Winter's Gift

By Thamasin Marsh

Look at winter as a gift, a time to get on with the serious business of thought, to mull over the successes and the failures.

This is a time for paper and coloured pencils, for glossy coffee table books, pornographic catalogues of unrealistic blooms and tattered library books written in past times, telling you how to force rhubarb for the table in January. Trawl the internet, flick through old Homes and Gardens magazines at the dentist’s, tear out Sunday supplement articles on eco-gardening. And dream.

Go on winter walks, train your eye to appreciate subtle wonders, take note of tough evergreen shrubs as they come into their own. Get nosey, poke your head into your neighbours’ front gardens. See what works and what fails. Acknowledge that plants alone do not make a garden, that the bones are often the hard landscaping: the paths, the walls, a well-placed sculpture. Remember that the frenetic pace of spring is followed by the brutalities of summer, with water shortages and hordes of malevolent beasties determined to strip your cherished plants to tatters.

Then take a deep breath and start again or, if new to gardening, start afresh. Begin with first principles. What kind of garden do I want, what space do I actually have, what demands are placed on it? Do my children want a space to play or, as a rising media star, do I need a funky place to entertain? Do I actually have any time to garden, or do I need a maintenance company to do the hard work? Am I away all summer? And, lastly, how deep are my pockets?

If you want a disco palace in the backyard, or a space that reminds you of your grandmother’s patch in the Caribbean, fess up to it. There are no wrongs in gardening, just other people’s opinions and bad design. By bad design, I mean inappropriate things in inappropriate places. If you want a culinary herb garden, placing it in a far-off shady corner, two floors down from the kitchen, is bad design. Take note of the real proportions of your garden; like our bodies, we can shrink or enlarge them in our fantasies. Observe where the shade falls, where you are overlooked and the condition and type of your soil.

Having established what you have, and what you want, the trick is to merge them together. This is the fun. A winter to think it over, to draw rough sketches, to rip them up and start again, to learn from past mistakes, to remember that article about planting a creeping vine up the new extension wall before it entangles itself around your neighbour’s satellite dish. To include green principles where possible into your dream, and to establish a relationship with a local enterprise, such as the horticultural project at Lee House in Stoke Newington, where you can buy your plants and give back to your community.

Failing that, winter is time to enlist the help of a garden designer to plan your ultimate pleasure garden.

Thamasin Marsh runs The Pleasure Gardens. Christmas plants and wreathes from Lee House Horticultural Project will be on sale at Stoke Newington Farmers’ Market, Saturday 9 December 2006