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!

Surprise surprise!

Most of us like a surprise – well a nice one anyway – and having a garden means that we don't have to wait for a birthday or Christmas for something unexpected to pop up out of the undergrowth. Having a new garden means that I'm finding surprises all over the place, like an enormous day glow orange Kniphofia erupting out of an otherwise unexciting border and flowers out of season like Hellebores in September and Hamamelis sprouting their spidery little blooms in October, way too early. But mostly the treats have been lovely flowers I've not spotted until they unfurl. At the moment delicate little white Cyclamen are peeking out from under hedges, amazingly resilient in dry shade, pretty Schyzostylis have opened up like shining stars and Nerines too, surprisingly shocking pink above strappy dull dark green foliage. It's one thing to be surprised by a new garden but unlikely as it sounds, surprises can be planned for too, even in the most familiar garden. Bulbs planted in the gloom of a grey November are easy to forget about until they emerge in April or May full of the joys of spring even brighter and cheerier than they looked on the packet. Most of us will plant a few daffodils but what about something a bit more exciting, alliums are always striking, tall slender stems with perfect globes made up of masses of tiny, usually purple flowers and camassias are lovely too, spires of clear blue flowers like a cross between a red hot poker and a bluebell. A surprise doesn't have to be visual, wild garlic might be a small and delicate wild woodlander but the smell will knock you sideways and if you dare it's useable in the kitchen in salads and stir frys too. I'll be using all of them as well as turning the heat up for next spring with Tulips, sultry burgundy 'Ronaldo', flaming crimson 'Couleur Cardinal' and to pick out the purple tones in both, the soft lavender and apricot 'Malaika' which is a subtler variation of another favourite 'Princes Irene' an electric blend of deep purple and vivid orange, a real stunner. These aren't colour combinations I'd choose to live with all year but a burst of flamboyance and pizzazz after a dull dreary winter will be a very welcome surprise!

Work in progress.....

Most of us have a favourite thing in our garden which we wouldn't want to be without. For some this might be a neatly mown lawn or a beautiful fine leaved Acer and for me, my garden is not complete without open water. So after sketching at least a dozen permutations of layouts for a man with a digger to follow, my garden has a new baby. A pond has been born – well dug actually. I don't expect it will start to look anything special until the surrounding vegetation gets into growth next spring but I know with complete faith and conviction that it will start to fulfil its main functions straight away. The sky will come down into my garden, its changing colours and moods echoed by reflections in the pond's surface and birds finding water on a dry hillside will stop to drink and bathe. I'll look forward all winter to a summer of damsel and dragon flies and I know from experience that my confidence isn't misplaced. All living things need water and having had the good fortune to be in at the birth of a lot of garden ponds, I've seen how quickly they've been visited or colonised with water fleas upward in size to newts and grass snakes and for one very lucky man, an otter. A pond comes alive when it's planted. Breathing life into it, oxygenating plants hide under the surface quietly doing just that and marginals like Iris at the edges of the water take out excess nutrients and provide vertical stems for emerging insect larvae. With their roots in the darkest depths and their big flat leaves sheltering and shading whatever is beneath, the shining star shaped flowers are the crowning glory of water lilies. From humble beginnings as a waterproofed hole in the ground to a completely self sustaining environment, a pond is a vital habitat and a resource for so many animals and birds. Mine is as big as I can reasonably fit in but just a small one is still very worthwhile so if you don't yet have a favourite part of your garden that you wouldn't want to be without a pond could be perfect.

ps Children love water and poking about in a pond is a wonderful way to learn about nature but be safe, if there are little ones about then perhaps wait until they're a bit older.

Summer's End

Summer's end comes every year with inevitable regularity, a part of the world's natural rhythm, and full as always in equal measure with sadness and exquisite beauty. In the garden the lowering light softly illuminates those gentle colours which the intense midsummer sun bleached out. Powder blue asters contrast with the first of the soft buttery golds and russets of the turning leaves and seed heads are forming at the tips of the swaying stems of ornamental grasses preparing to feed the winter's migrant birds. In the fruit garden – or in my case, in the hedge along the drive – the plums are turning a luscious smoky purple and the apples are reddening up to ripeness. This is the time when summer's shades of green slowly start to turn, one leaf at a time, a hint of yellow here and a flush of orange there until there's no avoiding it, summer is on its way out. We aren't the only ones to notice, swallows and house martins are lining up along the phone wires making ready to leave as the quantity of insect food declines and in the cooler mornings orb web spiders are suddenly noticeable on garden shrubs and hedgerows sitting patiently in the centre of their intricately woven traps. September is a time of change in the garden just as it is in the fields and woods around. Not yet quite autumn but no longer really summer, it's a time when pickings of fruit and vegetables are reaching their peak and it's time too for us to appreciate the garden for what it is, our own part of the glorious natural world, not really under our control at all but subject to the turning earth, changing levels of daylight and falling temperatures. Besides the asters, the other typical flowers of the season sedums are coming into flower too, our native stonecrop is one with yellow flowers but cultivated forms include some with deep purple leaves like Sedum 'Purple Emperor', most are pinkish or white and there are some varieties with names that make me smile like 'Stewed Rhubarb Mountain' and 'Red Cauli'. One of my favourites flowering now is Caryopteris, a scrubby little shrub we forget about until this time of year when it becomes worthy of a place in any sunny garden, it's vivid flowers a perfect reflection of a cloudless blue September sky.

Creating a buzz

As the summer progresses this new garden of mine continues to reveal more of its many secrets. Not all of them are welcome though, the borders are riddled with field bindweed and there's an ancient rusting concrete mixer securely cemented into the roots of an old tree, unfortunately they look equally difficult to remove! But the discoveries when they've come have mostly been exciting ones, two of the best have been a twayblade and a pyramidal orchid peeping out amongst the waving grasses of the unmown lawn and in their number and diversity the bumblebees have been a very welcome surprise. Droning heavily between the flowers, I've watched which ones they prefer to visit and it's the vetch, catmint and the tall purple flax which seem to be favourites. It's no coincidence that the colour and shape of their flowers are similar and being closely spaced along the stems there is less distance for the bees to fly for the amount of pollen gathered and nectar drunk. Such heavy bodies for such small wings to carry, they must need a lot of fuel to stay airborne. The low hum of bumblebees and their slow methodical passage between the flowers is the perfect companion to a warm, sunny summer's afternoon in the garden. We can do nothing to ensure warmth or sunshine but we can encourage the bees with a safe insecticide free environment and reliable supply of food for them during the months when they most need it, from March to September. Keeping flowers blooming through late summer is a trick Buddleja excel at especially if we dead head them regularly. There are people who don't like Buddleja because they're common and will grow anywhere, but I think that's a good thing. Easy to please and prolific flowerers they're brilliant insect plants and although some of them are real whoppers, if you think you just don't have the space to accommodate one, there are now some new compact varieties available. Buddleja 'Buzz Lavander', 'Buzz Magenta' and 'Buzz Ivory' are the colours to choose from and if you can't make up your mind which one you like best there's also 'Multicolor' which has flower spikes of purple, orange and pink all together at the same time. Now that I have a bigger garden and for the sake of the bees I might just go mad, splash out and have one of each!

Patience is a virtue.

If there's a valuable lesson we can all learn from our gardens, it's that the natural world will not be rushed, cajoled or bullied. Things happen in nature's own sweet time when the season and weather are right. No amount of wishing this year made any difference to the sluggish start to spring but then when it did arrive all that momentum and energy seemed to be condensed into a couple of weeks and then suddenly spring had been passed by and summer had arrived. And weren't we ready for it! Not just us either, the birds and bees too, to say nothing of the plants. The vegetable seeds I waited until April to sow sat in the cold frame and sulked for weeks, refusing point blank to germinate, so in desperation I sowed some more at the end of May and in two days they were away, their little shoots uncurling in the unaccustomed sunshine. Now that I have the luxury of a lovely cedar wood greenhouse the young plants have five star accommodation, relishing the warmth while the resident rabbits eye them up, noses pressed to the glass. My new garden and I are just getting to know one another and I have a lot to learn about its character which a mile and a steady climb uphill make so very different from my old one. Already I see evidence of a much more free draining soil in great swathes of red and white valerian, rows of perfect lavender and pinks in the formal borders and in the lawn lots more vetch and far fewer buttercups than my heavy damp clay had me used to. Eager as I am to get stuck in, clear the vegetable patch, dig a pond and move plants around, I know that in the long term for the sake of my back and our budding relationship I should hold back, bide my time and allow my garden to reveal itself to me over the seasons. It won't be easy but after all patience is a virtue so I'll do my best to try and cultivate that too.

New house - new garden

Well I hardly dare put pen to paper - or finger to keyboard - for the risk of putting the mockers on a not yet secure purchase, but after six months in the desperately bleak wilderness of renting we've found a new house and most importantly a new garden. Hooray! The house is actually a bungalow, not chosen I hasten to add because of advancing years and decrepitude, but because it just felt right. It's been renovated with care and attention to detail, it has a lovely view and that rarity, a garden with a soul. Because it's not been tended for a couple of years, there's been no restraining hand preventing self seeding of promiscuous little plants like hellebores and granny's bonnets which have romped around and made themselves at home all over the place. Spreading into patches which have forgotten whether they're meant to be border or lawn these ornamental opportunists and 'weeds' like fox and cubs and self heal have inspired me to hope that there might be a chance of a reasonable little meadow instead of a lawn and the current owners are so obliging that they've agreed to abandon having the man with the mower come in and actual let the grass grow for me to better see what might be there. What nice people! For now there are no photos but if all goes according to plan and the move goes ahead (my fingers and toes are crossed so that should help) within a month or so there will be. Any moment I can steal from working hours will be spent examining the minutiae of every seedling or beginning the clearing of a large and very brambly vegetable patch. Whatever it is I might be doing in my new garden one's thing's for sure - it will be sheer bliss!

April Showers

'Though April showers may come your way, they bring the flowers that bloom in May …..' Well that's the theory anyway, but as our weather patterns respond to changing climatic conditions and flooding or draught becomes an all too regular occurrance for some parts of the country, seasonal certainties seem to be a thing of the past, lessons from history rather than geography. The 'rain cycle' is another one towns and cities have started to rethink. Once it was simple, rain fell onto the earth to be soaked up by forests or slowly infiltrate its way through the ground into streams and rivers to the sea to be returned by evaporation to the clouds, to fall once again as rain and snow. Now so much land is built over with impermeable roads, driveways, and the roofs of so many buildings and channelled from there directly into storm drains, that in heavy rain a deluge rushes directly into and overwhelming our rivers. As flood plains throughout the county were built on pushing the problem further down stream, more of us have felt the devastating effects. If all this sounds depressingly familiar don't despair, there's no need to wait for officialdom to catch on, it is possible for us to use our homes and gardens to alleviate part of the problem ourselves. The roof is a good place to start, a flat or gently sloping one may be perfect for a green roof, planted with Sedums or similar draught tolerant species in a suitable substrate it will absorb some of the rain falling onto it and allow the rest to leave more slowly. By adding a diverter to the downpipe or an ornamental 'rain chain', excess water can be stored in a butt or underground reservoir for use when the draught arrives, or my favourite, piped directly into a pond and from there to a garden soak away, ditch or swale. Gravel, a permeable and relatively inexpensive surfacing also allows the water to drain away more naturally and of course any type of planting in the garden will take up some of the rain falling onto it. Best of all I think are trees, the earth's natural covering. Stabilizing banks and preventing water run off, giving us shade and shelter, providing homes for wildlife and in April giving us some of the most spectacular flowers of the year.

Choices

March is not a good month for a garden designer to be without her own garden. Temporarily renting someone else's home and gardenless, I'm an outsider, excluded from all this month's pent up momentum of plant and animal life. Just waiting for the weather to warm up a bit and the days to lengthen and with a seasonal release of energy they'll all be off as if at the bang of the starter's gun. Green shoots bursting through the soil racing upwards towards the light and birds darting through the trees displaying to potential partners, desperate to start nesting. Bumble bees intent on a early start to the year droning heavily between the crocus flowers and my favourite harbingers of spring, the frogs, croaking all night and then frenziedly at it all day. The natural activity in my garden was as important to me and is now just as much missed as the planned seasonal events like seed sowing and planting first early potatoes. It's not been a long time in years but there's been a huge cultural change from my dad's time as a gardener. He still followed the Victorian empire's attitude to nature of conquer and subdue, kindness itself to people he was a lovely man, but when it came to the garden he ruled with an iron fist. Any seedling daring to pop up out of its designated row would be ruthlessly beheaded by the hoe, insects were all considered to be pests and sprayed rigorously and birds, all thought to be 'after the raspberries', were very unwelcome. Starlings were his pet hate because there were 'just too many of them'. He wasn't alone of course, that was just how things were in his day but in mine we are learning from those terrible mistakes. Starling numbers are now down sixty six percent from my dad's 'too many' of the nineteen eighties and last year's RSPB garden birdwatch recorded them in fewer than half our gardens and I don't think it's hard to work out one reason why. Their staple food is leather jackets and many gardeners still thoughtlessly spray their lawns to kill them. Herbicides, pesticides and insecticides are all very readily available in every garden centre but we don't have to buy them. While the government still dithers over whether or not to ban nicotinoid insecticides we can all make our own personal choices and while I don't have a garden of my own I would love to think that there are other people out there gardening for wildlife. I do hope so.

New Year - New Garden

Every January I gaze adoringly at seed catalogues and like a child in a sweet shop, seduced by the colour and variety of the photographs, I always order far too many packets of seeds. If it’s not quite a case of ‘eyes bigger than my belly’, I know I definitely have ideas above my station as in the depths of a bare and leafless winter I seem to conveniently forget just how full my garden already is and imagine I have much more space for new things than I really do. This year though things will be quite different, I have to restrain myself and not give in to temptation, fingers crossed this house is sold and very soon we’ll be moving on and for a while, not long I hope, I will have no garden of my own at all. But it’s a means to an end and when it does come the next garden I am determined will be bigger and offer much more scope for growing the things I don’t have the space for here. More vegetables and fruit, more trees and dare I even hope for it, a meadow or at least a place to create a very small one. On a shelf of a bookcase in my office is my most treasured possession, a box of seeds gathered in hope and optimism over this last year of plants I shall be sad to leave behind. Marsh mallow, white campion, Primula florindae, wild carrot, meadowsweet, an unnamed buttercup relative which came from Great Dixter and many more. All plants of low lying damp ground and not knowing where the next garden will be I don’t know if these will be the types of plants which will flourish there. I’ll be sad to be without these old friends but if the new garden comes with different growing conditions it will also bring new and exciting opportunities. Wherever it is it will tell me itself what it wants to grow, not in so many words but with its aspect, position and soil and it might be the chance, as with all home moves, to make new friends, plant as well as human. Just like us, plants have their own preferences for where they live and we can learn the basics from books but it’s only when we put thought into choosing the right plants for the places we have, watching them grow and understanding their needs that we can develop a lasting relationship with them. Like all relationships there’s give and take and as all gardeners know, the ones we have with our own piece of the earth might sometimes mean cold hands and feet, nettle stings and thorn scratches, but on a lovely summers day with a gentle breeze, the scent of the flowers and the song of the birds there really is no other place like it.

Obsessed or what!

We’ve had a cousin staying with us recently. Not one of those you feel obliged to invite and hope they won’t accept, but a welcome guest, good company and an excuse for putting work on the back burner for a few days and having a bit of time out. We have a lot in common including only ever wearing comfy shoes, watching Merlin on TV and a love of the chained library in Hereford Cathedral (well worth a visit) and have both had a career in horticulture, but hers has been in practical down and dirty hands on gardening, whereas mine has been in clean finger nailed, warm and cosy in an office, design. A conversation we’ve had where I described my living room as being decorated in ‘metal’ colours left her with the sort of expression on her face that told me, albeit kindly, that I’m quite deranged. I know that most normal people don’t obsess about colour combinations like designers do but then we aren’t really that normal. I once painted an arbour to tone with the blue tits which were the most common avian visitors to the feeder hanging from it, even the colour of the pencil I pick up in the morning is dictated by the colour of the clothes I happen to be wearing on the day and this time of year things go from bad to worse with the arrival of Christmas cards. I don’t think everybody can be this picky about their positioning around the house but I have to have them arranged in rooms where their colours tone best with the décor and each year I live in hope that the latest fashion in cards will favour ice bound snowdrops or polar bears – the kitchen is mainly white, or three richly dressed kings – to go with the gold in the ‘metal’ living room. Robins are always popular with my relatives and along with the compulsory jolly Santas cause a bit of on issue for me because I have very little red anywhere in the house. You can see that my cousin does have a point but to me this behaviour isn’t odd, it’s all to do with an appreciation of my surroundings and colour is of course only one aspect of it, which makes placing Christmas cards even more complex when you think as well about their shapes and proportions. These must be considered by putting the long thin ones on furniture of similar proportions and square ones with decorations like candles of the same shape. I know I’m more than a bit odd but it does make for an interesting life. To look at the things I live with and analyse how they relate to their surroundings uses the same skills I employ to see the potential in every garden I design so to me it’s essential. It can be very time consuming though, especially at Christmas, thinking of which it's about time I bought some cards....now what colour is my cousin's living room...

A wall is a wall....isn't it?

I've been worrying of late that my designs might be getting a bit 'samey'. You see the thing is that prospective clients see photos on my website and have to like them before they give me a call, if they like the photos of other designers' gardens better then of course they will ring them instead. So I try to show a variety of garden styles, I hope I'm versatile enough to design to suit any client's tastes and this week I have returned to see two gardens I've designed over the past couple of years and I'm very relieved to see that they are not at all samey ... ... except that they both use walls ... you see they are designed for their owners who are very different people with very different tastes...

Snails!

I’ve never been one to dwell on failure. Ever the optimist I’ve continued to sow French beans since June in the hope that we’d get a dry spell and therefore fewer molluscs to munch on their tender young shoots. Although I’ve managed to reduce slug numbers in my garden using Nemaslug, the snails have just laughed in my face at copper tape and beer traps, as defeated, the French beans have gone the way of the runner beans, spinach, rocket and courgettes, all reduced to leafless stalks. Apart from carrots which the snails don’t seem to fancy much, the only veggies growing in my garden are the ones hermetically sealed inside a cold frame and I don’t think there will be much of a harvest there as everything is fighting for space with the tomatoes whose home it was originally meant to be. Anything I get from it to eat however is an improvement on the quince, plum and damson trees which all scored a big fat zero for fruit due I’m sure to the cold wet weather and lack of pollinators when they were flowering. But am I down hearted ? No of course not, I can’t do anything about the weather and I won’t poison the snails with pellets, if they’re eaten by a bird then that will be poisoned in turn, so I just collect them and put them out in the open for any local thrushes which might have escaped such a deadly fate and in doing so I’ve discovered that not all snails are the villains I previously thought them to be. The common garden snails Helix aspersa, are the ones which I find by the dozen enjoying their vegetable dinner during my torch lit bed time patrols, but I never see any of the smaller banded snails then, Cepaea nemoralis and Cepaea hortensis. I often spot these hiding under mint leaves or clinging to the stems of grasses during the day and in taking more of an interest and looking at them more closely I’ve found them to be really quite beautiful. No two are the same and even in my small garden there is a wide variety in their markings. Some are very strongly striped with thick bands of dark brown, some with finer stripes and some so light in colour that they’re almost translucent. Looking for information about them online, I’ve found that the variations in stripes and colours are due to responses to location, climate and the big reduction in the numbers of predators, namely thrushes (back to the reason I don’t use slug pellets). In short this is evolution taking place in my garden and now I know they’re not responsible for devastating my beans I’m very happy to leave these little snails alone and allow them to evolve at their own very steady pace.

For more information about banded snails go to www.evolutionmegalab.org

Variety is the spice of life

Even in a washout of a summer like this one has been with very little sun to encourage them, plants still need to produce flowers which in turn need to be pollinated, to set seed and produce the next generation. We’re very lucky here that the climate allows us to grow a wide range of flowers besides our own native species and if we take the trouble to look it’s amazing how much variety there is among them from dense clusters of tiny ones packed together in umbels like achilleas, separate hooded shapes on long stems like foxgloves and the simple open saucers of hardy geraniums. These are just a few of those nature has selected through evolution and when it comes to cultivars which we’ve manipulated to suit our own tastes over the years we find that some have become so complicated that they’ve lost any resemblance to their wild ancestors. Some flowers like the very full and multi petalled roses have actually ceased to be the reproductive organ of the plant and have lost that part of themselves which gave them their reason to be. I like these blowsy flowers as much as anybody but I do think that they are completely missing the point, if they no longer produce pollen and nectar to attract pollinators then as part of the garden’s ecosystem they are entirely pointless. Flowers have different colours, shapes and sizes because they have evolved together with their particular pollinators, each of which have their own preferences and means of obtaining pollen and nectar, their reward for the service of pollination. It’s no accident that there is such variety in the world of flowers and lucky for us, the more variety we have the more opportunity there is to be creative with them in the garden.

Whether our aim is simply a bright and cheery display or a more sophisticated colour co-ordinated arrangement , the choice is there and just like the insects, we have our own preferences too. Most of us select our plants for their flowers and those flowers for their colour, but their shapes and forms are important too. In my work I place plants in gardens so that they enhance one another and if I’m in doubt about how things will look together I experiment. When it comes to flowers, instead of digging up the whole plant it’s much easier to put them together as cut flowers in a vase. At the moment I have an arrangement of acid green parsley with the airy wands of purple toadflax and the sultry dark plum spikes of hedge woundwort in the hall and in the kitchen is an arrangement of baby pink clouds of Persicaria campanulata with tall spikes of the palest purple Veronicastrum ‘Lavendelturm’ and the lovely lavender and soft grey sprays of catmint. Although only short lived, flowers add interest, structure and variety to the garden and as we all know, variety is the spice of life.

New toys - new discoveries

When we think of new toys in the garden they are invariably big and bouncy, built to keep the children amused and out from under foot, or something butch like the latest in cordless hedge trimmers or a big beefy shredder. My daughter and I are proud owners of two new toys, not very manly but very exciting things for both sexes and children of whatever age. I’m an avid watcher of garden birds and although I’m fine at identifying them by sight, more often than not I haven’t a clue telling them apart from their songs, that is until now. My new toy is a book with a big difference, the birds in the photographs sing at the press of a button and today I’ve recognised a grasshopper warbler and a blackcap, they must have been just feet from the back door and although I couldn’t see either of them they were definitely there making themselves known in song. My book helps me identify creatures I can’t see and my daughter’s toy does the same by opening a window onto a previously unknown garden, it’s a digital microscope, a birthday present from her brother and it reveals a whole new world invisible to the naked eye. Just a few drops of water show themselves to be alive with the tiniest of animals and plants in a range of shapes and colours. Dark spinning spheres rotating swiftly out of view, colourless wriggling worms, armour plated insects with fearsome jaws and the oddest of all, a bright blue chubby little creature fastidiously cleaning its short fat hairy legs – if anybody knows what this is I’d love to know! . I designed my garden to be beneficial to as much wildlife as possible and I know it’s successful from the number of insects, birds and amphibians making their homes in the habitats I’ve provided for them, but it’s only now that I’ve had a glimpse into its microscopic world that I’ve realised just how teeming with life it really is and how little I truly know the patch I thought I knew so well. Our gardens are as familiar to us as old friends but they have an unrivalled capacity to surprise and delight and there are always new discoveries to be made, what better new toys than those which help us to make them.

To move or not to move, that is the question...

I would like to move house. Nothing new in that and nothing wrong with this one, it's just that it isn't really 'me'. I'm a country cottage kind of person and this is a new estate house, fine while we were four of us but we've been two for a few years now and so I'd really like to move on. Except for one issue, which to a lot of people wouldn't be a major one, but to me it's a big deal. The house itself is a 'family home'and all the families which the agents - we're on our second set now - have convinced to come through the door like the house but the garden, well that's the 'issue'. I designed this garden small though it is, for wildlife and reticent as I am to blow my own trumpet, it has been and still is rather good. The mixed native hedge is full of birds, the wild flowers are swarming with insects including many species of bumble and honey bee and the pond is alive with newts, frogs, dragonflies etc etc. And that's the problem. According to these and the former agents, a 'typical' family wants a 'typically conventional' garden, you know the sort, lawn in the middle and borders round the edge so apparently the only way I can move on to the cottage of my dreams, or as near to it as the budget will stretch and create a bigger and better wildlife garden, is to trash this one. So what do I do, weep into my cup of tea as I imagine newts suffocating and burly men lay a nice flat lawn over the carefully contrived range of habitats, or do I just accept the status quo and stay put. Maybe we just need another agent....