Why Blog?

After nigh on a month of gallivanting, I have returned home to discover that a rabbit has taken up residence in my garden. This is no ordinary rabbit. It has super-rabbit powers. How else could it have entered a garden fortified by rabbit fencing? The super-rabbit has given a whole new twist to the Chelsea Chop, the method of pruning championed by Christopher Lloyd whereby selected perennials are partially pruned in May to control size and flowering time. The super-rabbit's pruning technique, known as the Hampton Court Chomp, is applied only to much loved ornamentals and involves mowing them down to within an inch of their lives in July. It is clearly not suitable for weeds as they have been left completely unchomped and are romping away.

Geranium, Monarda and Sedum proving themselves to 
be rabbit-resistant (until the rabbit decides otherwise)

The cutting garden has been renamed the weed garden and the sweet peas have jettisoned their precisely placed supports in favour of rampaging through sow thistles. I suppose I should be grateful that the sweet peas haven’t gone to seed. I would cut some for the house if only I could machete my way through the thistles. Elsewhere, the Christmas hyacinths are putting on a most unseasonal show.

Small and preposterous hyacinth

 All of this mayhem will take time to put right, so why am I blogging instead of hurling myself into the fray? This is something I have been pondering because I have been asked to give a short talk to my local gardening club on the subject of inspiration and blogging. The two definitely go hand in hand. Reading blogs inspires me, so much so that I was inspired to join in the fun and write a blog; but it is the wonderfully supportive community of the blogosphere that I miss most when I take a break. Since my first tentative post I have been advised and supported all the way, and for that I am immensely grateful. Thank you!

Cosmos bipinnatus 'Cupcakes'

A fellow blogger recently expressed her concern about being too busy to post. There are times in every year when life takes over. Work, home, family and everything else will not juggle themselves, and blogging is sometimes forced into the back seat. Like many avid readers, I miss blogs when they disappear for a while and I am delighted when they return. This is why you see blogs on my blogroll that haven’t been updated for months. They stay there because I want to read them and I hope that some day the bloggers will post again.

Lavandula x intermedia 'Sussex'

What are the benefits of blogging? For me, I think that blogging has encouraged me to be a more thoughtful gardener. Of course, you might argue that I should think less and weed more, which is a fair point, but if I look closely enough at the bulb catalogue I can’t see the weeds in the garden (yes, I am already compiling spring bulb orders). Meanwhile, the super-rabbit has been named Christo, and as we all know, once we name anything, saying goodbye becomes more difficult. Time to order some rabbit-resistant bulbs.

When A Garden Feels Right

I went to the bank today and came home with a big smile on my face, for on the computer screen, nestled among a selection of dull but sensible salary payment options, was the glorious phrase, “undefined structure”. 

My concentration flew out of the automatic door and instead of talking money, I found myself daydreaming about that golden era of undefined structure: school summer holidays. If I had a superhuman power, it would be the ability to disappear down a rabbit hole or some similar fairytale conduit and be transported back to those blissful summer days when I was nine years old. 

I yearn for undefined structure in every area of my life with one exception: the garden. For me, a garden without clearly defined structure is like a human without a skeleton or a dancer without core strength. Many of us don’t think about our own skeletons until something goes wrong and we behave in much the same way about our garden bones, probably because, like a skeleton, structure in the garden can be such a quiet influence that it is easy to overlook it.

A garden with strong bones
 East Ruston Old Vicarage, Norfolk*

Some people enjoy formal gardens (and it is easy to appreciate the importance of structure in this style), while others prefer informality. I believe that all gardens, irrespective of size or style, benefit from time spent focusing on their structure. Garden bones might be hard landscaping elements such as paving or pergolas, or plants such as hedges, but whatever structure is in place, winter is the best time of year to take a critical look (just think of all the different hedge heights we see in one road of similar houses - one will be more successful than the next). 

Not many of us create gardens from scratch, which means that most of us work with an inherited structure. By analysing the bones we have, we can see if something can be done to strengthen them. Paths might be improved by following a more pleasing or logical route. Perhaps there is an eyesore from which we need to distract attention, or a beautiful view which would look even better were it to be framed and celebrated. With cold, harsh analysis we might decide that our borders are lacking in some way. Hedging plants or shrubs don't have to cling to the edge like wallflowers at a school dance, they can get out into the garden and throw some shapes, or create a backdrop, or form a static contrast with livelier, airier plants. 

Structural planting does not have to be evergreen as the photo above shows. Herbaceous perennials and grasses might also be used structurally, but whatever plants we select, they absolutely must be reliable in that position in the garden, for if they aren't, we will notice. After all, the peculiar thing about bones is that we tend to forget them when all is well, but they niggle like crazy when something goes wrong.

I will now get off my soapbox and go outside, but first I must tell you about my biggest regret in our farmhouse garden. You may remember that we installed rabbit fencing last year. I must report that it has been completely successful. Clearly this is disappointing news for my superhuman powers. 

* The last three photos were taken at a truly inspiring garden, East Ruston Old Vicarage. www.e-ruston-oldvicaragegardens.co.uk

Dancing While The Weeds Take Over

Asking a gardener to convalesce is like putting a Border Collie on bed rest. Nothing can reduce the desire to be outside; not even a stack of thoughtfully selected books - for the gardener not the Border Collie, a breed famed for its intellect but not for devouring meaty novels, unless "the dog ate my homework" counts.

Of course, gardeners listen to the pleas of our loved ones to rest, we really do; it's just that the second their backs are turned, we break free from our garden beds in the shade and gently potter (or putter, depending on where we live). In my case, having spent some time in hospital, I was released into the wilds of our garden for a spot of outdoor convalescence and while gently potter-puttering, I quietly planted a hedgerow. My loved ones were shocked and concerned and who can blame them? Summer is hardly the hedge-planting season, but as I tried to explain as they frogmarched me back to the comfort of my garden bed, it was perfect planting weather and in any case, I had been nurturing these native plants in containers since the bare-root season and saving them for this precise moment (the completion of the rabbit fencing - not the enforced convalescence).

This fabulous Stipa gigantea really lifted my spirits in hospital. The gardens at the hospital are actually a landscaped car park - a practical and necessary part of hospital life, yet the most blissful place for staff, patients and visitors to enjoy. They underline the importance of beautiful, practical public spaces. The same can be said of our wonderful Olympic Park (below).

I loved the Olympic Park. My friends and I deemed it to be the happiest place on the planet. I wanted to spend as much time there as I could and I was thrilled to be involved in the Olympic Closing Ceremony. After months of rehearsals, my lovely new friends and I donned our yellow outfits and had the time of our lives dancing, or in my case, hoping that I was doing what everyone else was doing and preferably at the same time as them. Here are some of us shortly before the ceremony. Our ages range from teenage to 80 years old.  

All this excitement means that I have barely been home this summer and if I have been in Norfolk, I have spent too much time watching the swallows swoop across the sky above the piggeries and not enough time gardening. However, I did enjoy a bowl of strawberries within 60 days of planting them (as promised in the 20th June post) and I am absolutely converted to 'Darlisette' which has the most perfect level of sweetness I have ever tasted in a strawberry. You will note that I failed to get round to laying down a straw mulch, along with a million and one other jobs this summer. 

I feel guilt-ridden, but I will confess that despite all the rain and the misery of blight affecting so many, my first experience of growing tomatoes without a greenhouse has been surprisingly successful... 

.. and much as I don't like to boast, a summer of neglect has led to spectacular weeds in the flower borders.

 Aren't they beautiful?

* Please note that the photo of the yellow-clad people was not taken by me and belongs to a member of TP7. The first picture is proof (were in needed) that flowers in wildlife seed mixes attract wildlife.

Juggling, strawberries and forget-me-nots

A few years ago I was inundated with sets of juggling balls. I don’t know why there were so many, perhaps they were fashionable at the time, or possibly I looked like a person in need of another juggling kit. Obviously I couldn’t juggle all the sets at once, but I fared adequately with three juggling balls - a skill I have now lost, along with the ability to do handstands or sit on a swing without feeling queasy.  

(I would have liked to have taken and inserted a photo of me struggling to juggle at this point, but that would have been multi-tasking gone mad, so instead here is an altogether less frenzied photo of a friend sunbathing outside my kitchen window).

Perhaps I was given juggling sets to prepare me for the day when I would find myself juggling a family, work, a barn conversion and a blog. In an uncanny twist, life has been mimicking my limited juggling skills and the fourth ball - the blog - has been dropped in the bedlam created when sickness bugs, work and a building project collide. I have missed the blogging community far too much, so I shall try very hard not to drop this particularly rewarding part of my life ever again.

Many beautiful plants have come into flower since my last post. One plant that I do not like to be without is Nepeta racemosa 'Walker’s Low'. It is hugely popular with bees; the colour shines in the evening light, so it is lovely to come home to after a long day at work; and ‘Walker’s Low’ behaves itself with me and doesn't get too leggy. 

Here in the farmhouse garden, the rabbit fencing has been installed and the landscapers are now laying paths. The gate to the field is sturdy and double-latched to keep out the cows who should soon be hanging their heads over the fence in search of a spot of nutritional variety in the form of interesting garden plants which have been carefully selected not to poison passing cattle.

This little corner of the garden might not look too promising at the moment, but in my mind I see borders brimming with beautiful plants which blend with the countryside beyond and attract and nurture an abundance of wonderful wildlife. Of course, while there is mud, rubble and a dream, there are no pests or disappointments, but I am an optimist, so I am planning for a positive outcome on the pest front and everything in the garden will be rosy and the cows will stick to grazing on their side of the fence.

Since we moved to Norfolk I have been missing my old strawberry patch, so yesterday I planted three varieties - 'Mara des Bois', 'Darlisette' and 'Chelsea Pensioner' (guess which flower show I was at when I ordered them). These three varieties, a perpetual, an early and a late, have been kept in cold storage so they will fruit within 60 days. I have tried this before and it was a great success. The photo of forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica) is here because I love to see forget-me-nots nestling among strawberry flowers. I have never noticed a worrying reduction in the size or quality of the crop, so it is a frippery I plan to enjoy in my new strawberry patch next spring.


 

Rabbiting on

As a fully paid-up member of the ‘do as I say and not as I do’ brigade*, heeding my own advice is about as natural as the sweet heady scent of freshly mown astro turf. However, miracles can happen - even in twenty-first century Norfolk.

In all honesty, I would rather spend my garden budget on something exquisite which pleases as many of my senses as is physically possible, so anything humdrum and sensible, like rabbit fencing, is way down my list of desirable purchases. Or it was. I have been preaching to clients about correctly installed rabbit protection for years and I have finally heard my own message.

Of course, lists of rabbit-resistant plants are readily available, but Br'er, Peter, Roger and Buggs haven’t read any of them and will invariably munch their way through specimens which are, according to the experts, off the menu.

I love to grow my own food and if I eat the food, the chances are that the rabbits will too and I know who is more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in the morning and will get to the crops first. So a considerable proportion of my garden budget will be blown on rabbit fencing which will, hopefully, keep the bunnies out. I like to think it will be a fine long-term investment for my plants and my sanity. After all, little is more disheartening than discovering that your garden is now the eatery of choice for the entire cast of Watership Down.

The photos above are of my auntie's travelling Geum. I took some from her Cambridgeshire garden, planted it in Essex, then moved a little of it with me to Norfolk. It's a spreader, so it travels within the garden too, although not in a pesky way - just enough to enable us to share it with others. It is Geum rivale. I think it is beautiful and even better, bees love it.

Our barn conversion continues apace. Tonnes of soil have been removed and the barn is still standing despite howling gales and hailstorms.

We have had many heaps of soil bigger than the one below (although this one is unusual in that it is basking in the sunlight). We have managed to reuse them all, so nothing has been disposed of off-site.

The dog enjoying his morning constitutional is Sprout. I can't believe how clean he looks in that photo!

This week it is Chelsea Flower Show, so my camera battery is recharging and I am getting all excited about catching up with old friends and meeting new plants. I can't wait!

* Please see the 'Chocolate and Cherries' post March 2012