Mosquito food

A soft rain fell for a while just before noon, welcome relief from the enveloping humid fug that’s settled over us over the past few days. It could do with an almighty downpour, which no doubt will happen while I’m digging this afternoon. In the meantime, I’ll be supplying tasty meals to clouds of aggressive, day-biting mosquitos, if the Jungle Formula doesn’t do for them. It didn’t earlier in the week, when my left leg alone received upwards of twenty bites, but that was largely due to the fact that I’d not thought to apply any. The local mosquito population had hitherto been, like me, of the opinion that they only came out to bite around dusk. These fellows must be new.

A windy morning on Roughway

A mild but windy morning on Roughway, grey clouds scudding quickly over the North Downs. I have misplaced my larger ball of thick tarred twine but have managed to salvage enough odds and ends of string from the back of the land rover to allow me to complete the day’s tying-in tasks. More planting to do here too – today we literally turn the corner in the long border, and begin to repeat the planting groups established on the first, shorter trench. I want it to be daily loose loose, though, and avoid it looking blocky. The wind whips across this garden, high on the Greensand Ridge, and though today I’ll be sheltered by a fence while working the plants themselves need to be tough enough to withstand the constant buffeting. That doesn’t mean I won’t be planting a few more fragile things, though – sweet peas on sturdy hazel wigwams, dahlias and paeonies staked to within an inch of their lives. There’s an awful lot to be done, not least looking after the rest of the garden, so enough scribbling, best get on.

RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2013

Best in Show

Another Chelsea Flower Show is behind us. I’m still sorting through photographs to upload and wondering whether or not my overarching sense of disappointment is justified. In spite of its origins as a flower show, and notwithstanding the fantastic displays by top nurseries in the Great Pavilion, it’s frequently the show gardens which receive most attention at Chelsea, certainly with the media. In this centenary year much of the press attention appeared to be focussed on the gnomes, which I managed to avoid entirely, eager as I was to get to the gardens in an attempt to discern this year’s trends and see how tastes have moved on from last year. Strangely I found it particularly hard to identify common themes largely because in contrast to previous years, when the majority of the show gardens seemed to possess a certain coherence – irrespective of whether or not I found them to my particular taste – many of this year’s gardens didn’t quite pull it off. Perhaps the planting might feel rather leaden, or the finish wasn’t quite there, or maybe there was an element (or several) that unbalanced the whole. Admittedly this is only my own personal impression, but it’s no less keenly felt for that. However, in this post I’d like to concentrate on things that I appreciated, rather than those that I didn’t, although I’m always happy to discuss that side of things in person, so do catch me on Twitter if you want the lowdown!

The Daily Telegraph Garden by Christopher Bradley-Hole

Christopher Bradley-Hole narrowly missed out on the Best in Show award with his well executed garden for the Daily Telegraph, the top prize going to the Trailfinders Australian garden. His own garden was loved by many for its stylised depiction of the British landscape; tightly clipped blocks of native species such as yew, box and hornbeam interspersed with drifts of naturalistic grasses and umbellifers, and pools of water intended to signify a meandering river in its lowland course. A cloister around the side from which to view the garden, though the public were denied access to this route, was reminiscent of a Japanese garden, designed to be viewed from without. It was an interesting piece, but as a practical gardener I could not shake thoughts of how impossible it would be to maintain and, while the species chosen should have leant the garden some unity, I found it ultimately a slightly claustrophobic prospect, which is not a feeling I associate with the landscape it purported to invoke.

The Styrax japonica in Roger Platt's garden for M&G

Two gardens I did like very much have both been labelled insufficiently ground-breaking in terms of design. That may or may not be the case, but I thought the planting in both Roger Platt’s ‘Windows through Time’ garden and Chris Beardshaw’s garden for Arthritis Research UK was very accomplished, and the gardens themselves finished to a very high standard.

Even the outer extremities of Chris Beardshaw's garden were beautifully planted

Kazuyuki Ishihara's An Alcove (Tokonoma) garden

As usual, the much smaller Artisan Gardens provided a few delightful vignettes; once again Kazuyuki Ishihara created the most beautiful and atmospheric space, this year with his Japanese tatami room, surrounded by waterfalls, moss encrusted stones and beautifully sculptural acers, pines and ferns – quite magical, and I lingered here a while.

A gallery of more photographs, with some more thoughts on this year’s show, can be seen here.

Three ways to keep on top of your garden in May

It is early, a grey and misty morning, the hedgerows a luminous and dripping green with the dew lying heavily on the ground below. Birds sing, lambs bleat, and a solitary crow pecks for food in the field. Trees that were tentatively offering up delicate buds a matter of weeks ago are suddenly in full leaf. Mother Nature knows how to make an entrance and, fashionably late, the doors to the growing season are thrown aside and she is suddenly before us and around us and commanding our attention, while spring rushes in and May bursts into life.

So the month began, and so it continues. This is not a time of year to neglect the garden, as grass and weeds put on inches of new growth with each passing day and the undergrowth sends out tendrils of goosegrass to scout out untended ground, at which point it moves in with reinforcements to reclaim the territory by virtue of a more imposing occupation. The change of pace can take you unawares; each time I come home the answer phone winks at me to indicate another overwhelmed garden owner seeking assistance, and I can only help as many as the daylight hours and my diary will allow.

As futile as it might initially appear a strategic approach to the garden can help in holding back the advancing waves of vegetation, and while some investment in time is inevitable it needn’t occupy every spare moment. You can’t do everything at once, so let’s consider just three tasks that you stand a change of fitting into your schedule.

Weed

The trick is, a little, and often. When faced with a jungle it can be tempting to go into denial mode, putting off the task of weeding until you reach breaking point and exhaust yourself in one or two mammoth sessions where you go at it like a crazed person. It’s a great shame when a garden becomes just an another guilt-inducing bogeyman on your to-do list . If you can partition your space into sections in your mind, and spend a few minutes a day or every other day in clearing the weeds (honestly, in a typical suburban garden you will see a difference with a regular five minute slot), that will make the task appear more achievable than if you try to get the whole lot done at once. Yes, it’s true that around now many weeds will be thinking about seeding themselves about, and that in an ideal world they would all be pulled out before this can happen. If you have the time for this, that’s fantastic. But you know what? You’re never going to have a garden that’s free of weeds. That’s why they’re weeds; the most adaptable, incredible survivors the plant kingdom has ever produced, perfectly suited to their situation, and we’re never going to win.

But you can fight back, and for that you need to choose your weapons with care. A hand fork is essential for getting small weeds out by the roots, and a garden or border fork for getting out deeper rooted and more mature specimens such as docks (it helps if the soil’s not rock hard here!). But both are time consuming, and for a quick weeding session, you want something that will help you see that you’ve made a difference. This is where the hoe comes in, the long handled tool with a flat cutting edge at the end, which severs weeds at the root as you skim it across the ground just below soil level. Keep the blade sharp, choose a dryish day and the hoe will prove an invaluable friend, clearing large areas with surprisingly little effort. Several variations are available, dutch hoes and draw hoes, hand or ‘onion’ hoes for tightly planted areas, and double-bladed versions which cut on both the push and the pull action – the best thing is to go to a garden centre and see what they feel like in your hands. You may even build up a collection, though that could just be me.

Edge

Leave the middle of the lawn to get a little longer. Or maybe even a lot – everyone loves a daisy, don’t they? The point is, you can become a slave to your lawn before you know it. Many people concentrate on the mowing and feeding and weeding while neglecting the edges, although it’s these very edges – the borders between lawn and not-lawn – which define the various spaces in your garden and help the brain to create sense of what it sees. Presented with a close cut lawn with messy edges, and the same patch of grass left longer but with neat, crisp boundaries, it’s normal for us to perceive greater order in the latter. A half moon cutter, which has a straighter blade than the slightly curved spade, may be required to re-establish overgrown edges by making a crisp line, but once this has been achieved it doesn’t take much effort to trim the grass back using edging shears, and even less with a small strimmer. Regularly done (weekly), you don’t even need to pick up the clippings every time, although if you leave it for more much longer than this you will generate more than will easily rot down in situ, and will need to be removed to compost heap or green bin.

Water

If you have plants in containers, you will need to be watering them daily now. I find time spent watering therapeutic; it keeps me in touch with my plants and helps me to know what needs attention. But it can be time consuming when done manually, so to avoid watering becoming overly onerous it’s worth investigating some form of automatic irrigation system – essential when you’re away on holiday, but also useful when you’re not. Typically you can buy a starter kit which consists of a battery operated timer which screws straight onto the outside tap, a pressure reducing valve, and a length of small diameter hose pipe with a selection of drippers and nozzles for delivering controlled amounts of water straight to the base of the plant where it’s needed. Usually, these systems can be added to with the purchase of extra component parts. It is quite astonishing what a difference regular irrigation can make to the health of your plants, which sounds obvious, but often has to be seen to be appreciated. Bear in mind if you’ve added water retaining gel to your containers when planting, or used compost which incorporates a similar product, you may well need to reduce the length of the irrigation bursts, although I like to keep the frequency the same to avoid stressing the plant. Finally, all of this uses much less water than indiscriminately dousing everything with sprinkler, hosepipe or even watering can, as the water goes where needed without being deflected by foliage. Good news in this age of the ubiquitous water meter.

So, automatic watering, louche lawns with crisp edges, and a daily few minutes pushing a hoe along the ground. Three simple steps that will help to push back the encroaching green waves which lap around the house at this time of year, reclaiming some space in which to enjoy the garden.

Green & pleasant

It must have been holidaying in Dorset as a child that instilled in me a love of earthworks. Driving through the lush countryside a few miles from Bridport our local landmark was Eggardon Hill, a prominent feature on the local skyline but, to a small child, all the more exciting for the iron age hill fort and burial mounds to which it is home. As a family we became adept at identifying the telltale swollen welt of tumuli in the landscape, while my sister and I learnt how to read the contours of the land on the Ordnance Survey map and home in on the gothic typeface that indicates a Feature of Interest. On the same vacations I remember scaling the windswept grass terraces of Maiden Castle, and clambering around the Roman amphitheatre at Maumbury Rings in Dorchester.

I’ve been asking myself what it is that so appeals to me about these constructions. It’s not merely the frisson you feel when encountering a familiar object – or, in this case, material — used in an unfamiliar way, or even the play of light and shade across the horizontal and vertical surfaces of the banks, paired with the relentless green of the closely cropped turf. But there’s also the delight of seeing the commonplace being used to create something of more complexity in both purpose and meaning. The grass itself has a semiotic link to something deep within most of us, recalling moments of carefree fun from childhood — whether it calls to mind grand lawns, country pastures or a welcome patch of green among the urban jungle. There’s something quintessentially British about grass, and pulling and pushing the land about into forms that suit our purpose before covering it over with a blanket of grass seems an entirely proper thing to do.

It’s exciting to me that garden designers and landscape architects like Charles Jencks and Kim Wilkie are incorporating these features today. But what unexpected joy, when entering the newly redesigned walled garden at Riverhill Himalayan Gardens, to discover crisply defined curved terraces of grass. Inspired no doubt by agrarian practices in the foothills of Nepal, it still somehow feels rooted in the Kentish landscape, only a few miles away from the sites of hill forts at Ightham and Plaxtol. The garden was full of children, throwing themselves with gusto at the embankments and laughing as they slid down the terraces. I’ll certainly be coming back to spend some time gazing at these lush green contours. Quite apart from anything else, in the absence of a flock of sheep which would have unwelcome consequences for the contents of the borders, I’m interested to see how they get on with the mowing.

An uplifting afternoon

I have a cold. This is very annoying, as the light outside today is shining with an intensity not felt for many months; the sky alternating between sunny and overcast with dramatic, silver-fringed clouds, and the air thick with a cacophony of birdsong. By late afternoon everything in our west facing garden is backlit: the bamboos in the courtyard, the early white tulips lining the path, and most impressively the amelanchier, now looking its very best, every stem heavy with pale cream candelabras of pristine new flowers. It’s impossible to stay indoors feeling sorry for oneself so I plug my constantly running nostrils and make my way to the greenhouse for more sowing and potting up activity, while Bill lies on the lawn outside, making himself sick with an all-you-can-eat buffet of lawn weeds, chief among them the strap-like leaves of Plantago lanceolata. Perhaps he’s trying to tell me something, as the ribwort plantain is used medicinally for, amongst other things, alleviating respiratory problems, and is an effective expectorant. Seven years after beginning to carve out something resembling a garden from the blank, weed-strewn canvass we took on it still loves our garden – especially the grass paths – as not only is it more than happy to grow in compacted soil (earning it one of its many common names, ‘waybread’ for its habit of growing on paths), but also likes to seed itself into the much more open soil structure of the borders. Truth be told, although its ground hugging rosettes are something of a pain in what little lawn we have, when grown in open ground I rather like its leaves and look forward to seeing the dark flowerheads with their little creamy tonsures, which hover above the plant on slender stalks and sway with the breeze, reminiscent of a small sanguisorba. Prodigious they are if allowed to set seed but, in the border, they’re not hard to pull out. I think I shall miss them if ever I become so efficient at home that I manage them out of our garden, although that day shows no sign of arriving.

But there’s something far more exciting which has drawn me away from my desk. These past few weeks I’ve been peering into the gloom below the pyracantha hedge, looking for signs of life in the leaf mould. Ever since I carefully snipped off last years mature leaves at the beginning of the month I’ve been waiting in excited anticipation for the unfurling of delicate, two-tone yellow flowers accompanied by heart-shaped leaves on impossibly thin, wiry petioles. The strong yet delicate and airy structure of the plant suggests some tiny eccentric aeronautical construction – you could almost be forgiven for thinking that the epimedium was designed to take to the air and fly. But the levitation for which this plant is known is of an entirely more earthy nature, with its reputation as an aphrodisiac. In a mood of uncharacteristic gentility I had decided that the nickname ‘horny goat weed’ for some reason referenced the horns on a goat’s head. It doesn’t, as another name, ‘Randy Beef Grass’, should have told me. Sold in tablet form as a the Chinese herbal medicine equivalent of Viagra, the uplifting effect was allegedly first observed in his charges by a Chinese goat herd, and is attributable to the compound icariin in which the plant is rich. Enough. Of more interest to the gardener are the properties of cultivars which provide robust and evergreen ground cover – many exhibiting attractive bronze markings on the leaves – several of the hardier types able to cope with dry shade. I have a fairly generic, but reliably hardy Epimedium x versicolour 'Sulphureum', whose leaves should emerge tinged with red, although mine refuse to, an annoyance which I feel may be due to the almost complete lack of any direct sunlight. I’ll move a clump this autumn into a more exposed position to test this theory next spring. In the meantime, I have a long shopping list of cultivars to acquire, starting with E. x rubra with its red bordered pale yellow flowers, looking for all they’re worth like something you’d buy by the quarter from a glass jar. Probably best not to eat them, though. The kind of sweeties that would keep a chap up all night.

Rather impressionistic due to the photographer wobbling about in low light

Spring

Spring rushes in wearing an expression of apologetic tardiness, a picture of windswept dishevelment. Better late than not at all and, now that the worst of the frosty nights seem to have passed, we can get on. On with rejoicing over meetings with old friends, and on with remembering the new ones you’d forgotten you’d invited. I have no recollection of planting Chionodoxa last year, but they’re here now, where they weren’t last year, where I was expecting crocuses which I seem to have planted further towards the back of this motley ensemble. The effect is harmonious to the extent that I begin to believe I had a sensible plan at planting time, albeit one which I’ve since forgotten. Appropriately then, forget-me-nots will join swarthy self-sown spanish bluebells and grape hyacinths Muscari in completing the late spring cerulean spectacle, though these last two will quickly become thuggish and require careful management. In May they’ll be succeeded by the white blooms of Paeony lactiflora ‘Shirley Temple’ and a pair of Dicentra aurora, while Corydalis ‘Purple Leaf’ with its tubular neon blue flowers and deep cut foliage will complement the dicentras and the ever-present ferny backdrop. Each of these has recently declared itself a survivor of the winter months, unfurling fresh, vibrant foliage above the well-mulched soil. I’m particularly excited at the prospect of watching this small section of the garden unfold this year.

Corydalis 'Purple Leaf' peaks out from behind the bluebells

The blue-green foliage of the dicentra emerges from a winter slumber

It’s at this point I realise that something is amiss. A californian lilac, Ceonothus ‘Concha’, presides over this corner of the garden, clothed in May with light blue liquorice alsort flowers which, in slowly deteriorating, clothe the ground below in baby blue confetti. Only right now it’s not looking quite as perky as it should. In fact, it’s looking decidedly – and there’s no gentle way of putting this – dead. Shrubs of this genus are often not particularly long lived on our heavy Kentish soils, and it’s not unheard of for them to croak after five or six years. This particular specimen, although in a corner and sheltered from the coldest gusts from the east, could be exposed to winds from other directions which would seize its top heavy growth and rock it about in spite of our best efforts to stake it securely. Well, no matter – I wasn’t overly convinced by it in that spot (truth be told, I find its leaves rather too small and ungenerous) and its loss presents an opportunity. What to put in its place, now...there’s the question.

On Tufty’s tail

Something is digging up the lawn. And it’s a different something from the Something that’s making holes in the turf at the top of this garden. That Something is a rabbit, or rather, a community of rabbits, their fiendish excavations discovered by the unexpected disappearance of my foot, and with it a good part of my lower leg, while surveying the kitchen beds. A surprisingly deep hole which took a lot of filling in, for all the good it will do, as the rabbits will no doubt simply pop up elsewhere. Little sods.

No, this Something is digging smaller holes – well, ‘hollows’ would be a more accurate description – and more of them, in a random, almost frenzied manner. You could, if you were inclined towards a spot of gratuitous anthropomorphism, imagine the tiny beasts scampering about and muttering, “I’m sure I buried it somewhere around here...or, maybe over there!”, forepaws a blur of frantic activity in an effort to find the furry critter’s equivalent of the elusive door keys. My money’s on squirrels; several piles of empty, cracked hazelnut shells dotted around the garden would suggest this is a safe bet. Which is odd as for all the time I’ve spent here I have neither seen a single squirrel nor heard its chastising bark. (It often seems to come as a surprise to people that grey squirrels are not mute. In fact, they can make quite a racket, particularly when annoyed or angry, and to annoy a squirrel would appear to be a feat easily achieved. Walking under a tree in which they happen to be sitting causes insult sufficient to trigger an outburst of barking, which you could be forgiven for mistaking for the chattering of a magpie with laryngitis. If, indeed, a magpie has a larynx – I assume it has some similar apparatus. But my point is, grey squirrels can produce a noise, and the noise produced is a rather tetchy, mean sort of sound.) So today I resolved to seek out Sciurus carolinensis, and having elevated my gaze a little higher than normal, sure enough a specimen was to be seen performing acrobatics among the boughs of a neighbouring oak tree. So, it is likely that the vandals in this case are squirrels, though these rural ones seem less tame than you might expect, preferring to keep out of the way of human kind. As well they might if they’re going to cause trouble.

That squirrels can cause problems for the gardener is nothing new. The RHS website has a page documenting their many crimes: in addition to making holes in your lawn and robbing the food from bird feeders, they can strip bark from trees (they seem particularly fond of acers), dig up and eat your tulip bulbs, eat flower buds on magnolias and camellias and munch through plastic netting. And they make that nasty noise. But while in many gardens (unfortunately not this one for reasons of layout and immediate geography) rabbits can be kept at bay with fencing, the aerial prowess of the squirrel makes it an altogether more difficult visitor to exclude. Humane trapping and dispatching seem to be the most efficient method (note the dispatch step; it is illegal under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 to release a grey squirrel to the wild, so transporting caught squirrels to your local woodland or country park in order to restore their freedom is not an option), but as the afore-mentioned website cheerfully observes, “more squirrels are likely to move in to occupy the vacated territory, so a garden is unlikely to be squirrel-free for long.” Rather galling, particularly as the grey squirrel is a non-native species, whose aggressive behaviour and immunity to the squirrel parapoxivirus (SPPV) which it carries has obliterated red squirrel numbers in England, although a programme of grey squirrel culling in Scotland and the northern counties is seeing numbers of the native reds returning.

All this could drive a gardener to distraction, or possibly to drink. But if the gardener in question is more inclined to seek solace in a bout of comfort eating, I think I may have discovered the perfect solution. A gourmet pie company in London, Little Jack Horner’s, who combine beer, prunes and pearl barley with an interesting free-range and highly sustainable ingredient.


Pies from Little Jack Horner’s

Grey Squirrel Hunter article from The Guardian

Squirrel and sherry pie recipe

Main picture used by kind permission of infomatique on Flickr under the Creative Commons Licence.

Frozen rabbit

Late March, Palm Sunday behind us, and most of the country is in the grip of snow again. Here we’ve escaped the worst of the weather – only the odd flake falling – but outside the wind is bitter and a chill is on the ground. Indoors we’ve been nursing coughs and sneezes and sore throats – my first for at least eighteen months – but out in the cold, fresh air my head clears and thought becomes easier as the steady tempo of work drives out more precious complaints. Here in the ever-present company of robins and the occasional blackbird, to whom clearly both spade and mattock ring sonorous as any dinner gong, I am glad of my hat (sometimes two at once), scarf and thermals, but I muse as I work that the central heating back indoors has spoilt us. Not only does it make us softer and more susceptible to winter illnesses when we get a little run down, but it dries out throats and noses and makes sleep elusive. Still, I ask myself if I am really advocating a return to houses like the one in which I spent my childhood, with gas fires and three-bar electric heaters, where only the side of you facing the heat source was warm and to move more than a foot or two away was to be resubmerged in icy cold so thick you could almost see it eddying around you? I don’t think so. I think rather I’m picturing some cosy aga-warmed kitchen of a woodland cabin or farmhouse I’ve never seen, wet boots and gloves drying on the hearth while supper warms in the oven and a kettle sings on top. Fairy tale stuff, but it’s cold and still dark, and spring’s late, so I think I’m allowed a comforting daydream.

Swing {thump}, tread {squish}, lever {thut}, shovel {flump}. I love digging. The sound, the rhythm, the movement. Though I’ve a sneaking suspicion that there might be something in the no-dig method, I've not yet found a way of putting in rabbit fencing without disturbing the soil to at least a spit deep, preferably more, so I feel I can safely complete this job without spectral voices nagging me about damaging the soil structure and the loss of carbon sequestration capacity. Quite apart from which considerations it’s a cracking way to keep warm, so I’ll continue to find many a reason to so occupy myself during the colder months, even if the days of double-, or even single-digging a plot are largely behind us.

Swing {thump}, tread {squish}, lever {thut}, shovel {flump}. I scoop the final mound of earth back into place over the chicken wire barrier, a warm glow steadily spreading through me at the knowledge that my handiwork will keep my clients’ cherished plants un-nibbled this year.

A flake or two of snow has started to fall, and a rabbit scampers over my boot.

The dark side

Spring time. Well, March anyway – time at last for sowing seeds, and the last chance for clearing beds of the rotting bedraggled remnants of last year’s splendour and, in doing so, banishing all memories of a wet and miserable year. Lengthening days, air noisy with the chatter of birds, buds on the brink of bursting, soil warming as the sun gathers strength with every passing day. Gladdened by the prospect of the new year and the end of the long, dark winter, we rashly peal off layers of warm clothing and head for the garden, to be met with ferocious, bitter winds, the coldest March night in 26 years, and three and a half inches of snow. The snow, which started suddenly at half six on Monday morning, continues to fall heavily and apparently, eschewing tradition, almost horizontally, until noon the next day, at which time the sun suddenly appears and begins to melt it away. But by this time we’ve had an evening of travel chaos, schools are closed and gardening plans seriously disrupted.

You’ll pardon us in Kent if we feel confused; the more cautious of us were expecting winter to have a sting in the tail (I may I fear even have predicted it in my last post) but, considering the last couple of weeks have been warm enough to work outside in shirt sleeves, excepting Friday’s torrential rains, it’s hard to plan when the weather is quite so capricious. Suffice to say, it would seem safe to suppose the next week or so will see colder than average temperatures. I wouldn’t mind that if only we could be sure of some decent light – at this time of year, it’s important to resist the temptation of sowing seeds too early and then running the risk of the seedlings going all weak and leggy as they struggle through the gloom. But this is gardening, and there are precious few guarantees. Especially, it would seem, in March.

The bright side

The morning began cold, damp and murky, with mist lying heavily over the distant hills. A few weeks ago I alluded to a sense that somehow Winter wasn’t quite done with us and now, at the end of February, mornings like these leave us in no doubt that this is still the case, though the daily increasing indicators of Spring’s approach suggest the hivernal grip is slipping.

Maybe we’re in for one last bitter wintery fling before we see the back of that season till the end of the year. But tomorrow is March – when the days grow much longer, and seeds need sowing, and the garden really starts to grow in earnest – and I’m optimistically looking forward to a warm, dry spring.

As I loaded rake, spade and barrow back into Digory at the end of the day, the sun came out.

Fashion in the garden

I don’t know who invented knee-pads, but I’d like to shake them by the hand. Possibly I’d squeeze a little too hard, just as some form of recompense for making the straps on the back of mine too short so that, when fastened sufficiently tightly to prevent them from wandering down my shins and consequently making themselves unavailable to my knees at the very moment of greatest need, they bite into the back of my legs. But, on the whole I’m rather pleased with them, at least after their first day in service. They have kept my knees dry and, most importantly to my mind, warm and isolated from the cold winter ground. There have been several chilly mornings where I’ve almost felt the veins in my kneecaps contract with the cold as I knelt on the frosted soil; the immediate moderate discomfort I can deal with, but the long term effects have to be considered as a jobbing gardener. If you want to keep at this into your old age, I tell myself, you need to remain bendy, or at least as bendy as you’ve ever been. I now feel liberated – freed from the tyranny of the waterproof trousers which I seem to have been wearing for months, irrespective of whether or not it’s actually been raining. Hard as it might seem to believe there have been quite a few dry days, at least in terms of precipitation, although the the ground has remained stubbornly, knee-soakingly soggy, something which the overgarments were supposed to counter. Inevitably they didn’t; they might be good at keeping off the rain and snow while walking, but prolonged contact with wet ground under pressure from several stone of solid gardener invariably results in the dampness eventually seeping through. That, and the combined efforts of bramble and briar have shredded several pairs into ribbons.

While on the subject of workaday fashion, I’ve also decided to wear eye protection whenever I’m in the garden now, which means finding a pair of safety glasses which look less like goggles stolen from a school chemistry lab, and more like spectacles. I’ve more or less succeeded, but they’re still larger than normal glasses. And then there’s the hat. Several of the gardens I work in are large, rural and exposed, which puts me at the mercy of an often bitingly chill wind, and so a trapper style hat, with faux fur flaps (which I think of as ears), seemed to be a good idea. It seems to be doing the job, but at what price? With the safety specs, I now look like an unholy cross between Ali Gee and Rowlf the piano playing dog from the Muppet Show. With knee pads.

It’s a look.

Notes from the greenhouse

11.5°C in the greenhouse, 7.5°C outside

You know that glorious winter’s day we carry about in our heads; cold, crisp, and golden with sunshine? It was today – and although it’s never a hardship working in the garden, this afternoon it was a positive pleasure. And so, while Emma got stuck in to weeding the veg patch (rhubarb peaking through the soil here; fat, deep pink stems starting to swell), I made for the greenhouse.

I’m nursing a bruised hand from planting digitalis on Friday; the most ridiculous injury, which can only have been caused continually stabbing through the blasted weed control membrane (how I hate that stuff). Consequently my body in its wisdom has decided to isolate my hand by turning my entire forearm into a solid lump of locked-up bone and immobile tendon. So I’ve not been at my most dextrous today, but hopefully my bench skills haven’t suffered too badly. And it gives me something with which to distract myself while avoiding accusatory stares from the corpses of plants I should’ve taken better care to see through the winter. More food for the compost heap.

I’ve potted on some of the Ammi majus sown in autumn, though lots more to do, and also the A. visnaga. It’s encouraging to see at least some of the Bupleurum which I sowed straight into 9cm square pots have made it, and I’m looking forward to having these in the garden this year. I’ve also started sowing sweet peas (Lathyrus odoratus ‘Blue Ripple’ today) as the light levels are increasing — I didn’t sow any in autumn, and I don’t want to start too early this year and end up with leggy, sick looking seedlings that give me rubbish plants. At this point, I need to point out that the current formulation of the peat free compost from B&Q (their Verve brand) is utterly hopeless, rubbish water retention and no structure at all. (You know what you’re left with after a vampire gets staked or wanders too far into the sunshine? Well, that.) I need to find a reliable, good alternative, and am tempted to try Carbon Gold’s GroChar. It’s not cheap, but you get what you pay for, I’m told.

Outside in the beds the tulips are pushing through strongly, though I fear I’ll have to dig them all out and bin them fairly quickly being reasonably certain that last year’s poor show (mottled petals and flowers going over rapidly) was down to tulip fire. It’s a significant investment to have to lose though so I do want to be sure but, if my worst imaginings prove to be well founded, this means no tulips or lilies or fritillaries in the borders for four years. Interestingly, the foliage so far looks healthy. We shall see.

Next time, I’m sowing straight into 9cm pots

Vampire dust

Crumble filling

Reasons to be cheerful...

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A jade’s trick

Yesterday the weather played a trick on us. Unusually mild and fresh and bright and, although at one point a dark cloud overhead brought with it a brief rain shower, half an hour later the sun and the breeze had dried everything out. The best kind of rain. The strongly gusting wind, so usually an annoyance, merely seemed to be blowing away all memories of a sodden summer, followed by a wet winter. For the first time in months I returned to the van at the end of the day with clean tools, and all night long the hearth remained unadorned with a pair of sodden, mud caked and gently steaming gloves.

Of course, the soggy weather is back today. Still mild, still windy, but now whipping the rain into your eyes no matter which way direction you face. Fools, says the Winter. Did you think Spring had come early? I’m not done with you yet.

The ostrich and the beaver

There are those who would seek to persuade you that there’s nothing to be done in the garden over winter. Pay them no heed. They are for the most part misguided, although several are bonkers and one in particular has that “Mwaha-HA!” laugh that tends to accompany delusions of a nature not conducive to the wellbeing of society at large. I have noticed that, whatever their peculiar motivation, they who espouse hibernal gardening abstinence fall into one of two categories, and can therefore be designated as either ostrich, or beaver.

The ostrich – who, like both its avian and metaphorical cousins, spends a proportion of the day with its head in the sand – dislikes facing up to the reality of the garden in winter, and will barricade itself behind closed doors with a glass of something medicinal the moment the days draw in and it becomes too soggy underfoot to be pleasant. Stopping its ears to the plaintive cries of neglected areas of its territory, it will walk with single-minded purpose between front gate and front door without so much as a glance to the side, lest a reminder of the work to be done should inconveniently intrude upon the conscience. It will survey the garden through the window, if at all, until it can be tempted out of doors again by more clement conditions in spring. At which point those tasks which should have been tackled over winter must now be undertaken in an undisciplined scramble, at an inappropriate time or, just as as likely, left until next year. When they probably won’t be done either.

Of course, it is entirely possible that you, dear reader, have Put Your Garden To Bed For The Winter, in which case I salute both your industry and your organisation and confer upon you the Order of the (Busy) Beaver. In an ideal world, I too would have spent the last few weeks of autumn weeding every border to within an inch of its life before spreading a generous several inches of mulch all around, both to suppress the weeds and to insulate the soil from winter’s icy machinations. Enjoying the prospect of a good frosty show, however, I’d still have left the more ornamental seed heads standing, and these would need cutting back around now as they start to take on a louche and bedraggled air, and then there’s the roses and the fruit trees, the grape vines and the second pruning of the wisteria...there are clearly practical reasons why you can’t do all of this in autumn, and if you leave it till spring you run the risk of the pruning cuts bleeding – not usually terminal, but unsightly and a bit messy.

My own list of winter gardening tasks is vast and comprehensive, including weeding and clearing, planting and mulching. There’s a whole host of plants which really benefit from pruning now in their dormant period, and they all need to be be attended to before the sap starts to rise in early spring. Not to mention shed-based jobs such as servicing mowers and strimmers and blowers, and cleaning and sharpening the hand tools. And even though the light is now increasing, there often don’t seem to be enough hours in the day to get it all done.

Fortunately all of these are tasks which I enjoy immensely and, muffled against the cold, the winter garden is a happy place for me to spend my days. Even if there are some who wonder what on earth I can be finding to keep myself busy out there.

Frosticles

Hankering after a cold snap and thoroughly fed up of mild, windy mush, I’ve been cheering myself along with some images from when winter really was winter. All of three weeks ago.

Blithe spirits

The snow has stopped for the moment, though I can see it falling on the downs in the distance. Two pairs of socks and toes still cold, though the rest of me is toasty. In the week since my last visit the tree surgeon has been and removed the dying birch which I had noticed had been rotting away at the base. One of triplets, the remaining pair stand together surveying the low stump with apparent detachment, anaesthetised to their loss. It doesn’t look quite as bad as I had feared, but slightly downhill from where their sick sibling once stood these two appear as though they might drag the green covering of lawn from off the top of the garden. Balance will need to be restored, and a post mortem carried out on the stump.


But that’s for another day. This garden is large enough to be divided onto a series of smaller projects, and today’s priority is to continue the work on the main border, making it both more visually coherent and also more manageable for the busy family who live here. This involves first clearing what’s already here and then implementing a new planting scheme to give year round interest without too onerous a maintenance requirement. To this end, and at the customer’s request, I’ll also be reducing the depth of the borders themselves. It’s not an insignificant task, but an exciting one as the newly planted border will completely transform the view from the house. And so, while some of the plant matter is relocated to a temporary holding bed, the majority will find itself destined for one compost heap or another; inoffensive leafy material to the domestic compost bins, while anything weedy, seedy, or in possession of an overzealously creeping root system to the council green waste collection, where the heat of the municipal heaps soon reduces all to innocuous crumbly goodness. I never feel bad about pulling out plants – if they don’t get preserved whole, they end up as a soil conditioner providing sustenance for other plants. Even the woodier shrubs destined for the bonfire will eventually make it back to the soil, often in the form of potash for the kitchen garden. It’s a happy day’s work, bent over the borders, sorting each forkful for this pile or that, and if I’m surrounded by the ghosts of hundreds of plants, they’re blithe spirits I think, perfectly accustomed to this periodic reshuffling and being helped along their way to their next incarnation.

And the tall birch tree, its wood warming some grateful family huddled round their fireside on a chilly winters evening...I wonder if its spirit will make its way back to this place to stand with its forgetful sisters, and hope instead that it will stay with the ashes from the fire’s grate, nourishing next summer’s raspberries.

Tree time

The first weekend in December, ringing in Advent, and with it, winter. The Christmas tree was bought from the nursery up the road, crammed into the car and – thanks to the help of the good friends we’d invited over – hung with baubles and lights. This is clearly the way to decorate your tree, and I can heartily recommend the following method: assemble the necessary equipment (one tree, one set of LED lights to avoid traditional bulb faffing, one quantity of decorations of dubious taste and unashamed cheer), provide food and drink, and stick them all in a room together with some cheesey music. And Robert, I predict you’ll find, is your Auntie’s signifcant other.


Not for us the practical choice, the non-drop Nordman fir Abies nordmanniana with its soft, generously clothed branches and symmetrical outline. We prefer the traditional Norway Spruce, Picea abies, and all that that entails, from the refreshing smell of pine wafting through the house throughout the festive season to the inevitable carpet of dropped needles beneath the tree. It’s just a part of Christmas; our Christmas anyway. Others are welcome to their artificial trees, I’m sure they are the sensible, economic choice and very realistic these days. But I reserve the right to waste my money and hop barefoot and swearing into the kitchen, another sharp green dagger piercing the sole of my foot.

But big as the tree is, and warm and snug as the stove had made the house, come Sunday morning we were craving fresh air and bigger trees, and so drove to Friezland Woods in Tunbridge Wells, our nearest wood under the care of the Woodland Trust. A dramatic place, notable for the outcrop of massive sandstone rocks at the top end of the woods, over which huge yew trees tower, their roots grasping monumental boulders with iron intent. It’s an impressive sight and the closest thing to Angkor Wat you’re likely to find in darkest Kent.

And a wood is a good place to go for tall trees. While a lone tree out in the field will grow stout in girth and hearty in leaf and bud, its cousins in the woods will grow taller and straight, each in close proximity to its neighbour, drawing one another up in search of the light. Tall, straight timber is to be had from woodland trees, but not on the side nearest a clearing, where the light encourages the growth of the sideshoots and branches that will cause knots in the plank.

Below, the ground in spring is a rug weaved with bluebells, celandine and close relatives buttercup and anemone. Above is yew and holly, birch and hazel, oak and, for the moment, ash, and tall alder trees down by the stream where the steam train to Groombridge startles us and has us all scrabbling for cameras, resulting in a collection of appalling photographs. Then we too go in search of the light, heading up hill towards the edge of the wood, where we emerge to a newly ploughed field in the sunshine to drink coffee from flasks and eat donuts for Hanukkah, the Festival of Lights, as we have a friend with us from Jerusalem and he’s come with provisions. Even Bill gets some, though not the coffee. You don’t want to give a terrier coffee.

After which home for lunch and to split some more apple and oak and chestnut for the fire, which has burned low since we’ve been out. A woody, tree filled, friend filled weekend in all.

Everything feels right. What a great start to winter.

Photograph at head of post by kind permission of Grant S. Rogers

Passions and parrotias

There’s a garden that I look after which has it all. A sunken patio surrounded by cottage garden beds, clipped evergreen shrubs, lichen covered stone and a large pond complete with jetty, still water reflecting the ghostly white stems of birches standing tall and silent at the edge. Beyond the artfully hidden compost bins the end of the garden disappears into mature oak woodland. The whole place is quite magical, so much so that in all honesty the prospect of tending it might have proved too much for me to bear had not the previous gardener moved out of the area. A fortuitous day indeed – certainly for me. And, who knows, perhaps also for him. That jetty can be quite slippery.

In my experience gardeners are often outwardly serene individuals in whom passion runs deep and, whilst on occasion the outer serenity may be occluded by a somewhat warmer front, the passion is invariably present. Snowdrops appear to cause normally respectable people to behave with quite irrational zeal, and I’ve witnessed genteel ladies positively foam at the mouth over a tray of Mexican succulents. All gardeners have something which will stir up this fire within. In my own case the trigger is usually a tree of one sort or another; perhaps a majestic, centuries-old oak, silent chronicler of generations and home to a myriad tiny lives, or a knobbly-kneed swamp cypress dipping its feet in the river while unfurling soft new green needles in spring.

The garden in question is stocked with some particularly fine specimens, although not ostentatiously so. Three trees in particular are prone to quicken the pulse whenever I see them – a pair of parrotias and a liquidambar, all of which have been a blaze of colour these past few weeks. The American Sweet Gum (Liquidambar styraciflua) is a medium to large sized tree with glossy leaves which in shape resemble those of a maple (on the tree it’s easy to tell the two apart, as all acers have leaves directly opposite each other on the stem, whereas on the liquidambar the leaves are staggered, or alternate). There is a wonderful example in the gardens at Scotney Castle, where the ground by the boathouse is covered with a carpet of yellow and red leaves every autumn.

The Persian Ironwood (Parrotia persica) is a more splendid tree even than this, with three features of note. Firstly, a shapely trunk with attractive grey brown dappled bark. Secondly, fantastic autumn colour, with leaves in vibrant golds, orange and red. And lastly – and most wonderfully – tiny filaments of deepest red which materialise to clothe the bare branches in mid winter, reminiscent of the flowers of its relative the witch hazel (Hamemelis sp.).

Of course, all of this means that for much of November I’ve been knee deep in leaves in this garden. I don’t mind. I’m just glad I didn’t have to resort to anything desperate to get here.

Photograph of Parrotia persica flowers (top) © Phillip Merritt