What my random, messy, experimental garden taught me about life
It started with a single weed
Today, a story about one small, annoying weed and how it led to the transformation of my garden - and possibly, my life…
It is April 2021 and I have just moved back to my flat after spending 10 months living with my mother during various pandemic lockdowns. I’ve decided to live alone for the first time ever; it is a Sunday afternoon and I’m sitting quietly in my garden.
I have a rectangle of fake grass (inherited from the previous owner) and three large-ish flower beds, all completely bare, bar some black membrane cloth and lots of woodchip.
I have visited my garden several times during the pandemic, each time discovering some unwanted thing: the padlock on my shed having rusted and jammed shut, the chairs in different places suggesting strangers have been spending time there, and multiple piles of cat poo in the dry woodchip (there were 25. I counted as I cleared them up).
By 2021, the garden has been mine for four years, yet it has felt too overwhelming to plant anything. I’m someone who looks at something and wants it done now, perfectly, in an instant, and as a result I sometimes become frozen and do nothing at all.
But there in the garden, feeling wobbly about being alone and not quite knowing what to do with myself, I spot a few rogue green shoots making their way through the cloth and the woodchip and into the large square patch at the back.
I don’t know what the shoots are, but I feel like they shouldn’t be there. The patch they’re growing in seems big and dark, but I sense that now is the time to approach it.
Tentatively, I kneel down at the edge and lift off the black cloth, shaking back the woodchip. The ground below looks trampled but busy with life. Small things scuttle, worms wriggle, and the patch of earth is full of what looks like long, white roots, all coiled around each other before emerging above as leafy stems.
The shoots had been a mystery until I pulled the cloth back: they turn out to be suckers from the plum trees that overhang my garden - and they are fierce. The only thing to do is dig.
I spend hours digging the patch, removing the suckers, along with rubble, glass, plastic clothes pegs and bits of brick. I pile them up and pull my gloves off, exhausted, but happy.
I spend most evenings between April and June tackling the rest of the flower beds. They all have suckers to dig up, and one patch is full of large lumps of concrete whose excavation provides much satisfaction - this is just me and my spade after all.
I keep going. I buy two large wooden planters that look like coffins when they’re empty. I acquire inexpensive terracotta pots from garden centres and have multiple packs of heavy compost delivered, which I drag through my flat. I plant up a discarded flue cover with petunias and an old metal basket with scented geraniums.
Three years later my garden is coming along. The patch at the back where I started digging is now bordered by some railway sleepers kindly donated by a friend and features a small acer tree that I bought for £3 at my local garden centre.
Right now, one of my wooden planters is full of alliums with huge round purple heads made up of tiny star-like flowers. A jasmine - a gift - climbs up one trellis, and a clematis up another.
When you tell people you’re a beginner gardener, they give you cuttings, seedlings and plants: I have sweet peas, an iris, an agapanthus, a honeysuckle, salvias and more.
I plant at random, digging things into places that feel right; moving them around if they don’t thrive; rescuing struggling plants from the ground and nursing them back to health in pots.
It’s all an experiment, and it’s magical when something works. I’ve accepted being a beginner - the pressure to be perfect has disappeared, and I’ve learned to be patient and to try things with no idea of the outcome. I love to nurture: dead-heading some plants means more flowers bloom, and I have made friends with my neighbours trading gardening tips.
I’ve learned tons from my mother and it’s a joy to have cuttings from some of her plants in my garden, a kind of continuation of life. Gardening stops me ruminating and deciding what should go where makes me feel creative and free.
Today two robins joined me as I weeded, searching for worms. I know that they are nesting somewhere, because they’ve been jumping around the garden, collecting tiny strands of plant material. It feels like all life is here.
I still have loads of plum tree suckers but seeing them now makes me happy - not scared any more. They shoot up in random places, sometimes surging through the material that lines my planters and making their way about a foot to the light.
But this is the point. Those annoying little suckers are what got me gardening in the first place - they finally got me to get off my arse and dig. And look at the result: experimentation, colour, birdsong, satisfaction and joy.
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Ah, thank you Robin!
A delightful garden, absolutely worth the effort. Well done Lucy!