Where's he been then...?

I had almost given up on blogging, but thought I'd try to get back into the discipline as the days shorten and opportunities for actual gardening start to wane. It was dark, to all intents and purposes, at half-past five this afternoon as gloom and rain descended for the night. Not good.

It was a busy summer, if a wet one. What this has meant is that the garden is looking very lush and green for this time of year. Usually, on returning from our annual family fortnight by the sea in lovely North Norfolk, the garden is looking a bit dessicated and never fully recovers before the autumnal tidy. This year, there is plenty of green, and colour, to be seen still. And it is the same in other gardens. I remember this time last year, when cutting back and clearing for the winter was already underway (although, of course, we didn't actually get a winter to speak of in the end).

New clients have continued to emerge, without having had to advertise, and I am now fully occupied for the three full days a week I can work. Most gratifyingly, the work I had been doing over the summer holiday at Wyndham Park School has paid off, and the Library Garden is looking really good. Following the ideas suggested by the Headteacher, I have created a number of discrete areas within the space around the new octagonal Library building: a herb garden, wildflower meadow, beach garden, bee & butterfly garden, rockery, and a more traditional herbaceous border.

Left: the wildflower meadow in June 2012

Left: the newly-planted herb garden in June 2012













I will be back at the school tomorrow,  all being well, getting some bulbs in for spring and starting to tidy-up a bit. I have got various different wildflower/meadow seed mixes to try out, so need to clear some spaces and sow these. It will be interesting to see which flourish and which struggle. 

The site is very rough ground indeed: Wiltshire downland chalk and flint, compounded by any amount of builders' rubble from the original school building and the library building last year. It's also pretty windy and exposed, so planting choices have to be fairly robust and able to deal with dry conditions. It would be great to make a 'jungle' garden with some exotics - canna, banana etc - but short of building some quite extensive sheltering fences I am not sure it's practical... we'll see.

There, that wasn't so difficult, was it?

The SADness of summer

Is there any light at the end of the tunnel that is this summer?

When I decided to go into horticulture as a job as well as a hobby, the allure of being outside was an important factor. The thought that I could store up as much sunlight as possible during nine or ten months of work each year, enough to see me through the dark of midwinter, was hugely appealing. For too many years I had travelled to and from work in the semi-darkness, only to spend the daylight hours indoors, under artificial lights. And in the months of GMT that often meant seeing precious little sunshine from one week to the next. None of which was good for me.

This spring and summer were supposed to be the start of a new dispensation, one in which the rhythms and cycles of nature would have a daily impact on me. No longer would I be insulated or cocooned from the natural world of weather and seasons, but they would start to dictate my working (and non-working) life to an unprecedented degree.

Well, of course, that has happened. But not in the way I imagined. Yes, I have become completely immersed in the changing seasons and the fickleness of the weather, a slave to the forecasts and the barometer. However, this has coincided with the most unpleasant and unforgiving spell of spring/summer weather I can remember. Low light levels and overcast gloom have predominated for weeks now, to say nothing of the persistent rain. I find myself suffering from what I can only call summer-SAD. And the cure, getting out into a garden – mine or a client’s – and working, is frequently denied to me by the cause. I don’t mind working in the rain: but there is little pleasure to be had in it, huddled in waterproofs, head down towards the soil, no sun on one’s back. Seeds planted early to steal a march on the season perished long ago in the wet, cold soil. Plants remain stunted and unhappy because of the lack of light and warmth. Those that have done well have suffered a battering at the hands of torrential rain and blustery wind for weeks.

How low are my sunlight-batteries going to be come the end of the year, I ask myself anxiously? If I go into the winter in deficit, how much of a lux-deficit can I sustain? I can only hope that the remaining summer will improve, and that we may experience a sunny August/September (even October?), the sort of late summer weather we have had in a few recent years.

And yet I am still optimistic and positive about being a gardener. There is nothing like it, and I am as happy as I have ever been. If I can handle this summer, I tell myself, anything approaching a ‘normal’ year will be (in Raymond Carver’s lovely phrase) ‘pure gravy’.

And on it goes...

May, bloody May...

It is raining steadily outside, as it has been for most of the past 6 weeks or so. It is supposed to be the spring, but it has been sodden and cold, dark and dreary as far back as the Equinox. This induces in me an unfamiliar gloominess, one that I associate with the long nights of midwinter, not this season of growth and uplift. Having wintered well, and managed to avoid the worst of winter’s dark hounds, it is not good to feel like this when summer is just over the horizon.

The garden grows, and long thirsted-for rain is bringing on a surge in the borders. Digitalis clutch towards the sky before one’s eyes, and there are bluebells and tulips for colour now that the yellow of daffs, Forsythia and Primulas have faded. And there is blossom on apple trees and hawthorns. But still, the mud and drizzle mean that forays into the garden are hurried, scuttling between house, greenhouse and potting shed, no time to stand (let alone, sit) and fully appreciate what is going-on.

At the allotment, which started with great energy and enthusiasm in the weeks before Easter, cold and wet have taken their toll. Whole sowings of early crops have disappeared into the cold, wet earth; those plants (Broad Beans, for instance) which were brought on early and planted out in late March, have scarcely grown since – and who can blame them. A few brave salad potatoes have shown through, but the anticipation of eating them on a warm evening in the garden seems sadly misplaced.

Work for other people has also been hard to manage, with today being the 4^th consecutive Wednesday I have had to write-off because of the poor weather. On the other hand -  come on, indulge in a little optimism – growth in general has been held back, so lawns and borders are not yet in need of full-on attention each week.

I am particularly bothered by the garden I am working on for the friends whose Silver Wedding falls in late June. All the plants I have put in so far have struggled to make much headway, and things are running behind somewhat. I know that, if all else fails, I can be there on the morning of their  party with ‘instant’ bedding to create some sort of effect – but it will not be the silver and blue herbaceous mélange that I had intended and promised…

Oh, unseasonal gloom – get away with you…bring me sunshine!

Mmm...and now April's half over

Any excuses for failing to post anything in a month? Not really...bit busy, week's holiday in the Lake District, but otherwise should have been able to make time. Never mind.

The garden is looking good now that there's been a combination of rain and new planting. There is still a  huge pile of shrub cuttings sitting on the lawn to be recycled, and I do worry that birds will start nesting in there, which would mean they could not be touched for  many weeks - with a fair wind I will get them shifted this week. Speaking of nesting birds, our robins appear to have raised at least one chick: it looks about a week or so out of the nest, so it must have fledged over Easter. Ma and Pa are certainly both busy to-ing and fro-ing with food, and nearly take my hand off when I pop out first thing in the morning with a fistful of suet pellets [you can see why Sergio Leone passed on that one...].

View from YHA Ambleside

Easter week was spent in the Lake District, based at YHA Ambleside. What a location: if this was a 'commercial' hotel you'd pay a lot for the stunning view across Windermere to Bowfell and Crinkle Crags, to say nothing of the lake itself, and the amazing sunsets - which we enjoyed from both our family room and the dining room. The staff were uniformly friendly and helpful, and the food was filling and tasty - not a bad selection of local beers in the bar either. Weather was par for April in Cumbria: one day of steady rain, but all the rest were no worse than 'showery'. There was a nice sprinkling of snow on the higher fells which made for some cracking views. Good birding, with common crossbills, dipper, treecreepers spotted on walks at Aira Force and Tarn Hows: and twenty-odd swallows dipping and weaving over Windermere one evening, as if revelling in the end of their long journey...except that they were gone next day, so must have just stopped off en route for Scotland perhaps.

Wee girl turned three while we were away, and started nursery school yesterday: she is growing up apace.

I was supposed to be back to work today, but the heavy thundery showers may put paid to  that: I think some more sowing of annuals is called for. There are already dozens of  perennials waiting to be planted, both here and in clients' gardens, all enjoying a good soaking, and some veg seedlings coming along well in the greenhouse. Some early spuds I put in about three weeks ago are already sprouting vigorously in the sacks here at home: the allotment crop are a little bit behind for now. Oh, the joy to come of salad potatoes fresh from the soil!

Where is March going?

Crikey, it's mid-March and the clocks are a week away from changing, how did that happen? It has been, in the words of the great Garrison Keillor (sort of), a busy week in constant gardener land.

People have clearly got the sense of spring in their veins as I have been gathering new clients/projects busily for the past ten days or so. Very gratifyingly, this looks like keeping me busy for the spring at least, and it will be a help when the wee girl starts nursery-school after Easter and I have a bit more flexibility with my working hours. And, of course, the days will be longer which helps.

Last weekend was fantastic here, warm sunshine and a real feeling of growth in the air. I spent all day Saturday at the allotment, getting raised beds in good order, planting some early potatoes, and re-roofing the shed. I have decided that gardening is an occupation better pursued on all fours, nose down in the earth where you can see and feel what's going on: maybe that's why I don't really regard lawn-mowing as a gardening activity? Certainly it's best done standing up... But everything else is about getting your hands mucky and some soil under the fingernails.

Having got a good stint at the allotment done on Saturday, I spent Sunday in the garden here at home doing a 'spring clean' of the big beds. Long overdue it was too. I have only recently realised how timid I have long been as a gardener, and conversely, how satisfying it is to be bold and make some significant changes every now and then. So several long-standing shrubs, which had got very woody and tatty, came under the loppers, and masses of bare earth emerged from the gloom ready for some new and more lively planting.

Incidentally, is there a proper name for all the dead strawy-stuff that accumulates in herbaceous borders over winter - bits of last summer's growth which have died-back and lie strewn about? Often it's been semi-deliberately left for overwintering bug purposes etc, but simply makes the beds look untidy come the spring. To myself I call it 'scrat' - I'm not sure why, but it may be that one clears it whilst 'scratting around' in the beds, or that the plants which generate it are often 'scratty' - or maybe both. Either way, in the absence of a better word, 'scrat' it is.

I also entered the lists against my old foe Ground Elder, which is starting to poke through here and there. What a persistent blighter it is, but I quite enjoy our annual trench warfare, especially as I finally (after many years) seem to be winning. Unconvinced by its culinary potential, I do seek to beat it into submission with my bare hands. I'm told it tastes like parsley, but I never wanted to have beds full of parsley in my garden either...

So, after two days, I have a lawn heaped with shrub-cuttings - which will go to the recycling centre today, all being well - but apart from that a much happier-looking garden: and a much happier gardener.

PS I discovered that watching Gardeners' World on iPlayer on Sunday night was a much more relaxing experience than watching it live. Looking back on a weekend's gardening done is so satisfying.

A drizzly Saturday morning (remember them?)

This week saw some more planting in the front garden, which is now looking really good. There is a feeling of structure to it now, but still plenty of space for more plants as the season moves on. The back garden looks a bit neglected by comparison, probably because it has been, so that's the next thing to tackle. I know that, left to its own devices, it would look perfectly good by midsummer - it always does - but I am itching for change. In particular the first lawn, which has never been a success, is in my sights for treatment: the grass (mostly moss at the moment) is to go, and a gravel garden will replace it. Last night I had the idea of trying to incorporate a pond too: not sure it will work, but I will think about it. Ponds are such good value, especially for children, and our present one is tiny, if frog-filled.

My wee girl's birthday present is to be a playhouse in the garden, so a base for that needs to be constructed. Fortunately there is a good spot for it, with little or nothing growing (a horseradish will need moving, and a few naturalised primroses which can go into the front, but that's all). It will be tucked in behind the apple tree and against a fence with Jasminus growing over it, so should feel a bit 'secret' for her. She is very keen on 'houses' of one sort and another, so this will make it more fun for her to play in the garden while I work in the greenhouse nearby.

Have been busy in other folk's gardens this week, and making the most of some glorious afternoons - it's been misty and murky here in the mornings. A huge Buddleia davidii came under the loppers yesterday (actually a triple-pronged attack of  loppers, pruning saw and secateurs), necessitating several journeys to the recycling centre. I have an enormous pile of cuttings to remove from another garden too, which has built up since the autumn, and now needs moving ahead of some fence being replaced behind it: said fence is leaning at an alarming angle, though not due to the rubbish, which is simply in the way.

My most exciting project at the moment is pulling together a garden in preparation for the owners' Silver Wedding celebrations in June, which coincides with the daughter's 21st birthday - so a big outdoor bash is planned I think. Anyway, I have carte blanche and the brief is simply to make the garden look as attractive as possible by the end of June. I imagine this is a bit like it feels to do a show garden: everything has to be at its best by a certain date. But with the additional need for whatever I do to be sustainable thereafter, it's not a stage set, it's their garden. My head is buzzing with ideas and thoughts - what a welcome feeling.

Today was to be an odd-jobs day here and on the allotment, but  may have to reschedule the odd one until a dry day. But the feeling of drizzly rain is terrific, we do need days and days of it - hard though it is on Mrs G and the boy who have been stuck indoors all week, and need some  fresh air.

Was reading some pieces in Ruth Petrie's Notes from the Garden last night - a collection of gardening articles from The Guardian. I had forgotten all about the Percy Thrower scandal, when he was sacked from Gardener's World for doing ICI adverts - but I had also forgotten that he only presented GW for 7 years, it seemed like he was there forever when I was watching as a small boy. I do remember that the scandal was quite a talking point at the time, especially in conversation with older relatives, of which there was a lot in those days. Christopher Lloyd's contributions made me laugh out loud a few times - not something that can be said of much garden writing - but my favourite was a brief review of Derek Jarman's Garden from 1995. The description of photographer Howard Sooley, whose photographs illustrate the book (which I don't actually have, but will now look for), is glorious: "Sooley himself...looking like a giraffe that has stared long and hard at a photograph of Virginia Woolf." I have no idea what Howard Sooley actually looks like, but I think I would know him anywhere...

PS there are some lovely photos of Narcissus at www.howardsooley.com