Ssh! Noisy neighbours and yapping dogs can drive gardeners nuts
Gardens should be oases of calm, says Agnes Stevenson, and she has several ideas of how to make yours seem just a little bit more heavenly
Sometimes when I’m in the garden I stop to watch planes flying overhead. Prestwick Airport is a refuelling point for military aircraft from several European countries and they often rumble low over the house. Here in the woods of South Ayrshire we get little road noise so the clatter of the coastguard helicopter or the occasional appearance of a little red stunt plane that performs loops and turns is thrilling, not annoying. Not everyone is so lucky. If you live close to a major road you’ll never be without the noise of cars and trucks, or maybe you have a train line at the bottom of the garden. Loud music, yapping dogs, a neighbour with a serious grass-strimmer habit, they can all drive you nuts. So what can you do if noise is preventing you from enjoying your garden? Horatio’s Garden at the Queen Elizabeth National Spinal Unit in Glasgow sits hard against the southern approach to the Clyde Tunnel and here the solution has been to install a high, solid fence and a linear grove of birch trees that act as an acoustic barrier, cutting the amount of noise pollution that reaches the garden. A few days ago, I visited a garden
close to a major motorway but what struck me most was not traffic, but the sounds of birds.Their chirping acted as an antidote to the road noise. If you want more birds to visit your garden then plant shrubs and climbers to give them cover and make them feel safe from predators. Choose plants that produce seeds and berries so they have a good supply of food. Hang out bird feeders and provide a shallow bowl of water for drinking and bathing. And water is useful in other ways. Trickling over stones or bubbling from a fountain, it makes other noises fade into the background. You now get simple solar-powered devices that float on a pond or in a pot filled with water that will provide you with a gentle gurgle to help blot out other disturbances. Wind chimes also help.Their tinkling helps to bring your attention back to the garden and not to the sounds on the other side of the fence. And if you like to play music while you are in the garden, just bear in mind that not everyone may share your taste for thrash metal, so consider playing it through headphones instead. We all have a responsibility to be good neighbours and doing what we please in our own gardens shouldn’t stop anyone from enjoying theirs.
The warmer days of summer are a great reason to throw open the back door and head out into the garden. The mixture of damp soil and sunshine has triggered accelerated growth, which means that even the most modest patch has quickly turned to jungle. If the time has come to tame the grass, dig weeds from the borders and stop climbers from strangling their hosts, then you can do so in the knowledge it won’t be just your plot that benefits… you will as well. Countless studies have now shown that gardening is good for our health. Almost every week a new report appears to cite gardening as a positive force, capable of reducing stress levels, building strength and suppleness and cutting the risk of conditions such as dementia. It turns out that the combination of regular, moderate exercise and an absorbing pastime is a powerful medicine. Add in a dash of sunshine and fresh air, the benefits of eating vegetables you’ve had the satisfaction of growing yourself and the opportunities for a chat with your neighbour over the garden fence and you have the recipe for a long and satisfying life. And now scientists have discovered that Mycobacterium vaccae – the microbes that live in the soil – act like Prozac, stimulating serotonin in the brain, it turns out that getting your hands dirty could be hugely beneficial. I’m a great believer in the healing powers of gardening. My friend Dianne, diagnosed with inoperable cancer and given three months to live, told her doctors she couldn’t possibly pop her clogs because she had just taken on a new garden, and went on to spend the next 13 years planting trees, setting out hedges and growing vegetables. In Sardinia and Okinawa, both designated “blue zones” – places with a much higher than average number of centenarians, and where people
stay active into their 90s and beyond – gardening is a way of life. And, increasingly in Scotland, gardening is being used as a form of therapy to help people manage all kinds of health conditions. Six years ago Ninewells Community Garden was established in the grounds of Ninewells Hospital in Dundee on the advice of occupational therapists and physiotherapists who wanted to provide outdoor space for rehabilitation of patients. Today the garden is an essential part of the hospital and the whole community, with dozens of groups taking part in gardening activities on a weekly basis. “It is a busy place,” says garden facilitator, Sarah Griffiths. From teenagers with autism, amputees working to regain their sense of balance, primary school pupils being taught about growing and healthy eating, patients from the nearby psychiatric unit, groups from the Maggie’s Centre, which also sits in the hospital grounds, and volunteers from the local community, the garden is in constant use. It covers an acre and has flower borders, vegetable beds, a herb garden, a polytunnel and beehives and, at its heart, the award-winning Leaf Room – a remarkable garden pavilion from where patients can enjoy the garden and surrounding woodland. Now there are plans to create an outdoor kitchen, where everyone who uses the garden can cook and eat together. “A lot of our volunteers say that coming to the garden gives them a sense of purpose,” says Sarah. In Okinawa they
I’m a passionate gardener and want to give patients a place to get outdoors
call this “ikigai” – a reason for living. Something similar is happening in the Borders where mental health nurse Jan Moffat has established Space to Grow in an acre of gardens within the grounds of the Huntlyburn acute mental health ward of Borders General Hospital in Melrose. “I’m a passionate gardener and I wanted to create somewhere for patients to get out of doors,” says Jan. The project was given a recent boost with £30,000 from the People’s Postcode Lottery and local businesses, which has been used for essential landscaping.The garden has become a focus for many patients and Jan says: “It gives people structure to their day. It gives them a sense of purpose.And it has promoted friendships between patients of different ages, it has shown them they are kindred spirits. “Gardener’s World presenter Carol Klein came to visit us recently and that gave everyone a huge boost.” Jan, who now divides her time between Huntlyburn and the Gala Resource Centre, where she has also initiated gardening therapy, is hopeful that local GPs will start using the garden for social prescribing, where they recommend structured activity as an alternative to pills. Thanks to the wonderful Horatio’s Garden now surrounding the wards at the Queen Elizabeth Spinal Unit in Glasgow, patients can take part in gardening activities even from their hospital beds, this connection with growing things is proving to be an effective form of therapy. Projects like these are taking place all over the country. But the desire to garden is also being played out on allotment sites, in back gardens, in school playgrounds, on balconies and by the flat dwellers who are now surrounding themselves with greenery. Gardens, it turns out, are one of life’s essentials. But, then, we’ve always known this, from when the world’s first cultivated places began to emerge in the fertile lands between the Tigris and the Euphrates. These were beautiful spaces, cooled by fountains and pools of water and lined with fig and pomegranate trees, and when pressed to come up with a name, the ancient Persians chose the word “Paradise” to describe what they had created. Today we would still agree.