Every garden has a spot like ours - under the eaves so it never gets any rain, dry soil, more like dust. You tell yourself that you are going to water it twice a week, or once a week at least. You are going to mulch it every summer so that dust becomes rich soil, and give it slow-release plant food. The flowers and herbs will look stunning against your wall.
So you choose your plants. You buy your plants. You dig the soil, ahem, the dust. You plant. You water, and try to ignore that the water is all dribbling off the garden and onto the path because the "soil" has been so dry for so long that it repels water and none actually soaks in.
And then you forget about it.
My garden has more good intentions than weeds (it has a lot of weeds). I have planted that dusty patch outside the dining room perhaps 20 times. Some things have survived. A few have even thrived there. One is wild thyme.
Once, more decades ago than I'd like to count, I used to forage on the hills near wherever we were staying on Crete for the herbs to flavour our dinner. There might be a dozen different flavoured thymes on a single hill, not comparatively long stemmed and big leafed like the thymes I'd known back home in Australia, but tiny leaves on flat stems so they looked like mats creeping among the rocks - rocks in dry, dusty soil, pretty much like the conditions next to my wall.
The wild thyme that grows in our patch of dust is fabulous. It just keeps growing, with no help from me, covered in tiny white blooms for much of summer, a sweet if mild fragrance in cooking, and smells delightful now it has spilled out onto the paved path and people tread on it. Even gallumping boots half a dozen times a day aren't enough to kill it, or even bruise it.
This, of course, is why wealthy flower lovers grow thyme lawns.
Thyme lawns don't need mowing. They are wonderful to roll, picnic or doze on. They also cost a lot to establish and even more to keep looking good.
Any area that you plan to make a thyme lawn should be weed-free. It's very hard to weed herb lawns - and almost impossible to get grass out of them.
First remove all grass and weeds. Rake the soil lightly, then cover with clear plastic. This will encourage weed and grass seeds to germinate. Wait three weeks and rake again. There is no need to dig the soil deeply before planting herb lawns - the roots will do all the digging necessary. Now plant your pots of thyme, or if you prefer, wait till spring and plant many, many tiny thyme seeds and wait for them to germinate and hope that was does germinate is not a weed, as it will be hard to tell the difference for a few weeks and the weeds will inhibit the thyme plants. The best clue is speed of growth. If it grows upwards, fast, it is a weed, not lawn thyme.
I no longer have any delusions I can manage a thyme lawn, but thyme spreading out onto our garden path is possible. Wild thyme is very variable, and there are many wild and garden cultivars and hybrids around, all differing in leaf size, colour and growth habits. You'll find "wild thymes" under many names: creeping thyme, matting thyme, T. serpyllum, T. praecox and a profusion of many others. Some are true wild thymes. Others have been tamed, so they are more fragrant or flower more brilliantly. The most important criteria is that it grows flat, with no upright stem.
Generally, all are fast growing. The flowers are pale pink to purple, from late summer to autumn. Some of the most common are white flowered thyme (T. serpyllum albus), a very low-growing thyme with rounded leaves. It's the last thyme to flower each summer.
Annie Hall (T. serpyllum 'Annie Hall') is another white-flowered matting thyme. It has incredibly small light green leaves. Grey Woolly Thyme (T. lanuginosus) is a furry grey-leafed thyme with pale purple-pink flowers. It is a reasonably rapid grower - the more sun the faster it grows. It flowers in summer with its flowers on relatively long stems. Red flowered thyme (T. serpyllum coccineus) has the deepest coloured of all the thyme flowers. Pink Chintz (T. serpyllum 'Pink Chintz') is a pink-flowered thyme, fast growing and adaptable. It is very aptly named - the grey-green foliage and the dusty pink flowers are very like a chintz pattern on a sofa. Magic Carpet (T. serpyllum 'Magic carpet') is another fast grower, with deep pink flowers.
Thyme will tolerate even the heaviest frost, but older "woody" plants can be damaged in cold weather. If your thyme has been damaged by frost or an exhausting summer, revive it with a deep watering overnight, followed by broadcasting moist soil over the stems. The bush will "layer" itself by growing new roots from the stems and within a few months these new roots will stimulate new growth to cover up the bare patches in the middle of the bush.
If you are prepared to ensure weed-free soil and are sure you can tell a thyme seedling from a weed, thyme seeds are a far cheaper way of getting lots of thyme. Sow seed in spring, in moist but not wet soil, after temperatures reach about 20 degrees, and cover it very, very lightly. Seed planted too deeply will rot. An alternative is just to scatter it along narrow furrows scored by an old fork - as soon as you water them, the furrows will gently close over the seeds, covering them shallowly.
Keep young thyme plants well watered and away from very strong sunlight till they are well risen from the soil. When they are about half as tall as your thumb, plant them about 10cm apart or closer if you want a "hedge" or a quick carpet. If you're using the dusty space under the eaves, make sure you DO water for at least a few months till the plants spread their roots out into the damper soil beyond.
English botanist, herbalist, physician and astrologer Nicholas Culpeper claimed wild thyme was a sure remedy for nightmares. Sadly, I can't guarantee your dreams will all be sweet if you plant it, but can promise that the aroma when you tread on it will be very sweet indeed.
This week I am:
- Intending to cover all the bare areas in the vegie garden with mulch to stop weeds springing up over winter, leaving lovely bare soil for September sowings.
- Rejoicing in the first tree dahlias, with their blue-purple ballerina skirts. Tree dahlias don't begin blooming here till May, and we usually get our first frost in May too, so we have a short tree dahlia flowering season. But for a week or even three, the blooms dance around the garden.
- Watching others whippersnip around our rock gardens, which is a bit like a Santa Claus visit every late afternoon as I see the rocks emerge in all their rounded beauty.
- Planting euphorbias, which I don't actually like much, but which do bloom towards the end of winter when there are few other perennial flowers, especially ones that need so little tending i.e. just about none.
- Picking the first, very tiny, mandarin of winter.
- Still picking chokos. And more chokos. And eating chokos - freshly picked ones are thin-skinned and far more tender than shop-bought ones. But we still have a ludicrous profusion of chokos - the vine even grows across the garden gate each night, so we have to hack it back to get inside. One morning we may wake up to find the whole house buried in choko vine.
