Until July 2017, documenting the seasons of coastal Dorset. I'm a complete amateur so don't trust I'm always right. If ever you see I'm wrong - whether with identifications or in anything else - do say! Meanwhile . . . I've now moved to Halifax in West Yorkshire. Click on the link below to collect the new URL. Don't forget to follow there!

Monday 14 July 2008

NEXT, THE LANDSCAPE GARDENER TOOK A TURN


This is a post left over from when Loose and Leafy was a work of fiction. Later, it evolved into what it is now - a blog about the wild plants of the South Dorset Coast.

To make sense (in so far as there is sense) of these early posts, you may like to take a look at Esther in the Garden.

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Well, after the leatherjackets, I had to decide what to do with the muddy patch they left behind.

I was properly working then and sometimes away for weeks trying to persuade delicatessens in Europe to sell Casterbridge Pies in their stores - so I looked in the telephone directory and found a firm of landscape gardeners, phoned to see if they would take on the task and a man soon came round. I chatted with him for a bit, showed him pictures of gardens I liked, assured him that he was the expert and that I'd leave all decisions with him - and went to France.


I don't know precisely what I thought he'd do but I certainly hoped he'd make clever use of perspective so it would all seem much bigger than it really is. And I explained that, although he'd need to choose low maintenance plants, I would like something dramatic and interesting to look out upon and I asked for a good way to hide the dustbin and the compost. In my mind's eye I was seeing . . . perhaps a nice curve in the path suggesting a shrubbery beyond . . . or the hint of an entrance to a walled vegetable garden - a tasteful variety of horticultural trompe-oeils.

So, off I went, happy with the reasonable quote I'd been given and surprised how short a time he said would be needed to complete the task.


He put down floorboards.



6 comments:

Barbee' said...

Leave it to a man to think up a different solution. Now, no mowing, no clipping, no weeding... just sweeping!

Nancy said...

well, it is low maintanenc, but. Really!

Time to build either a trellis, or a bonfire. Or a gallows with a bonfire beneath...

'Course, being from Texas, I'd consider shooting him in the big toe, but not until he'd torn up the floor boards.

Amy said...

Oh dear! I suppose you could put lots of pots on top :)

Zoƫ said...

Hi Lucy,

yes, it was really all inside a Pavilion!

I am not sure they intend to instill Daily Mailness, apart from perhaps that it represents a little corner of the UK, in this case a hypothetical Dorset Vineyard , cottage, barns and gardens etc. Having helped with planting a couple of years ago in one of the areas of it, I can tell you that in three weeks they transform some tussocky grass in the part at Hampton Court and create this, irrespective of the weather. I always think its an amazing achievement.

I think you might enjoy it, its far less formal than Chelsea, it is the largest flower show in the world, but it has the atmosphere of a quintessentially English village Fete! The Palace and the grounds are worth a trip too if you ever get to Surrey.

Anonymous said...

I'm sure we'll soon see your new garden featured in a Gardening Magazine as the ultimate low maintenance garden!You could inspire a revolution in garden design.

Amanda said...

I miss Esther