Adam's Garden

Have you noticed how fashionable timber decking has become? It's use is lauded in gardening programmes and numerous press articles and magazines, and some garden centres display whole constructions to be bought and re-erected at home. It has not been so popular in these parts in the past, partly because our climate tends to deposit a slippery layer of algae over the boards, turning any casual perambulation into a cross between an award winning performance from Torvill and Dean and a Keystone cops movie - with expletives in place of the frantic piano music. Nowadays, though, it is easy and cheap to obtain decking with grooves cut along the length of the boards, giving a good foothold, and it's many advantages can now be realised in the garden.

The chief benefit comes over tricky terrain. A flat garden can simply be paved, turfed, concreted etc. to provide an amenity area, something that is not quite so easy with a precipitous slope or severely undulating garden. There is a back entrance to our farmhouse that drops downwards a few steps and then sharply upwards again because the house is built in to the slope of a steep hill. A level path cuts across the slope and until this month it was necessary to access the path by going down then up. I have circumvented this problem with the use of decking, very easy to do because the door is approximately level with the path. This was simply a matter of putting in four sturdy upright posts, each a slightly different height in order to take the slope out of the terrain, and fixing joists to support the decking. The whole process was quick and relatively inexpensive. The platform is roughly triangular, fanning outwards from the door, with a slight curve on one side for artistic reasons! The straight side has a handrail but the curved side has been left open for planting.

Because the site is heavily shaded most of the day, yet has a couple of hours of morning sun, I am having a little difficulty in finding suitable plants. A Camellia would be appropriate were it not for the morning sun, which can ruin damp blossom, and most shrubs suited to shade are simply too tall for this spot. I thought it would be nice to have a late flowering plant so I input all the details into my 'Perfect Plants' CD ROM's search facility and it came up with one plant - Tropaeolum speciosum, aka a flame creeper. It will be necessary to put up a trellis for such a plant. Maybe I shall do it when I get time.

The only other place I have installed decking so far is immediately in front of the shed in the orchard. There is an exceptionally steep drop in front and decking was really the only option in this case, and once again it was easy and cheap. I reused some support timbers left over from the poolside pergola, which cut the cost even more, and this provided a platform about twelve foot square which is excellent for work and sitting out. The view across the valley, down to the river and beyond to the moors, is particularly good from here. That is another of the great benefits that decking can provide - a certain amount of elevation.

I have toyed with the idea of putting some decking across part of the duck pond area, about which I wrote last month, in order to provide seating close to the water, but that is as usual just plans! Unfortunately I have made no further progress on the project this month, what with the demands in the greenhouse and other things, but will keep you posted. It has been suggested that the garden be known as the millennium garden which is a good idea, although it could become a hostage to fortune and not completed for years to come. In fact, is a garden ever completed? A number of grandiose national projects are dedicated to reinstating ancient gardens to their formal glory in exact detail, using a combination of archaeology and archives, and I often wonder if it is really worth all the effort. In particular, what would the original gardeners think about it all? Would they say: "Hang on a minute, you could improve on that feature over there. It was never meant to be that way" and so on. Old gardens are of interest in so far as they give a glimpse into the past, but they are being enjoyed now and in that respect are a living entity and shouldn't they evolve?

Coming back to the present, the garden centres and nurseries are a hive of activity. Gardeners are coming out of hibernation and eager to get to work. Because the industry is becoming big business, there has never been a better choice of plants, and there are lots of growing options, the cheapest being from seed, then running the whole gamut from seedlings to plug plants, to small plants, and finally fully grown specimens. I prefer growing from seed but I have found that it is cheaper to buy a pot of Pelargonium seedlings than to buy the seed itself, and that is even if 100 per cent germination is achieved, which it never is. Another advantage of buying seedlings is the time saved. I am a little behind in my sowing schedule this year which means that as soon as twenty, or so, seeds of each variety has germinated the pot is removed from the propagator to make way for the next one. In reality I usually end up with far more than required so I pot up the first sixteen for my own use and a number of the rest for swaps and donations and what is left goes into my recycle bag. It always seems a waste to throw away unwanted seedlings but there is only a limited amount of space in the greenhouse, although this year I do have more space in the shed which, has been converted into a sort of giant cold frame.

This weekend I bought two sixteen inch frost resistant terracotta pots I spotted on special offer in a garden centre. At the same time I noticed a nice Chusan palm (Trachycarpus fortunei), a plant I have wanted for some time and quite common, and as it was just the right size for one of the pots decided to buy it. A benefit of the recent gardening craze is the falling cost of plants such as this - normally out of the budget of your average enthusiast. I suppose nurseries are beginning to realise that is more of a market for these plants and are increasing cultivation accordingly. The beauty of the Chusan palm is it's exotic appearance - it looks as if it has come right out of a tropical rainforest (they originate from sub-tropical Asia) and yet will survive temperatures down to minus fifteen Celsius when established. It will be kept in a pot for several years before eventually going out into a sheltered part of the garden.

The lengthening days and warmer temperatures are waking up the garden, and I will be spending more of the next month preparing the beds and borders, and many hours in the greenhouse bringing on plants, not to mention planning new garden features so I shall leave you and wish you happy gardening. Now, about that decking....

You can find more articles in the archive under Soiled Hands.

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