“What,” I asked, “are we doing here with a lifetime’s work ahead as we rebuild a derelict cottage and learn how to restore 10 acres of silted up pond and rundown woodland?”
Looking back, at forty-something we were mere babes in the wood. But I had an answer: “To understand why, you need to see the pond on a frosty winter afternoon, or catch sight of the heron fishing in the sluice stream, to find a bank of primroses above a pile of rusting corrugated iron, or sit on a starry summer night with family and friends round a bonfire in the new clearing while bats flicker above the ghosts of the old neighbourhood dump.”
I wrote that nearly thirty years ago. As journalists often do, I dug the words from both heart and head.
In November 1995, to my great delight, I had just secured a new commission to write a regular weekend series for The Herald on Scottish gardens and gardeners.
It was to be a winding trail led by the happenings on the unlikely plot Ray and I had somehow got our hands on just a couple of years earlier. Ten acres of swampy woodland, two old quarries – one of them the neighbourhood dump – and a derelict cottage without planning permission. How would we turn it into a woodland garden? I was about to plunder the pages of Scotland’s Gardens Scheme to meet the people who would inspire us. Oddly none of them were put off by my somewhat arrogant assertion:
Scotland’s gardens are a monument to the heroically bonkers who give their lives or a perfectly good day off to persuade trees and plants to grow in places where most of them had no intention of growing before whether on a barren hillside or in a city centre basement.
wanted: a thick mulch of money
A more innocent time?
Suddenly that all seems a long and more innocent time ago. In the mid-nineties there were no smart phones, no doomsday tweets; newspapers were still the main source of news. 1995 was the UK’s driest summer on record (and third hottest) but although climate change was the troubling stuff of serious scientific research it rarely disturbed public consciousness.
But that’s the benefit of hindsight: a sometimes comforting blurring of the vision in the rearview mirror. Scrolling through the Wikipedia timeline it’s unnerving to see just how much trouble was piling up for the 21st century. 1995, designated as United Nations Year for Tolerance, saw many atrocities: genocide in the Balkans, the first Chechan war, deaths from terrorism in US (Oklahoma bombing) and Japan (Sarin attacks on Tokyo underground) and the ending of the Gulf War coincided with an emerging Iraq disarmament crisis.
In the wider world, an uncertain future lay ahead: 1995 was the ‘beginning of the Information Age’ as privatisation of the Internet opened access to the world wide web.
In my own small world, our sons were still at home and my parents still alive. Middle age can be challenging but there is perhaps something comforting about being the filling in that sandwich of duties; simultaneously parent and child. There’s both liberation and loss when those responsibilities are gone. Maybe gardening, for some of us, fills a need to nurture.
Yet the outside world is never completely shut out. During that year of researching and writing features for The Herald I was driving to meet a lovely lady in Livingston (she specialised in growing hostas) when the car radio broke news of the Dunblane school massacre. We sat in her kitchen for a long time hugging mugs of tea, too stunned to venture into the garden. When we did, the carefully tended plants seemed a poignant distraction, the battle against slugs the only display of human violence.
Deadly imports
Further afield, sudden oak death had been observed for the first time in California. When I visited the Botanics in Edinburgh there were disinfectant pads at the gate. They are there still. Now I sometimes wonder if we should be disinfecting our boots and gloves with every garden visit. Or at least find ways to reduce the amount of plant diseases we carelessly import through cross-border trade and travel.
Yet (like Covid) plant diseases are often airborne. When we first arrived at Pond Cottage in 1993 the tree line was punctuated with upright dead elm, standing as testament to the devastation of the fungus spread by elm bark beetles. Now their place is taken by ash trees tragically blighted by ash dieback, another fungal disease. Even here there may be hope. The standing dead elm, which as RSPB reports, supported populations of woodpeckers, now greet spring with fresh green growth from old stumps. Some of ash we had to cut back last year are also showing new growth. Two of the oldest survive as ‘wildlife monoliths’ proud beacons of the cycle of life. Perhaps these stubborn elm and ash will grow just long enough to attract new agents-of-death, then again, perhaps they will eventually outlive the disease.
As I get older there is a sweet sadness in each new growing season. Perhaps I am a slow developer. The pandemic has left a pesky awareness of mortality. But there is too much to do to stay morbid for long.
Now, waiting for builders to finish retrofitting our twice-refurbished old cottage, we are preparing to get to work in the garden. Again. I’m not sure about the heroic bit, but over the last thirty years we have certainly often thought we must be bonkers.
A defiant thrill: sharing simple pleasures
Nevertheless, we still thrill to catch sight of heron and kingfishers, primroses glinting on the bank, bluebells among the beech trees, bats flickering beneath the stars on summer nights and red squirrels chasing each other round the cottage.
There’s an involuntary, rebellious sense of joy in watching the wild world go about its natural business. There are times, reading the day’s headlines, when I feel helpless and hopeless. Writing about our garden is surely such self-indulgent trivia? And yet I do firmly believe we must nurture and restore moments of joy. So, if you don’t mind joining a quiet rebellion – the delight of simple pleasures – we will be delighted to welcome you back to The Pond garden (with Scotland’s Gardens Scheme) as soon as we rebuild the road.
PS: One of the gardens featured in 1995 is published in The Herald archive – I’m interested to discover a recent paywall, you now have to subscribe to read the archive, £24 per year.
However, Antoinette Galbraith’s very good profile of Pond Cottage, beautifully illustrated by Ray Cox for the Scotsman is available to read HERE: How one family restored ten acres of Scots woodland
Feature image: new green leaves of the Wych Elm by Tommy Perman
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