My mother and I should probably swap gardens. My small back garden would be ideal for her and her large, sprawling one is the stuff of my dreams. I can hear her bristling at the very thought, but the truth is, her garden has become too big for her and I have outgrown mine.
This isn’t going to happen for many reasons but, seeing as I can’t take over her garden, what to do with one that is slowly taking charge of itself? First off, acknowledge that the garden doesn’t belong to you; you belong to it. And that the garden is not going to pot if you don’t weed it or cut the grass – rather, you are, and that’s OK.
Gardens left to do their own thing are very healthy spaces. Wildlife thrives on what we perceive as a mess: weeds are great for pollinators, long grass is best for beetles, and un-dug soil is at its peak of happiness for the soil food web. Call it “doing a Monbiot”, if you like – you’re adopting re-wilding principles. Plus, so long as you keep your bed edges tidy and mow a path through your overgrown lawn, you will be amazed by what you can get away with elsewhere.
Some plants will disappear altogether, while others will just get on with their lot. Self-seeders, poppies, Alchemilla mollis, Geranium pratense ‘Mrs Kendal Clark’, foxgloves, strawberries, parsnips, aquilegias, alliums and a host of others will happily plant themselves where they see fit. This might not always be to your plan, but they’ll give you something to cheer about even among the most thuggish of weeds. Divide and multiply any tough perennials that work, fill all the gaps, and console yourself with the knowledge that very stylish gardens often have limited palettes.
If the watering can is too much to manage, install an irrigation system: they’ve come down in price, are easy to programme and take away all the hassle. And if you can’t weed vast stretches, the trick is to slow them down as best as you can: if nothing else, just chop off the seed heads. Mulching will slow weeds’ progress, too, so spread in late winter, and again in early spring, when there’s space around perennials and before the worst weeds are up. (My mother, incidentally, swears by Strulch, which is very lightweight, so long as you have someone to move the bags to various locations, you can spread it with little effort.) Mind you, it’s also fine to let some bits of the garden go completely, but do frame your view. This works the other way round, too: if you are unsure where to start in an overgrown garden, first work on the bit you get to look at most.
Finally, observe the oldest gardening rule in the book, as put rather brilliantly by Edith Wharton: “Each step away from the house should be a nearer approach to nature.” In other words, keep the area around the back door pretty and ordered, and loosen your grip on everything else.
