I started my implementation by planting out the trees that I had ordered. It was early spring & they needed to go in at the earliest opportunity. As the South West of Eire is very wet & mild, trees there bud up relatively early in the spring, but I still got them in the ground in good time. Altogether there were over sixty trees of various different species & these were going to form the main skeleton around which the other elements would be added. The varying conditions across the site required trees with different qualities. In the South West corner I planted Sea Buckthorn up on the exposed cliff to provide some extra wind protection, alongside the three existing young Larch trees there.

 Down below, in the partially sheltered marshy area along the South & West sides, I planted Alder & various species of Willow. There they would thrive in the wet conditions & carry out a pioneering role creating a more conducive environment in which other trees could follow on behind. The young trees would be sheltered by the steep bank above them until they reached eight feet high or so, giving them an excellent opportunity to get started.

 The top of the garden I hoped would in time be dominated by two Sweet chestnut trees, though this was a bit of an experiment & one that would take a long time to determine (at least a decade, even though these were supposed to fruit quite quickly). In the rest of the garden which was more sheltered & generally a lot drier underfoot (i.e. not marshy!), I planted out a variety of different fruit & nut trees; Apples, Pears, Cherries, Edible Hawthorns, Cornelian Cherries, Hazels, Red Elderberries, Plum, Greengage, Fig, Mulberry, Juneberry, Apricot, Arbutus, even a Feijoa. However, even here though I had to find the drier 'lumps' in the ground to plant them on to give them a chance in such generally wet conditions.

 The pathways around the site were fairly obvious; some were already there & others, like the ones around the area I was going the have as a home garden just fell into place. Where the path crossed the stream, I placed several stepping stones, just to make the journey that little bit more comfortable in the depths of winter. I also planted up a pair of Willows either side of the crossing point to act as guide points in low light conditions.

 I then planted out the various shrubs that I had in between them. I planted soft fruit bushes in various zone 1 areas (i.e. around the Willow house & along the pathways) & in clumps to provide a bit of wind protection to those on the leeward side (in theory these might fruit first). I used the Eleagnus' as a fruiting, nitrogen producing windbreak, on the South West side of some of the newly planted fruit trees. I planted an encircling hedge around the area that I was planning to make the Willow dome upon, using fruit trees, hedging plants (Berberis, Eleagnus, Rosa rugosa etc) & cuttings. I had plenty of cuttings of Fushcia, Flowering Currants & Blackcurrants, so I just stuck them all in the ground in between the plants, knowing that at least some of them would root.

 Along the west side of my windbreak perimeter hedge I needed a plant that would cope with being planted in such wet conditions & according to my 'Plants for a Future' book, Phormium tenax (New Zealand Flax) was 'tolerant of boggy moorland' & would do the job. I wasn't quite sure whether that meant that they would grow more slowly or not so big as usual, or just not die! So I tried another experiment; planting them close together in a hedge like fashion, something I have never seen done before or since. I know that they can certainly become big plants that would do this job admirably, but whether they have thrived there I don't know. The other thing that I wasn't sure about at the time was whether I could have coped with all the rustling every time the wind got up a bit! One thing is for certain, if they had thrived, I'd never have gone short of strong fibre.

 In amongst the trees in the orchard I set about planting some deep-rooting perennials & self-sowing annuals & biennials. I wanted them to help to bring up the deep minerals to the surface where the young trees could benefit from them & to provide a bit more wind protection too. For this purpose I chose as diverse a range of plants as Comfrey, Burdock, Parsnip, Yarrow, Kale, Fennel, Tansy, even Thistles! (for the full list see the Final design drawing). Would you believe that we were even bringing in & nurturing Dandelions from further down the mountain because we didn't have any?!

 My next task was to plant up the living Willow house that I had designed, but first I needed to make a framework over which to train it. I harvested some Hazel rods from a local wood that was ready for some coppicing, having worked out how many I was going to need. I tied them together to make the framework shape that I wished to train the Willow into. I had never read anything specifically about doing this, but I had heard rumours & I knew that the Willow wands that I had cut would very likely root. They were however too short to tie together at this point, hence the need for the framework to tie them to. I figured that by the time the Hazel got brittle & fell down it would have done it's job.

 I finished tying up the Hazel frame in the double spiral arm shape that I had designed & then inserted the Willow wands into the ground at 45 degree angles, crossing at right angles & weaving in & out of each other. I had already discovered that cuttings put into the ground at this angle seemed to have a better chance of rooting, presumably because the sap doesn't have to work so hard against gravity to reach the buds. I tied the Willow to the framework where necessary & stood back to imagine how the structure would look as a green living home.

 Once I had planted my potential future home, I started planting up some of the garden beds around it. This was the driest part of the site, even though I knew that there was plenty enough water below the surface to keep the Willow wands happy. Though it was currently quite exposed, the planting of the hedge would in time reduce this & the Willow dome would provide further shelter still to the area behind it. This was where I was going to be growing all the plants that I was used to seeing in the other gardens on the land; the plants I was used now to eating. I took a selection of plants from the garden around the caravan that I was currently living in & transplanted them up in the new garden. The list of these plants appears at the bottom of the Final design drawing.

 Sadly, this was as far as I got with the implementation of this garden & I have never gone back to see how it got on. Maybe one day I will get the chance, but for now I will just have to imagine that at least some of the things that I tried were actually a success.

Maintenance

 Whilst I don't know how little maintenance this garden needed, I do have my experiences from tending the other gardens on the land. These were gardens just like the one I have now, full of a diversity of plants, all rambling under, over & around each other, with little space in between. This meant that it was very difficult for weeds to get a hold & what was there we made the best use of anyway (i.e. we ate the nettles & used them as mulch etc.).

 The rodent population seemed to take care of the slugs in the gardens (& there were some very big black ones out on the moor beyond!) & they also spread seeds around (when they carried off tomatoes for instance & only ate half of them). It wasn't an entirely beneficial relationship though for us at least; we had to sacrifice some plants to them, brassicas in particular, as they loved the stems. All in all, maintenance was very low & most of the weeding & pruning was incorporated into the daily salad picking. This was a job that was shared with the visitors to the land & was also utilised as a learning experience for them. I was once one of those visitors & in time I became the teacher.

 ...And the salads? Well, as you can see, they weren't your regular salads either. We used to keep a list of the plants that went into the salads & in the summer months, the number often went up to seventy or eighty. We took time & care in decorating the salads to honour the garden for feeding us & we all used to eat out of one big bowl, having thanked the garden again by toning together around it.

 An evaluation of this whole process can be found on the Design Review page.