11 Sept 2009

The Hanging Garden…

 
Periwinkle (aka Vinca Major); small but perfectly formed -  cheeky purple asterisks peeking through a curtain of green - and much desired by gardeners in search of good ground cover.  Especially our predecessors - or did it blow here on the wind?  Whatever the tale, we're now inundated with the stuff. 

Over the years it's swarmed over the raised borders, swamping the lilies, choking the honeysuckle and hydrangea and fighting with the ivy climbing up the back walls.  Tenacious, indeed.

The original plan was to try and preserve some of it - if only as individual plants to exchange for seeds and cuttings.  But a few weeks ago the ivy was toppled by heavy rainfall (the day it rained solely over York Rise, seemingly), leaving it dangling over the Vinca like a surfer's wave and exposing the brick wall for the first time in decades.  Which was lucky really, because a) the ivy is so heavy it could have brought the entire wall down and b) nobody was standing underneath it - which might have spoiled their day.  Naturally, this has doubled the work involved to prepare this bed, so I'm afraid it's hasta la vinca baby, because we need to clear this raised border for sowing spinach, potatoes, onion sets, garlic and broad beans (no, obviously not all in the same bed - that would be a stretch, even for novices like us).

So, take a good long look - soon all this wild, natural and abandoned greenery will become the South Section of the Urban Veg Patch. (But perhaps not quite by the end of this weekend.)


It will be missed, but I, for one, am so looking forward to lovely, yummy winter veg…

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