From January through June, Matt Collins, writer and Head Gardener at the Garden Museum, will document the subtle and often overlooked scenes of a changing garden. Join us throughout the season as he reflects on the ever-changing landscape of his Hampshire plot.
14th November 2024
Last weekend I tied a bird feeder to the sturdiest limb I could find on the young almond tree, and filled it with sunflower hearts. It’s now Thursday and, after a few days dangling untouched, bird life has unequivocally discovered it: flashes of yellow and brown-blue dart between fence and feeder; blue tits and great tits flit from its pegs. All of a sudden the garden is alive with a dimension of activity previously absent; there is movement everywhere. As though the feeder has sent up a smoke signal to all birds proclaiming this garden ‘safe’, they have arrived to explore it with the fervour of children in an unfamiliar playground. A blackbird forages through the Virginia creeper litter; a pigeon totters over the kids’ sandpit leaving a swirl of indentations.
From the kitchen I watch a troop of blue tits hop along the twining strands of the honeysuckle, pecking enthusiastically at aphids; they then dart in unison to the compost bin (an invertebrate larder), and on to the tall swaying heads of eupatorium. Seemingly, a queue system has developed in the neighbour’s elder tree, with birds advancing to take their turn at the feeder. A sparrow pops its little head over the fence, ‘what’s this then?’. The bustle is divinely distracting.
19th November 2024
Entering now its third year, I have renewed plans for our little Hampshire garden. It was more or less a blank canvas when we arrived — of lawn, shed and fencing; once new beds were dug, it served as a repository for ornamental ideas. It is a place for flowers, predominantly, almost all grown from seed or cuttings, some inspired by trips abroad and cautiously trialled in the British climate. Increasing space has been given over for the growing of these plants; a little more turf etched away each season in favour of nurturing soil. The boys make their mark, too, via the liberal distribution of toy trucks and diggers. ‘Construction-vehicle yellow’ protrudes conspicuously from beneath shrubs. Herbs have come and gone, wherever a gap has been found for them — sowings of parsley, dill and fennel — but I feel it’s time for a more concerted effort at cultivating edibles. I envision some kind of raised bed arrangement taking over the back end of the garden, where the sunlight is generous, providing us with a modest, if not token, assemblage of vegetables for the table. A winter task, so now to source some wood.
20th November 2024
Winter is so far unfurling in a series of thermometer lurches, swinging relentlessly between wet warmth and temporary freeze. The garden expresses these fluctuations through subtleties mostly stumbled upon: a new, perhaps confused, green shoot; a crystallised leaf shimming at its margin. Today the frost came again, and my son and I went out to inspect it, marking the grass with our prints, checking the miniature pond — dug out together only last month — for sheathing ice. We take an opposing view of the situation: where I see failing seedlings and a host of potential fatalities, the four year old sees only enchantment: the globe thistle rosettes sharpened with frost, the rose wires sparkling.
Strangely, it has taken fifteen odd years of gardening for me to truly appreciate the aesthetic merit of winter seed-heads. Perhaps this is because, in Britain at least, the magic of the frosted flower exhibits only at first light, at which time I’m usually making my way to the gardens in which I work, and rarely arrive in time to catch it. Now with a garden of my own, at last (albeit modestly sized) I see the frozen beauty, and the value of leaving herbaceous plants standing. Left erect through winter, the dark fingers of anise hyssop glint; the maroon sedums become dusted white; the slender stems of purple moor grass blaze straw-gold. Frost has wilted and sugared the black elder leaves, too, outlining their crow-black centres, preserving them momentarily before their inevitable fall. The effect is stunning, and will no doubt last only a few fleeting hours.
Later, walking back from the park at sundown, my son shudders in his little jacket, telling me he feels ‘sparkly cold’; the most wonderful phrase.
22nd November 2024
The temperature drop has bleached the three large clumps of fountain grass in the sunny border, whitening the long arching leaf blades beyond repair. I’ve never noticed this happen before, though I’m sure it happens most winters. Their autumnal ochres are unequivocally spent for the year, their foxtail plumes wind-scattered across the garden.
18th December 2024
Blustery, mild morning: another thermometer lurch. The bird feeder swings, the fences lean. Jackdaws quack from the roof of the house — from the chimney pot — and lift with ease onto the unseasonably warm air, buoyant on the breeze like tethered kites. Stepping into the garden I notice seedlings have germinated in one corner of the sandpit (which I have been meaning to pack away for weeks): broad cotyledons and grassy shoots cluster in the damp. A lush woodwardia fern, planted a few days ago — a two-metre giant in the making — revels in the present dank; it is decidedly ‘fern weather’ today; a bizarre moment of December. I notice a fresh flush of green leaves showing on the rockrose — anyone’s guess if they’ll survive the winter.
20th December 2024
Today I brought home from the Garden Museum a carrier bag of spare roots, perennials lifted from a tired planting scheme — white bistort and white anemone, which I dug into the border close to the house. Also brought home was a wedged clump of Aralia cordata: a large woodland perennial from east Asia with lances of spherical, ivy-like flowers. ‘Cordata’ refers to the plant’s heart-shaped leaves, which open green and soften mirabelle-yellow come autumn. All that shows at present, however, is the stub of a spent stem and the red bud of a new one. All else is soil, worm and root — all that is needed for now. But such is the promise of herbaceous plants; that from an unassuming, somewhat amorphous muddy clod will assuredly rise vigorous stems bearing bright, pillowy flowers clean as linen. With confidence I can trust that, come summer, the anemones will bloom either side of the bistro table, as I have placed them, and that the bistort will mingle with the fennel behind, white on bronze. The aralia will throw up branching stems that will eventually tumble over the lawn, below the kitchen window as intended. But now to construct the produce beds.
Matt Collins is a garden and travel writer, and head gardener at the Garden Museum in London.
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