How big does your garden grow?

What happens when a garden grows too big? Not in the outward sense, for every gardener with space at their disposal is guilty of pushing out the boundaries. But what happens when a garden grows up?

Once small trees now create vast meshing umbrellas of green. Where there was once sun and sky there's now deep shade, and the previously position-perfect plants beneath them are increasingly faced with exactly the opposite of what they prefer.

This often unforeseen conundrum is happening to us presently, and it's thrown the balance of all that we had achieved in the garden’s infancy off balance.

Perhaps a garden is nicest at the halfway point, when satisfying progress abounds and the joy of an optimistic end result is still firmly on the horizon.

I wondered this just the other day, rake in hand, imagining what the next move might be for those older, more established parts of the garden.

One such part is the "sunken garden". It's really just a natural hollow in the landscape where the river flats create a nape in the shoulder of the ridge. The descent to the bottom is by way of a broad set of seven steps I recreated in stone (during one of the Covid lockdowns), while the other is a steep path at the foot of the old wattle-and-daub stables, an early structure that started life as a tiny house when the gold rush was in full swing.

The trees here have grown exponentially. There are two draping lime Gleditsia either side of the steps, an earnest olive with silver-backed leaves like the twist-and-turn of a thousand fish, and an Azara microphylla that has grown much larger than expected.

Also known as a boxleaf azara or vanilla tree, it has a slightly ghoulish habit of twisty grey branches as matte as a set of felt antlers, and stippled with tiny, secretive, glossy green leaves. Every spring, its visually insignificant fuzz of yellow blooms is well compensated by its intoxicating scent of chocolate and vanilla. How incredible the whole garden smells then under its confectionery spell. It's these trees, among others, that have grown up large, changing this part of the garden's dynamic forever.

We've lost plants to the deep shade. Some have become leggy and lank, begging for the sun. The Melianthus major is no longer quite so major, and the rusty grabs of chrysanthemum 'Monza Red' have given up the will to bloom, protesting with sallow underwhelming stalks. And there are clear, mystery-spoiling views under the raised canopy of the trees, where previously only hidden glimpses beckoned.

It is lovely in a different way, yes, but somehow I miss the way it was when everything seemed to thrive together in unison.

Little by little, corner by corner, we are gradually introducing more appropriate plants that can cope with all this dry shade we now experience during summer. 

Plants and gardens have long relationships, as people do. Everyone evolves over the years. Conditions change, interests ebb and flow, and the seasons of life march on endlessly. But true friends remain steadfast, accommodating all the tweaks and quirks along the way.

And on that thought, I'll grab my tools and embrace these fascinating changes as they come to the fore. Friends and gardens united.

Jeremy's February garden notes

• We had rain. 70mm in one night of endless lightning flashes and torrential downpours. Apart from the slight misfortune of soil washed onto gravel and gravel onto the soil, the garden was instantly rejuvenated from its parched and exhausted state.
• The steps and rock wall project around the new bathroom rebuild has had me well and truly immersed in a world of stones and cement. We've adopted a "peasant style" of basalt and old broken bricks cobbled together with a slurry of cement, and it looks like it's been there for a hundred years. Which is exactly what I had hoped for.
• Weed management has been an ongoing process here at The Stones. The paddocks have been eradicated of Patterson's curse – a seven-year project thanks to Grant's unfaltering determination – and now we are combating a patch or two of dreaded heliotrope, which pops up, especially after summer storms (the seeds probably carried in by the rabbits). This weed is toxic to livestock causing damage to the liver over time, as well making their skin more susceptible to sun damage.
• Down at the milking sheds in the "pavlova garden," the thicket of raspberry canes on either side of the door is bending low to touch the lawn. On one side, there is the autumn-fruiting kind - just flowering, whilst on the other is the summer-producing variety, which has been generously laden with berries for weeks. But not a single one has made it to the house. Instead, Grant and I head down to the source, eating them straight off the canes in a kind of Garden-of-Eden fashion.
• Before the rain, I was watering furiously ahead of yet another 40-degree day when I noticed I was joined by a convergence of large-bodied skinks seeking out the mist from the hose. They ran from one bed across the parched lawn as fast as their legs could carry them. And in the spray, I could almost see the relief in their little enigmatic smiles.
• The Sedum 'Autumn Joy' in the sunken garden is developing its flower heads in stipples of pale Icelandic green. Before long, it will develop a blush of pink, intensifying in hue as summer continues. By autumn, the flowers will be russet, then rust and finally, in winter, rigid umber stems like dash marks of a thousand pen strokes.
• I'm always in conflict as to whether we pick and eat the artichoke globes like true kitchen gardeners or simply admire their regal blooms like hopeless romantics. In eleven years, we haven't ever picked one. Eyes before stomachs, it seems, in this garden.

Catch up on Jeremy's previous stories here or find him on Instagram at @thestonescentralvictoria