Comedy of errors

Press, 9 October 1987, Page 10

Comedy of errors

Most people, when they acquire a garden, Inherit the accumulated mistakes of generations of earlier occupants. There is usually one spectacular error like a maturing blue Atlas cedar whose pendulous branches now scratch the glass of the picture windows. Even more Inconvenient are the border plants (perennials, bulbs, and shrubs) which appear to have been plonked in the flower beds with all the systematic and logical selectivity of a computer. It’s a rich (or foolish) man, of course, who will destroy all with a sudden burst of weedkiller, just for the luxury of starting from scratch. Most people (myself included) feel pained, even shocked, by the idea. Yet, after a season of watching “what comes up” in a new garden, it is hard not to feel lowered by the sight of carminepink phlox next to an orange lily, or the fact that the winter-flowering hellebores are too far from the house to be seen without binoculars. Having faced this problem myself when I moved house a few years ago, I offer the following suggestions for a solution — in all humility and provided it is understood that I have not always taken my own inestimable advice, but invariably regretted it when I did not. Try to wait a whole growing season before ripping up the borders; instead, note what your predecessors have planted, and take masses of photographs as an aidememoire. When something comes into flower put a bamboo cane into the ground next to the clump and tie a plastic gardening tag on it, bearing the description “deep pink, hardy perennial, December, 1.2 metres.” It does not matter if you do not know the name; the label will hold sufficient meaning for you even months later. Without it, however, you will' never find those phlox

in the dormant season: when you want to move them. A bed of bamboo canes will not look very pretty, I concede, but you may have to sacrifice present pleasure for future benefit. Write in a notebook all the plants you possess, their flowering times, height and so on. Measure your garden using a 30-metre (100 ft tape and relying on two static points, A and B, from which all measurements to points C, D, E, etc. are taken. If you measure A to C, B to C, and A to B, then A to D, etc., you will have no difficulty drawing up a really accurate plan of your garden, and its existing features, on graph or tracing paper, using compasses. Incidentally, do not rely on your eye: however square your garden may look it is unlikely to be so. Use a scale ruler (from a drawing materials shop) to measure the lengths on to the paper; the scale 1:100 is appropriate for the shape of borders and 1:50 for the planting of

them. (This method works equally well for an established garden or a totally new one you are starting from an expanse of mud and builder’s rubble.) Having decided which of those plants you already have will look well together in one bed, plot them on your planting plan, using crosses to represent each individual plant. Be careful to leave enough space for their eventual mature breadth (I find the widths recommended for each plant in “The Reader’s Digest Encyclopaedia of Garden Plants and Flowers” extremely useful, although not absolutely infallible). If you do not know the name of your hardy perennial allow it 45cm as a general, though breakable, rule. If the position of each individual plant is marked, every one should slot into place when you come to plant the border. Label each group of identical plants on the plan.

Realistically you will have to buy or beg some new plants appropriate to the situation if a coherent colour scheme is to be achieved. Order these from nurseries as early as possible in summer for an autumn delivery. In spring, empty the border you wish to replant, dividing the perennials and overcrowded bulbs and heleing them in (yes, that is how it is spelled), labelled, in a sheltered piece of ground. Wait until the perennial weeds (which there inevitably will be) are growing strongly in your border 'before spraying them at least twice, six weeks apart Dig in rotted manure or garden compost in late summer, and fork in 85 grams of bonemeal per square metre. Plant all those heled-in plants, and any others required which have been dug from elsewhere in the garden, in early April. On very heavy soils, wait until the winter to dig and the following spring to plant. Lie the tape along the front of the bed, so that the position of each plant can be read off from the plan, using the scale ruler. Put all plants in their allotted places on the soil, with the barerooted ones covered so they do not dry out, and plant the whole area in one hectic orgy of planting. Others cleverer than myself can achieve a coherent scheme by piecemeal planting, perhaps. However, for ordinary mortals, a systematic approach to the problem is much more likely to bring about the desired result and, paradoxically, with far less effort in the long run.

Ursula Buchan’s book, "The Pleasures of Gardening,” is published in Britain by J. M. Dent.