I’ve spent the past few months looking at my garden and examining each area to see how well it works: it’s an annual obsession. I’ve been pondering the marginal spaces – you know, the edge of the lawn where it meets the border, the grass where it meets the paving, that tricky bit at the front of the border that never seems quite full enough. Those spaces have been occupying my mind and I’m questioning whether I should be obsessing about them so much. I’ve concluded that I need to relax and let the garden go its own way.
While we all love mature gardens: borders packed with well-established plants, every space accounted for, there’s a lot to be said for breathing space. And I mean that literally and metaphorically. As gardeners we can be restless, relentlessly looking for the next best thing, comparing our garden to other gardens. We all have our own level of fixation with it, fed to varying degrees by over-shopping, over-planting, or just out and out overindulgence. And because I recognise a lot of myself in that statement, I’m endeavouring to behave differently this year.
What’s come over me? I’m taking a chill pill, becoming more relaxed about my garden. It’s about taking time to appreciate what’s there and resist the urge to keep adding for the sake of adding. It happens so easily, that nervous twitch-like reflex that creeps up on you, the desire to reach perfection with your planting, forgetting that nature is indeed beautiful but not always perfect. We strive for control over our plants, sometimes losing patience with underperformers, but it’s time to relax.
We all contribute to the million-pound economy that is the ornamental and edible horticultural sector. And this year, Easter is early, meaning that the
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