The little things

Last Monday morning, a mad dash to Wisley where, in addition to charging up Battleston Hill for one final look at the Henry Moore sculpture before it departed, I was bound for the alpine area. An interest in alpines is something I’ve managed to avoid cultivating for many years but, with a creeping sense of inevitablity, it would appear to be taking hold. Is it age, I wonder? Surely not maturity – I do hope not. But perhaps there is some truth in the notion that while a person might be tempted into the garden by the big and the bright and the blousy, it takes time to develop even so much as an awareness of stuff you’d normally walk on, let alone to marvel at the tiny architectural perfection of these diminutive plants.

As with so much in horticulture, this is an area in which I’m almost entirely ignorant. Fortunately Wisley provides an ideal teaching resource so, macro lens at the ready and already anticipating a memory card full of wide-apertured, poorly focused shots, I set off to capture at least a few images that would be worthy of keeping; to examine, and prompt further research. Here they are.

Do please leave a comment below if you’ve any wisdom to offer on any of the plants in the pictures.

Saxifrage, I think. Possibly S. x petraschii

Um...I’m going for campanula

Look at this! Fab colour, well, beige I suppose! So tactile, I love it.

I’m a mug for an epimedium. I think I saw this at Chelsea in the pavillion last year.

I absolutely fell in love with this one...

...and here, a bit closer in. Look at that geometry! And the flowers...

At this point I was getting concerned that a saxifrage obsession could be in the offing

The Cretan Brake Fern, Pteris cretica 'Wimsettii'. Looks like bagged salad. I like it.

Look at those trumpets! PAAARRRPP!!

How perfect is this Oxalis palmifrons from South Africa?

Neat, tribble-like mounds of Acantholimon everywhere. Love the paper thin petals.

Too much of a good thing

Within gardening, as within many other areas in life, it is perfectly possible to have too much of a good thing. I was reminded of this truism as I stood in the woodland garden this morning, surveying the luxuriant layer of fallen oak leaves clothing the ground. Hitherto I have waxed lyrical about the wonders of leaf litter, the benefits of a humus rich soil and the various shenanigans entered into by the detritivores and decomposers who chose to make their home (not to mention their dinner) in these layers of our garden ecosystem, and nothing I’ve recently encountered gives me cause to gainsay such reasonable utterances. However, all things in moderation. It would seem that the autumn of 2013 was not only a bumper mast year (see this post here for an account), but also one in which every tree decided to complement its prodigious crop of fruit with leaves produced in such generous abundance it bordered upon hysteria. These, having at last been shed by the oak trees – which become untypically coy towards the end of the year, revealing their naked forms at the latest possible moment – are now lying several inches thick upon every horizontal surface in the woodland area. This is a part of the garden which, while making no claims to be a naturalistic setting, is nonetheless a very pleasant spot in which to walk a while and ponder; its dappled light, subtley different climate and unique soundscape offerring an intriguing change of pace from the rest of the garden. Of course, it also provides environment in which plants more at home in shadier, less exposed situations can thrive.



Perhaps I am more at home in a woodland setting than anywhere else, and I find things to delight me here in any season; the cathedral like hush under the vaulted green ceiling in high summer, the low sunlight slanting through the branches in autumn, the stark, graphic monochrome stage set in winter. Mosses and lichens and ferns all year round. And spring has its own particuar magic in a woodland setting, as light levels increase, the ground warms up, and the canopy overhead has yet to fill in and filter out the suns rays. At that time, snowdrops, hellebores and epimediums rule the garden unchallenged against a backdrop of marbled cyclamen leaves, in the humble company of early-flowering Ranunculacae; brash celandines or more bashful, delicate wood anemones paying tribute to their larger cousin, the Lenten Rose.

But all that excitement is s a few weeks away, and before then there’s last year’s leaves to remove from the hellebores, and a bit later a similar exercise to carry out on the epimediums; not to mention vast quantities of the afore-mentioned oak litter to cart off to different areas of the garden.

Not all of this is strictly necessary from a horticultural point of view. Emerging shoots will have more than enough oomph to push through the insulating mantle of soggy leaves, and fresh spring flowers will be supremely unconcerned about sharing the stage with the previous season’s vegetation. These hellebores are healthy and as yet show no signs of the blackspot fungus Microsphaeropsis hellebore which does require old leaves to be removed and burnt, and so the exercise here is carried out largely for aesthetic reasons. My clients quite like to be able to see what’s emerging at this time of year, a preference which seems quite reasonable to me. Anticipation is a huge part of the joy of gardening – never more so than during the winter months – and who would deprive themselves of a few extra days of delight by forcing their plants to remain hidden that much longer under superfluous inches of decaying sludge? Not I.

Lurgy on hellebore leaves at Wisley this morning. Just for reference, you understand.

Passing over

The wind sounded like the sea this morning. That wide-throat white-noise roar of rollers beating themselves on the beach, somehow echoed miles inland by air raking through bare winter trees, singing the telephone wires, bursting out into wide gardens through the narrow alleyways between houses, and breaking in waves on the lawn.

It is oddly mild and, muffled against the gusty wind in the not quite light I can see that the ditches though full are not overflowing, and the fields are largely free of surface water. The ground is nonetheless saturated, every air pocket and worm worn burrow awash. The worms themselves, lacking lungs and unable to drown, can stand a week or two of being submerged and wait it out patiently, five hearts beating time away till the waters recede and the soil returns to a more pneumatic state.

The forecast for Kent suggests that we may be nearing the end of this chain of rotten weather systems. I’ll dare to hope that these winds blow the rain heavy clouds away as predicted and give us at least a few days of relative calm, before – who knows what? Maybe we’ll be next in line for the freezing conditions presently gripping the east coast of the US. Maybe we’ll just be in for traditional mild sogginess, but a chance for the ground to dry out would be just the thing.

In the meantime, I’m taking great comfort in the clouds passing over, happy to let the boisterous winds blow these last few weeks away.

Floods and frosticles

Awoke to frost, and finally it feels like winter. God knows we’ve had enough of mild and wet days, particularly here where storms and flooding have taken a harsh toll over Christmas. The river is bound by its banks once more and neighbours are starting to return to sodden homes, allowing us to welcome the most decorative incarnation of the third element with a combination of gladness and relief.

Fields that only a few days ago were under several feet of water have now drained, crisp tussocks of frosted grass receeding into the distance in the morning sunlight, instead of a stretch of eerily silent water. Things, it would seem, are getting back to normal; pasture and gardens will survive relatively unscathed, and the amazing resiliance and cheerfulness exhibited by even our worst affected neighbours suggests that it will take more than tempest, storm and flood to subdue the holiday spirit in this part of Kent.

26 December: Boxing day floods

29 December. Business as usual, albeit frostier

Cold and crisp in the garden this morning...

...and just as nippy in the fields

All this being said, I can’t escape the feeling that last December’s Frosticles were more impressive.

Planting hedges in the mist

The shape slumped in the doorway was unrecognisable in the early evening gloom. Reversing the land rover onto the drive, I allowed a minor curse to escape me, directing it towards remote sensor for the porch light which since the start of the recent damp weather spell has been working only intermittently. I’d been expecting a delivery but had left instructions for it to be left around the side by the log store, so The Shape by the front door was either what I was hoping for, but in the wrong place (a minor thing), or...something else. It was not something else. The shape in the porch was a large polythene sack containing 50 bare-root yews and an assortment of similarly naked dogwoods. In essence, a nascent wood, in a bag. Just add soil.

The yews I had ordered for a gap-toothed hedge which I’ve been looking forward to rectifying all year, while the majority of the dogwoods, Cornus alba 'Sibirica' AGM, were destined for a particular long border in the same garden, red stems forming a rosy thicket about the large-lobed, rusty winter foliage of Hyndrangea quercifolia. Come spring and summer we can look forward to the leaves of the dogwood – a green of particular freshness and intensity – providing a backdrop for the white pyramid flowers of the hydrangeas. These shrubby cornus species are not grown for their flowers, unlike their more showy cousins (the kousas and the floridas, for example) and, while the flattish florets of creamy white flowers and blue berries are incidental as a garden spectacle, they are welcome all the same as an interesting detail and an additional food resource for birds and insects.

Cornus alba 'Sibirica' in early spring

Frosted leaves of Hydrangea quercifolia

The final occupants of the large plastic sack – a handful of Cornus 'Midwinter Fire' – are to find a home in our own garden where over the years no doubt we will increase their numbers with hardwood cuttings. I remain entirely unapologetic about my love of a bed full of fiery stemmed dogwoods over the winter months; the more I can cram in to the allotted space the more content I feel about the prospect. There are plenty of other views within the humble plot that excel in presenting monochrome vignettes in drabs and browns, and so it’s welcome to have a splash of flame at this end of the year to echo autumn bonfires and the more distant, hot colours of late summer blooms.

Thick mist lay heavily across the wealden landscape the next morning, and persisted for most of the day. Perfect conditions for hedge planting; the ground damp but workable, water hanging thickly in the air all around, like a fine persistent rain, but one in which on closer observation the droplets of water appeared reluctant to obey the laws of gravity, seeming to travel sideways as often as downwards, and apparently even upwards on occasion. This is a garden on a high ridge where often it’s unclear whether a cloud has descended to envelop the hill, or the mist has risen to achieve the same effect but, whatever the cause, I knew there was little need for concern that the young sapling yews would lose moisture through their bare roots while they waited to be lowered into their planting position. In any case, immediately upon removing from the plastic sack, each fresh batch of ten plants was plunged into a large tub of water to help rehydrate them after their journey from the nursery’s fields at the other end of the county.

Bare-root hedging plants are tough as old boots, and native plants such as yew have formed part of our familiar hedgerows for centuries. With relatively small plants such as these (60cm in height), a perfectly acceptable way to plant them is to make a ‘slit’ in the ground with your spade, rocking the handle to enlarge the opening and then, once the spade has been removed, to insinuate the roots of your plant into the hole to the same depth as the plant had been grown in the field (the mark between the aerial and the subterranean parts of the plant is quite apparent once you get your eye in), finally closing up the hole with your booted foot. For several reasons, I don’t use this method, trie, tested and ‘old country’ as it may be. Firstly, actually I find it a bit of a faff. Secondly, I’m not usually planting in an open field, but often in areas where previous plantings have had to be cleared. And thirdly, while I know there will be a pretty good success rate with plants grown in this way, somehow it doesn’t feel like a particularly auspicious beginning for a garden feature you’ll be looking at for decades to come. Planting a long line of hedgerow as a field boundary would be an ideal time to use this slit planting method but, in a garden, I like to be sure that everything I plant gets off to as good a start as possible. I include a couple of soil conditioning products; a handful of bonemeal as a slow release organic fertiliser, and also a sprinkling of myccorhizal fungi – sold under license by the RHS under the brandname ‘Rootgrow’ – over the roots. This fungi forms a symbiotic relationship with the plants via its roots, exchanging nutrients taken up from the soil through the fungus’s wide network of hyphae with sugars synthesised in the plant. My usual method is to sprinkle a small amount over the roots with the plant in its final position before backfilling the planting hole, although I noticed in this pack that the manufacturer is now including a sachet of a wallpaper paste like substance (actually, I think it might be wallpaper paste, hopefully without the anti fungal additive) which can be mixed with the Rootgrow crystals in a bucket to form a dip for the roots.

Yews planted and trenches backfilled, I mulch with well-rotted manure – compost would do if it’s not too weedy, otherwise it largely defeats the object, which is to supress competition from weeds while the new hedge is getting established); likewise woodchip would be fine if, again, well rotted, as fresh organic matter will rob the establishing hedge of nitrogen. There is just time to plant the cornus at the top of the garden, as the sun begins to set and the mist starts to thicken, visible across the valley like a white, fluffy sea surrounding islands of bare trees.

And then all of a sudden the mist is gone, and golden sunshine glints and sparkles from a million tiny lenses on dew laden grass and leaves. For a moment, it is breathtaking, and I remind myself; this is my office. What a lucky so and so.

Lords and ladies

The first week of December and, rather late to the party, Arum italicum makes an appearance in the garden, just as everyone else is leaving. So late in the year is its appearance that one could almost consider it indecorously early for spring, but advent has barely begun and we should really be on the other side of Christmas before we can even think about such things.

Of course, the plant in question has not been absent from our gardens throughout the rest of the year. In spring its pale green spadix is a feature of damper, shadier spots, and the short ankle-height columns of orangey red berries are a familiar site in gardens and woodland in autumn. The berries are highly poisonous and will cause breathing difficulties from irritation to the tongue and throat. Now, from among the detritus of the year, dark green leaves emerge on the floor of the garden, marbled with bold tracings of ivory. It’s a reminder that nature never sleeps; we express our belief that throughout the winter months she is at work beneath the soil, plumping bulb and swelling root, and the faithful are rewarded with signs as miraculous as these, unfurling, richly luxuriant while all around is pale and limp and dead.

A very good friend has a ‘rude border’ in her garden, for which I periodically supply plants whose names appeal, for all the wrong reasons, to those with minds that might obtain puerile amusement from such things. Here specimens such as horny goat weed (Epimedium spp.) and Rubus cockburnianus have found a home; I am not quite certain, but surely she will have included a plant with such a variety of lewd references amongst its common names. Arum italicum is known variously ‘Lords and Ladies’, ‘Priest's Pintle’, the ‘willy lily’ and, my favourite, ‘Cuckoo Pint’ - a reference to the fandigulare of the male bird. Having never knowingly been in the vicinity of a gentleman cuckoo's undercarriage I find myself unable to comment on the accuracy of the likeness, but posterity in its wisdom has chosen to preserve this particular nickname, and so we can consider it safe to assume that at some point in history a person, or persons, who were in the position to make the comparison found it an apt one, and so made it.

Arum maculatum shares many of the same features as its showier cousin. Its large mid green spear-shaped leaves lack the attractive marbling, but are handsome nonetheless. It also shares the same common names, and is consequently equally qualified for my friend’s garden.

Manure for the garden: a fundamental matter

Not quite seven in the morning, and I’m on site to make preparations for an early delivery. The faintest glimmer of daylight fringes the trees bordering the fields of the stud farm opposite, but nearer to hand the tarpaulin laid out over the drive bounces the harsh brightness of the security lights about the garden. A slightly surreal, not-quite-half-light time of the day and on the chillier side of mild and dry – which is very good news. As with most garden tasks it’s possible to do this job in the wet, but a day without rain makes for a distinctly more pleasant experience. All is set; I pour myself a large mug of tea from my flask and walk across to the lane outside to await the arrival of the tipper.

Ten minutes, a mug of tea and sixty quid later, I have what I came for – a significant heap of chocolate brown horse manure, shrouded in a haze of steadily rising steam, and a warming morning’s work ahead of me. There’s about three cubic metres of manure to move, roughly two and half tonnes depending on the water content. Experience tells me that it will take three to four hours to shift it, depending on how far it has to be barrowed, and longer if it’s to be immediately used to mulch borders already stocked with plants. This lot is destined for a temporary location between the compost heaps and the bonfire.

The going is soft, if not sodden, and I wear a trench in the turf as I go. This part of the lawn will need some remedial treatment, aerating and topdressing in order to relieve some of the compaction caused by repeated trips made by a stout gardener and his heavily laden wheelbarrow. But that’s a job for another day. This is lovely stuff from I source that I trust – well rotted, mainly crumbly with the odd pocket of really rich gloop every few shovels fulls – let’s not be coy, we are talking about horse shit here, but it doesn’t smell, as indeed it shouldn’t. Given a horse’s largely hay-based diet there’s little if anything to be squeamish about; just processed, rotted down vegetable matter that will do the garden a world of good. Wheeling each successive load past the borders it is pleasing to think how much the garden will benefit from a generous helping of the gardeners’ black gold.

I use an annual dressing of a manure for two main purposes. Firstly as a mulch, which suppresses weeds, both warming and insulating the soil and having a pleasing aesthetic effect of providing an even dark tone against which the plants can stand out. Secondly, I add manure as a conditioner for the soil. Not as a fertiliser – the nutrient content of well rotted manure is rather low (slightly higher for horse than cow manure, not nearly as rich as bird guano which is a phenomenally good, natural fertiliser) – but as a material rich in organic matter which the soil flora will process in short measure, turning it into rich humus, aiding the ability of the soil to retain moisture in dry spells whilst also creating a favourable soil structure with the kind of friable texture envied by those whose unmanaged clay flip-flops from waterlogged in winter to rock hard in summer.

If I’ve managed to convince you of the benefits of manure for your garden, you may have a few further questions, which I'll endeavour to answer. Do please use the comments section below this post if you have any queries which aren’t covered.

Where can I get hold of manure for my garden? 
The most obvious place is probably your local DIY shed or garden centre, most of which sell well rotted farmyard manure in large bags. This is probably the most expensive source.

Should you have the time and the inclination, many stables and horse owners are only too keen to get rid of their manure for free, and a phone call from a gardener in need is often met with a positive response. It is highly likely that you’ll be welcomed in to help yourself, meaning you’ll have to shovel, bag and transport it to your garden yourself (bring bags and tools). For anything other than small quantities, this can be very time consuming, though the benefit of an unlimited supply of free mulch and soil conditioner may outweigh the inconvenience. Some kind owners even bag the manure themselves and leave it for collection, for a small fee – look out at the roadsides when driving through Kent; we’re not short of stables.

If you have the space and the cash, the best option is to find someone who will deliver a load for you. I found my supplier through the supremely uncomplicated approach of a google search. It often works out more affordable if you can find a local farmer or stables who will deliver, rather than opting for one of the commercial ‘bulk bag’ operations. This tends to be good stuff, but not the cheapest.

Should the manure smell?
Well rotted manure, which is what you want, should not smell at all. If it does have a whiff, then the process of decomposition is still going on and you will need to leave it in a heap until this has finished, or else it will rob your plants of valuable nutrients and possibly cause plant tissue to burn (rotting involves an exothermic i.e. heat generating process).

Should my manure contain straw?
A small percentage of rotted down straw is acceptable, and indeed inevitable when dealing with the product of mucking out, but you don’t want too much. Any lumps which have yet to finish decomposing I leave in a heap or put on the compost. Undigested carbon, which is what straw consists of, causes essential nutrients such as nitrogen to be ‘locked up’ by the microbes involved in decomposition, making them unavailable to your plants.

Should my manure contain a stirrup/random bits of tack?
Not really, though it’s happened to me more than once!

What equipment do I need?
A good shovel is essential. Don't try to do the job with a spade, they are about half the size of a shovel and have no sides so stuff falls off the edges. Buy a lightweight shovel, you don’t want to add to the weight of what you’re lifting with the weight of the tool.

A wheelbarrow, likewise, is an obvious requirement. One with a big tub, preferably made out of composite (plastic) material rather than metal, which is lighter and just as strong. A pneumatic tyre, suitably inflated, will relieve stress on the joints, too.

A tarpaulin is a very good idea if you are having the manure delivered. It can be spread over your drive or lawn where the heap is to be tipped, and makes clearing up afterwards so much easier. Get the biggest size you can, it’s frustrating when the footprint of the pile turns out to be larger than the tarp.

A lightweight, long-tined compost fork is great for spreading the mulch out when you’ve got it to the final location.

How should I shovel?
This is important, albeit a bit of a nag. Keep your back straight, bend your knees, and keep your core (stomach) muscles engaged i.e. tight. It sounds silly, but try to move gracefully and in a flowing motion, and watch out for obstacles that might catch the shovel and cause jarring to your body. Sloppy shovelling, as with lifting, can cause you painful persistent back and joint problems. Of course, the best way to shovel anything is to get someone else to do it.

How thickly should I mulch?
There is little point in doing things by half. To be effective, mulch needs to be applied at a thickness of no less than three inches, preferably four inches (10 centimetres) or more.


Other mulches, and a warning for dog owners
There are of course other materials that you can use for mulching, many of which will eventually rot down to become incorporated in the soil, although only garden compost will do this with anything like the speed at which manure decomposes; this might be a benefit or a drawback depending on your point of view. In fact, compost generated from the garden is the most desirable material for mulching, being free, and having the benefit of returning to the ground much of what has been removed, although many if not most gardens are unable to produce it in sufficient volume to be used to without adding to it from external sources. The various other mulching options could form a blog post of their own, but I will just say there is one material I absolutely won’t use as a mulch on any garden – cocoa shells, which in spite of its eco-credentials as a by product of the food industry contains dangerous levels of theobromine, potentially fatal to dogs in reasonably small doses. Even in homes without dogs, you can never be sure if friends will visit with the family pet, so I would rather err on the side of caution.

fundament 

noun

 1 the foundation of basis of something

 2 formal or humorous a person’s buttocks or anus

Oxford Dictionary of English

Five tulips to plant now

Late November, and the colour is slipping from the trees; down, down to the gardens and lawns, down to streets and pavements, grass and slabs strewn with discarded finery in shades of scarlet and copper and gold. The wind has been fierce, whipping the leaves into a frenzied dance, a kaleidoscope of burnished flecks whirling around me as I walk, swooping and bobbing in front of my face. I watched a leaf trapped in a doorway, caught in the eddying wind, unable to break free and find the way out like a fly by an open window, exhausting itself with frantic effort while being unable to comprehend that the simple way out of its present situation lies less than a few inches away.

Sensations and events can act as milestones in our year, not merely marking how far we’ve come and have yet to go, but providing an invitation to pause and to take stock of where we are. This gradual bleeding of pigment from the landscape, this ballet of the leaves in the wind and a cold that rasps my hands and face – the combination of these familiar experiences reminds me that now is not the time to retreat indoors and go to ground till spring, but instead the long awaited time to plant tulips.

There are so many, and no matter how much care you lavish upon planning your spring display, you are always bound to end up coveting the form or the colour of a tulip you see growing in the garden of a friend or neighbour. But by the time you’ve seen it, it’s too late to grow it that year, and so you bide your time and wait until the ground is sufficiently cold to plant safely the bulbs without fear of rot and disease that the tulips of less patient gardeners might fall prey to. Mid to late November is the season to begin planting tulips, and I’m starting now.

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Five tulips for planting now

These are not necessarily the best or even the most fashionable of tulips. They are simply the five that form the backbone of the spring display in our garden, which is based on an understated monochromatic scheme with a bit of fun, pink froth to lift it. They are reliable, either elegant or cheering, easy to grow and, importantly, not difficult to acquire.

Plant the bulbs deep. The accepted wisdom is twice the depth of the bulb, but if you can plant them at a depth of about 10 inches with a little grit at the bottom of the planting hole they will perform more reliably year after year on our heavy local soil. It goes without saying, do try to plant them the right (pointy) way up. Contrary to popular belief, they won’t grow downwards – plants are intelligent enough to know which way is up (something called geotropism) –  but they will waste energy in righting themselves which could otherwise be channelled into the flowers.

Name: 'White Triumphator'
Type: Lily
Colour: White
Height: 70cm
Flowering time: Mid May
Notes: Elegant, large and pure white, lily-shaped flowers.

Name: 'Queen of the Night'
Type: Single
Colour: Black/Purple
Height: 60cm
Flowering time: Mid May
Notes: Deep purple, almost matt black petals with a velvety sheen. Stunning – if I had to have only one, it would be this.

Name: 'Black Parrot'
Type: Parrot
Colour: Black/Purple
Height: 55cm
Flowering time: Mid May
Notes: As fascinating in bud as in flower, looking like some exotic vegetable. Not quite as dark as 'Queen of the Night', but not far off. The parrot tulips have fringed petals, and air of the decadent baroque.

Name: 'Purissima'
Type: Fosteriana (Botanical)
Colour: Creamy white
Height: 45 cm
Flowering time: April
Notes: The first of our tulips to flower, this is a robust, tulip-shaped tulip, in a soft creamy white. A yellow centre is visible inside when the flowers begin to open up. Also known as 'White Emperor', which might explain why I received a job lot of them one year instead of 'White Triumphator'. A happy accident, though.

Name: 'Foxtrot'
Type: Double Early
Colour: Opening white, then shades of pink
Height: 30cm
Flowering time: April
Notes: These are a treat, opening white and then blushing to shades of a gentle pink with darker pink highlights. The double rows of petals creates a fringed effect, almost paeony like. Very pretty indeed.

Cold addled

It would seem that the grass has at last had the decency to stop growing, or at least to slow its rate of growth to a level appropriate for the time of year. This is fortunate: the ground is getting wet and claggy now as our local clay is wont to become at this time of year, and continued trundling back and forth with mower and heavy boots is liable to compact the soil and exacerbate any drainage problems. Some traffic will still be necessary until all the leaves are off the trees – and then off the grass – but for a few weeks over winter it will be good to give the turf a rest. In spring when the risk of ground frost has past we can think about aerating compacted lawns, but it will need to be drier than now or else the clay smears and becomes impermeable, making matters worse.


I welcome the change in routine. Much as I can appreciate a well-tended lawn, there can be no denying that a smooth green sward exerts a kind of tyranny over all gardening activity for at least forty weeks of the year. Having converetd most of the lawn to flower and vegetable beds in my own garden I lose no sleep over a crop of dandelions or the odd patch of bee-friendly clover, self-heal or daisies in what little grass does remain, but even here there is no escape from the weekly cut. I really prefer the longer look of a wildflower meadow, especially if it has an inviting path cut through it, beckoning me to wander between the tall grass and flowers. This is a form of grassland management requiring significantly less input in terms of time, fertilisers and other chemicals – which adds up to significantly less money, all positive benefits which I am keen to point out to anybody who will listen. Not to mention that allowing flowers in your lawn provides a valuable nectar resource for bees and other pollinators – the arguments both environmental and economic are well rehearsed and to hand and, while I haven’t yet succeeded in introducing a meadow in every garden under my care, it’s a work in progress.

But it’s almost winter, and these are matters for spring. Nobody will be thinking about their lawn until the new year, unless it is to bemoan its transformation to quagmire as an ill-judged slipper-clad foray across the garden provides an education of a muddier nature. And because there’s little to be done to the lawn in winter, I spend a few happy moments planning what long-delayed tasks I can at last get around to; building new compost bins and turning the heap, completing the dog proofing of the boundaries, moving and splitting fallen logs. Until I realise that the reason that there’s little to be done to the lawn in winter is not only that it is colder – which slows down those biochemical processes required for the grass to grow – but also that there is less light, as there is, quite literally, less day. And so consequently I come to the understanding that I have no more time than I had before; probably, in fact, less, and these tasks still need to be crammed in to ever shorter daylight hours. Rather obvious really – clearly the neurons are not firing at peak efficiency. I blame the cold.

Mast year

It is raining acorns. They land with a sharp CRACK! upon the aluminium roof of the landrover, amazingly causing no dents. A less bell-like tone is produced when they fall upon the greenhouse, or upon the garage roof, but a steady percussion is now building to create a sustained accompaniment to the afternoon’s artistry. I am in the process of attacking a neglected woodland understory with an improbably small, but nonetheless viciously efficient hand saw. And all the while, it is raining acorns.

2013, it transpires, is a good year to be a pig. Apart from...you know. Sausages. But, right up until the moment when it becomes absolutely necessary for such matters to be broached – porcine sensibilites aside – a free ranging pig must be one of the happiest creatures alive this autumn thanks to the abundance of choice tree fruit blanketing the ground. Layer upon delicious layer of your favourite food – not just apples (the apple harvest is fantastic this year, and so it should be considering how poor it was in 2012) – but acorns too, just as choice a delicacy to a pig. This year will go down in the records as a mast year, a year when the harvest of mast – defined as the fruit of woodland trees – is particularly abundant. And while trees such as oak, ash, beech, hazel and chestnut (sweet and horse) are producing impressive crops, the effects are likely also to be seen in the trees and shrubs in our gardens, with an exuberant clothing of berries on hollies and rowans and hawthorns, to name but three.

The exact cause of this phenomenon known as masting is not entirely understood, although it is clearly linked to both weather and climactic conditions, and it has been observed that some species, such as beech, exhibit this behaviour on a regular cycle (approximately every ten years, although this has become shorter in recent decades). All of this has clear implications for our native wildlife, as the effects of an overabundant supply of fruit and nuts cascades along the food chain. As well as being good news for garden birds and fetching field mice, populations of less welcome creatures will also be seeing a significant increase come spring; the thought of an explosion in rat numbers creates a not altogether heart-warming picture. Still, we should never have got rid of the wolves and the boar and the bears, so it serves us right.

Quite apart from which, all of this reckless superfluity has clear implications for my lawn mower, as more than one of my gardens borders on the woods and now boasts deep insulating piles of acorns across where once emerald turf shone forth. Optimistically I had hoped the mower would sweep this into the grass bag. Sadly, while the second lowest setting on the blades sees the machine ignore the acorns altogether, the lowest height succeeds in mashing, rather than collecting them – mashed acorn being even more difficult to pick up. The leaf rake buckles under the weight (piles of acorns are deceptively heavy), and the leaf blower too is surprisingly impotent in the face of so much brown shrapnel. Leaving me no option but to shepherd them into great piles, and manually tip fistfuls of the things into the barrow. I really don’t want a lawn full of oak seedlings. Undeterred, it’s warming work on a cold autumn day, and I have a plan to roll out the scarifier on them next time I visit.

But still, for a while longer, it is raining acorns.

Autumn days and chocolate buttons

Autumn, at its best when days are dry and cold and bright, can throw some truly nasty weather at you. The light rain forecast for this morning turned into a lengthy downpour so heavy that the water somehow managed to flow back along the underside of my hat brim before encountering a brow furrowed against the elements, at which impenetrable barrier it abruptly turned course and proceeded to flow down my face. Puddles formed inside my boots as rivulets of rain coursed down my legs, almost making me regret this morning’s selection of shorts over long trousers, although my prepatellar bursitis – a knee affliction common to plumbers, housemaids, carpet fitters and apparently gardeners – continued to approve of the choice (the stretched fabric of a longer leg when kneeling down causes increased pressure on the lump above the knee; annoying rather than painful). I came home briefly at lunch to walk Bill, threw my sodden clothes into the dryer, and promptly managed to melt all the buttons. I can only conclude that they had been manufactured from chocolate, leaving me nursing a sense of regret at the thought of a missed snack opportunity.

Undeterred by the weather or the state of my clothing – billowing precariously in the chilly wind which had by now replaced the morning’s rain – I continued with the day’s toil, barrowing leaf mold and manure to the borders and coppicing overgrown hazels in the woodland area, all the while thankful for the capacity of the lawn grasses to survive a thorough muddy trampling.

It was gloomy and muddy and damp and cold – so far from the ideal autumn day I carry with me in my head. And while it may have been the frisson caused by the knowledge that at any moment a freak gust of wind could overpower the last remaining fastenings on my shorts and see me chasing my dignity across the rose garden, I think it is more the raw and elemental quality of the days at this time of year that makes me feel particularly present in the moment, particularly alive. I snapped a few hasty pictures on my phone on one trip back from the bonfire in an attempt to capture something of the feeling. Some are even in focus.

So here’s to autumn days, whatever the weather. And here’s to long autumn evenings by the fire, sewing on buttons.

Some elements of this composition are in focus. Just not the ones you’d expect.

Ivy stems on oak trunk

Leaf mold

Much of this afternoon was spent both in and on a pile of leaf mold. A lovely, deep pile of well-rotted leaf mold – thick, chocolately stuff, the consistency of a really good chocolate brownie, the kind that makes your mouth go all funny and sends a little shiver down your spine. The kind that offers your teeth the resistance of the barest hint of crust on the outside but rewards the persistance of your masticationary efforts with a meltingly gooey interior. The word ‘unctuous’ gets a bad press but was surely invented for this stuff – in fact, I’m not sure that anyone could ever have really appreciated the richenss of that adjective without having been here, on this pile at this moment, watching the shining blade of the shovel carve tranche after tranche out of the heap, hearing it flop wetly to the ground, crumbling as it falls. There has been rain of late in volume, and were I in particular mood I could wish the texture more friable. Candidly, I rather suspect the inclusion of grass during the incorporation of the heap, but I cannot say. I was not here at that time. But what this compost lacks in crumble it more than makes up for in luxury, and it will be more than adequate for purpose.

This lot is bound for the rose garden, to act as a mulch in order to supress weeds, and also as a soil conditioner to lighten the clay. In this the gardener will be given invaluable help from the host of worms which poplulate the rich humus, as they do the hard work of mixing the new layer organic matter with the soil. Before the mulch can be applied, I remove fallen leaves from the beds with the aid of a powered blower. These leaves will not make it into the main pile, instead meeting their fate on the bonfire and thereby minimising the proliferation of rose blackspot (the fungus Diplocarpon rosae). Once the beds are clear, applicaton of the fresh leaf mold involves accurate aiming of the barrow, and the use of a long-tined compost fork – by far the most efficient tool for spreading the mulch between the stems of the rose plants.

I have posted before (in Leaf fall and Cloth of Gold) on the wonder of leaves. As I write this on Hallowe’en, and in spite of the fierce winds at the beginning of the week, we have not yet entered the peak of the leaf raking season, with many trees keeping a stubborn grasp on their foliage. But it’s surely a matter of days if not weeks before leaves cover our gardens again, and it’s as well to have a plan of what to do with them once they’ve been coralled and collected. It would, after all, be criminal to let all that potential goodness go to waste.

Honey fungus

Autumn is the season for mushrooms, the fruiting bodies of fungi that appear suddenly in our gardens at this time of year, along with morning mists and the smell of woodsmoke. An integral part of our environment fungi play an essential role within the ecosystem, converting dead material into nutrients required for plant growth. However, in the quasi-naturalistic setting of the garden, not all fungi are created equal. There are relatively harmless saphrophytic fungi, which live on dead or decaying organic matter, and aid the process of decomposition. These perform a vital function and one which, from a gardener’s perspective, is relatively benign. There are also beneficial micorrhizal fungi which form a codependnent relationship with the roots of plants, assisting in the uptake of nutrients from the soil in exchange for sugars and carbohydrates. But there are also pathogenic fungi, which are rather more of a nuisance, possessing as they do a penchant for living material.

Two weeks ago, several patches of cinnamon hued mushrooms, each with a darker central spot on the cap, appeared in one of my regular gardens. This was not an auspicious start to the day, as these mushrooms bore a marked resemblance to one of the three signs of the armillaria group of fungi, also known as honey fungus. Armillaria is a virulent pathogenic genus – recognised by the RHS as ‘the most destructive fungal disease in UK gardens’ – which invades the roots of trees and woody perennials, weakening the plant and then consuming the decaying organic matter. The cap of the mushroom is convex at first, like a shallow dome or half a tea cake, but as it ages the outer edges curve upwards, revealing the gills beneath. While the mushrooms do not necessarily appear each year the presence of honey fungus is also suggested by a sheet of white fungal growth beneath the bark at the base of the infected plant, and by the characteristic black rhizomorphs, or ‘bootlaces’, by means of which the organism can spread long distances through the soil. The mushrooms in this garden were concentrated around the decaying remains of some old shrubs, on which both the white mycelial sheet (which smells very noticeably of mushrooms) and the beginnings of the bootlaces were evident. Finding the fruiting bodies, with their characteristic colouring, was a fairly good indicator of what was now lurking in the lawns and borders. Finding all three signs together removed any remaining vestiges of doubt. Honey fungus, I was now confident, had arrived.

To put things in perspective, it is reputedly the case that the largest living organism is a kind of honey fungus, Armillaria ostoyae, which covers an area larger than 2,000 acres in a forest in Oregon. No wonder that I wasn’t overjoyed to see its relative manifesting in these Kentish grounds.

A pair of mature birch trees dominate this garden (there had originally been three, but one had to be felled last year when I noticed a rotten hole had developed at the base of one – mentioned in a blog post here), and one of the newly planted borders near a particularly fine crop of mushrooms features a Magnolia 'George Henry Kern', Viburnum tinus, and Hydrangea 'Annabelle'. I couldn’t have created a more sumptuous menu for the honey fungus had I tried – all of these appear on the list of plants particularly susceptible to this pathogen, so we shall have to keep an eye out for signs of stress, by which time it may well be too late. I would prefer where possible to lift the plants and containerise them in the same position with some artful planting to hide the containers, a plan that’s presently in negotiation. The first step was to dig out all the infected rotten wood – stumps and roots were well decayed by now and offered little resistance to the trusty mattock – and as much soil as possible, all of which was bound for the bonfire. The chemical control for this was banned for use as a garden herbicide in 2003, so physical destruction (burning) of infected material is the only legal option at present. The legislation wasn’t able to prevent me from disinfecting my tools with Jeyes Fluid before moving on to other areas of the garden, a sensible precaution to take.

The next step is to have a reputable tree surgeon inspect the remaining birch trees for signs of infection, particularly as the root and stump of their departed companion resembles at present some kind of mushroom gourmand’s fantasy. These trees are too tall and close to the house, and the garden too exposed and windy, to countenance any chance of structural weakness.

Should the worst transpire, we will have to look to more resistant plants – a list of which is available here – to replace those that might succumb too easily to this voracious fungus. For now, we’re pairing the measures we’ve already taken to all the optimism we can muster, and hoping it won’t come to that.

Tthe beginnnings of blue black ‘bootlace’ rhizomorphs in the middle of this rotten stump

Eat your greens

Wandering along the farm lane, as I do several times a day with Bill, I spend many a happy while examining the hedgerows. It’s fascinating to me that while we tend to think that at this time of the year the whole natural world is a few short weeks away from bedding down for a long winter snooze, many perennial and biennial plants are gearing up for spring, thrusting out lush green foliage and staking a claim to their spot for the new growing season. Here’s a selection of native plants, most of which are doing just that, and all of which, it occurs to me, might not make it that far in an unmolested state, owing to them being either rather tasty foragers’ fare, or rather useful in some way.

Nettles (Urtica dioica) and cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) making an attractive emerald tableux. The beautiful cheese Cornish Yarg (as sold by Lynher Diaries, amongst others) is wrapped in the leaves of stinging nettles. Recipes for nettles abound – soups, risottos, nettle and parmesan fritters – quite apart from which you can more or less use it as you would spinach. Cow parsley should absolutely not be consumed unless you can be entirely positive about its identification, as it can be mistaken for the dangerously poisonous distant cousins hemlock and fool’s parsley. Consult Richard Mabey’s excellent book Food for Free and find an experienced forager who can show you the key identification points to look for. If you’ve overcome the possibility of a horrible death, the leaves are quite nice in salads. But the fear of imminent expiration can play havoc with the digestion.

Burdoch (Arctium minus). Young leaf stems need to be peeled, and then can either be used raw in salads or boiled in a similar way to asparagus. You’ll want to avoid itchy balls, which cling like velcro to absolutely anything with a slight pile. But you’re unlikely to find young stems on a plant that’s gone to seed, so this shouldn’t be an issue when foraging. 

Comfrey (Symphytum sp.) Good for making a foulesomely noxious but fantastically nutritious plant tonic. There’s some evidence that it may help broken bones to heal, hence one of its common names, knitbone. Use young leaves in salads, cook leaves of any age as you would spinach. 

Garlic mustard, or Jack-in-the-hedge (Alliaria petiolata). For a piquant garlicky flavour, whose leaves make a splendid sauce for lamb when chopped with young hawthorn leaves in vinegar and sugar.

Dandelion (Taraxacum officiale) It does make you wonder why people spend such an awful lot on ghastly salad that’s steadily rotting inside a suffocating platic bag, when lovely fresh leaves that you can  hoik out by the handful are liberally clothing just about any lawn that hasn't been chemically nuked to within an inch of its life. Go on, give it a go. Stick a handful in a sandwich at first, then maybe progress to including them on the side of a plate with a hearty oil and vinegar dressing.

Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) Known colloquially as ‘Bread and Cheese’, presumably for its ubiquity. The leaves are very edible, surprisingly substantial with a crisp texture and a slightly nutty taste, although a little bitter at this time of year. The berries, or haws, can be used in fruit leathers or jams, though they’re not especially tasty on their own.

In between days

An awareness of the passing seasons is a grounding thing. It relates us to the world outside our window which might otherwise be perceived only in momentary glimpses as the natural realm intrudes upon our busy lives: suddenly we’re driving to work in the dark, shorts and t-shirts are consigned to the back of the wardrobe, and one day soon we’ll awake to find the lawn shrouded in leaves. We note the signs that mark our passage from spring to summer, to autumn, to winter and back to spring and, while we may complain about the less welcome aspects – complaining is in our nature after all, and something to be enjoyed – we are fortunate to live in a part of the world where the passing of time is softened by the comforting regularity of discernibly different seasons. But as much as we tend to think of clearly defined periods, each with their own individual events and moods, in reality we spend as much time transitioning between one and the next, where the interregnum is marked by a character of its own.

We are somewhere between summer and autumn, which has as distinctive a personality as a snowy winter’s day or a fresh spring morning. Fuchsias reign in the borders alongside the big daisies; asters and echinacea, dahlias, helianthus – hairy of leaf and smiley of countenance – cosmos and heleniums, while nicotianas waft and tall miscanthus shamelessly exploit the low evening sun. Sweet peas are running to seed faster than I can cut the flowers, and must now be wrested from their supports. It has become impossible to walk down the garden path without some specimen of ripened vegetation popping a seed pod at me. Earlier flowering plants have done their thing for the year and are capturing the last of the summer’s nourishing sun, squirreling it away underground in bulbs or starchy roots, before they drop their leaves and hibernate for the winter.

This week, the first of the leaves have started to turn. Not the desiccated parchment coloured foliage caused by a dry summer, which caused alarm in some quarters at the prospect of an unlikely early autumn. These are the first signs of the rich golds and reds and earthy hues in which autumn prides itself, as the green slowly bleeds out of each leaf with the shortening of the days.

By then, of course, it will be autumn proper. Something to look forward to.

On bulbs, and hoola for your moolah

As suddenly as someone flicking a switch the children are back at school, the temperatures have noticeably dropped, and the evenings are dark by eight. It’s rumoured that some have even been eyeing the central heating controls, and the time for the annual visit of the chimney sweep approaches. Summer may yet rally for one final, glorious encore, but it is unmistakably waning, and thoughts begin to turn in earnest to next year’s garden. Autumn (am I allowed to use that word yet?) is the time for planting bulbs – beginning with alliums, which benefit from a little residual warmth in the September ground, and finishing with tulips in late autumn, when the colder temperatures will help to keep the dreaded tulip fire at bay. This is good news, as bulbs offer the time strapped garden owner a shortcut to fantastic floral displays, with relatively little investment required in either time or money. Of all the ways to buy plants, bulbs arguably get you the most jolly for your lolly.


Which brings me in rather timely fashion to that purple pom-pom headed lollipop of a flower which graces fashionable borders throughout the spring and into summer – the allium, and most particularly, to the one known as Allium hollandicum 'Purple Sensation'. The allium family includes onions, garlic, leeks and chives – whose flowers and growth habit all bear a marked familial resemblance – but of those alliums grown for ornament, 'Purple Sensation' is undoubtedly the most ubiquitous. No doubt this popularity stems from being easy to grow, inexpensive (twenty five bulbs will cost you less than a ten pounds), and providing a reliably cheerful display. The stem, between 60 and 75 cm in height, requires no staking and the globe comprising myriad individual violet florets grows to 10cm in diameter. The whole flower dries particularly well, though if this is your intention it’s a good idea to hang them upside-down when drying so that the many black seeds have the opportunity to fall out before you scatter them all over your carpet.

Allium 'Purple Sensation' in the borders at Great Dixter

If you’ve yet to include any ornamental alliums in your garden, start with this one and, if you like what you see, perhaps consider augmenting your display the following year with its shorter, but impressively large headed cousin A. christophii, or the statuesque A. giganteum and 'Globemaster'.

Planting notes
This allium is particularly unfussy and will cope with most situations, except waterlogged soil. It grows and looks remarkably well in a dry garden setting. Bulbs should be planted 10 to 15 cm deep (a depth of roughly three times the size of the bulb) and a similar distance apart for the best effect. Although not necessary, the job would be rendered distinctly less back breaking by the purchase of a long-handled bulb planter, such as the one made by Joseph Bentley. I must remember to buy one myself.

Green pebbles in the rain

Gentle drizzle falls this morning from a bright grey, light grey sky. The clear air and softened light makes for a pleasant change after such a period of unforgivingly hot, bright weather. Muffled sounds of the falling rain blend with the ambient noise of these gardens; a counterpoint comprising the cooing of collared doves, the plop of fish coming up for air, and the lightest swiish from the cherry trees as the breeze filters through their coppery canopies. This welcome freshness finds me kneeling on the turf before the low lavender hedge that encircles the lily pond. I have discarded my gloves, the better to feel the individual bundles of flowering stems which must now be removed if the plants are to retain a dense and compact habit, and the sharp blades of my secateurs make easy work of the task as they cleanly sever semi rigid green tissue. Snip. Taking care not to cut into the old wood, eruptions of tiny blue grey needles below the wound – new leaves contrasting with the softer, richer green of the mature foliage – confirm to me that the plant will make a full and fast recovery from this operation.

These plants want to sprawl, to range lankily away from their planting holes, pinned to the ground by a single foot but reaching ever outwards. They possesses a strange, wizened beauty in this form. But that’s not how we like to grow lavender in our gardens, where so often we enforce the juvenile state, perhaps because we are able to do to plants what we long to do to ourselves. Enforcing youth, I mean. Not snipping bits off.

Pleasing green pebble forms begin to emerge where earlier a flattened mat of cat sprawled chaos had threatened to overwhelm the scene. The rain begins to fall with a greater determination, fat drops pattering on the brim of my battered Barmah hat. There is still plenty of summer left, but the freshness newly discernible on the morning air brings with it a thrill of anticipation for the season to come.

Devilish hot

Midsummer. Lucifer straightens his back, rises and in a salutation to the sun stretches out his arms, glowing with crimson fire across the borders. Cooling waves of pale lavender lap around his feet but the contrast serves only to accentuate the fiery glow of the tall crocosmia, which performs with infernal constancy each July. Against the deep burgundy glow of the smoke bush and with sparkling highlights from spent alliums, firework explosions from Stipa gigantea and the shimmering haze of the deschampsia, this year more than ever the summer planting is in perfect harmony with the weather.

The sun is relentless, and quite a challenge for me as I emerge blinking from the relative cool of the courtyard area, shaded from the brightest rays by tall bamboos, a rampant pheasant berry on one side and a philadelphus on the other. Introducing some shade and vertical scale with one or two carefully placed trees is definitely high on the list of priorities for our garden; an inviting patch of dappled shade to make for on those summer days when the sun actually shines, as it’s been doing for the past few weeks with great enthusiasm. But that’s a job for later in the year.

There is a path here, somewhere. The lavender has been left untrimmed for the while, so that you have to push your way through clouds of delicate butterflies and industrious bees in order to get to the middle of the garden. It’s no hardship; the scent is intense and the thrum of the assembled humming bees imparts a kind of thrill as I wander through their harvest. I will have to cut the plants back soon – any heavy rain we get weighs the plants down and they’re getting leggier than I would like, even with a twice-yearly trim for the last five years. Before autumn comes I will need to propagate these same plants in reliable quantities, and get them sturdy enough to be nursed through the winter, in order to have enough replacements for the now ageing hedge which flanks both sides of the winding grass strip. There are doubtless more sensible choices of plant here. Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’ would be less trouble and both foliage and flower lie in similar areas of the colour palette, but I’ve never been a fan of the scent of catmint of any variety and…well. Shoot me for saying so but it always seems to be something of a poor man’s substitute for lavender. That smells faintly of wee.

Over the coming week I will begin to tame the unruly summer sprawl, to make way for the later flowering plants, the cosmos and the dahlias and the nicotianas. But this weekend, I intend to revel in the untidiness.

Fiendishly hot. Lavender and cosmos are quite at home, but I’m not used to such intensity of heat for more than a couple of days at a time.

How to keep your toes in the heat

Mid July and the heatwave continues, pushing 30 degrees during the day, not dropping much lower than mid teens at night. While far from my favourite weather so far I seem to be managing: remembering to drink enough, slathering on the sun block (which I detest with great passion) and developing a knack for finding jobs which happen to be in the shade. Sartorial standards have slipped; first it was an untucked shirt, then an open shirt over a t-shirt, and now the over shirt is usually abandoned almost instantly. But that’s as far as it goes. That, and the fact that my hairy white calves have been on show for the past month or so, though displaying a marked reluctance to develop anything which could be described even vaguely as a 'tan'.

Meanwhile, Bill has taken to flopping around like a discarded teddy bear, gazing accusingly at me from limpid brown eyes as if the weather is some cruel trick engineered by me solely for his discomfort. To be fair his fur is presently providing him with a luxuriant but entirely unwelcome system of insulation, but it will be several weeks yet until his thick top coat is ready to be stripped out.

Today as the thermometer nudged 32 I found myself engaged in a session of digging. That ideal winter activity, when the ground is soft and there’s little else to do in the garden. How come I have so much of it to do at the moment, when the ground is baked hard and... well actually growth rates are beginning to slow down again. This is just how things have worked out, and so it is a matter of good fortune that I enjoy the task, even under a merciless sun with the sweat pouring down my face. To be honest, there’s not much else I’d want to do in this weather, and if you’re going to work yourself into a lather you might as well commit yourself to the job and just hope nobody gets downwind of you. On hotter days I carry with me a bandana with which to wipe away the odd bead of perspiration from the noble brow. Today this was wringing wet within seconds but, I thought to myself, no matter – the sun will surely dry it in no time at all. And sure enough, draped over the t-handle of a handy half moon edging tool, the cloth was soon ready for service once again. It was at this point I realised that while the water content of my industrious sap had become as one with the atmosphere, the salty portion had remained on the cloth, which being wiped across my face now felt not dissimilar to the application of a piece of course sandpaper to the steaming boat.

But things could be worse. I read in the Daily Telegraph – which surely means it must be true – that the recent unseasonal summery weather in summer has resulted not only in the death of over seven hundred people but, no less shockingly, an unprecedented rise in the number of toe amputations seen in the nation’s hospitals. Evidently a hitherto unknown side effect of heat exhaustion causes affected people to dash into the garden wearing sandals or – horror – even barefoot, and recklessly fire up the strimmer, with consequences that can only be imagined, though I’d rather not. Not being blessed with anything more generous than average height I favour a bent shaft for the tool in question and am quite aware that what I gain in manoeuvrability and ergonomic comfort, I loose in unintended strimming of my own feet. And so when last week I noticed with some alarm that my trusty, clumpy steel toe-capped chelsea boots had developed an unexpected degree of additional ventilation I was the very embodiment of efficiency when it came to acquiring a replacement pair. (The old boots will now have something appropriate planted in them, to undoubtedly charming effect.)

Of course, thick socks and heavy safety boots do not make for the coolest of feet in this weather. Still, mustn’t grumble – I still have a full complement of toes. And there’s rumour of rain tomorrow.

Pretty useful

I snapped a photo of the trug en route to the compost heap. Spent aquilegias, unwanted yellow loosestrife and a garnish of wilted paeony petals. Now, it looks like pretty rubbish. In a few months, it will be brown, crumbly and useful.