Wildlife loves a messy garden, right?

I’m writing this post because Sophie Lucido Johnson said she wanted to see pictures of my garden, so here we are! I took all these last night in the quiet part of the day that sometimes happens when I get home before the rest of the household (apart from Oskar the cat because he’s always at home).

This first picture basically sums up my garden - messy and random. I have so much mint I don’t know what to do with it. I have tried giving it away to people at work but not very many people want it and obviously it keeps growing. I wonder if I should take it out. Can you freeze mint? Even if I did freeze it, it would probably just sit in the bottom of the freezer and never get used.

This is the closest-to-the-back-door of several weird grow-bag planters I have created. I wanted to put wooden troughs in the garden and fill those with plants, but that was when my daughter was younger and I had horrible visions of her tripping over them and injuring herself so I used bags because they’re softer. I have not found many plants that grow well in them, due to the shallowness of the soil and lack of good drainage. They have become sort of mini rock gardens. At least this was my vision. Most of the rocks are ones I accidentally stole from my husband. It really was an accident because I had forgotten he had carefully collected these nice smooth rocks from a beach in Jutland and they are each meant to represent one of the ships that took part in the battle. I just thought they would look nice in the garden, and by the time he realised where they’d gone it was too late. I suppose I could have taken them out and washed them, etc., but I didn’t.

These are the herb pots/planters. You can also see some mint (is mint a herb, I don’t know) encroaching into the foreground, as it does. There is nothing in the pot behind the mint. I can’t remember what used to be in there. It is probably my nicest pot, so I should put something else in there. But what?

Here are the rest of the ‘mini rock gardens’. My hope is that one day, the green will cove the bags. The plants actually don’t look too bad sometimes, but at the moment at lot of them are going over and it has been very hot here over the last few weeks, which has not helped. Also, as I said, it is difficult to find plants that actually like being in the bags. I’ve tried rockery plants and alpine plants, but carnations seem to do OK, considering.

In case you can’t recognise it (and why should you?) this is a little olive tree. I’ve had it for about seven years, and it has never looked more healthy than this apart from when I first bought it. It used to stand next to the front door, but it gets quite windy there and it got blown over and the pot broke, as you can see. Poor little tree. It is flowering more this year, though. I think of Palestine every time I water it.

The rock gardens from the other end. We have two stone dogs, who came with the house (as well as several gnomes and a bear). This one keeps the bag from collapsing onto the path and the other one stands guard at the back gate (and props it open when necessary). You would probably be surprised looking at this garden, but I really don’t like mess. I am only kept from pulling up all the weeds by the futility of doing so, lack of energy and the fact that more green is (usually) better for wildlife and people. I am still slightly tempted to pull them up every time I see them, but it is really a never ending and thankless task. I guess I don’t care enough to do it, really. I just think of the birds.

The rose, with some more overgrowth. I believe the name of this rose is ‘Soldier Boy’ - by coincidence my parents have a picture of a Soldier Boy rose on their upstairs landing. But I could be wrong (about the name of the rose, not the picture). Spot the literary reference. Anyway, it is the only rose in the garden, and also came with the house. It is quite small, as you can see. I think it is gradually getting taller and bearing more flowers each year.

This is a part-makeshift bird bath. I bought the bath part from Tesco the other day and then thought it would be better off the ground so I used the upturned plant pot. I haven’t seen any birds use it yet, but hopefully some will soon.

Bushes! One side of the garden has several large bushes - mainly holly. I think there are at least three varieties of holly in our garden and one other spiky bush. The only one that is not spiky is the lighter green one in this photo. I don’t know what it is but I just looked it up (image search) and it is a Mexican Orange Blossom (Choisya ternata). It does smell lovely, so that makes sense, and it likes chalky soil, which also makes sense - it is very chalky round here.

This is just to show (a) the state of the ‘lawn’ and (b) the smallish size of the garden.

The hydrangea. I have had this for about five years (I think). This is the first year it has shown signs of flowering. Very exciting!

The self-seeded buddleia. It is nearly in flower. It is a monster, really, but hopefully it will be good for the butterflies.

I think we orignially brought the strawberries with us from our old house, and now they have spread themselves around. They mainly grow under the step but there are also a few in the actual soil. We don’t get loads of berries, but enough, and they keep going through most of June - maybe into July as well. I usually eat them straight off the plant, no washing and no refrigeration, then you get the proper strawberry taste. Also, I have found that they are good to eat even before they have turned red, and this means you can pick them before the birds get to them (mainly).

This picture is just to show you the giant stick (AKA branch) my daughter brought home from the field the other week. It almost works as an edging…

This is my favourite new plant I bought last week from the market. I don’t remember what it is. It’s very cheerful, though. I need a heavier pot for it as it’s already been blown over, so for now I’ve moved it to a more sheltered location. It is unusually windy.

The final picture is of the coming blackberries. We have a big, dense, brambley hedge down the side of our house. We are not really sure who is supposed to maintain it. The council seem to chop it back once a year, and otherwise my husband attempts to keep it from eating our house and subsuming us all into its depths. However, the upside to this is that we have absolutely hundreds of blackberries, should we have the time and energy and storage capacity to be able to pick them all. There are other branches (pun intended) of this mahoosive blackberry bearing monster nearby so probably the whole town could get enough blackberries to last them a summer…well, perhaps not the whole town, but maybe the whole estate. We will pick some and probably freeze some, although I fear we might still have some in the freezer from previous years.

I hope this has given you, Sophie, and anyone else who is interested, a good flavour of the untamed randomness of our garden. It is unpredictable and basically does what it wants, somewhat like other members of our family.