In September friends of ours brought one of their tours to our garden. And one of their group, Vicki Scott, was, amazingly, inspired to write a poem about the garden. And here it is!
Garden Tour in the Welsh Borders – Veddw
On a Welsh mound golden grasses
stroke bare arms, passing by
someone slips on the shingle
and reaches out for a handful of fragile tensile rods
Disco balls astride square oak beams
in the newly mown grass meadow
act like distorting mirrors in a fun fair.
Laughter breaks the barriers of Covid isolation,
their shiny steel sends laser like arrows
into the dark shadows of a yew hedge.
This garden is all patterns and shapes,
angle and contour mimic a landscape of
ancient field boundaries.
Spirit levelled razor sharp hedges
lead to the ruins of a woodman’s cottage
where history meets horticulture.
An ink black water garden,
the sump for water boatman and damsel flies,
invites reflections on the practice of conservation.
The crenelations of a rabbit proof fence______________
embed this visionary natural theatre
to its Marches border history
when land hungry Norman Barons
cared not for artifice or expression
but farm and pasture, cattle, skins and fleeces was the economy.
Swathes of Japanese Anenomes, Persicaria, Clerodendrum,
Hydrangeas, Scabious and Montbretia are its
army now, invoking welcomed intruders
to bowed admiration.
Present and Past meet in labour and love,
The thud of a fork turns over ancient and new.
Inspiration travels beyond its worked edges.
by Vicki Scott
And see her Cottages to let
