Meet the garden





My garden is a typical north London  garden, long and narrow  like a ribbon. It measures 90ft x 23ft. When I took it over 30 years ago, it had been a football pitch for two small boys. There were long, narrow (2ft) beds running all round its edges which were full of pyracantha and privet.  Taking up most of the space in the middle was a lawn in which stood a Bramley apple tree and a barbecue.
Features included a Wisteria climbing up the house, a white rambling rose called Albéric Barbier, a wonderful red rose that I think is climbing Papa Meilland and a gap in the top hedge where the neighbours used to climb through to visit. There's a 10ft concrete patio and an outside tap.

I created a slightly snaking narrow brick  path up to the back wall, widened the beds so they are now about 4ft or 5ft , took out half the hedges and planted a yew hedge two thirds up the garden. Behind this are two wooden compost bins and my shed.

I kept losing plants during winter because the water couldn't drain away though the clay and the garden became a pond. I decided to raise the beds by adding masses and masses of compost.  It's taken some years but I asked for compost for my birthdays and Christmases and made as much as I could myself and added wood chips from local trees being felled until now I can grow all those Mediterranean plants that hate getting their roots wet.

Six years ago, inspired partly by a friend who turned her field into a fruit garden, I decided to mix aesthetics and edibles and began to do my own version of "forest gardening" or "permaculture", so that I hope people, including myself,  will find places to sit and enjoy the environment while I can pick both fruit and vegetables in season.

The garden, it is true,  has become a bit less tidy - but I never was much of a tidy person anyway - and already I have a more diverse wildlife and as long as there is a strong and interesting structure  the garden looks interesting at any time of year, tidy or not.

I'm really in the middle of finding out what's possible, what  works and how easy I can make it.

                                       

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