Since lockdown, many of us – those who are lucky enough to have one – have been spending more time in our gardens. This has been one of the sunniest springs on record. And yet we’ve not been able to buy new plants as we would normally have done.
With the extra time, we’ve had an opportunity to grow new plants from seed – our front windowsill is filled with sunflowers, forget-me-nots and radishes, growing up from seed. And the extra days of lockdown have given more time to contemplate changes in the seasons which we might well not have noticed in the same way before.
This year, with the record sunshine, the azaleas in our garden have been the best-ever, the forget-me-nots have almost smothered the wallflowers; the peonies have come into blossom. The garden is filling with the honey-smell of wisteria, the scent of early roses, a regular pattern of flowering and a comforting sign of the apparent constancy and predictability of the world and nature, in a time when everything seems to be falling apart.
But just as gardens can delight, they can also disappoint, cause grief, surprise and even shock. As some plants flourish, other will fail to thrive or unexpectedly die, like the massive old clematis in our garden, which died last year, leaving a great gap on one wall which will take many years to replace with new growth.
Many great gardens have been neglected, destroyed and disappeared, but gardens can also come back to life; Heligan in Cornwall, rescued from brambles, the orchards replanted, the glass houses rebuilt, the beds restocked with gorgeous sub-tropical flowers; Croome Park, where newly-replanted trees are gradually restoring the vision of Capability Brown, or Stowe, the greatest garden of all, where the National Trust has dredged lakes, restored vistas and is replaced lost statues.
But some of us will have experienced the satisfaction of restoring a neglected garden in a house to which we have moved; where undergrowth has been cleared, lawns remade, flowers and shrubs replanted. In our garden, a few years ago, a utility company had to carry out major works, which entailed destruction of trees and shrubs, digging of trenches and loss of privacy for many months; but now there is no sign of its temporary humiliation.
Returning to a much-loved garden has the potential for disappointment as well as joy. Has the garden we might have remembered from our childhood been maintained as we might have hoped? Have trees, shrubs or flowers we planted in our childhood or youth survived? Do we still recognise it as the garden we remember from our childhoods?
Revisit Your Home to find out.
