Holey Clogs, the Garden Museum and a Day Out with Matthew Biggs

One Mothering Sunday not many moons ago, my children asked me what I would like to do to celebrate my special day. “You can do anything,” they said and my eyes lit up as images of me clad in a maternal swooshing skirt and skipping hand in hand with my beloved brood of smiling, plant-loving children through swathes
of daffs passed joyfully through my idealistic mind “...except visit a garden.”
I clattered inelegantly back to earth and landed with an ungraceful thud.

The girls skipping through the daffs (yes, they were bribed)

I reminisce dewy-eyed on the good old days, when all I had to do was suggest a trip to a beach which just happened to be in close proximity to a garden I wanted to see and they would clamber unwittingly into the car, trailing their buckets and spades behind them. Over the years they have grown wise to my pathetic ploys and I am subjected to trial by teenager if I so much as utter the words “day out”.

Brunnera macrophylla 'Jack Frost' in the farmhouse garden

The wiser the children grow; the more creative I must become. Days out with dual interests work well, so long as my hidden horticultural agenda remains undiscovered. Many zoos have superb gardens; and do you think I would have driven my offspring all the way to Legoland had I not harboured a burning desire to ogle the landscaping? So you can imagine my excitement on hearing about an exhibition exploring the relationship between fashion and garden design at the Garden Museum in London. All I had to do was conceal any reference to gardens and I would have my day out. 

Bergenia 'Silberlicht' in the farmhouse garden

It is a fascinating exhibition, spanning centuries of design from the use of botanically accurate images of flowers on clothing during the 1600s to Valentino’s spring/summer 2013 couture collection. Apart from the jaw-droppingly beautiful clothes, I particularly enjoyed a collection of paintings featuring gardeners at work. Gardeners were once such a source of pride that they were painted. Imagine! I would certainly need some new clothes if I were to be captured on canvas doing my mulching. 

My least holey clogs after years of mulching

This leads me to one of the questions raised by the exhibition. "How did people dress to garden, or to visit gardens?" The 18th century landscape movement may have given rise to a new style of dressing, which eventually developed into the outdoor clothing we see in glossy magazines, but I am not altogether convinced that this stylish ideal holds much relevance for real gardeners with brittle nails and that half moon sun strip around the midriff which never seems to fade. In any case, we know what we wear to garden these days, as we have already chewed over the issue of gardening clothes here: 
http://thegardeningshoe.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/swishing-for-gardeners-and-garlic-bath.html

Crocus tommasinianus proving its value to wildlife
 in the farmhouse garden

When it comes to visiting gardens, twenty-first century style choices can be astonishingly diverse and bewilderingly unpredictable. For example, there was a time when I might visit a garden sporting beach clothes accessorised by sand, seaside buckets and spades. These days however, I might dress as if I were on the verge of accompanying my teenage children to a music festival, but got lost en route and found myself visiting a garden. Ahem.

P.S.  Update on the children... After the initial horror of finding themselves duped yet again into a garden-based day out, they relaxed and enjoyed the exhibition. The level of forgiveness will be assessed on Mothering Sunday later this month. You never know, they might be reading this and decide (completely without any hinting from me at all) to treat me to a day out with Matthew Biggs.
http://www.gardenmuseum.org.uk/page/mothers-day-in-the-garden-with-mathew-biggs-30-03-14 

Information about the Fashion and Gardens Exhibition can be found on The Garden Museum website:  http://www.gardenmuseum.org.uk/page/fashion-and-gardens

Welcoming Wildlife

Isn't it great when a plan starts to come together? When I began our garden last year, my main aim was to encourage wildlife by selecting plants which would offer a source of food and shelter. One year on, we are seeing a marked increase in the numbers of bees, butterflies and birds. Perhaps this is because of the weather and nothing to do with gardening, but when I go outside and find myself in a flurry of butterflies and I see them settling on plants which were selected to meet their needs, I feel certain that I have made sound choices. 

I garden organically; I have never gardened in any other way. If you should ever visit our garden, you will receive no apology for lawn weeds because we rejoice when we see bees enjoying flowering clover in our lawn and we tread very, very carefully! 

Echinops ritro

Gardening for wildlife might be my main aim, but I am selfish enough to design our garden for my requirements too. I have posted before about my need for readable structure in the garden* and although I select plants for other creatures, I want to see them arranged in a way which pleases my eye. Happily, bees and butterflies enjoy plants en masse as much as I do.

Cirsium rivulare 'Atropurpureum'

The farmhouse garden is still far from mature - a budget blown on rabbit fencing put paid to any hope of planting big specimens - but it is beginning to do its job and we have a lively garden where we can enjoy a privileged, close view of the creatures visiting the plants. 

Hyssopus officinalis

I feel very strongly that our decisions make a difference and while we can’t encourage wildlife in if it isn’t within sensory distance, we can welcome visiting creatures with a delicious feast, somewhere to stay and a supportive environment for any offspring.

Knautia macedonica

My next challenge is to try to ensure food and shelter for wildlife all year round and I hope you will forgive me if I return each month to this subject which is so important to me. I am fascinated to hear about any plants you have found to be particularly attractive to beneficial insects and other wildlife.  Meanwhile, I will grab myself a coffee and take a few minutes to enjoy the company of today's garden guests.  

* The structure rant can be found at:

 http://thegardeningshoe.blogspot.co.uk/2013_02_01_archive.html

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.