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Long gone garden

I had about 23,000 photos on iPhoto, which, not surprisingly, has been slowing my MacBook down!  Over the past weeks, I have been having a massive cull and in the process siphoned off favourite photographs, and also I have been on a trip down memory lane.  There is one group of photos I am compelled to post here because for me they form a glorious record of my long gone and much lamented garden, at our previous house.  I have a tiny garden now, which I am enjoying, but in our last garden there was room for lots of joy.   

Regrettably, where there were tulips and fritillaries in the long grass, there is now hardstanding for cars, and I heard yesterday that my beloved lavender hedge has now been taken out, which is the final nail in the coffin of a place bees once loved to visit.  I am not sure that a static row of box balls is going to quite cut it with the pollinators.  I used to count up to one hundred bees, of various types, along the spires of lavender when it was in bloom.  


Comments

  1. Glorious, wow! You created a wonderful riot of colour and wildlife, with all the plants and flowers I love. Let’s hope the new owners tune in to Gardeners World and realise what they are now missing. I’m thinking of giving over some of our tiny garden to nettles to help the butterflies A x

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    1. Thanks A! It was a lovely garden and I miss it. Unfortunately I know the new people and they have turned what was quite a lovely tangle of a garden into a soulless characterless place. Our old neighbours and friends call it "twee land". Very fitting. If you plant nettles, watch out for the network of roots invading your garden. They need no encouragement!! Perhaps you could plant some up in a big bucket or container to keep the rest of the garden safe - a bit like mint! The butterflies will love you though, and young nettle leaves make good soup!

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  2. I can vouch for it having been a beautiful garden! The lavender hedge was divine and rest looked like it was a feature in Country Living!
    We all appreciate that people don’t have the same taste but to rip out a garden that looks so beautiful is awful and spiteful!
    A garden is a reflection of self!
    Beautiful and adaptable and giving back to nature versus hard and unyielding and toxic!
    Enough said!
    I’m sure you current Garden will be a small glorious tribute - photos please when available 🌾🌸🌺🌱🌷🌼💖

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  3. It was such an exquisite garden - and represented not only a deep understanding and knowledge of plants and planting but many hours, days, months and years of effort and care and, above all, love. Even allowing for individual tastes and preferences, I cannot for the life of me imagine or understand why anyone who called themselves a gardener - or even a garden lover - would choose to wantonly destroy such beauty and so many plants and trees. Is there a horticultural equivalent of cutting off one's nose to spite one's face? Or scoring an own goal and losing the match in doing so? Just a thought . . .

    Despite the loss, I wish you much joy with your new garden; I know that you will make it a very special place.

    (A late family member, who had been a prisoner of war in Italy during WWII, told me that to cut down a tree in that country, without official permission, was a punishable crime. I have no idea if this was true, or true at the time, but it always struck me as a very good thing - and he always treated trees with great reverence after he came back to England at the end of the war.)

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