Garden Moments

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Earthly Comforts – Town Gardening Services

Garden Moments Directory

Introduction to Garden Moments

Earthly Comforts works for an eclectic and diverse client and garden base. While l perform maintenance on many of the established gardens l work on now, sometimes the maintenance results after long-term project work over several months.

A new client’s garden often requires a certain amount of botanical archaeology to be carried out first, as l rarely take on a new garden that requires basic upkeep and generalised maintenance from the get-go.

This is primarily due to taking on gardens that have been neglected, forgotten, lost, or new to the house owners. Occasionally, l take on overgrown and overwhelmed gardens that once had a gardener attend, but that may have been some time ago. So, the garden needs much repair work before regular maintenance can commence.

Many of the gardens worked on are long games played slowly regarding restoring and recovering.

When l work on a new project, my main direction and aim is to get to know the garden space first and foremost and then the clients. Therefore, l would like to see the garden through the year’s four seasons. This allows me to understand what the garden truly needs. Over that period, l would also get to know the clients and what they wanted from their garden.

I hope you enjoy the series and my client’s gardens, too.

Thanks for reading.
Rory Matier

One view of the Wild Rose Project which l started working in on Tuesday 16th, April 2024.
Client Wild Rose

Restoration

Brief

Bring Garden into shape and definition in preparation for wedding party in July and to continue with weekly restoration maintenance.

This is my walk through video of the Wild Rose Project

Earthly Comforts is getting busier with each passing week. I have taken on board three new garden project clients in the last seven days alone, and I have another two joining the client list, most likely before the end of April, which will bring my total up to fifteen. All aside from one, which is the Dover HMO and is quarterly, are long-maintenance restoration projects.

I still have to write about the 2023 garden clients l took on board, like sorbet, damson, mocha and regal, as well as the gardens from this year still not mentioned, like magenta, brick red and periwinkle, all great gardens and thankfully all long maintenance projects.

I started in Wild Rose last Tuesday, a week ago. The brief is in two stages: one is to bring the garden into a more defined layout shape in preparation for the client’s daughter, who is getting married in July but hosting her after-party in the garden, and two is to keep the garden generally maintained for the client.

It’s a lovely garden—a mixture of wild and ornamental plants—hence why I named it Wild Rose. It’s ironic in some ways because, unlike other gardens l maintain, this one has very few roses! 

It currently has an abundance of bluebells in white, Lilac, and blue, as well as both English and Spanish varieties. As someone who volunteered in Gazen Salts for two years, I know how conservationists would frown at the mention of the Spanish bluebell—it’s invasive. It takes the nutrients away from the English variety, and its spread is aggressive, but you can cut them and have them in your house, and they are quite lovely!

This garden also has many mahonias, a plant I see a lot of in Sandwich. They are nicer than Holly despite being pricklier! But it also has a lot of wild country flowers mixed with a few ornamental ones, which is where it gets a bit trickier. It is principally a wildlife garden but has a decorative shape and layout. 

For instance, the Damson Garden used to be an ornamental garden in the eighties, but forty years later, it was allowed to overgrow and became a jungled wildlife garden that I am now restoring and returning to a garden layout like Wild Rose! 

I seem to be taking on many wild gardens, which is alright, as I greatly like their irregularity and energy. Wild Rose, compared to other gardens, is a walk in the park as a project; it’s easy to understand the garden and the client, which helps me enormously. They both know what they want and, more importantly, what they want me to do, and they will let me crack on.

Thanks for reading.

Designs – Earthly Comforts – Inspired by Nature – see collection here

Published by The Autistic Composter

Earthly Comforts is a journal supporting my gardening business, focusing on flora and fauna, gardening, composting, vermiculture and photography.

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