Transatlantic Gardener - Part One (September 2001)

What a glamorous life we lead. With an eighteenth century cottage in Northamptonshire and a lakeside house in the wild woods of Pennsylvania, my American wife judy and I have in one country what is almost impossible to find in the other. Strip out the jetlag and the possibility of a deep vein thrombosis on the plane and glamorous might indeed be the word.

My wife and I met at the Chelsea Flower Show. On press day, in fact, she having commissioned me, sight unseen as you might say, to report the show for the website she was running. We met, and that was that. We were married two years ago this month and set about re-organising our transatlantic lives.

So just over two years ago we exchanged my country house with its two acre garden in rural Northamptonshire for a cottage with small garden near our friends in the nearby town. But we both had urges to be secluded, out in the wilds, in the woods and by water. So just over six months ago, we exchanged judy’Äôs suburban house in New Jersey about forty minutes from Manhattan for a house in the Pennsylvania woods about two hours to the west with water at the bottom of the garden - ninety acres of glacial lake, to be precise. There are chipmunks, racoons, skunks, turkey vultures and eighteen inch woodpeckers with heads like hammers.

It took over a year to find the right American house: ’ÄòCould we run around the garden with no clothes on?’Äô was the test - without startling the neighbours, that is. We also wanted to be by water; not near the water, we wanted to walk out of the house, down to the shore, get in the boat and catch dinner. Those trout are tasty’Ķ

But you want to know about the garden. Well, it’Äôs two acres of second growth forest made up of maples and oaks and hickories over high bush blueberries with ferns and sedges and skunk cabbage and erythroniums in the ground flora. There’Äôs a trickle of a stream running across the corner down to the water. At the front of the house is a fenced area called, rather grandly by the previous owner, The English Garden. Well, with small beds divided by paths of white granite chips and ’Äòdecorated’Äô with concrete pineapples it’Äôs more of an American’Äôs idea of an English garden. The deer can only get in if they pull down the netting which surrounds the slender grey pales. And those hostas look mighty tasty to a deer.

At the back is a small lawn surrounded by rhododendrons, kalmias, pieris and other ericaceous shrubs and all surrounded by the woods. The soil is very acid and very rocky. It was 90F in Pennsylvania in April, (everything’Äôs in F over there still) less than a month after the lake thawed; such extremes are tough on plants.

In Northamptonshire we now have an eighteenth century stone cottage, two tiny cottages knocked together in fact, on the edge of town. A dear friend lives next door-but-one, other good friends are nearby and in surrounding villages.

The garden has been cultivated for two hundred years and the colour of the soil proves the point; and so does the profusion of nettles which love the fertility. But there were virtually no plants and no structure when we moved in.

I brought a few choice plants from my previous house, like ’ÄòDusky Challenger’Äô, the spectacular deep blue iris with truly black buds, but of course it’Äôs impossible to fit two acres of plants into an area 60ftx40ft and anyway, we haven’Äôt yet quite decided on an overall plan.

And that’Äôs the problem. We go back and forth when we need to but I spend more time in Northamptonshire and judy spends more time in Pennsylvania. The result is that, as we want to plan things and work on things together, everything happens so very slowly. We get over our jet lag, cut the grass, rush round weeding, do a little planting and planning, catch up on everything else and it’Äôs almost time to pack again. What a glamorous life.