Notes from the greenhouse

Mission Control has been looking a little sorry for itself of late. A wet winter and a less than watertight structure have taken their toll on the end of the greenhouse where I station myself to sow seeds, pot on, check the temperature, listen to the radio and drink tea (although the last two activities invariably occur wherever I find myself in the garden). This isn’t to say I’ve not been using it – far from it – but ‘making do’ has very much been the order of the day, as I’ve watched with a growing consciousness of my own inadequacy the seemingly endless stream of tweets testifying to the ruthless efficiency of my gardening friends, all of whom have appear to have cleaned, repaired and rearranged their greenhouses in good time over winter in preparation for the new season. Social media is wonderful for providing support and encouragement, particularly I’ve found in the gardening world. Just sometimes, it reminds me that I’m still very much a journeyman at this game.

My greenhouse, of course, couldn’t agree more. The leaky roof has decided that the main cascade is shown to its greatest advantage when falling directly over the potting bench, the plywood surface of which became badly waterstained, the grain not so much raised as mountainous. The max/min/in/out thermometer has been staring at me blankly for weeks, due in part to the absence of a sensible battery compartment, necessitating the irksome removal of six fiddly screws and a rubber gasket just to discover what manner of exhausted power source lurks within. It doesn't sound like much of an obstacle to overcome, but by the time I’ve made the short journey along the wavy grass path back to the house, I've passed several other more pressing things-which-need-doing along the way, and all thoughts of batteries and screwdrivers have been forgotten.

Clearly some TLC was in order, and so making the most of the extra hours of light we’re now enjoying, the potting bench has now had a rub down and several fresh coats of Briwax, which ought to see it through for a while longer. The thermometer is restored to an operational state (triple A cells in there, who’d have thought? I was expecting those annoying watch batteries), and I’ve built a new shelf above the bench for essentials so I can keep the working surface clear. Suddenly, it feels like a much more efficient operation.

I’ve also got a plan to add in a lower level of staging to create a third tier – there won’t be the height for anything taller than moderately sized seedlings, but then there won’t be the light levels for anything that’s exhausted its onboard store of energy, and by the time the first pairs of true leaves are unfurled and seeking out the sun I’ll be needing to pot them on anyway. It will just give me an extra (slight) defence from the mollusc army, though it is tempting to clad the vertical surfaces in copper. Now there’s a thought... but perhaps I’m getting carried away.

If the weekend stays sufficiently dry, I shall attack the roof seam with some silicone, a slightly fiddly process as I need to do this from the outside rather than from below to prevent the water from gathering between the roof timbers and causing them to rot. I’d rather be sowing seeds.

What’s growing in the greenhouse this month

Sweet peas in root trainers. Sown these into Carbon Gold GroChar seed compost, which I think might have been a bad idea due to the length of time they’ll be in there –they’re beginning to show signs of nutrient deficiency. Silly me; I’ve given them a shot or two of Maxicrop seaweed-based plant tonic and will get them into the ground in a few days.

Tomatoes in modules – these need potting on now. A snail got up onto the staging and munched all the 'Gardeners Delight'. Only one of the measley eight-in-a-packet 'Red Robin' have germinated (a new variety for containers), so I’d better look after this. All the 'Moneymaker' look good.

Cleomes – germination rate rather good, and potted on now into 9cm square pots. These were also looking a bit yellow (also sown in GroChar seed compost. I think it might only be good if you’re sowing into seed trays and pricking out fairly swiftly after germination, I tend to sow into modules and so need more food for the seedling as it’ll be in there for a while. I will stick with the GroChar but use sieved multi-purpose I think).

Butternut squash and courgettes – the first signs of life just showing, sown straight into multi-purpose in 9cm pots.

Hanging basket of petunias waiting to go out the front of the house, for some retro gardening cool!

A knackered looking melianthus in a 2 litre pot, a favourite plant I was intending to plant out till I discovered its toxicity to dogs.

Not to mention the posh pelargoniums, astilbes and misc cuttings/splittings, which all need some attention.

The cosmos will get sown today. Or maybe tomorrow.

What’s in yours? Do leave a comment, or send me a tweet!

If he’s not going to hurry up in there, he could at least let me in to munch on the astilbes

Inner Temple Gardens

To London on a grey and rainy day, to visit gardens of the Inner Temple. These are found on the north bank of the Thames, midway between Waterloo and Blackfriars bridges, and occupy about five acres of that strip of land between Fleet Street and the river.

The walk from Charing Cross station allowed me to revisit a favourite old haunt, the Victoria Embankment Gardens, where I’ve whiled away many a happy lunch time reading a book or just strolling beneath the canopy of the enormous London plane trees (Platanus x hispanica). Before I knew anything about gardening, I remember marvelling at their colourful, flaking bark in camouflage shades, hung in winter with brown seed balls like Christmas decorations, which disintegrate in spring to release a blizzard of parachuting seeds. I’m sure that it was also here that I encountered my first fatsia – there are some mature species of impressive size by the gates to Villiers Street – impressed not only by the handsome foliage but also by the astonishing white inflorescences, spherical umbels on similarly blanched pedicels. I remember escaping here from my office in the middle of one particularly fraught project, watching the gardeners lay out the bedding schemes with no little envy, thinking to myself; ‘gardeners must exist in an entirely stress-free world. You can’t exactly shout at a bulb to come up any faster than it wants’ I may have been on to something – while I don’t think any occupation is stress-free, or indeed should be, it’s certainly a more positive, constructive type of stress I feel now than in those suited and booted years in the air conditioned offices of an oil company.

I was glad to see the gardens here in such excellent condition, with much evidence of restorative work and even some new hard landscaping in the form a curved stone wall behind Steell’s sulpture of Robbie Burns. Why it is I gain so much pleasure from the bedding schemes here, when normally the very notion of them fills me with horror, I have yet to work out, but the sight of white tulips in a sea of pink myosotis was a cheering prospect in the afternoon drizzle, albeit one that reminded me of coconut ice. Crown imperials peaked out from more tropical plantings, and the plane trees have yet to release their seeds in earnest, though the brace of gardeners with backpack blowers keeping the paths immaculate suggested that they might be about to start.

At a leisurely pace the walk lasts about ten minutes, taking you under Waterloo Bridge, along the front of Somerset House and past Temple tube station, and the smaller sections of the embankment gardens. One of the four Inns of Court (the others being Middle Temple, Lincolns Inn and Grays Inn), the Inner Temple has existed since the fourteenth century, but evidence of a garden on this site dates back some two hundred years before then. The present gardens were laid out in the seventeenth century, with significant changes to accommodate contemporary fashion in the 1700s, but the enlargement of the site due to the construction of the embankment in the nineteenth century resulted in the amended layout which forms the basis of the gardens today. What follows here are my first thoughts and impressions of the gardens, which I look forward to researching in more detail and indeed visiting again in the near future.

Entering through the iron gates on Crown Office Row and descending semi-circular steps to the upper level of this sloping site, you are faced with three acres of lawn, bounded top and sides by the Temple buildings, and at the bottom by the embankment and river beyond. A row of benches lines the upper path, bisected by the central axis running from the gates, through the eighteenth century sundial, and down the steps which lead from the upper level to the lawn, at which point, rather oddly, the central axis disappears in a sea of green turf. Without wishing here to get into the discussion of where a park ends and a garden begins, there are definitely elements of park here, notably the expanse of lawn, the selection of mature specimen trees, and perhaps also the relative dearth of formal elements, those that exist (the paths, the steps) being pushed out to the boundaries. Given the purpose of these gardens, its park-ness is entirely appropriate, and had I been visiting on a sunny day perhaps a wander across the lawns with my lunch would have been a perfect way to spend an hour or so. On a rainy day in April, I  found myself wanting a big path down the middle, and something to continue the formality created at the entrance down through the site to the river. As it was, I stuck to the path and skirted the edges.

And as I circled the space via its peripheral edge, my gaze was held in the main by the circular fountain area. Of all the structural elements, this is the one which I found hardest to reconcile with the rest of the garden. Marooned in the lawn, it’s eccentrically off centre in a setting which calls either for formality or a purposeful rejection of the same, without quite gathering the confidence to be stridently informal. In addition, I think that it might be too small for the space – it seems a little apologetic, neither classically proportioned nor vulgar in its enormity, but too large and ill-sited to be quaint. My hope is that the planting will in time soften those aspects of the fountain that I find jarring – it doesn’t as yet, perhaps not helped by the mismatched hard landscaping materials – modern red brickwork, pale stone flags, blue-grey zinc planters with wooden benches. I think my attention was so drawn to this area I missed some of the detail in the planting by my feet, particularly on the broad walk that runs along the bottom of the site, bounded on both sides rows of huge London plane trees underplanted with, I think, liriope. I shall visit again to give this area the attention it deserves.

Reading about the complex history of the gardens*, it becomes evident why it feels as if there is no overarching plan to their layout – there hasn’t been one, at least not for several centuries and certainly not for the garden in its present form, and so perhaps a piecemeal approach to the design is understandable. The broad walk was laid out in the nineteenth century, the high border has come, gone, and come again, the steps that go nowhere were added in the sixties, and the combined efforts of fire, plague, Victorian engineering and two world wars have taken their toll.

That said, none of these comments on the layout and structural elements should in any way detract from what the head gardener and her team are managing to achieve here. Their skill and dedication is evident in so many areas, from the long herbaceous border running along the very top – packed so tightly I’d have a job insinuating a credit card between the plants, let alone my own sturdy, lumpen-footed frame – to the artfully arranged display of pots by the greenhouse, and the lush, shade tolerant plantings in the ‘woodland area’, where paeonies jostle with ferns, dicentra/lamprocapnos (I’m still getting the hang of that one!) and astilbes. There's a new planting of ferns around the base of the old black walnut tree – pleasingly a thick bark mulch path had been laid here encouraging you to step off the path and walk among the plants. I had the distinct impression that the new planting area had encroached some way into the turf – could it be that the gardeners are putting in place the initial phase of a stealthy coup to claim space from the tyranny of the lawn? I rather hope so.

The presence of the gardeners was palpable, even while they themselves appeared to have been spirited away. I passed two wheel-barrows clearly abandoned mid-task, one by an obviously well tended working seed bed, and another on the other side of the gardens, where an invisible horticulturalist had evidently been in the process of weaving intricate hazel supports for the paeonies. It was, after all, lunch time (the gardens are only open to the public from 12.30pm – 3pm), and a gardener has to eat.

Perhaps there's something particularly dynamic about a place where the gardeners are necessarily battling against less than ideal design – after all, isn't that what many of us do every day? Here, it clearly draws out a certain flair and panache that makes this space an interesting one in which to linger. Now, a few days after my first visit, the guidebook has arrived in the post, and I feel I’ve at least begun to get the lie of the land. I’m looking forward to my next trip to the Inner Temple Gardens – I have a suspicion it won’t be long before I’m back.

* In The Great Garden: a History of the Inner Temple Garden from the 12th to the 21st Century, Hilary Hale, The Honourable Society of the Inner Temple 2010.

Spring green

The garden astoundingly fresh today, all around that vibrant, luminous spring green that bursts upon your vision and fills you with an extra dose of life. All the natural high you could ask for.

In the woodland garden, sticky bud scales on the horse chestnut have parted to reveal new leaves in the process of unfurling. Yet to be raised into their final orientation, they hang drooping from slackened ribs like the infant wings of some freshly hatched dragon.

You can almost hear the sap pumping through the vascular system of the garden. Even as you look, it seems to be spreading through these veins of the russet epimedium leaves.

Hellebores are promiscuous things when happy, and they love this dappled shade. Ovaries swelling with their precious cargo, some manage a novice-like air of serene piety, while others just look fit to burst.

And out in the orchard, the snakes head fritillaries are having a field day, offering up a variation on a green, with their more glaucous shades perfectly offsetting the mottled pinks and plums of the flowers. What a day.

Waiting game

March has done us proud. Sunshine, just the right amount of rain, enough of a breeze to aid the drying of the ground but insufficient for any real chilling of the bones. And now, for the very reasonable price of one lost hour at the weekend, British Summer Time has arrived, the days lengthening perceptibly and, with the change in the clocks, remaining light until almost eight. The effects of photoperiod on the flowering of plants is complex, though well documented. Its effect on gardeners, while more anecdotal in proof is, I am convinced, no less true for that, the equation being expressed in the following manner: a longer day equals a happier gardener.

And with the light comes the heat – if anything, the temperatures over the last few weeks have been slightly above average. Try telling that to the tomato seeds I’m stubbornly attempting to germinate in an unheated greenhouse. Just as stubbornly, they’re making me wait, of the three varieties only the stalwart  'Money Maker' is showing much sign of life, although, peering very closely, I think I may have seen some embryonic roots emerging in the other modules today. Possibly, just wishful thinking. I tell myself any delay actually plays to my advantage; in previous years I’ve sown indoors both too generously and too early – just becuase you can sow tomatoes in February, doesn’t necessarily mean you should. The resulting small forest of lanky plants never really got away as well as those started a few weeks later. This way, I tell myself, as long as I can protect the tiny seedlings from any late frosts (fleece at the ready in the greenhouse), the timing will be just right. We shall see.

And whie I’m waiting for the tomatoes to do their thing, I can cheer myself with more cooperative characters, among them cleomes (new for me this year), salad leaves and of course the sweet peas. Stil loads to sow, and running rapidly out of space.

Plant identification

Identifying plants can be a minefield. It’s one thing when you haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re looking at, but quite another when you have a sneaking suspicion. Nine times out of ten, you should probably go with your gut.

Last Friday, I found myself in such a situation, up to my eyeballs in creeping buttercup, and faced with something that initially felt not altogether different. Perhaps if I’d stuck with the same order, Ranunculales (admittedly quite large, including buttercups and anemones and celandine but also –perhaps less obviously – hellebores, poppies, aquilegias and clematis, amongst many others), I’d have identified my mystery plant more quickly. But unfortunately I allowed my brain to get in the way, which sent me off on quite another route. With no tell tale flowers to help me, I became distracted by the cut leaf and stubbon, longish single root, which reminded me of something like cow parsley, Anthriscus sylvestris, and although I knew it wasn’t that, I wondered if perhaps it was a member of the same umbellifer family, the Apiaceae.

Just to add insult to injury, I elected to live tweet my mental process as I painfully worked things through. In verse. Nothing like public, self inflicted humiliation. But for those of you who missed it, here’s an account of events, more or less as they unfolded. You need never feel bad about misidentifying a plant again.

Ode to an Umbelliferous Thing

O Umbelliferous Thing, it’s my belief
your great tap root and compound leaf
should lead me, ’fore the morning’s old
to cry your name out, loud and bold.
More numerous than buttercup
and twice as tricky to pull up,
why is it not so plain to see
the truth of your identity?

Not Hogweed, then you would be hairier.
P’raps Aegopodium podograria:
Ground elder? No, the root’s all wrong
You clearly sing a different song.
Not knowing irks me; hands all clammy.
Maybe you’re spawn of summer’s Ammi?

Can’t be, that really would be queer
We planted none of that last year.
A brutish Carrot? Here? How raucous
would be the cries. Daucus –
in the flower beds – how fey!
It’s not a bleedin' pottager!

So neither chervil, parsnip, parsley...
but here a thought intrudes-how ghastly!
A nagging doubt, at first quite small...
...WHAT IF NOT UMBELLIFER AT ALL?!

This one here has a thing quite odd;
A longish stem and seeded pod...
Umbellifer, this plant is not.
If that’s the case, the question’s: WHAT?
There’s many a plant – genus, to boot –
compound of leaf and long of root,
I clearly was too quick today
to take the Apaiceaen Way.

I’ve really been supremely soppy
It’s Meconopsis – a Welsh Poppy!

Meconopsis cambrica, via a very circuitous route

Buzzing

Male catkins of the goat willow Salix caprea – also known as pussy willow for the soft furriness of the unopened buds. My ears detected a steady buzzing as I wheeled the barrow back from the bonfire area towards the end of the day; the sun was about to set, the temperature had noticeably dropped, but there was a distinct sound of activity coming from one of the four large multistemmed trees which preside over the hazel coppice. The source of the sound was at first difficult to locate, but the richness of the tone suggested a significant number of individuals, reminding me of standing below a hornets’ nest as countless creatures flew in and out, completely ignoring me in their determined industry. A bit early in the year for hornets, I thought. Surely early too for bees to be swarming – I silently berated myself for not knowing more about these fascinating things, resolving to buy Dave Goulson’s A Sting in the Tale, on my wish list for months, without further ado – and, look as I might, I could find no sign of a nest. But still, the closer I got to the tree, the louder the insistent thrumming noise. Only one direction left to look, then...

And there they were. A cloud of what looked from the ground like fat bumbles (though I couldn’t be sure), making the most of the pollen and nectar from this early flowering tree – good for them. And, by extension, for us.

Battling the borrowed view

Wednesday’s garden takes the notion of ‘borrowed view’ to an entirely different level. It’s one thing to appropriate visually your neighbour’s Betula utilis var. jacquamontii as a focal point for a particular view in your garden. It’s quite another when your every boundary is surrounded by the most breathtaking scenery; turn one way for the rolling downs with their patchwork fields and woodland; turn another to gaze out over the village church and country cottages, oast houses and orchards. In a very obvious sense this location epitomises what it is to be gardening in the Kentish landscape; look up from your weeding and it’s there, rolled out before you in all its glory.

It would be misleading to suggest that this borrowed landscape intrudes; it’s too pleasing a view to be unwelcome in any respect. If there’s any downside in being surrounded by such a generous expanse of loveliness – and, being British, I’ll have a good stab at locating any downside – it’s that any sense of ‘garden’ you try to establish can all to easily become overwhelmed by the wider context of the glorious countryside. Tall hedges and structures artfully arranged to create a sense of enclosure, opening up at strategic points to provide choice glimpses over the surrounding weald would certainly be high on my list of solutions for starting to address this tension. But other factors are at work – cost, time, client preference – calling for approaches of a subtler nature.

I think that’s why the area in the photograph is one of my favourite spots in this garden. Out of shot to the left, and down a rolling bank, a group of sedate birches provides a visual stop, while a mature purple smoke bush (Cotinus coggygria 'Royal Purple') provides the top and right hand edge of the frame. Standing here, the landscape beyond is perfectly visible, but you are conscious of having to look through the garden to see it. It’s a sensation that lasts only fleetingly – a few steps down the slope and you’re back out in the open, glorious rolling Kentishness on all sides, but it gives a hint as to what can be achieved without having to resort to great blocks of evergreen hedging.

As for the spot itself, it’s an area into which a fair amount of thought and work has gone, though perhaps you wouldn’t know it to look at it. The image shows the cotinus in semi-recumbent pose – a combination of waterlogged soil and winter winds have done their best to fell the old soldier, but we’re hoping he’s made of sterner stuff. The majority of the root system is in the ground, and we’ve done our best to protect that which became exposed. I’ve also elected not to perform my annual hard prune for larger leaves at the expense of the smokey flowers – the plant has been under enough stress as it is and, in any case, the loss of some of the roots will inevitably lead to a degree of self pruning in the aerial parts, if it survives at all. So far the signs are good, with the tiny dark red buds emerging with encouraging vigour. The foot of the shrub has been rescued from a tangle of uninspring vinca, no doubt planted due to its chief quality of being decidedly unappetising to rabbits, from whose attention this garden suffers greatly. In the rich soil, however, the vinca can quickly become rampant, and an unruly mound of its arching stems did nothing visually. Wisely, the furry critters have also chosen to leave un-nibbled the native digitalis and hellebores that have replaced the periwinkles. The lilac coloured primrose, not somethng I’d normally choose, seems to have settled in of its own accord, and I think it can stay, certainly for the moment. While I decide what to do about it, it can be left to enjoy the view – although, apparently unimpressed, it appears to be facing entirely the wrong way. One presence here, at least, that would rather gaze into the garden, than out to the landscape beyond.

What’s so good about: crocuses?

I took some cracking photos of crocuses this week and, though I tweeted them instantly, I wondered if it might be too much to post them to the blog, having featured an image of a crowd of crocuses at the head of last week’s post. Well. Poo to that with knobs on. The sun’s out, fast fading snowdrops are old news, and the crocuses are coming into their own.

Crocus. It’s an awkward word, isn’t it? It’s much more satisfying to pronounce the Greek word from which it derives (krokos), although this itself apparently has its root in the semitic languages of the mediterranean area, and refers explicitly to the saffron for which the stamens are harvested (from Crocus sativas, which is the autumn flowering saffron crocus and not, confusingly, the autumn crocus Colchicum autumnal which – to confound matters further – isn’t in fact a crocus at all, but a member of the lily family. The crocus, as any fule kno, is in the iris family). I’m also aware that the plural should almost certainly be croci, but can’t quite bring myself to write it, let alone say it. Crocuses it is, then.

What do I like so much about crocuses? Aside from the colours – white ones and cream ones and orange ones and mauve ones and deep purple ones and even stripy ones – I’m rather fond of the leaves. Described technically as ensiform (sword shaped), the leaves are long, thin, and grass like, although there are considerably fewer leaves to each corm than there would be to a tuft of grass, so you’re unlikely to mistake one for the other. Quite apart from which, the leaf of the crocus usually features a central silvery-white stripe along the whole length. If I’m honest, they are not things of great beauty; but their appearance in February is a sign that some colour is about to appear in the garden. Unless you spend an awful lot of time staring at the ground as I do, it won’t be the leaves that you notice, but the flowers. Each flower has six petals, two whorls of three, one cupping the other; the outermost often being slightly larger. When closed, these give the flower its characteristic goblet shape, but in full sun some species – particularly C. tomasianus with its longer, slender petals – will open out fully, exposing stigma and stamens in colours ranging from golden yellow to a deep, egg-yolk orange. Welcome, bright splashes of colour in drifts across the garden, just the thing to banish the winter blues.

Where to plant?

Lawns are better than beds or borders, where the corms may be disturbed by weeding and planting activity. Most crocuses appreciate full sun – many will sulk and refuse point blank to open their flowers without it. Drainage is important – although you can grow crocus with a degree of success on clay soils, incorporating grit is a good idea, as is avoiding areas which become waterlogged.

How to plant?

In short, in great numbers. “Splurging is the only way with crocus,” writes Anna Pavord in Bulb, and you can’t really argue with that. Anything less than a generous expanse looks plain silly, like an afterthought. Plant each corm to a depth three times its own height, and one and a half times its width apart (as the corms are not large, this is close, meaning that one or two bags from the garden centre won’t achieve much of an effect. It’s best to buy in large quantities from a bulb wholesaler, which works out at under ten pounds for a hundred corms). The drifts will bulk up by seeding, but it is important to remember not to mow the grass for a couple of weeks after the foliage has died back, a period which will allow the seed pods resting on the ground to open and release their cargo into the sward.

Crocuses also look wonderful planted in containers, which can be brought into the house to enjoy their scent as well as their cheery flowers. Use a free draining compost, incorporate a sprinkling of bonemeal and top dress with fine grit.

When to buy?

Autumn flowering varieties should be available as corms to plant now. Spring flowered varieties are usually available from September.

Autumn crocuses of note

In addition to C. sativas grown for saffron, the autumn flowering crocuses also include one of the bluest flowered species, Crocus pulchellus, while the award for the craziest stigma (the orangey lady parts of the flower) goes to Crocus tournefortii. Autumn flowering varieties should be available as corms to plant now. Spring flowered varieties are usually available from September.

The Good Taste Brigade

A word of warning with which to end. There is, as with many things in the world of gardening, an element of snobbery regarding certain varieties. The larger flowered crocuses – cultivars of C. vernus – appear to be considered by some to be rather uncouth. Particularly the all white 'Jeanne d'Arc', and the cheerfully striped 'Pickwick'. I think Pickwick’s rather fun, and Joan of Arc is splendid. Perhaps care should be taken not to plant these with more delicate forms. But then again, perhaps not.

A fistful of snowdrops

Galantho thievery

What is it that’s so satifying about having a fistful of snowdrops? I’m not sure. Perhaps it’s the knowledge that some people are willing to pay silly money for bulbs of the rarest and most desirable varieties (over £700 for Galanthus woronowii 'Elizabeth Harrison' in 2012 - which has golden markings on the petals and a matching golden ovary at the base (well, top as you look at it) of the flower). Maybe it’s just the feeling of having your hands around such a delicate and iconic plant, as if you’re somehow holding the key to spring itself. Whatever it is, it’s a sensation that caught me off guard today, as I carefully moved clumps of self sown plants into one area in preparation for revamping this particular bed. Normally, I don’t touch them until they’ve done their thing, if at all, but I don’t want them getting lost in the melee. I tried where possible to take as big a rootball with the plants as possible, although in separating out some of the intermingled undesirables, the odd bulb was displaced, and it will take a little longer for these to reestablish in their new positions, as they’re not hugely keen on root disturbance.

A snowdrop nursery would, I’m sure, be happier to move plants during the dormant period, rather than ‘in the green’. Just imagine working in a place like that, where you’re shifting the things about all the time. That’s a job I’d be happy to do. For a few snowdrops more.

Winter’s end

The sun is playing hide and seek. Magnolia peeping, cherry blossom beginning to froth the boughs. It is, after all, the last day of February, a milestone marking in my mental calendar the end of the hivernal trimester. In reality, the seasons are hardly so orderly, and signs of spring have for weeks been coexisting with a mild but stormy winter. March is a time of bitter winds – oddly, rather than images of windswept rural landscapes, the arrival of that month conjures memories of walking up Bishopsgate, hunkered down in scarf and coat against icy blasts seemingly intent on keeping me from the office. Perhaps the wind was trying to tell me something – turn around, get back on the train; leave the city behind, pull on your boots and get out in the open where you belong. I’ll be no kinder to you when you’re surrounded by trees and standing on soil instead of stone, but you may feel the benefit of a warmth of a different kind. An inner warmth that comes from knowing you’re where you belong. Odd, for a London-bred lad. But a few months later I had taken a part time job closer to home allowing me to volunteer with the garden team at Scotney Castle while studying horticulture at the local college.

So, we have March winds to look forward to, and the long range forecast is talking of colder conditions arriving in the south east – there is plenty of time yet for frost to nip off the over eager shoot or bud. But the earth needs a spell of freezing, and the cold temperatures are essential for controlling the less desirable elements of our local ecosystem, including a host of plant pests and pathogens. The arrival of frost also suggests clearer skies and brighter, drier conditions. Coupled with the steadily increasing daylight, I think that can only be a paticularly good thing.

Remembering snow

Wednesday morning. Birdsong, drizzle. The constant background roar of the bypass, the occasional metallic ululations of a passing train transporting early-morning commuters into the capital. A typical Hildenborough morning soundscape in early spring. While not understanding the mechanics of the process, I have noticed how rain – all rain, but particularly a thick curtain of fine rain or mist – magnifies the sound of the distant trunk road and the railway tracks that bisect the fields behind. Pondering on these things, I realise why I have missed the snow, why I always long for the snow when it seems that all around me dread the faintest rumour of its arrival. It’s not so much the excitement of looking out of the window in the morning to discover your world blanketed in white. Nor is it the prospect of snowball fights and sledging, of watching Bill testing the alien coldness with a tentative paw before diving in, tail up and head down, nose bent to the trail with that degree of focus and determination only seen in snow or after a heavy frost. Nor even is it the pure, childish pleasure of being the first to arrive at some virgin drift, boot-clad feet breaking through the taught crust, descending through the powder beneath, crushing and compacting ice into chunky treads. I love that about a good, deep fall of snow. But it’s not what I miss most.

It’s the silence.

I miss the silence. In order to maintain a sense of balance I need to spend a good proportion of my time outside, working in gardens, running or walking through woods and fields, and I’m aware how fortunate we are to live in a county where this can be a daily reality. But appreciative as I am of our surroundings, I can’t fool myself for long that this is anything approaching wilderness. Stand still and listen, deep into country footpaths almost anywhere in Kent, and beneath the sound of the birds and the animals, and the wind in the trees, you’ll almost certainly become aware of the noise of the transport systems that crisscross the countryside, not to mention the ever present rumble of air traffic far above. Much of this is necessary to maintain the lives we live – I don’t dispute that. But a heavy fall of snow stops the lot. Inconvenient, undoubtably. But, for a few days, silent.

I wonder if the snow will come this year? I think probably not. But I take comfort in remembering.

5 ways to overcome garden inertia

Having a garden is supposed to be a good thing. But all too often, it can become a source of bewilderment, guilt and even stress, particularly for first time buyers and those juggling the pressures of work with young families. The majority of the garden media spreads before us lavish images of beautiful, perfectly manicured plots – aspirational, certainly, but seemingly unattainable and remote. Even those helpful articles with titles like “10 things to do in your garden this month” – clearly intended to offer sound, step-by-step help and advice – can often seem to be giving you ten more reasons to beat yourself up for your lack of achievement. The knowledge that over two million homes in the UK are without a garden probably only increases the guilt, rather than reminding us how lucky we are to have a garden of our own. We should be doing better with the resources which we’re so fortunate to have. Faced with a yawning chasm between what our garden could be and the reality of what it is, who can blame us for falling into a state of denial, and closing the door to our outside room, particularly in winter. But anyone who's tried this approach will tell you that there's a catch. The more we put off taking action, the more there is to be done. You think you can get away with ignoring your garden in winter. By May, it’s a monster.

If any of this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. It’s something I increasingly encounter; if I’m honest, I even feel this way myself from time to time. If someone for whom gardening is both passion and profession can feel this way, you should know you’re in good company.

Practical advice

Which is all very well, but what do you do if you find yourself in a similar situation? Here are five ways in which you can overcome your inertia, and being to gain some traction in the garden.

1. Take baby steps

Waiting until you just can’t stand it any more, and then rushing about the garden like a whirlwind might get a lot done in one morning, but it’s hardly a sustainable way of keeping on top of things. For a less ‘pressure cooker’ approach you need to incorporate small, manageable tasks into a your weekly routine and, in that way, you’ll start to create a long-term strategy that will soon pay dividends and have you feeling more relaxed about the garden. Laetitia Maklouf (author of The Virgin Gardener and Sweet Peas for Summer ) uses her daughter’s hula hoop to define a small area which she clears whenever she has a moment in the day, concentrating solely on the area bounded by the bright pink edge. It’s a really practical illustration of how a ‘little-but-often’ approach can go a long way.

2. Work in zones

Tackling the whole garden in one go can seem an overwhelming prospect. But what if you were to split it into smaller areas, each of which you could treat like a mini project? This would allow you to assign a timescale to each discrete zone, making the prospect of tackling the entire space far less daunting, as you’ll no longer feel it needs to be accomplished in an instant transformation. “Never take on the whole garden at once,” writes Alys Fowler in The Thrifty Gardener . “Start from the back door and work outwards.” This approach also has the benefit of ensuring that you always have something cheerful to look out at from your window, rather than having to peer down to the end of the garden to see the point at which chaos gives way to order.

3. Get tidying

This one sounds incredibly obvious, but it makes such an immediate difference. When we’re suffering from garden inertia, it’s often the case that our outside space can become a little...cluttered. Particularly true for those renovating a new house, when you soon find out that the garden can absorb a huge amount of stuff that you really don't want to be looking at all the time. And it’s true, gardens are great storage areas, but really... that’s what sheds are for. That pile of bits and bobs you've been meaning to take to the dump? Nine o’clock, this Saturday morning – make a date and just do it.

4. Use Freecycle 

For large, and not so large stuff that you really don't want any more. It’s amazing what people will gladly take off your hands, from old bricks, hardcore, wooden palettes to larger garden buildings. Several friends have spared themselves the effort of having to dismantle and dispose of a greenhouse that’s in need of some TLC by advertising it on freecycle, whereupon they’ve been inundated with people only too keen to take it off their hands. So, find your local freecycle group, and join up. The only hard bit is deciding which of the many responses you receive will be the lucky winner of your old shed.

5. Throw a party

It can’t be denied that sometimes there is just too much to be done without help. I’m a firm believer that that’s what friends are for. It’s hard to overstate the good will generated by a group of like minded folk coming together with one common aim, and if you can provide food and drink in exchange for an afternoon of your friends’ labour, I guarantee that you will achieve a huge amount in the time, while creating an occasion to look back on with fondness. Surely one of the very best things about a garden is that it is a space in which happy memories are created. If the weather’s up to it (and it should be if you’re asking a load of people to come over and work outside), a barbecue is ideal for this. Just make sure the gentlemen in the party concentrate on gardening, rather than fire making. Ugg*.

Have you come up with strategies of your own for overcoming inertia in the garden? Leave a comment below or tweet @growgardencare.




*A shameless instance of outrageous gender stereotyping. But not necessarily inaccurate for all that.

Alarm call

Hmm. Looks cold up there. Might stay under this leaf for a few more days.

A blackbird is singing outside my bedroom window. The morning creeps into the room, a faint grey glow seeping around the edges of the blinds and pooling in the corners where wall meets wall, and the sound of birdsong, gentle at first then more insistent, draws me into consciousness. Hurry, it is day now. Quick, now, quick! Spring is on its way.

And, spring is on its way. February is come, and suddenly, just when we thought winter would never end, we’re more than half way through, and hellebores and snowdrops, eranthis and crocuses are forcing their way out of the ground to shake themselves out of slumber. There’s more wet stuff on the way – another nasty front coming in tonight if the forecast is to be believed. But the birds are singing, the bulbs are up, and I’ve got a spring in my step this week.

Regreening the front garden...what to do about block paving. 1.

Somebody has stolen my front garden. Where once there would have been lawn, borders brimming with flowers, a functional but nonetheless charming path to the front door and a low wall with railings to the street, there is now an expanse of characterless block paving and a dropped kerb. And we’re not the only ones to have become victims to the front garden thieves  – there’s a rash of it breaking out along our road, and the word on the street is that it’s a phenomenon that could soon reach epidemic proportions across the nation.

Perhaps I overdramatise; this isn’t something that happened overnight – in fact, the block paving’s been at our address longer than we have, and the absence of the original front garden was not a sufficient obstacle to prevent us from buying the house which we chose to make our home. But this fact doesn’t prevent me from gazing with slight longing at the gardens of the few neighbours who have managed to resist the lure of a paved frontage, nor from feeling alarm at the ever increasing number of homeowners who are choosing to grub out all plant matter and cover over every inch of bare soil with paving from one boundary to the other.

You may ask, what’s the big deal? Most houses with front gardens were built at a time when levels of car ownership were significantly lower; it makes perfect sense to use this area for off-road parking and, quite apart from which, who has time to tend a garden in the front of the property as well as the rear? All of which are perfectly valid points, which would appear to suggest that paving over a front garden is an entirely logical solution to a modern day first world problem, perhaps even a socially responsible one, as we opt to park our vehicles within the bounds of our own property rather than clutter up the public highways.

So why am I getting myself so worked up about people paving over gardens? I have reservations about the trend continuing along the current trajectory, for reasons both aesthetic and environmental. Let’s deal with the effect on the environment first, something which has been thrown into sharp focus on several occasions in the UK over the last decade, most recently with the very recent weather patterns we’ve been experiencing since Christmas.

The main issue here is one of urban runoff; the more we pave over land which, left in something approximating its natural state, would safely filter, capture and direct rain water, the more we put ourselves at risk of flooding. This is a state of affairs only exacerbated by the apparently irresistible urge of house builders and planners to construct developments on floodplains. Building and planning regulations now make reference to the permeability of hard surfaces, but in practice this is little more than greenwash, and while everyone who knows about these things agrees that building Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SuDS) into our towns and cities is a great idea it has yet to become a legal requirement, with government and industry wrangling over who’s going to pay for it. Currently, the financial cost of ignoring these best practice technologies is being shouldered by the insurance trade, while the emotional cost weighs heavily on those families and business owners who become victim to the inevitable floods.

Against this background, I can’t help wince at every front garden I see being paved over.  Perhaps this reaction is caused by frustration and moral outrage at the environmental cost – that would be the noble explanation. But I think it’s at least partly because I think so much of it just looks awful.

I don’t have anything against block paving per se. I just wish it wasn’t quite so ubiquitous, and that more installations sought to add interest by incorporating a greater variation in texture, whether by using a wider palette of materials, or by including planting areas, from more traditional raised beds for flowers and or shrubs or – I don’t know – perhaps ground level gravelled areas for mediterranean type plants. Just something to break up the monotony of relentless, often deeply unlovely paving. As for the pavers themselves, it would be encouraging to think that some thought could be given to selecting materials and colours which complement those used for the house itself. I don’t think it would be too much to ask that these considerations be made statutory requirements, and that any householder or landscaper found flouting them be whipped naked through the streets as a warning to others.

As someone who has acquired a paved driveway, there’s one more niggle – the maintenance. I realise that this is a particularly personal point of view, and that the time spent looking after a proper garden in front of the house would be far greater. But keeping block paving in anything other than a frankly derelict condition (and I have tried this as an option) requires periodic pressure washing and redressing with sand, and either a frequent application of herbicide or a several hours of shuffling along on your knees pulling weeds and grass out of the cracks. None of these are activities which I find particularly nourishing to the soul. And it’s so – well...not-green – that it almost makes me weep. 2014 then, I have decided, is the year in which Something Must Be Done.

In a series of posts of which this is the first, I don’t plan to make a case for or against paving front gardens, nor am I intending to explore the countless different options available to a householder considering a redesign of this space. What I will be doing – because this is the position in which I find myself – is considering ways in which to bring some green life back to what in many cases is an unwelcoming, bleak and sterile area.

And so, approaching the front door and looking with some dismay at our drive, I find we’re faced with the following options:

1. Clean it up.

2. Dig it up.

And then, possibly a third:

3. Something else.

It’s that ‘something else’ that we’ll be deciding upon over the course of the year. I’ll let you know how it’s progressing in the next post.

Further reading

Guidance on the permeable surfacing of front gardens, Environment Agency, 2008

Spaced out: perspectives on parking policy, RAC Foundation, July 2012
A report including statistics on domestic parking space across the UK

SUDS, What’s it all about? pavingexpert.com, last accessed 28 January 2013

UK’s front gardens paved over for parking spaces, The Guardian, 18 July 2012

43 reasons not to pave, Ealing Front Garden Project, last accessed 28 January 2013

New planning regulations for front garden paving, Healthy Life Essex, last accessed 28 January 2013
A good general summary of the issues, legislation and technologies available, with some design ideas for front garden space.

Sustainable Urban Drainage System (SuDS) rules: delays could leave developers high and dry, Mondaq, December 2013

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.