20 February: a new Bogsy path

Friday, 20 February 2021

At home

Yesterday’s inspiration from Gardener’s World and the book Adventures in Eden translated into action. I got a very late start because of one of those maddening nights where I am in bed trying to sleep for nine hours but only manage to get five hours of sleep. (I’ve tried pretty much everything: melatonin, Calms Forte, valerian, benadryl, and Ambien, which is great but ill-advised for regular use).

Overnight rain

My mission was to make a new path through the straggly edge of the salmonberries that grow behind hydrangeas and my big gunnera. I got rained on, muddy, and was supremely happy working on this project.

Yesterday, I had cut back some holly and had created this pile of dead salmonberry and alder twigs, excellent kindling for future campfires. I had piled it at the south side of the salmonberry tunnel, which is a path cut through a grove of salmonberries.

The Bogsy Wood used to be all alders and salmonberries till in one drought summer, the salmonberries on the east side of the wood all died and became a cultivated area of shrubs. The salmonberry tunnel on the west side is also slowly dying away, perhaps because I mess with the plants too much by breaking off dead branches and by cutting back unsightly powdery mildew that it gets in the summer. I’m not sure what I will do about it. It’s a fun feature but having more area to plant up with variety is also appealing. I sort of doubt I’ll plant salmonberry starts in there to thicken it up.

I did not want the pile to sit there till campfire season and so I came up with an idea that I quite like and made a kindling stash between two alders.

• 

  Yesterday

• 

  Today

Allan arrived to give me some help by transplanting a piece of gunnera at the edge of the Willow Grove’s seasonal pond. Trying out such a tropical looking plant out there goes against my feeling that it should be more natural looking. But I can’t help myself, and it might end up looking like Cornwall.

I was thrilled to look out and see Allan pulling ivy on the slippery southwest bank.

Before

After

Deer tracks in the willow grove

I added to the kindling stash as I worked my way through my new path, where the salmonberries were spindly from growing in a boggy area. It’s a rainwater swale at one end during winter but will be a dry path from late spring through autumn. Allan took a photo and then helped me by chainsawing some thick, dead salmonberry trunks.

Here are the before and afters of the new path. To get there, you walk south on West Willows Path.

Just as you reach the alder grove (aka the Bogsy Wood), the new path is to your left. Looking east:

Before

After

Looking southwest from the fire circle:

Before

After

A few days ago in The Magic Land: Creating Your Enchanted Garden by Julie Moir Messervy, I had been struck by this passage.

Today, it inspired me to carve down the new path a little deeper. I would like all of it, not just one end, to fill with water in winter. I hope we get enough rain this spring to see if that happens.

When I walked back out to the fire circle, I felt like I had emerged from darkness into light even though it was a sunless day. Maybe it was from lack of sleep, but the experience was as strong as if I were a new visitor to the garden and is just the effect I am trying to achieve.

I had also done some refining of the erstwhile salmonberry tunnel, which may become something else because the salmonberry grove is getting weaker.

Looking west
Before

After

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• 

After, looking east

And we had removed salmonberry to widen the tilted path by the west swale because it is hard to walk on a tilt.

We had transplanted some clumps of acorus (Japanese sweet flag) into the west swale. I’m experimenting with making it more than negative space.

Looking west

Finally, to cut down some more holly, I went up onto the mound on the east side of the Bogsy Wood, formerly a salmonberry grove that had died out in a drought summer a few years ago.

The mound

A huge clump like this of lesser celandine, a rampant weed, at the base of a fuchsia, is going to be a place where nature wins over human.

Some lovely narcissi comforted me.

Yesterday, in the book Adventures in Eden, I had admired huge photos of an amazing garden where the gardener had elevated parts of his level ground to twenty five feet. I can’t tell you which garden, because the book went back to the library today.

But just being up on that low mound gave me such a different view of the Bogsy Wood garden.

The southeast corner is still a problem. I’ve been piling compost in there as I try to decide what to do. I’m stumped.

It’s a very dark area and invaded by montbretia from next door.

Maybe I need something like this.

From Gardeners’ World, the Malvern Garden Show, 2012.

Looking southwest toward the willow grove:

Admiring today’s project to the west of the mound:

In veg news, Allan made a delicious potato leek soup with almost the last of our leeks.

A good day’s work. I wish all days could be this satisfying at home, but we must return to work on the next good weather day. I don’t think either of us want to. Allan recently looked at an actuarial table and was informed that his life expectancy is 75. He is 68 and would rather be boating than working and I’d rather not leave my property. However, the port curbside gardens continue to inspire me so I’m sure I will be happy to be working once it has begun. (Allan’s parents lived into their 80s so I think he has more than seven more years.) Allan repainted the trailer in preparation for work to begin.

This trailer says it all about how tiny our operation is.