Branshill Cottage garden: the beginning

Branshill is situated on the slopes of a hill, wrapped around by a ancient woodland on the north, east and west, with the most beautiful views across a valley also covered in ancient woodland (an official designation for a wood that has been around since at least 1600, I had to look it up when I arrived here). It's as bucolic as you can get. Our next door neighbours farm the surrounding fields (and have a massive pile of manure that's come in very handy). The garden was essentially a large lawn with an enclosed goat paddock/field (not sure if goats get their own land nomenclature). At just under half an acre, it's not massive but it's much bigger than any other garden I've been in charge of.

While initially incredibly excited at the prospect of this blank canvas, the reality of designing a space soon had me close to paralysed. Filtering the millions of garden ideas I've had, trying to accommodate the sense of place, and figuring out how to do it all on a shoestring budget and with limited help has been difficult. Well, actually, impossible. So I've given up. I've decided to do one thing at a time without agonising over it for weeks, and if I planted 150 hawthorn whips in wrong place, well I can dig them up next year. If the flowerbed I created looks too much like a 1970s, kidney shaped island bed, I can change it next year. If the red rambling rose arch looks too twee (and I think it probably will), I can move the roses. I'm sure you get the idea. If the pond's in the wrong spot however, tough luck, it's staying. That thing was a bitch to dig, and that was with my brother doing almost all of the hard labour (he's very keen on exercise and fitness, so I jokingly suggested he dig my pond while he was on holiday here, next morning I found him a metre down!). I've made some mistakes that can't be reversed, the most annoying one was aligning the greenhouse with the closest boundary rather that the house. It seemed reasonable when I was planning it but I could see I'd made the wrong choice as soon as the postcrete had set. As it's going to be behind a hawthorn hedge at some point in the future (the hedge is already there but it's currently 20cm high), it won't matter that much. Still annoying though. The shape of the pond is another bugbear but I'll save that for another rant.

Accepting that I'm not a garden designer and that no cohesive plan is going to happen appears to be the best plan for me. I'm far happier, and I'm actually getting stuff done. Much better than agonising and yearning for perfection.

View across a valley of ancient woodland

A beautiful blank canvas