Our roof terrace garden is a calm, healing space
The plot is close to hibernation, hunkered like a hedgehog, though not yet as sleepy. I am about to sow broad beans. I have moved the kales from their nursery beds. I stand and watch the amaranth fall. I pick kale and chard for midweek suppers, a couple of autumn carrots. I guard the puntarelle. But there is no denying winter now, so this week a few more thoughts on caring for flowers in pots.
When we first came to our home, the roof terrace was an abandoned bike yard – old cycles for almost every age, bits of retired furniture, its floor tiled in asbestos. No grass, no soil, but our own outside space.
We replaced the tiling and gradually gathered a collection of large and small pots. At first I was obsessed with climbers: roses, clematis (particularly clematis)… it quickly became almost a cottagey garden. When I started working with Mary on the plot, Henri took over the terrace. It became calmer, more town house, more architectural. The wilding was a little tamed. If I had brought the outside in, she brought the inside out.
It is a calm, healing space where she sits and reads, where we drink hot tea in the cool evenings, and wine when it is warm enough. I am mostly an observer there now. I potter round in the early morning or late at night, admire the Bengal Crimson rose (currently sporting 15 fat buds), watch the blue geranium withdraw.
Last year we grew tulips and paperwhites here for the first time. There is another order waiting to go in (a little late, I know). The magnolia stellata has lost its leaves, but it will be the first to wake in spring. The viola are nodding, almost smiling, happily.
We will wrap up warmer, read Sunday papers in the thinning sun. We will quietly wait for our tulips, daffs and winter to lift, and the return of her lily of the valley.
Allan Jenkins’s Morning (4th Estate, £8.99) is out now. Order it for £7.91 from guardianbookshop.com
