As everyone knows, you cannot garden quickly. Plants grow at the own speed, dependent largely on factors outside the gardener’s control. This is a healthy realization for any garden project, especially one that is starting from scratch. One way to approach this conundrum is to do the jobs in the order they present themselves, yet acknowledge the need to establish an order of development without which the task descends into confusion. The example that we face in our garden in Midlothian is to establish various plots, such as the vegetable garden, now for planting next spring. The same paradox applies to our present 1.6 acres of lawn. When we moved here two months ago, I tried my 22” walk-behind mower, but it was hopeless. One neighbor laughed out loud at my puny efforts. The mower clogged repeatedly and spewed out a mass of white smoke before giving up the ghost.

I never imagined I would need a ride-on mower, any more than I need a gas-guzzling truck to take the dog to the dog park or collect garden supplies, but 1.6 acres demands desperate remedies. Although we will create a meadow garden in half of the enormous back yard we’ve inherited, even that and the vegetable garden will not reduce the overall mowable area to less than an acre, so – needs must.

Our plan for the no-dig vegetable garden involves marking out the area in the existing lawn; laying down cardboard (an abundant supply that stems from saving the hundred or so cardboard boxes we used in our move to Midlothian). With the cardboard in place, bring in leaf mulch to a minimum depth of 3”, and top off with woodchip sourced directly from local arborists who often simply discard it. As an aside, triple-ground and dyed mulch looks neat and tidy, but is not necessary for the garden to thrive. Ideally, we would be using mulch we have made ourselves, but in this first year we have to buy it in, as waiting for this year’s fall to collect enough leaves means losing a year of growth, and I am not patient enough to wait.

 This brings me to another point. While thinking about, and acting on, conserving natural resources is nothing less than a moral and civic duty, taking that duty to extremes can be counter-productive. Certainly, you could buy a sythe and learn how to use it, with the understanding that none of us could ever be as good, or as hardy, as those who labored all their lives in the park-like gardens of England’s stately houses, able to mow the grass to perfection with a hand tool. It is a matter of numbers – ten skilled gardeners to manage several acres of lawn = one ride-on mower.*

*Historical Note: Gardeners did not mow the whole of the parkland, sheep did. These excellent trimmers were kept at a distance from the stately house by a ha-ha – a sunken wall about six feet deep that surrounded the buildings and prevented the animals from crossing from their terrain to that of the landowners in the house. The beauty of this simple device was that landowners could experience an uninterrupted view of their estate without the blemish of farm animals, menial workers, or any other rustic distraction from the ideal landscape before their eyes. For a pictorial example, without ha-ha, see Thomas Gainsborough’s famous painting Mr and Mrs Andrews.