In Retrospect: the Sanctuary 1987 – 2014

A slight complexity in organising this collection of journal posts has been the lack of connection between my text and our random collection of photographs.

When I wrote, I would balance the big hardback journal on my right arm and scribble away in it with my left hand, noting anything I felt was of interest to me at that moment as I walked around the garden. Sometimes I’d have the luxury of time and clement weather and the descriptions were long and detailed. Other times, I would be in a rush, or tired; it may be cold and more often than not it was the end of a long day’s gardening and consisted of brief notes of tasks we’d achieved, in a wobbly gardener’s hand.

G, who is a great photographer, took the majority of the photos, and I have him to thank for them. They were taken on a variety of cameras of different qualities, well before the iPhone had been invented. In the beginning, the 35mm films were expensive to buy, and had a limited number of exposures. With a film with 36 exposures choices had to be made regarding how they were allocated. After pictures of outings and gatherings, some could be spared for garden. and the film had to be sent away, with further expense, to be developed and printed. You took a photo, hoped it was OK, but had to wait to find out. Sometimes film canisters were put to one side until you got round to having them processed.

This is so hard for me to imagine now. With today’s phones, if a view or a detail looks even half good there are endless possibilities to photograph from various angles, edit, delete, print and forward to friends. It is immediate, instantaneous, free and endlessly versatile. You can so easily take a photo for reference, or for ideas and inspiration. Easy. In the past, by the time the photo came back I’d ask myself ‘ why did I take that?’ or ‘ what a shame, I thought it looked better than that. Too late, wait till next year’

The result I have found when compiling these posts is that I have often written in great detail about something but have no images to accompany it. For instance, I wax lyrical about a Fremontodendron I’d planted, ‘ bright hot yellow flowers, more vivid than the Great Dixter perennial sunflowers, paler than the Rudbeckias – a warm buttery yellow’. Is there any visual record? No.

Alternatively there are numerous images I can’t place at all. These are particularly from the wilder areas of the garden where we’d planted many trees. I am lost. Where is that exactly? What is that tree? When did we plant it?

The time element is also confusing. The journal entries are not in date order, some having no year but just the month noted. Some were written up from scraps of paper at different times. So an entry from Dec 2001 may be immediately after one from August 2012. Equally, the prints of the photos we took were stored away in a series of ‘Garden Photographs’ boxes, again, not in order, but some by evidence of quality clearly dating from the late 1980’s.

Because of my enthusiastic approach to ‘ seeing what comes up’, particularly in the herbaceous borders, each year can look fundamentally different depending upon which seed had vigorously self set. So again, dating progress in a chronological manner is impossible.

But this is not my way to garden.

What we achieved in practical terms had an order, a structure and a plan that evolved to create a space that hosted a considerable diversity of wildlife and a variety of natural habitats. A space to be. The development of our Sanctuary was based on design and horticultural experience, but also enthusiasm, sheer hard work and determination. It’s informality belied careful planning, natural surprises and luck, and the age old technique of working with nature.

The writings, the photographs are just glimpses of moments. They were never intended to be chronological or instructional. There is plenty of information out there, online or in books.

This is something different,