Rewilding was not a word in the 1990s when we bought our ten acres of temptingly untended land. Or at least not a word we had heard.
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Category: Gardens (Page 1 of 2)
Autumn on the horizon. Will we know the difference? It has felt like October for much of the summer this year. But today a mischievous sun peeks through fluffy clouds (such flirts!) and in the garden I find a buzz of pollinators partying among the plants. Great opportunists. True survivors. Perhaps they can help me plot a course for 2025.
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Here we are at the start of a new season. Though of course the promise of a new season has been poking through the ground since Christmas. Now there are snowdrops everywhere I look but they are being nudged and jostled by bright yellow sploshes of narcissi. Bluebells and wild garlic are racing to catch up. Which season are we in, exactly?
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“Where would you like to start?” The question, presented with a smile, is a good one. Looking at the map I’ve just been handed there’s plenty temptation. The Hidden Gardens of Kingsbarns offer no fewer than ten gardens open to visitors ready to explore nooks and crannies of this handsome village. But the tantalising trail is just part of a remarkable story which winds a long way back.
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”Pond Cottage is an acreage of weed, rot and litter but Fay Young intends to turn it into a Scottish horticultural paradise”. That was The Herald almost thirty years ago in a quirkily offbeat introduction to my new dream commission: a Weekend Extra series about Scotland’s gardens and gardeners on a trail following my own discoveries. It was a happy year, leading to an unforgettable spell with Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh as contributing editor and writer and ultimately to membership of Scotland’s Gardens Scheme. But back to the beginning…
Flashback to October 1995
Here, republishing my first Weekend Extra column in The Herald (don’t take that bit about horticultural paradise seriously!)
If you squint, the garden round Pond Cottage looks almost planned.
The stone path to the front door is lined with catmint covered with butterflies and bees. Hastily sown Alaska nasturtium seeds have grown into a convincing hedge around the vegetable plot. Red-stalked spinach contrasts cheerfully with yellow spaghetti squash plants and (as long as you are still squinting) a fresh green semi-circular lawn is marked by newly planted rowan and cherry to light up autumn and spring.
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Through the window I saw a robin on the bird table, two blackbirds underneath, a grey squirrel in the white stemmed birch, four fat pigeons and three pretty doves squabbling on the ground. If we had a pear tree perhaps there would have been a partridge in it. A record-breaking cold spell brought hungry wildlife into our back garden. That’s something to celebrate just a short walk from Edinburgh city centre. Oddly, it added to my sense of loss as we packed to leave our old urban jungle home.
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“I plant what grows,” the words of Ian Hamilton Finlay echo in my mind when I walk round our rain-spattered midsummer jungle. At this time of year the most sumptuous growth is in stuff we didn’t plant. I think of him again as the grass path cuts through a particularly belligerent looking bunch of nettles, docks and thistles. “Certain gardens are described as retreats,” said Finlay, “when they are really attacks.”
I was very lucky to get the chance to interview the poet-artist-revolutionary-gardener in real life almost twenty years ago. I approached him in his windy hillside garden a little warily, on guard in case of attack, and found instead a gentle man coming to terms with his recent stroke. It was one of the unforgettable privileges that sometimes come the way of a journalist. I have been to Little Sparta several times since and, though Ian Hamilton Finlay died in 2006, it is good to see the garden still grows true to the creator’s spirit.
Little Sparta is next open under Scotland’s Gardens Scheme on Tuesday 5 July. Meanwhile, I’m reprinting the article which first appeared in the (sadly) short-lived Scottish Garden magazine in 2003.
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Hello and welcome. You’ve arrived on an early post. Please check the home page for latest events and dates for visiting The Pond Garden in 2024. This has been quite a year!
Storytelling sessions in May and more creative activities to come. This year we’re very pleased to see a good display in the wildflower meadow – and self-sown wildflowers have added a lovely extra dash of colour in the borders round the house.
If you like a little wildness, please do come for a wander in our wild woodland garden. Visitors are very welcome by arrangement (just call/email through Scotland’s Gardens Scheme listing or use the Contacts form on this website)
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It’s not always easy, summertime. Fish are not jumping. And the nettles are high. In the last month at Pond Cottage we’ve had high winds and low temperatures. Delicate flowers compete with weedy thugs and then heavy rain has a good go at flattening them all.
But when the sun shines the world changes. And even when it doesn’t there are long hours of daylight and beneath grey skies a defiant burst of bright colour covers the ground.
That’s what the music celebrates in the new video Tommy has made for Scotland’s Garden Scheme YouTube channel. It was recorded at the pond by Tommy Perman and Morgan Szymanski two years ago in the pre-pandemic midsummer of 2019.
Retreat or attack? Welcome to Little Sparta
I loiter in the garden and find myself longing for this election campaign to end. And I’m not alone. Over the last few days I’ve been meeting people – politicians, academics and ordinary voters like me – desperate to see the end of #GE2015, as the Twitter hashtags identify this unseemly mess. Continue reading
