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Formal pool with Verbena bonariensis, purple loosestrife, dahlia ‘Jessica Willows’ and rose ‘Florence Mary Morse’.
Formal pool with Verbena bonariensis, purple loosestrife, dahlia ‘Jessica Willows’ and rose ‘Florence Mary Morse’. Photograph: MMG/Marianne Majerus
Formal pool with Verbena bonariensis, purple loosestrife, dahlia ‘Jessica Willows’ and rose ‘Florence Mary Morse’. Photograph: MMG/Marianne Majerus

If you’re moving house, which plants will you take – and which leave behind?

This article is more than 7 years old

After four decades of tending her Dublin plot, Helen Dillon reveals her must-keeps and mistakes

When we bought this house in Ranelagh on the edge of Dublin City 44 years ago, my husband Val insisted we would never leave it, except in our “wooden overcoats”. And I don’t know why, but I’ve always disliked the words “retire” and “downsize”. So it was a surprise to me when, in early February, the notion of moving house and making a new garden came into our heads. The decision was made, and we move this autumn.

I love this old garden, and also the house. But I’ve become a sort of madly busy maintenance person. Just when I think I’ve got an area sorted out (any plant squashing its neighbours has been pruned, or propagated and moved elsewhere) I notice all-encroaching shade is developing in the opposite bed. Honey fungus, the prime disease of old gardens, is rife, especially in old Dublin ones where everybody grew their own fruit until the boom arrived and they bought their fruit instead, and didn’t dig up the old trees carefully enough, thus making ideal honey fungus conditions. Vine weevil, heaving populations of slugs, snails, swift moths, flat worms and what I hopefully imagine are only large mice have taken over.

Paperbark maple trunk surrounded by purple loosestrife, rose ‘Bonica’ and tiger lilies. Photograph: MMG/Marianne Majerus

No gardening book wants to tell you the truth: old gardens are riddled with problems, with many no-go areas occupied by thickets of beautiful but semi-wild plants. For example, a long border here is occupied by the handsome but incontinent self-seeding onion Nectaroscordum siculum, and much as I adore Japanese anemones, one can sometimes have too much of a beautiful plant. (However, I cannot get enough of the lovely white willowherb, Chamerion angustifolium ‘Album’ – I think it’s madly pretty, especially if you keep deadheading it in August.) Old gardens consist of a huge assortment of wonderful but permanent plants – and I’d rather not spend the rest of my life tweaking and maintaining the same old flowerbeds yet again, with no space for reinvention.

Reactions to our plans for leaving are very different: good people say, “How exciting – a new garden,” but others insist on making a gloomy face and muttering, “How sad.” The more I protest and say how I love the idea, the gloomier they become. Our late Georgian house has many stairs and brisk draughts rush through every keyhole, with accompanying backaches and mysterious twinges in knees, so a cosy small house and smaller garden seems very inviting.

Steps beside the formal pool and rill, with box topiary and hagenia trees in pots. Photograph: MMG/Marianne Majerus/mmg/

I will be saying goodbye for ever to several plants. Chilean Cestrum parqui (willow-leaved jessamine), for example, which has a horrible smell during the day but a wonderful perfume around midnight (because it’s pollinated by moths), but I’ve only once been up late enough to smell it. Then there’s the Spanish bluebell (Hyacinthoides hispanica), which is murder to dig up, because the bulbs are clustered in huge underground heaps. And I’ve finally got it in for Ficaria verna ‘Brazen Hussy’, the lesser celandine, which is the sneakiest coloniser you’ll ever meet. The other good reason for leaving a garden is you can wave goodbye to all your mistakes.

Now for the must-keep plants. These are either hard to get or so ordinary that few garden centres stock them, such as Mexican fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus), the charming weed and gentle coloniser of cracks in the paving; the scented white perennial stock, Matthiola fruticulosa alba subsp perennis, rarely found except in old gardens; and a very dark blue periwinkle with no name that survives on the smell of an oily rag. Late spring essentials include my favourite Pulmonaria ‘Blue Ensign’ and the excellent rosemary ‘Sissinghurst Blue’. Pale blue Campanula lactiflora (now I’ve found the original tall cultivar, as opposed to the blobby small newcomers), long-time resident of the old-fashioned herbaceous border, will be coming with me, as will the perennial honesty, Lunaria rediviva, which thrives in shady corners.

Canna ‘Erebus’ in galvanised dustbins alongside agapanthus ‘Purple Cloud’ and flowering seakale leaves. Photograph: MMG/Marianne Majerus

I’ll be taking Christopher Lloyd’s mother’s favourite rose, ‘Florence Mary Morse’. I don’t think this is a beautiful rose, but I do think it’s a wonderful plant, which produces masses of rich, red flowers just about all summer. Hagenia abyssinica, from the forests of Ethiopia, is a superb tree for growing in a large pot (kept under glass for winter). The leaves are somewhat the shape of melianthus leaves (very showy) and the four pots arranged on the limestone paving surrounding the formal pool introduce a new dimension by adding height.

I must take the lovely pale-blue agapanthus ‘Eggesford Sky’. I find, after collecting agapanthus for 30 years or so, that the pale-blue cultivars show up better from a distance than some of the (very desirable) dark colours. Hydrangea paniculata ‘Limelight’ and its relations such as H. ‘Vanille Fraise’ must come with me – they are so easy to fit in anywhere.

A winding path through the border, with fuchsia ‘Crackerjack’, canna ‘Musifolia’ and dahlia ‘Murdoch’. Photograph: MMG/Marianne Majerus

Other plants ready for the removal van include Rosa x odorata (Sanguinea Group) ‘Bengal Crimson’ (a wonderful rose with single, deep-red flowers, blooming five times a year), the superb large fern Woodwardia unigemmata, and a piece of my best blue-stemmed clumping bamboo, Borinda albocerea.

I’ve always wanted to be a creator rather than a curator. I wish the new owners of this garden great happiness, but I’ve never forgotten the words of a great old gardening friend: “When the gardener goes, the garden door is closed for ever.”

There are two ways of dealing with a much-loved old garden: you can sit at the window and watch it quietly and gently return to nature – leaf by leaf, petal by petal – or you make it as good as you can, shut the door and escape as quickly as possible to a new garden. We’ve chosen the latter. Perhaps it’s the coward’s way out, but I think it’s most exciting. I can’t wait.

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