Gardening in Eden the natural way

England's second largest county, with a population of less than 500,000, is Cumbria.    Here there are displays of every example of garden style and design.

Protected by the North Pennines to the East, the Irish Sea to the West and the Lakeland Fells, the counties rural isolation has prevented fashion from dictating gardening trends.   Change for changes sake has never been a priority to the native of Cumbria.

The landscape dominates.     Naturalistic planting overrides every horizon, puts a mark on the whole terrain.    The results are spectacular.   Castle Rigg Stone Circle, just East of the town of Keswick, is my favourite Cumbrian landscape.    Created by nature, manipulated by man.  



Erected in approximately 3000 BC Castle Rigg is potentially one of the earliest henge monuments in England and was taken into guardianship in 1883.    There are more than 300 stone circles in England, over fifty of them are in Cumbria.   The majority are Bronze Age dating between 2000 and 800 BC.   The Neolithic Stone Circles of Cumbria include Castle Rigg, Swinside, in the South, Long Meg and her Daughters, in the Eden Valley.    Castle Rigg has 38 large stones standing up to 10 feet in height is thought to be the oldest.

The first mention of a garden was the Garden of Eden in the Bible.   Gardening began in Eden and continues today.   Little plots and breath taking vistas made by men and women with some help from Nature.

Cumbria has its own Garden of Eden that includes a rich pastureland lying between the North Pennines and the Lakeland Fells - an area of outstanding and diverse natural beauty.   The Eden Valley offers idyllic rustic seclusion.    Peaceful untroubled towns and villages.

The district of Eden covers 832 square miles (2156 square kilometres) of land, with a population of just over 50,000 people.   Eden is the most sparsely populated district in all of England and Wales.    This is where I live and garden.    Today, although below freezing, it is the most idyllic place to dabble in the garden.




Only with the coming of the railway in the mid 19th Century, when wealthy northern industrialists from the cities such as Leeds, Preston, Manchester and Liverpool built holiday homes, did gardens in Cumbria start to change dramatically.    Fiercely competitive, the nouveau riche of the Industrial Revolution vied to have fashionable gardens filled with exotic plants to complement their architect designed houses and the surrounding landscape.

Cumbria now displays spectacular gardens filled to bursting with unusual native and non-native plants and trees, the designs of which can be traced from the time of the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the 21st Century.

To the garden and landscape historian Cumbria is the jewel in England's crown of glorious gardens.

Gardening for pleasure requires surplus time, energy and money and used only to be indulged in by the rich.   Today we all can enjoy the fruits of our gardens as designers.    Hard landscaping materials and plants are accessible to all.

Gardening is about capturing the natural landscape, planning, planting and pottering.   Also, it is about occasionally sitting back  and just looking.
  

 








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