We Made a Garden Read Free

available crack and crevice I can bring the wall to life long before the plants get going in the border below. Great cascades of white and lavender, yellow and pink prevent the wall from looking cold and bare in the early spring.
    Having torn down all our little walls and obstructions so that we could visualize what the place looked like without them, our next job was to clear the barton—the yard in front of the outbuildings and between us and the orchard.
    That job would have frightened most people, but not Walter. Anyone who knows anything about farming can imagine the piles of iron and rubbish that had accumulated during the years. We had bought the outbuildings, barton and orchard from a chicken farmer, so in addition to the farming legacies we had all the relics of the chicken era as well. And to add interest there were old beds, rusty oil stoves, ancient corsets, pots, pans, tins and china, bottles and glass jars, and some big lumps of stone which may at one time have been used for crushing grain.
    A bonfire burned in the middle of that desolation for many weeks, until one day Walter announced that the time had come to level the ground for a proper drive into the malthouse, which we used as a garage. I was told I must find another place to burn the barrowloads of weeds and muck I collected every day. I can remember arguing, without result, that the place where the bonfire burned could be left while the rest of the barton was tackled. I think Walter was very wise in being so firm with me. The only way to get jobs done is to be ruthless and definite.
    There was no rubbish collection in those days, which was undoubtedly the reason for the horrible collection of stuff we found. Small things, such as china, glass and tins were collected by us in barrowloads and as a short cut Walter had holes dug in odd places and the stuff tipped into them. In course of time, as I have put more land into cultivation I have run into quite a number of these caches, and have decided that it really does not pay to take short cuts. Luckily we now have a regular salvage collection and having retrieved the grisly mementoes they are banished for good and all.
    Between the barton and orchard were two walls, and Walter suggested we could make quite attractive rock gardens against them and thus add colour and interest to the barton. It was only after I had given my enthusiastic agreement that I discovered he wanted some way of disposing of the bigger rubbish that couldn’t be buried. So all the old oilstoves, bits of bedsteads, lumps of iron and rolls of wire netting were distributed against the walls, and the rest of the job was handed over to me.
    Luckily we had a garden boy working for us then and he was allowed to help me cover the hardware with earth, and between us we ransacked the heaps of stones for the nicest looking specimens. Neither of us had ever done anything of the sort before but we constructed what we thought were two very fine gardens.
    Soon after this some visitors appeared one day. One of them was an expert gardener and she didn’t get further than the first rock garden. I thought she was filled with admiration for our handiwork and was waiting for the applause. But I discovered she was trying to get up her courage to tell me that all the stones were put in at the wrong angle. Instead of tipping slightly inwards to make a good pocket of soil which would hold the rain, mine had an outward tilt so that the first really heavy shower would see a lot of the soil washed away and the water would run off what was left.
    The stones had to remain as they were for several months, a monument to my ignorance, but one happy day a cousin with a genius for gardening visited us and remade the gardens for me. Although there is a distinct downward slope towards the gate he placed the stones to give the effect of level strata of outcrop, something I could never have dreamed of and have never ceased to admire. From the house the effect is a