105 Dulwich Village; a country garden in London

I'm Anne Rutherford and this is the garden of 105 Dulwich Village in South London. If it had been possible for you to come last Sunday as planned, you would have arrived here from a gate that next door is a beautiful garden where you could have had teas and cream cakes on the lawn and possibly listened to some music. Unfortunately this couldn't happen so we're doing a little tour of my garden instead. At the moment I'm standing by the area where I have my plant sale. Unfortunately I haven't been able to sell the plants so I'm in the process of repotting them all for next time. Above the tree we have a special butterfly but unfortunately you can hardly ever see anything today. And below it is a bed of nettles. It's also a butterfly and there has been evidence of them laying eggs there on the tree edge so I'm hoping to hear that soon. And right at the bottom we have a pile of old, old, old, old bagpipes. Again, we can't see them very well because we haven't yet repotted them. We're very keen on nature and this is my son's moth trap. About every other day, weather permitting, he switches on this very, very bright light and the moths arrive, attracted by the light, and they slip down these perspex panels to the bottom where there are egg boxes. And they seem to sit there patiently until 5.30 in the morning when he comes and photographs them and reports them. Amazingly, he's had over 500 different species. This is the top level of our garden and when we came here there was a swimming pool which is why there's a gate bridge next door. And when the children left home, we got rid of the swimming pool and instead we put in a water garden. And more recently, this beautiful sculpture. It was created on the spot by James Parker, who's a charming young man from Edinburgh. And it's made from recycled roof tiles of the same slate as the rocks around the pond. And we're very, very pleased with it. This pond has a waterfall and it's for wildlife. It has newts and leeches and all sorts of other creepy crawlies. And it's very restful. It's a lovely place to sit and relieve yourself when you think you've done all you have to. At the same time as the pond being put in, various surrounding trees and shrubs also arrive, including a cedar. We're about to go down to the next level, which was just a large rectangular lawn when we arrived. So I've taken all the corners off and each one is slightly different. The one on the left here is a shrubbery and all the trees were shrubbed on the road market probably about 30 years ago. And on the right, there's a bed with all sorts of mixed up things. And my gin and tonic seat, which gets the last of the evening sun. The bed on the left has a rose arch and tunnel. Unfortunately, since we put all that in, a huge oak tree has grown next door. That's 30 years worth of oak trees. And there's too much shade, so we've lost a lot of the roses. And on the right is what might be my tall border, where I have Delphiniums and Sunflowers, Rose Bay Willow Herbs. We're now going through the rose arch to the bottom level. There are lots of roses growing there at the moment. This is the only really old tree that we have, it's the Mulberry Tree. It's one about the same size as Darwin's house's tent, which is said to have played as a child, but it was just a migratory ape. This is where I hung bird feeders for the large birds, the magpies, parakeets, jackdaws, pigeons, woodpeckers, and so on. And then we're going to take care of the small birds who are feeding on the other side of the garden, which we're about to show you. This is Glasgow's feeding station for the little birds. All the pips and webbings, cat patches, we've had black cats, and occasional pinkies. And it's actually a dog cage that somebody donated years ago. I've been trying for years to find a parakeet food bird feeder, and this is it. I fill up the dishes every day, and they're very, very handy, especially now that we've got young ones to be put in. So this is surrounding York Haven. It replaced a large campus grass, and York stone came from factories in the north of England. The garden was absolutely filthy, so we all spent hours scrubbing it. And the larger paving slabs were five or six inches thick, so it was some undertaking. But in no time at all, it looked as though it had been here forever. The beds around the pond are blue and white, apart from the adsorbed rubbish that pops in in the visors. This is my greenhouse, which I absolutely love. It's early 20th century. We have an advertisement for this particular model, dated 1935, which says that it's been doing good service for 30 years. I've got too many things in pots, but I can't resist acquiring other things which are not necessarily suitable for the garden. This is a saline dribble array. We're going to go on to the background, and I'll speak to you back to Karma. So we're walking up the side path, and this long border is the only border that was here in the past, although it's got completely different planting now. This is an albizia tree, which I've grown from seed, and it's about four years old, and I'm very excited because it's got little flowers on it now. So for the first time, it's got little flowers. My daughter Claudia is a garden designer, and she recently worked very hard on this area, clearing away old laurel and branches and undergrowth. She's planted a few more interesting shrubs and sown woodland wildflower seeds, so that we can enjoy the next spring. Thanks for looking at this video. We're really disappointed not to be able to open our gardens. That applies to hundreds of trees next door as well, and we hope maybe that next year we will be able to come and see it properly. Thank you for watching.