‘I transformed a forgotten corner of my garden’

The first thing we had to do when we came to our present garden, was to think how we might use the ground, how it was to be divided, where the paths must go. By the time the builders had finished with the site, there wasn’t much of the original garden left. Certainly not up on the bank, which rises up from the yard and finishes at a wild field boundary of holly and hazel. The bank had always been left to itself and when we finally got to the end of clearing it of bramble and elder, I fully understood why.
The plot, as a whole, is roughly triangular and there’s a drop of more than 70ft from the highest point of the bank to the lowest, a small valley where a stream is lined with alders. We had to work out a way of getting to the top of the bank without feeling we had just accomplished an assault on K2.
The first thing we did was to plant a hedge, actually two hedges, which cut off the first part of the bank from what lay beyond. The hedge, doubled, became something completely different from the single line I first thought of. The position of the first hedge was fixed by a mature red oak (Quercus rubra). It seemed to make more sense to incorporate this, than to leave it standing unconnected to anything else on the bank.
The second hedge went in parallel to the first, leaving a path 7.5ft wide between the two. Now we had something more than just a screen between one part of the garden and the next. The twin hedges channelled a view south across the valley with its alder trees. And it acted like the blank space on the page of a book between one chapter and the next. Instead of walking straight through an opening and immediately connecting with the next bit of the garden, there would be the chance for a pause. And a seat.
The hedges, starting at the northern boundary of the garden, run south for 45ft. We used a native mix of green-leaved beech, hornbeam, yew, holly and blackthorn, planting bare root plants about 2ft tall. They settled brilliantly and raced up until we stopped them at about 7ft. Cutting the hedges is a winter job, any time from November to the end of the year. The path between is dressed with woodchip.
A path leads from the yard up the bank to the opening in the hedge. The opening is quite close to the point where the hedge meets the back boundary of the garden. Just to the left of that is a small, forgotten corner, a thin triangle, with a long side, about 7ft along the boundary and a short side (4ft) along the hedge we planted. It’s carved off by a wooden gravel board.
Coming up the bank through tree peonies and rampaging love-in-a-mist, this small patch is directly in view. Ever since we have been here, it has been thick with docks and wild garlic, both of them enthusiastic self-seeders. As we have big spreads of wild garlic at the furthest end of the garden, we didn’t need it here and I got tired of endlessly weeding its seedlings out of nearby paths and flower beds.
So I laid into it and cleared the lot. It’s not great ground, since it is bounded by hedges on two sides, but it was directly in view to anyone making their way up the bank. The first things that went in were snowdrops. They grow well here, both in gardens and in the wild, either side of the stream that runs through the valley. When we first came here I brought with me a clump of a snowdrop called ‘Atkinsii’ that had grown in our old garden. It’s splendidly vigorous and after flowering each spring, I’ve lifted a clump and spread it about. The newly cleared forgotten triangle provided an ideal place for a new colony.
The next ingredient was a fern, planted before the foliage of the snowdrops completely disappeared. That way, I hoped to avoid planting the one thing on top of the other. The fern is a native, a low, compact beauty called Polypodium cambricum ‘Richard Kayse’, forming a clump not more than 18in high and wide (though its creeping rhizomes will gradually spread further). This is one of at least a dozen kinds of P. cambricum, each with subtle differences in the way the fronds are divided.
All this tribe have the unusual characteristic — among ferns at least — of producing their fresh fronds in August, which is just when the garden needs an injection of new, bright foliage. It’s not strictly evergreen, but some of the old fronds will still be present when the new ones come through. Then you can carefully cut them away, leaving a clean canvas for the new growth. In its quiet way, it is a stunner, first found by Kayse in 1668 at Dinas Powys in South Glamorgan.
The third and final element was the autumn-flowering cyclamen, (Cyclamen hederifolium). I got these, in flower, from our local garden centre, choosing plants with the deepest pink flowers. I’ve found these cyclamen succeed better as plants than they do when I’ve planted them as dried corms. The flowers of course are enchanting, but the real gift is the foliage, the pointed, heart-shaped leaves beautifully patterned in various shades of silver.
So this small, forgotten triangle has finally stopped nagging at me, every time I pass it. The snowdrops start flowering in late December and continue for the next two months, the narrow grey foliage gradually dying away through spring. The ferns, though at their peak in high summer, look wonderfully fresh for months through spring and early summer. And the cyclamen is equally generous, sending out its first flowers in the middle of July and flowering on through autumn. The leaves, which arrive after the first flowers will last until the beginning of next May. Presently I’m eyeing up a forgotten corner of the drive, at present growing nothing more than gravel. There are possibilities there.