The open day has come and gone. All of the stress of having the less than perfect garden 'just right' for a single day is just a memory. Its a good memory even though the day did not exactly get off to the most promising start. When I woke up it was chucking it down with rain. I toddled off down the road to put up the Scotland's Garden Scheme signs just as the rain stopped but the overcast sky persisted, all grey and miserable. I can't speak for other garden visitors, but the sun just lifts the garden, the insects are more numerous and well, the day just feels better...well to me anyway and I wondered if the grey day would put people off.
The success of the day was always going to be in the lap of the Gods. I have a tiny garden a good mile up a bumpy track off the main road so I had already made up my mind that more than a handful of visitors would be ok. I did think we might not have anyone turn up at all. So with signs up and the SGS rep here we waited. 10 am came and went (open time was 10am until 4pm) and the SGS rep said that often people tend to visit from lunch time and beyond so I dottled about checking everything was suitable for inspection. 10;20am and the first two visitors arrived. I breathed a sigh of relief, at least someone had turned up. Then the next visitors and the next, I looked over to the parking field and a few more cars arrived, and at one point, to enable social distancing, we kept people talking at the gate as the garden filled up with a throng of people. Then the questions started coming, 'what is this plant...that plant, those plants...' Now I know every plant that I have grown from seed or bought in the garden, but some of the cuttings from friend's gardens I'm not so sure on, but the visitors seemed satisfied with the answers. There were some very obvious 'long-time' gardeners but to my surprise everyone was so kind and complimentary. I suppose when you are in your own garden all of the time, you notice the gaps or the bits that just don't quite work the way you had intended, but, when you visit a garden you just appreciate what you see. The best bit was that the hoverflies all came out to play and so many people commented on the amount of insects there were. The garden really was buzzing.
For some reason, we didn't actually do a numbers count, but basing numbers on the entry fee even though some folk did donate more and there is no charge for children, we estimate there were around 80 people came through the gate. There was no point in the day when there were no visitors and the last ones to leave went around 4;30pm. Best of all, the sun made numerous appearances, the rain very kindly held off all day and we made £239 for Scotland's Garden Scheme.
I've decided not to open next year. I do think it would be good if a lot more smaller gardens opened under the scheme, especially in Moray as we do have a lack of gardens to visit, but opening a smaller garden, I feel, is more complicated than opening a large one. It might seem like an odd thing to say as surely a large garden requires so much more work? Well yes, but I think you can get away with more. If you have some plant loses or areas that have gaps or failures in a large space you can still provide the visitor with plenty other interest. In a small garden this can be more troublesome, the gaps and problem areas can make up a larger part of the borders and beds.
The size of my growing spaces dictates the style of gardening I do. If you watch any gardening programme they recommend that you plant in threes and fives and create a large impact with the planting as well as using repeat planting throughout the beds. I can't do that. If I did I would have an extremely limited plant selection which in turn would limit succession. I'm a plant collector first and foremost and while you will find some plants repeated in the garden, you won't find large drifts of a single variety as I simply don't have the room. Instead I have to work out what plants will be flowering at what times and and how will the border look when some plants have gone over. It does mean I tend to cram plants in and I have lost some who have taken offence and been crowded out. This year, with the extremely late spring even the most reliable of plants have flowered at odd times, many of them very late, which led to the cancellation of the first scheduled open day in June. I'm thankful for the annuals though, the fabulous little gap fillers that flower their socks off right into autumn.
So why am I not opening the garden next year? Well, even before the open day I was getting twitchy. In my head had already started planning some changes to the garden and was keen to get going. Since then I've already created a new planting space in front of the patio and removed all the stones where the throne sat in the woodland garden and planted the mecanopsis that had been in pots the last couple of years. The main cottage border is going to get a major revamp and not opening the garden means I can be a bit more relaxed. If my revamp is a disaster, well that's no problem, no one but me will see it. I also want to give my tropical courtyard a bit of time for some of the plants to size up and I've also got to get a few of the more difficult ones through the winter.
For now, I'm planning and taking notes, getting ready to lift, divide and rearrange. I've sowed some seeds that like to be sown in autumn and should germinate come spring. There's more tulip bulbs to get in the ground come November and then its a case of batten down the hatches and watch gardening programmes all winter....and dream of spring, lets hope it comes early in 2022!