Blogging is a funny thing, isn’t it? Often I feel that I don’t want to go on, because I tend to compare my garden with other (more perfect) specimens. I always find myself, and my own garden, wanting – and sometimes I feel the garden is simply an endless list of tasks that I’ll never get to the end of.
Hey! I can’t measure up to your perfect manicures, but I keep going (in spite of the fact that the garden’s particularly messy at the moment). I’ve just spent two months fire-fighting elsewhere (excuses, excuses), so what can you expect?
The garden really is a mess, not just kidding … Still, this week I finally got to the end of the strimming and grass-cutting after the two months of neglect. Unfortunately, I also noticed today that the grass needs cutting again. Its been so warm.
Here’s the Rose Walk …
Euphorbia ‘Silver Swan’ and Anemone ‘Honorine Joubert’ still look good …
The Long Border …
This needs more ornamental grass to give it some structure (they do well in the dry summer conditions).
Unfortunately the dahlias haven’t really lived up to their promise of adding colour at this time of the year. I probably need to increase on what I bought this year (which will be stored during the winter) and allow the existing to bulk up a bit by potting them very early before planting out.
The mini-woodland … there are cyclamen and some prettily tinged epimedium leaves. Plus lots of weeds.
A little Judas tree (Cercis silaquastrum) in the wrong (shady) place, next to the mini-woodland.
The Hornbeam Gardens, with hedges desperately in need of cutting …
Miscanthus sinensis ‘Malepartus’ is looking particularly pretty at the moment – must divide and make more in spring 2021.
It’s all a beautiful mess, but the older I get, the less inclined I am to ‘control’.
The loveliest thing this week has been our red oak (Quercus rubra). Doing so well down in the bottom of the garden after planting in 2016. This part of the garden is occasionally flooded in the winter (but not for more than 2 hours). I read that the red oak actually quite enjoys damp conditions, but is intolerant of flooding. Who knows what the future will bring?
I love the light and dark down in this orchard/wild area (as if I needed more wild!). If you live in Britain you might not understand how lovely I find this shade.
However, it’s starting to get a bit much. My four cherry ‘Tai-Haku’ are quite large now.
… and the espaliered fruit are beginning to complain slightly under the shade of the largest of our three young walnuts.
Last night we were asking ourselves if five walnuts (three young, two mature, all existing when we arrived) are too much for a garden this size. I’m thinking that’s so … and that we should be buying a chainsaw. But the one above would be the specimen singled out for the chop. And its colour is so pretty right now. It will be hard to say goodbye.
I played around with the panorama facility on my phone today and thought I might end with the result.
Happy gardening week everyone!
Garden Dreaming at Châtillon 
To me, your garden has a charm of its own and is full of lovely autumnal colours, with the sunlight accentuating them. It’s beautiful
Thanks so much Jane. It does look rather lovely in its mess – half of the loveliness of course borrowed from the surrounding landscape.
Ha, what is ‘perfect’ anyway? 😉 I once read a quote that in gardening, ‘the process is the point.’ Not what it looks like, but the joy you derive from its creation. I loved that and it freed me up a lot. I am a ‘messy’ gardener, and it has only been recently, that I’ve found that is preferable to ‘neat as a pin’ gardens because wildlife flourishes in the ‘mess.’ So to my eye, your garden is perfect! 😉
So true Eliza – as I’ve just written to someone else, I think as an ex-botanic garden gardener I still have visions in my head of what’s ‘right’ Now I get messier every year and the garden is overflowing with birds, bees and butterflies. Take care!
I agree with the comments above, I think your garden is utterly charming. This time of year, you’re allowed to be messy anyway, well that’s what I tell myself. Half of my garden is under deciduous trees, including the dreaded messy Lime trees, and living with the mess has become a gradual process of adapting to life’s many imperfections!
Thanks so very much. We enjoy it thoroughly. I suppose as an ex professional gardener I still have a vision in my head of how it ‘ought’ to be!!! I love the leaves that trees drop (I suppose because our garden is often so sun-baked). I look at them – and the limes have lovely soft leaves – and imagine how much good they are doing my soil. Thanks so much for commenting. I must come over and visit you on your blog!
Do come and visit, am new to blogging but worked for many years as a journalist, so I am greatly enjoying writing about something I love. It’s good when one can use professional background for pleasure, as I am sure you do (must be nice to be your own client anyway…or perhaps you are too demanding of yourself 😆)
Hi – how nice! I worked for quite a time as a gardening journalist – as I go on I’m wanting to write less (seems its all been said!), but enjoy the pictures more!
Ah really! Who did you write for?
For EMAP publications. Garden News, Garden Answers, Practical Gardening, and was once editor of a long-vanished magazine called The Garden (plus a local column in Suffolk). I still write a tiny bit for The Connexion, an English newspaper in France. What kind of things did you write about? Will check back much later to find out!
I wrote about hydrocarbons, renewable energy, energy efficiency and a fair bit about politics/economy in North Africa for a specialist publications company. Am trying to see if a few expat type publications are interested in gardening features here in Belgium, I think there could be interest in that but as you probably know, it’s a hard sell to get any freelance stuff published these days with budgets so stretched.
Wow – so much more exciting than what I did! It’s hard to believe there wouldn’t be a market for what you write about at the moment. Keep trying, and will be cheering you on!
Sorry – that should be ‘The Gardener’!!!
How lovely! A “tidy” garden has not space for insects and hedgehogs and life!
The garden is brimming with wildlife now, far more than when we arrived. The numbers of birds – and particularly butterflies – seem to have skyrocketed this year (as have the bees) …
“La perfection n’est pas de ce monde”, dit le proverbe. Et tant mieux, c’est tellement plus charmant un jardin ébouriffé ! Amitiés, danielle & john
Merci bien vous deux! J’espere quand’on va visiter bientot!
Quand tu veux, si l’on n’est pas condamnés au reconfinement !
I don’t think any of the blogs I look at showcase perfectly manicured gardens – mine certainly isn’t one of those! Showing the messy bits as well as the more satisfactory parts makes for far more interesting reading, as do the thought processes involved, which we can all learn from – and we all start with different raw materials which we work on in our own personal ways. I always enjoy seeing your garden which is so very different from most and am in awe of the scale that you have to work within, and it is interesting to share your learning experience as you trial different plants and planting times. I like the idea of your mini woodland, especially as I have one too, and wonder what else you have growing in it and if you planted it all or enhanced an existing area?
Hi Cathy – all the gardens I look at look better than mine (to me!). Yours always looks especially nice, because I like the structure you have. I suppose I’m a little unfair on myself because mine was basically mostly a field when I started not so long ago. But heh – I keep going. Thanks as always for your generous comments. When we arrived here the mini-woodland was the only place in the garden (near the house) that had any shade. Since I used to look after woodland plants at work – and they were my first love – it was hard. Many things have just died there. For example, and amazingly, a little Sarcococca confusa which remains as a tiny twig. It is too dry in summer for many things. Same with Fritillaria meleagris. The bluer hostas don’t do badly, but I’ve only one – it’s a tiny space!! I’ve planted over 50 there and have about 3 left. However I do have my only snowdrops there, epimediums, pulmonaria, hellebores (which do fabulously – too well!), Mileum effuseum aureum, and bits and bobs of other things. Thanks for commenting!
Are doing-too-well hellebores a bad thing?! I would like to see more pictures of your woodland sometime, and it’s good to know that certain plants are establishing and naturalising in it. As you say, starting from a field you perhaps don’t give yourself enough credit for what you have achieved – I have taken pictures of our garden from the start when it too was all but ’empty’ and sometimes find I have forgotten some of the guises it has been through. Please do look beyond the structure of it though as that is one of the few aspects I am satisfied with! Contents of the borders are another thing…!
Oh my goodness, Cathy, and here I thought my gardens were a lot to maintain. How do you do it all? They are gorgeous!! I KNOW the work involved and with age I just don’t seem willing to be so attentive. I love your wild and free look ….. some parts of my gardens are like that while others are more manicured. I SO enjoyed your gardens. No garden is perfect …. perfection is boring! LOL
Thanks Amy! I’m not sure how I’m doing it these days but I love it so much that I trudge on and just try to enjoy it as a process. As a former prof gardener I was originally too ‘result-oriented’. A little every day and a conscious effort to stop and relish are how I’m managing to ignore my slightly aching joints and back.
I give you so much credit, Cathy. My hat is most definitely off to you! xo
I love the dishevelled look all gardens take on in autumn and yours is lovely… I would certainly not use the word messy! I was only just this minute looking at red oaks online as we want to plant one. How big was yours when you planted it Cathy?
Hi Cathy – it was planted in 2014 (can hardly believe it!). It was a whip of about 1.5 meters (from memory). Now it’s about 4 to 5 meters tall and really beginning to branch a bit. So it’s done very well. I’m loving it for it’s huge leaves and autumn colour.
Thanks Cathy. It grows quite quickly then – good to know!
hi Cathy
I love seeing photos of your garden. It is so unusual given the slope, and I really love what you have made, and are making! thank you for sharing 🙂 Isla, Canberra, Australia
On Mon, Oct 26, 2020 at 8:09 AM Garden Dreaming at Châtillon wrote:
> Cathy posted: ” Blogging is a funny thing, isn’t it? Often I feel that I > don’t want to go on, because I tend to compare my garden with other (more > perfect) specimens. I always find myself, and my own garden, wanting – and > sometimes I feel the garden is simply an end” >