Christmas is well over but the house is still quiet. The New Year hustle and bustle of returning classes and groups has not yet begun, the beautiful decorations have been removed, and Bensham Grove waits.
One of the big conundrums that plague us every year at this time, and even more so now that the house restoration is almost at an end, is what to do with the garden!
Always a mess at this time of the year, it is looking particularly forlorn and battered after the weeks of high winds and rain we have been experiencing. Leaves, inches deep, cover the lawn, small twigs and branches litter the paths and one rather disgruntled Health and Safety officer has pointed out that overgrown hedges are obscuring signage.
To be fair to us, during the restoration the lower garden was a no go area to anyone who was not a workman. We consoled ourselves by promising to come up with wonderful new plans and ideas to completely transform the garden into something that would compliment our lovely house. Just how to do it however is another matter, and to help you understand our dilemma it is worth considering the question ‘What is a community garden?’.
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| The garden at Bensham Grove |
This is where things begin to unravel almost straight away. One of the many dictionary definitions for ‘community’ is ‘common ownership or participation’, and herein lies the nub of our problem. The garden at Bensham Grove belongs to everybody, but also to no-one in particular! This means that one or two things happen. Either everyone has conflicting ideas on what should be done, or else no-one really cares as long as it is pretty to look at when being peacefully regarded from the safe distance of the terrace, preferably with a cup of tea and a biscuit close to hand.
Over the years various people have worked hard on the garden, cutting the lawn, pruning shrubs and planting. And with that particular word lies another nub. Many enthusiastic gardeners have in the past looked at a plant or shrub in their own garden and wondered what on earth prompted them to buy it in the first place. It is big and growing well, and did I mention ‘big’, and is in fact in danger of robustly trampling over every other plant in the garden. What to do with it is the question until a ‘light-bulb’ moment occurs and its relieved owner decides that the best place for it is in the community garden. In a twinkling of an eye the plant is dug up, transported and put to rest in a place which leaves it free to bully its way happily all over the community’s own delicate plants instead.
The words ‘volunteer gardener’ also have connotations. We volunteers are a mixed bunch. Mostly reliable but sometimes not. Many of us have done the rat race. Been there and got the tee-shirt. We are just looking for something enjoyable whilst helping us to stop falling quite apart, or at least warding off the evil day. Others need something to add to their C.V’s and keep someone else happy at the Job Shop whilst they wait for the ideal position to surface.
Sometimes, if so moved, we will work longer and harder than a paid employee, but then the unreliability creeps in. A chance of a tantalising holiday or a visit to see the grandchildren occurs. Will we worry that the Monday Gardening Group will miss our input during those weeks? Not really! Not at all actually!! We have better things to do.
There also seems to be a profundity of ‘ladies who garden’. Who are happy to float. Large straw hats are particularly useful at this point as the ladies do a bit of pruning and insist in referring to every plant in Latin. What we are always short of are the diggers. The real, get down to it, gardeners. The ones who can fork over a particularly exuberant border in an afternoon. The ones who don’t mind sweeping the paths or gardening in the rain. We want you, where are you?
During the years of planning the restoration many architects, historians and the like have posed the dreaded question ‘what are you going to do with the garden’? So this is another problem. Photographs which we have managed to collect point to the Spence Watson family having a distinct predilection for photographing family groups posed outside. However it is always in one spot, outside the garden door and beneath the library window so we have many views of the house, remarkably unchanged by the way, but none of the garden.
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| The Spence Watsons posing in the garden |
We know that during the Settlement days the garden, which then stretched down as far as Elysium Lane, was arranged out into plots for the unemployed men to grow vegetables, but even then there is still a mystery on how it looked. The small dedicated group who meet on Mondays are actually reproducing one of these plots in the top garden, using some of the methods that the men would have used at that time. The main garden however has defeated us (please refer back to bullying plants, straw hats, and tea and biscuits).
Because of all the pressure and the need for urgent action this particular volunteer also had a ‘light-bulb’ experience. Of course! We have a predominately Arts and Crafts house so what we need is an Arts and Crafts garden! Coming swiftly back to earth though it is obvious that books need to be read and the internet scoured. Very soon a plan is beginning to emerge and Gertrude Jekyll begins to look like a very best friend.
It becomes obvious that we need swathes of wisteria, climbing honeysuckle, roses and clematis which would jostle with paths lined with lavender and pinks. Secret topiary outside room would suddenly appear. Our little group decide to walk around the garden to see what features we already have.
Well we do have two interesting brick arches although one of them is nattily decorated with graffiti, compliments of some of Bensham’s finest. We also have a couple of wisterias even if one is struggling in a pot. Our total contribution to topiary is our box hedge which borders one of the beds and has taken ten years to grow to its present height of ten inches.
We have an interesting bit of wild land at the side in which the gardening container is hidden and which could at a pinch be described as a bit of woodland. We also have a very exuberant mixed border next to the hut which was originally built in the 1930’s. In short we have the very, very bare bones of an Arts and Crafts garden already. We are decided! This is the year for a transformation. This however will necessitate a meeting of the Fund-raising Group and not to mention the need for volunteers.............which brings us back to where this Chronicle started!
All this talk of an abundance of flowers and a plethora of perfumes leads naturally to the insects which inhabit these gardens. During the restoration we came across stained-glass depictions of tiny dragon-flies in the attics. We absolutely love them and have decided to celebrate their discovery by organizing a competition for the best rendering of a dragon-fly in any medium. Why not enter? We are really looking forward to seeing what all you dedicated craft people out there will produce. Proper digging people will also be met with open arms!!!
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| The stained glass window in the attic |
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