I took a walk down my garden path this morning, taking in the daffodils and primroses scattered around under the trees and in the lawn. They are battered by rain and wind, but cheerful nonetheless. March is in the process of turning from lion to lamb, from roar to bleat. Shoots and buds have emerged against the grey skies, and the early-leafing birches bloom lime green next to their still-naked neighbours. There are tiny trunks of early rhubarb in the raised beds.
I’m lucky to have a long and interesting garden. When we first moved here, I hardly took any notice of it. The house was what had invited me in, its crooked floors and the many bookshelves ready to fill. I needed a safe space, and anything beyond the back door seemed irrelevant, unwelcoming. We arrived in a freezing February, and I huddled indoors with the cats.
But then we turned the corner of the year, and that March I found myself padding down the winding path and exploring, discovering a glade, vegetable patches, a crumbling shed, masses of early cow parsley spreading over the lawn. I made a refuge in the treehouse and listened to the blackbird calling from our roof. I discovered the pleasures of roses, which I had always thought more thorn than beauty, and I relaxed into our style of gardening, which is lazy but which we prefer to think of as a kind of wilderness-management.
I was sad to have left behind the modest urban garden in Bath that we had transformed from paving slabs to flower beds, but that had been a place for sitting, not moving. A few years after arriving in West Oxfordshire, when walks suddenly had to be solitary and rationed, I was grateful to be able to stretch my legs without crossing boundaries, taking turns around the perimeter like a Jane Austen heroine. The brambles and overhanging branches and confused planting no longer mattered. I had been gifted a lockdown so different from those confined inside.
It’s my mum’s birthday soon, and I like to remember her outdoors at this time of year. She only had the chance to visit our great wilderness once before she could no longer travel from home. Soon after that, she too was confined. On that visit, she walked the length of the garden, pausing to poke a toe into an overgrown border and identify a plant. She was a great gardener and left me copious notes on how to make the most of the hellebores and how to identify bindweed. I wish I’d had more time to ask her advice on what might grow well against a shaded wall or how to prune gooseberries (one of her childhood favourites, eaten raw and dipped in sugar).
A few months after she died, I scattered a tiny pinch of her ashes under the brightest rose bush. I said hi as I passed this morning, noting the hellebores gathered below, in need of attention.
Hellebores seem to be having a glorious year ❤️