Photography by Jim Powell, except where noted.
Restoring the garden at the Wilderness is pleasantly frightening. For example: How to feed a family of six this season, from a kitchen garden that grows nothing but nettles.
Wilderness House, running to seed last summer.
Laburnum hanging over the remains of the formal parterre. If there was a ghost at Kelmarsh Hall in Northamptonshire, it would be Nancy Lancaster, who leased it for several decades from the 1920s as Mrs. Tree, before marrying the owner, Colonel Lancaster.
The Garden’s Edge
Philadelphus, one of Nancy’s favorites, provides an understory to the laburnum and lights up the garden perimeter by the farm, along with repeats of Viburnum opulus ‘Roseum’. Further mounds of large, scented philadelphus could be used to good effect nearer the house.
The Kitchen Garden
Photograph by Kendra Wilson.
The dilapidated greenhouse, being put to use before it blows away. A few weeks ago, Annabelle had mentioned that she wanted to buy an instant vegetable garden from a company called Rocket Gardens.
The instant vegetable garden arrives in a large box. A few days after my firm words with Annabelle, Rocket Gardens got in touch, out of the blue, and I responded by saying I’d be willing to give them a try.
Photograph by Kendra Wilson.
Although the vegetables have been beautifully labelled and packed in straw, we are not being over-scrupulous with our own labelling (which can be checked online).
Photograph by Kendra Wilson.
A few tons of topsoil were bought cheaply and that has made a pleasant medium for this instant garden of annuals, if it can survive weed strangulation over the summer.
Photograph by Kendra Wilson.
Wilderness House, as seen from the sizeable heap of cow manure in the farmyard next door. Over winter, the heap will be greatly reduced in size as we spread it over our four modular beds, ready for a new system of crop rotation next year.