Elizabeth West: Garden in the Hills (1980)

On my first and. so far, only visit to Wales in the late nineties the weather was glorious. I volunteered at the Eisteddfod in Llangollen and cycled round North-Wales (visiting Dorothy Campion’s house en route, but that is another story). I now realize how lucky I was. The weather can be extreme there, especially at 1000 feet and Garden in the Hills can be used as a guide on how to garden at that height. Elizabeth and Allan found advice in gardening books often does not apply so they learned by trial and error and often just by 'what felt right'.

This is the sequel to Hovel in the Hills. It tells the story of how Elizabeth and Allan West made a garden and gives further insight into their life in the hills.
The book includes a map, which is one of the reasons I like it. I have pored over it, trying to place everything that is mentioned in the story. Where is the bluebell forest, and where is the drive? Never mind, I just love maps. 
Once again I find that Elizabeth is very good at writing about plants and animals, but not at describing people. The acknowledgments state that she has invented a few characters so that she could describe true incidents without causing embarrassment to real people. Well, I don’t think these real people will have been very pleased to find themselves represented by two nitwit Welsh farmers and a know-it-all retired teacher. Best to forget about them, the rest of the book is a joy to read.

 

Making a garden around Hafod involved a lot of hard work: clearing the garden, making paths, creating shelter, building fences to keep out rabbits and sheep (not always successful), and building a water garden around the spring that is the cottage’s only source of water. A special chapter is devoted to the long hot summer of 1976, when, at the end of a long dry period, it took 2 hours to fill a bucket at the spring.
There is a chapter on weeds, which can be very useful as ground cover and as pest food (keeping insects away from vegetables). Elizabeth also includes a list of weeds they regularly eat in salads.
Apart from growing fruit and vegetables they also forage, although it was not called that then. They use berries to make jam and wine and gather mushrooms. A list of all the crops grown is included with tips on which varieties to grow. Elizabeth and Alan find that using seed that they have saved themselves works best.
The garden is also filled with trees and flowers, some of which they have planted, some of which just  'happened'.  We bought crocuses and carnations. But who gave us the double snowdrops? Where did the marguerites come from? Those oriental poppies by the shippen?  They also rescue plants from roadworks or building sites.
There is a chapter on manure (which they get from a farmer friend) and the making of compost.
Though the word „ organic” is not used in the book, Elizabeth and Alan are certainly organic gardeners. They find they are not much bothered by pests, because of the wild plants (attractive to insects and birds) surrounding the vegetable garden and because of the healthy balance of predators and prey.
What comes through in the whole book is the joy they both find in their garden, in the butterflies, birds and other animals that are constant visitors.
One of my favourite chapters is on how Elizabeth keeps house. How does she cook (on a wood stove or an a primus stove) and what? She includes menus and recipes.
The books ends on a sad note. On the one hand there is the perpetual problem of earning money. They find they often have to leave Hafod for a few months to earn money elsewhere, but this is getting harder.
Also 'progress' in the form of road widening schemes and traffic is creeping up on them. So Elizabeth and Alan will have to leave Hafod.   But it won’t all be destroyed. Something will remain … In a hundred years’  years time when the cottage is perhaps a ruins, a lone walker coming across the moor may look down from the hillside and see the Hafod woodland, quiet and secluded at the base of the hill. (...) He will see all these things and he will know that in this wild and lonely place, someone once made a garden.