LANDSCAPE / 07
Féidhlim Harty tracks the principle of succession in a wild garden
THE CALL
OF THE WILD
W
e bought our house in 2008, just as the housing bubble was at its most inflated. I'd never really wanted to move, but it had been on the cards and now it was time. We got the keys in April. I don't think there was a single day that summer without rain. The back kitchen door opened south onto grey skies and a growing puddle that swelled to a broad shallow pond as the days lengthened and then shortened again. I dug a drain and created a new patio of local stone flags, but for all my love of water and wetlands, I wasn't my best self that year. The house was dry and airy, which was a novelty, having spent the previous decade in a leaky but beautiful cottage. At half an acre, the garden was spacious for a town site, but abundant with rushes and a brace of dark looming conifers. After planting a twin row of coloured willows for a future tunnel and for screening from the road, we decided to
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minimise the mowing and wait to see what would emerge. Our new patch of lawn, located on the north side of Ennis town, on the outskirts of Burren geology, did not disappoint. That first damp summer was a tad rushy, but soon rich purple heads of self-heal poked through the deep green thatch and, to my delight, three spotted orchids emerged under the western boundary hedge, all bright and pink and welcoming. I'd planted about a hundred trees around the edge of the garden: a mix of willow, alder, hazel, ash (back when ash was still on the planting lists) and an assortment of cultivated fruit and nut trees. I worried that the willows would shoot up and crowd out the fledgling orchids, smothering out any chance they had for light and space. On the contrary, as the willows climbed skyward, the orchids seemed to take great pride in spreading out horizontally, slowly but steadily taking up ever greater territory on the damp lawn. They are still spreading, year on year, beautiful delicate exotic blooms through the mix
HORTICULTURECONNECTED / www.horticultureconnected.ie / Autumn/Winter 2021
