Rays of hope

“If a plant can get two or three hours of light a day, then it will tolerate more shade than can be imagined”

Five years ago, we dug up the orchard. Not all of it, you understand, but an ambitious chunk of it. Like all things in this garden, it started as a simple idea – making a large bed under the apple trees with lots of shrubs, especially species roses. This, in turn, evolved from a long-held desire to plant clipped box and roses in the orchard in-between the apple trees. I had seen a picture of this in a garden in Normandy – of great billowing shrubs spilling with roses and topped by the broad branches of mature apples – and loved it. But box blight has made box too risky and, anyway, our orchard is too small and the trees too