Back yard jungle…

You may remember earlier in the year that I tidied up my postage-stamp back yard, or as I prefer to call it - my Italianate garden. It gets the sun early in the morning but by early afternoon the sun has pretty much gone and the side walkway doesn’t get any sun at all. That’s the problem with tall houses, they block out the light as the sun moves. Mind you we get the sunshine at the front in the afternoon, but that’s another story.

Still I’m not complaining too much. The back yard – sorry, ‘Italianate garden’ is a private haven with its all enclosing six foot walls where I happily sit drinking my early morning coffee without fear of observation. Not that there’s very much to observe, but I really like that feeling of privacy and solitude.

Of course planting is a bit of a problem and to be honest I haven’t really bothered very much for a while. Well, it is very shady and not a lot will grow in shade, at least not the vibrant oranges and yellows that I love. Or at least that is what I thought until I decided to try a few seeds that I found right at the back of the seed drawer that were left over from the cottage.

Nasturtiums, courgettes, canary creeper, parsley, marigolds, carrots, sunflowers, chives, busy lizzies, beetroot, sweet peas, tomatoes, hollyhocks, even a few almost dried up seed potatoes. I just bunged them all in not expecting them to do anything much at all and to be fair a lot of them didn’t, but then the seeds were very old.

The gardening experts call this type of garden, where you plant flowers and vegetables together in borders, a potage garden. No, not a pot garden that’s something else altogether and requires a cellar or loft, tin-foil, hydroponics, lots of lights. No, this is a potage garden, a mixed-use growing system, a mash-up as it might be called these days.

Of course it couldn’t possibly work. Far too many growing problems - too much shade, not enough light, the soil isn’t great, and of course there are the neighbour’s cats and an army of snails to contend with. No it wouldn’t work; nothing could possibly grow with all that to contend with.

But I was wrong. Most of it is doing pretty well. Oh, the carrots are just foliage and the tomatoes may not ripen, the courgettes have been tiny (and delicious) and the beetroots may never win a prize – but the marigolds, the hollyhocks, canary creepers and the rest are all doing well and my nasturtiums are magnificent (ooh, errr, missus!).

So why am I waffling, boring you with my tales of unexpected plant growth in my dingy back yard? Well, I may be in danger of boring you still further with my home-spun philosophies but it strikes me that some things that seem unlikely or even impossible aren’t. My seeds grew in the shade when really they shouldn’t have really grown at all, and one of the sunflowers is almost five feet tall already. Everywhere is green with floppy leaf and although I may not get red tomatoes I do have some nice yellow flowers on them. I feel almost happy sometimes sitting out drinking my coffee in the mornings surrounded by all that lush greenery.

I feel like I’m in a private shady jungle. Maybe I’ll pick up my machete and wander off deep into the undergrowth never to be seen again. Like I said, some things that seem unlikely or even impossible aren’t - perhaps I’ll find a triffid.