Top Garden – the Pinus patula
April jobs.
We’ve had to have a good go at the top garden, after the Pinus patula – the beautiful orangutan pine with its soft elegant form, unexpectedly toppled over, smashing the pink pergola and damaging plants all around. We took turns cutting and lopping branches and dragging them down to the bonfire. The trunk was about 18 inches in diameter and very sappy. Not an easy job to saw through it. We cut through the trunk to about 2 foot above the roots with a handsaw. A good way to build up your arm muscles. Despite cutting it as close to the ground and removing as much weight from the trunk as we could, it still didn’t fall back into the hole as we hoped. Thankfully the stump lies across the border, not the gravel so it will have to stay there and we’ll grow something over it. Getting an expensive tree surgeon in is not an option. It is sad to lose this tree because it was so gorgeous and had a gentle tactile softness. What can you do?
It took the best part of a day and a half to tidy up and replant. All the pine had to be cleared, the pergola fixed and repainted, plus damaged foliage from a big escallonia, a variegated bamboo and laurel from the hedge behind.
Then I filled as many gaps as possible with my stock of plants and two Buddleias I’d stuck into some tubs two years ago. Despite the limited colour scheme in the top garden, of pink, magenta, lime, cream, violet and dark red I still managed to find a good selection. I moved some of the small forest of Stipa arundinacea ( now called Anemanthele lessonia – which really trips off the tongue) from the path behind the conifers to fill gaps and soften everything. There were six reasonable sized Fuchsias in some pots which will blend in well, also Heuchera, Cranesbill, Vitis, Physocarpus aurea and Granny Bonnets.
Self-seeded in the gravel were some big plants of Geranium maderense ( or G. canariensis?) which have filled some more gaps in the borders and will look spectacular. I’ve tidied up the Catalpa after the Pine fell on it, and though it’s not a good shape now, at least it has survived being crushed, and will recover in time. The Rosa ‘ American Pillar’ I moved in the autumn is looking very healthy. I’m hoping it will be a stunning jangling mismatch to the magenta pergola poles.
