The frogs are here, hooray!!!

Well it's not every garden designer who measures their  success in the number of black eyed blobs of jelly which overnight miraculously appear in their garden pond, most would rate a Chelsea gold medal as the pinnacle of their achievement. Thrilling as a Chelsea gold medal would be of course, I'm actually much more excited by the fact that I now have frogs!

The arrival of so many of them on a still moonlit night when the season and weather conditions must have been just right to gather together to mate and lay their eggs, means that they are happy enough with the pond and its surrounding garden to entrust their offspring to it and for me that's a perfect endorsement of my skill in habitat creation.

Yes I know I'm completely deluded, there are thousands of garden ponds out there with frogs croaking happily away over their slimy bundles of joy but I've been eagerly awaiting their arrival since we took over the garden and the pond was dug two years ago.

First was the discovery of orchids in the lawn, just one species among so many in what is now a carefully managed garden meadow, their blooming brought with it several species of solitary and bumble bees and beautiful blue butterflies.  A pair of mallards found my pond to their taste first as a honeymoon suit (and are still here much to the annoyance of my chickens) and then last summer came the newts, so they arrival of the frogs has been awaited with much anticipation and crossing of fingers and toes.

What creature will be next to find my garden as desirable as I do will be a surprise but whatever it is I'll be excited to see it because with every new form of life that sets up home here it means that my garden is a perfect wildlife habitat and for me that's worth a lot more than any gold medal.


Changes

Gardeners are used to coping with change. Month by month, season by season, our gardens come into spring growth, flowers flourish through the summer, seeds are set and foliage dies away as the plants hunker down for another winter.

 

Well that's how it used to be, but now things are less predictable and the consensus of scientific opinion is agreed, our climate is changing, our weather is set to become warmer, wilder and wetter and we all need to adapt and do our bit to lessen the impacts wherever and however we can.

 

Many of us have garden ponds and these can be beneficial in so many ways, brilliant for wildlife, lovely to sit by on a nice day and as the water evaporates in the sun it gives the surrounding plants a more humid atmosphere and that's just for starters.

Mine is fed by rain from the roof via the down pipe so that if there is only a little rain the pond is better refreshed and in heavy prolonged downpours a little less water goes into the main drains and instead the outfall from the pond takes the excess on a meandering route through a border of shrubby willows and other moisture lovers, giving me another planting opportunity and my garden another habitat for wildlife.

 

There are so many things we can do as individuals which collectively make a difference, like not buying peat based compost, reducing food miles by growing a few of our own fruit and vegetables, reducing the number of times we mow the lawn or reducing the area we mow, thereby reducing the amount of fuel burned and carbon released by the mower.

 

Planting even just one tree is worthwhile, not a huge Leyland cypress in a small garden of course but an appropriately sized one for the space we have. As trees grow they give off oxygen, absorb pollutants, reduce rain run off and soil erosion, provide food for insects and birds and eventually when mature offer a shady place to sit.

We may not be the ones doing the sitting, but planting a long lived species is planting for the future so that generations to come can enjoy our trees as we enjoy those planted by  past generations, and in doing so we contribute if only in a very small way to saving the planet, one garden at a time.

Ups and downs

As the year comes to an end, looking back over our gardens' successes and failures seems a sensible tradition to follow, to learn from our mistakes and recognise where we can do better is no bad thing in the garden as it is in the rest of life.

This year I thought my meadow lawn was splendid, but apart from raking seed into the bare bits and keeping my husband away from his mower I can take no credit at all, the wild flowers just love my free draining soil, as do the tulips.

The red ones in the grass were so cheerful with the buttercups, the deep dark burgundy 'Ronaldo' and the pale cream 'City of Vancouver' were just lovely and would have been even better if I'd planted them together instead of at opposite ends of the garden, so I've ordered more for next year and will do just that.

Some short and squat shocking pink ones whose name I have forgotten were a big mistake, they disgraced the front border for weeks this spring, so I've made a mental note to pick them as they come into flower next year before they can shriek at more unfortunate passers by.

Embarrassing as the horrible pink tulips were, they paled into insignificance in the face of the dismal autumn fruiting raspberries which I neglected so badly that from a double row I picked no more than a handful of berries. Left smothered in weeds and unwatered who can blame them, but being at the back of the house at least my failure was private.

A shame though that the pond is out of sight too, the plants around it did beautifully, much to my and my bees delight.

A big surprise were the French beans which produced the loveliest pale apricot and cream flowers for months, despite that we only had a few meals from them but you can't have everything and if our gardens teach us anything it's that.

Every year has its ups and downs but one thing we gardeners have in common is an unfailing optimism and belief in the promise of another year.

As this one ends and our gardens appear uninviting, look closer, the hellebores are in bud and under the ground things are moving, bulbs are getting ready to push their noses up through the soil and a whole new cycle of life is just about to begin.

An incredible number of edibles.



Making a cup of mint tea from the patch outside the back door reminded me of the lemon verbena I also like to make tea from, it sits among a few plants in pots which I like the look of together and by coincidence are all edible. 

The garlic chives and varieties of thymes for when I want something to taste of Italy and the scented Pelargonium leaves and the lovely lavender for flavouring cakes.
For no better reason than idle curiosity, and discounting the vegetables which are grown only for eating, I've added up all the plants in my garden that earn a place for other reasons but are also edible. Bay, rosemary and sage are great ornamental shrubs in a dry raised bed through which runs purple fennel for height and very useful near the kitchen no matter what meat's for Sunday lunch.

There are fruits all around the garden, apples, Japanese wineberry, rhubarb, raspberries, wild and cultivated strawberries and in the hedges up sprout hazels, plums, blackberries and elder, from which I make cordial and elderberry flu remedy. I've no idea if it works but it tastes wonderful.
There are less obvious wildlings too, wild garlic packs a punch when the leaves are young and nettles are actually ok if you cook them when very new and in with other things; apparently they're packed full of vitamins.

If I include all the things my chickens peck at in order to make their eggs for me and all the nectar rich flowers the bees forage on to turn into honey then the list is staggering.

It's a huge plus to be able to enjoy the taste of my garden as well as its beauty and the close contact with wildlife it gives me.

Freshness and flavour are guaranteed, totally pesticide free and unlike the number of miles much of our food has travelled to get to our kitchens the few steps needed to pick from the garden are insignificant.

So as I sip my mint tea and wonder if I should freeze some leaves or dry then for using over winter, I realise that the fruits are all finished, the leaves will soon be gone and only the hazel nuts are still to come. It will be slim pickings over winter, thank goodness for Waitrose!





Whatever next!

Every summer begins with my firm intention to visit a few private gardens open to the public, especially those that have been planned by other garden designers. Most summers come and go and the good intentions remain just that but this year I was determined and made the time to get to several. Each one had something to make the trip worthwhile.

In one garden I found not only inspiration but also a challenge to a very long held prejudice where a beautiful burgundy red flower on a lush and leafy perennial grabbed my attention. Stunned, I recognised it straight away as a Dahlia, a species I've never liked nor given house room to in my own garden, despite their return to fashion in recent years.
What a fabulous flower, matched only by two others in different gardens, one of which was another Dahlia!
What a mistake to dismiss a whole species and miss out on such beauties particularly at this end of the year when as I can now see, their bold forms complement the glowing colours of autumn so well.

In complete contrast the other stand out plant was much more to my usual taste, a lovely sky blue Salvia uliginosa, head and shoulders above everything else waving around in the wind among the bleaching heads of tall grasses, a perfect combination.

Other grasses were memorable too, Miscanthus used as a monoculture completely surrounding a swimming pool was simple and serene, a perfect plant for the application as wind break and screening and at its best in mid to late summer when the pool would be most used.
The garden was designed by Tom Stuart Smith so I had anticipated brilliance and found it not only around the pool but also in the way it made me completely rethink my opinion of clipped and shaped yew.
Earlier in the year I'd visited a garden known for its use of tall yew hedges which I'd found dark and oppressive, but here they were much lower, rhythmic and playfully shaped providing a very different atmosphere.

Pictures of gardens might give us the general idea but it's only by being in them that we can appreciate how they make us feel and visiting open gardens is a brilliant opportunity to understand how we respond to them, experience other people's tastes and most importantly question our own.

This year I've been converted to Dahlias, whatever next!











Saving the seeds of success

There are some lovely late summer flowering combinations to enjoy this month. In full sun, tall asters like 'Monch' shine brightly among ornamental grasses like the stately spires of Calamagrostis 'Karl Foerster'. The beautiful white Japanese anemone 'Honorine Jobert' partnered with Hydrangea quercifolia glows in cool shade and the hot oranges and reds of Crocosmia are looking wonderful, but some earlier bloomers are now definitely past their prime.

Having flowered their hearts' out through spring and early summer, for some plants the job is done for another year and the seed of the next generation has been set, so now is the perfect time to take advantage of their generosity and if they have been successful and already proved their worth in the garden then we know that they will thrive and the more the merrier.

In my garden opium poppies have produced enough seed to populate the whole of Monmouthshire with their varied progeny, some in quite astonishing colours but all equally beautiful. The seed heads make statuesque additions to the borders right through late summer, autumn and into winter, so I leave most of them alone to do their own thing and scatter the ripe seed themselves as they sway in the wind, but I like to shake the seeds from a few heads into paper bags 'just in case' which I keep over winter to sow myself in spring in places where they haven't yet colonized.

Forget me not and Aquilegia have much the same prolific nature, they are stalwarts of my garden and have been reliable early flowerers for generations of gardeners before me.
Wild carrot, a biennial mainstay of newly sown meadows and Verbena bonariensis are relative newcomers to our gardens, but when happy will seed themselves around freely. Like the lovely soft feathery leaved herb fennel with which Verbena looks wonderful, they will flower in the first year so can be treated like annuals and sown in autumn or spring just where you want them to flower.

Gardening can often be a very expensive occupation requiring more than a little hard work so when I'm offered lots of easy plants for very little effort and completely free then I'm all for it and if my plants are happy enough in my garden to want their next generation to live here too then that's great.

Happy plants, happy garden, happy gardener!








My Garden And Other Ecosystems


In an effort to keep reasonably fit I try to exercise regularly and it struck me recently that I should do something to keep my brain fit too so I signed up for an Open University course about ecosystems.

It's not just been useful in my work but it has also given me a greater insight into my own garden's ecosystem. I've learned more about what makes it such an interesting and diverse place, a series of interactions between plants converting energy from the sun and a multitude of living, breathing, growing organisms from the birds and bees to the microbes and fungi which eventually return all that life to the earth.

I have often thought that nature would do a better job without my interference and find its own balance, but what I've been reminded of is that for my garden to retain all of its biodiversity, it does require a degree of management or it would eventually return to woodland, the climax vegetation that all land aspires to be.

As it is, a mix of woodland (the fruit trees), woodland edge (the hedges), woodland clearing (my mini meadow) and open water (the pond) it provides accommodation for species perfectly adapted to the conditions. From blue tits dangling precariously from the slender birch twigs, midges dancing in the early morning sunlight and the pair of wild ducks which have graced my pond with their mating displays, to the many hundreds of species of insects and other invertebrates that I can and can't see without a microscope. They are all part of my gardens ecosystem, some absolutely essential, others perhaps like the sparrow hawk which only I would miss, but all with a role to play.

When we've decided that enough is enough with holes in the Hosta leaves and the green fly on the roses just have to go, it's all too easy to sprinkle round the slug pellets and reach for the insecticide spray. But in doing so we're introducing deadly poisons into the garden's food webs, depriving birds of some of their natural food and adding a toxic mix of chemicals to those that remain. 

When we reduce biodiversity we do ourselves no favours. Although I've netted my vegetables so the rabbits and cabbage whites can't get to them before I do, it's live and let live here, my kind of ecosystem management doesn't recognise anything as a pest in my garden, just part of life's rich variety.







First Love


If we're really lucky and in the right place at the right time, there will be a day this month when a perfect blue sky will coincide with the opening of one of the most exquisite flowers in the plant world. Rising out of pointed silver buds to form globes of waxy petals, Magnolia flowers will grace us with their presence and for a short few weeks these epitomes of refined elegance will lift our gardens out of the mundane and into the realms of aristocracy.
They are the most grown up of flowers, neither bright nor particularly cheerful, but calm, serene and understated.

It was the glimpse of a Magnolia soulangeana in full bloom from a bus window on the way to my first job that began my love affair with plants and like many a first love it stayed with me and blossomed over the years to embrace other more exotic species of Magnolia like grandiflora, wilsonii and acuminata.
There are some lovely trees in Monmouth, opposite the Priory and in Powell's Court are two beauties, but strangely for a few years now my affection has centred itself around a particular young Magnolia which I've watched rise steadily from behind the bare brick boundary wall of a small garden. Which named variety it is I'm not sure but the flowers are primrose yellow glowing candles and I know that I shall soon be making any excuse to drive past in the hope of catching them at their best before an almost inevitable late frost blights their perfection.

Being a self confessed plantaholic, I'm usually incapable of restraint and if I really covet a plant, believe it will grow in my garden and can afford its price then that's the deal done, but when it comes to Magnolia it's just not that simple. It seems that my love for them has always been from afar, if I had one of my own at close quarters it might lose some of its allure, familiarity might breed contempt and I couldn't risk that, not with my first love.







Genius Loci


To begin the design of a garden by looking at what's around it might not seem to be the obvious place to start, but the view out is really important to the layout and the planting, it's part of what gives the garden its unique character which the Romans called Genius Loci, the genius of the place.
If there are features of the design and plants which root the garden into the surrounding landscape then it will soon start to look as if it has always been there and feel as if it really belongs.

Most of us like a good view, I think it must go way back into our ancestry when the need to keep a lookout for attack by lions or rival tribes was a matter of life or death. Now it's just nicely comforting to see the glow of lights in neighbouring windows and really useful to see the rain clouds approaching from the west, a bit of advance notice to bring the washing in.

There's a lot to be said for having an 'inward looking' garden too. Surrounded by high fences or walls, an enclosed space can be very calm and restful, think of monks and cloisters. By its architectural nature it belongs much more to the house than the landscape around it and like another room can be secluded and private.

Fortunately we don't usually have to choose between one type of garden or the other, there are spots in most gardens with a view of something pleasing where a bench can be placed for when the sun's in exactly the right place, and for when we're feeling introspective or just want a bit of peace and quiet, then enclosure is relatively easy to create with plants.

Hedges are perfect for this, they have after all been surrounding fields for a very long time.
Their formal straight lines make living walls and clipped to grow no higher than we choose, the species used make visual links with the landscape around them even if from within their shelter we can't see it. They can mark the seasons with clouds of white spring flowers like blackthorn or hawthorn, or like holly cheer up winter with bright red berries.

Even when we can't see it, the view is important to the garden and like hedges the idea of Genius Loci has been around for a very long time.









February, first stirrings of spring

I've never been the type of gardener who shuts up shop at the end of November, cuts everything down to the ground and puts the garden to bed for the winter. I admit there are some plants which collapse into a mushy heap at the first frost and are just too messy to live with but I always leave the majority of perennials in my garden to stand as bleached silhouettes right through the winter.

In late autumn they are festooned with dew covered orb spider webs, they look fabulous in the frosts, give a home to over wintering insects and are fastidiously picked over by birds searching for any remaining seeds, but they having taken a battering by the strong winds and are looking a bit the worse for wear now so it's time for me to get out there and start cutting down and clearing up.
All that dead top growth has also been protecting emerging new shoots, so if it stays really cold I'll wait until later in the month and by then there will be a lot more new growth for me to see too.

Unlike clearing up at the beginning of winter, after which parts of the garden are left looking bare and bleak for weeks, we know that despite the cold there is so much new life getting ready for the first signs of spring to burst through the soil and break from branches, so that now it's an altogether much more cheerful and uplifting exercise.

There are hidden gems to find at this time of year too, although it's technically still winter, under all that dishevelled foliage the first flowers of spring are already appearing. Pointed spears of daffodil bulbs, the delicate dangling white bells of snowdrops, the first primroses and rising from last years leaves, hellebore buds are opening out into the most beautiful and exotic flowers. 


It's not just plants feeling the first stirrings of spring, if we're lucky February  sees amorous frogs returning to the pond to spawn.


Those glistening balls of black studded jelly are for me the real beginning of a new year in the garden, just as exciting to see as they were when I was five. I gave up collecting frog spawn in jars many years ago but despite the finger numbing iciness of the water I just can't help it, I still have to get my hands in there!






From me to me at Christmas

I know this is cheating but just in case I don't get the gift of a book for Christmas, I've bought myself not just one but two.

'The Wild Garden' by William Robinson was first published 144 years ago to illustrate to the Victorian gardener a naturalistic and informal alternative to the fashion for seasonal tender plants used in rigidly formal displays. Although radical at the time you would expect that with the passing of the years his message would have lost its relevance, but with the ever more pressing need for us to garden in a sustainable way, William Robinson's ideas are just as relevant today. Using plant communities that coexist easily and happily without the need for a huge amount of intervention from us to cover the ground and exclude weeds with their vigour is a great way to plant for a Victorian or modern gardener.

The other book I've treated myself to is bang up to date and by two of the leaders of current planting styles, 'Planting A New Perspective' is by Piet Oudolf and Dr Noel Kingsbury. They describe ways of planting to achieve a naturalistic look and an easy maintenance regime using plants suited to the garden's conditions. At first glance these books couldn't look more different from each other, one illustrated by small black and white line drawings the other packed full of exciting vibrant photographs of planting combinations, an explosion of colour, shape and form.
Yet at their heart both books ask gardeners the same thing, to think about what we plant and the way we do it, to understand the plants' needs and use them in combinations which encourage them to perform their best for us in schemes which are easy on the eye and are not difficult to maintain.

It's incredible to think how much has changed in the last 144 years and yet in the world of plants, despite so many new ones having been brought into cultivation. the message remains basically unchanged. It's all about gardening with thought.
By coincidence, it just happens that there's another book I quite fancy called 'The Thoughtful Gardener', but I couldn't buy myself three Christmas presents could I?



Weeding.....



Weeding the garden is a bit like doing the house work, I know that if I keep putting it off things will only get worse and yet I've been doing just that for the best part of a year. I'm a reluctant weeder, not because I find it a tedious task but because I actually rather like weeds. Having evolved to be perfectly suited to our growing conditions, our wild flowers are much more at home here than the fancy ornamentals we would rather have, but there are some that are so successful even I must concede that they really do have to go.

Given the tangled mass of foliage in my beds and borders, any sensible person would dig over the soil pull out all the weeds and throw the lot on the compost heap. But contrary to sound gardening advice if I don't know what a plant is I'll leave it and see what it turns out to be, so my weeding efforts can be very long winded as I inspect and attempt to identify all the seedlings of granny's bonnet, teasel, self heal, valerian, viola, vetch and anything else that might have decided to pop up. I enjoy gardening on this intimate scale, close up, down and dirty with the woodlice worms and beetles. It also means that I don't inadvertently dig out any of the self sown hellebores, poppies, fennel and verbena and it allows me to get to know my garden and its inhabitants in much finer detail.

Where the buttercups are growing the ground retains moisture, the soil is richer so I know it will be a good place if I want to grow Hosta, Rodgersia or Ligularia. The dry patches at the edges of paths I've found to be alive with ants, perfect spots to watch out for a visit from a hungry green woodpecker and at the base of a dry stone wall is a daytime hiding place for snails where I can sometimes see the thrush hunting.
On hands and knees I'm at eye level with the blackbirds taking their daily bath in the pond and the robin as he follows my progress inspecting the disturbed ground for insects.

This isn't just weeding and it's certainly no chore, what I'm really doing is getting to know my garden intimately and hopefully next year we will both be all the better for it.


Self heal - the name gives it away, it used to be used to heal wounds.


Beautiful buttercup






Teasel - brilliant for goldfinches
Granny's bonnet - self seeds everywhere, a great gap filler

Gorgeous, graceful grasses

Ornamental grasses seem to divide opinion more than any other group of plants. Some people, myself included, love them for their grace and elegance, the way they catch the breeze and add colour and movement to the late summer and autumn garden.
Others view them as a passing fashion, or worse, as nothing more interesting than stray seedlings from the lawn to be ripped out with the creeping buttercup and bindweed.

They may be relative newcomers to our gardens but I firmly believe that their positive contribution is here to stay. Some designers like to use grasses in bold contemporary blocks of single species, some in prairie style mixtures with other late flowering North American plants, their natural bed fellows. In my own garden I like to experiment with plant combinations and I've found the diversity and versatility of grasses to be indispensable, they are simply brilliant garden plants.

The cascading copper and olive foliage of Anemanthele lessoniana tones beautifully in shade with the fern Dryopteris erythrosora or in sun with orange roses like 'Lady of Shallott' and makes a perfect backdrop to the sky blue geranium 'Rozanne'. As autumn approaches the tiny droplets of bronze flowers on long falling stems are perfect with Aster 'Monch' and Kniphofia 'Little Maid' or 'Bees Lemon'. 
Low growing with a dense arching habit it's perfect for covering difficult banks

For height without heaviness Miscanthus 'Morning Light' is just lovely. Upright and slightly arching at the tips with a fine white stripe through the light green leaves, it rises slowly over the summer to form a statuesque plant, perfect with Anemone 'Honorine Jobert; white Hydrangea quercifolia or Fuchsia 'Hawkshead, very refined and elegant.

As the year moves on and the colour in the garden begins to turn, grasses with good autumn hues shoot like flames around the skirts of fiery leaved shrubs and trees like Acer palmatum, Cotinus coggygria and Amelanchier lamarkii.   Imperata 'Rubra' has red tipped leaves all summer and many of the Panicums have brilliant red autumn foliage, spectacular when teamed with deep red Persicaria amplexicaulis 'Blackfield'.

If you're new to grasses and it's all year round versatility you're after then Stipa tenuissima is hard to beat, light and airy the foliage and long lasting wispy flowers float among so many perfect companions from geraniums and roses to lavender and Potentilla fruticosa cultivars, it's a brilliant grass for any garden style.







'Bee neighbourly'

Whenever I'm out in the garden I always feel the need to be doing something, pulling up bindweed, watering pots, rescuing a plant in the greenhouse from heat stroke, I do find it difficult to just sit.

But I must do try harder because it's in those quiet, still moments when we're just being not doing, that we actually appreciate just how much other activity there is. When we stop being busy ourselves and take notice of what's going on around us it's remarkable how industrious animals are and none more so it seems to me than the wild bees. They have to be I suppose to cram their life's work into just a few short weeks.

I'm paying more attention this year because I have a brilliant bee identification chart so now I can put names to them. Some which I'd always assumed to be just smaller bumble bees are actually solitary ones which as their names suggest don't live in colonies but lay their eggs in individual holes in walls, or in the ground like the tawny mining bees which I watched in the spring disappearing down cracks in the lawn's bare patches. They are the little ginger furry ones, white bottomed ones with the fluffy boleros I've discovered to be tree bumble bees and the black ones with bright orange bums are red tailed bumble bees. There are several with yellow stripes, but they'll have to slow down a bit before I can be confident enough to know whether I'm seeing a buff tailed or a white tailed or even a garden bumble bee!

I always feel much more of an affinity with something when I know what it's called, like being on first name terms with the neighbours, the more I know about the bees which share my garden with me the less likely I am to do something to upset them and just like any good neighbours we help each other out. I leave my lawn uncut so they have big patches of clover, birds foot trefoil and bush vetch in which to forage and from the densely packed fruit along the branches of the plum trees they were very busy pollinating for me this spring.
A very fair exchange, I do hope we stay on good terms now the runner beans are in flower!





Scentsational!


I have made a promise to myself that this year I will not squander the lovely long summer evenings inside, neither at my desk working nor in front of the tv, but be outside enjoying the daylight hours in my garden for as long as I possibly can and so far I'm sticking to it.
I'm equally happy doing something useful and productive like a stint digging in the veg patch or just pottering around looking which new flowers have opened and noticing as day by day the garden gently settles down from it's fresh spring flush into the soft fullness of early summer.

So well known by day, the garden changes into an unfamiliar and magical place as dusk gathers, the blackbirds which always seem to be the last birds to stop calling fall silent and the rooks and jackdaws pass over following the same flight path every night on their way home to roost.
As the natural light fades there's a chance to see bats flit silently but swiftly over the pond on the hunt for moths and as all the colours disappear, in monochrome, any white flowers glow as if artificially lit.

As vision become less certain we notice other sensations like the drop in temperature and a freshening breeze. Hearing becomes a bit more acute picking up the typical night time 'twoo' of a tawny owl and a sharp 'twit' answering call and the scents of the night garden are suddenly really noticeable.
There's the heavy sweet perfume of so many flowers, late bluebells, lilac, honeysuckle, wisteria and as June wears on roses pervade the air but to sniff the delights of many plants we need to rub the leaves to release their oils. Herbs like rosemary, thyme and sage evoke a succulent Sunday roast, Perovskia, Santolina and lavender are a reminder of a Greek island holiday. Mint has to be the freshest of all scents especially after rain, just like toothpaste, but for me the best of all the garden's many wonderful perfumes is yet to come. I'm looking forward to one of the highlights of high summer, walking into a warm greenhouse full of tomato plants, it's just scentsational!






Feeling right at home


From the number of people I see gazing into estate agents' windows, who like me are probably not in the market for another house move, I guess I'm not alone in being nosy about other people's homes. But I wonder how many are as interested as I am in the gardens surrounding them. It's rare to find the garden mentioned as a particular selling point and even rarer to see 'beautiful south facing garden' as I did recently. I think that the orientation of the garden is very important, but not long ago I saw a new client for the first time who had no idea which way her back garden faced and on showing her with a compass she was horrified to find it was north east, so surrounded by very tall buildings, only in mid summer would the sun shine directly into her garden.
For a sun worshipper or lavender lover this would have been a disaster but as it turned out that she didn't like to sit in the sun and her favourite plant was Alchemilla mollis then thankfully my visit ended well.

In most gardens, as the sun moves around it, we can move our spots to sit and benches strategically placed in a few locations not only give us different views but also the choice to be in light or shade.
Our plants unfortunately have to put up with what they've been given and all too often planting is a case of looking for a gap and sticking it in which at best only gives the poor plant a fifty/ fifty chance of survival. It's good for plant sales of course when we buy a replacement but it's entirely possible to avoid the guesswork and buy appropriate plants for the conditions we have and embrace the philosophy of putting the right plant in the right place.

The first rule of green fingers is to make an honest appraisal of our garden and consider which plant's tastes we might best accommodate, like lavender, thyme and sage from dry and sunny Provence, rhododenrons and camellias from the misty forests of Asia, grasses from the open prairies of America or should it be bluebells, wood anemones and wild garlic from under the opening canopy of a British woodland.



Although impulse buying plants is very tempting, for just a bit of consideration they really will repay our thoughtfulness and just as we do, they settle best, grow well and thrive where they feel most at home.

Therapy


I am writing this after one of those vanishingly rare Sundays when having enough time to spare to spend the best part of the day in the garden has coincided with the most glorious warm spring sunshine and it has been blissful.

It strikes me that if we all spent more time out in our gardens immersed in the rhythms of the seasons and the way that nature responds to it, watching and enjoying the plant and animal life that shares our gardens with us, then the world would be a much happier place. I've always thought that being close to nature is great therapy, good for body and soul and whatever ails them and it turns out that much research has been done on the subject and guess what, I was right all along and there are now specialist organisations set up to help us in our search for wellness.

Ecotherapy focusses on our connection with the natural environment and how through learning to care for it we can in turn learn to care for and nurture ourselves.
Thrive is a charity which helps people with physical disability or mental ill health through horticulture and gardening and Project Wild Thing aims to educate adults about the essential developmental needs of children though their relationship with nature.

These are just a few of the groups working to get us outside and back where we belong doing wonderful worthwhile work but how sad that there is a need for them when just outside our own back door there it is, the natural world which many of us have forgotten, or never learned, that we need to belong to.

Now in mid spring is the very best time to appreciate it, every day sees changes, plants are growing almost as we watch, new unfurling leaves are fresh and vivid green, the spring flowers are bursting open and all the animal life that depends on them is busy making the most of the increased light and warming temperature to feed up, find a mate and rear their young.

Now in the garden is the most positive and life affirming place we can possibly be. Why would anybody want to be anywhere else?

Spring has sprung!

I love March, it's one of my favourite months of the year, there's so much anticipation in the garden and as the level of light is rising life is responding to it. Bright and cheery daffodils shine out from borders, dainty little violets and primroses nestle into grassy banks and under trees where the first of the year's new fern leaves are preparing to unfurl are the glamorous flowers of hellebores.
There are so many exciting cultivars of Hellebore, cups of pristine white, frilly pale pink, deep and dusky shades of sultry purple, some are spotted and streaked and others the most delicate picotees, the edges of their petals washed with the lightest brush stroke of colour.
Where happily established they will promiscuously interbreed, their progeny adding yet more variety year after year.

One sunny days the first of the season's bees will be busily bumbling about foraging for food from early dandelions spangling the lawn underfoot and higher up from pussy willow catkins, gleaming silver against a blue sky and later in the month fat and golden with pollen. The first of the Prunus, the cherry family, are coming into flower, sloe are usually the first with plum following close behind. With flowers much smaller than the deservedly popular Japanese cherries sloe flowers form a haze of white so that the whole tree looks like a cloud, a lot like hawthorn from a distance but easy to differentiate, sloe flower on dark bare and leafless branches, hawthorn flower after the leaves have emerged.

In the pond the frogs are back, mild damp nights have them croaking noisily and the mornings bring shining blobs of black dotted jelly, usually in the shallows where the water will warm up more quickly in the sun and encourage algae to form, we're not so keen to see it but for growing tadpoles it will be a feast. As the birds turn up the volume the resident robin's beautiful melody warns others to keep away, this is his patch, while more sociable sparrows chatter in the hedge and the blackbirds sing out from their lookouts higher up in the trees.


This is a month to savour in the garden, despite the chill there's so much to enjoy, whatever the weather throws at us now spring has sprung, lets get out there and be part of the action.











Perfection

Yet another day of driving rain and blustery wind, but as just another in a long succession of them this winter I was determined today to actually get out in my own garden and trim off some of last years dead growth to see if there are any treasures lurking beneath. I'm not a tidy gardener and like to leave last year's foliage as shelter for tender new growth from hard frost but this is my first winter here and the temptation of revealing hidden treasure has been too much.
On a perfectly hideous day I have found perfection in the shape of exquisite hellebores and wonder that they retain such purity through all that the elements throw at them. But nature knows just what she's doing and leaves last year's tatty old leaves to protect the new blooms....until someone stupid comes along with secateurs....


'Getting into Shape'

How many new year resolutions revolve around coming to terms with the excesses of the festive season and deciding to get ourselves back into some sort of shape? Just as in the human form, most of us see a more shapely garden as a more attractive one and what better time to look over our own with a critical eye than now, when the flattering leaves and flowers are gone, the branches are laid bare and the stark bones of the garden are on full view. We often think that the shape of our garden is dictated by its boundary walls and fences but these can be so easily hidden or disguised with planting that in most gardens we can impose onto it the shape we would prefer. The flat spaces in the garden give us the shapes we see and the easiest and simplest one to manipulate is the lawn. For people who like formality and straight lines, a rectangular or square lawn kept neat and trim with a mowing edge of brick or stone might might appeal to their sense of order and reflected in the architecture of the surrounding buildings will look well groomed and perfectly at home in a village, town or city environment. For those who look out onto the curves of hillsides and the gentle shapes of nature, softer lines might be more appropriate and help place the garden in context. Think of a flower filled meadow with a mown path through, or a lawn sweeping lazily around a group of trees or deep border bending away out of sight to draw the eye to a distant view, a very inviting prospect even if the feet can only be drawn a few yards to a bench at the bottom of the garden. If the shapes we see in the garden flow together, onwards and outwards into the landscape, we can create a beautifully harmonious and restful space. Well that's the theory anyway. In reality getting the garden into shape can take quite a lot of hard work but it's all good exercise and a way that both we and the garden can enter into the new year in great shape!