My garden is gone.
I planted the first seeds for my garden in 2001. I finally owned my own home and I wanted to tread lightly on the planet. At the time, that meant recycling, paying a fortune for energy-saving lightbulbs and reducing your Food Miles.
The house had a garden. Well, it had an outdoor space that was home to a neglected lawn and – as it turned out – quite a lot of buried rubbish. Including most of a car engine, if I remember correctly. It had possibilities, but it needed work. In the meantime, I perused the shelves at the local hardware store for seeds I could sow in pots on the patio. Mostly herbs, and a leafy green I wasn’t familiar with – leaf beet (perpetual spinach) – that sounded as though it would be great in stir-fries.
The rest, as they say, is history. I got bitten by the gardening bug, and Emma the Gardener was born. I went from a few pots on the patio to a permaculture paradise, with raised beds growing weird and wonderful edible plants, a geodesic dome greenhouse and a small flock of chickens. Every spring, I tried to whittle down the list of things I wanted to grow so that it would fit into the available planting space. And every spring, I failed. It was a garden of passion and exuberance rather than practicality; a labour of love. It was never conventional, and it never matched up to anyone else’s ideas of what a garden should be. But I loved it. It was a part of my soul.
But then the wheel of life turned, as it does, and I was forced to leave it behind. I tried to pack as much up as I could, and carried far too many plants into an interregnum that would last three years. The plants were as homeless as I was, adrift aboard a ship sailing towards an unknown future. When we finally saw land again, we eagerly put down new roots.
But although we hadn’t travelled far in miles, the landscape now looked very different. The UK voted to leave the European Union in 2016, and the garden became an island nation with more responsibility to feed us and less space for frivolities.
And as each summer grew hotter and drier, the plants – and the gardener – wilted. I learned to erect a parasol over a raised bed if I wanted to do any weeding and to do the watering on the cusp of night.
Every spring, I pared back my ambitions to fit in with the new reality, until I realised I had none left.
In 2022, building work nearby unleashed a plague of rats that laid siege to the garden. We tried to build a fortress, but it was almost impossible to keep them out. We moved the bird feeders into the front garden, to limit the temptation. Ryan can see the birds from his office window now; I can’t. The rats retaliated by eating the potatoes right out of the raised beds.
We tried a wildlife garden for 2023, focusing on flowers to draw in the bees and the beneficial insects. Sometimes it was wonderful. But the weeds! Oh my god, the weeds. It got out of control. I didn’t want to step outside.
And so, just before Christmas, I paid a landscaper to come and take away everything I had built. Dismantle the raised beds and stack them to one side. Remove the fertile soil I’d filled them with. Carry off the plants. Replace them with turf.
We now own our first lawn mower (a small, manual one). I’m told the garden looks “nice and tidy”. Personally, I think it’s hideous. Boring and barren.
Ryan wants a few plants in pots, to brighten the place up. He says that if I plant them, he’ll do the watering.
For reasons that reach beyond the horticultural, my life is currently in a state of flux. This feels like more than a new chapter, perhaps a new volume in the Life of Emma. Is the garden gone for good, or is it just sleeping? That may depend on your definition of a garden.
I’d quite like to turn the space into an adult-sized adventure playground, but it’s not large enough. Maybe we’ll finally find a shady spot for the bench, where we can sit without being burned to a crisp. We have all the kit to do a lot of outdoor cooking, but we never do. Maybe this is the year we’ll put up a gazebo, break out the tripod for the over-sized Kadai and learn how to cook campfire stew. Or really get the hang of making pizza in the Ooni.
What is a garden? A garden is just possibilities, waiting to grow.
Unless otherwise stated, © Copyright Emma Doughty 2024. Published on theunconventionalgardener.com.
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