The Fourth Dimension

A client of mine has recently moved house and asked me to take a look at the garden for her. The house has been empty for a year, and she warned me that the garden was in a bit of a state. What I found when I arrived fascinated me. I was expecting nettles and brambles, bindweed maybe even some ground elder, definitely dandelions to have taken over, but that's not what I found at all.
The previous owners were obviously very keen gardeners. A densely planted, wide herbaceous border runs around three sides of the garden. The shrubs had all outgrown their allotted space from lack of pruning, and a lilac had been busily suckering up an entire corner, but there were practically no weeds at all. Once I started removing the black tangle of dead forgetmenots it became more and more obvious that the beds were rammed full of self sown plants; foxgloves, honesty, sky blue Nigella, feverfew, Nicotiana and hardy geraniums to name just the most prolific. So many of these seedlings had germinated that there can't have been room for the annual weeds to get a foothold. Left to its own devices the garden was gradually painting its own picture, arranging itself in some inspiring combinations.
Verbena bonariensis shouldn't of course be at the front of the border rising out of a clump of hardy geraniums or come to that any of the other twenty or so places it had made itself at home, nor should the honesty be filling a space occupied by Potentilla atrosanguinea and its neighbouring Geum 'Mrs. J. Bradshaw', but there was a definite charm there. Likewise the carpet of intermingled Cerinthe major var. purpurascens and Viola labradorica purpurea squeezed around and amongst lavender bushes. I couldn't help but reflect how these 'wildings' as Christopher Lloyd referred to them give the garden a real sense of abundance and freedom, the plants getting on and doing what they like rather than being dictated to. Twenty of this and a dozen of that gives so much more cohesion than single specimens, plants on top of each other, growing through each other look artless and carefree and real.
To my mind the garden was doing a pretty good job of developing itself, but there was no question of letting it get on with. Cleared and pruned it now has an element of order restored to it, but I hope I've left enough of the wildings alone for the potential to remain, should the garden ever get set loose again.