We Made a Garden Read Free Page B

led up to the house, turning at right angles to the gate. The rest of the garden was grassed, with fairly wide borders all round, under the high walls. The garden was not particularly well kept, nor were there very interesting plants growing in the borders, a good rector hasn’t time for that, but it was adequate and pleasant and just the setting for village fetes and summer meetings of the Mothers’ Union.
    In time it ceased to be used as a rectory and came on the market. The next owner left it as it was, probably from lack of interest. Then it changed hands again and the new owners felt they had to do something to improve it. We thought they could have achieved this by concentrating on what was there. They could have replanted those ample borders with better plants, and introduced interesting climbers on the walls, but they thought there were all sorts of things that ought to be in a garden, no matter what size. So they worked very hard to cut up that peaceful old garden with hedges. The lawn was cut in half, more beds were made along the new hedges, in one half trees were dotted about a small stone monument, and mean little narrow paths intersected it still more. On the other side little bits of rock garden cropped up from the grass, there was a pond and a weeping tree, more little bits of paving and more little beds. If ever a garden was ruined that one was, and the new owners spent their lives clipping hedges and cutting round the horrid little beds.
    Another garden we knew was ruined for Walter because the paths were too narrow and completely out of proportion to everything else. He liked breadth and generosity and a feeling of spaciousness in the garden as well as the house, and the elimination of all unnecessary detail.
    One of the things we tried to do was to make the garden as much part of the house as possible. It was easier for us than some people because we made the garden round the house, and the construction of the house helped. The big door in the hall, where we always sat, opens directly into the garden. The hall is paved with flagstones and we paved the garden outside, which is on the same level. It was difficult to tell where one ended and the other began, in point of fact a great deal of the garden usually came into the house with me, and attention was continually being drawn to the shoe scraper and door-mat! In the summer the garden door is open all the time and we are always in and out. The front garden we paved too, and as the only way to reach it is through the house or round the road there were more reprimands when I carried baskets of plants or weeds through the house. In the winter there is always a wood fire smouldering on the open hearth in the hall, and it makes a wonderful funeral pyre for dangerous weeds, and a convenient source of supply when potash or charcoal are required for garden operations.

 
    3. The Lawn
    And so our lawn was taken right up to the high wall. I was grudgingly allowed a narrow bed in which to plant a few perennials and the climbers that were to clothe the wall, but I was warned that it was not to encroach too much on the precious green grass.
    We were lucky in having one tree in the garden, a variegated sycamore. That was the tree we saw through the open door the day we decided to buy the house, and today it is the only thing that remains in the garden from those days. It is in the lawn, rather near the house, and the aspect would be very bleak without it. It is one of the tragedies of a new garden that all the trees must necessarily be very small, and I think we were extremely lucky to find one ready grown for us.
    It took us several weeks to make our lawn. Making a lawn isn’t just a matter of raking the surface and sowing grass seed. Certainly it wasn’t for us. First of all the ground was by no means level and had to be levelled by driving in pegs at intervals. A long strip of wood with a spirit level strapped to it is placed on top of the pegs to get the right