Landscape project in the orchard

Madness. What was I thinking? I’m standing at the pointy end of an enormous long steep bank of wildflowers and weeds and thinking, yep, this could do with a makeover.

Someone throw a bucket of cold water over me now. Then lead me gently into a darkened room for a nice lie down.

It’s gorgeous up until half way through the year. Gentle growth, the lush grass only about ankle high and the fruit trees the star of the bank.

But in just three or four weeks at this time of year I start to lose control in a big way.  I could pretend and call it a wildflower bank. But I can’t leave it alone (unlike the bank just above it which is mostly left to its own devices).

I can console myself with the fact that if I can’t wade through this bank en route for the cherries or the apples then neither can the deer.  But one trip from an errant bramble tendril lurking under the grass and I know it’s time to get out the machines.

And of course a close strim means it looks dreadful for a few weeks. And it really does lose its charm.

I mow curves on the track at the top of this bank and I love the effect of the real wildflowers (as opposed to brambles) contrasted with the mown edge.

The purple geranium-like flower you see here is actually ‘mauve’ and is the original pelargonium.  And it’s mauve. Fancy.  And I have a passion for these white achillea. A touch invasive, but so strongly upright and fighting the drape of the vetch.

So when I was strimming away I thought: time to save the achillea and do something with the bank.

Which means my weeding of this bank is fiddly.

I fantasize about small diggers uprooting all the couch grass and making my life easier with me behind the wheel with a manic grin.

Instead it’s a sturdy Bulldog fork and my best work boots and just legwork. luckily it’s a sitting down job, so I’m not moaning too much.  But apart from the crop of couch grass, I also have a good crop of stones.

Ah, the stones. I am hauling out stones by the bucketful.

But that’s fine. Because you can’t move far on this farm without finding a beautiful granite stone wall. Or a potential stone wall.

So I have put my rejects to use by defining the top of the bank with the start of a teensy wall.

I need to be able to mow the track without barking my blade on the edge. So the wall is flush.

Does that make it a wall? Or just a garden feature?

And that was the end of my day one. It’s hot by the time I get round to this project: so I’m slower than I would like.  But I’m getting there.

Another thought came to me as I toiled: did you have to choose a part of the garden that is so far away from the tap?  I will need to drag about 200 feet of hose just to water this bed. But I’m planning on only doing this deep watering technique once a fortnight.

Watering what I hear you shriek. In a word, spares.  Spare eragrostis curvula grasses that are growing in the Alice’s path below the potting shed.  Spare verbena bonariensis I weeded out of the potager; phlomis  and agastache grown from seed, and the rest are cuttings taken this spring: ballota and purple sage.

Now, if I could snap my fingers and show you the finished product – I want to get at least a few more metres of the bed planted up – I would. But I get the feeling this is going to be something I come back to after the vegetable garden chores and the rest of the farm.  Unless you want to come by and give me a hand.