Walls

The border between our garden and the pub next door is marked by a high wall. On our side there are strawberry plants and on the other side are empty metal casks and flattened cardboard boxes. Our cats and the pub cat never cross the wall but they sometimes sit on top of it, watching each other.

The back of our garden is an unkempt, semi-wild area full of old pots, piles of leaves and straggly bushes. Over the boundary wall is a patch of scrub land which, if the wall were removed, would be a seamless continuation of the garden.

The third wall is no boundary at all. Years before we moved in, the two cottages that make up our house were knocked together but the wall separating the gardens was never removed. When we bought the house, we knocked a gateway through the wall but, before that, to move from one part of the garden to the other involved walking through the house. This second part of the garden has no other garden walls - its outer bounds are defined by buildings.