Five tulips to plant now

Late November, and the colour is slipping from the trees; down, down to the gardens and lawns, down to streets and pavements, grass and slabs strewn with discarded finery in shades of scarlet and copper and gold. The wind has been fierce, whipping the leaves into a frenzied dance, a kaleidoscope of burnished flecks whirling around me as I walk, swooping and bobbing in front of my face. I watched a leaf trapped in a doorway, caught in the eddying wind, unable to break free and find the way out like a fly by an open window, exhausting itself with frantic effort while being unable to comprehend that the simple way out of its present situation lies less than a few inches away.

Sensations and events can act as milestones in our year, not merely marking how far we’ve come and have yet to go, but providing an invitation to pause and to take stock of where we are. This gradual bleeding of pigment from the landscape, this ballet of the leaves in the wind and a cold that rasps my hands and face – the combination of these familiar experiences reminds me that now is not the time to retreat indoors and go to ground till spring, but instead the long awaited time to plant tulips.

There are so many, and no matter how much care you lavish upon planning your spring display, you are always bound to end up coveting the form or the colour of a tulip you see growing in the garden of a friend or neighbour. But by the time you’ve seen it, it’s too late to grow it that year, and so you bide your time and wait until the ground is sufficiently cold to plant safely the bulbs without fear of rot and disease that the tulips of less patient gardeners might fall prey to. Mid to late November is the season to begin planting tulips, and I’m starting now.

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Five tulips for planting now

These are not necessarily the best or even the most fashionable of tulips. They are simply the five that form the backbone of the spring display in our garden, which is based on an understated monochromatic scheme with a bit of fun, pink froth to lift it. They are reliable, either elegant or cheering, easy to grow and, importantly, not difficult to acquire.

Plant the bulbs deep. The accepted wisdom is twice the depth of the bulb, but if you can plant them at a depth of about 10 inches with a little grit at the bottom of the planting hole they will perform more reliably year after year on our heavy local soil. It goes without saying, do try to plant them the right (pointy) way up. Contrary to popular belief, they won’t grow downwards – plants are intelligent enough to know which way is up (something called geotropism) –  but they will waste energy in righting themselves which could otherwise be channelled into the flowers.

Name: 'White Triumphator'
Type: Lily
Colour: White
Height: 70cm
Flowering time: Mid May
Notes: Elegant, large and pure white, lily-shaped flowers.

Name: 'Queen of the Night'
Type: Single
Colour: Black/Purple
Height: 60cm
Flowering time: Mid May
Notes: Deep purple, almost matt black petals with a velvety sheen. Stunning – if I had to have only one, it would be this.

Name: 'Black Parrot'
Type: Parrot
Colour: Black/Purple
Height: 55cm
Flowering time: Mid May
Notes: As fascinating in bud as in flower, looking like some exotic vegetable. Not quite as dark as 'Queen of the Night', but not far off. The parrot tulips have fringed petals, and air of the decadent baroque.

Name: 'Purissima'
Type: Fosteriana (Botanical)
Colour: Creamy white
Height: 45 cm
Flowering time: April
Notes: The first of our tulips to flower, this is a robust, tulip-shaped tulip, in a soft creamy white. A yellow centre is visible inside when the flowers begin to open up. Also known as 'White Emperor', which might explain why I received a job lot of them one year instead of 'White Triumphator'. A happy accident, though.

Name: 'Foxtrot'
Type: Double Early
Colour: Opening white, then shades of pink
Height: 30cm
Flowering time: April
Notes: These are a treat, opening white and then blushing to shades of a gentle pink with darker pink highlights. The double rows of petals creates a fringed effect, almost paeony like. Very pretty indeed.

Cold addled

It would seem that the grass has at last had the decency to stop growing, or at least to slow its rate of growth to a level appropriate for the time of year. This is fortunate: the ground is getting wet and claggy now as our local clay is wont to become at this time of year, and continued trundling back and forth with mower and heavy boots is liable to compact the soil and exacerbate any drainage problems. Some traffic will still be necessary until all the leaves are off the trees – and then off the grass – but for a few weeks over winter it will be good to give the turf a rest. In spring when the risk of ground frost has past we can think about aerating compacted lawns, but it will need to be drier than now or else the clay smears and becomes impermeable, making matters worse.


I welcome the change in routine. Much as I can appreciate a well-tended lawn, there can be no denying that a smooth green sward exerts a kind of tyranny over all gardening activity for at least forty weeks of the year. Having converetd most of the lawn to flower and vegetable beds in my own garden I lose no sleep over a crop of dandelions or the odd patch of bee-friendly clover, self-heal or daisies in what little grass does remain, but even here there is no escape from the weekly cut. I really prefer the longer look of a wildflower meadow, especially if it has an inviting path cut through it, beckoning me to wander between the tall grass and flowers. This is a form of grassland management requiring significantly less input in terms of time, fertilisers and other chemicals – which adds up to significantly less money, all positive benefits which I am keen to point out to anybody who will listen. Not to mention that allowing flowers in your lawn provides a valuable nectar resource for bees and other pollinators – the arguments both environmental and economic are well rehearsed and to hand and, while I haven’t yet succeeded in introducing a meadow in every garden under my care, it’s a work in progress.

But it’s almost winter, and these are matters for spring. Nobody will be thinking about their lawn until the new year, unless it is to bemoan its transformation to quagmire as an ill-judged slipper-clad foray across the garden provides an education of a muddier nature. And because there’s little to be done to the lawn in winter, I spend a few happy moments planning what long-delayed tasks I can at last get around to; building new compost bins and turning the heap, completing the dog proofing of the boundaries, moving and splitting fallen logs. Until I realise that the reason that there’s little to be done to the lawn in winter is not only that it is colder – which slows down those biochemical processes required for the grass to grow – but also that there is less light, as there is, quite literally, less day. And so consequently I come to the understanding that I have no more time than I had before; probably, in fact, less, and these tasks still need to be crammed in to ever shorter daylight hours. Rather obvious really – clearly the neurons are not firing at peak efficiency. I blame the cold.

Mast year

It is raining acorns. They land with a sharp CRACK! upon the aluminium roof of the landrover, amazingly causing no dents. A less bell-like tone is produced when they fall upon the greenhouse, or upon the garage roof, but a steady percussion is now building to create a sustained accompaniment to the afternoon’s artistry. I am in the process of attacking a neglected woodland understory with an improbably small, but nonetheless viciously efficient hand saw. And all the while, it is raining acorns.

2013, it transpires, is a good year to be a pig. Apart from...you know. Sausages. But, right up until the moment when it becomes absolutely necessary for such matters to be broached – porcine sensibilites aside – a free ranging pig must be one of the happiest creatures alive this autumn thanks to the abundance of choice tree fruit blanketing the ground. Layer upon delicious layer of your favourite food – not just apples (the apple harvest is fantastic this year, and so it should be considering how poor it was in 2012) – but acorns too, just as choice a delicacy to a pig. This year will go down in the records as a mast year, a year when the harvest of mast – defined as the fruit of woodland trees – is particularly abundant. And while trees such as oak, ash, beech, hazel and chestnut (sweet and horse) are producing impressive crops, the effects are likely also to be seen in the trees and shrubs in our gardens, with an exuberant clothing of berries on hollies and rowans and hawthorns, to name but three.

The exact cause of this phenomenon known as masting is not entirely understood, although it is clearly linked to both weather and climactic conditions, and it has been observed that some species, such as beech, exhibit this behaviour on a regular cycle (approximately every ten years, although this has become shorter in recent decades). All of this has clear implications for our native wildlife, as the effects of an overabundant supply of fruit and nuts cascades along the food chain. As well as being good news for garden birds and fetching field mice, populations of less welcome creatures will also be seeing a significant increase come spring; the thought of an explosion in rat numbers creates a not altogether heart-warming picture. Still, we should never have got rid of the wolves and the boar and the bears, so it serves us right.

Quite apart from which, all of this reckless superfluity has clear implications for my lawn mower, as more than one of my gardens borders on the woods and now boasts deep insulating piles of acorns across where once emerald turf shone forth. Optimistically I had hoped the mower would sweep this into the grass bag. Sadly, while the second lowest setting on the blades sees the machine ignore the acorns altogether, the lowest height succeeds in mashing, rather than collecting them – mashed acorn being even more difficult to pick up. The leaf rake buckles under the weight (piles of acorns are deceptively heavy), and the leaf blower too is surprisingly impotent in the face of so much brown shrapnel. Leaving me no option but to shepherd them into great piles, and manually tip fistfuls of the things into the barrow. I really don’t want a lawn full of oak seedlings. Undeterred, it’s warming work on a cold autumn day, and I have a plan to roll out the scarifier on them next time I visit.

But still, for a while longer, it is raining acorns.

Autumn days and chocolate buttons

Autumn, at its best when days are dry and cold and bright, can throw some truly nasty weather at you. The light rain forecast for this morning turned into a lengthy downpour so heavy that the water somehow managed to flow back along the underside of my hat brim before encountering a brow furrowed against the elements, at which impenetrable barrier it abruptly turned course and proceeded to flow down my face. Puddles formed inside my boots as rivulets of rain coursed down my legs, almost making me regret this morning’s selection of shorts over long trousers, although my prepatellar bursitis – a knee affliction common to plumbers, housemaids, carpet fitters and apparently gardeners – continued to approve of the choice (the stretched fabric of a longer leg when kneeling down causes increased pressure on the lump above the knee; annoying rather than painful). I came home briefly at lunch to walk Bill, threw my sodden clothes into the dryer, and promptly managed to melt all the buttons. I can only conclude that they had been manufactured from chocolate, leaving me nursing a sense of regret at the thought of a missed snack opportunity.

Undeterred by the weather or the state of my clothing – billowing precariously in the chilly wind which had by now replaced the morning’s rain – I continued with the day’s toil, barrowing leaf mold and manure to the borders and coppicing overgrown hazels in the woodland area, all the while thankful for the capacity of the lawn grasses to survive a thorough muddy trampling.

It was gloomy and muddy and damp and cold – so far from the ideal autumn day I carry with me in my head. And while it may have been the frisson caused by the knowledge that at any moment a freak gust of wind could overpower the last remaining fastenings on my shorts and see me chasing my dignity across the rose garden, I think it is more the raw and elemental quality of the days at this time of year that makes me feel particularly present in the moment, particularly alive. I snapped a few hasty pictures on my phone on one trip back from the bonfire in an attempt to capture something of the feeling. Some are even in focus.

So here’s to autumn days, whatever the weather. And here’s to long autumn evenings by the fire, sewing on buttons.

Some elements of this composition are in focus. Just not the ones you’d expect.

Ivy stems on oak trunk

Leaf mold

Much of this afternoon was spent both in and on a pile of leaf mold. A lovely, deep pile of well-rotted leaf mold – thick, chocolately stuff, the consistency of a really good chocolate brownie, the kind that makes your mouth go all funny and sends a little shiver down your spine. The kind that offers your teeth the resistance of the barest hint of crust on the outside but rewards the persistance of your masticationary efforts with a meltingly gooey interior. The word ‘unctuous’ gets a bad press but was surely invented for this stuff – in fact, I’m not sure that anyone could ever have really appreciated the richenss of that adjective without having been here, on this pile at this moment, watching the shining blade of the shovel carve tranche after tranche out of the heap, hearing it flop wetly to the ground, crumbling as it falls. There has been rain of late in volume, and were I in particular mood I could wish the texture more friable. Candidly, I rather suspect the inclusion of grass during the incorporation of the heap, but I cannot say. I was not here at that time. But what this compost lacks in crumble it more than makes up for in luxury, and it will be more than adequate for purpose.

This lot is bound for the rose garden, to act as a mulch in order to supress weeds, and also as a soil conditioner to lighten the clay. In this the gardener will be given invaluable help from the host of worms which poplulate the rich humus, as they do the hard work of mixing the new layer organic matter with the soil. Before the mulch can be applied, I remove fallen leaves from the beds with the aid of a powered blower. These leaves will not make it into the main pile, instead meeting their fate on the bonfire and thereby minimising the proliferation of rose blackspot (the fungus Diplocarpon rosae). Once the beds are clear, applicaton of the fresh leaf mold involves accurate aiming of the barrow, and the use of a long-tined compost fork – by far the most efficient tool for spreading the mulch between the stems of the rose plants.

I have posted before (in Leaf fall and Cloth of Gold) on the wonder of leaves. As I write this on Hallowe’en, and in spite of the fierce winds at the beginning of the week, we have not yet entered the peak of the leaf raking season, with many trees keeping a stubborn grasp on their foliage. But it’s surely a matter of days if not weeks before leaves cover our gardens again, and it’s as well to have a plan of what to do with them once they’ve been coralled and collected. It would, after all, be criminal to let all that potential goodness go to waste.

Honey fungus

Autumn is the season for mushrooms, the fruiting bodies of fungi that appear suddenly in our gardens at this time of year, along with morning mists and the smell of woodsmoke. An integral part of our environment fungi play an essential role within the ecosystem, converting dead material into nutrients required for plant growth. However, in the quasi-naturalistic setting of the garden, not all fungi are created equal. There are relatively harmless saphrophytic fungi, which live on dead or decaying organic matter, and aid the process of decomposition. These perform a vital function and one which, from a gardener’s perspective, is relatively benign. There are also beneficial micorrhizal fungi which form a codependnent relationship with the roots of plants, assisting in the uptake of nutrients from the soil in exchange for sugars and carbohydrates. But there are also pathogenic fungi, which are rather more of a nuisance, possessing as they do a penchant for living material.

Two weeks ago, several patches of cinnamon hued mushrooms, each with a darker central spot on the cap, appeared in one of my regular gardens. This was not an auspicious start to the day, as these mushrooms bore a marked resemblance to one of the three signs of the armillaria group of fungi, also known as honey fungus. Armillaria is a virulent pathogenic genus – recognised by the RHS as ‘the most destructive fungal disease in UK gardens’ – which invades the roots of trees and woody perennials, weakening the plant and then consuming the decaying organic matter. The cap of the mushroom is convex at first, like a shallow dome or half a tea cake, but as it ages the outer edges curve upwards, revealing the gills beneath. While the mushrooms do not necessarily appear each year the presence of honey fungus is also suggested by a sheet of white fungal growth beneath the bark at the base of the infected plant, and by the characteristic black rhizomorphs, or ‘bootlaces’, by means of which the organism can spread long distances through the soil. The mushrooms in this garden were concentrated around the decaying remains of some old shrubs, on which both the white mycelial sheet (which smells very noticeably of mushrooms) and the beginnings of the bootlaces were evident. Finding the fruiting bodies, with their characteristic colouring, was a fairly good indicator of what was now lurking in the lawns and borders. Finding all three signs together removed any remaining vestiges of doubt. Honey fungus, I was now confident, had arrived.

To put things in perspective, it is reputedly the case that the largest living organism is a kind of honey fungus, Armillaria ostoyae, which covers an area larger than 2,000 acres in a forest in Oregon. No wonder that I wasn’t overjoyed to see its relative manifesting in these Kentish grounds.

A pair of mature birch trees dominate this garden (there had originally been three, but one had to be felled last year when I noticed a rotten hole had developed at the base of one – mentioned in a blog post here), and one of the newly planted borders near a particularly fine crop of mushrooms features a Magnolia 'George Henry Kern', Viburnum tinus, and Hydrangea 'Annabelle'. I couldn’t have created a more sumptuous menu for the honey fungus had I tried – all of these appear on the list of plants particularly susceptible to this pathogen, so we shall have to keep an eye out for signs of stress, by which time it may well be too late. I would prefer where possible to lift the plants and containerise them in the same position with some artful planting to hide the containers, a plan that’s presently in negotiation. The first step was to dig out all the infected rotten wood – stumps and roots were well decayed by now and offered little resistance to the trusty mattock – and as much soil as possible, all of which was bound for the bonfire. The chemical control for this was banned for use as a garden herbicide in 2003, so physical destruction (burning) of infected material is the only legal option at present. The legislation wasn’t able to prevent me from disinfecting my tools with Jeyes Fluid before moving on to other areas of the garden, a sensible precaution to take.

The next step is to have a reputable tree surgeon inspect the remaining birch trees for signs of infection, particularly as the root and stump of their departed companion resembles at present some kind of mushroom gourmand’s fantasy. These trees are too tall and close to the house, and the garden too exposed and windy, to countenance any chance of structural weakness.

Should the worst transpire, we will have to look to more resistant plants – a list of which is available here – to replace those that might succumb too easily to this voracious fungus. For now, we’re pairing the measures we’ve already taken to all the optimism we can muster, and hoping it won’t come to that.

Tthe beginnnings of blue black ‘bootlace’ rhizomorphs in the middle of this rotten stump

Eat your greens

Wandering along the farm lane, as I do several times a day with Bill, I spend many a happy while examining the hedgerows. It’s fascinating to me that while we tend to think that at this time of the year the whole natural world is a few short weeks away from bedding down for a long winter snooze, many perennial and biennial plants are gearing up for spring, thrusting out lush green foliage and staking a claim to their spot for the new growing season. Here’s a selection of native plants, most of which are doing just that, and all of which, it occurs to me, might not make it that far in an unmolested state, owing to them being either rather tasty foragers’ fare, or rather useful in some way.

Nettles (Urtica dioica) and cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) making an attractive emerald tableux. The beautiful cheese Cornish Yarg (as sold by Lynher Diaries, amongst others) is wrapped in the leaves of stinging nettles. Recipes for nettles abound – soups, risottos, nettle and parmesan fritters – quite apart from which you can more or less use it as you would spinach. Cow parsley should absolutely not be consumed unless you can be entirely positive about its identification, as it can be mistaken for the dangerously poisonous distant cousins hemlock and fool’s parsley. Consult Richard Mabey’s excellent book Food for Free and find an experienced forager who can show you the key identification points to look for. If you’ve overcome the possibility of a horrible death, the leaves are quite nice in salads. But the fear of imminent expiration can play havoc with the digestion.

Burdoch (Arctium minus). Young leaf stems need to be peeled, and then can either be used raw in salads or boiled in a similar way to asparagus. You’ll want to avoid itchy balls, which cling like velcro to absolutely anything with a slight pile. But you’re unlikely to find young stems on a plant that’s gone to seed, so this shouldn’t be an issue when foraging. 

Comfrey (Symphytum sp.) Good for making a foulesomely noxious but fantastically nutritious plant tonic. There’s some evidence that it may help broken bones to heal, hence one of its common names, knitbone. Use young leaves in salads, cook leaves of any age as you would spinach. 

Garlic mustard, or Jack-in-the-hedge (Alliaria petiolata). For a piquant garlicky flavour, whose leaves make a splendid sauce for lamb when chopped with young hawthorn leaves in vinegar and sugar.

Dandelion (Taraxacum officiale) It does make you wonder why people spend such an awful lot on ghastly salad that’s steadily rotting inside a suffocating platic bag, when lovely fresh leaves that you can  hoik out by the handful are liberally clothing just about any lawn that hasn't been chemically nuked to within an inch of its life. Go on, give it a go. Stick a handful in a sandwich at first, then maybe progress to including them on the side of a plate with a hearty oil and vinegar dressing.

Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) Known colloquially as ‘Bread and Cheese’, presumably for its ubiquity. The leaves are very edible, surprisingly substantial with a crisp texture and a slightly nutty taste, although a little bitter at this time of year. The berries, or haws, can be used in fruit leathers or jams, though they’re not especially tasty on their own.

In between days

An awareness of the passing seasons is a grounding thing. It relates us to the world outside our window which might otherwise be perceived only in momentary glimpses as the natural realm intrudes upon our busy lives: suddenly we’re driving to work in the dark, shorts and t-shirts are consigned to the back of the wardrobe, and one day soon we’ll awake to find the lawn shrouded in leaves. We note the signs that mark our passage from spring to summer, to autumn, to winter and back to spring and, while we may complain about the less welcome aspects – complaining is in our nature after all, and something to be enjoyed – we are fortunate to live in a part of the world where the passing of time is softened by the comforting regularity of discernibly different seasons. But as much as we tend to think of clearly defined periods, each with their own individual events and moods, in reality we spend as much time transitioning between one and the next, where the interregnum is marked by a character of its own.

We are somewhere between summer and autumn, which has as distinctive a personality as a snowy winter’s day or a fresh spring morning. Fuchsias reign in the borders alongside the big daisies; asters and echinacea, dahlias, helianthus – hairy of leaf and smiley of countenance – cosmos and heleniums, while nicotianas waft and tall miscanthus shamelessly exploit the low evening sun. Sweet peas are running to seed faster than I can cut the flowers, and must now be wrested from their supports. It has become impossible to walk down the garden path without some specimen of ripened vegetation popping a seed pod at me. Earlier flowering plants have done their thing for the year and are capturing the last of the summer’s nourishing sun, squirreling it away underground in bulbs or starchy roots, before they drop their leaves and hibernate for the winter.

This week, the first of the leaves have started to turn. Not the desiccated parchment coloured foliage caused by a dry summer, which caused alarm in some quarters at the prospect of an unlikely early autumn. These are the first signs of the rich golds and reds and earthy hues in which autumn prides itself, as the green slowly bleeds out of each leaf with the shortening of the days.

By then, of course, it will be autumn proper. Something to look forward to.

On bulbs, and hoola for your moolah

As suddenly as someone flicking a switch the children are back at school, the temperatures have noticeably dropped, and the evenings are dark by eight. It’s rumoured that some have even been eyeing the central heating controls, and the time for the annual visit of the chimney sweep approaches. Summer may yet rally for one final, glorious encore, but it is unmistakably waning, and thoughts begin to turn in earnest to next year’s garden. Autumn (am I allowed to use that word yet?) is the time for planting bulbs – beginning with alliums, which benefit from a little residual warmth in the September ground, and finishing with tulips in late autumn, when the colder temperatures will help to keep the dreaded tulip fire at bay. This is good news, as bulbs offer the time strapped garden owner a shortcut to fantastic floral displays, with relatively little investment required in either time or money. Of all the ways to buy plants, bulbs arguably get you the most jolly for your lolly.


Which brings me in rather timely fashion to that purple pom-pom headed lollipop of a flower which graces fashionable borders throughout the spring and into summer – the allium, and most particularly, to the one known as Allium hollandicum 'Purple Sensation'. The allium family includes onions, garlic, leeks and chives – whose flowers and growth habit all bear a marked familial resemblance – but of those alliums grown for ornament, 'Purple Sensation' is undoubtedly the most ubiquitous. No doubt this popularity stems from being easy to grow, inexpensive (twenty five bulbs will cost you less than a ten pounds), and providing a reliably cheerful display. The stem, between 60 and 75 cm in height, requires no staking and the globe comprising myriad individual violet florets grows to 10cm in diameter. The whole flower dries particularly well, though if this is your intention it’s a good idea to hang them upside-down when drying so that the many black seeds have the opportunity to fall out before you scatter them all over your carpet.

Allium 'Purple Sensation' in the borders at Great Dixter

If you’ve yet to include any ornamental alliums in your garden, start with this one and, if you like what you see, perhaps consider augmenting your display the following year with its shorter, but impressively large headed cousin A. christophii, or the statuesque A. giganteum and 'Globemaster'.

Planting notes
This allium is particularly unfussy and will cope with most situations, except waterlogged soil. It grows and looks remarkably well in a dry garden setting. Bulbs should be planted 10 to 15 cm deep (a depth of roughly three times the size of the bulb) and a similar distance apart for the best effect. Although not necessary, the job would be rendered distinctly less back breaking by the purchase of a long-handled bulb planter, such as the one made by Joseph Bentley. I must remember to buy one myself.

Green pebbles in the rain

Gentle drizzle falls this morning from a bright grey, light grey sky. The clear air and softened light makes for a pleasant change after such a period of unforgivingly hot, bright weather. Muffled sounds of the falling rain blend with the ambient noise of these gardens; a counterpoint comprising the cooing of collared doves, the plop of fish coming up for air, and the lightest swiish from the cherry trees as the breeze filters through their coppery canopies. This welcome freshness finds me kneeling on the turf before the low lavender hedge that encircles the lily pond. I have discarded my gloves, the better to feel the individual bundles of flowering stems which must now be removed if the plants are to retain a dense and compact habit, and the sharp blades of my secateurs make easy work of the task as they cleanly sever semi rigid green tissue. Snip. Taking care not to cut into the old wood, eruptions of tiny blue grey needles below the wound – new leaves contrasting with the softer, richer green of the mature foliage – confirm to me that the plant will make a full and fast recovery from this operation.

These plants want to sprawl, to range lankily away from their planting holes, pinned to the ground by a single foot but reaching ever outwards. They possesses a strange, wizened beauty in this form. But that’s not how we like to grow lavender in our gardens, where so often we enforce the juvenile state, perhaps because we are able to do to plants what we long to do to ourselves. Enforcing youth, I mean. Not snipping bits off.

Pleasing green pebble forms begin to emerge where earlier a flattened mat of cat sprawled chaos had threatened to overwhelm the scene. The rain begins to fall with a greater determination, fat drops pattering on the brim of my battered Barmah hat. There is still plenty of summer left, but the freshness newly discernible on the morning air brings with it a thrill of anticipation for the season to come.

Devilish hot

Midsummer. Lucifer straightens his back, rises and in a salutation to the sun stretches out his arms, glowing with crimson fire across the borders. Cooling waves of pale lavender lap around his feet but the contrast serves only to accentuate the fiery glow of the tall crocosmia, which performs with infernal constancy each July. Against the deep burgundy glow of the smoke bush and with sparkling highlights from spent alliums, firework explosions from Stipa gigantea and the shimmering haze of the deschampsia, this year more than ever the summer planting is in perfect harmony with the weather.

The sun is relentless, and quite a challenge for me as I emerge blinking from the relative cool of the courtyard area, shaded from the brightest rays by tall bamboos, a rampant pheasant berry on one side and a philadelphus on the other. Introducing some shade and vertical scale with one or two carefully placed trees is definitely high on the list of priorities for our garden; an inviting patch of dappled shade to make for on those summer days when the sun actually shines, as it’s been doing for the past few weeks with great enthusiasm. But that’s a job for later in the year.

There is a path here, somewhere. The lavender has been left untrimmed for the while, so that you have to push your way through clouds of delicate butterflies and industrious bees in order to get to the middle of the garden. It’s no hardship; the scent is intense and the thrum of the assembled humming bees imparts a kind of thrill as I wander through their harvest. I will have to cut the plants back soon – any heavy rain we get weighs the plants down and they’re getting leggier than I would like, even with a twice-yearly trim for the last five years. Before autumn comes I will need to propagate these same plants in reliable quantities, and get them sturdy enough to be nursed through the winter, in order to have enough replacements for the now ageing hedge which flanks both sides of the winding grass strip. There are doubtless more sensible choices of plant here. Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’ would be less trouble and both foliage and flower lie in similar areas of the colour palette, but I’ve never been a fan of the scent of catmint of any variety and…well. Shoot me for saying so but it always seems to be something of a poor man’s substitute for lavender. That smells faintly of wee.

Over the coming week I will begin to tame the unruly summer sprawl, to make way for the later flowering plants, the cosmos and the dahlias and the nicotianas. But this weekend, I intend to revel in the untidiness.

Fiendishly hot. Lavender and cosmos are quite at home, but I’m not used to such intensity of heat for more than a couple of days at a time.

How to keep your toes in the heat

Mid July and the heatwave continues, pushing 30 degrees during the day, not dropping much lower than mid teens at night. While far from my favourite weather so far I seem to be managing: remembering to drink enough, slathering on the sun block (which I detest with great passion) and developing a knack for finding jobs which happen to be in the shade. Sartorial standards have slipped; first it was an untucked shirt, then an open shirt over a t-shirt, and now the over shirt is usually abandoned almost instantly. But that’s as far as it goes. That, and the fact that my hairy white calves have been on show for the past month or so, though displaying a marked reluctance to develop anything which could be described even vaguely as a 'tan'.

Meanwhile, Bill has taken to flopping around like a discarded teddy bear, gazing accusingly at me from limpid brown eyes as if the weather is some cruel trick engineered by me solely for his discomfort. To be fair his fur is presently providing him with a luxuriant but entirely unwelcome system of insulation, but it will be several weeks yet until his thick top coat is ready to be stripped out.

Today as the thermometer nudged 32 I found myself engaged in a session of digging. That ideal winter activity, when the ground is soft and there’s little else to do in the garden. How come I have so much of it to do at the moment, when the ground is baked hard and... well actually growth rates are beginning to slow down again. This is just how things have worked out, and so it is a matter of good fortune that I enjoy the task, even under a merciless sun with the sweat pouring down my face. To be honest, there’s not much else I’d want to do in this weather, and if you’re going to work yourself into a lather you might as well commit yourself to the job and just hope nobody gets downwind of you. On hotter days I carry with me a bandana with which to wipe away the odd bead of perspiration from the noble brow. Today this was wringing wet within seconds but, I thought to myself, no matter – the sun will surely dry it in no time at all. And sure enough, draped over the t-handle of a handy half moon edging tool, the cloth was soon ready for service once again. It was at this point I realised that while the water content of my industrious sap had become as one with the atmosphere, the salty portion had remained on the cloth, which being wiped across my face now felt not dissimilar to the application of a piece of course sandpaper to the steaming boat.

But things could be worse. I read in the Daily Telegraph – which surely means it must be true – that the recent unseasonal summery weather in summer has resulted not only in the death of over seven hundred people but, no less shockingly, an unprecedented rise in the number of toe amputations seen in the nation’s hospitals. Evidently a hitherto unknown side effect of heat exhaustion causes affected people to dash into the garden wearing sandals or – horror – even barefoot, and recklessly fire up the strimmer, with consequences that can only be imagined, though I’d rather not. Not being blessed with anything more generous than average height I favour a bent shaft for the tool in question and am quite aware that what I gain in manoeuvrability and ergonomic comfort, I loose in unintended strimming of my own feet. And so when last week I noticed with some alarm that my trusty, clumpy steel toe-capped chelsea boots had developed an unexpected degree of additional ventilation I was the very embodiment of efficiency when it came to acquiring a replacement pair. (The old boots will now have something appropriate planted in them, to undoubtedly charming effect.)

Of course, thick socks and heavy safety boots do not make for the coolest of feet in this weather. Still, mustn’t grumble – I still have a full complement of toes. And there’s rumour of rain tomorrow.

Pretty useful

I snapped a photo of the trug en route to the compost heap. Spent aquilegias, unwanted yellow loosestrife and a garnish of wilted paeony petals. Now, it looks like pretty rubbish. In a few months, it will be brown, crumbly and useful.

Mosquito food

A soft rain fell for a while just before noon, welcome relief from the enveloping humid fug that’s settled over us over the past few days. It could do with an almighty downpour, which no doubt will happen while I’m digging this afternoon. In the meantime, I’ll be supplying tasty meals to clouds of aggressive, day-biting mosquitos, if the Jungle Formula doesn’t do for them. It didn’t earlier in the week, when my left leg alone received upwards of twenty bites, but that was largely due to the fact that I’d not thought to apply any. The local mosquito population had hitherto been, like me, of the opinion that they only came out to bite around dusk. These fellows must be new.

A windy morning on Roughway

A mild but windy morning on Roughway, grey clouds scudding quickly over the North Downs. I have misplaced my larger ball of thick tarred twine but have managed to salvage enough odds and ends of string from the back of the land rover to allow me to complete the day’s tying-in tasks. More planting to do here too – today we literally turn the corner in the long border, and begin to repeat the planting groups established on the first, shorter trench. I want it to be daily loose loose, though, and avoid it looking blocky. The wind whips across this garden, high on the Greensand Ridge, and though today I’ll be sheltered by a fence while working the plants themselves need to be tough enough to withstand the constant buffeting. That doesn’t mean I won’t be planting a few more fragile things, though – sweet peas on sturdy hazel wigwams, dahlias and paeonies staked to within an inch of their lives. There’s an awful lot to be done, not least looking after the rest of the garden, so enough scribbling, best get on.

RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2013

Best in Show

Another Chelsea Flower Show is behind us. I’m still sorting through photographs to upload and wondering whether or not my overarching sense of disappointment is justified. In spite of its origins as a flower show, and notwithstanding the fantastic displays by top nurseries in the Great Pavilion, it’s frequently the show gardens which receive most attention at Chelsea, certainly with the media. In this centenary year much of the press attention appeared to be focussed on the gnomes, which I managed to avoid entirely, eager as I was to get to the gardens in an attempt to discern this year’s trends and see how tastes have moved on from last year. Strangely I found it particularly hard to identify common themes largely because in contrast to previous years, when the majority of the show gardens seemed to possess a certain coherence – irrespective of whether or not I found them to my particular taste – many of this year’s gardens didn’t quite pull it off. Perhaps the planting might feel rather leaden, or the finish wasn’t quite there, or maybe there was an element (or several) that unbalanced the whole. Admittedly this is only my own personal impression, but it’s no less keenly felt for that. However, in this post I’d like to concentrate on things that I appreciated, rather than those that I didn’t, although I’m always happy to discuss that side of things in person, so do catch me on Twitter if you want the lowdown!

The Daily Telegraph Garden by Christopher Bradley-Hole

Christopher Bradley-Hole narrowly missed out on the Best in Show award with his well executed garden for the Daily Telegraph, the top prize going to the Trailfinders Australian garden. His own garden was loved by many for its stylised depiction of the British landscape; tightly clipped blocks of native species such as yew, box and hornbeam interspersed with drifts of naturalistic grasses and umbellifers, and pools of water intended to signify a meandering river in its lowland course. A cloister around the side from which to view the garden, though the public were denied access to this route, was reminiscent of a Japanese garden, designed to be viewed from without. It was an interesting piece, but as a practical gardener I could not shake thoughts of how impossible it would be to maintain and, while the species chosen should have leant the garden some unity, I found it ultimately a slightly claustrophobic prospect, which is not a feeling I associate with the landscape it purported to invoke.

The Styrax japonica in Roger Platt's garden for M&G

Two gardens I did like very much have both been labelled insufficiently ground-breaking in terms of design. That may or may not be the case, but I thought the planting in both Roger Platt’s ‘Windows through Time’ garden and Chris Beardshaw’s garden for Arthritis Research UK was very accomplished, and the gardens themselves finished to a very high standard.

Even the outer extremities of Chris Beardshaw's garden were beautifully planted

Kazuyuki Ishihara's An Alcove (Tokonoma) garden

As usual, the much smaller Artisan Gardens provided a few delightful vignettes; once again Kazuyuki Ishihara created the most beautiful and atmospheric space, this year with his Japanese tatami room, surrounded by waterfalls, moss encrusted stones and beautifully sculptural acers, pines and ferns – quite magical, and I lingered here a while.

A gallery of more photographs, with some more thoughts on this year’s show, can be seen here.

Three ways to keep on top of your garden in May

It is early, a grey and misty morning, the hedgerows a luminous and dripping green with the dew lying heavily on the ground below. Birds sing, lambs bleat, and a solitary crow pecks for food in the field. Trees that were tentatively offering up delicate buds a matter of weeks ago are suddenly in full leaf. Mother Nature knows how to make an entrance and, fashionably late, the doors to the growing season are thrown aside and she is suddenly before us and around us and commanding our attention, while spring rushes in and May bursts into life.

So the month began, and so it continues. This is not a time of year to neglect the garden, as grass and weeds put on inches of new growth with each passing day and the undergrowth sends out tendrils of goosegrass to scout out untended ground, at which point it moves in with reinforcements to reclaim the territory by virtue of a more imposing occupation. The change of pace can take you unawares; each time I come home the answer phone winks at me to indicate another overwhelmed garden owner seeking assistance, and I can only help as many as the daylight hours and my diary will allow.

As futile as it might initially appear a strategic approach to the garden can help in holding back the advancing waves of vegetation, and while some investment in time is inevitable it needn’t occupy every spare moment. You can’t do everything at once, so let’s consider just three tasks that you stand a change of fitting into your schedule.

Weed

The trick is, a little, and often. When faced with a jungle it can be tempting to go into denial mode, putting off the task of weeding until you reach breaking point and exhaust yourself in one or two mammoth sessions where you go at it like a crazed person. It’s a great shame when a garden becomes just an another guilt-inducing bogeyman on your to-do list . If you can partition your space into sections in your mind, and spend a few minutes a day or every other day in clearing the weeds (honestly, in a typical suburban garden you will see a difference with a regular five minute slot), that will make the task appear more achievable than if you try to get the whole lot done at once. Yes, it’s true that around now many weeds will be thinking about seeding themselves about, and that in an ideal world they would all be pulled out before this can happen. If you have the time for this, that’s fantastic. But you know what? You’re never going to have a garden that’s free of weeds. That’s why they’re weeds; the most adaptable, incredible survivors the plant kingdom has ever produced, perfectly suited to their situation, and we’re never going to win.

But you can fight back, and for that you need to choose your weapons with care. A hand fork is essential for getting small weeds out by the roots, and a garden or border fork for getting out deeper rooted and more mature specimens such as docks (it helps if the soil’s not rock hard here!). But both are time consuming, and for a quick weeding session, you want something that will help you see that you’ve made a difference. This is where the hoe comes in, the long handled tool with a flat cutting edge at the end, which severs weeds at the root as you skim it across the ground just below soil level. Keep the blade sharp, choose a dryish day and the hoe will prove an invaluable friend, clearing large areas with surprisingly little effort. Several variations are available, dutch hoes and draw hoes, hand or ‘onion’ hoes for tightly planted areas, and double-bladed versions which cut on both the push and the pull action – the best thing is to go to a garden centre and see what they feel like in your hands. You may even build up a collection, though that could just be me.

Edge

Leave the middle of the lawn to get a little longer. Or maybe even a lot – everyone loves a daisy, don’t they? The point is, you can become a slave to your lawn before you know it. Many people concentrate on the mowing and feeding and weeding while neglecting the edges, although it’s these very edges – the borders between lawn and not-lawn – which define the various spaces in your garden and help the brain to create sense of what it sees. Presented with a close cut lawn with messy edges, and the same patch of grass left longer but with neat, crisp boundaries, it’s normal for us to perceive greater order in the latter. A half moon cutter, which has a straighter blade than the slightly curved spade, may be required to re-establish overgrown edges by making a crisp line, but once this has been achieved it doesn’t take much effort to trim the grass back using edging shears, and even less with a small strimmer. Regularly done (weekly), you don’t even need to pick up the clippings every time, although if you leave it for more much longer than this you will generate more than will easily rot down in situ, and will need to be removed to compost heap or green bin.

Water

If you have plants in containers, you will need to be watering them daily now. I find time spent watering therapeutic; it keeps me in touch with my plants and helps me to know what needs attention. But it can be time consuming when done manually, so to avoid watering becoming overly onerous it’s worth investigating some form of automatic irrigation system – essential when you’re away on holiday, but also useful when you’re not. Typically you can buy a starter kit which consists of a battery operated timer which screws straight onto the outside tap, a pressure reducing valve, and a length of small diameter hose pipe with a selection of drippers and nozzles for delivering controlled amounts of water straight to the base of the plant where it’s needed. Usually, these systems can be added to with the purchase of extra component parts. It is quite astonishing what a difference regular irrigation can make to the health of your plants, which sounds obvious, but often has to be seen to be appreciated. Bear in mind if you’ve added water retaining gel to your containers when planting, or used compost which incorporates a similar product, you may well need to reduce the length of the irrigation bursts, although I like to keep the frequency the same to avoid stressing the plant. Finally, all of this uses much less water than indiscriminately dousing everything with sprinkler, hosepipe or even watering can, as the water goes where needed without being deflected by foliage. Good news in this age of the ubiquitous water meter.

So, automatic watering, louche lawns with crisp edges, and a daily few minutes pushing a hoe along the ground. Three simple steps that will help to push back the encroaching green waves which lap around the house at this time of year, reclaiming some space in which to enjoy the garden.

Green & pleasant

It must have been holidaying in Dorset as a child that instilled in me a love of earthworks. Driving through the lush countryside a few miles from Bridport our local landmark was Eggardon Hill, a prominent feature on the local skyline but, to a small child, all the more exciting for the iron age hill fort and burial mounds to which it is home. As a family we became adept at identifying the telltale swollen welt of tumuli in the landscape, while my sister and I learnt how to read the contours of the land on the Ordnance Survey map and home in on the gothic typeface that indicates a Feature of Interest. On the same vacations I remember scaling the windswept grass terraces of Maiden Castle, and clambering around the Roman amphitheatre at Maumbury Rings in Dorchester.

I’ve been asking myself what it is that so appeals to me about these constructions. It’s not merely the frisson you feel when encountering a familiar object – or, in this case, material — used in an unfamiliar way, or even the play of light and shade across the horizontal and vertical surfaces of the banks, paired with the relentless green of the closely cropped turf. But there’s also the delight of seeing the commonplace being used to create something of more complexity in both purpose and meaning. The grass itself has a semiotic link to something deep within most of us, recalling moments of carefree fun from childhood — whether it calls to mind grand lawns, country pastures or a welcome patch of green among the urban jungle. There’s something quintessentially British about grass, and pulling and pushing the land about into forms that suit our purpose before covering it over with a blanket of grass seems an entirely proper thing to do.

It’s exciting to me that garden designers and landscape architects like Charles Jencks and Kim Wilkie are incorporating these features today. But what unexpected joy, when entering the newly redesigned walled garden at Riverhill Himalayan Gardens, to discover crisply defined curved terraces of grass. Inspired no doubt by agrarian practices in the foothills of Nepal, it still somehow feels rooted in the Kentish landscape, only a few miles away from the sites of hill forts at Ightham and Plaxtol. The garden was full of children, throwing themselves with gusto at the embankments and laughing as they slid down the terraces. I’ll certainly be coming back to spend some time gazing at these lush green contours. Quite apart from anything else, in the absence of a flock of sheep which would have unwelcome consequences for the contents of the borders, I’m interested to see how they get on with the mowing.

An uplifting afternoon

I have a cold. This is very annoying, as the light outside today is shining with an intensity not felt for many months; the sky alternating between sunny and overcast with dramatic, silver-fringed clouds, and the air thick with a cacophony of birdsong. By late afternoon everything in our west facing garden is backlit: the bamboos in the courtyard, the early white tulips lining the path, and most impressively the amelanchier, now looking its very best, every stem heavy with pale cream candelabras of pristine new flowers. It’s impossible to stay indoors feeling sorry for oneself so I plug my constantly running nostrils and make my way to the greenhouse for more sowing and potting up activity, while Bill lies on the lawn outside, making himself sick with an all-you-can-eat buffet of lawn weeds, chief among them the strap-like leaves of Plantago lanceolata. Perhaps he’s trying to tell me something, as the ribwort plantain is used medicinally for, amongst other things, alleviating respiratory problems, and is an effective expectorant. Seven years after beginning to carve out something resembling a garden from the blank, weed-strewn canvass we took on it still loves our garden – especially the grass paths – as not only is it more than happy to grow in compacted soil (earning it one of its many common names, ‘waybread’ for its habit of growing on paths), but also likes to seed itself into the much more open soil structure of the borders. Truth be told, although its ground hugging rosettes are something of a pain in what little lawn we have, when grown in open ground I rather like its leaves and look forward to seeing the dark flowerheads with their little creamy tonsures, which hover above the plant on slender stalks and sway with the breeze, reminiscent of a small sanguisorba. Prodigious they are if allowed to set seed but, in the border, they’re not hard to pull out. I think I shall miss them if ever I become so efficient at home that I manage them out of our garden, although that day shows no sign of arriving.

But there’s something far more exciting which has drawn me away from my desk. These past few weeks I’ve been peering into the gloom below the pyracantha hedge, looking for signs of life in the leaf mould. Ever since I carefully snipped off last years mature leaves at the beginning of the month I’ve been waiting in excited anticipation for the unfurling of delicate, two-tone yellow flowers accompanied by heart-shaped leaves on impossibly thin, wiry petioles. The strong yet delicate and airy structure of the plant suggests some tiny eccentric aeronautical construction – you could almost be forgiven for thinking that the epimedium was designed to take to the air and fly. But the levitation for which this plant is known is of an entirely more earthy nature, with its reputation as an aphrodisiac. In a mood of uncharacteristic gentility I had decided that the nickname ‘horny goat weed’ for some reason referenced the horns on a goat’s head. It doesn’t, as another name, ‘Randy Beef Grass’, should have told me. Sold in tablet form as a the Chinese herbal medicine equivalent of Viagra, the uplifting effect was allegedly first observed in his charges by a Chinese goat herd, and is attributable to the compound icariin in which the plant is rich. Enough. Of more interest to the gardener are the properties of cultivars which provide robust and evergreen ground cover – many exhibiting attractive bronze markings on the leaves – several of the hardier types able to cope with dry shade. I have a fairly generic, but reliably hardy Epimedium x versicolour 'Sulphureum', whose leaves should emerge tinged with red, although mine refuse to, an annoyance which I feel may be due to the almost complete lack of any direct sunlight. I’ll move a clump this autumn into a more exposed position to test this theory next spring. In the meantime, I have a long shopping list of cultivars to acquire, starting with E. x rubra with its red bordered pale yellow flowers, looking for all they’re worth like something you’d buy by the quarter from a glass jar. Probably best not to eat them, though. The kind of sweeties that would keep a chap up all night.

Rather impressionistic due to the photographer wobbling about in low light

Spring

Spring rushes in wearing an expression of apologetic tardiness, a picture of windswept dishevelment. Better late than not at all and, now that the worst of the frosty nights seem to have passed, we can get on. On with rejoicing over meetings with old friends, and on with remembering the new ones you’d forgotten you’d invited. I have no recollection of planting Chionodoxa last year, but they’re here now, where they weren’t last year, where I was expecting crocuses which I seem to have planted further towards the back of this motley ensemble. The effect is harmonious to the extent that I begin to believe I had a sensible plan at planting time, albeit one which I’ve since forgotten. Appropriately then, forget-me-nots will join swarthy self-sown spanish bluebells and grape hyacinths Muscari in completing the late spring cerulean spectacle, though these last two will quickly become thuggish and require careful management. In May they’ll be succeeded by the white blooms of Paeony lactiflora ‘Shirley Temple’ and a pair of Dicentra aurora, while Corydalis ‘Purple Leaf’ with its tubular neon blue flowers and deep cut foliage will complement the dicentras and the ever-present ferny backdrop. Each of these has recently declared itself a survivor of the winter months, unfurling fresh, vibrant foliage above the well-mulched soil. I’m particularly excited at the prospect of watching this small section of the garden unfold this year.

Corydalis 'Purple Leaf' peaks out from behind the bluebells

The blue-green foliage of the dicentra emerges from a winter slumber

It’s at this point I realise that something is amiss. A californian lilac, Ceonothus ‘Concha’, presides over this corner of the garden, clothed in May with light blue liquorice alsort flowers which, in slowly deteriorating, clothe the ground below in baby blue confetti. Only right now it’s not looking quite as perky as it should. In fact, it’s looking decidedly – and there’s no gentle way of putting this – dead. Shrubs of this genus are often not particularly long lived on our heavy Kentish soils, and it’s not unheard of for them to croak after five or six years. This particular specimen, although in a corner and sheltered from the coldest gusts from the east, could be exposed to winds from other directions which would seize its top heavy growth and rock it about in spite of our best efforts to stake it securely. Well, no matter – I wasn’t overly convinced by it in that spot (truth be told, I find its leaves rather too small and ungenerous) and its loss presents an opportunity. What to put in its place, now...there’s the question.