I fear yesterday’s post may have given an inaccurate picture of the planting in my garden. It’s only ever that tidy (sterile?) near the less intensively-planted, shrubbier parts…
Read moreDay 33: low tide
Lockdown is confirming what I already know about our garden – it’s at its best in spring, and winter... well. Let’s just say, winter in our garden requires an exercise of the imagination…
Read moreDay 32: surviving February
February has a trick up its sleeve; whilst being by all objective measures the shortest month of the year, it somehow contrives to feel the longest…
Read moreThe Gardens, Weeds & Words podcast, Series 3 Episode 3
This tendency of ours to want to stick a label on everything might make the world seem neater and easier to manage, but it’s as joyless a process as it is reductive. You couldn’t stick a label on my guest in this episode of the podcast even if you tried – Jackee Holder’s business card says ‘Cultural Creative’, but that’s only a partial description of her work. When we met online to talk, we started with trees, and travelled on together from there.
Read moreDay 31: a garden edit
Raining all day – sat at my desk working on a book chapter, watching paragraphs emerge onto the screen, take shape, fill the space in such a manner as to influence how I feel about what came before, and what’s to follow…
Read moreDay 30: endings and beginnings
At a time where almost nothing in our daily experience seems clear cut – even the seasons seem to merge into a confounding jumble - the appeal of a neat edge is hard to over state…
Read moreDay 29: hellebore squats
Winter trains the gardener to be keen-eyed in the quest for colour; those flashes of delight that brighten an otherwise sober outlook
Read moreDay 28: ani-seedy
A dull, mizzly and oddly mild January afternoon. Knees and fingers are generously besmirched with mud and, feeling in the need of a pick-me-up,
Read moreDay 27: bud spotting
It becomes something of a sport around now. You’ve probably already engaged in a spot if it yourself – peering closely at bare twigs for the faintest sign of swelling…
Read moreDay 26: time for tea
There’s one essential aspect of gardening that receives insufficient attention within traditional horticultural instruction. I refer, of course, to the following question: how do you have your tea?
Read moreDay 25: stealing time
Stealing time outdoors as the sun goes down, pruning and retying a shrub rose to itself. Some roses are better suited to the Jenny Barnes treatment than others
Read moreDay 24: delay no more
Could this be the year I finally get around to...? There are so many ways to end that sentence when it comes to my garden…
Read moreDay 23: cold start
Up before the hour of the flatulent sparrow, and I have the garden to myself. The plastic tarpaulin – offensively blue under the security lights – quickly laid out in anticipation of a tipper-load of manure…
Read moreDay22: smashing pots
Crash. The sound of breaking terracotta is distinctive, and one I’ve become quite accustomed to this past year. Even in the relative shelter of the side return to our house…
Read moreDay 21: sarcococca
Today the rain stopped just sufficiently long to allow the birds a brief moment of song, and the smell of Christmas Box wetly to take flight..
Read moreDay 20: make room for the mulch
I do like to leave the seed heads of herbaceous perennials and grasses for as long as possible – for the birds, and for frosty displays – but around now practicality comes into the gardening equation…
Read moreDay 19: job creation
Winter brings a certain kind of clarity. I’m clearing around the plants in the beds, making sense of the green jumble of self-sown weeds and ornamentals and the runners of alpine strawberries, buttercups and tiny brambles…
Read moreDay 18: what lies beneath
Scratch the surface of my garden, and all manner of foreign objects begin to reveal themselves. When I first laid out the beds I discovered a 2 metre square patch of glass sheeting, as if someone had flattened a greenhouse and then turfed it over…
Read moreDay 17: good day sunshine
In spite of efforts to the contrary, I can feel the gloom of a damp January tugging at the edges of my thoughts…
Read moreDay 16: staying the hand
I have to stay my hand. I am no neat-freak in the garden, and quite possibly the one true king of Leave-it-for-the-Birds Land, but I feel my right hand rise towards the hip where habitually my secateurs can be found…
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