Garden Archaeology

The mountain cornflowers are cautiously opening on the top grass, the stretch of scruffy lawn that runs alongside the hedge which in turn marks our boundary with the old road. The grass here - Michael is cutting it today, perhaps sick of looking at it as it gets shaggy - is thin and weak, probably because the soil beneath is poor and stony. We tend to leave it and allow the dandelions and grasses to get quite tall; TV gardeners would call it 'prairie planting.' If we have to have grass at all I like the idea of some areas being neat and clipped and some areas being wild and shaggy, allowing small flowers and unusual grasses to grow. The contrast between neatness and wildness appeals to me. The hedge is not to my taste - 1980s leylandii - but the small birds love it as it is relatively open inside but quite thick. There are some elements of garden archaeology in this top lawn; the leylandii, a flight of brick and gravel steps from the lower lawn to the top, the large clump of moujntain cornflowers and an unidentified pink flower with fleshy rubbery leaves. There is a wooden deck around the large beech tree, a continuation of the top lawn; slippery in winter it has seedlings growing in the cracks, but it gives good views up the valley and I often sat on it last summer. There is also a listing rose arbour, a small metal frame with some struggling roses and the remains of a fountain inside it, suited better to a performance of the Arabian Nights than here. But taken together these oddities are the remains of a grand plan for this part of the garden.