Freda's Garden

9 May 2025

There is a ghost in the garden.

She zigzags down from the tops of the conifers to drink in the pond. She likes the stepping stones; her tiny claws grip the rough sandstone. She departs so swiftly it is as if she is shocked by her own pale reflection.

There is no sign of her yellow-suited beau. Only the red-faced goldfinch struts the branches and examines the feeders. He is the Harlequin to her Columbine. You would not look at him twice – he is just another bright bird – but her … I look for her again, she is so slight, so fleeting …  but she has long gone.

I search her colours among the bird books – olive and cream, subtle shades that blend together and defy precise description. She is a siskin, enticed by the abundance of ash seeds and a nesting site in the heights of an ageing Leylandii. I have never seen a siskin in the garden before, although the conifers have always been here. I suspect it is the sapling ash, now matured at forty feet, which has won her over. If she settles, she will incubate her eggs alone although her partner should help feed the chicks. I make a mental note to remember to look for his bright yellow plumage and black-striped wings. Short of high winds, nothing is likely to bother this little family hidden high in the treetops. I make another mental note: look out for shards of pale blue eggs.

She is not the only ghost here. Twenty years ago, it was a wilderness of dying trees and muddied paths. The previous occupants hated it so much they would not let their children play outside. There were traces, however, of an earlier garden. A large greenhouse, panes smashed, hiding in the shadow of an ancient holly. A drained pond, cracked concrete, soaking up the midday sun. A rotting summerhouse, prone to wasps, facing west. Like pentimento in artwork, if you scratch away at a garden, older layers reveal themselves.

I asked the neighbours. This was Freda’s garden, they said, before she became ill and died. The summerhouse took on a particular poignancy then, and I understood the sadness I felt in this place; we had inherited a garden of the dying facing the land of the dead. I imagined Freda in the summerhouse, propped against cushions and with a blanket across her knees, watching the setting sun. With this in mind, I decided to think of it as Freda’s garden. In the short term at least.

We removed the old trees and planted new ones – rowan, silver birch, cherry. We kept the holly and the hazel; holly to protect the house and hazel for pea sticks. Damsons appeared, followed by currants. Pentimento again. I wondered about the tree stumps littered about in the undergrowth – could they have been fruit trees? Was Freda a forest gardener? I became preoccupied: how to make a forest garden that also works for children …

The concrete pond became a climbing frame. The summerhouse, a playhouse. The veg patch, a trampoline. Years passed and the garden matured. Dogwood thrived, conifers swelled, grass thinned. Soon, the garden was so dense that on the brightest days the challenge was to find a suntrap and avoid a scalp full of gnat bites. Something had to change.

The climbing frame came down. I raised the canopies of trees and removed the lawn. I grew flowers and they brought the butterflies – brimstone, orange tip, holly blue and speckled wood. I know already what happens when the trampoline goes – the space becomes a veg patch. The veg patch becomes a fruit garden and another pond. Freda, I imagine, is looking on, bemused and smiling. This is how she had it.

This is, after all, Freda’s garden. I imagine she watched the siskins from the summerhouse. Perhaps this is why they have come back.