by Margery Fish
The first thing we had to do was to level the surface, and then dig out the foundation. A good foundation is the secret of a good drive, we had it and there has never been any trouble since. I often wish we had taken as much trouble with our lawn as we did with the drive.
We had to dig out to a depth of nine and a half inches. Some of the stuff we removed could be used again, but it had to be sieved and the soil carted off to another part of the garden. The first layer was five inches of broken bricks and rubble—of which we had any amount. The garden boy rolled, Walter rammed and I sprinkled with the watering can. We rolled and rammed, rammed and rolled until the surface was as firm and level as a billiard table. The greatest care had to be taken at the edges of the drive, for that is where there is least traffic, and if there is any excuse at all the weeds grow there first.
The next layer was of finer stuff, ashes and clinker, to a depth of three inches. Again we rolled and watered over and over again until it was smooth and firm. There is no short cut to these operations but the heavier the roller used the quicker will perfection be reached.
Not less than an inch and a half of gravel had to be used for the top layer, and the laying of this was the longest operation of all, but the time and trouble we took paid us amply in the end.
First of all Walter had heaps of gravel dumped at regular intervals on the drive and then team work began. Walter spread the gravel, I watered it well and then the garden boy rolled. Each foot of drive was rolled and rolled and rolled, with a sprinkling of water between each rolling. Walter’s theory was that the more you rolled the harder the surface, and the harder the surface the fewer the weeds. We took particular trouble again at the edges, for it is here that gravel is often loose and you really can’t blame weeds for growing there.
It is quite important to see that the colour of the gravel goes well with your house and surroundings. Some gravel is really violent in colour and shrieks at everything in sight. But with a little trouble it is quite easy to find gravel or chippings that will harmonize with the garden scheme. When we first contemplated our drive we called on the local builder and asked if it would be possible to get fine ham-stone chippings to harmonize with our hamstone house. That was not practicable but we were put on the track of some gravel that went with our house beautifully.
Every time we had heavy rain the drive and paths had to be rolled. It is very difficult to make the average garden help see the necessity for this, particularly in our rural corner where gardening from the village point of view is mostly vegetable growing, and paths and lawns quite a new idea. We had one boy who really enjoyed rolling the drive. He said it was a job after his own heart as he didn’t have to think, and being very strong it was no effort to him to pull the heavy roller. He rolled very slowly too, which is the secret of good rolling. We lost him, alas, early in the war and never again did we have a good drive. Rolling was a job everyone shunned, and if it was done at all the roller was dragged round at a great rate, infinite care being taken to keep it away from the edges.
Even with constant rolling some weeds will appear and have to be exterminated, so about twice a year the whole surface was treated with weed-killer. We used either a solution of sodium chlorate or an arsenical weed-killer (we have no animals). Sodium chlorate acts on the leaves so a dry day is best for its application, but arsenical weed-killers have to percolate to the roots and one has to be very clever in choosing the right moment when the drive is receptively wet and when there is no danger of further rain to dilute the brew.
Walter always did the mixing and superintended the operation while the boy of the moment wielded the cans. It always seemed to me that they waited for a windy day for this job, and I had many anxious moments as wisps of poison spray were blown on my precious plants growing in the walls on each side of the path. In the end I took over the job myself and picked my own day.
My quarrel with gravel paths is that they require far more attention than most of us can possibly give under present day conditions. To keep them hard they must be rolled thoroughly very regularly, and once having achieved a modicum of perfection the proud owner is on constant tenterhooks that something will happen to spoil them. Walter used to get very worried if visitors drove the wrong way round our drive. One side was steep and it needed quite a lot of acceleration to get up and round the grass knoll in the middle of the drive. Every time we had a party there was an inquest the next morning and the roller had to come into action. Another source of annoyance was the dropping of earth on the drive. I always hoped Walter would not be present when I was swopping plants with my friends as most of them were quite oblivious that they were scattering earth all over the sacred drive. Vainly would I proffer the plants in a basket and hold it so close that no crumb should fall, but it never worked and there was always a nasty mess on the gravel and black looks for me.
After Walter’s death I gave up the unequal struggle. It was impossible to keep the drive properly, and all the gravel was good for, from my point of view, was a convenient rooting medium for stray seeds. I could always count on a harvest of choice little seedlings in the drive. I thought I should lose this rich source of new plants when I had the main drive treated with a bituminous product and the other paths paved. But though I don’t find so many now I still come across quite a few. Small rock plants still seed themselves on the hard surface of chippings rolled tight into this tar substance, and it makes me wonder if one might not get better results if a really hard surface was made on which to plant seeds. They may respond better to a little resistance. Various thymes come up near my little wall, rock statice and Silene Schafta in another place, and a gold mine of tiny primula seedlings near the narrow beds under the north walls where I grow candelabra primulas. There are far more primula seedlings in the path than in the beds—a most provoking habit of theirs, as it is difficult to prise them from the iron-hard surface without damaging their roots.
A good many people in our part of the world have solved the drive problem by covering the surface with loose chippings, either limestone or coarse gravel. This type of path does not appeal to me because I have never enjoyed walking on shingly beaches, and I don’t think they are particularly labour-saving either. They have to be raked regularly to keep an even appearance and weeds grow very happily under the chippings and have to be poisoned from time to time, or hoed. Concrete is probably the only thing that can be relied upon to require no attention whatsoever, but the surface would have to have embedded in it either gravel or chippings to make it bearable, otherwise it would be impossibly glaring and soulless.
We used paving at the back of the house, and for the little path that led up to the barton. A paved path needs careful laying if it is to last. In our heavy clay we had to make a foundation of broken bricks, but on gravel or sandy soil this wouldn’t be necessary. After ramming them down until the surface is quite level the stones are laid out, keeping the large ones with straight edges for the sides of the path, and smaller uneven ones to fill in between. To keep the stones firm and keep them from rocking they should be put down on joggles of cement, three or four to each stone. If nothing is to be allowed to grow between the stones the cracks are grouted with cement. It makes a vast amount of difference to the appearance if the grouting is left until the cement is nearly set then a small amount scooped out so that the outline of each stone is clearly defined. Walter used to stand over the men laying the paving and see that they did this. Most of them, if left to themselves, love to smear on the cement with a lavish hand so that parts of the stones are covered too.
I should have preferred to fill our cracks with a mixture of sand and fine soil so that tiny green plants would creep along all the stones but this was one thing Walter would not have at any price. I was allowed a very few very small holes, in which I planted thymes and Dresden China daises, and the effect was far too neat and tidy. Time has improved things and a lot of the Somerset cement has become loosened, some of it helped, I admit, by a crowbar, and now I have little plants
creeping and crawling in and out of nearly every crevice. The theory is that only my plants and not weeds grow in the cracks but a few weeds do appear, but they don’t make as much work as Walter always prophesied they would.
5. Clothing the Walls
We were surrounded by high walls and nothing was growing on any of them. The three-storey malthouse and the cowhouse, being strictly utilitarian, were starkly bare, nothing grew on the high wall along the road except tufts of arabis and an odd wallflower or two, and Walter was very anxious to clothe the end of the house where the old stones were too decayed to be repaired and the surface had been covered with stucco.
He sent me to the local nursery for ampelopsis by the dozen, we bought roses, pyracantha, cotoneaster and clematis. My sister gave us a Ceanothus Veitchianus for the front of the house, which was a sheet of blue in a very few years.
On the subject of clematis Walter was convinced that the ordinary blue C. Jackmanii was the only one worth growing. One day I was sent to the nursery for six of them. I had seen a red one I admired very much so I bought Walter his six blue ones and a Ville de Lyons for myself. When I got home there was much head shaking, and I was warned I was wasting my time and I should never get the results from my child that he would get from his little family.
I decided that my clematis should go on the wall near the gate, so I planted it with great care on the top terrace of the rock garden. Dainty little morsels of limy rubble were incorporated in the soil, a small bush of lavender was planted in front of it to keep the sun from its brittle stem, and I never allowed it to get dry. But in spite of all my cosseting it did not have a very robust childhood and it was some time before it began to enjoy life. Of course Walter’s Jackmaniis went ahead without a hitch, just as he said they would, and the one on the south front of the house was really spectacular. People I met used to ask me if ours was the house with the wonderful blue clematis over the front door. In the end I did get two Ville de Lyon clematises to grow very well, and in time they were referred to as ‘our red clematises’ instead of a rather snooty ‘your poor clematis’.
Walter took infinite trouble in training his clematises. Every day he would indicate to each leaf over which wire it should go and he got obedience. Under his management each trail was separate and each clematis covered vast surfaces of wall, with each bloom getting its full value. When I saw Walter standing on the rock garden coaxing my Ville de Lyons to spread her wings I said nothing but I recognized it as a major triumph.
Now that I have to train these beautiful but temperamental plants myself I marvel at his patience and the wonderful results he got. I induce the trails to start on their journey away from the parent stem but directly my back is turned they slide off my wires and lock themselves in a firm embrace with their brothers and sisters. It is well-nigh impossible to disentangle them from this huddle and start them off again on their outward trek. The stems are brittle and break with the slightest excuse. And even if I do separate one stem from the family the next morning I usually find it has ceased adventuring to the unknown and is again hugging itself. The consequence is that instead of large spaces covered with well-trained flowers I get a great lump of leaves and flowers which is too heavy for its frail twining contact with the supporting wires, and gets blown all over the place by the wind.
Wire netting stretched up the wall on which clematises grow is a good way of teaching them to spread themselves and far better than the cat’s cradle of wires which I use. And while we are talking of clematises I’d like to mention how lovely they look growing over a lowish wall, rather like a beautiful oriental carpet flung over the wall, and here wire netting is essential to indicate to them just how much of the wall you want them to cover. With wire netting they cling quite naturally, but with wires it helps to attach the tendrils where you think they should go with little strips of wired green paper (like the stiffeners the laundry use in collars) sold by garden shops.
The roses on the front of the house grew luxuriantly and Walter trained them close to the windows so that we caught glimpses of Mme Abel Chatenay and Lady Hillingdon peeping in at us while we had our meals.
One of the things we admired most when we were house-hunting in the district was the effect of red roses on the mellow hamstone walls. So we had quite a number of Paul’s Scarlet and Climbing General McArthur on the front and sides of the house. The new polyantha Frensham is wonderfully effective as a bush grouped against a background of hamstone walls, and blooms over a very long period.
Walter realized that it would be some time before the climbers would make an effect on the bare walls, so one day, without telling me, he bought a collection of stuffed heads and mounted horns at a London sale room. Very soon heads, antlers and horns sprouted from every available wall, inside and out. The malthouse received the most imposing pieces from the collection, and very soon our house wasn’t known as ‘the one with the lovely blue clematis on the front’ but as ‘the house with all the heads on the outbuildings’. In a community largely composed of retired army people this display was definitely surprising, if not a little shocking. One adorned one’s house with one’s own trophies but it was rather unusual to buy them by the gross. Walter used to chuckle about his heads and was delighted when he could tell an enquirer that he had bought them and not shot them himself!
Luckily the ones outside didn’t last long. Not being intended to withstand rain and snow the skin soon came apart and flapped open before falling on the drive, the fillings disintegrated, the painted mouths and red nostrils were washed away and before long all that was left were the horns starkly mounted on a narrow length of wood. When they got to this stage I was allowed to put them on the bonfire, but I am still occasionally reminded of them when I am digging and see a large liquid brown eye gazing up at me.
Since Walter died I have cut down the ampelopsis because during these fifteen years they have grown so vigorously that they were trying to push off the roof, and attaching themselves to all the windows. To fill the gaps a passion flower now wreathes the rain water barrel by the malthouse, a Forsythia suspensa is working its way up another wall. Walter could never be persuaded to have a wisteria because he said they would take too long to flower. Now I have two, and both flowered about two years after I planted them. Another climber I always hankered for was a bignonia, and in this case Walter was quite right not to indulge me. I put one in myself, it grew so robustly that I could not curb it, I was always hacking at it to enable me to see out of my bedroom windows, but it never flowered, so it had to go. But it has not gone yet, it keeps reappearing quite unabashed, and I keep digging it out. I put in a Chimonanthus fragrans in place of the bignonia and it is more rewarding. It flowered—just—after about two years, and every year I get a few more of its heady-perfumed flowers. No garden is complete without this wonderful winter shrub, planted as near the house as possible so that one can enjoy its perfume without venturing far into the cold. Chimonanthus Iragrans lutea is another exciting shrub. The blossom is all yellow, in a delicate shade, and to see its waxy flowers with the wintry sun shining through them makes one wonder if they are real. I believe this form is more difficult to propagate than the more usual variety, so it is rather expensive, but what a lovely way to be extravagant.
Another newcomer to the front of the house is a stauntonia. I hope it will prosper in this sheltered spot and I look forward to its scented green flowers. On the north wall facing the house I have put a Garrya elliptica, with its neat evergreen leaves and graceful swaying tassels of palest green arriving most happily in the winter. It is worth taking a magnifying glass to study the exquisite workmanship of these super catkins.
Against the pink brick wall at the end of the malthouse there is another winter-flowering shrub, Lonicera Iragrantissima. The white waxy flowers of this honeysuckle are wonderfully fragrant, but for picking are rather swamped by the luxuriant green of the foliage. I find if I pick them they look far more attractive if the leaves are taken off the flowering stems, using some sp
rays of leaves that have no flowers, with them.
A plant I like and have in various parts of the garden is Thygelius capensis. This too is evergreen, with dark glossy leaves. It is often used as a bush and I don’t think it makes a very satisfactory one as it grows unevenly and needs constant checking. But plant it against a sheltered wall and it will reach five or six feet. Its large sprays of tubular flowers, brick red in colour, are generously given and come in the late summer and autumn when there is too much lavender and yellow in the garden. If happy this plant is inclined to encroach on less assertive plants, and has to be curbed. Less invasive is its more refined brother Thygelius aequalis. It does not grow so quickly and its flowers are longer and paler, and delicately touched with green. Eucalyptus Gunnii is growing well against the south wall of the cowhouse. This is the hardiest of all the eucalyptus family and has come through several hard winters very well. It needs tying back firmly, as I discovered when to my horror a gale snapped off the top. In brilliant sunshine the fluttering leaves make delicate shadow effects on the wall. Its grey green foilage is delightful for decoration and lasts a very long time in water. When flowers are scarce early in the year I use the new leaf tips of clear pink instead of flowers in the house.
6. Hedges
After clothing the walls, Walter turned his attention to hedges. We had our high wall on one side and we wanted something equally high and impenetrable on the other side and along a low wall beyond the house on the south side. Our thoughts turned to Cupressus macrocarpa. We were warned that it had a limited life, in fact, just when we were considering our hedge the local doctor showed us a magnificent hedge he had planted at the back of his tennis court the year his son was born. That year his son was thirteen and the hedge was beginning to die. Of course we did not heed and we planted mac-rocarpa along the road beyond the house and between ourselves and the next house. The hedge flourished. It was well clipped every August and gave us no trouble. But in 1951, thirteen years after it was planted I noticed several of the trees were dying. Our hedge hasn’t made such a wholesale job of it as the doctor’s did but I have two nasty gaps where four or five trees had to be dug out. Now I have started a new hedge of Lonicera nitida behind so that I shan’t have to wait too long for a screen after the rest of the macrocarpa die.