What an Imperfect Garden Means to Me

As a gardener of only six years I'm in no way an expert. I think the term "keen amateur" would be a good description and the more I garden the more I realise how much there is to learn. This is especially true when you're working under less than ideal conditions.

The garden in its fifth summer. Yes, it's a bit rough around the edges but I love it, and so does the wildlife.

After beginning to get my fingers green in 2020, I moved to this garden in early 2021, hugely excited by the prospect of creating my own garden from scratch. Situated high on a hill on the English-Welsh border, we're nearly 200m above sea level, exposed to high winds and heavy rainfall, with winter temperatures reaching -10C, and to top it all off we're blessed with very heavy clay soil.

Snowfall and prolonged temperatures far below freezing are the norm through the winter.

Initially I came into this garden with a head full of ideas of what I wanted to grow, bringing plants from our previous (very sheltered) garden, only to have half of them killed within the first week thanks to a huge dumping of snow. This was the first sign that things were going to be challenging here, and that I was perhaps going to need to think more carefully about what I could grow.

As I continued to develop the garden, I learnt that working with my conditions rather than against them would be the only path to success. Gone were the days of walking into a garden centre and picking up any plant I liked the look of. More attention had to be paid to hardiness levels and soil preferences if anything was going to survive and thrive.

Wildlife and the natural world have always been an important part of my life and are a central part of my career. For this reason it was only natural that it would also become a major part of how and why I garden. Planting native tree species and pollinator-friendly plants, leaving seed heads and leaf litter over the winter, reducing soil disturbance and leaving parts of the garden to grow wild, are just some of the things that have become normal in this garden. Yes, it's a little untidy, but if by letting go of control I can provide even a small amount of habitat for wildlife then surely it's worth it?

Common Blue butterflies have become regular summer visitors to the patches of lawn I leave to grow long

Through this blog I want to share what I've learnt whilst gardening in challenging conditions and hopefully help others in similar situation to see that you can still grow beautiful and productive plants. Perhaps you don't have such extreme conditions but maybe you have similar clay soil, an awkward corner in deep shade, or a border that gets blasted by strong winds or scorching summer sun. I want to share what I've learnt about these areas and how I am learning to embrace them.

On social media we get bombarded with images of stunning borders and perfect allotments and whilst these are nice to look at and can be a real inspiration, I often looked at my little garden and realised it was never going to be that perfect. I want to share a realistic view of an amateur garden, celebrating its successes, embracing its failures and learning to love the rough bits around the edge.

As the name suggests, I'm not aiming for perfection. I don't believe this garden will ever be "finished" (is any garden?), but if I can grow plants that I find beautiful, produce a small amount of food to eat, and create a space that wildlife can benefit from, then I will be more than happy. Some years will be better than others and accepting losses has become part of the process. Even in the five years that I've been here I've seen the impact that climate change is having and every year there's a new challenge to overcome, but every year I learn something new, and every year I fall in love with my imperfect garden a little more.