Читать книгу The Organic Garden - Allan Shepherd - Страница 37

Now that you’ve decided on the basic structure of your garden, the next thing you need is a bench. Some people may argue for shed, tools, seeds, but I reckon bench. Of course, under the bench heading I’d include hammock, chair swing, stool, recliner, deck chair, turf chair, chaise longue or anything upon which one may park one’s bottom – or, even better, lie down. Somewhere from which to survey the garden, dream dreams, make plans and entertain guests. I’ve shaped a whole area of my garden around a bench and postponed planting the beds around it until I know it works as a good place to sit. That’s how important this bench thing is to me, and my benches are organic.

The natural materials to use in my garden are slate and wood. These are the two materials that lie beneath and around me in huge quantities. So it’s quite in keeping with the garden to use waste slate and wood materials wherever I can. The previous owner left copious quantities of both when he left and I’ve been cursing him ever since I moved in. But when I got round to making my bench I said a little prayer for him instead.

You have to know that my garden is made up of a set of flat and sloping steep terraces, a large, slightly messy pond and a variety of slate walls, all facing north-east. The sun shines in the morning on all parts of the garden but only on one part from the afternoon on (the small plot I have given over to those sunlight-hungry families of plants we call vegetables). My bench sits snugly into the sloping earth overlooking the pond. It gets the morning sunlight beautifully (apart from about one half hour or so when the sun passes behind an enormous conifer planted by my neighbour as a 30cm-high sapling thirty years ago). When the day is at its hottest, the bench is only dappled by sunlight and becomes a fantastically cool place to retreat to when working the garden is no longer a pleasure. Before I cleared the area it was a mass of old building timber, chicken wire and felled conifer hedge – a combination of the previous owner’s waste and my own garden trimmings. Clearing it has been a monumental task and it would have been easier to have put my bench somewhere else, but nowhere else would do. From here I am close enough to my pond to see my frogs blink and far away enough from my neighbour’s titanic decking (which haunts my garden like a hovering buzzard) to avoid the hot fat that I feel sure will rain down upon me if they ever have a barbecue when I’m lying on my lawn.