As predicted, Spring’s here and there’s a lot to do. Weeding, cutting back old stems of last year’s perennials, mulching round new shoots, planting new things (which usually involves moving round several more that have been displaced by the favoured newcomer), sowing seeds, pricking out seedlings; it can feel a bit overwhelming at this time of year especially after such an awful autumn and winter when things didn’t get done.

Not sure what to do first, so delay by looking round and admiring. I’ve just read a justification of this in a definition of a plantsman “ one who looks at every single plant every single day”, so now I’m calling myself a plantswoman. But of course, if you look at every single plant every day, you will also notice the problems they’re having; seeing the wood anemones just appearing under the apple tree, I realize the comfrey I’ve also planted there 2 years ago as good groundcover is too greedy in the ground it covers. Similarly, there’s a dear little pale-yellow anemone that needs help as it’s trying to grow in the middle of a clump of tough old Geranium magnificum. Decision made, attend to the anemones.

Paradoxically, in a so-called “natural” garden, there is always a need to intervene in the tussles that the plants have in living together, because if you don’t, the strongest will take over and the garden would be very limited in its appeal (sounds like society at large). The aim is to allow the plants as much freedom as possible by self-seeding and spreading into others to make interesting combinations, but also to live in some kind of harmony so the garden as a whole is a pleasure to be in. Natural gardens are not low maintenance.

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Wondering if methods of getting oneself to face a blank page and write something will work for getting me out into the garden. A good one is simply to write for 5 minutes without worrying about what you’ve written – it gets your hand moving and words reassuringly get written. Even better is to write for 5 minutes on “why I can’t write today”. I suppose the gardening equivalent would be to pick up a trowel (my favourite tool, I want to be buried with my trowel) and do something to get started.

So why don’t I?

It’s cold. It’s freezing. The ground is hard. The beautiful hellebores have all collapsed. I’ve got a cold and am reluctant to take in lungfulls of painfully cold air.
OK so do something indoors!
Did that yesterday. Result: ordered a ridiculous quantity of seeds in the vain hope I might actually get some to grow and they’ll look as stunning as the photos in the catalogue.
Maybe you feel a bit guilty about that?
Yes! I think I should get the heated propagator out and do something with the seeds I already have but I can’t be bothered.
OK, have a day off.
But it’s the middle of March and when – IF – the weather cheers up, there’ll be a lot to do and it’ll all be too late, another year wasted, I’m a total failure.
Oh come on, pull yourself together.

I think I could just manage to get out the propagator and put it in place; then maybe sort through the seeds I didn’t sow last year. That’ll be a start.

Later: I did it! And I discovered that the Astrantia seeds I sowed last autumn have germinated – apparently they like cold so not all is failure.

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And here I am, back in Sand Hutton and very pleased that the snowdrops are still flowering, in fact they’re looking marvellous all over the garden. Less pleased about the reason they’re still out, i.e. that it’s COLD here, and after all that sunshine and frangipani, life’s a bit grey.

However, when I switch into English gardening mode – taking pleasure in small things (Bill Bryson says the English get excited about digestive biscuits) – there are some lovely things here. The hellebores especially are gorgeous, in all sorts of colours and markings. I read somewhere recently that the self-sown seedlings they produce in abundance will not be worth keeping but not so here: last year I planted out lots of the babies round the garden, several have flowered and all are beautiful.

Viburnam bodnantense is also still out, flowers looking like snow on the bare branches, and the winter iris still going. Primroses are getting going, though the birds have also noticed them so they’re a bit tatty; crocuses, not open – they need sun to do that – but showing colour; winter honeysuckle is in full flower, smelling delicious.

And all the time looking round the garden I haven’t seen for six weeks, I have this song in my head, a setting by Peter Warlock of Hilaire Belloc’s poem “My Own Country”, which includes the lines

“I shall pass through many places
That I cannot understand
Until I come to my own country,
Which is a pleasant land.”

Strictly speaking, the poem probably celebrates Sussex, and the hellebores come from Asia, and no doubt there are issues about native/non-native still to be sorted, but I’m tired, and just glad to be back home in my own garden.

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Unplanned visit to Everglades, a garden in Leura, a pretty town on the Blue Mountains. I’ve been left there with a sandwich in my hand while Anne goes to a meeting at the Wildplant nursery.

No idea what this garden is about and I want to eat my sandwich, so where’s a nice corner? Wandered around a corner and wow! Sandwich nearly fell out of my hand. Amazing view over the mountains! But nowhere to sit; retrace steps back to rather dull lawn redeemed by bench; sandwich eaten. Now for the garden………

I should have read the guidebook first and not been distracted by a sandwich. This garden is listed in a book “1001 Gardens to Visit Before You Die”. And I’m here by chance, I could have died and not visited. I had been looking for some good gardens to visit and found in the library the Aussie equivalent of our Yellow Book (National Gardens Scheme) but it didn’t include Everglades. Anyway, I did visit, and did do it properly, i.e. read some background, try to understand the design, and get the feel of it.

What makes Everglades special is not only the sandwich-dropping view but also how well the garden sits in it. It’s on the Blue Mountains that are nothing like mountains as we know, but form a plateau dissected by enormous canyons and rifts of stupendous depth. So the garden has a series of terraces stepping down the hillside, a rocky watercourse going through glades of tall trees and ferns, a waterfall in a ferny grotto, all looking utterly natural (although, of course, requiring incredible construction works).

The planting is very familiar near the house – lilacs, cherry trees, rhododendrons, conifers, dogwoods, underplanted by anemones, pentstemons, lilies, (specially pleased to see hydrangea Annabelle that I have from Buttercrambe nursery) – but then it gently merges into native bush with some gorgeous eucalypts and banksias. It is the fitting of a garden to its location that I love, and in this exceptional place, Everglades fits exceptionally well.

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