"Eden: the beautiful garden where Adam and Eve, the first human beings, lived before they did something God had told them not to and were sent away, often seen as a place of happiness and innocence."
That's according to the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary.
When I first read this it intrigued me, the 'did something', it is surprisingly vague. To me, beautiful gardens are meant to be worked, apples are meant to be picked, otherwise that happiness is swiftly erased by swarms of wasps, slugs and other assorted creepy crawlies. Innocence? Hm. I was told not to use plants taller than 50 cm, but that first summer my verbena bonariensis grew taller than me (I'm 1.69). Luckily there are no snakes on Voorne, otherwise I would have been evicted pronto.
We do have a lot of other wildlife around here. It's the proximity of water and greenery. At the end of my street, near the small ferry to the next isle, there are abandoned playing fields. The football and tennis club have moved out and the animals have moved back in. The large white poplars and summer oaks house ringneck parakeets, woodpeckers, ravens, crows, doves and a roost of jackdaws. In 2019 a buzzard raised two chicks there. Underneath the trees live hares, voles, mice, and I come across the occasional roe deer or two at dawn. Herons fish, mute swans nestle, all kinds of waterfowl make a hell of a racket. We even boast two beavers.
I love it. To me, rewilding is the magical word of the decade. I do realise that parcel of land is meant for a housing project, but long may my council lack the funding! In the meantime I try to lure the wildlife to my garden. The slugs have rather unfortunately made it their home, that wasn't in the plan. But I coo over every ladybird and bumblebee that flies onto my flowers. I'd love butterflies and sorely miss my old pond with damselflies and dragonflies. I've put up an insect hotel and feed the birds. And try to plant pollinator flowers.
So this year I have sown some seeds. Aniseed (especially for the flowers), marigolds, lathyrus, two kinds of nasturtium, and mixed pollinator seed. I put the seed trays on my heated living room floor (that works well for the seedlings, not so much for me, as walking becomes an obstacle course) and meant to put them outside in April, like all normal gardeners do. Except it was so extremely cold, all through April. So they remained indoors.
Those seedlings grew well. Puck thought so too, and bit off all the heads one afternoon when I was out. I cried. There, I'm not ashamed to admit it. But I did put them out in the cold after that and kept my fingers crossed. Well, unlike the cheap red Lidl rescued salvias I had planted to brighten up the gloom, those seedlings took the frost and rainstorms in their stride. They hardly grew at first, and the nasturtiums lost some leaves to the wind, but they survived. Unlike my beloved cannas. Not a shoot in sight so far, deep sigh. I fear I've lost both pots. I adored those blood red cannas, even more so because I rescued the original one from the local DIY centre, where it was thrown onto the rejects tray and I got myself a bargain for €1. I'm big on rescue, my Puck is a rescued dog, many of my plants are and I could use a good rescue myself. Anyway, that one miserable canna was divided into two gorgeous plants last year, and every evening Puck and I sat next to them and praised every flower.
You can read more about my balcony garden at Instagram @songsmith2962 and @grashoffr
