At last it feels springlike on my walks. Plenty of people out in their fiercely manicured garden with lawnmowers, hedge cutters and leaf blowers, de rigour in this affluent town. I have mixed feelings about these overly tended gardens. They do have beautiful specimen trees and shrubs, we are well stocked with showy magnolias, camellias and the like but to me they speak as much of wealth as gardening skill or enthusiasm.
I was delighted to see the woods are full of bluebells, they are particularly spectacular this year and lovely hawthorn hedges are in full flower. I much prefer this kind of wildlife friendly hedge to the knife edged sterile evergreen pruned versions.
Maybe I am being unkind. I expect the owners get a lot of pleasure from their immaculate gardens and it’s good they work in them. I prefer something a bit more blousy and untamed, something more like me.
So now that spring is here we are leaving. On Monday we catch a not too early ferry and will spend a few days in France and one in northern Italy before reaching our house next Thursday. I have some anxiety about the fuel situation and really hope that if awful the war continues we don’t get stuck in Italy. We hope to be back in Ilkley late June.
I don't like gardens which are created not grown, its more fun to grow everything, I do like the edges to be tidy but flowers should be a riot.
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