AUDIT
Garden Bench Interview
With Linda Treliving, Trellis Trustee and Consultant Psychiatrist, co-founder of MBT Scotland
What is your…
Favourite autumn season plant? Maybe this is a cheat because what I like at the moment is alstroemeria which isn’t really an autumn plant as such, but it’s still going and it’s been flowering right from early summer. They’re so exotic and there are loads of blooms. It’s a new one to me and I only discovered it a couple of years ago. I used to see them in those bouquets you can buy in the shops and I felt such pride to actually be able to grow something like that. Although someone who came round to visit the garden said they ‘grow like weeds’ so that slightly punctured the pride! I don’t seem to have a big slug problem here so they are not eaten by them. Perhaps the slugs are kept at bay because I have lots of bird feeders, hostas remain in tact here, whereas elsewhere they end up like lace.
Best autumn gardening tip? Don’t cut everything down in autumn. Some people are so keen to be neat and ‘put the garden to bed’ but I just love the dried seed heads and flowers, the lavenders and the Agastache, they have such lovely shapes. I just leave things til they fall over and get eaten up, perhaps there’s a bit of laziness in that. And of course, the birds are still hanging off the dried seed heads too. The plants seem to have bugs on them still, even at this time of year. The frost when it comes makes them so beautiful – I love the way the garden looks in frost and you miss that if you chop it all down.
Favourite area of your garden in autumn? I think this year, it’s the pergola I put in. It’s taken a while but it’s finally starting to look great. I have apples growing on it and for the first time it’s starting to look as I fantasised it would. The trees are joining up and it’s been such a good year for apples, so they’re laden. The fruit is just teetering between ripe and overripe. I have a different apple on each of the four corners and they’re all heritage varieties. It’s taken a while to get there but it really is looking good now.
Tell us about your...
Favourite time of day in the garden? I like it first thing.There’s no traffic and there’s no one around, just the birds. That time of day has a lovely feeling that you’ve got the place to yourself, which I do most of the time anyway, but there’s something special about it because it’s morning and it’s a moment so full of opportunity and hope. I’m a morning person, I guess, so I like those early hours. I’m not good at the end of the day when I think of what I’ve forgotten to do and so on.
Least favourite task in the garden? Tidying up after myself. Maybe I’m just lazy but I really don’t enjoy all the carting of the weeds and things to the compost heap. Although I love the compost itself, but it’s those thankless tasks, like the laundry or cleaning where you know you’ve done it but tomorrow there’s going to be more needing done, and more. I have a cleaning lady for the garden – she helps me do all the stuff – clearing away all the piles of trimmings and weeds I leave behind.
Who is your gardening mentor? Well from the well-known gardeners it has to be Charles Dowding, of the no-dig system. I’ve reshaped the whole garden, especially my flower growing, without knackering my knees or my back, using cardboard and mulches and it just really works. But then more locally, I’ve learned a lot from members of our local gardening club. We set up a group based at the village hall, and I’m the convener. It keeps expanding which is great – we have I think around 25 members now and one of them is a qualified horticulturalist, Lesley Barnett. We go round each other’s gardens and talk about what we are unsure about, ‘I don’t know how to prune this’ or ‘what do I do about that?’ and Lesley advises, explaining what to do when. It’s so sociable and such a lovely thing to do, and all of our gardens have improved substantially. It has had a big impact on me, meeting people I wouldn’t have met otherwise. We’re a disparate group but what we have in common is a love of gardening but a feeling we don’t know much about it.
What does gardening mean to you in 2020? I think that even more so with Covid this year, to have something positive in your life that’s growing and where your input pays off, has been so important. The abundance of gardening has been so rewarding when everything else is restricted and we’re hearing, ‘don’t do this and don’t do that.’
I think the virus this year has made me appreciate how important gardening is to my mental health and how awful it must be for others who don’t have access to a garden. We’re seeing this same realisation happen more widely with so many people taking to gardening and slowing down in lock down and getting out and noticing the gardens in their neighbourhood when they go out for a walk or run. I hope that aspect of things continues.