Oh god, I’ve decided to write another blog.
I’m one of those horrific people who throws themselves into things with gusto, only for it to fizzle out a few months later never to be heard of again. It’s genetic. My dad is terrible for it.
So this is my first post of my gardening blog, which I would like to do monthly (scoffs), and I want to tell you how it all started.
To be frank, it started with appalling mental health. I was working for a company and working myself to the bone. I couldn’t face getting up in a morning. I would sit in traffic staring at the car in front of me questioning my entire existence. Buses became tempting. I couldn’t stop crying. It all seemed so futile. Safe to say, I wasn’t enjoying myself.
There’s a lead up to this but it’s boring ‘yada yada’ I broke my knee ‘yada yada’ I lost loads of weight and got depressed but skinny, ‘Woooooooooooooo’ but, I was unhappy. Then we bought our first house and this cheered me up a lot despite my cluelessness. The garden was a jungle and I was so ignorant of the amount of work involved that I thought of it as a ‘nice challenge’. I’d never done any gardening before, how hard could it be?
……..
I started by throwing a house party and inviting a lumber jack to cut two of the trees down leaving an elegant birch tree in the centre. This immediately let light and air into the space. Everything was green and overgrown. It also uncovered a large amount of building rubble and left over material.
It was now that I started to get my gardening bug, but it didn’t really hit me until our second winter. At this stage I have 14 months and counting at my current job, and I’m still quite enjoying it.
A year on and I was in a bad way mentally, and rather than find a nice bus to lob myself under, I decided to go to Dobbies garden centre
In the winter of 2014/2015 I come close to a major mental breakdown, and every day is spent trying to keep it at bay. The only place I find respite is in the garden, but it’s winter, and there’s nothing to look at… or is there?
I looked out into the garden after it had snowed and noticed the snowdrops and berries. It was colour, but I needed more
I remember taking this picture, I remember the feeling I felt of sheer joy and hope.
I was in a bad way mentally, and rather than find a nice bus to lob myself under, I decided to go to Dobbies garden centre and find a plant to buy. Anything. I would have bought anything that just made me feel a little more alive. I remember being repulsed by the pictures of what I considered to be ‘ugly’ flowers in pictures of Hamamelis in gardening magazines. I had no idea they flowered in winter.
I was entranced. They were beautiful. They were hope and joy all rolled into one. They were expensive… I bought two… This is the thing I look forward to most all year. Jalena is planted in the centre and catches the low winter sunlight in such a way that it looks as though it is smouldering.
I bought camellias and hellebores and dogwood and I felt refreshed. I proudly dragged them into my kitchen, excited for the first time in weeks.
That was when my obsession with the winter garden began, when I dragged my poor malnourished soul back to life through plants that flowered and gave colour during the long winter months.
I quit that job at the end of the February to go to a competitor. Ironically I was given gardening leave. I continued to furnish my garden will all the early flowering plants that I could find. I love summer, but winter colour is my passion, and one day I hope to open my garden for show during the winter months.
This blog will mostly be for me, to recount my journey of learning, and to document the evolution of my winter garden as I strive for interest all year round, but I welcome anyone who wants to read my ramblings. There will be swearing.
thewintergarden 