GARDEN SURROUNDINGS: Past And Present In A Garden

k-england
5 days ago
4 min read

By Francesca Filanc, for Let's Talk Plants! November 2025.

Many of us live in our gardens. By that I mean, we spend a lot of time in our gardens. Working in them for sure, but it’s also so important to sit in the garden and appreciate the beauty of nature. I for one enjoy most of my meals in the garden. Looking at the beauty of nature while eating a delicious meal, many times containing some item from the garden, such as herbs or apples, lemons, limes, oranges, passionfruit and stone fruits in the summer, like plums and cherry plums, from the trees, I feel a spiritual peace come over me and a renewal and I am thankful to nature for the beauty and the bounty.

Here we are in November and the end of the pool area behind the brick wall looks like a meadow filled with flowers and gourds, which I am excited about growing. This is the first time I’ve ever tried growing gourds all from seed. The giant sunflowers that the gardeners planted from seed never came up. I had some small sunflowers come up in a different area along with zinnias.

As you might remember from a previous article, the gardeners planted clover from seed all over the bank and then in another article I talked about how they dug it all into the soil. Because I love having sunflowers all along that bank the gardeners planted the seeds, but sadly they never came up. I had bought a mixture of flower seeds, including marigolds, some shorter ones and some giant ones, and all of those came up and it has made a meadow again attracting so many butterflies all through the summer and even into the fall, and it is still looking gorgeous in a wild manner.

The idea was to plant fava beans from seed right about now but that clearly isn’t happening because I am still enjoying the flowers and the gourds. I look forward to doing creative projects with the gourds such as turning them into bird houses or just painting them or leaving them natural. All the grandkids are teenagers now, but they might be interested in doing a creative project with them. The next time they come to visit, the gourds will be ready.

My mother’s amazing book, All My Edens, A Gardener’s Memoir by Pat Welsh is out of print, but it can be purchased used online. I keep a copy next to my bed for light reading before sleep.

This is an excerpt from the book on page 15...

"At times my headlong dash to keep up with John was brought to a screeching halt by something so beautiful I just couldn’t rush past it. Once it was two glass urns on inlaid stands higher than a man - one on either side of a door - with sprays of pink climbing roses, cascading down from them almost to the floor, filling the hall with fragrance. (Viney, the kindly head gardener, was also a master flower arranger.) Another time it was a single ray of sunlight on a painting of fringed and nodding tulips, and a real bee buzzing in front of them. There were no window screens in that house or any other English house I ever lived in; Bees wandered in and out - birds too sometimes."

Hoyle Court, my great grandparents' home and garden in Yorkshire, England had formal gardens. Mum lived there for a while with her older brother, grandparents and parents.

Mum, Pat Welsh, also spent a lot of time at their other grandparents’ home, The Gleddings. Mum and her brother, John, felt very close to Grandma Hattie, their paternal grandmother.

Top - Mum, Mum's Mum, and Uncle John. Below - Gran Emily, Uncle John, Nora, their nurse, Mum, and their dad, Emerson.

Lady Hattie Fisher-Smith was a grand lady and did many good works. She was American and very affectionate with her grandchildren and took them on great adventures in the Rolls-Royce. The Gleddings gardens were wild in comparison to Grandad Sam and Gran Emily’s gardens at Hoyle Court but still beautiful and much fun for Mum and Uncle John to run in and play.

The reason I’m mentioning both of these estates is because there are so many different styles one can create to make a beautiful garden. Whatever turns you on for your own garden is the best way for you to make one and enjoy your own garden's beauty.

There are elements that are formal in my garden and elements that are wild and natural.

Whatever you love will be good for you to create in your garden and it will bring the birds, butterflies, dragonflies, and other forms of wildlife to your garden.