Flower Power

As the year rolls on towards autumn, colour from the flowers in the garden begins to fade away. Our insatiable appetite for it draws attention to the turning leaves, but it's not yet time to turn away from the beauty of flowers, there's a lot more pleasure to be had from them than from their colour alone. Shape and texture are just as worthy of our appreciation and can extend the season of interest, especially from late summer blooms.

The way in which individual plants are put together to create rhythm and drama, like the composition of a piece of music from single notes, can make the garden sing and there is a garden I recently visited which gives a master class in combining plants.

 

Hauser and Wirth near Bruton in Somerset is a contemporary art gallery where the plantsman and designer Piet Oudolf has created a stunning herbaceous perennial and grass garden from a field.

Many of the plants are North American prairie species so are perfectly suited to the open sunny site and are at their best from mid summer onwards. Space is not an issue here so the drifts of individual species are generous and perfectly in proportion with the surrounding landscape. Colour plays its part but it's the form of the plants themselves and the shapes of their flowers heads which are used so brilliantly. There's an overall feeling of movement which draws visitors through the garden, mounds of planting undulate and weave together to create wave upon wave of plants where flowers blend or contrast in style.

 

Flat headed umbels of Sedum and Achillea sit in front of the spires and spikes of Agastache and Veronicastrum swathed in the frothy dew drops of the grass Sporobolus. Rounded bobbing heads of Echinops and Sanguisorba sway in the breeze and the dark daisy like central disks of Helianthemum contrast their weight against the airy lightness of Echinacea pallida as it dances through Stipa tenuissima.

Japanese Anemone and sky blue Aster remind every visitor that they do know the names of some of the plants, but knowing what the plants are called isn't what matters. It's seeing past the initial impact of fleeting colour to the shape, form and texture of them which will linger as autumn draws on. We can't hold back the season but we can hold on to the beauty and power of flowers.

Times change and so do gardens

The way we garden is often a reflection of the times in which we live, my own way is to respond to the loss of habitat and continuing decline in native species and try to redress the balance in my own patch.

Since the first modern humans evolved we've been changing our landscape to suit our own needs, but in recent centuries up until the intensification of farming, our gardens were seen as a place of refuge from the wild not for it and for the wealthy, whose gardens could be more than a food producing necessity, it was a display of money, power and mastery of the natural world.

I visited Hanbury Hall garden recently, in Worcestershire, a unique National Trust recreation of taste and gardening skill at the end of the C18th where nature is kept firmly in her place behind high hedges within which all is geometry, tranquillity and order.

Individual flowering annuals are shown off as specimens inside tightly clipped box hedges and interspersed with neat topiary. Much of the soil is kept bare by constant weeding in a display of complete dominance over nature's processes. The precision and high levels of skill from what would have been a small army of gardeners is only possible today due to the willingness and dedication of volunteers.

Another garden visit, in complete contrast but only a few days later, was to Allt-y-Bela, the garden and home of renowned landscape architect Arne Maynard. So very different in atmosphere from the formality of Hanbury Hall it too harnesses the skill of shaping and manipulation of plants to create its character. The result however is relaxed and informal and where topiary trees stand around nonchalantly in groups, like people chatting in the garden. Much of the grass remains uncut and the resulting meadows drift out into the landscape over a boundary of hawthorn hedges trimmed into undulating waves, linking the garden perfectly with the same trees dotting the hills around.

Using traditional practises and timeless natural materials from a decidedly modern perspective, this is a garden for the way we live now, a celebration of gardening skills but embracing nature with open arms.

The world around us has changed and I for one am very pleased that our gardens have too.

 

 

 

High summer

It's mid July and summer is making its stately progress through my garden. The few weeks ahead of us are traditionally drier and with fewer weed seeds germinating and slowing growth tidy gardeners should have some respite from the perennial battle with whatever weed is currently most despised. Hopefully a lull in hostilities will give them, as well as the happily weed blind gardeners among us time to just enjoy being out there, absorbing the sights, smells and sounds of high summer and depositing them into our memory banks to be used as a restorative pick me up during the short dim days of winter in the same way that we store surplus rumnner beans or apples. To bring them out to appreciate and savour during the colder months is a sensory treat.

During the depths of the darkest days I find it hard to picture the landscape of summer, the deep green hillsides around me, their lumpy duvet of trees in full leaf and my garden packed with flowers and their attendant insect pollinators. So I've been out snapping away with my camera to try and capture these ephemeral mid summer moments which are so easy to forget when the days are short and the sun only manages a low weary arc above the horizon.

Disturbingly, among the flambouyant flowers, there is evidence already of a change to come and in readyness for leaf fall my Acer palmatum and Euonymus planipes are already turning colour. I try to kid myself that this is just due to dry soil but I know that they are already responding to the almost imperceptible shortening of the days.
I can't help wishing that they would wait a while longer but their colours are lovely and contrast beautifully with their surroundings, just a taste of equally enjoyable things to come.

Rewilding my garden

I've just had two incredibly inspiring days listening to two wonderfully inspiring people. One is George Monbiot, a well known environmental journalist and the other Nicola Chester, a naturalist, writer and all round lovely lady.

I now know that what I've been aiming for in my garden for the past three years has a name and that naming helps me justify the decisions I'm making and also the confidence to write about and share it.

It isn't that I'm actively doing a lot, it's more what I'm not doing that makes the difference and the evidence for the difference between my garden and many can be found in the species that call it home.
My unmown meadow lawn is full of wild flowers including orchids. Bumble and solitary bees abound as do birds and from the number of young ones, several have nested here including two mallards whose little fluffy ducklings have been a delight bobbing about on the pond and leaping up to try and catch the damsel flies.

I began the process by concentrating on the smallest components of my garden, the soil dwellers and coverers thinking that if they were in good heart then the rest would hopefully follow and so they seem to have done.

Now I realise that I have top predators here too and I know that they will be responsible for more change and also balance. A sparrow hawk often jets through, I hear a tawny owl regularly, see buzzards circling high overhead, and twice I've spotted a red kite quartering the sky.
A red fox has discovered us too, no doubt he has his eye on the ducklings but he has his place in the scheme of things.

My garden doesn't cover acres, it's a fairly average size and in a town, so if I can rewild my garden then other people can too. It might not be for everyone but if enough of us do it then together we can make a difference. All there is to lose is a boring garden and why would we want that when we could have a wonderfully wild one?

So what's not to like?

It's no accident that the days with the longest hours of light coincide with all that growth and fulsome flowering in the garden. Plants and the seasons are perfectly synchronised; more time for photosynthesis means more energy for growth and flower production and for us there's so much to enjoy in the lush splendour of early summer.

With everything happening outside I begrudge time spent indoors, I don't want to miss a moment in my garden but the natural world is at its most appealing now too and with so much beautiful landscape on my doorstep I'm spoilt for choice.

 

I garden for wildlife as much as for myself and where nature and my garden most noticeably overlap is in my meadow lawn, my favourite part of the garden at this time of year. I find it exciting for the range of tightly knit plant species and for the insects which feed upon them. Common blue butterflies are some of my favourites, flitting among the long grasses on sunny days and I like to think that they will lay their eggs here too. In my lawn are their larvae's food plants, birds foot trefoil, white clover and black medick. Many bumble and solitary bees species are at home here too and I'm always drawn to the tawny mining bees, their bright ginger furry little bodies easy to spot and recognise.

 

I love my meadow lawn for its biodiversity but if all I wanted was just colourful summer flowers and very little effort then I couldn't choose anything better. No weeding, feeding, watering, staking, pruning or even much mowing apart from the path around and through it. Just a strim and clear up at the end of the summer with a couple of passes of the mower between then and next spring and that's about it, maximum return for minimum input.

 

So what's not to like? Why do so very few gardeners leave their weedy lawns to grow and blossom and so very many weed, spray and mow lawn flowers to oblivion?

Answers on a postcard please…...

 

Blooming Marvellous

May is a wonderful month in the garden, so much is happening that it's hard to keep up with the changes. The amount of growth being made is phenomenal and as spring gives way to summer the list of things we feel obliged to do in the garden seems endless, but as we approach the longest day and the hours of daylight extend, the longer evenings give us a few more daylight hours to be outside.
We're not the only ones making the most of it. The bird nesting season is in full swing and rushing to and from my hive are the perfect examples of busy bees falling over each other as they hurtle in and out, their hairy little legs laden with pollen from all the flowers newly bursting into bloom.
Fruit trees are some of their favourites, with hawthorn, Cotoneaster and lilac too and under the shrubs and trees, bugle, granny's bonnet, violets and bluebells. Out in the sun are poppies, alliums, clover, vetch and bird's foot trefoil offering a feast of pollen and nectar. No wonder the honey bees are so busy.
I'm lucky that my garden is also home to solitary and bumble bees which nest in the free draining soil under my meadow lawn, but May isn't all about colourful flowers, now is the time that the garden is at its freshest green and the colour, form and texture of foliage is at its seasonal best.
New leaves are opening eveywhere, unfurling ferns beneath beautiful vibrant beech, the fine filigree foliage of Japanese maples and by the pond the thrusting verticals of Iris and lush ornamental grasses create a foil for all those lovely meadow flowers.
The year's RHS shows are well under way now and from the 24th to the 28th it's Chelsea Flower Show time again where the horticultual world displays its finest. With all those gorgeous gardens, fabulous flowers and fancy foliage on offer there's inspiration for every gardener. It's a highlight of the year for many of us and part of what makes this Month of May blooming marvellous!

It's been an interesting week...

Well that was very different!
I've just designed a garden for people with whom I've had no contact and a site I couldn't see which any designer will tell you is a near impossibility.
But that, I've discovered, is TV for you and this was for a very good cause. To give a young family a very well deserved helping hand and a new start in life by renovating their home and more importantly from my point of view, their garden.
I've been working as a volunteer with the BBC's DIY SOS programme and it's been a roller coaster of a ride.
Within minutes of arriving on site it was absolutely full of people, all volunteers like me giving up their time willingly to get their own small part a very big job done in a ridiculously short time.
Don't ever think that programmes like that are not what they purport to be, there are no extra teams coming in or weeks taken over the build, it really is all done in just nine days by the kindness, long hours and hard work of the local community and the core DIY SOS team who keep the wheels oiled and men and women well fed and watered.
Well done Monmouth's volunteers and thank you Nick Knowles and the team for asking us to be part of the project. When the programme's been aired pictures will follow so watch this space....

Up close and personal

There are some remarkably flamboyant flowers in my garden just now. There are big double daffodils which passers by seem to like but I'm not very keen on and drifts of wonderfully varied hellebores under the apple trees which I absolutely love, but it's the small flowers, easy to miss in the exuberance of summer, which at this time of year and given some sun, shine out and are well worth a closer look.

Black flowered willow, Salix gacilis 'Melanostachys' is stunning. Deep reddish black and dangerous looking, especially with the sun behind it and what a contrast to the common pussy willow, all shining silver purity.  They say the devil is in the detail, it certainly is with this flower. Hamamelis is really spooky too,  like contorted orange or yellow spiders, these two would be brilliant at halloween!


Down on the ground beneath the shrubs the flowers are much more as expected. Anemone blanda, Pulmonaria and Primula are the essence of early spring, all dainty prettiness.  Muscari, well know as grape hyacynth, is often a cause for complaint as it spreads through an old garden but close up the tubular flowers can be seen as individuals and are the most striking clear blue.
If the sun shines get out there quick, the closer we look the better we know our gardens and that has to be a good thing.
 

 

 

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