Virginia Taylor - Author

There is never much to show at this time of the year because we are getting the garden ready for the spring showing. This means much weeding, cutting back, and replanting. But I had a lovely surprise yesterday. The old almond tree started a new branch a couple of years ago, and this year it is full of blossom. Last year, I didn't see more than three or four blossoms on the whole tree. This year the dear old thing is about to have quite a showing.

The photo on the left is of the new branch that is growing from the bottom of the tree. The photo on the right is a branch from the old tree. You can't see much but there is also quite a bit of blossom there.

I had to think for a while about the name of this section of the garden. The remains of a rudimentary chicken enclosure still remain beyond the secret path but the area was probably not touched for fifty years. We never thought we would get this done, but it is now weeded and planted with the purple plants, cuttings of artemesia and another plant with silver foliage. Yesterday, we added acanthus, because it is an old plant that would have been popular 160 years ago, and a swathe of English violets, because of Davenport's interest in the perfume industry. I hope it will remain this way, very plain, and relying on colour groups.

I must admit that I never thought I would get this area weeded. Quite a number of times I had friends who came and helped but we could never get it finished and it all grew back by the next year. It was my dream to see this part of the garden looking civilised because it shows from the road and gave a bad impression to people walking past, who think this area is a wilderness. This is how it looked before we started. There was a huge heap of building rubbish, old clay soil, broken bricks and stones piled high with cuttings no one had bothered to move. You can see here that the cottage garden is not yet developed.

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First my sister, Robyn, and her husband, Steve, and I tossed and sorted the bricks and stones, many of which I used for borders around the rest of the garden. We broke up the branches and disposed of them. Then we threw all the awful builders' soil all around, anywhere we could find a dip.
In the years after this, it was all absorbed into the garden. We had a sloped area and the weeds and periwinkle continued to grow. The next year, a couple of friends, Thea and David, came from Melbourne and stayed with me, and they came to the garden to help me, and pulled up a million periwinkle runners. At least half grew back by the next year, but much more spindly and weaker.That was about three years ago.
This year, I've had a lovely garden helper, Noel, an Irish comedian, who is pretty serious about pulling up periwinkle. He has worked for weeks on this and today we finished! It's now all clear and shaped. Next week I will plant it all out with violets.
​I want it to to be a discreet and shady place.  I planted silver bushes all around the pear tree and purple things (my plant knowledge is hopeless but I'm good with colours) running down the slope. I hope by summer it looks stunning but I'm an optimist. It will probably take a year.
So, this completes my secret way through from the marquee pad path, to the olive grove. It's a very curvaceous path and can't be photographed in one go. The photos below show the development.

Everything to the right of the photo has been removed. The twisted old wire has now gone and a very twisty path runs through. The downhill side (which you can't see here) will possibly not be developed but 'we'll see.'

I kept weeding and making a shape. It's rather hilly there. We planted Agapanthus and Clivea as a border. You can see the beginning of the purple plants and perhaps an idea of the silver ones. Below is how it looks today. You can see all the way through to the olive grove. As I said above, I'll need to do some planting but the shape is the thing. Once it is there, all is right in the world.

I don't have anything new to show because I have been working on a secret path from the lower cottage garden into the olive grove. It will join an even more secret path that will run through the overgrowth to somewhere else in the olive grove. So, instead of the half finished path, I'll let you see pretty photos of other parts in the garden. 

Because the weather is so hot, I don't have any different photos to show of the cottage garden but I took a few early this morning of the main garden that gets a lot more water and shade than the cottage garden gets. That is changing. Very soon my garden will be connected to the bore system too and I will have far more time to do the gardening. Mainly this year I have been trying to keep the plants hydrated, which is a fancy way of saying 'watered.
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This week I didn't start or finish a new project. I had to clip back many overgrown plants because the weather is getting hotter and I find it hard to give my part of the garden as much water as it requires. Anyway, it's a lot tidier now and with luck I will have saved a few plants that were seriously singed. I took photos of colour combinations or pretty bits.

We should probably call this part of the garden The Mulberry Garden but we got used to saying 'the red garden' so that everyone knew the place we meant. It was never part of my plan but it shows from the street and I don't want people walking past to think that the rest of the garden is a mess. Therefore, I got into the habit of maintaining this part, unless I am too busy. I wish I had a 'before' photo. It was full of weeds. Long ago, someone thought a weed mat would be a good idea but without maintenance, it buried itself so deeply that it took a couple of weightlifters to tug out most of it. Some is still there but impossible to remove because of the plants growing on the top. The main feature used to be a rusty old plough sitting on the dry soil. One day we had a working-bee and cleaned up the worst of the weeds and planted red geraniums around the sides. Later on I bought more hebe but it died. We put in succulent cuttings and sebum and more red geraniums. The mulberry tree is there as a feature because one was purported to be in the original garden. The below is a photo I took today from the path below.

Photos from summer, autumn, winter, spring, for three years. The mulberry in the bottom left is looking better than I ever thought possible. It's starting to be the star of red garden bed.

The photos tell the story of the growth of the plants in the area between the two heritage almond trees. Below are the early days.

I took this photo today. The bird bath is new/old, requestioned from another part of the garden. For reasons known only to my soul, it makes me happy to have the birds drinking there.

Year by year the view changes with the growth of the plants.

The almond tree has been in the garden since the 1860s. I haven't seen an almond for the past two years because the blossom has been destroyed by the weather. In the top photo you can see a new little branch growing. It covers the area now. The other photos were taken during the past four years as the garden has been growing.

 From a pile of rocks and weeds, I made a strip garden that requires no water. Well, it gets some from the sky but no one ever has time to do more than that. I planted mainly succulents, but along the wall strip we put plumbago, the hardiest plant known to man or beast, or even delivery trucks. Below is the dry strip, rock filled and gravel topped. Out of this, with a little compost, a healthy garden was made, immediately above and below.