Restoration Drama - November 2025
The rain in spring this year was exceptionally generous. So much so that the plants shot up in frantic surge of growth. Even those shrubs that had sat there for years sadly and stubbornly doing nothing were now racing skywards and doubling is size.
What started out as a great year and such abundance soon became a daunting mass of overgrown foliage and branches that smothered many smaller plants as bigger shrubs took over. Teucrium fruticans, Phlomis fruticosa and Eleagnus x ebbingei were some of the main offenders.
So to work: my brilliant new team of professional gardeners attacked the jungle-scale mess with gusto. I say ‘they’ did it - I was so daunted by the scale of the task that I really did not know where to start. But we were encouraged by the glorious autumn display that lit up the panorama of the garden.
But start they did on the long shrubbery to the left of the pond. Not much actual pruning but more a question of removing dead wood (of which there was lots) and branches that were suffocating their neighbours. The big Teucrium fruticans were thinned out but in spring we (or rather ‘they’) will take all these shrubs almost down to ground level to stimulate denser growth.
We also took the opportunity to replant the area under the olive tree at the far end of the pond. Here the wild boar had dug up and eaten every single one of the (very many) Iris germanica that I had carefully planted there. Replacements included: low growing carpeting plants Ceratostigma griffithi and Teucrium marum; silver plants Artemisia abrotanum 'Silver' and Artemisia arborescens ‘Powis Castle’ interspersed with purple flowered Tulbaghia violacea.
Attention then turned to the other side of the pond where the steep bank had become choked with overgrown Teucrium fruticans and Cistus salviifolius with most of the lavender having become too woody to save. Inevitably this left gaps – or as my gardening friends call them ‘opportunities’ - to fill. I selected two varieties of Perovskia atriplicifolia: 'Blue Spire' which grows to around 1m tall and ‘Little Spire’ which a bit shorter as the name suggests. Other gaps were filled with groups of Cistus x skanbergii and Caryopteris x clandonensis 'Kew Blue' as well as refreshed areas of lavender (Lavandula x intermedia 'Grosso').
Now to the gravel garden where some plants had self-seeded abundantly and others grown far bigger than expected. Particular culprits are Scabious (nowadays called Lomelosia cretica), Coronilla glauca and Teucrium flavum.
We left quite a few seedlings in the gravel to see what thrived and to perhaps use to fill in other gaps. I selected Epilobium canuum and a red Salvia microphylla to add a touch of colour to otherwise silver foliage planting. I am also trialling a tall salvia ‘Indigo Spires’ which looks rather splendid with its deep blue flowers as well as an even smaller Pervoskia atriplicifolia ‘Lacey Blue’ which is supposed to only reach 50cm.
The stairways and paving below the house - one of the first areas I created in the garden - had become very overgrown and the lovely stonework was buried. Ruthless trimming and raking of mounds of leaf litter took a lot of effort, especially where self-seeded shrubs and trees had to be removed with a pickaxe.
But the stonework is too nice to stay hidden. We also re-discovered an area of variegated shrubs there which had become lost - including a rather fine variegated Yucca. We will need to review carefully the rest of these variegated shrubs as they tend to revert to green leaves if they don’t receive enough light and the Pittosporum variegata had indeed half turned green.
Whilst the days are becoming colder as we enter winter, the temperatures ought to stay high enough during the daytime such that hard pruning will not cause the shrubs like Abelia to be at risk to frost, but we will cease all pruning in February when we expect severe frosts. Some plants like rosemary still need to be treated with caution and we will have to review in spring as to whether the old woody plants alongside the steps are good for another season or need to be replaced.
There is a lot more still to do but I already feel a sense of restoration - of the garden and of my own spirits.
The photo at the top of this page shows winter sunlight on the pond