Stourhead

We must visit Stourhead, obviously, after hearing gardener Alan Power's lyrics on the Radio 4 Eddie Mair Show.

Believe it or not, in Stourhead, it's all autumn, autumn, autumn.

And people photographing autumn, those twitchers of trees.

Don't forget the temples, too.

Fortunately! Alongside the many talents of this household, we have an informal training in eighteenth-century garden design! This is a benefit of living near enough to Stowe that we visit for their National Trust tea parties, wee in their bushes, and have our ball confiscated from us in 2003, but you can never say I hold a grudge.

Stourhead. I recommend a visit, if you like autumn, belonging to the Eddie Mair club, the lyrics of Alan Power, or temples.

The season begins

I have begun my annual back garden clearance.

I expect this Aegean task could overwhelm me about next Tuesday when I shall finally break down and cry. In truth, the emotional labour of it exhausts me more than the physical labour. I can throw stuff about with my old scrawny torso no problem; it is the pain from the broken bits of my rusted iron heart falling clanging about my feet that normally does for me in the end.

I look at my garden now, and I tell myself, if it wasn't for the unicorn hanging by its neck from the tree, everything would be fine.

This is, of course, a lie. I have a memory of my garden filled with the blooms of full-skirted blood-red poppies, surrounded by the late evening scent of jasmine and Mexican orange blossom, all mixed up with the sensuous pleasure of exotic lilies. And now it is nothing more than a torturing mat of brambles, an assortment of plastic buckets, and a horrible hole in the ground where the dinosaurs live. Somewhere, I am told, we have a raspberry bush that no-one remembers planting, so it must have come in with the bird droppings. That is the result of my thirteen years living with triplets.

And now I am going to begin it all over again. This tension over the garden. I could call it a creative tension but it isn't really. A creative tension - whether both sides are exchanging blows, curses or kisses - can produce an offering to the gods much greater than any one side could have fashioned alone. But my garden is clearly anything but the result of a creative tension. More the end product of an annual cycle of despair and despondency with a few bitter tears and resentful recriminations thrown in for good measure.

The problem is, I have had such brilliant ideas for childhood fantasy! If only my children would stop arguing with me and let me loose on my creative imaginings, I could have conjured all manner of magical fantasy constructions! But Squirrel, Tiger and Shark have only ever wanted to fill the garden with holes in the ground, the contents of my crockery cupboard, plastic stuff draped over bushes, old bikes, bits of wood, twenty-four pairs of scissors, the bath plug, and now, somewhere to set on fire.

Gardens that children like, and gardens made for children by adults: here we have a fundamental mis-match of vision.

However. The neighbour has unwittingly helped me identify a positive way forward. Here is their front garden.

They have had that shopping trolley adorning the garden for months, alternatively using it as some sort of plant stand, a refuse collecting point, and a place to lodge the cat.

But it is obvious to me that they are indeed trying, even though they are surrounded by adversity. Look, they recently added a note of rus in urbe by propping up a whitewashed stone rabbit under a selection of dead twigs.

I am taking great courage from this spirited approach to gardening. It speaks to me not of failure and complete hopelessness, but of real grit and determination. It sings to me, undefeated by circumstance, blind to failings, look! it all may be crap, but we can yet achieve!

Thus I am resolved. I will not look bleakly at my wilderness of old stepladders, disused bikes, dead unicorns, matted bramble and holes in the ground filled with sieves and plates, remembering what is past, and lost.

I will look upon my space and know that even if the end result is still Gold Medallist in the Shit Garden Awards, my labours will count: I will measure my endeavours using no comparison with what is gone, but by my determination to effect something. I will work with the children to shape the garden for us all.

And if my final garden landscape ends up with an Asda shopping trolley holding up three pot plants, a bag of rubbish and a tom cat, I shall hail it, success.

I shall trade the kids in for Percy Bysshe Shelley

Last week I threw my passions into the garden to craft a space which now looks like this.


The children heard all the shovel scraping and grunting. They came out to observe the soil digging, ground flattening, wall building, fatsia bashing and table manoeuvring.

They watched my new space emerge with some suspicion. But through the day I maintained this had become my soul's yearning and my mind's vision. Live creatively! I urged. Live imaginatively! Live generously! Live boldly! Be brave, always, to put into life that which you dream!

But children have an uncomfortable way about them, do they not? They frequently miss the point and always observe the thing you would least like them to note. Oft with these perceptions they belittle the world and snatch away that to which the gentler soul aspires.

So to my visionary construction, the children now casually refer. The Gin Drinking Area.

Let's hope here's a geologist in the making

Otherwise, in a few years, I'm going to feel pretty silly, leaving my 11-year old daughter to sit absorbed in the garden for two hours, carefully sieving soil into piles of particle size, while all the time I'm telling myself that this composes an effective education.

Slow day

'Slow down' says Dig. I peer at him on Skype and say, 'Not bloody likely'.

England will slip out my grasp in only three months. And my eyes are greedy for green. Do you know how many greens you have here, in every hedgerow, every field and every tree? You have purply-greens and yellowy-greens and greeny-greens and-

'I worry' says Dig. What about, I'm not sure. Burning his income at 2000C, possibly. Or thrashing about the countryside in the ever reliable gritmobile? Or never a day at home to sort out the rotting cellar like I promised, almost certainly.

I can't help it. I am a driven woman. Once it was despair but now it is time. I want to throw myself at this beautiful country and experience what a wonderful place it is. Too soon I will have to stare at the departing end of a village vehicle and the $78 price label stuck on a packet of cereal. While I am here I want to see and feel chalk hills and moors and woods and jiggedy-jaggedy coastlines and five-bar gates and pink banded snail shells and wavy wobbly mouse-tail grass and-

'What are you doing today?' asks Dig. Well, I can set his mind at rest there. Today I had planned a walk round College Lake because they have a Discovery Day and I want to discover things, but the children all wanted to Stay Put in the garden and repair a unicorn's allotment.

So that is what they did. They mended fences and drew up a peace treaty called The Treaty of Spark's Allotment. They're very proud of it. I went outside to see what all the quiet was about, and saw Squirrel sat in a hole under the tree while her sisters towered over her. For a moment I thought things had gone badly wrong and maybe they were burying her, but apparently it was all going fantastically well and she was defining the territory by bum prints. It was generally agreed this was a good idea if you are uncertain about where an allotment's borders should be.

Of course I had to leave them to it. Negotiating the politics of territory has to count for something in a young girl's education.

But I couldn't stay at home staring at the cellar and wondering how I'm going to hoist an old soggy chest back up the stairs. I just couldn't. I had to creep out. So in the evening I took the kids to Milton Keynes Museum for their wonderful story evening, with a teller from Word in Edgeways sharing some fantastic tales in the chapel.

There. Dig, you win, sort of. And I drove at 30 all the way.

Finding new ways to spend Dig's money every day!

Pass the day by throwing Dig's money down telephone lines to book his little grits onto various educational endeavours. Bat walks, architecture talks, theatre trips, sheep-farm visit, four nights in a field.

I say I know it all mounts up cost-wise, but these are essential experiences for a well-rounded education.

I suppose I should feel guilty. After all, times is hard. And he is working tirelessly in Hong Kong to earn a crust while I indulge my passions freely in geography, history, art, and running about the countryside bothering trees. Of course I try and make him feel better about it all. I claim it is not for me. It is for the children. I do everything only for them!

Well, husband, funding these ambitions just went up a notch. Shark found the gardening books.



While I was busy at the kitchen table with a calculator and a phone, trying to keep within the educational budget, Shark took a shovel to the earth and said with great enthusiasm, Look at my plan!

I say, I expect daddy will be pleased you are showing an interest in garden design. It can be a very expensive hobby if you have resolved yourself upon waterlilies, fish, fountains, an orchard of fruit trees, a Gothic arch, and 23 acres of a country estate.

Nevertheless, I used to love gardening myself, so I want to encourage her. I offer to take her to the garden centre and see how far she can get with a modest budget and a small Victorian garden. I shall call that an education as well, and shave off an outing elsewhere.

I suppose, at this point, it is a duty upon me to feel generally bad; no doubt someone would like me to feel so. Being a dependent woman and all, not earning her own income, squittering the husband's hard earnings on transitory aspirations. Everyone knows that I tell him it's the kids, when really I am just encouraging them in all the areas where I'd like free reign to spend his money.

Okay then, I'll feel bad about my cake mixing bowl. It seems to have upended itself in Shark's mud pile. Yes, I'll feel bad about that, because now having seen it make a mould for a pond, I shall be cautious when making my own cakes to feed the masses.

Maybe it would be better to buy those French Fancies from Waitrose instead.

I gave up my Beth Chatto garden for this

A recreation of a Jurassic mud swamp.


A reenactment of The Battle of the Dinosaurs


A grave.


Of a unicorn.

I am told that the unicorn is not dead. Merely resting. Tonight, if I wake screaming in terror at the nightmare that is the Dawn of the Flesh-Eating Zombie Undead Unicorns, forgive me. It is the result of playing in the garden.


A blackboard badger. On stilts.


A home-made hammock held up with string and ribbon. (I approve of that. It saved me £13.99.)


An assault course.

And dinner for two. Two unicorns, of course. This is their pudding. Painted mud pie. In the background is probably the main course. Corpse.


Spring is here, and the children have taken over the garden.

The midnight terrors are beginning.

Find something positive. Or die, probably.

Grit has been bubbling around in a stewpit of misery recently, but it is time to emerge from the swamp.

Did you see that? Did you see me emerge? I would like to think of myself slipping away as a beautiful and graceful phoenix creature, sliding into the sky with her shimmering ruby wings, emerging bright and vibrant against the blue overhead, while the chains that have bound her break away and fall as dust upon the fiery lake. But I am probably looking a little more weary and mud soaked and creature-from-the-black-lagoon-like, except without the gills.

So for today I will say that home education is a fantastic lifestyle for parent and child if you choose it, and worth every bitter salt tear, forced grimace, chewed down knuckle and itch to swing a lead pipe in the library.

The rewards are thousand fold. And you get to see a child's face light up with pleasure and understanding that they really do love geology, or drama, or reading, or the seven-times table, whatever floats their boat, because they can get right on and do it, just like that, without any problem or interference. They don't need to dress in black, be beaten up, humiliated, forced to eat their own knickers in the toilets or join the Bratz gang (only aged 6 and below need apply).

It is not that every school is awful. Some are not. Some are quite delightful. I taught in one. Before I taught in another and had all creativity smashed out of me by a sledgehammer.

It is just that I know some schools don't suit all children. Home education suits some children because it gives them more time and space to explore what it is they want to do, and the support and opportunity to help them work out how they want to achieve it.

And home education suits some families because some parents are as mad as a bag of badgers. I hope we fall into that category, me and Dig, and that would at least justify being routinely hounded and persecuted by the ignorant and stupid.

So for today's post, here are some pictures of my garden. I would calm myself down with pictures of puppies and kittens but I fucking hate pictures of puppies and kittens and they make me want to vomit.

She looks like I feel. One of the dollies.

Apparently she has been for a swim in a frog pond and needs to drip dry.

The magic mirror in the garden.
If I look in here I have the curves of Venus and the face of a virgin.
It works if I drink three bottles of vodka first.

Ah! Free as a bird we soar! Light, love and happiness is all ours!
We had a sparrowhawk in the garden last week.

Yes yes YES!
The old grape vine that has been completely neglected for ten years!
HOWZAT.

But this lady might have made me want to live again, more than anything.

That's just the way it is

It is true there are some mornings when you leap out of bed and shout I need a hammock!

And then you must convince yourself that a day spent constructing a hammock in the garden constitutes for your offspring an education, more rounded, you hope, than sitting at a school table dressed in black and white and filling in worksheets.

Then you must set about creating the hammock from scraps of old netting scrounged from whoknowswhere; some sticks from the garden, and a lot of string and ribbon. The children for whom this is an education wander off after half an hour to sacrifice dinosaurs to the pit of despair which they have dug in the middle of the lawn and covered over with leaves.

While they are busy with that, you discover that hammocks do not stay up with string and ribbon. You must then bribe Tiger to give up the nylon rope she has tied round her midriff and which she says is 'climbing equipment'. It is not climbing equipment, it is essential stuff to hold up my hammock, now trade it for three squares of chocolate and be off with you.

After some two hours hard labour, Grit staggers inside to revive herself with alovelycupoftea.

When she returns ten minutes later she finds the lovely new hammock, made with bits of rope, sticks, string, ribbon and Tiger's climbing equipment, already requisitioned by small people.

Satisfying and frustrating, all at the same time.



And someone somewhere hopes, educational.

Fule Grit speaks too soon

Because I have entered the dark pit of hell, otherwise known as the garage and hauled out from there an old bed. Then I have scattered bits of the old bed on the patch of land visible from the kitchen window. Until now I had been pleased to call this delightful shady border the wildlife garden in an attempt to romanticise over the fact that it is really a patch of soil round the side of the house undisturbed by any creature except rats for the past ten years. Now it resembles an overflow landfill site.

But anyway, the bed is there. In bits. Some parts are strapped together with duct tape and the whole resembles what we are calling a den.

Like I thought I might get away with not turning the entire house and grounds into a den building activity area following yesterday's session down at Interaction.

After I'd hauled the old bed about from garage to garden, grunting and sweating and covered in bee droppings and twigs, of course a fight breaks out immediately over whose den it is. Mine! I shout, hoping that by offering Shark and Tiger a common enemy I can unite the warring factions and they can both play in it and defend it from the mummies, otherwise known as the Watties (why I don't know, don't ask).

That tactic didn't work. Shark is now standing guard over the old bed in the rat garden with a snarl on her face looking like a particularly bad-tempered, snake-strangled Medusa.

I am pissed off that my total devotion to the den building enterprise, even at the cost of myself, our once delightful grounds, and the relinquishing of an old bed that I'm sure would have been alright somewhere should we have needed it - all of that was futile. Not for a moment did my labours create the joyful garden day I had fondly dreamed about, and which I might have called, with misty tears pricking my eyes as I speak to Dig on Skype, that yes, the children are happily playing in the summer sun.

So I took a box containing a hammer, screwdriver and lots of screws and I set about spitefully making a den only for Tiger out of some old wood and a lot more grunting and thrashing about. Here it is. A work in progress.


Soon it looks like this.


So now I have two areas of my once beautiful garden covered in old beds, bits of wood, the contents of my fabric box, and piles of junk. Along with two daughters who aren't speaking to each other, and a mother who looks like she has dragged a bed from a disused garage infested by bees and mice and creatures of the swamp and has been thrashing around in garden undergrowth for three hours before hitting her finger with a hammer trying to bang in a screw, then losing her temper and having a big squeal.

And somehow, I do not think I am going to get away with having only two den areas here when Squirrel returns.

There is only one word to cover this mayhem and mishap. Let's call it education.

Leave them alone and they do wonders

Grit has abandoned her children today. She is busy arranging her life, organising her family, mentally preparing for seven nights in a concrete bunker, and typesetting a load of pompous academic twaddle from an undistinguished lecturer now on holiday somewhere in England who spends his days drawing foolish pictures of verbs.

Since I am occupied, Squirrel and Tiger amuse themselves digging pits for unicorns. Shark, left to her own devices, sails through the kitchen and prepares delicious miniature souffles.

I think if any of those scoundrels from the DCSF are lurking around they would probably deduce, on a judgment of today, that a nine-year old child is probably the primary carer, all the children certainly neglected, and the house is filled with hazards, so that's a sure sign we need to be inspected and closed down on health and safety alone.

From our point of view, we see Tiger and Squirrel follow an extraordinary fantasy of deep play which involves one unicorn becoming a master bricklayer and designing mud houses for everyone to live in peacefully. We then see Shark's astonishing culinary ability, ambition, and confidence. We see not see the coating of soil and not the mess left in the kitchen.

We do not want thanks for what we do, we just want to be left alone to do it.

And here is a blurred photograph of one of Shark's souffles, before I snatched it and scoffed it.

Two sides to every story

A garden day. And doesn't it show?

Those weeds could signal how much we are out of this house, how much we are engaged in the company of others, how busy these days are, how they are filled elsewhere, how much we have to do which is not here. Could I seriously stay at home and look on a garden like this?

But I know that to Mrs Gradgrind and her coterie, these weeds signal just another sign of neglect.

And these willing gardeners, demonstrating not active learning though play, but a poor example of little more than childminding.

What else can you do with plants anyway?

Apart from turn them into a medieval apothecary patronised by unicorns?


Incidentally the unicorns are the variety that nest in trees

and have to be coaxed down by special ambassadors with umbrellas.

Yes, I'm still calling this home education. Defiant, aren't I?

Help in the garden

After yesterday, I have booked a four hour session with the gardener.

I'd just like to pause here in the hope that you think this is Grit in hot sex with Mellors down the potting shed.

It isn't.

Glastonbury the gardener comes round twice a year to prune hedges and to help hack bits off trees and the tallest shrubs. I am incapable of doing these things. The power saw got stolen. Anyway, if I had hold of it I would probably fall from the wobbly step ladder and be killed by a stake of holly through the heart, or I would sever my own arteries by accident. That would be typical. The only safe way now is for Glastonbury to do these things instead of me.

Really, I would like to think Glastonbury is an actual gardener, with a gardener's attention to detail, like can this plant live or die, but every time he opens his mouth he confirms to me he is not. He is a man with a chainsaw.

And that's what he does today. Chainsaws his way through overgrown trumpet vine, takes down the branch of the fig tree that's stopping everything from doing anything beneath it, and makes sure we can actually walk through the rose arch without having to crawl on our hands and knees, Colditz style, to get onto the lawn.

The only advantage to this carnage of the shrubbery is that I get to rest after my labours yesterday, and watch someone else do the same job but with much greater speed. Glastonbury does not have to pause his garden work to minister to a sickly Tiger on the sofa, nor feed a hungry Squirrel, or placate a steamed up Shark who has locked herself in the bathroom and won't come out without an apology.

And I know that the idea of having an old gentleman gardener tenderly pruning overhanging shrubs in a rambling Victorian garden may be quite appealing. But I suppose there are some advantages to watching a young man grunting and swinging a chainsaw about. And if it were not this frosty mid winter but the dog days of summer, then who knows? He might possibly arrive with his chainsaw, half naked.

Winter work

This afternoon I'll hack the garden down. Tiger with the mumpy face is lying flat out on the sofa. Shark is fuming, and Squirrel is hiding.

This garden is the secret garden, Victorian walled on all four sides, unseen by anyone passing on the street. Before children changed everything I was in here everyday, tending plants and flowers, occupying myself with colours, shapes, growth. I would make seats and hidden places where I could retreat with a mug of morning coffee or a glass of evening wine, all year round, to watch the birds come and the garden change. To do that now would be peaceful. I would like to do that today, sit out here and watch, only the seats are covered in dead leaves and plastic spades, remnants of a children's summer.

I know Shark is feeling better. She has growled at me twice. In our ensuing argument, she ordered me out of the room. Actually she didn't quite use those words but this monitor might blush bright red if it watched Shark's actual words appearing on its face, and from an eight year old at that. All I can say is that if I were writing a school report on her, I might choose Shark uses language directly. Not always appropriately.

I would sit and calm down in my garden, even with Shark's bite still smarting. But there are not many adult spaces here now.

When children came, the garden entered the wilderness years. Nothing was tended, shaped or pruned. Only children. Slowly, as the children began to toddle and tentatively to explore the secret garden, I shaped the space for them. I left some areas wild to discourage them, and other areas I planted with wigwams, dens, a little house, a place for gravel and archaeology, a place for ribbons and streamers, a place for chimes and music. I forgot about the adults, mostly. I found a huge old office table and put it by the lawn, under an elder tree. Marching out now from the house for the space of the garden, I make straight for it, like a refugee holding out for a symbol of former civilization. I'll drink my coffee here and tell Shark that if I go, I do so of my own choosing, not her command. And when I left the room, I hope she thought she hadn't won.

Squirrel is fine today, but hiding from Shark's tongue lashings. I can't lead Squirrel to the mountains of pink ice cream and rivers of strawberry sauce at the home ed children's Christmas party, because Dig's not here to look after Tiger. She's disappointed, but it can't be helped. This is always a problem, with one adult, outnumbered by children, and each of them wanting to do different things and go to separate places, or lie on the sofa, being ill. It probably doesn't help when the one responsible adult hides in the garden tutting at the starlings.

I think the garden is changing. It is growing up, shaping into an older, wiser space. This year, worried by commerce, I dreamed of self-sufficiency and planted more vegetables than ever before. Only a few came up. Next year I want the garden to be a place where Shark, Squirrel and Tiger grow solid, stomach-filling potatoes, not try out fancy peppers that on the seed packet look like Origami pendulums with pink stitching. I want them to get grubbier hands and learn a gardener's knowledge; choose vegetables, grow flowers, prune shrubs, shape spaces.

So there we have it. I have to go inside and reason with Shark, and lay down laws about respect. Half way through she'll probably get bored and wander off. And we lose the Christmas party but I'll gain an afternoon in the garden cutting back the shrubs, preparing for next year. Winter is a good time to review what's gone and shape the garden we want.

And next year I would like to feel in control, not so overwhelmed, struggling out of my depth, submerged in chaos. Not to feel I live in disarray, to live where the house shows the sign Welcome instead of Out of order. And so this afternoon, while I am cutting back the shrubs, removing the deadwood, sweeping the leaves, I will make new paths between the borders, where we can all stop and enjoy the flowers.

Smug grit

Look! It is not all despair, misery, pestilence and death! Here is the proud result of the swamp that is otherwise known as the Grit vegetable patch!



We did have a family carrot. Sadly, being only 15 mm long, it met with an unfortunate accident after rolling off the kitchen surface.

I stood on it. I thought a photograph of a flat minature carrot might not be so impressive.

Banners

Sometimes we can't help but feel sorry for the kids that spend summer days in small, hot, overcrowded rooms learning about fractions.

Today we revisit an art project that we once did years ago, when the children were little and liked eating glue and sticking sequins on their noses.


I unroll long lengths of broad, white satin ribbon, squeeze out the glue, spread out the sparkling sequins and add felt tips, the sewing box, the tub of odds and ends, beads and buttons and sticky jewels, all this to the mix, then we hunt down seed heads, petals, bits of twig, anything that might catch our magpie eyes, and we set to work.

On each long length of ribbon we follow an idea of a journey or a moment we have lived and we tell it through pictures. We spend a morning sewing and gluing and sticking sequins on our noses, and then, as the result unfurls, we have long, proclaiming banners. Each banner is a length of a picture story: about the day we watched the birds fly off from Suffolk, or the bright balloons we blew up huge for Squirrel's party day, or the fish we watched from the bridge streaming and streaking along, pink and gold.

When we're happy with our picture stories, we sew the finished telling onto long branches of trees; we hang them in the garden and they flutter and tell us back of times that we have loved to be free and able to choose our own paths.


And that's why we think of children, dressed in black and grey and white today, bending over fractions and worksheets, filling in blanks with numbers to which someone already knows the answer, right or wrong. And with the world and all its stories calling, some of those children won't want to be at school today.

Gardens for children

Today I am not misery guts Grit. Because today we are playing in the garden. And because you people who comment have all been so lovely, today I shall give you a day off from the horrors of daily living. I'm taking you by the hand and bringing you into my garden to share with you how my garden has changed.

Only if you are nice, mind. And leave the cats and dogs outside.

But be warned. Where once there were Beth Chatto inspired pools of colour coordinated loveliness and not a plastic spade in sight, now there are children. At first I wept about that. Then, when the lilies were choked by brambles, I sang heigh ho and made bramble jam and had to be glad.

Now, eight years on, my garden is a very different place. Just like before, there is a rationale behind this garden, and an inspiration. It is a garden for learning. It is a garden for children. And this is the garden it is.


Buddha sits under the hazel tree. We didn't plant the hazel tree. It arrived one day with a squirrel and two blackbirds. Two blue tits nested last year in a box above Buddha's head and raised a cluttered family. There is a little sunken pond at Buddha's feet, which once I cleaned out and instantly regretted. Two frogs hopped out, and I killed several dragonfly larvae at a stroke, in ignorance. Now I know, so I don't touch it at all. There's a wooden garden bench just by and a tray with sand. I think the children enjoy this spot very much; we light incense here and there is a Mexican Orange Blossom and Winter Flowering Honeysuckle. Heady on perfume, then we planted Scented Narcissus. Overhead there is an overgrown Fatsia, which beats against the house in the wind and wrestles with the ivy. Oops, someone's playing here. Better not interrupt.


Two paths part here, one a straight route down to the swings. We call it the woodland path thanks to two damson trees, two holly trees and a golden elder. The ivy makes wreaths, the holly does us nicely at Christmas craft time, and with the elder, we make wooden beads. The wood's very soft and you can strip the bark and push out the middle. We're learning how to make whistles. Let's take the woodland walk.


Between the trees I've hung a swing and a hammock. The swing works very nicely for hanging about in, as you can see, although you might get heckled when you pass. Ignore it. The hammock is fine for private reading, since everyone forgets to look in there.

Against the wall you can see the story seats. Around these seats are essential storytelling items, like rocks, and chimes, and sticks, magic stones, and sunken pots. Mrs blackbird does her main foraging on this path. She runs up and down ahead of us, clucking and tutting at our approach. Sometimes we get our revenge at her curses and hide her mealy worms.


Sshh. Shark won't notice if we tip toe by.

If you look around the woodland path, you'll see many treasures hidden here. We hope you stop and wonder. Perhaps, today, at this,


Or this.


This old picture frame is a way of making sudden story happen on our woodland path. We choose some items and hang them in the frame. Now you make the story. It must include a shell, a little fishing net, and a tiny spade. We can make the spade magic if you like.

Now pass quickly by the swings, because frankly, it is a tip down here. The little girls have played with a lot of millstones recently and have been inspired to set up several rocks to crush seeds and pound squirrel's hazelnuts. Things are not looking good, especially with the mud pies. The saving graces to this vista are the Wisteria and Jasmine climbing over the swings. I planted strong perfumes of Mint here too, hoping it would brush against plump legs and send out mingling scents that would return to evoke happy memories of sunlit swings and laughter. But the little feet were too heavy and the legs too plump and not even the mint could survive underfoot. So look the other way.

You could look at this. It is Hedgehog Corner. This is where twin hedgehogs tucked themselves up last winter, pulled faded yellow wisteria leaves over their heads and snored. Here, Tiger puts out lettuce leaves to attract fat, unwary slugs.


Next stop, the vegetable area. This is where the children are nurturing courgettes, peas, sweetcorn, mint, beans, and things in pots that I forget because we run out of lolly sticks. Goodness knows where we'll put them all if they germinate. Anyway, here is a Fig tree, Clematis and Trumpet Vine. The Trumpet Vine burst into song last summer with huge and vibrant crimson but was still outdone by several early morning parties hosted by rowdy sparrows.


Foolishly, to satisfy the sparrows, next to the cloche we have put bird tables and a little pond. We're trusting our birds know the difference of seedlings and food. Anyway, we spy on them. There's a small chair that hides the viewer and gives excellent views of sparrows supping from the pond and kicking about the veg patch, looking for trouble. Which reminds me. The weather vane is a remnant of a meteorology project.


Oh yes, this is a children's garden, of course. I routinely scatter plastic lizards and snakes amongst the flowers and pots. The plastic rat on the roof was excellent fun. And I suspect Mr Pod crept up close to the parrot before hoping no-one saw.

Now, turn the corner and a choice of paths. See the golden star on the ground? That is starling's grave. I hope you left the cat outside. And ignore the pile of rocks and plastic dinosaurs at your feet. Tiger is building a scale model of the dinosaur age. She's collecting weed seeds to drop into the primeval sludge. Anyway, from here, one path leads to a ragged patch of grass that once was called a lawn, and which is now the backdrop to some tomato plants, a sundial covered in mud and a sacrifical altar. We use that for worms, obviously. At sun up we have to placate a robin.

Let's take the path picked out in white gravel and a lot of sprinkled glitter. This is much more fun. Ignore the pile of sticks on the left hand side. That's the remnants of a child sized Celtic round house under the hawthorn tree. It blew down. Anyway. Welcome to the camp of the native American Indians.


I bet that wigwam's authentic. Three bamboo poles, tied gracefully at the top with sticks and feathery twine and hanging with beads and home made dreamcatchers. The barbecue is donated. I think someone's cooking snake. Again.


Sometimes the children drape old fabric round the beanpoles and bring them crashing down. Thanks to minimal design, we can have it back up again in a trice. I leave worn out musical instruments round here in summer; shakers, whistles and tambourines, just in case anyone wants to try and create a sun dance.

There are lots of things to look at here. Climbing roses. Pansies, in pots, Jasmine. Aquilegia. And here, some of my favourite objects in the garden. They are the hanging journey sticks. And I am truly sorry about the photograph.

The journey sticks are long sticks that have been collected on our walks in local woods. They hang down from the buddleia that no-one cut and which became a tree. From the sticks we hang the natural found curiosities without which we cannot come home: feathers, odd shaped twigs, pine cones, twisted grass, daisy chains. These treasures hang here and bob up and down, swaying as we walk by, falling to the ground, decaying. I love them, because every one of them is a little memory, twirling on an embroidery thread.

Look down. Can you see snake path? The children painted stones and made them into the shape of a twisting snake. We dug the ground and the stones were hunkered in.


Oops. If you see stones like this, painted all over with chalk, you can kick them. They are called kicking stones, and if anyone becomes angry with a sister, or a mummy or a daddy, go and strike the kicking stone. You won't feel angry for very long. You may even limp a bit.


Oh look, here we are in South America and the Europeans have arrived. Tsk. We were given a wonderful clay thing - there is no other word to describe it - all the way from Peru, which, quickly dismantled and looking the better for it, now hangs in all its parts in thebuddleia tree.


Tsk. Get out the way, pesky small people.


There. that's better. I can see one now.

Off to the top of the path. We have been inspired by Gaudi.


Smashed a few pots recently? Get yourself some hardboard, grout and nails. Hours of garden play and you get a mosaic wall and a memory of a brilliant mind. We even painted some cushions to go on the chairs. And the chairs were a bargain. £1 each at the local tip!


Now follow the path and pass Squirrel's bird area. I notice the feeder's empty. Typical.


Did you catch a smell of something then? Maybe it's this. It's a scented wax block, left overs of a candle maker. When the sun shines, the smell coils up, like ripe lemons. And it makes great soft sculpting material, too.


Let's just go and have a quick look around the lawn. Ignore the table. I got that from the tip. It might be an old office table, but it's all the better for that. We use it for craft, reading the newspaper, drinking coffee, wine, or beer, and contemplating the latest offerings from the barbecue. Now mind the deer. Somewhere there is a moorhen and a badger. They are large cut out shapes painted black. Don't ask any more questions. They make excellent chalkboards.


There's Shark's herb garden. She's very pleased about this because she has designed it herself.


And here's the archeology area. Tip into this gravelly, sandy patch a few pennies, an old bracelet, plastic jewels, sparkly things. On the sly, of course. Here, in my pocket I've got some coloured glass beads. In they go.


Don't be silly. The amonites come in a slab from the garden centre. Have you seen them? Good, aren't they? Keeps the children amused too.


Over there is where we learn about frogs. Better not tip out their pond again.

Of course, because it is a children's garden, I do have to put up with this.


You're absolutely right. It's a bath towel with piles of grass on it. Don't say anything. Pretend we haven't seen it. Don't look at the sun dial in the centre of the lawn either.


Let's go back past the fir tree. This is a useful place for left over Christmas decorations, isn't it? And I say again there is nothing wrong with the fairy lights. I believe they are now quite trendy. Don't listen to Dig. He says we look like an Indonesian restaurant.


And up to the house. When the tub plants have died back, it matters not. We fill them with paper creations.


Well I think that's about all now. Did I forget anything?


We didn't look at the mirrors, did we? Or the place where the mushroom will go. Or Tiger's potatoes. Not the fairy, either. Nor the green man, ribbons to catch the wind, or the plans for the alpines, climbers and new bird bath for Mrs blackbird. Never mind, next time.

Anyway, that was a long ramble. Once I get in the garden, I lose all sense of time. The clock doesn't work either.


But thank you for coming into my garden. It might be a one-off, mind. You can pick up your cat now. Has your dog run off? Sorry about that.

And I shall probably be back to normal tomorrow.