Taming a woodland garden

Reader, I resorted to scissors.

Cutting a lawn with scissors is a test of time and patience. And a spot of madness.

But I was locked down in a one week quarantine, and what else does one have to do with one’s time? Besides, we only have a push mower and the grass had grown too long to tame.

So I sat on a cushion, blunted my best pair of secateurs cutting just the edges. And then went to the kitchen drawer and returned with a good sturdy pair of scissors.

Who knew?

It worked a treat. And then when I had given it an appalling messy cut, it was out with the mower and the lawn almost looks tamed.

From above. From afar.

The star Jasmine (trachelospermum jasminoides) is growing well against that new wall to the right. And I pulled out goodness only knows how many raspberry escapees from the lawn. The birds will not be pleased.

And the next mad job was to reclaim all the paths in this woodland west facing garden.

Scrubbing all the mosaic paths with a toothbrush?

That will do it.

It was actually quite soothing. Listening to the birds in the trees and the distant hum of traffic (such a novelty after eight months away).

The tahsome thing about a woodland garden is all the self-seeding delights from your own trees and next door. Next door to the left is a sycamore jungle. so some of the self seeders have secretly turned into small trees in the dense woodland planting towards the rear.

I did unearth some fat rhubarb stalks in among the plants. And the gooseberries survived the caterpillar attack from a few years back.

I have thickly mulched the raised beds with cuttings from all the pruned shrubs. And hope that the cuttings from the lawn grass duvet over the top might deter the determined. The self seeding carex pendula, and the sycamore.

But I doubt it.

The front garden has had its huge haircut. But better still, the neighbours next door are going to agree to cut back the jungle on their side of the boundary wall so the poor lilac and cherry and euphorbias don’t have to lean into the path to try and see sunlight and not choking shade.

I was surprised not to find bunyips lurking in the shrubbery back there. It had the lost in the wilderness feel.