Wednesday, 11 April 2018
A cold and rainy day permitted me to re-read The Bad Tempered Gardener by Anne Wareham.
The book is out of print and should not be. I hope it gets republished. If you are lucky enough to visit Veddw, Anne’s garden in Wales, she might have copies for sale there. I found one online, used, without too much searching.
Here are just some of my favourite bits. With a cat on my lap, I cannot lay the pages out flat. The pages are a bit glossy so you may have to squint a bit to read certain passages here. It will be worth it, and I hope it will inspire you to read the whole thing.
I do love that she used the mulching method to make her large garden, because that is the way I do it, too.
I appreciate the personal revelations:
With a lot of garden to plant, her fondness for variegated ground elder (aegepodium) makes me feel a little better about it being rampant at the Shelburne garden, because that is not a battle I am going to win:
If I came across a a plant that I knew was especially rampant, eradicable and mad I might treat myself, especially if I had read a lot of warnings about it from garden writers. One of the best was a single plant of variegated ground elder, which after a relatively slow start went on to cover the ground in the whole of the front garden.
Later: Part of my ambition is to persuade people to appreciate spreading plants—the simpler, easier, and more beautiful effect produced by some commitment rather than an endless, irritating variety of plants.
Later: I used plants as weapons, hoping they’d rampage away, covering the ground, eating weeds, defying slugs, making me a garden. I couldn’t afford hard materials—plants had to do everything (not recommended) and two acres is a lot to cover.
More:
Ironically, the day after my rainy reading day, we spent seven hours tearing out a vast swathe of orange crocosmia. At least I found takers for most of the corms. Anne likes it:
On page 20, she recommends two garden writers, Constance O’ Brien and Marion Cran and, while I continued to read, I got Allan to order me all of their books online.
Marion Cran wrote several books (1930s and 1940s), which Allan was able to find; I got them all and O’Brien’s book for under $60 total and look forward to their arrival. Now I wish I was in a garden “guild” instead of a garden “gang.”
A theme throughout the book is Anne’s preference for good thoughtful design over plant collecting. She quotes Gertrude Jekyll:
Now, I am a collector of precious plants and my garden has an awful lot of onesies, so I am not sure Anne would like it at all. I appreciate her writing for making me think. Yet I am still irresistibly onesy-ing five years after I first read it.
Later:
I value her thoughts about death and the garden. Regular readers know I do contemplate this frequently, maybe because I grew up around old people who talked about it.
In spite of our diversions, we all ultimately find a path to realization of our own physical end.
The garden….throws the remorselessness of time in our faces, depicting in its endless, indifferent moving on, growing and dying, just how we are fated. There is grief and struggle and real love out there.
This is my favourite paragraph in the whole book:
Below, on garden touring, garden tour guides, and how gardens get picked (which I like because I have seen some indifferent gardens choses for various tours, even, rarely, and only a couple of times on the Hardy Plant tours):
One of the elements I would like best at Veddw is Anne’s use of words in the garden.
….
I know what she means about the slight awkwardness; I had lots of quotations in my garden, mostly on the fences, in 2008 and 2012 when my garden got toured a few times, and it feels a bit funny to pause while someone reads it. With me, it comes with hoping that whatever is written speaks to them. One of the tasks on my to-do lists is to rewrite those words that have faded away.
Anne was on a garden show called “I’ve Got Britain’s Best Garden” in which gardens were actually analyzed and criticized. She writes that the show could be found on Youtube (in 2010) , yet I was unable to find it. I long to see it.
You can read part of Anne’s essay (included at a more length in this book) on why she hates gardening right here.
Below, I am interested to learn that her garden is close to the Forest of Dean (because I have been there). I also do not like to be away from my garden even for one night. And I DO mind that my own garden will most likely not continue after we are gone.
Below, by Anne’s reflecting pool, at the end of this passage is something I think about if Allan (my spouse and business partner) and I have had a day of much squabbling at work:
On the topic of dividing the garden to avoid squabbling:
One concept I remembered most strongly from my first reading in 2012 was that she does not like an edged lawn! The text is followed by a photo by her spouse, garden photographer Charles Hawes, showing a lawn with alchemilla spilling over. (And I tend to get hostile toward alchemilla at times.)
Something I expected to find was a chapter about her method of leaving debris to compost in the garden beds. I could have sworn it was in the book. I must have read it in one of her articles, instead, perhaps this one.
Below, I am reminded me of my shock at the number of local gardeners who’ve told me they have never been on a garden tour (when there at least two most years within easy driving distance): A staggering number of garden owners I came across while writing up gardens for magazines absolutely prided themselves on never visiting anyone else’s garden. And that is unlikely to inspire you to brilliant composition. Or even, perhaps, to realize that gardens are composed at all.
On two occasions, Anne mentioned Piet Oudolf coming to visit her and I went Squeeee! (I admire him so.) On using grasses inside of boxwood squares (you really must read The Bad Tempered Gardener in its entirety to learn about this and other designs whose purpose is to evoke the history of the Veddw):
This, because it made me laugh: “You like your succulents,” someone observed one day. How wonderfully patronizing—like ‘”Old Fred, he do like his pint.”
I haven’t even touched on her theme of understanding gardens. You must read the book; I can’t even begin to quote all the parts that were so educational and inspirational to me.
You can read more online by Anne and others at her aptly named website, thinkinGardens.
In the near future, I will be reading her brand new book, The Deckchair Gardener: An Improper Gardening Manual.
Throughout your blog and here, you have made me realize gardens are so very much more than merely places to put a plant or a lawn chair. They are . . . shall I say something so obvious now . . . where life really happens.
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Love this!!
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Thank you for all the great excerpts.
Many years ago, my mom, due to her own health concerns, and looking after my dad who was ill with Alzheimers, became unable to maintain much of a garden.
We decided to let ground elder, or more derisively known locally as gout weed, ramble all over the garden bed.
It formed a glorious carpet under an old acer, azaleas, and a handful of roses. No fuss, no maintenance, and it won every potential weed battle. And it looked pretty.
Of course not only is it no longer de rigueur to have ground elder in a garden, and local garden centres no longer stock it, you will also get the big tsk of disapproval for supporting an invasive plant.
But oh how lovely I remember the waves of soft green and cream leaves, whilst we sat on the patio, with a cup of tea.
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Thank you. I appreciate all help to look upon it without despair. I had forgotten the name gout weed. I think the leaves are edible and taste a bit like cilantro. (Google before eating!).
Nurseries here still sell it. That’s ok, I suppose, if they warn people about what the plant will do.
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I enjoyed these excerpts and might have to see if I can find a copy to read the whole thing. I don’t usually like these kinds of books. I love blogs, but have a hard time getting into books that are garden memoirs, or thoughts about gardening, or essays, I don’t know why. I’m actually in the process right now of taking out or moving Alchemilla mollis in my garden, because it hangs over into the lawn, and the lawn maintenance guys usually just rip into it with the lawn mower because they don’t seem to care or notice that a living thing is in the way.
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I don’t let alchemilla into my own garden at all even though I used to like it. I have an awful lot of it in one of the LB parks.
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Thank you! What more could I ask than that someone enjoyed the book this much – and then shared their enthusiasm so generously. You make me very happy.
Anne XXXXXX
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Thank you, Anne.
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You certainly do a lot of thinking about your gardening. Luckily I have Mrs T to both the thinking and the gardening for me so that I can just enjoying being in the garden.
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You are a lucky fellow! So are we to enjoy your garden photos.
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I must say that Frosty looks very comfortable and cute while helping you read. He is such a pretty cat.
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Frosty thanks you for the compliment!
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