Ask the Gardener: Jackie
April 2022
Every month we will ask one of our wonderful community gardeners some questions about their own gardens and gardening habits. Hopefully you’ll find some inspiration in their answers. If you’d like to share some thoughts about your own garden, please get in touch.
This month we heard from Jackie.
Tell us about yourself:
My name is Jackie and I am married with 3 grown up children and two grandchildren. I was brought up in Little Wymondley and moved to Great Wymondley after marrying Paul 40 years ago, so properly local! 5 years ago, I became very ill with meningitis and sepsis which resulted in me losing my hearing and having both legs amputated below the knee. This, of course, has had a major impact on my life and made gardening a very different and sometimes difficult experience!
Where do you live?
Our home is just off the village green in Great Wymondley and we are very fortunate to have a large garden.
Favourite plant or flower?
Very difficult to choose but I think Sweet Peas.
Favourite season?
Again, difficult, but I think it’s the Spring. It’s so wonderful watching everything coming back to life. It starts early in our garden with the snowdrops in the front garden.
How often do you get out to the garden?
When the weather is dry almost every day, even if it’s just to deadhead a few plants. As I’m in an electric wheelchair it’s much more difficult when the grass is wet.
We love being outside and weather permitting we eat all our meals in the garden and relax there. We have had many parties and fun occasions in the garden and it’s our favourite ’room’ in the house.
What do you enjoy most about gardening?
I love growing plants from seed and seeing them grow into mature plants, although I am also a regular visitor to the plant stall on the market. It is also very satisfying picking the produce from the veg garden.
What’s your favourite and least favourite job in the garden?
I used to love cutting the lawn as it transforms the look of the garden. Within an hour or so it becomes neat and tidy again. Paul does that now, so I think my new favourite job is planting out plants I’ve grown in the greenhouse.
My least favourite job is watering. It’s such an important job but I find it so boring and very frustrating as the hose constantly gets caught up around my wheelchair.
If you could have any type of garden, what style would you have?
Definitely a cottage garden with all the old-fashioned plants, antirrhinum, lupins etc. also lots of honeysuckle and clematis.
Where do you get inspiration for your gardening from?
I’m not really sure. We’re members of the National Trust and love visiting gardens. We have a lot of gardening books and are also big fans of Monty Don. So, a mixture of things really, but our garden isn’t very structured, it just seems to evolve.
What is the biggest challenge when you garden?
Just keeping up with everything really. We have lots of flower beds and have a large vegetable patch. I grow a lot of our flowers and veg from seeds in the greenhouse so there’s always something to do, especially weeding! But we are determined that we enjoy our garden and try not to stress over what doesn’t get done.
What is your favourite gardening tool and why?
I have a three-quarter length trowel and small fork which helps me to reach things
What’s the biggest adaptation you’ve had to make in your garden since you’ve been using your wheelchair?
I was determined that I wanted to keep gardening so there had been many. There were two main major adaptations.
The first was we had to buy a different greenhouse as the one I had was small with a single door and I couldn’t get in there in my wheelchair.
The second huge change was raising all the vegetable beds and most of the flower’s beds to enable me to still garden. It was a mammoth job and involved many deliveries of sleepers and topsoil. Luckily, Andrew, my son was staying with us during the first lockdown when most of the work was done so was another pair of hands.
If you could rid the world of one plant or weed, what would it be?
Without doubt, ‘Stinging Nettles’.
What wildlife do you most look forward to seeing in the garden?
The birds, especially the smaller one – tits, sparrows, robins etc. Although we have a number of bird feeders around the garden, we have a robin who comes to the kitchen door each day for his breakfast.
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