It takes a full year to really get to know a garden and my husband and I have only been in our new house for some of spring, and enough of summer to get sunburnt putting washing out. I’m always discovering new plants and I’m learning about the people who chose them, as they’ve left behind green and growing clues.
The back garden faces north on a steep slope running away from the house – exactly the conditions that get Gardeners’ Question Time panellists clutching at their pearls. It will be ideal for rolling Easter eggs. But there’s always something growing on or popping up – the previous owners planted interest for every season, sometimes for every day.
It started with acid green shoots in a raised bed that had become overgrown during the endless conveyancing. Spring was in the air and rubbing these shoots yielded an oniony smell, but I still couldn’t quite believe they were actual spring onions, or that some generous person had planned so far ahead. For weeks, I didn’t dare to eat them because they seemed too fancy. Instead, I bought some because I prized ours so much – but also, I realise, because I somehow feared they weren’t really ours. I half-expected the previous owners to come by and demand them back, roots and all.
Then the bulbs leapt into action, with mysterious spears that could have been anything but turned out to be tulips of all stripes and colours. For a few weeks, it was like 16th-century Holland out there. Then the peonies began showing some ankle and I didn’t know where to look. I counted more than 90 blooms in the end and couldn’t resist going to Marks & Spencer to work out how much that many bunches would cost (answer: another mortgage).
Every day is a fresh surprise and I’m so grateful to the generous gardeners who put down roots here before us.
Damian Barr is the author of Maggie & Me and You Will Be Safe Here, and presents the BBC’s Big Scottish Book Club
