getting older Archives – Welcome to The Moosbach Garden

Paul’s Himalayan Musk is my favourite rambling rose, beautiful clusters of white and pink roses with a heady scent.

I am amazed by the array of wonderful plants at our disposal for creating our living masterpieces

I finally have a garden big enough to indulge whatever gardening whim blows my way and I really do appreciate how lucky I am. Many gardeners have a limited space and whilst we all love looking at gardening programs, magazines, visiting wonderful gardens and garden centres many people have to think about where they can find the space to put this new ‘must-have’ plant. I have a friend here in Germany who has a wonderful garden but of a limited size, when she discovers something she likes she just buys it and either digs up some more lawn to accommodate it or removes some other plant specimen. Some people might think that she is a bit crazy but it is her garden, her creation and the relationship that they share is unique, personal and nurturing.

Gardening is a life lesson for the impatient

I’ve met a few very succesful people who have very impressive corporate careers and then decide to take up gardening. Sometimes it is a painful experience both for them and for me. For those people who have had ‘minions’ and expect immediate results in gardening like they have in their corporate lives it can be a reality that is hard to accept.

Gardens take time, there are always unexpected twists and turns and let’s face it sometimes nature can be unyielding, a little like my good self! I often try to explain to people that gardening is a process, albeit an evolving one and that the process is just as important as the end result.

I simply cannot move house again

I’m in my 50’s now and I’ve spent the last 5 years developing the Moosbach Garden and it feels like I’ve only just started. Any logical person would sell the house and buy another with a good-sized garden that is flat but let’s face it I was probably at the back of the queue when they were handing out logic. The Moosbach Garden is steep, there are very few even remotely flat spaces, the winter is long, cold and there is usually lots of snow. However, what is life without a few challenges? I have worked many hours in my garden, I have planted uncountable numbers of plants and trees, this is a marriage that I simply cannot walk away from. The thought of digging up thousands of euro’s worth of plants is not one I ever want to seriously contemplate. My sister, who has lots of common sense (she got my share) tells me that I will never recoup the value of the plants when we move but I can’t think in those terms. Every year those plants repay me for my financial investment by soothing my soul, bringing me untold amounts of happiness and providing a paradise both for me and wildlife, I reckon that is priceless.

I’m not a mover and shaker

I was never especially academic, I did OK but never excelled at anything, I had no idea of what career to follow and consequently was never going to set the world ablaze. I have no children and am a little bit eccentric. What I can do is garden, I have been gardening for over 35 years but didn’t realise at an early age that I should make it my career. Yes, you got it, I’m a slow learner! I have decided that I will be quite happy if during my time on this planet I can create a garden that is beautiful, that will endure and that people might visit it long after I have hung up my gardening gloves. It is a tall order as there are so many beautiful gardens in the world and maybe I’m deluding myself but it’s my delusion so don’t deprive me of it.

It’s great when things start coming together

When we moved here there wasn’t much of a garden at all and it has taken 5 years of hard graft, many gardening projects and lots of experimentation to get the soil and plant choices right. The top garden is really starting to have the feel of what I wanted to create, the plants have found their feet and have lots of healthy top growth that is proportionate to the garden space. We are just adding a pergola for the Paul’s Himalayan Musk and a row of poles and wires to support the climbing roses and then structurally we are finished. The rest of the work in the top garden isn’t really work at all, weeding, dead-heading and pruning are the fun bits. I have a love of English flowers and as well as roses we have peonies, delphiniums and phlox. Peonies appear to be my latest garden obsession, we have a mixture of herbaceous, tree and Itoh peonies. The first tree peony that I planted here is now 1.5 metres tall and is covered with flower buds and buds of a size that I have not seen before. I’m told that the flowers can be as big as a dinner plate once the plant is mature enough and happy. so fingers crossed.

We are striving towards a BIO garden

We love nature and the planet and we want to do everything that we can to encourage biodiversity, so no weed killers, no slug pellets, no quick fixes. We have a nature pond and a resident population of frogs, we have small lizards and we want to encourage hedge hogs. We have left piles of branches to provide overwintering habitats for hedge hogs and insects, what we are going for is a sustainable eco system. I am not a gardener without misdemeanors, I have used far too many slug pellets in previous years and have also used weed killers. However, this is not something that I am prepared to do anymore, I’m learning to work with nature rather than against it. This year my other big goal is improving the soil composition to help retain water and this is so important with global warming. I’m trying out bark mulch this year to see if it makes a difference. In theory it helps reduce water evaporation, improves soil competition and allows mycorrhizal fungi to establish and this should lead to healthier plants.

Are you getting it yet?

So the title of this piece is “Why I wouldn’t swap my garden for anything” and I’m hoping that I have convinced some of you that a garden is a symbiotic relationship worth investing in, that it’s not just your garden that grows but yourself as well. So you can keep your big cities, you can keep fortune and fame, I don’t need them. What I do need is to be in a relationship that is honest, that has its ups and downs but where the needs of both parties are met and gardening fulfills these needs. Don’t misinterpret me, I’m very happily married but I’m in 2 relationships, 1 with my husband and 1 with my garden, may they both be long and fruitful. I partied endlessly in my youth but now that I’m in my 50’s I’d much rather be working in my own garden or walking around a National Trust garden than at a music festival. Let my soundtrack now be the buzzing of bees, the trill of birdsong, the cockerel crowing from the orchard or a hen announcing proudly that she has just laid an egg. Realising that not all rewards can be measured in financial terms, that the phrase ” return on investment” can be measured not only in an increase the value of your home but on how it’s improved your life-balance, your levels of happiness and helped nature and the planet. I’ going to sign off now as my husband has just finished baking a rhubarb cake from freshly harvested rhubarb from the vegetable garden and I think it would be rude to not try a piece! I wish your all happy gardening, peace and joy.

The Moosbach Gardener.

I have a damaged rotator cuff on my left shoulder which is quite painful and will most likely require an operation. I was considering when would be the best time to get this done bearing in mind the recovery period. Now is definitely the wrong time as there is extensive watering to do and all of the beds need weeding. September is not a good time either as I need to start tidying up the garden in preparation for winter. October isn’t convenient as I have trailer loads of horse manure to collect and distribute in the garden. I also realised that I have to be sorted out by the end of March next year so that I’m fighting fit to cope with the barrow load of garden work that there is for next year. No sooner had I come to the conclusion that November or December would be ideal than I remembered that I have a new path and steps to build to run alongside the new scented rosewalk and then there is the new pergola to build on one side of the rose garden. There’s nothing that can be done, I think I’ll just chop the arm off and fit a mechanical one so that I can get on with things.

Obviously, I’m joking about fitting a prosthetic arm, I’m very lucky to have two arms that function fairly normally. It’s just that getting older is a nuisance, I feel a little like an old car that’s due for its 60,000 mile service. Getting older is problematic for everyone, I’m sure, but when your profession is dependent upon being physically able it’s frustrating.

I know that as much as I would like to say “when can I realistically fit it in?”, the reality is this, I know that I can’t do what I could do a year ago with it, I know that it hurts and I know I’m making it worse by working with it. Maybe it’s a getting older thing when your ‘to do list’ is growing longer instead of shorter and each week, month and year seems to go quicker. When I was a child and adults used to say to me “enjoy your childhood, when you get older time goes by quicker and quicker” I remember thinking that this was a very illogical statement and some kind of ridiculous adult trick. After all how can time go by faster, time is constant right? Do you remember, as a child when a day seemed like an eternity and you never wanted to go to bed for fear of missing some important thing that was about to happen. Now the thought of going to bed early sounds like bliss, I’d even happily sit on the naughty step if only somebody would let me.

Finding peace in the simple things

When I visit a garden and I find a quiet beautiful corner with nothing going on but the humming of bees and the chattering of birds I’m not bored, I relish the calm and the quiet and secretly wish it could last forever. The truth is you know that it can’t, life’s not like that but you can pretend that it will, just for bit. I was talking with my adorable sister recently and we were discussing the pure joy of having alone time. I think as you get older you enjoy your own company more and it is perfectly ok to have a conversation with yourself when you are alone, sometimes it’s the only way to get an intelligent conversation. One word of warning though, talking to yourself when you are alone is OK but can raise concerns in company, unless of course you have the style to carry it off as marvelous eccentricity.

My plan is to grow old disgracefully and not worry about what people say or think about me. I’ll sing Christmas carols in June but not in December (actually, I already do), I’ll wear T-shirts in Winter and jumpers in summer and I’ll keep working in the garden until they cart me off in a box. I might even keep bees and do monkey impressions at inappropriate times.

The signs

I’ll be good though and schedule my operation and jobs in the garden will just have to get done when I have time and am physically able. On the subject of ” You know you are a gardener when…” here are some of my favourite signs.

When you are looking at buying a new house, you check out the garden first and if that meets with your approval then you’ll take a look at the house
When you can’t go to a garden centre without bringing a plant home, even if you don’t have room for it
When you get itchy fingers at the end of February and want the weather to improve so that you can get out there doing jobs in the garden, even though you know in your heart that it’s too early in the year
When you start sowing vegetable seeds as soon as Christmas is over (willing Spring to come soon in December doesn’t make it come any sooner)
When you keep buying more gardening books to go with the 30 that you already have
When you’d rather watch your favorite gardening program on the television than go out for a drink with friends
When you can only consider going on holiday in the winter when the garden is asleep
When you find it easier to remember plant names than people’s names

I’m going to stop now but you know that I could go on but I’d love to hear any additions to the list that you might have.

So now I must draw this to a close as it’s still daylight outside and I should be getting on with one of those jobs on my ever-growing ‘to do list’.