As far as prickly days go, and there is no doubt that is exactly what today was, it was a good one. At Bill and Benjamina’s, a month or so ago, men with machines carved through brambles at irregular heights before dashing off in their white van to some other garden needy of petrol and posing. This left a vacancy for some fool (sans machine but with a Ford Focus to make a juddering getaway) to untangle these spiny constrictors from their unfortunate supports and dig up the already shooting and determined roots. The lucky gal who won the contract was little old me!
Still the sun shone and I made headway on a job that will take weeks to complete. At the end of the day I admired the pile of cruel brambles, ivy, self-seeded trees and a proportion of a rampant ornamental salix. Halfway through the afternoon I made a small diversion, attempting to rescue a hacked at hydrangea (hedge trimmer I am guessing), half dead but with potential to be something special. Long before B&B took residence, the garden was planted by a woman, now in her 90’s, who obviously was a keen dabbler in the green arts. Who knows what beauty this sickly hydrangea might turn out to be? While there is life there is definitely hope and while there is hope I will continue to dig up those darned brambles.
The shot above caught my eye just as I was leaving. This garden has many hellebores, most I imagine are seedlings, they form carpets beneath the trees in a range of colours and sizes. The narcissus positioned perfectly in the foreground. I believe there are horticultural treasures waiting to be found here, beneath the detritus.
Off The Edge Gardening 
Ahh the difference between getting a ‘gardener’ to getting a garde, I have no doubt that the tangle of stems will once more back to a garden with your skilled work! I hope it all goes well
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Thanks Thomas, I am looking forward to it, fingers crossed it will turn out well.
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love this ‘keen dabbler in the green arts’ I continue to find wonderful things in my garden, but I think birds are the dabblers.
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Glad to hear it, we all need a bit of treasure to find every now and then, so good for the soul.
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There certainly are horticultural treasures, masses of hellebores and those beautiful narcissi, lovely.
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Hellebores do look amazing en masse, very impressive!
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Tell the flowerpot persons that your adoring public look forward to reading their gardening exploits. They may choose to use you as their conduit or join us on Twitter etc., and reveal all. Tell them we love a bit of scandal. Also tell them not to wave a seed packed anywhere near your nose (unless you are pegged firmly to the ground).
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If there is not enough scandal I shall make it up, no one will know. Did someone say seed …….?
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We said SEED. OK, we did not say WHISKY.
Your other readers may ponder on that.
😉
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Wow! It’s just like “The Secret Garden”! Let us know what else you discover.
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It is and I definitely will!
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Now this is an adventure, the kind I love, look forward the the gradual discovery of this lost garden.
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I so hope they are all rescued intact. 🌼
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We have been doing that at work for the past three week, but the area below does not have many surprises for us, only lost balls and frisbees.
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Rhody might think they are treasure. 🙂
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Actually, he does. He hides them so that I do not discard them.
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Very sensible of him.
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Perhaps, but I just spent the past three weeks cleaning up the mess, and he just puts some of it back again!
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Quite sad to think that our beloved gardens could be lost like this one day. All that work and love vanished under a sea of brambles.
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