When I made the decision last year not to have a garden open day in 2022, it must have been a bit of divine intervention at work as I had absolutely no idea what fate was about to befall the garden.
It was a bit of a soggy winter, although not the wettest we’ve had but for some reason the water was puddling in the garden and before too long, having a very active greyhound meant the grass paths soon became a muddy mess. The side garden which is the cottage style planting scheme was particularly bad and I ended up covering the paths with woodchip to give some kind of surface to walk on…but to no avail. The woodchip just turned to a squelchy mess too. Water sat for weeks around the apple tree and the wildlife pond which normally needs regular topping up was overflowing, even when there had been no rain. At the same time I had started seed sowing and using my usual compost had zero germination, even with the propagator, with all but the biggest seeds such as the cannas, hollyhocks and sunflowers. The compost was awful, it dried really quickly, but worse was to come. Any plants I potted on into it quickly started to yellow and I realised that the compost was actively killing my plants. With some of the seeds I had left I put them into a different growing medium and had rapid germination, mostly within a few days. There was definitely something wrong. A quick online search told me I was not the only one to have experienced it. There was page after page complaining about this particular brand. By now we were well into the growing season and my planting was way behind, but that didn’t matter anyway, the garden was still so wet I couldn’t work in any of the flower beds. While the ground was baking dry all around the cottage, the fields were becoming parched as we entered an early drought, only the surface of my garden dried. Every hole I dug rapidly filled with water and I knew then we had a water leak somewhere…but where?
Most curious was where the wildlife pond was coming out, and I spotted the pond liner actually being pushed up from underneath. Surely the leak couldn’t be under the pond? That would mean it’s under the house.
In the field next door there was a noticeable pool of water too and when my landlord and the plumber came out to take a look, they noticed a ‘wet patch’ running the length of the field and decided that they could fix it by capping off a pipe a bit further back and so they did. Within days the field started to dry up and I thought it would only be a week or so until the garden did the same. Nope! The garden stayed sodden, even with no rainfall. And then one night I came home to find my neighbours hose running into her chicken pen in the woods behind the cottages and it set me thinking, I knew she would leave it running all night and when I heard it still going in the morning I went and checked the front garden. The wildlife pond was back to normal level and the stream that had been running from it into the bed beside the path was dry. There was my answer. The diversion of the water pressure elsewhere had allowed my garden to drain, at least a bit and as I predicted, when my neighbour switched off the hose, within an hour the pond had over flowed again. It’s all now in the hands of Scottish Water and my landlord to come to some agreement of new water pipes etc and in the meantime, I’ve still been unable to actually do any work in the garden. The cottage garden on the side is completely destroyed. All the tulip bulbs have gone, and most of the plants have died except the ones that like the wet such as the astillbe and the yellow loostrife has taken over. I’ve done no weeding except pulling out the rampant clivers when they have smothered other plants and thinning a bit of willowherb and something weird has happened. Wild plant species that I’ve not had in the garden before have appeared. The wet patch created by the overflowing pond is full of red campion and plantain. Fox and cubs flower has also found its way in and there is feverfew in abundance. I haven’t been able to use the lawnmower to cut the paths and instead I have to use hand shears every week or so to enable me to walk down the paths. Cutting the grass while kneeling gives you a whole new perspective. Using the shears means I don’t cut the grass nearly so short and the beetles are loving it. In fact I’ve noticed a considerable increase in invertebrates in the garden. I’m not even bothering to pull the snails off the plants and there seems to be more blackbirds than ever. The garden has essentially been left to go feral and in the front part, the plants are growing tall and lush. Although this part has not been as wet as the side garden they have clearly appreciated the constant moisture. This morning when I looked behind the solar panel that runs the waterfall at the fish pond I found a whole group of toadlets and newtlets sheltering underneath. It is absolute abundance and clear that the garden doesn’t need me, it’s a thriving ecosystem, but something else has happened too, I no longer ‘need’ the garden. Despite the seemingly disastrous situation, I don’t care. I haven’t watched a gardening programme on the TV for weeks. I have been able to totally let go of the obsession of creating a garden and at the same time I’ve let go of everything needing to be perfect, because it already is. And that’s a great headspace to be in.