JOURNEY TO NORTH WALES : 'Those Blue Remembered Hills'

 

JOURNEY TO NORTH WALES : ‘Those Blue Remembered Hills….’

May 10^th 2022

Route taken.

We went up to Kim’s for a week this spring, leaving the house in rain at 7 in the morning. What a difference a few years make. The smallish road from home to Launceston, once more or less deserted this early in the morning, was very busy with traffic and when we joined the A 30 at Launceston, that road was equally busy. There had been rain overnight and the countryside was gleaming soft spring green, punctuated by crisp white Hawthorn blossom. The A30 from Launceston to Exeter skirts its way round the north side of Dartmoor The verges were a froth of Cow Parsley and the sky was silvery grey with glimpses of sun beyond the low clouds blotting out the higher tops of the moor. It still takes forty minutes to reach Exeter from home, but this is a much pleasanter route to make our way out of east Cornwall than struggling through the Plymouth commuter traffic.

The great red sandstone cliffs sliced through to join the A30 with the M5 at Exeter are still largely bare rock with fringes of pink Mexican Daisy now establishing in the fissures and cracks. We began to head north again towards a grey threatening sky, through the veils of spray flung up by big lorry wheels. We were glad we weren't going south as there was a huge tail-back in all the south-bound lanes about Bridgewater. It went on for miles.

As the M5 ages, the extensive views to either side are being increasingly hidden by the roadside planting of trees and shrubs, now reaching a considerable size and our focus is now fixed on the road ahead. We reached Brent Knoll Services (now called Sedgemoor Services) for breakfast at 9.30. Having paid £1.63 a litre for petrol before we left Tesco’s in Launceston, we saw the price at the service station was an eye-watering £1.88 per litre!! We were watching the petrol prices as we drove, with an eye on our needs on the return journey. The mid-Wales garages seemed to be charging around £163.9 to £165.9 a litre.

Brent Knoll is a good landmark on the left as you go north. It’s a hill of 137 metres on the Somerset Levels where the Mendip Hills end partway between Weston-super-Mare and Bridgewater.

Towards Bristol, now suitably refreshed, we saw this stretch of road was bordered  by the golden yellow of Oxford Ragwort. This plant was introduced from the stony slopes of Mount Etna to the Oxford Botanic Garden in the early 1700s. The story has it that its parachute-borne seeds lifted off and subsequently travelled along the clinker beds of the railways of Britain, ‘getting off at every station!’ over the next few hundred years The plant certainly thrives in gutters and pavement cracks and other dry stony places and is widespread in Britain now.

Oxford Ragwort.

We decided to go up though mid-Wales on the shorter but slower route, crossing the Severn estuary on the now not so new Prince of Wales suspension Bridge. The toll charge over the Severn estuary into Wales has been scrapped, so we opt to take this route up through Wales rather than fight our way though the Birmingham and the M6 before going off to the west on the M54 past Shrewsbury etc. The welsh roads are pleasanter, shorter and through lovely scenery, but the journey takes longer.

The Prince of Wales bridge.

Prince of Wales bridge, going towards Wales. The side barriers, presumably to cut down cross-winds, unfortunately prevent views of the estuary below as we drive across.

This second estuary crossing was built between 1992 and 1996 to supplement the first bridge over the Severn. This was built in 1966 and replaced the old small Aust Ferry. The elegant, aerodynamic second bridge, over 5ms long, the Prince Of Wales Bridge is a handsome, partly suspension bridge. One has to leave the motorway on either end to get down to admire the views.

Continuing west along the M4 as far as Newport, we then turned north and headed for Abergavenny. A lot of Ash trees have been planted along this road, as well as it being an abundant local tree. Over the past two or three years we have watched the inexorable spread of the die-back disease, although this year so far, quite a few trees are showing signs of re-growth . Maybe this might be signs of immunity developing in the surviving trees and it’s to be hoped that no programme of wholesale felling is undertaken prematurely.

Just before we reach Abergavenny you can see the ruins of Raglan Castle up on a ridge to the right. I have always wanted to go and have a look at it but a detour at this stage of the journey seems too time-consuming. All I know about it is that it’s late mediaeval.

Raglan Castle.

Abergavenny is a busy market town in Monmouthshire, and is a good centre for exploring the Brecon Beacons or, nearer, a leisurely walk along the Newport to Brecon canal.

Through Crickhowell and past Tretower, another impressive-looking ruin worth a look at , this castle, built in 1100 by a Norman lord, became the home and fortress of powerful Welsh lords for several hundred years more.

Tretower.

The road from Abergavenny to Builth Wells was quieter and the countryside was green and benign , and the road verges were studded with bluebells and stitchwort.

Continuing north the road passes between the hills of the Brecon Beacons to the left and their continuation as the Black Mountains to the right before we reach our favourite stopping-place for a breather and mid-morning drink time. We have met the Wye valley by now, and we cross the wide river in its thickly wooded valley by a pretty little iron suspension bridge.

The bridge is only just wide enough to take a car (fold back the wing mirrors and breathe in!) and the planks on the road surface clack as you go over, reminding us of the wooden bridges regularly swept away by flooded creeks in Australia,

River Wye, looking upstream from the little bridge.

There are may fine old trees here, and a little way upstream there is access to a public footpath which runs through the fine woodland alongside the river.

This area seems to be part of an estate; we assume it belongs to Llanstephan House a little way up a side road. I see it has a large garden open for the National Gardens Scheme.

Builth Wells is the next market town, home of the annual Royal Welsh Show held every July. With very old historical links, a catastrophic fire swept through the old town in the 1600s but it was rebuilt and enjoyed a hey-day In Victorian times when it became popular as a spa town following the opening up of two mineral water springs outside town. Many of the major buildings in town are Victorian and a big mural depicting a tale of the Welsh Prince Llewellyn can be seen on one big wall at the roadside in the main street.

Occasional glimpses of Red Kites can now be seen. Rhayader, the next small town is the focus of a Kite feeding centre, now a popular tourist attraction.

Red Kite.

The clock tower in the centre of Rhayader.

This small market town is twenty miles down the River Wye valley from its source. The river rises on Plynlimon the highest mountain in the Cambrian mountains, (and also the source of the Severn.) A small side road leads from Rhayader up into the hills where many years ago we camped with the children when they were young. We had stopped in old oak woodland with nesting Redstarts and Treecreepers in the trees near our tent. The road went on up into the hills to the Elan Valley reservoir. It was a memorable camp and totally unknown in the early 1970s.

Now however we go on up the main road to Llangurig then Llanidloes, and then up the winding road past the extensive reservoir of Llyn Clywedog which dams the headwaters of the river Severn. Started construction in 1963, this dam was intended to alleviate the floods of the Severn downstream and to safeguard the water supply to Birmingham and the Midlands.

Llyn Clywedog reservoir.

Continuing north we approach the Cambrian Mountains and taking a small side road to the left at the hamlet of Staylittle, we head up into open moorland past the traces of 19th century lead mining into open countryside with extensive views stretches all round. This road, now increasingly popular can be cut off by snow in the winter as we have found to our cost on a couple of occasions.

 Near the top, a rough side track leading through the mountains to remote upland farms further east has, in the past given us a secluded stop for picnics and even an overnight stay on occasions.

Llyn Glaslyn

Passing Lake Glaslyn on the stony track in this national nature reserve we saw grouse back in the early 1970s; much more recently we stopped overnight at the side of the track when on our way up to Kim’s. She was returning home after having stayed with us in Cornwall. She had taken the opportunity to clear out a huge amount of old unwanted drawings, card offsets and other art debris accumulated under the spare bed over several decades. We slept in the campervan but Kim decided to put her bed-roll just outside, using the big wad of paper and card as extra padding underneath. Rain set in during the night and a stream of water began to run down the side of the track. She awoke at first light, her bedroll floating on the mattress of discarded art works!

Going down the mountain road towards Machynllech.

Coming down the mountains the narrow road winds though well wooded, pastoral farms, soon reaching Machynlleth in the valley of the Dovey river. The small town is now another popular tourist destination, picturesque and a good walking centre.

Victorian clock tower in centre of Machynllech.

Delays just north of Machynllech last summer were due to extensive works, making a new crossing of the River Dovey and associated road works. Little seems to have changed this time!

Further up the road we pass the Alternative Technology Centre at Carrog. From small rather hippy-ish beginnings over fifty years ago the CAT has become a well-recognised centre, embracing and demonstrating the concept of low technological, sustainable methods of building, heating, lighting, waste-disposal, in all walks of life. The centre is open to visitors and also runs relevant courses.

Screes of Cadair Idris east face.

Cadair Idris.

The next striking area of scenery in this magnificent centre of Wales are the desolate screes of Cadair Idris rising up to almost 900 metres as the road rises alongside the eastern edge before dropping down through old woodland to Dolgellau. This important and historic centre is now bypassed by the modern road which then runs fairly straight though the extensive conifer plantations of Coed-y-Brenin in the Snowdonia National Park. The view soon opens out to the left and the horizon is bounded by the chain of rounded mountains called the Rhinogs before passing the lake, mothballed nuclear power station and village of Trawsfynydd.

Rhynog mountains (Rhynogydd or Rhynogau Welsh plural.)

The un-lovely nuclear power station of Trawsfynedd across the lake. The power station is now decommissioning and mothballed. Rhynogydd behind.

After so many miles, we now leave the A470 as it heads off to Conwy and Llandudno, and we start our last, west-heading leg out of Snowdonia and towards the lleyn Peninsula.

This most northerly peninsula is about thirty miles long from its rather indeterminate beginning west of the Snowdonia range to Kim's home out on the tip.

Looking back towards Snowdonia from the beginning of the eastern end of the Lleyn Peninsula.

 These days we usually leave the main road at Maentwrog and take a right turning up through more quiet upland country through Rhyd, bypassing Penrhyndedraeth and even Porthmadog and regain our road at Criccieth, birthplace of Lloyd George. We now head down the much improved road through to Pwllheli and the last 15 miles, at last, to Ty’n Gamdda, Kim’s home on the furthest possible SW tip of the Lleyn Peninula.

This way is about 350 miles from home but nearer 385 by the orthodox route via Birmingham and the A5.

The Story of our Garden form 1969 to the Present : Part 2

Part 2

Continuing from the previous blog describing the development and changes to our garden from when we came her in 1969 to the present day. A garden is a dynamic organism and when in the same hands, it reflects the changes within the family it belongs to.

Just a taster from the 1970s when everything was growing anywhere.

The Orchard

At the very bottom of the garden is a square about 30x30 yards, which, thanks to a number of sawn-off apple tree stumps and one which was surviving and re-sprouting, we grandly called The Orchard.

An early order of several varieties of fruit trees was made and they have withstood the years with varying degrees of success. The apples, Bramley, Blenheim Orange and Ellison's Orange, do pretty well most years, with some feasts to famines. The Newton Wonder is showing signs of die-back and the original apple which re-grew from the stump is a local variety known as Pig Snout which is usually a good cropper, early-ripening but not a good keeper. 

Outside the orchard in what was Kim's garden when she was a child, we have a local Tamar Valley variety, a graft by a friend, which is called King Byard. It crops very well on the whole, producing very big apples that are good for baking and with a good flavour.

Back in the orchard and part of the original order, were a crab apple John Downie, a Victoria Plum and a Damson, none of which thrived so were grubbed out. The two pears, a Conference and a William bon Chretien have mixed fortunes. We think pears are a difficult fruit as they either fall before they're ready, or have to be picked all at once and then they tend to ripen all at once too, so you can't keep up with eating them at their prime. The William in particular is very tricky. If we get a crop, the fruit tends to split while still unripe on the tree. I don't know what causes this, but the result is that in fifty years we've scarcely ever had anything worth eating from this tree. Only sentiment saves its life I think.

The William did well for once, in 2020 , and we ate pears at every meal, between meals, stewed, pickled, given away, and still had to compost a lot. We  just couldn't keep up with them!

King Byard summer 2020. This was the year the branches were so laden we had to prop them, and the runner beans from the row across the path climbed into the apple tree!

The daffodils which have always grown in the orchard are a very simple variety, not a great deal bigger or taller than the wild ones. Not as glamorous as the modern cultivars but it stands well in bad weather and the heads aren't so heavy and nodding as some. They are still in rows, reflecting some time probably dating to at least the 1950s when they were grown commercially. I knew the people who at this post-war time grew daffs for picking for the London market in the field below our orchard and there are still the relics of a few Pheasant-eye narcissi growing there. They are amazingly persistent.

The daffs are followed by bluebells. These were originally the generous Spanish species, blue and sometimes white. These cultivated ones are much maligned these days because they hybridise with our less vigorous natives and it's feared they will in time 'contaminate' our native bluebell woods.

The spring bulbs are followed these days by a froth of 'Our Lady's Lace' or Cow Parsley. A comparative newcomer to the garden and certainly not deliberately introduced.

The orchard is unmanaged until late August and into September when Tony cuts it with a scythe, section by section and then follows up with two or three mowings before the autumn has really set in.
A few other trees have sneaked in : a Gingko (for its novelty value), a Bird Cherry, a Balsam Poplar for its heavenly smell when the spring leaves are unfurling, an Alder and several Buddleias of various colours for the butterflies.

Our Family of Other Animals.

Over the years we have lived with a variety of two-legged and four-legged friends. Bridget our much-loved Alsatian has already sat in the limelight in the previous blog so she's had her mention.

Something nasty has happened to this 1983 slide. 

Rather scruffy rescue hens from a battery house. After their terrible confined life they soon recover from their agorophobia and turn into true scratching hens and moult into good plumage.

Their companions here are a couple of Gleanies, notorious for their strident rattling calls. They were the first victims of Reynard who over the years has had his vigilance rewarded on all too many occasions.

Building the stable next to the orchard. Autumn 1978

Am I supposed to be here?

Oh well, I'll just cut the grass while I'm here.

Oh yes, this is Kim's horse Taurus AKA Pooh, by the way. 1979

Meet Gozzle & Pozzle 1986. G. the gander is on the left and P. the goose is on the right. We reared them from chicks and the enduring mistake was to let them imprint on us. Much loved, very spoilt, they had the run of the garden. The trouble was Gozzle thought he was King and he would endure no man in his territory. When Tony appeared, he had to talk to Gozzle in a high squeaky voice to avoid attack.

While we were in Australia for six months in 1989 G & P went to live on Bardsey. They were settled by Nant Pond and disgracefully, Gozzle terrorized anyone who went near. He resumed his lovey-dovey nature as soon as he came home. Mistaking me for his wife I was amused but slightly uncomfortable by his spring display behaviour, putting twigs and bits of plucked grass suggestively at my feet in nest-building mode. I wouldn't have wanted to be ravished by him  unless maybe he turned into a handsome prince!

Sadly once again, Reynard had the last word.

PS....

Proud parents. The family's first outing, 1987

Chat through the fence. We have had a mix of ducks at different times.

The bantams. We ended up with two families. One with their cockerel lived in the orchard and the other with their cockerel lived higher up the garden but they all went to bed together.

They went to a friend while we were in Oz and guess what? Reynard had them too!

To get right up to date, after years going without poultry because of the fox problem, we decided during Covid to have some hens again and here are a couple of our three luxuriating in a dust bath. They are spoilt, cunningly reptilian, very companionable, love gardening and so far lay lots of eggs.

Plant crazes.

As well as the children's devotion to their cactus collections when they were young, Tony became keen on Bamboos. This has been a mixed blessing. They have mostly come from bits of root from naturalized clumps in woodland. They hadn't been dumped for no reason! Without exception they have been very invasive.

The first and now making a dense clump known of course as the Bamboozalem, keeps us in canes, makes a lovely children's den, roost for flocks of finches, and one year took part in the world-wide bamboo flowering event in 1983.

The rather squiffy flowers.

Despite claims that bamboos die after flowering (and if so why aren't they extinct?) although severely weakened, they recovered within a few years.

Most highly prized is a very tall stout, yellow-stemmed sort which makes huge canes in a single year. We have one as our stair bannister and another as a railing for the top pond bridge.

I became interested in Snowdrops some years ago, having seen all the different ones in the garden at Buckland Monachorum in Devon. I only have under a dozen of the hundreds available (at a price!)

We inherited rows of what I call Cornish Double in the orchard and which I have scattered throughout the garden subsequently. It is widely naturalized at least in the lanes round here.

Sam Arnott a very handsome snowdrop.

On the left......A hybrid which seems to have appeared spontaneously in the garden in the past three years. It's very vigorous and I think more handsome than the rather muddled lumpy 'Cornish Double' on the right.

Ferns. Continuing from my botanical interest in wild ferns, and capitalizing on the readiness of wild ones to appear in the garden anyway, Lady Fern is really quite a weed and if not winkled out when very small, needs a pickaxe to get out the sturdy rootstock.

One of my favourites, the delicate black-stemmed Oak Fern. It disappears in winter so I'm always pleased to see its inconspicuous croziers just nosing through again in the spring. We first saw it growing wild in wet woodland where we were camping in southern Sweden.

Roses aren't on the whole, happy here in our mild wet winters and clean air. Of many we have tried, few flourish. We were given a cutting in a bucket some years ago, of Isphahan, an old Persian variety. It grows by our front  door and its a show-stopper in a good year.

June 2020, a good year as it didn't rain while it was flowering. If the flowers get wet they turn into what look like scrunched up brown paper bags which as you see, are too high to reach to pick off. But we live in hopeful expectation every year.

Wedding Day makes a wonderful though brief show over the arch between the veggie beds and the 'Cricket Pitch'

The single, glowing pink Apothecary's Rose, Rosa gallica, suckers freely. This one comes from the now derelict garden in North Wales of RS Thomas the Welsh poet of whom we have affectionate memories.

Sadly we have a very full graveyard of rose labels of loved ones that haven't stood the test of time.

Dahlias. I began my relationship with dahlias many years ago when I bought a bucketful of tubers for 65p from Stoke Garden Club plant stall.  I still have this one, a semi-double, semi pom-pom, very robust cream colour. I have added and lost others of different types but my latest enthusiasm is to grow the single ones from seed. They germinate readily and with luck flower the same year, but can be saved overwinter and grown on. Bees love them.

I name these myself for convenience. This one's worth keeping I think and I call it Virginal.

This one I call Will Scarlet. Not sure about it. Either cheerful or garish! But it's fun seeing how they'll turn out.

Rockery.I think a rockery is tricky to get right. It's so easy to produce a 'dog's grave'. I love alpine plants but again I'm ambivalent. Most favourite is to see them growing naturally, in the mountains where they belong. I also love the immaculate displays of specimens at an Alpine Show. As I can't spend much time in the mountains and and haven't the single-minded dedication needed to tend an Alpine house, I compromise.

We rebuilt our first rockery because it was invaded by weeds.

1999.

Tony : "I'm running out of stone!"

Well, we did what we could with what we'd got...

In our damp climate the stones quickly get mossy.  Years ago I was given cowslip seeds by a friend in Hertfordshire and although we are very acid, the cowslips are still with us in all their promiscuousness. We now get false oxlips, red cowslips, sort -of Polyanthus etc etc.

Something plays havoc every year with these plants as they come into their best and I start to think 'Ah! I've got away with it this year!' when overnight, along comes the phantom tweaker and OFF WITH THEIR HEADS! I grow my most precious ones in the fruit cage where they escape the beheaders, so it isn't mice.

Tulips. I'm going full circle as I didn't care for tulips when I was younger. Why ever not? I'm really hooked on them now. I was inspired by the most wonderful show of all sorts being grown by a lady in Helland and I now put in an order to a Dutch grower every summer. It's two lots of pleasure for the price of one; first looking at his so-tempting website and then seeing them flower in their big pots the following spring. 

The guru, Christopher Lloyd recommended that you treat Tulips as annuals and don't try and struggle to get them to repeat the next year. I confess I do, by saving the biggest bulbs of those saved and dried in the summer but I put them in the garden and if they flower again, it's a bonus. But mostly they do tend to divide into smaller, non-flowering bulbs.

What a difficult task it is, to choose which ones to order. I am torn between the flamboyant, like last year's Black Parrot and the red and white vulgarity of Estelle Rijnveld, and the more traditional and dignified Darwin type with their pure tulip shape.

You can imagine, I am looking forward to this year's lot, already showing good growth in their pots outside the greenhouse.

Simplifying.

From 1989 we made many trips overseas for some years. On a couple of occasions we were away for six months at a time, and never less than a month, so what had been quite a plantsman's garden steadily lost the smaller choice plants and gradually was taken over by thuggish vigorous and invasive plants. I don't mind the rush of Welsh Poppies in the spring but by the autumn I begin to get oppressed by the ever-expanding clumps of rather weedy Michaelmas Daisies.

Every return from a trip meant an orgy of sorting out the garden. As I got older and was losing the battle with Ground Elder, the most difficult to manage beds were given up. I took out such plants as I wanted to rescue and then handed over to Tony and the mower. Its surprising how  a couple of years' mowing will turn a ground elder-infested flower bed into more lawn, and it was far easier for Tony to mow a bit more than for me to struggle with a difficult bed.

However, you can't have it all ways and I wouldn't have missed the travel for worlds.

The main design of the garden remained intact but down the lefthand-side border, instead of one continuous bed, it is now fragmented. The righthand-side border has more plots of grass scalloped into its far side. But that's all, and it does save a lot of difficult work.

I call this 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' . This space used to be the middle section of the left-hand border. The Box Balls started life as tiny cuttings. I'm tempted to try and trim them into Nessie or a dragon.....

Wildlife

Going hand in hand with the simplifying of the garden, the combination of less(??) work, advancing years, and the opportunities for just sitting and looking afforded by Covid have enabled us to relax and enjoy our own wildlife under our noses. We have always fed the birds but more sitting has allowed us to be able to enjoy nesting, rearing of young, wash-and-brush-up sessions in the pond.

Cock Siskin feeding on sunflower seeds. We hear singing males here in the summer so they are no longer just winter visitors.

The Sparrowhaawk had chased a Blackbird into the fruit cage when the gate had been left open by mistake.

Fieldfares occasionally visit to eat discarded windfall apples if we have a hard spell. (spot the other one on the right.)

Rabbits and deer and squirrels are less welcome and we are always on tenterhooks about fox visits. The occasional hedgehog is welcome but not the mice and voles which raid the broad beans and peas as they germinate, and move my crocus corms around. Wildlife and gardeners aren't always good bedfellows.

     Squirrel scoffing sunflower seeds.

Any hung feeder tests their agility and ingenuity and they usually win in the end.

The greatest diversity is the insect life. By night we set the moth trap in the orchard or in the main garden from time to time.

Robinson light trap. Over the years we have trapped (identified and released) over 400 species, mainly resident but occasional migrants from the continent.

We are growing more flowers with open centres with stamens exposed to favour nectar and pollen-feeding insects, and also making sure we have flowers in the later part of the summer to extend the feeding season.

                           Comma butterfly on Michaelmas Daisy

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     Painted Lady, Small Tortoiseshell and a Comma feeding on nectar-rich Sedum.

One of our biggest thrills has been to see in 2014 and again in 2019 a White-letter Hairstreak Butterfly feeding on a wild mint I was foolish enough to bring into the garden from Germany many years ago (see Mistakes later on.) This is a very rare butterfly in Cornwall and the caterpillar feeds on Wych Elm. Our big Wych Elm grows just behind this flower bed so the butterfly didn't have to come far.

The old Eucalyptus stump is slowly rotting and it now produces great clumps of Sulphur Tuft fungi

and the larvae of this long-horned beetle The Tanner, feed for some years within the decaying trunk before the adult emerges. This one actually came into the moth trap one night.

We have newts, frogs and toads using the pond and for many years we feel specially privileged to have a very large Grass Snake. We have watched her hunt frogs in the pond, found her cast skin draped over twigs and have seen both clusters of hatched eggs in the compost and various sizes of young, from pencil-sized to teenagers, over the years.

Tony has put down some squares of carpet in warm places and the grandchildren watch with bated breath as they are lifted to reveal, sometimes, a resting grass snake or slow worm.

A clump of Grass Snake eggs in the compost. They have already hatched.

            Slow Worm basking.

Mistakes over the years have been many and varied but I like to think most of them were made in the early years. Most of them unfortunately are still with us.

Inexperience led me to take the most bog-standard cultivars available rather than enquire further to get more choice specimens. This especially applies to the Wych Hazel (Hammamaelis mollis) where a much more attractive pale yellow flower is available, rather than my strongly orange one. And the Mahonia japonica has a much more attractive form than mine.

You won't believe it, but I was once misguided enough to put in a Winter Heliotrope in the days when I'd put ANY plant in. It took a good ten years to get rid of it!

I've already mentioned that when putting down the parking place, we should have put a membrane down before laying the chippings. It would I'm sure, at least lessen the chore of weeding it every year (and it really needs doing more often than that.)

Other inappropriate additions have been inferior forms of Michaelmas Daisies. The superior ones seem to be short-lived but the weedy ones spread like crazy.

And the arch-spreader is what I call the German Mint (Mentha longifolia) a very handsome silvery-leafed plant with long terminal flower spikes of pale mauve. It has a pungent small when you crush the leaves; no good as a culinary mint. But the insects adore it.

The downside is it's underground running roots. Every winter I yank out at least a barrow-full from the bed it inhabits; by the summer, there it is again, undaunted.

So not exactly a mistake but perhaps I should have put it in a strong prison cell.

On the upside, to end on a positive note, I think the original layout has proved robust enough to still work even after the adjustments of the 'Simplification'. The main central lawn takes the eye down through the main part of the garden, and the side paths take you on little voyages of discovery, much enjoyed by children and I find also by visiting adults.

Half of me really likes to see individual plants growing in a bed with clean soil round them to show them to full advantage, but my other dominant half tends to overplant so that by mid summer everything is growing into its neighbour (and hopefully holding each other up!). Some people like this exuberance, but others find it claustrophobic. I do notice this crowded look is difficult to do justice to in a photo whereas a garden with a strong structure and good hard lines, such as the Lutyens/Jekyll garden at Hestercombe in Somerset photographs very well.

We have been fortunate enough to have sufficient space for all sorts of leisure play by the children and then their children, while still having room for me to indulge whatever whims I might come up with.

I have scarcely done any justice to so many more of my favourite plants. If I were to write this again another time I'm sure the plants mentioned would mostly be a different lot.