The Hatch

Sleeping with one eye open

I suppose I ought to start with some sort of an apology for ‘not being around’ or at the very least an explanation, but having been a consumer of Substack and social media for some years now, I’m pretty sure people barely noticed I was gone. I have been hankering after resuming my writing on Substack for nearly a year and now I have sat down quite suddenly and started typing. As before, this letter is about things I’m doing in my garden, and other, completely unrelated stuff. I hope it is a happy, and generally useful thing and that it’s welcome in your inbox. I’m very aware that keeping control of who has access to your email is important in terms of your precious time, and reducing general overwhelm, and if this is the case then I absolutely understand…hit that unsubscribe!

Much has changed since I last wrote, not least that I now need glasses to see anything closer than a yard in front of me. My perfect eyesight had always been a weird source of pride; threading needles, removing splinters, reading the small print effortlessly until I turned fifty and then quite suddenly, within a matter of weeks, I had to move everything further away, shine harsh light on the tiny things. The sudden fuzziness of close-up things would have bothered me massively had I been any younger or – crucially – any idler, but I haven’t honestly had time to get upset about it. Rotter ordered me a pair of glasses from Amazon which probably don’t suit me at all,  but I don’t care and I have now become someone who is constantly seeking her glasses. My mother used to have this problem until she took things into her own hands and had a jeweller hammer a wafer-thin ring out of gold, attached to a wire which she puts around her neck every morning, and from which she suspends her glasses – so chic. I am pondering a lorgnette, or a pair of folding things? Suggestions welcome.

There is also the matter of having three different children at three different schools. All of these schools insist that communication happens through their ‘portal’. I shouldn’t whine about this, but it is just utterly bloody. The sheer volume of communications is overwhelming (I suppose if you’ve got a ‘portal’ then you need to justify it don’t you). As yet I haven’t found a satisfactory way to triage the information in a way that means I don’t miss that essential assembly. I once missed one of these essential assemblies and the affected child keeps claiming she will never recover. I don’t buy it at all, but it is highly annoying to be reminded of the things we don’t get right rather than the things we do, isn’t it?

Speaking of which… I need to tell you about Hatchgate. I suppose this story, in one way or another is as old as time but I’m still going to tell it because one week on, it continues to fry my tiny brain. Last weekend I was feeling ropey enough to announce a ‘lie-down’. I slept so peacefully for three whole hours and came downstairs in blissful mood, feeling so much better, rested, ready to do the rest of the weekend. When I got to the kitchen I found two small children who were not mine. These sweet small people belong to our new neighbours whom we adore. Their eldest has made friends with my youngest and they chat to each-other over the garden fence like ladies from a bygone era. It’s glorious. Sometimes this little girl comes over to our house with her two smaller siblings. They could not be sweeter and more adorable. They are however, six and four respectively, which means they need some level of supervision, so when Rotter appeared at the door, having just gone jogging, I was confused. I asked when the children had come over, and that’s when he said:

“I made them a hatch!

He had, you see, decided to do something delightful (if you are four, or six, or even nine years old) and cut a hole in the fence which divides our gardens

“…so that the children can come in and out…you know…without having to knock on the door!”

I had so very many thoughts about this, and I voiced them, loudly. I can’t write what I said here because, the c word was liberally sprinkled in there but the gist was very much HELL NO.  It’s not that I don’t get it; Rotter is home for roughly five minutes a week, during which time he loves nothing more than hanging out with us, absorbing his five minutes of homely bliss. I can absolutely see him out there, while I was asleep, surrounded by children playing in the sunshine and thinking to himself “what can I do to make this more wonderful, more joyful,…what can I do to make these sweet little children think I am Mr Willy Wonka? I know! I’ll cut a little hole in the fence! Won’t that be fabulous! Won’t they just LOVE it…and ME!” And the thoughts are real…they’re coming from a real place that wants everyone to be happy …and I know this because his face when he said the words

“I made them a hatch!”

had not a trace of knowledge …he was Adam, naked in the garden at that moment…innocent and pure. It took some time for him to grasp why, as a mother of three children and wife to a largely absent Rotter, I might be breathing a teeny tiny sigh of relief that finally, my youngest doesn’t require the constant supervision of those early years, that my response might be less “Hurrah! How lovely!” and more “You did what???”…. that I may, as the parent who does most of the parenting, be glad of a front door, with a door knocker, and the ability to say “Why yes, come in! You are welcome!” or equally “Darlings we can’t right now…how about tomorrow?”

So the fence was fixed (pretty damn quickly) but of course, it’s not as simple as fixing the fence is it? There are now other holes to be filled, little children, for example, to be soothed, and truths to be acknowledged – the biggest one being that it’s not only children who need supervision, and that sleep should continue to happen with one eye open.

Of course I realise that when I am really old (not just quite old), I may look back on this and wish wistfully that I had been nicer, that I had let The Hatch happen. I hate being the nasty woman who made the nice man nail up The Hatch. I’ve always idolised mothers who are constantly surrounded by small children and seem to thrive on the chaos. I’ve tried doggedly to be more like that, but have always found their level of chill frustratingly out of my reach. You may have thoughts on this and I’d be fascinated to hear them.

And the garden? It has had a transformation over the past year, because my Rotter built a sort of studio in it which has taken up a fair amount of space. Don’t get me wrong, I love a new interior, especially one which means that people can watch telly or dance late at night without keeping anyone awake, but when it encroaches on my garden, there are sacrifices to me made, and deals to be done. To his credit, Rotter has come through with five stars and had the garden re-landscaped, to include a terrace covered by wisteria-clad pergola, flanked by parasol liquidambar trees on one side, a meadow and new flower-beds. All of these things fill me with stupendous amounts of joy! There is also an outdoor fireplace and kitchen (gulp!) a gravel space for a game of pétanque, and an outdoor shower. Yes, cups overflowing etc. The whole thing is in its infancy, having just been completed a couple of weeks ago, and I have been busy trying to make it look like it’s always been there. To which end I thought I would share a couple of tricks that are useful when you are dealing with something rather new, rather stark, rather ‘done’ that will soften it down and give the impression of fewer hard-landscaping lines. For this task I am drawn instinctively to plants that are slow-growing and prefer to hang out in undisturbed areas, so when you use them in the garden they give the impression of age.

Ivy in a pot

I’m not sure why people are so mean about ivy; I think they are scared that it will pull their walls down or something – my experience of it is that it is far more likely to keep a wall up, with the bonus that its works wonders for attracting wildlife, particularly blue butterflies, which I love and adore. I have always grown small ivy in containers and used them to add a whimsical sort of gravitas where needed. The word ‘neglected’ keeps popping up in my brain here and when a space is very clean and new, that’s just the sort of thing I’m looking for. If your container can be an urn, and if you can raise it up on a table or some sort of surface, then so much the better. As you can see from the above picture, Rotter has put a gigantic Green Egg within a similarly gigantic slab of concrete. The whole thing might be described – eyebrows alarmingly raised -  as ‘bold’, but is instantly improved by the ivy adornment.

Ferns (also in a pot)

As a lover of mossy woodland and rain, and general dampness, I am obviously a fan of ferns. I have two large terracotta pots both planted with Polystichum setiferum, an evergreen fern that will grow slowly and happily with pretty much zero input from me. I water them only in the hottest spells over the summer, and I think I may have fed them a few times over the course of their lives with liquid seaweed, and they are perfectly happy just to sit there looking majestic. Aspleniums and polypodiums are also your friends if you are after something smaller for planting in cracks and crevices. They are evergreen.

Yew

Again, think ancient churchyards! I’ve chosen yew for a low hedge that edges a path around the garden. Ten years ago it would have been box without question, but putting in new box plants now requires a care commitment that I’m not willing to give. I already have existing large-ish box balls to look after and that’s enough. But the other reason I chose yew was to tone down the mediterranean vibe we have going on in this new space (I chose a pale pink render for the fireplace and kitchen, and the gravel we have used even has sea shells in it - all very lovely but we must remember where we are). Yew can be clipped into anything you want; the tiny foliage and the fact that it will re-grow from its main trunk gives it unmatched scultptural potential.

Old yew hedges and topiary are some of the most wondrous sights. The hedges at Powis Castle are the most well-known example, and I love the fact that gravity and time have squashed everything down, and that gardeners over the centuries have simply gone with it, clipping around this grand old lady and her bulges, letting the thing breathe. Perhaps that’s why I’m drawn to the slightly mushroom-shaped flattened ball of yew that is aptly named a ‘pillow’ in the trade, and I’m going to fill two large terracotta pots with the beginnings of this shape, using a few small yew plants and plenty of patience.

There, I think I’ve probably gone on too long. If you got to the end and liked it, do hit the heart, and I will be back with something or other. I am slowly learning Substack so forgive me if I’m not very good at utilising certain bells and whistles!

x Laetitia