The Garden at Hampstead Lane – Year 1 – arrival

I have been promising for some time to bring those of you interested in gardening up to date with the garden at Hampstead Lane. So for those who love to watch a garden being created, posts over the next few weeks (or possibly months) will take you through its evolution from spring 2020 till now – after which I plan to go back to the old Lawn Road practice of regular updates.

When I now look back at the lush green garden that I inherited when I bought Hampstead Lane I do rather wonder whether I should have left well alone.  Not very exciting, but very green, woolly, peaceful – and south facing. Admittedly, given the works on the house, it would probably never have escaped getting turned into a builders’ yard.  Anyhow, I console myself with the fact that I was similarly stricken with remorse when I saw what destruction I had wrought upon a perfectly nice house in my quest for ‘open-ness’ and the house has actually turned out fairly spectacularly well. So maybe there is hope for the garden…

As you can see, it is a reasonable size – approximately 15 metres wide by 10 deep. A wall across the back separates us from the offices, car park and greenhouses of Beechwood, a Grade 2 mid 19th century villa with some wonderful trees and extensive gardens which stretch down to Hampstead Heath. Beechwood has passed through many hands but currently belongs to billionaire, and now sanctioned, Uzbek businessman and close mate of Vladimir Putin, Alisher Usmanov.

(I have not, even previous to his sanctioning, come across Mr Usmanov. The closest I have got was his head gardener and estates manager – both, I think, laid off since the sanctioning – who came to discuss the health of our shared wall.)

I arrived in Hampstead Lane very shortly before the first lockdown in the spring on 2020. At that point the left hand side of the garden adjoining the other half of my ‘semi’, and the wall at the back, were smothered in a rich 30 year growth of ivy, most of which was several feet deep and whose ‘stems’ were as thick as tree trunks – and a rampant virginia creeper.

Down the right hand side of the garden was – and still is – a large Bramley apple tree. It is extremely healthy but leans, as you can see, rather perilously to the right. This is because a previous owner had planted a willow tree in the back right hand corner of the garden – a ridiculously big tree for this size garden.  The apple, in a desperate attempt to escape the willow, headed to starboard. A few years ago the willow died and had to be taken down but by that time the apple was already some years old and well etablished. Although, as you can probably see, it is now throwing shoots out at a more normal angle, I doubt they will ever come to anything serious.

Buried within the ivy forest opposite the apple tree, and all but choked by it, was a holly tree which was comprehensively shading the gardens of the neighbour. So one of our first jobs was to get in the tree surgeons to reduce it to a manageable size.

After that it was the ivy’s turn and I spent several enjoyable months doing battle with it and revealing, in due course, an extremely ramshackle wall beneath.

Summer was by now upon us and the house was enveloped in scaffolding to allow us to replace the roof and the windows. COVID was still raging, but – we were allowed to gather, if you remember, outside. So we did! And, as it happened, the scaffolding provided us with a perfect stage! Here is Madeleine Mitchell, the inspiration behind my Salon Concerts, playing a solo recital for us.

And here a jazz group that I found playing on the heath and invited to come and play for us.

Joana Ly’s string quartet could not fit all their instruments onto our scaffolding stage so they played for us in the garden – although that did prove somewhat of a trial for those instruments, especially the cello, which did not like being baked in the sun!

Unlike the audience who were able to shelter under umbrellas.

Meanwile, the poppy I had brought from Lawn road bloomed –

and Boris took possession of the garden!

Next up – autumn and spring 2020/1.