The Garden Nursery

When I was six years old, I loved to tiptoe quietly into the garage to peek at the silhouettes of baby blue tits in the bird box my dad had built into our garage wall. The back of the box was glazed and covered with brown paper which gave the birds a sense of privacy while allowing us the opportunity to see something of their lives. My dad died the following spring, but the seeds of my fascination with the natural world were already sown.

Nowadays we don’t need to head into the garage to see silhouettes of chicks in a nest. For Christmas I received a bird box with a camera in it. I suspect that the gift is part of a cunning plan to encourage domesticity as the nesting box is sited directly opposite the kitchen window under which there is a sink. Since the sink is required to fill the kettle, the domesticity plan has backfired to the point that far from motivating me to attempt kitchen chores, there has been a significant increase in the quantity of time I spend sitting down. I have always drunk coffee on the hoof, but if there is any activity around the bird box while I am filling the kettle, I fire the remote at the television, plonk myself into a chair and ogle the nest while enjoying a lovely warm drink and wondering what Dad would have thought of this wireless camera bird box. 

The nest taking shape

The most astonishing accomplishment of this piece of technology is that it has caught the attention of my own offspring. Instead of the usual fare they enjoy on television, they have been spotted watching nature. Out of choice! Surely this is a healthy form of screen time?

Feathering the nest

From the comfort of the kitchen we have also been watching over a mother who hatched 11 ducklings. The nest is in the lavender which I have yet to cut back after flowering last year. I don’t cut back plants until spring because of the shelter they offer to minibeasts. I hadn't considered that the same plants might offer shelter to much larger creatures. Of course, my lavender tends to fall apart more quickly than it would had I shorn it after flowering, but it is easy to strike cuttings so I always have a ready supply. The courtyard where the ducklings hatched is a former boar pen. In the two years since it was converted into a garden, 22 ducklings have made their way into the world under the cover of the plants.

The garden feels like a dating disco. Our feathered friends are busily pairing off and doing the bird equivalent of The Birdie Song while dancing around their handbags, or in the case of Mr & Mrs Pheasant, tiptoeing through the tulips, (aptly named Tulipa 'Night Club'). At this rate - and with any luck - we will be inundated with offspring!

Mrs P doesn't look impressed. 
Perhaps she doesn't like the tulips.

There is a baby boom in my office too. Since I don't have a greenhouse, the office floor must double up as a nursery. Butternuts, tomatoes, peppers and Cosmos are jostling for light and waiting impatiently to fledge. It is hardly the ideal start for a plant, but they are safer indoors than in the cold frames where they would become frazzled with frost in no time. I rather like sharing my office with them; I only wish that the greenfly hadn't followed them in. The office greenfly are clearly very happy with the food and shelter on offer as they are procreating like it is going out of fashion. One solution will be to bring in the ladybirds. This is all putting a most unlikely slant on the notion of a busy day at the office. 

I am joining with Wildlife Wednesday at https://mygardenersays.com/ Why not pop over there, grab a drink and spend some time marvelling at the wildlife in gardens around the globe?

The Great Garden Throwback

I spent much of my childhood viewing gardens upside down. If I wasn't careering around the lawn perfecting cartwheels, I might be socialising over a weather-related handstands game which was snappily named Snow, Rain, Thunder, Lightning. The rules elude me, but I do remember that a handstand with one leg at a jaunty angle signified a lightning fork.

When my best friend and I were feeling lazy, we would dangle upside down from the frame of the garden swing; she on one side, I on the other, putting the world to rights for hours on end and wondering where Speedy my tortoise had scurried off to while we were chatting (he wasn’t called Speedy for nothing). On the rare occasions when we weren’t upside down, we would not have our feet on the ground. Why would we when we could be rockery hopping? This involved skipping from one stone to the next in the rockery, while honing our multitasking skills by having a conversation about something deep and meaningful like Abba, all while avoiding the toad which sheltered in a crevice hidden by Aubretia.

Aubretia was arguably the most ubiquitous plant of my childhood. In springtime it would be romping over rockeries and clambering over walls in the suburb I called home. Then rockeries fell out of fashion and Aubretia became the subject of mockery; the butt of jokes from plant snobs. It is highly likely that the demise of Aubretia coincided with the point at which I found my feet, gave up tumbling across lawns and became an upright citizen. Last spring, as an act of rebellion against plant snobs and the all-too-persistent passing of time, I decided to relive those glorious days of yore by growing Aubretia and attempting a handstand. Needless to say, one was more successful than the other. 

Aubretia is a top bee plant. I had toyed with the idea of growing it for a while, but because my garden is set in a flat landscape, with no rocks or walls over which Aubretia might scramble, I was concerned about where I might place it. I could have popped it in a pot and left it to escape over the side, but I keep very few plants in containers as I find them too time-consuming. I have no memory of seeing Aubretia growing anywhere other than over and down the side of things, so it was with more than a little hesitation that I placed it in a border. What on earth was I thinking? Aubretia is fabulous in a border! Instead of long (and quite frankly lanky) curtains, it forms a neat cushion. When it comes to garden soft furnishings - and if you want matching curtains and cushions - this plant is a winner! 

I grow it in an area which was once a gravel drive. The soil is thin, impoverished and alkaline. The site is the most inhospitable part of the garden. It might face south, but it is also a frost pocket which can be exceptionally windy. Despite this, Aubretia flowers shrug off the frost and the plant holds itself together, blooms for weeks on end, and is a hub of bee action on a sunny day. Clipping it after flowering keeps it neat and tidy. It really is a valuable addition to my borders and leaves me wondering why on earth a plant of this calibre was so badly maligned? 

I would love to tell you with confidence that I purchased plants from the Cascade Series, but since I am relying on my memory and the plants are cascading nowhere, I am happy to be corrected. It is unsurprising that I mislaid the plant labels given the second part of reliving my childhood. I am no Beth Tweddle, but I gave it my best shot and my children were in awe of my handstand abilities. Of course, those might have been looks of horror on their faces, but for reasons of self-esteem, I will stick with awe. Despite reaching the dizzying heights of an almost perfect handstand (dizzying being the operative word - it took quite some recovering from), I shall not be attempting another handstand in the near future, not least because I swear it took a full week for all my internal organs to work their way back to where they started. 

Clearly I made a slight error of judgement in believing that I could still achieve a handstand with any level of dignity; the garden fashionistas on the other hand made a massive mistake when they were so downright dismissive of an excellent garden plant. I am delighted to welcome Aubretia into my garden; it certainly gets the bee seal of approval. Garden fashions have a lot to answer for.

On the Menu for Bees in March

When it comes to beauties with unfortunate names, common lungwort has to win the prize. Even its Latin name, Pulmonaria officinalis - pulmo - pertaining to the lungs and officinalis - of the shop (and they don’t mean Harrods), hardly conjures up images of the heavenly flowers gracing my garden at the moment. Were our antecedents so preoccupied with leaves like diseased lungs that they failed to notice the blooms? Someone's forebears must have looked at this charming little plant and thought not of its delightful flowers or (thankfully) ulcerated lungs, but of its speckled leaves being spattered by the Virgin Mary’s milk. Consequently Pulmonaria is blessed with a number of biblically-related monikers including the rather unimaginative, ‘Mary-spilt-the-milk’. As common names go, it is an improvement on lungwort, but it is hardly in the league of beauty berry or pearl everlasting.

Pulmonaria 'Diana Clare'

Not all pulmonarias have leaves speckled with milk; 'Blue Ensign' for example has plain dark green foliage and 'Diana Clare' makes rosettes of silvery leaves with green edges. Pulmonarias thrive in pretty much any soil in dappled shade; some forms will cope with heavy shade. The key is that the soil must be moist, but not waterlogged. Too dry, and Pulmonaria may fall prey to powdery mildew.

Pulmonaria officinalis Cambridge Blue Group

At 25-30cm tall (10-12") it makes a superb ground cover plant. It is non-invasive, semi-evergreen and will even grow under Juglans nigra (the black walnut). I don't mollycoddle Pulmonaria; our clay soil suits them and all I have to do is cut back the foliage and seed heads after flowering, give the plants a little fish, blood and bone and leave them to get on with the business of growing their summer foliage.

Pulmonaria 'Sissinghurst White'

Pulmonaria is a member of the borage family (borage is not the prettiest word in the world, which proves, were proof required, that there is no avoiding unattractive names if you are a lungwort). As we might expect from a borage family member, the flowers are nectar-rich and attractive to bees. 

Pulmonaria 'Diana Clare'

The different colours of blooms indicate the various stages in the development of the flowers. It is thought that this is a signal to pollinators so that they know exactly which flowers are ripe for pollination. How clever is that? If flowers had brains, Pulmonaria would be a fully paid-up member of Mensa. Beauty and brains... it's just a shame about the name, but in the words of Meat Loaf, ‘Two out of three ain’t bad’.

I am joining with Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day which is hosted by Carol at http://www.maydreamsgardens.com/ Why not pop over there and see what else is blooming this week in gardens around the world?

Going Off-Liste In The RHS Halls

February is the month when gardeners dust off their winter torpors, cast aside coffee-stained catalogues, grab their most capacious shopping bags and venture intrepidly beyond the garden gate to attend the Royal Horticultural Society’s first show of the year.

Carefully compiled shopping lists in specially selected gardening notebooks and hastily scribbled notes on the backs of envelopes are soon jettisoned in favour of a new must-have plant or garden item. It is difficult to ascertain quite what causes such retail fervour. Perhaps it is the heady scent of spring blooms, the choice plants whispering "buy me" (please don't pretend that you have never heard a plant speak) and the sudden splashes of colour which render the lists futile. I have never skied off-piste, not least because I am too scared, but when it comes to challenging pursuits such as shopping, I fearlessly venture off-liste on a regular basis. Going off-liste is a gardener’s folly and prerogative and if you can’t go off-liste at the first show of the season, then when can you? 

With all the floriferous wonder of spring filling the halls, you might imagine that I was to be seen dragging several laundry bagloads of stunners back to Norfolk; but no! My retail therapy was dramatically curtailed by Basil (the puppy, not the plant), who had travelled to London with me, although not the show (perish the thought). Since Basil is hardly pocket-sized, my shopping had to be, so I turned my back on scented Pelargonium and Pulmonaria to die for, in favour of tubers. I have enjoyed growing oca and yacon for a while now*, so I was delighted to stumble upon ulluco and mashua at the show. The ulluco tubers are pretty enough and I am excited about trying them, but they are hardly going to win the snowdrop beauty parade.

Ulluco

Oh to be a galanthophile in the wintertime! Imagine wandering into the RHS halls and coming face-to-face with the snowdrop of your dreams. I save myself a lot of heartache in the Galanthus department by examining all the price tags before looking at the snowdrops and then thinking (although not necessarily believing) that I will get as much pleasure from a glorious sunlit swathe of good old Galanthus nivalis as I will from a single, cherished, eye-wateringly expensive one. Of course, it would be lovely to have the opportunity to test this theory, so if I should ever find myself in possession of the winning lottery ticket, we can forget yachts and jets; I shall have rare snowdrops.

Gardening can be a solitary activity. This is part of its attraction for some. Time alone in the great outdoors is a pleasure to be cherished, but so is the sense of community we can find at allotments, horticultural societies, the internet, plant fairs and garden shows. If you have never been to a show or a plant fair, why not visit one near you this year? Please ensure that you take the time to compose an extensive wish list prior to your arrival at the venue. After all, if you don't know what you are supposed to be buying, how can you fully experience the guilt and joy of going off-liste?

*http://www.thegardeningshoe.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Yacon#!http://thegardeningshoe.blogspot.com/2013/10/kitchen-garden-multitaskers.html

Details about The RHS Shows may be found here: https://www.rhs.org.uk/shows-events

Growing Delicious Food - The Allotment Cookbook by Pete Lawrence

A friend gave up her high-powered legal job in favour of a simpler, more self-sufficient lifestyle. During the first month at home she baked every day, systematically working her way through all the cake recipes in her cookery books. Once completed, she turned her attention to chutney, which was just as well since a cake-based diet, although a marvellous thing, is not without its side effects.

Unlike my friend, I have never tried all the recipes in one chapter of a cookbook. I dip in and out of chapters - and books. There are cookery books on our shelves which have not a spatter of batter glueing their pages together. They are pristine, treasured, and the cause of merciless mockery from those who do not understand the world of the voracious recipe reader.

Given my passion for gardening and reading recipes, I was delighted to receive The Allotment Cookbook by Pete Lawrence. Pete is an award-winning executive producer who has worked with a variety of TV cooks including Nigel Slater and Nigella Lawson. For Pete, relaxation from food-related work takes the form of growing food, cooking food and writing about it. Obsessive gardeners will recognise this trait: many professionals spend weekends gardening and writing about plants, so we understand how the day job can also become a wonderful form of relaxation.

The Allotment Cookbook is not simply a collection of recipes, neither is it a gardening manual. Filled with anecdotes involving food and generations of family life, this book verges on becoming a love letter to fresh produce. It is not slushy, with the exception of the lovely rocket seedling proposal to his wife (I shall be discussing this with my other half as a standard to which he might aspire); rather it is an appreciation of the incredible positive transformation which can take place in our lives when we grow, rather than buy, our own fruit and vegetables.

   "Growing veg feels right. When you hum the same tune 

   as nature - get into its rhythm - then you will learn to    

savour produce at its very best."  - Pete Lawrence                

Pete Lawrence’s love for growing food shines through. It is a gentle, enjoyable read with delicious echoes of Nigel Slater’s writing. This book is not just for foodies and wannabe plotters, it is also a great read for experienced growers and voracious recipe readers. 

The Allotment Cookbook will not remain pristine in my house. I promise, in spite of everything stated earlier, that I will have cooked and eaten every dish in the radish and courgette sections by the end of this growing season -  not because I will be wrestling with gluts, but because I want to eat them. Roll on summer!

*Photos feature crops I have grown, picked and enjoyed eating. There would have been more strawberries and raspberries in the first picture, but they are notoriously challenging crops when it comes to picking and not eating.

New Introductions

Introducing new plants into a garden is always exciting. Sometimes the impact can outweigh the outlay because we plan and use our additional plants carefully. We might create a new focal point; add lemon flowers to lift a blue and white scheme; or increase coherence by repeating the same plant or form at intervals throughout our borders. It would be wonderful to post about a new, improved planting scheme today, but my garden is suffering from a surfeit of new introductions at the moment; and although I am very happy with them all, they are not exactly making my borders look any fuller, more beautiful or bountiful. 

RIP Herby Chicken

The first new introductions of 2016 were additional hens. Herby chicken died a few weeks ago and since a solitary chicken is such a sorry sight, I got Hippy Chick some new friends in the form of the cluckiest blue chickens in Norfolk 

(Iris and Hyacinth), and a sweet little Russian Orloff called Voddy. 

The hens had all settled in wonderfully well until I introduced a puppy called Basil into the mix yesterday. Iris and Hyacinth secured their position as top guard hens by marking his arrival with a deafening fanfare of clucking. Measures are already in place to reconcile Basil with the girls; and I am reconciling myself to more chaos than I might wish for in the Barn Garden. An eight-week-old puppy and three new chickens is not a combination famed for its positive impact on lawns and borders, but this doesn’t matter; it is a joy and a privilege to take care of animals, be they pets or wildlife. 

This is why I am not too upset about the state of Iris reticulata 'Blue Note'. I had been looking forward to a spectacular display of these beautiful flowers in the Barn Garden this year, but many of the stems have been scattered hither and thither by the hens' over-exuberant scratching. It is a small price to pay for seeing the girls happily settled in their new home. 

Wild birds have started to help themselves to our garden fare at last; I hope that they are late because there has been plenty on offer in the surrounding countryside. Plump Pyracantha berries have persisted through most of January, but they are now being eaten. I know many gardeners view Pyracantha as a mundane plant, but I could not disagree more. Not only does Pyracantha add wildlife value, with nectar-laden flowers for pollinators, juicy winter berries for birds and year-round cover, it makes a wonderful addition to more formal planting when clipped as an espalier, or trained into a grid pattern. I think it is one of the most under-appreciated plants in our gardens.

The arrival of February heralds a period of deepening envy as I read about other gardeners sowing seeds under cover. I allow myself to sow a few flower seeds which will cope with life in the cold frame as they grow, but without a greenhouse, it makes sense to wait until spring to sow many edibles. Doing nothing is incredibly hard work, but it is better than the alternative (cucumber kitchen curtains linger long in the memory*). I am optimistic that I will be so busy with Basil that I might sail through the big wait to sow this year. Here he is on his first morning with us, busily practising the important life skill of helping gardeners tidy up after themselves. This will come in useful when I introduce new plants into the borders. I shall remain optimistic regarding the length of time these new introductions will remain in the soil... there are only so many plants a puppy and a few hens can dig up, surely? 

* The great cucumber curtain fiasco: http://thegardeningshoe.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/kitchen-gardens-and-garden-kitchens.html

Shrubs for all Seasons

There are many mysteries in life, like where have all the trowels, tupperware lids, single socks and left-handed gardening gloves gone? Are they being eaten in some kind of trowel/lid/clothing meal deal? And what happened to January? I don’t think anyone ate the first half of the month, although it would go a long way towards explaining my failure to post in 2016. Up there with “the dog ate my homework”, is “my sister ate the first half of January”. Not that I am suggesting that my sister, who is considerably smaller than me, could manage to eat half a month, but she is a competitive character so the merest suggestion that she couldn’t devour half a month would surely render that fortnight well and truly eaten.

I was going to share my odd sock pile with you, but
thought you might prefer a snowdrop in the rain

Fortunately plants get on with doing their thing irrespective of sisters eating months and my failure to post. I only have to open the door to know that one of the most useful shrubs in the garden is doing its thing at the moment, because the scent is delicious. Good old Sarcococca confusa, or sweet box as it is often known. Blooming from December to March, the flowers might be shy and hidden away in the leaf axils, but this shrub packs a punch in the olfactory department. You don't have to be a half awake bee to follow that fragrance and find these insignificant little beauties on a warm winter day.

It is evergreen, so I use it in the shadier areas of the courtyard where I want to see year round colour. Even better, it is one of the least fussy shrubs I have ever grown. I neglected one in a shady corner of a woodland in my last garden for almost a decade and it showed absolutely no signs of stress. The natural cycle of the woodland should have kept it well-nourished, but even without nature’s help, this is a plant which will put up with a surprising amount of neglect. 

Unlike the rest of the Sarcococca family, Sarcococca confusa doesn’t sucker. It will cope with pollution and tolerates dry shade wonderfully well, so it is one to consider for those tricky shady bits down the side of the house or shed. It can grow to 2m by 2m, but it does so very slowly and it isn't averse to being trimmed back. In fact, I intend to clip the groups of Sarcococca confusa in the courtyard in a similar way to Buxus sempervirens once they have reached a decent size, which may take a while, given their slow growing tendencies. If you want to clip Sarcococca confusa, do so in spring and give it a compost mulch - just because a plant will cope with neglect, doesn’t mean that we shouldn't give it a little help (this is my new year mantra and my garden is celebrating heartily).

Sarcococca and Buxus

I love plants which hold flowers and fruit at the same time. Arbutus unedo is top notch for this and so is Sarcococca. Last year's berries persist and add interest during winter, when we really notice the plant. In other seasons, the shrub makes a quiet, evergreen and rather elegant addition to the garden while it gets on with the important business of suppressing weeds, forming structure and creating a backdrop for more showy planting.  

Perfect for pots outside a shady front door, under trees, clipping into hedges, in an urban or rural setting, Sarcococca confusa makes a valuable addition to modern, slick borders as well as more traditional or natural planting. It will even cope with sun, so long as the soil is kept moist. Just because a plant is quiet and puts up with neglect, doesn’t mean that it isn’t treasured. I might forget about Sarcococca in the middle of June when brasher, showier flowers strut their stuff, but for the next three months I will be enjoying great nostril-loads of Sarcococca's beautiful fragrance and celebrating its quiet beauty every day. 

Wishing you a happy, healthy new year.

I am joining with http://www.maydreamsgardens.com/ for Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day. Why not pop over there and see what else is blooming in gardens around the planet?