This is a big garden. And it's about to go whoosh. It will be wonderful of course- but how many man/woman hours will have to be expended to keep it within bounds?
The people next door have a full-time gardener. He and his wife live in the converted stables. We see him pottering around on his mini-tractor. Our garden isn't as big- but it's big enough- and if we had a full-time gardener I don't suppose he'd spent too much of his time sitting idly in the potting shed.
We abandoned the kitchen garden at an early stage of our residency. It was just too much, too much. Matthew went through it with strimmer last Autumn and laid everything low. I hadn't meant him to take out the currant bushes and raspberry canes but perhaps it was for the best. Now it's a blank canvas for the weeds to fill- and they're not being slow in getting started....
