Review: The Ivington Diaries

by Monty Don

Christmas approaches apace, and I thought I’d share with you one of the most inspirational gardening books in my collection. So for those of you be in the enviable position of having already finished your gift shopping, you’ll still have time drop weighty hints suggesting that the course of the festivities will run far more smooth for you having discovered a copy of this excellent book wedged into your stocking on Christmas morning.


Monty Don is probably best known as the main presenter of the BBC’s Gardener’s World, a role to which he made a welcome return this spring after an absence of over two years. The Ivington Diaries is an account of how he has developed his own garden in Herefordshire, from two-acres of open field in 1991 to the beautiful and productive space with which readers of his (several) other books as well as viewers of Gardener’s World will be so familiar.

The book is a handsome object in itself, with its sturdy illustrated boards and purple cloth-bound spine, thick cream paper carrying elegantly typeset copy and photographs of the garden taken by the author. As for the content, quite apart from the depth of knowledge you would expect, Monty Don’s prose is a joy to read for its own sake – he has a facility with language to which many other writers, let alone garden writers, can only aspire. Even were you to have no interest in gardening, you’d be a cold fish indeed to remain unmoved after reading an entry or two.

In one of my favourite passages, he muses on his connection to the soil that he works each day and, through it, to those who worked it before him:

I think about ghosts a lot. They all live underground. When I was a child I knew that both my great-grandfather and grandfather walked beneath the walnut tree. They were a friendly, gentle presence. This garden too is filled with people who have cultivated this tiny, particular piece of land, out of sight but as real to me as the pieces of pottery and footings of buildings I scratch against three feet down in the vegetable garden.

This is a diary of a garden and, as a garden only exists in relationship to those who create, maintain, and use it, there is inevitably an autobiographical element, although those seeking a truly autobiographical account of the author should read the 2004 book The Jewel Garden, which Monty wrote with his wife Sarah. Featured throughout are details of the folk whose lives intersect with the garden, but it is the narrative of the garden which remains the star to the end. It is both a book to read in one go, or a book to dip into just to see what it has to say on any given day – remarkable for the ability to deliver a timely insight pertinent to the world beyond your back door. The purple-spined volume occupies a favoured spot on my bedside table, as its gentle enthusiasm never fails to restore perspective after a frenetic day, or instill hope in what might be achieved tomorrow.

For gardening old hands or for beginners looking for seasonal instruction, for those seeking in-depth detail on the development of an wonderful garden, or merely a very good read, I couldn’t recommend The Ivington Diaries highly enough.

A grey day, with berries

Hips of the dog rose in the morning mist

It’s gloomy outside – the kind of day that words like ‘dank’ and ‘drear’ were invented for. But peering through the nullifying fog that hangs heavy in the air, cancelling out familiar views and making us feel like strangers in our own gardens, something rich and rather magnificent calls for attention. Winking, jewel-like clusters of opulent splendour, fat with food for the birds and creatures who share our autumn gardens, the berries take centre stage at this time of year, bringing colour and joy to our surroundings when all around is fading into winter gloom.


In many a garden the scene is stolen by always reliable pyracanthas and cotoneasters, with their showy displays in fiery oranges, yellows and reds, though there are many other genera to choose from when it comes to stocking the garden with berrying plants. The rowan, or mountain ash Sorbus aucuparia, is a wonderful tree suitable for a small garden. Providing year-round interest with its pinnate leaves which turn a rich red in autumn, its slightly bitter berries are used to make rowan jam, a traditional accompaniment to venison and other gamey dishes. Climbing plants, too, make a valuable contribution to the garden’s berry quota: honeysuckle, bittersweet Celastrus orbiculatus, and of course, ivy, with its understated black fruits nestling amongst the mature, shiny leaves.

If I have a guilty secret to confess to as a gardener, it’s that I’m not as fond of roses as I feel I ought to be – other than at this time of year when most of the leaves have fallen. Now the plants are revealed as thorny skeletons with plump, bright hips: some smooth and long, others large and round as a tomato, as with R. rugosa. Appropriately, Bill seems particularly partial to the fallen hips of the dog rose R. canina that arches over the garden gate and so, having first done a little research to ensure these were harmful to neither man nor hound, I decided to try one myself. No wonder then that people make jam from these. They’re practically ready-made jam: thick, sickly fruity goo – one hip was almost too rich a meal – which explains why our winter garden visitors find them such a rich source of food.

But it is in the hedgerows that my favourite berries lurk. Bright red berries of holly and yew against glossy, dark green foliage, dusky blue sloes on the blackthorn, orange-red gems of the guelder rose and the garish fruits of the winged spindle, whose vivid, pink cruciform capsules split open to reveal bright orange seeds. Now is the time to get out into the garden and make the most of the berries. Before the birds beat you to it.

Yellow berries on the firethorn Pyracantha ‘Soleil D’Or’

Mature ivy plants provide a good habitat in which wildlife can overwinter, as well as berries which are a rich source of food.

Holly, the heraldic symbol for truth, and traditionally a wood for  making bagpipes. But used more often by overwintering birds for food and shelter.

The rowan tree Sorbus aucuparia provides year round interest, including fantastic autumnal shades

Leaf fall

Autumn leaves of the Liquidamber styraciflua at the boathouse, Scotney Castle Gardens

Every season has something to recommend itself, but for me autumn has always taken pride of place. I would love to experience a New England fall, but working in the garden or walking through the countryside here at home, I’m just as content to revel in the sights and smells of a Kentish autumn. I think it’s partly the freshness in the mornings, the smell of damp soil and bonfires, and the almost perceptible sound of the garden sighing after a frenetic summer's growing, drawing all its richness back into the ground as it prepares to muster its energies over the winter – ready to do it all over again next year.

And as the sap slows and nature draws her vitality back inward to hold it close against the winter cold, the trees release their leaves, their days of active service at an end. It’s these same leaves which make autumn for me; practically, as I spend the days coralling them into order with rake and blower, but also emotionally and symbolically since, with their heartwarmingly rich and vivid tapestry, they not so much signify the passing of one season as herald the coming of winter and Christmas; of dozing in front of warm fires and spending time with friends.

We should spare a thought for these leaves. They are the engine rooms of life on this planet, in the absence of which there would be no wood, coal, oil or gas (or plastic, for that matter). Without the ability of these paper-thin wonder structures to harness the energy of the sun – creating the sugars and oxygen on which all life at some point depends – the earth would be a rather dull asteroid of metals and rock. And so whatever your view of autumn leaves, whether as glorious spectacle, or as nuisance chore to be tidied up, be sure you pay the leaf the respect it is due.

And make time, whatever your age, to pull on a pair of boots, find the largest pile of leaves you can, and shuffle happily through them.


PRACTICAL ADVICE

Your essential leaf collecting equipment would be: a gardener.

But if you must do it yourself, you will find a spring tine rake, and a large plastic leaf rake just as invaluable, if not more so, than a petrol leaf blower (and never an electric one, unless you have a very small garden).

Leafmold makes a wonderful soil conditioner, but avoid the temptation to add leaves directly to your compost heap, as they take a good year or more to rot down unless shredded beforehand, either with a lawn mower (which is also a very good way of collecting them off the lawn), or a vacuum/shredder tool. Alternatively, store the collected leaves in special leaf sacks or, failing that, plastic sacks with holes punched in them to allow a good flow of air, which will prevent them turning to soggy, smelly mush. Next season, you will have a wonderful, crumbly leafmold to improve the quality of your soil, or to use within your homemade potting compost.

Magic in the walls

The entrance to the walled gardens

To the splendidly formal but entirely accessible gardens of Penshurst Place this week, which closed for the winter today. The building itself is the closest we have to Hogwarts around here (they recorded the sound of the creaking floorboards in the long gallery here for the Harry Potter soundtrack), but to my mind it’s in the gardens that the real wizardry occurs.

While it’s undoubtedly the magnificence of the house, the hundreds of metres of beautifully clipped yew hedging, the topiary shapes, pools and fountains which create such a sense of history and grandeur, one thing that really touches me about this garden is the superabundance of tree fruit. Not very posh at all. Apple, pear and plum trees are literally everywhere, confined not to an orchard beyond the garden walls or kept in check in a dedicated kitchen garden, but given pride of place – not least along the recently replanted herbaceous border which runs across the centre of the garden. I think it’s this aspect which somehow relates the garden to the land on which it sits; there’s a sense of storybook charm here, with doors cut into hedges leading to wondrous and unexpected garden rooms (one with its own grass amphitheatre and stage!), but it retains a deeply grounded and earthy quality which makes you feel welcome, inviting you to linger.

I’ve always felt there was something enchanting about a walled garden. I think it must be from reading stories as a child of characters pushing through barriers of impenetrable briers, sneaking through ramshackle, heavy wooden doors, and scaling crumbling walls to discover another world beyond. Whatever the cause, I can see myself easily losing hours here gazing at the contrasting textures of the old, red bricks, the fresh leaves of the mature pears trained against them, and the gnarly old trunks of the same trees.

So it seemed appropriate today that we arrived at the height of the Hallowe’en Pumpkin Hunt, the garden full of little people dressed ready for trick or treating this evening – pumpkin number three proving a stinker to find but eventually being located at the foot of a tree in the Stage Garden. There is, slightly incongruously, an adventure playground just inside the gates, but I thought this activity was a great way to get the younger visitors engaged with this magical place at an early age.

The Stage Garden, with the elusive pumpkin number three beneath the tree

The gardens reopen in February 2012, when the new border will be officially unveiled. You can sign up on their website here to be notified of special events, including when the amazing Peony Border will be in full flower. Well worth a visit, and plenty to keep both adults and children spellbound at any time of year.

RHS members get in free.

Steps leading up to the Garden Tower, where interpretation boards tell the history of the gardens

To the side of the Lime Walk, with the outside of the garden wall on the left

First frost

The rudbeckias, staunchly gritting their teeth and smiling through the cold.

I had wandered out with Bill early in the morning, noticed the chill air, but not ventured more than a few steps from the back door in the dark. The penny dropped while I pulled on my boots as a prelude to loading up the Land Rover for Thursday’s gardening round calls. That familiar, rasping noise – absent from the early morning soundscape for months but instantly recognisable as the sound of the neighbours scraping their windscreens. We’d had our first frost of the autumn.

It hadn’t been a severe one. Not harsh enough to worry the Canary Island date palm or the pelargoniums basking in the relative warmth of the courtyard – but sufficient to transform the lawn to a silvery carpet, perfectly complementing the lavender hedge, and to rime the margins of the remaining flowers with a delicate, icy border. The dahlias, very late this year, won’t be putting on much more of a show.

Strangely, in the garden, it’s often not so much the initial frosting which does the damage, as the process of thawing out. Water expands as it melts, and often does so at a rate faster than the frozen plant tissue can regain its usual elasticity. Cell walls within leaves and stems rupture and tear, causing the damage with which we are so familiar: foliage hanging in ragged tatters, buds and leaf margins blackened, and the more sensitive plant material in a general sorry-looking state.

But it’s not all bad. In fact, there is something wonderful about the garden in winter, and nothing quite like a good, hard frost to clear the head, sharpen the senses and open the eyes to the splendour of the colder months. Those of us who have been less than efficient with our autumnal tidying regime should feel no shame at at our failure to consign every last seed head to the bonfire or compost heap – whether out of forward planning, concern for the birds, or just plain lethargy. Now we are rewarded by seeing them in all their sculptural beauty, transformed by the frost into exquisite structures decked with intricate, bejewelled spiderwebs. And who can resist walking across a frozen, crunchy lawn, leaving neat imprints of your boots behind you, in the full knowledge that it's bad for the grass and most definitely not a something you should do? Not me, I’ll be out there every time, more than happy to enjoy the moment and pay the price of a less than perfect sward later.

That said, it’s time to take note. Bring in your houseplants, move tender plants into the conservatory or greenhouse, and wrap up and generally mollycoddle anything with a delicate disposition. There’s rumour of a cold winter coming.

Orchard crate

Delighted recently to receive a commission from a lovely young couple for a wooden box in which to place presents at their wedding reception. Stuart and Nicky were hoping for something with a similar finish to the herb planter I blogged about in June, but in the style of an apple crate or bushel box – quite appropriate for the time of year!

I selected timber reclaimed from old delivery palettes to build the box; once the nails and staples have been removed and the individual pieces planed and sanded, you are left with a perfectly good construction material. All the better, in my book, for being recycled, and into the bargain possessing that worn and distressed air which becomes accentuated by the final coat of coloured wax, bringing out the roughness of the wood grain.

The orchard crate makes a handy box for storage, or to carry things around in the garden. Of course, with the addition of a thick, polythene liner, it would make a great planter for the kitchen garden.

I think I need to build a few for myself.

Note: The holes for the handles were cut using the stick from a Walls Magnum ice cream as a template. I regret to report that said frozen comestible remains unaccounted for.

Deadheading by dusk

October, and while people who ought to know about these things argue over whether or not we were having an Indian Summer (we weren’t, apparently – just a late warm spell), there’s no denying we’ve all been given a late reprieve from autumnal maintenance tasks to enjoy being in our gardens a little longer. Even the supermarkets have been holding back on filling the shelves with Halloween paraphernalia in order to be able to cash in on an unseasonably late weekend of barbequing. It’s been great.


The temperatures having returned to something a little more recognisably Octoberish this week, I find myself engaged in my annual rage against the dying of the light, frantically deadheading everything I can in the vain hope that this will somehow manage to hold off the inevitable approach of winter gloom. Like pruning, deadheading provides a way in which we can influence how a plant grows by working with nature; in this case, a plant’s inbuilt desire to reproduce. Flowers appear, their finery intended not for us, but to attract pollinators (insects, or humming birds, for example – not seen many of these last in Kent), or formed to enable the wind to carry pollen from one flower to another, sometimes over great distances. Once pollinated, the plant sets seed to ensure its precious genetic legacy is maintained. A timely intervention from the gardener, snipping off a spent infloresence, has the effect of prolonging the flowering period as the plant concentrates its energy on creating sufficient seed to give rise to the next generation.

Once the seed is produced, plants tend to feel that their job is done, and either expire (in the case of annuals and biennials), or shut down, overwintering in a state of dormancy until spring (in the case of perennials). No more flowers; and when the asters and the dahlias, the Japanese anemones and the penstemons, and all the rest of the floral rearguard give up the ghost, it is probably time to retreat indoors, light the fire and settle down with a good book and a snifter of something medicinal for the winter.

As it is, I stand defiant among the late summer blooms, flanked by crinkling sunflower heads and the last of the cosmos, shaking my secateurs in impotent fury at the darkening sky.


A note: Apparently the phrase ‘Indian Summer’ has nothing to do with India, but is of transatlantic origin, and had something to do with Native Americans. I heard this on Radio 4’s Today programme, so it must be true.

Do the Right Thing

On the right, the forsythia the spring after we moved in, with our friend Mark expertly logging the ash tree he’s just pollarded.

Someone once said (I think it was the apostle Paul although I’m fairly certain these weren’t his exact words) that it’s all very well knowing what you ought to do, but quite another thing actually doing it, when all you want to do is the exact opposite. I don't recall any stories about the saint being a great horticulturalist, but the notion holds true in the garden too. Over the past few weeks our forsythia hedge has taken on the silhouette of a lunatic banshee’s hairdo, and against my better judgement, I’m struggling to resist the temptation to give the thing a good trim and restore a little order before winter sets in.


We inherited this hedge with the garden, along with some pitifully skeletal borders, a lumpy area of grass with a collapsed greenhouse buried beneath, three large and unruly dog roses, a horizontal, lightning-struck apple tree stubbornly clinging to life, and a substantial plantation of stinging nettles. Not to mention the strange mound at the end of the garden (I’m always slightly wary digging here in case I unearth someone who incurred the displeasure of a previous resident, but so far we’ve found nothing more sinister than house bricks). So this small stretch of hedge, no more than four metres in length, was the cheeriest thing in the garden, especially in spring when it is one of the first things to burst into flower – a vivid splash of golden yellow on arching, leafless stems. At that time of year I can forget the fact that it’s been planted in far too small a space – this relative of the olive tree needs room to flourish – and just enjoy the display. But, on the understanding that it must spend the winter months bereft of foliage in a state of twiggy undress, for the rest of the year I want a nice, well mannered hedge. The problem is that, since forsythia flowers on the previous years growth, the ideal time to give it a good cut back is immediately after flowering: any pruning after about May will reduce the material on which the next year’s floral display depends. I am reluctantly coming to appreciate that, with this plant at least, I cannot have both the spring display, and a tidy, compact hedge. The two things are mutually exclusive.

I know this to be true, but needless to say, continue to snip away far later into the year than I should. I fear this year I have already transgressed – perhaps one afternoon in July – but as I stand in the early evening air, the hedge in question gesticulating at me rudely against the twilight sky, I utter a small prayer for strength, take up my shears, and go and vent my frustrations on the hedgerow on the opposite side of the garden.

Two years and two months later, the same view of the garden as in the first picture, with the hedge now providing a good backdrop to the new planting

Mists and mellow fruitfulness

Thoroughly enjoying several things just now: the slightly chill nip in the air, the mist hanging over the garden and fields in the mornings, the sight of swollen red rose hips in the hedges, the sound of ripe apples dropping off the tree, and the early evening sunshine that comes raking in across the land at a recklessly low angle, creating a fantastic backlit tableau out of any stand of trees or clump of grass that gets in its way. All of which means autumn is coming in, and while I won’t believe it is quite arrived until the leaves turn and the fire is lit, I have a familiar sense of excitement and – is it relief, almost? – that the approaching season brings. Which might be considered odd for a gardener, seeing as the light becomes shorter with each passing day, and the garden appears – on the outside at least – to be winding down for the year. But there’s plenty yet to be done.

September colours

September burnishes the garden with a metallic sheen, and colours so improbable you would think foliage and seed heads had been steeped in some lustrous paint overnight. Acanthus leaves are turning from deep green to their autumn shades of copper and gold, and an arresting combination of the sea holly Eryngium ‘Sapphire Blue’ against pearlescent maroon honesty is particularly hard to accept for a natural phenomenon. Across the path the flower heads of the tussock grass Deschampsia cespitosa ‘Goldtau’ nod and in the breeze, catching the evening light as though they've been spun from thin golden wire. Just for a moment it feels like a stage set.

 

Deschampsia cespitosa ‘Goldtau’

Acanthus leaves with Eryngium ‘Sapphire Blue’

Thinking ahead

Bank Holiday Monday dawns bright and clear in spite of last week’s heavy rain, but I can’t be the only one who’s noticed that the evenings are drawing in with frankly indecent haste. While the arrival of Bill the puppy last weekend has taken a toll on domestic routine, on those occasions I have managed to escape the furry but demanding cuteness for my morning run there’s been a noticeable freshness in the air. Autumn is on its way, and now is a good time start thinking ahead – beyond late summer, beyond even Christmas and the bleakness of winter – about how we want our borders to fill out in spring.

It might seem a bit premature, but a plant grown from seed sown direct into the final flowering position over the next few weeks will have a distinct head start over seeds of the same plant sown in spring. Now, with the memory of this spring still fresh, we’re ideally placed to devise and execute a plan for plugging any gaps which we noticed in our gardens earlier in the year.

The idea is to select seeds – largely, but not exclusively hardy annuals – which when sown will germinate and grow away now, developing sufficiently to survive the onset of winter. Then, shaking off dormancy in spring, their already well-established root system will allow them to romp ahead of plants started in March or April as soon as the growing light allows, attaining a flowering size and sturdiness of structure far greater than their later-sown cousins.

So much for the theory, the fun part comes in choosing what to plant, so I’ve dug out the seeds catalogues – notably Sarah Raven’s, which has a great selection of flowers, vegetables and herb seeds, together with some excellent advice on the accompanying website – and made a shopping list:

1. Ammi majus (Bishop’s Flower) - a lovely cow-parsley like umbellifer that gives clouds of frothy floral interest without too much weighty foliage.

2. Erisimum chieri. Just because the scent of wall flowers always stops me in my tracks and transports me back to the front garden of the North London terrace in which I grew up. Something deep red probably: I like the look of E. chieri ‘Vulcan’.

3. Eschscholzia californica. The Californian poppy, a bright orange, cheerful little edging plant with fern-like foliage. Self-seeds merrily about the place.

4. Scabiosa atropurpurea ‘Black Cat’. A dark purple version of the Pin Cushion flower – small, tight pom-poms on the end of long, thin stems. You could imagine an orchestral percussionist playing a kettle-drum with them. Maybe.

5. Euphorbia oblongata. This perennial has the typical hooded flowers of the euphorbia, in a zingy chartreuse green. Another great filler, fantastic for cutting.

6. Gaura lindheimeri ‘The Bride’. A beautiful, delicate plant which looks amazing in drifts. Shorter than the species, the opening buds cluster along the stems like small, dusky pink butterflies before emerging white. I’ve not grown this from seed before!

7. Calendula officinalis ‘Indian Prince’. Just a cheerful, sunshiney big orange daisy like flower with a black centre. With all the associated herbal properties of the pot marigold, the petals are tasty in salads or to be used as a saffron substitute in cooking. Great for companion planting in the veg garden too, deterring pests on tomatoes and asparagus.

8. Briza maxima. Greater quaking grass, this carries its gentle, nodding flower heads like so many tiny paper lanterns. Great for cutting and drying.

9. Nigella papillosa ‘African Bride’. We have a lovely, pale blue version of Nigella damascena Love-in-the-Mist, but this cultivar looks quite exotic with white petals and black, horned seed pods. I wonder if they’ll hybridise, and if so, whose genes will win out?

10. Echinacea purpurea ‘White Swan’. Another daisy-like flower. We already have the larger species in a purplish pink, but to grow these lovely perennial cone flowers from seed will be quite something. I find the combination of the tactile stems, the spiky central cone and the apple white petals incredibly beautiful, especially when the flowers are just opening.

Can it really be this simple? Just ten packets of seed at two quid each, and a little work preparing the soil, keeping the weeds off and thinning the seedlings – if nothing else, this will save a fortune compared with buying plants from the nursery next year. My biggest problem is going to be limiting myself to the ten plants I’ve listed!

Laurel, and Hardy Plants

To the utterly charming and most inspiring Marchants Hardy Plants today, a wonderful garden and nursery not far from Lewes in East Sussex. I’d love to give you the exact location but, in spite of printing out instructions from the infernal interweb, we got slightly lost, and spent rather longer getting there than intended.

The small car park was overflowing when we finally arrived, so we pulled up on the roadside just before the entrance, next to an artfully pruned hedge of what I took to be field maple. But what this place specialises in is as fine a selection of home grown herbacious perennials and ornamental grasses as you are likely to find anywhere, and that's what we'd come to see.

Accompanied by the sound of the breeze whispering in two fine willows flanking the entrance to the garden, we descended from a grassy knoll into the beautifully landscaped space, which acts as a showcase for the plants in the nursery. Here inspiration in abundance awaits, from planting combinations suggesting myriad ways in which grasses can be used together with perennials and shrubs, through the soft landscaping of the undulating grassland and creatively shaped hornbeam hedges, to the subtle use of hard landscaping materials. Any questions we had were answered by Graham Gough and his partner, textile designer Lucy Goffin, whose passion and enthusiasm for both plants and garden was clearly evident.

Leaving empty handed was never an option, and we took with us the prettiest, pale pink flowered pelargonium, P. ‘Shannon’ (the stunning, dark maroon flowered P. sidoides was on show but, alas, not on sale this year), and a magnificent willow, Salix purpurea ‘Nancy Saunders’ – all mahogany stems and long, pale, olivey leaves – which I’d spied making a fantastic backdrop to clumps of Stipa gigantea in the garden. Lucy has made the single most creative example of a living willow fence I’ve ever seen from whips of this plant, which we spied as we drove away.

And as for the laurels? I might have missed them, but I’m afraid we didn’t see any. Just a shameless, bad pun to give me a half decent title for a blog post!

Handful

Emma’s Thursday posy, just cut from the garden. Quite a handful, with a knockout scent from a combination of lavender, fennel and sweet peas.

Need to find a better vase, though.

Spud man

Is there anything more wonderful than digging your own potatoes out of the ground just in time for dinner? I can’t think of anything right now.
Everything about the experience is thoroughly rewarding. The spring in your step as you march confidently to the vegetable plot, in the comforting knowledge that you’re not entirely reliant on Sainsburys for everything. Then there’s plunging your fork into the ground, and turning the rich soil to reveal the buried treasures, which always somehow surprise me as they appear between the tines. One, two...three, then an unexpected fourth, fat, yellow, joyous spuds which – if you’re really lucky – you haven’t put the fork through (I’m getting better at this - the trick, I’ve found, is to stick the fork into the earth further back from the yellowing haulms of the potato plants than you might think, and then agitate the soil with a rocking, twisting motion to tease the tubers up unharmed). And then as you stoop to pick up your prize, rubbing the flesh clean with your thumbs, the smell of fresh soil and that earthy, nutty crispness somehow simultaneously knocks you off your feet and roots you firmly to the ground on which you stand.

This is soul food; and you haven’t even got them back to the kitchen yet.

Honey bush

This gorgeous foliage belongs to the honey bush, Melianthus major. Year after year, I grow it in my garden and, sure enough, year after year it expires.

Admittedly we have had two exceptionally harsh winters, the last of which arrived several weeks early – rather unsporting, I thought. I adore this plant, and have done since we first encountered it in Cornwall, where it grows alongside enormous spires of echiums and other fantastical looking things. I love everything from the dusky, glaucous blue green of its sharply toothed leaves, to the smell of peanuts it gives off when touched; the amazing sight of new foliage unfurling, and the outrageous, dark red flower spike that appear from some admittedly rude-looking buds. In its native South Africa it grows like a weed. (Typically, like so many of my favourite plants, it’s horribly poisonous and will kill you as soon as look at you. Fortunately, the odd smell tends to prevent any animals from even considering munching upon its leaves, and it’s the roots which are the most toxic.) Technically an evergreen perennial, hardiness in our climate is not something with which this plant has been blessed, and protection is really required in order for it to survive anything other than the mildest of winters. Up until the point at which the cold November winds whip it to kingdom come, just before the frost renders each stem a necrotic black, it does exceptionally well in my garden. If I have to grow it as an annual then I will, just to enjoy its presence.

Recently, I’ve been scouting about for a replacement plant, my usual sources not being able to help this year. My search took me to the RHS plantfinder, and from there to the very wonderful Plantbase near Wadhurst where Graham Blunt, the effervescent owner, had not only several specimens of what I sought in stock, but also two other related species (M. comosus and M. villosus), both a little hardier and better suited to our climate.

Graham is evidently a person who knows his subject, belying modest assertions that he’s entirely self taught, eschewing book learning for a more hands-on approach. His nursery is an Aladdin’s Cave for the plant enthusiast, with some truly amazing specimens — as we arrived, he was waxing lyrical about some very evil, spiny-looking solanums, one with bright orange thorns which was very special. We were completely won over by the many echeverias he has — one of which, E. cante (a present from Kew), is truly beautiful and seems to radiate light, but is alas not for sale this year until he has had a chance to propagate from it. I particularly loved the colour and form of the ghost echeverias, Echeveria lilacina – powdery lilac-grey rosettes which seem somehow both architectural and entirely other-worldly. The plants are laid out loosely in terms of habitat – jungle, woodland, alpine, waterside, prairie - and visitors are encouraged to roam, and to ask questions, the answers to which Graham is only too happy to provide. I would thoroughly recommend a visit — we left with our wallets slightly thinner, but with massive smiles on our faces a whole list of plants we will be coming back for.

Did I take the sensible route and opt for the hardier relatives of my precious honey bush? I confess, not. It may well end in tears once more, but at least I’ve found someone who can feed my honey bush habit.

Weed or wildflower?

Mock outrage at Friday evening’s Gardeners World as the very splendid Monty Don refers to Corydalis lutea as a weed. He was speaking of it with affection, so I think he’s excused, though I like to think of it as a wildflower. Granted it has a wondrous faculty for self-seeding, but it rarely has it inserted itself in a position where its presence has done anything other than brighten the immediate environment and, should it do so, it’s not hard to pull out.

I love it for its soft, ferny leaves, which remind me of aquilegias or the maindenhair fern Adiantum capillus-veneris, and yellow, trumpet-shaped flowers. It’s a delightfully unfussy plant, liking the margins of things, and will cope as happily with the shade under a tree or hedge as with a position on a sunny wall, in the cracks of which it frequently stations itself. All it requires is moderate drainage, and a slightly alkaline soil. In the shade, it looks great planted with epimediums and its not-too distant relative Dicentra ‘Ivory Hearts’.

It catches my eye, peering back at me from under the pyracantha hedge opposite the kitchen window. Company for when I’m doing the washing up.

Hampton Court Flower Show

Lots of really inspirational gardens and some wonderful plantsmanship in evidence at Hampton Court this year!

We loved the planting and the restrained colour palette in Charlotte Murrell’s Wild in the City garden for Wyevale East Nurseries, and her use of green oak posts and cut logs to form panels for the wall. Another breathtaking site was the amazing hedge on the Heathers in Harmony garden (shown here). It’s a modular vertical planting system (all the rage at the moment) with different heathers providing a tapestry effect. A deserving gold medal winner for designer William Quarmby.

Notable trends across the show included Grow Your Own (still going strong), sustainability, naturalistic planting for wildlife, and vertical gardens! Great stuff.

See our Facebook page for more comments and pictures from the show.

Telling tales

I’m beginning to suspect that the most successful people in any walk of life are the ones who tell the best stories. We all love a good story. It seems to be hard-wired into us in infancy, and we never lose that childlike trust to place ourselves in the hands of the storyteller and allow ourselves to be taken on a journey to an unknown destination. And who doesn’t still feel cheated on those occasions where the ending is given away before its alloted time? I think we all derive deep satisfaction from progressive revelation, and I’ve noticed this is something which the best gardens use to their advantage.

Think about it. In isolation, an open field is a pretty uninspiring thing. Leaving aside what it may have to tell us with its history or ecology, it’s a fairly passive, open, usually green space. Put a house on it, and it starts to get interesting. Enclose it, with hedges, walls or a fence, and a dialogue begins between the house, its garden, and that which lies beyond.

But I don’t believe many of us are really happy to leave things here. I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something slightly depressing about standing outside your back door and being able to take in three fences in one glance; although, on moving into a new home, it may sometimes be necessary to strip away the layers of random ghastliness bequeathed to you by the previous owners, just to be able to see what you have to work with. Once we know where our garden begins and ends, we don’t want to be constantly reminded of its limits. At some point, I think most of us have a need to put some mystery back.

“A garden revealed all at once is like a story told before it is started”, writes Dan Pearson, in his book Home Ground: Sanctuary in the City. I don’t think he’s describing a wish to create a network of “garden rooms”, partitioned from one another by brick walls or dense evergreen hedging. Rather, I think he identifies a need for some mechanism by which we can obfuscate the limits of our outdoor space, by distracting the eye and drawing a veil over the reality of its boundaries. And it’s a strange phenomenon that the less we have in our gardens, the smaller they can appear. Our fences and walls are the covers of the storybook; we have the opportunity to arrange organic and non-organic materials to compose the details of the narrative within.

There’s a magical moment in the gardens at Sissinghurst when, emerging through a gap in the hedge which runs parallel to the Lime Walk, you find yourself facing open fields. It’s totally disorientating – standing with your back to the garden, you are transported to another world, rooted in the middle of the Kentish landscape, being examined quizzically by a sheep. You’ve stepped beyond the book covers, and all you’ve just experienced seems strangely fuzzy, like trying to grasp the details of a dream on waking. Surely, this pastoral scene, unchanged for centuries, is reality? An about turn, and you’re through the hedge again and, through some kind of wizardry, back in the story.

Life on the edge

Something that continues to fascinate me about gardens is the relationship that exists between the gardener and the natural world. We might be allowed to think we’ve got the upper hand for a short while, but this is just an illusion. Where the gardener seeks to impose their will – the tidily clipped hedges, fruit trees trained into espaliers and fans, or the neatly manicured expanse of baize green lawn – little more than a momentary distraction provides the opportunity for Mother Nature to reassert her dominance. And it seems to me that this relationship is nowhere more evident than around the edges of things.

Easily overlooked, I’ve come to appreciate that edges are key in providing definition and coherence in the garden. They help our brains to make sense of what the eyes are taking in. So while by nature I’m not an obsessively tidy person, it’s struck me this week that just about every garden I look at seems to be in need of a good haircut. Hardly surprising in a week of minor monsoons and mini heatwaves that the plants are growing vigorously away, but who has time not only to keep on top of the weeding, make sure the containers are watered, and mow the lawn twice a week, but also to ensure crisp edges on everything? As a working gardener, I know that good edging is the finishing touch that completes all my hard work in maintaining a beautiful garden. But as a householder I am aware that, as long as nothing is wildly out of control, if you look after the edges, you can for a time get away with a little less attention to what’s going on between them.

Noone wants to be a slave to their garden, so why not take a little time to neaten up the perimeter of the lawn, and then reduce the frequency of mowing for a few weeks? Similarly, take advantage of the RSPB’s advice against cutting hedges between March and August by leaving the noisy, cumbersome hedge trimmers in the shed, and clip off the straggly tops with some hand shears.

It’s not a long-term strategy — inevitably at some point, you will need to catch up — but anything that promises to steal a little time to enjoy our gardens has to be worth a try. I’ll be getting the shears out this evening after work. But only for a few minutes.

Summer solstice

All too soon, the longest day of the year is upon us. Just at the moment we realise we can be outside at ten in the evening and still see our way along the garden path without the aid of a torch, we turn the corner and the nights begin to draw in again. Of course, this picture of balmy June evenings is entirely fanciful – having spent most of the past fortnight utterly sodden, rainsoaked and windswept, there’s been little chance of pottering through the twilight garden, beaker full of the warm south in hand. A mad dash to the shed to shelter from the heaviest of showers has been more typical of late, but for all that, it’s been wonderful to seen the effect of the rain on our gardens, transforming them from parched spaces to verdant jungles within ten days.

But (dare I say it), this week looks brighter, and while today is undoubtedly a milestone in the year – and one with the faintest tinge of melancholy for those of us who crave every available photon of the day’s light – there are still the glories of the late summer border to look forward to. The dahlias and lilies, asters, cosmos and verbena, heleniums and rudbekias, agapanthus and montbretia – all old friends I can’t wait to meet again in a few week’s time.