I think gardening might just be another word for tidying !

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 Dear reader,


My garden is becoming more and more untidy as the years roll on, and as my energy wanes. I feel this most acutely since retiring on a small pension and living within our means. It doesn't help that at this time of year Instagram and Book of the Face is full of really beautiful images of tulip filled and very tidy gardens.

Do you sense a kind of jealousy creeping in ?


Ok, I have a chip on my shoulder. But then we also read a lot about not being too tidy in the garden for the benefit of wild things. It is very hard to resist the urge to tidy. It must be a deeply entrenched human need?

I've wanted to take down the rotting pergola and shed for a very long time, but every year something happens that means we can't spend on what is secondary in terms of priorities. I used the first warm dry day for some time to venture down and inspect what remains of this end of the garden, and this involved tidying and clearing up the detritus. I actually derived pleasure from this, the endorphin rush was palpable. But then I remembered a really inspiring Instagram post by John Little of www.instagram.com/grassroofco who is transforming a garden space that looks roughly the same size as ours, and who mentioned an untidy patch between gardens as the place where all the wildlife was. He was opening up cracks in an old concrete base and seeding and planting into it. This got me thinking and reconnecting with the heart of this old garden below a coal tip.



I have been allowing 'weeds' or native perennials to have their way in parts of the garden, I've been leaving patches of grass to grow long, have allowed woody piles of brushwood to slowly rot in their own time, all to increase habitat and diversity. In the overwhelming negativity of the trundling machine that is  'progress' it is good to love and care for other living beings. 

Yesterday in this mostly untidy and decaying garden, I saw a pair of holly blue butterflies mating on the ivy leaves. I saw a small skipper, and the pieris flowers were full of hover flies, bumblebees and others. Anne Wareham's squirrel proof feeder was alive with long tailed tit, coal tit, blue tit, goldfinch, chaffinch, and a bunch of sparrows.

The squirrels have been gnawing the horse skull instead of the bird food



I am thankful despite the untidiness. We will be open with www.ngs.org.uk 24th and 25th June.


Paul



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