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June 2023
If there was a word to describe June at Crofton Garden it would be ‘control’. We are not the most rigorous gardeners here, not by a long shot but even we can reach our limits. The starkness of the Winter garden revealed a mass of branches, climbers, shrubs that had all become a bit out of control. You don’t really notice it when the garden is in full exuberance of Spring but when you can’t get down a certain pathway once all the foliage and growth is gone or can no longer see the shed under a mass of bare limbs, it’s probably time to do some work. Just some…
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May 2023
To be completely honest we spent most of May basking in the glory of last month’s Pond makeover. As the last month of Autumn, its where the garden starts to really look bare, and you can begin to see the structure of the plants within it. We have been lazy over the years, not intentionally, things have a way of being let go if you’re busy or distracted. But not this year. This seems to be the year of strong action. Of being decisive. Limbs have been removed from trees, plants transplanted (but there’s nothing new there), garden features being moved (and moved again) and the resurrection of pathways. I…
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April 2023
When we first moved to Crofton we made a pond. A lovely big pond. With different depths and ledges for plants, and plenty of room for fish. You can see images of it when it was new below: See? A gravel beach with planting all around. 20 years later: Chaos. Crofton Garden has never been an overly maintained garden. Over the years things happen, gardens get neglected, you try to get it back under control, you fail and you keep trying. And to be completely honest I think we just forgot what the pond looked like. We knew it was there. We saw it had become a muddy quagmire and…
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March 2023
This is where we say goodbye to Barbara Hepworth. I had spent a number of years cultivating her but Jenny was never convinced by it. Which is strange as she is usually quite easy to convince about other things. For years she has been trying to coerce me into making Barbara into a horse or an elephant and I have resisted, campaigning for modern sculpture. March is the month I lost the argument. Barbara had been suffering from a middle age spread that was starting to block the pathway, and once you start cutting it becomes quite difficult to stop. There was quite a simple reason for my reluctance to…
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July 2022
It began with Jenny having one of those moments when she looked at the garden and declared it was getting on her nerves. It coincided with a decision that we needed to downsize the large middle bed garden you have heard us bemoan in the past. Our process involved much arguing about how this was to be achieved, even Martin put in his two cents worth concerning creating large pathways the divide up the bed, which, of course, we duly ignored. After much discussion, and with a good healthy dose of humility, we found ourselves agreeing with Martin. We would divide the bed up into three pathways that converged in…
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May 2022
The last month of Autumn was a stunner. Crisp but full of golden sunshine. In a dream world it is the time to sit, bask in the light and have a cup of tea (or mulled wine). Reality is very different. The weeds keep growing, there is always something to clean up, trim, prune, wood needs to be cut in the bushland and all needs to be done by at least 4pm because it gets too cold and too dark to be out beyond then. The shining light within all these ‘chores’ is that magical word ‘propagation’. Autumn is the perfect time to take hardwood cuttings and sow seeds. Jenny…
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April 2022
It may look lovely but April can only be described as a month of destruction in our garden… It began with the apple step-overs. One of the first things we planted when we arrived at Crofton over 20 years ago, this is an old espaliering technique where you cut out the leader at the first pair of lateral branches so it is low enough to step over (hence the name). It is only small garden area, one we walk past daily and yet had slipped beneath our view over the years, until now… To be honest the makeover was fuelled by an idea that had been brewing for a while.…
