The Green, Green Grass

Tags

Carol Klein, cottage gardens, High Glanau Manor, lawn mowing, lawns

My kind of lawn mowing

We’re quite attached to our lawns here in Britain. Much time is devoted to mowing, raking, edging, and feeding to create the perfect swathe of green. Last weekend was the first dry and warmish weekend of the year and I could hear the distant hum of lawnmowers around the village. For many, a garden wouldn’t be a garden without a patch of turf and the weekly mow is part of garden routine, but not us. When we moved here one of the first things we did was dig up the grass in the front and back gardens.

I don’t deny that the smell of cut grass is a powerful scent that can transport me to a warm summer’s day, I love lying in a park surrounded by green and I’ve visited some beautiful back gardens where the lawn is an integral part of the design. Friends with pets and children see their lawns as a necessity and I’ve seen extraordinary levels of care lavished on patches of grass. We once lived opposite a lady whose front lawn can’t have been more than 2 metres square but that lawn was primped and preened as if it was a prize-winning poodle. There would be a sprinkler installed during the summer months and it was so green it looked like astroturf. Her gardener, who must have been in his 60s, gardened wearing nothing but a pair of tiny shorts and little plimsolls and had the sort of leathery skin cultivated from a life of sun-worshiping. It was an intriguing site to say the least.

The Lawn at High Glanau Manor, Monmouthshire (the foxes are statues)

Our gardens, front and back are both small. There was no path to the back shed, so you had to walk across the grass to get to it. Well after our first winter here, where it seemed to never stop raining and I had to collect the wood from the shed via the grass you can imagine what state it was in, not to mention our kitchen floor. A proper path was needed but there was so little space left that putting in a lawn didn’t seem worth it and in the front garden there was nothing but grass and a hedge. After 8 years of living with other people’s gardens I wanted plants and as many as I could squeeze into the space. I’d always loved cottage gardens and their exuberance, stuffed with flowers tumbling over paths. A swathe of lawn seemed like such a waste.

The lawn in my front garden being removed

I love how Carol klein the tv presenter has no grass in her garden even though hers is considerably bigger than mine, at over a third of an acre. She’s a real plantswoman and has large raised beds and border running through her garden instead.

The front garden with no grass but lots of plants

There is another reason why the lawns had to go, we both hated mowing them. Up until moving here we had lived in a variety of rented places and all except the flat you couldn’t swing a cat in, had gardens with lawns in varying states of neglect. Most were weed infested, not just the occasional daisy here and there but more dandelions and plantain than grass. Some had drainage problems and the resulting moss and the last house had a lawn that was so undulating with bumps and dips that it would have made for an interesting mini golf course. Of course, every time I mowed it I would scalp the bumps and not be able to mow the dips, which meant that even after an hour of mowing it still looked dreadful. The back garden at this house had a sloping lawn and so when mowing I was always worried the momentum of the mower would take me with it plunging me towards the patio. Then there was the sinking feeling when returning from holiday, knowing that the grass would now be knee deep and would be a chore waiting to be done.

Unusually, Wellyman has a real aversion to lawn mowing. It seems to be one of those chores that men really love, maybe because it involves machinery, I not sure but it’s not for Wellyman. During the months of June and July when I would be suffering from hayfever Wellyman would take over the mowing responsibility but he was clearly not happy with lots of huffing and puffing and muttering. And finally, there was the storage of the mower, which took up the best part of our garden shed. So the grass in our new house never really stood a chance.

It has been really liberating. One less thing to do before the holiday and no knee-high grass to wade through on our return. No faffing around with cables that won’t reach, no discovering you’ve mowed through the cat mess only when it’s too late and no grass clippings deposited everywhere especially when it has been a bit damp and they stick to everything. But best of all I’ve been able to grow so many more plants than I ever would if my garden had a lawn.

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What a difference a week makes

Tags

allotments, emptying compost bin, RHS Wisley, spring clean

The first daffodils in my garden

Who’d have thought it, such a beautiful weekend of weather with warm spring sunshine and still only February. Last weekend I was wearing snow boots and several layers for our visit to a frosty Wisley and it felt we were still in the grip of winter. A week later and it was warm enough for just a t-shirt. Of course the vagaries of the British weather mean it could be snowing again by next week but the recent dose of sunshine has put a spring in my step and I’m feeling positive that we’ve turned a corner now.

Such great weather coinciding with a weekend and at this time of year is a rare thing so I jumped at the opportunity to get Wellyman’s help to cross some jobs off my ‘to do’ list. Of course things never run completely smoothly and on Thursday afternoon it felt like it was going to end up being one of those frustrating weekends where no matter how much you try you never actually get anywhere.

The newly edged garden path

A path in our front garden is edged with those half log rolls you can get from most garden centres. This was the most aesthetically pleasing option we could afford when we first moved here and seemed to fit with the idea of the cottagey style garden I wanted to create. Unfortunately, even though the logs are treated with a preservative they have only lasted 4 years before starting to rot. They were looking scruffy and they needed replacing before the plants start to grow so I knew I needed to do it soon. Last weekend we had measured up and purchased replacements and then on Thursday I discovered we’d bought the wrong size. This was, of course, after I’d started pulling the old ones out and generally created a bit of a mess. Fortunately, our local garden centre said that we could just pay the difference and get the other size but I was rather frustrated that I couldn’t see any progress for my effort and concerned that the sore elbow I’d had for a couple of days was now very painful.

Scroll forward 4 days and not only is our path now all neatly edged and looking tidy but we now have a new path at the allotment, where Wellyman removed the turf. We laid down some membrane and even found some piles of chipped bark by the side of a local road which we bagged up and then used to cover the path. On a roll, the compost bin was emptied and spread on the beds at the allotment. The fruit bushes were mulched with manure and the final patches of green manure were dug in. I even planted up some shallots.

Pulmonaria 'Blue Ensign' now flowering in my garden

Back at home I cleaned out my shed. All those bits and pieces I had moved into the shed last autumn for protection over winter, such as my hosepipes and garden table and chairs were brought outside. We’ve used all the wood now so that has freed up some space, so that I can now actually walk into the shed. It had got to the point where I couldn’t get any further than the door. We even made a trip to the tip to get rid of some detritus that was lurking behind the shed.

I do have to say that I couldn’t have done half of this without Wellyman’s help this weekend. All this and he still managed to put in a great performance at his piano teacher’s soiree for her adult students, despite being worried his hands were too sore and blistered to play. My elbow was painful all weekend and after all the exertions we are both making groans and grunts when we get up off the sofa, well to be honest whenever we move. It was a very satisfying weekend despite the aches and pains and both the garden and plot look good for their early spring cleans.

A Thorny Problem

Tags

felco secateurs, Geof Hamilton, green fly, RHS encyclopedia, Rosa, Rosa A Shropshire Lad, Rosa Gertrude Jekyll, Rose pruning

The end of February is the perfect time to prune your roses, whilst they are still dormant but just about to burst into life. On Tuesday, as mine were starting to show signs of growth with a few buds opening I decided it was a job that needed tackling, so armed with some cleaned and sharpened secateurs and some gloves I set about the task.

I do have a bit of a love/hate relationship with roses. They are such a quintessential part of a garden for me and their scent is beautiful but they take a lot of care to look good. They seem to attract every greenfly in the vicinity, along with leafhoppers and are particularly prone to fungal infections such as blackspot and mildew. Trying to look after them organically, without an arsenal of chemical sprays at your disposal can be a real test.

Then there’s the pruning, a thorny problem indeed. A lot of people are flummoxed by pruning in general but roses, like clematis, seem to cause more than their fair share of panics. I think it is mainly due to the many different types of roses available; species roses, ramblers, climbers, old English roses, modern shrub roses, tea roses, musks, I could go on. It can be confusing to say the least as to how to tackle the different varieties. Coupled with this is the fact that roses have evolved to be covered in vicious thorns, natures way of protecting them from being eaten by grazing animals, although there are times when it feels like it was probably more to fend off gardeners wielding secateurs.

Rose 'Gertrude Jekyll'

We have 3 roses; Gertrude Jekyll an old rose hybrid, with a particularly strong ‘rose’ scent which was voted the nations favourite rose by BBC viewers in 2006, Geoff Hamilton, a Leander hybrid, again with a lovely scent and named after one of Britain’s most popular TV gardeners and A Shropshire Lad, an English Alba hybrid which we grow as a climber.

I started with the 2 shrub roses first. Pruning these is fairly straightforward, removing any dead, diseased or damaged stems first and then reducing the other stems to between one and two thirds. It is also good practice to try to create quite an open bush with no congested stems growing in the centre as this allows air to flow through the plant minimising problems with fungal diseases. To maintain this open structure always prune back to an outward facing bud, so any new growth is growing out and away from the plant.

It wasn’t long though before the roses were putting up a fight. It may have been the warmest February day for years yesterday but on Tuesday it was still quite chilly so I was wearing my winter hat. Whilst bending over my hat was snagged on some thorns, Gertrude Jekyll has some particularly vicious ones. My hands were full with prunings and I couldn’t release my hat. After a couple of tugs the hat came off my head but remained attached to the thorns as if the rose had acquired a triumphal trophy. The other problem was my gloves. They’ve been through the wash so much now that they’ve become really stiff, making it awkward to perform tasks that require a bit of dexterity. It was no good the gloves would have to come off, of course this meant I was scratched to bits. I also came across the first green fly of the year, can you believe it, already congregating on the young rose leaves just as they’re opening. So much for that cold spell killing them off.

I then turned my attentions to A Shropshire Lad. We have this growing up against a fence and I have been training in the stems over the last 2 years to create a nice framework. I still find it a bit daunting pruning this rose though and after a couple of minutes of looking at it wondering where to start I went into the house in search of my trusty RHS Encyclopedia. Because there are more stems and branches it can feel a bit overwhelming tackling a climber but with my book propped open at ‘How to prune and train a climbing rose’ I felt a bit more confident. Initially, the principles are the same as the other roses removing the dead, diseased and damaged stems but then it became more about maintaining a shape that encourages the most flowers.

By training the vertical stems to grow horizontally this changes the hormone balance in the stems and rather than the plant concentrating on producing vegetative growth it focusses on flowering. I removed a couple of large stems from the base and any spindly, twiggy branches and then reduced any sideshoots by about two thirds. Finally, I tied in the stems to wires already on the fence to hold them in place. The flowers on A Shropshire Lad are quite large and especially after rain can become heavy so it’s important to tie in any new growth over the year to prevent any stems snapping.

A Shropshire Lad, pruned and tied in

My back was aching afterwards and I was a little blood-stained from my thorny encounter but it felt very satisfying. Although pruning the climbing rose has exposed that I now need to paint the fence. Another job to add to the list. The question is can I manage to paint the fence without covering the rose in it.

The Houseplant Conundrum

Tags

Eden Project, feng shui, House plants, NASA, plants to purify the environment

How do you feel about houseplants? Do you love having pots of verdant plants dotted around your home or do you think the best place for plants is the garden? Do they thrive under your care or do they struggle to survive your regime of drought followed by drowning? As a plant lover I’m ashamed to admit that houseplants are my achilles heel.

I have always had a plant or two since I left home. Plants at university never really survived my student lifestyle. In contrast, my good friend doted on her plants, all of which had names and thrived. During the summer breaks I would be treated to updates on their progress in her letters to me.

In our first home together we bought a couple of plants from that large Swedish furniture shop. Along with the flat pack furniture with the strange names it seemed obligatory to buy a couple of plants. The one that I remember, possibly because it survived our attentions or lack of them, was a rubber plant or Ficus elastica. He even made the move back from Germany stuffed in the back of our car with the rest of our possessions deemed essential for living for several months whilst the rest was moved into storage. In our new flat he, his name is lost from my memory, was joined by a weeping fig which within days of purchase completely shed it’s leaves leaving a pathetic looking couple of bare stems in the pot. Eventually, the rubber plant got too big and was given to someone with more space.

Streptocarpus Seren (image from dibleys.com gold medal winning streptocarpus growers)

There have been other plants; a kalanchoe whose leaves were eaten by some undiscovered creature, an areca palm that developed blotchy leaves, orchids that never flower again and a streptocarpus that I overwatered amongst others.

My peace lily

My current houseplant roll call consists of 2 peace lilies, 3 money plants and 1 streptocarpus. The peace lilies were flowering when I bought them four years ago but haven’t flowered since but they do make attractive foliage plants and obligingly droop when they require a drink, so there is little danger of overwatering. They are also, according to NASA,  one of the best plants to have in the house to absorb the chemicals that are given off by modern furnishings and electrical appliances. I read somewhere that peace lilies are particularly sensitive to chlorine in tap water. It causes the tips to brown and die. So now I leave a glass of water standing overnight before using it to water them.

The streptocarpus is fussier and has proved more of a challenge to keep alive. It doesn’t like full sun so is only really happy on one particular window sill. It has slightly hairy leaves and doesn’t seem to like water splashing it’s leaves, otherwise it develops brown, dry patches. I have managed to get this one to flower though, which is something and once it starts flowering it goes on and on. I did forget to water it for a while though, partly because I killed the last streptocarpus by drowning the poor thing, so now the compost in the pot has formed a solid mass and shrunk away from the sides. Fortunately, March is the best time to pot on houseplants and give them some TLC so it won’t be long now before I can give this plant a new home.

My money plants

The money plants were grown from cuttings from my mum-in-law’s plant and have been very successful, they can get quite big and I don’t have the space, so I have to take cuttings every couple of years and start the plants off again. Money plants, however are really undemanding and there would be something wrong if they couldn’t survive my attention. They sit on my study window sill facing south east which is apparently where they should be according to feng shui. I have to say this has less to do with any adherence to this eastern philosophy than it is the only window sill available but still when I win the lottery I can say it was because of the placement of my money plants.

I know I’m not alone when it comes to struggling to keep houseplants alive. So why do they give us gardeners so many problems? Well as most gardeners know you should work with the conditions you have rather than trying to get plants to adapt and to some extent this is the problem with houseplants. Our homes really don’t provide most plants that are sold to us for the house with the conditions they require. Most houseplants are tender plants from the tropics. They generally like humidity and constant temperatures, the 2 things homes can’t really provide. If they did it wouldn’t be very pleasant for us to live in them, think Eden project in your lounge. Despite this I do still like having a few plants indoors and I’m sure they do make the environment in my home healthier, I just need to try a little harder to nurture these plants that I so often neglect.

Please feel free to share any houseplant horror stories, it’s a cathartic process.

Late Winter at RHS Wisley

Tags

Alpine house, RHS Wisley, winter scented plants, winter sweet, Wisley Glasshouse, witch hazel

Winter Sweet (copyright Ian Curley)

The last time I visited a garden was back in September, so feeling a little deprived of new inspiration coupled with a touch of cabin fever and frankly just needing a change of scene, we decided to visit RHS Wisley, in Surrey. Unfortunately, the combination of good weather, half term and some children’s events meant that we weren’t the only ones with that idea. To say it was busy was understatement, heaving more like.

The RHS has 3 other gardens in North Yorkshire, Essex and Devon but Wisley is the largest and it’s flagship garden. Covering 240 acres it combines being a training establishment for it’s students and it’s educational role informing the public about horticulture with providing a day out in beautiful surroundings. We used to live close by so have been lucky enough to see the gardens throughout the seasons. High summer is in my opinion the best time to visit but there is still plenty to see even in winter.

Intoxicating Scent of Daphne (copyright Ian Curley)

Winter scent is easy to find at Wisley with Daphnes, winter-flowering Honeysuckle and the incredible Chimonanthes or winter sweet.

Witch hazel (copyright Ian Curley)

There were some beautiful specimens of witch hazel with it’s lemon peel-like flowers. The overnight frost had not had too much of impact on the carpets of crocus and snowdrops and there were hellebores scattered all over the gardens.

Alpine house at Wisley (copyright Ian Curley)

A great treat at this time of year is the Alpine House which was bursting with colour. A stunning collection of Hepaticas, Crocus and Narcissi were all in bloom protected from the elements. Later in the year the green tussocks of Saxifrages will be covered in tiny little flowers.

Glasshouse at Wisley (copyright Ian Curley)

One of main reasons for our visit was to see the glasshouse which was opened in 2007. We had seen the construction work going on but had moved away from the area before it was completed and opened. The structure is very impressive especially with the lake in front of it, providing beautiful reflections. It covers an area of 10 tennis courts and has different climates – dry temperate, moist temperate and tropical. As part of the half term activities was a ‘Come and See Butterflies’ event in the glasshouse which was proving incredibly popular with families, so popular there were long queues. We weren’t so bothered about seeing the butterflies and were more interested in the plants, so thinking we could bypass the 40 minute queue to see the butterflies, we left the queue to have a look at the plants only to realise half way round that you could only see the rest of the glasshouse if you were in the queue for the butterflies. We didn’t have the time or stamina to queue again. What we saw was good and I particularly liked the display about roots but it was quite frustrating not to get to see the rest of the glasshouse especially as we seemed to be the only people interested in seeing the plants.

Inside the glasshouse

The plant centre is amazing and could do serious damage to your bank account. The nursery has a wide selection of herbs, shrubs, trees, alpines, herbaceous plants and fruit bushes and trees. It is horticultural heaven. The staff, as you would expect, have a wealth of knowledge and are very helpful. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, I was so tired after 4 hours of walking around I didn’t have enough energy for the shop. I was very tempted by the trained fruit trees but all I could manage was a pot of blue wood anemone. If you really want to do the plant centre justice I suggest you start here first. It has the added advantage that you don’t have to pay to get into the plant centre so if you didn’t have time to visit the gardens you could just pop into the shop.

I can highly recommend Wisley and realise how lucky we were to live so close by. The gardens cover such a large area that even on a very busy day you can find quiet spots. Visitor facilities are good with a selection of places to eat. It is always worth checking what events are on, they offer a full programmes throughout the year ranging from courses and talks for adults to childrens craft making days.

For more information visit the RHS website

I wouldn’t be without ….

Tags

cold frames, half hardy plants, hardy plants, sowing biennials, sowing seeds

I wouldn't be without my cold frames

The seed sowing season is about to start in earnest and over the next couple of months my window sills will be stuffed with seed trays and pots as I grow vegetables and flower plants for my allotment and garden. I prefer to start seeds off at home rather than directly into the ground for several reasons. Last year, the seeds I sowed directly germinated very patchily because of the very dry spring, whereas the seeds started off at home germinated well as it was easier to control their growing conditions. I also find that if I can nurture a plant to a reasonable size before planting out they are less prone to pest attacks, slugs in particular love young seedlings, but I wouldn’t be able to grow the volume of plants I do without my cold frames.

When we first moved here we realised, sadly that there wasn’t the space for a greenhouse, which was even more annoying because we were offered one for free. The compromise came in the form of a sturdy, 5ft by 3ft cold frame from the Greenhouse People. It cost £250, which felt like quite a lot to spend on a cold frame, especially since money was tight as we were doing quite a bit of work to the house and garden but I wanted something that looked like it would last. Two years later and with a newly acquired allotment I knew one cold frame wouldn’t be enough so I bought another but this time I went for the cheaper option. Well I certainly have proof you get what you pay for. The second cold frame took twice as long to erect and wasn’t very well designed. It has perspex lights rather than glass and annoyingly the perspex has a habit of working it’s way out of it’s fittings and slipping down exposing plants to the elements. Despite the second cold frame’s shortcomings it has still provided me with the extra space I need.

Seedling packed cold frame

In February and March you will find hardy plants such as broad beans, sweet peas and early peas in my cold frames and then towards the end of March and into April, as these hardy plants are moved to open ground, they are replaced by hardy flowering plants such as antirrhinums, sunflowers, scabious and cornflowers that will form my cut flower patch. Half hardy and tender plants sown indoors in April will gradually move to the cold frames in May. By the end of May, with the danger of frost having receded and all the plants now in their final growing place, the cold frames fall quiet for a while. But it isn’t long before they have filled again with sowings of biennials such as sweet williams, honesty, sweet rocket and wallflowers, sown in July to flower the following spring. Then in September I start off hardy annuals such as orlaya and scabious that will overwinter in the coldframes and can then be planted out in early spring to provide an early show of flowers.

This all sounds very organised but invariably some plants are slow to germinate, or the weather makes life difficult. Last spring was so warm and my plants grew so quickly that my cold frames were bursting at the seams but it was still only the start of May and too early to plant out, in case the weather changed and there was a late frost.

It’s not just for providing protection for young seedlings that I wouldn’t be without my cold frames, they have been useful places to overwinter plants that can cope with cold but just don’t like sitting in wet compost. Winters here in Wales tend to be wet so I move herbs, succulents and alpines into the cold frames so they stay dry, protected from the winter rains.

Of course, like anything cold frames have their problems. It is really important to keep on top of ventilation. Even in early spring the warmth of the sun on the glass can make temperatures underneath rise, causing young plants to wilt. On mild days in autumn and winter ventilation is important to stop damp air lingering and fungal diseases such as botrytis flourishing. It’s also essential to keep an eye out for pests, in particular aphids and slugs. Aphids multiply rapidly and in a confined space will spread quickly from plant to plant and if slugs find their way into your cold frame full of young, juicy seedlings. Well, lets just say it will be like a banquet for those loathsome creatures. I speak from experience, the damage caused by slugs unleashed in a cold frame can be heartbreaking. I don’t like using slug pellets, even though I buy the ones that aren’t supposed to be dangerous to wildlife but I now find a scattering in the cold frame is the best way to keep on top of them. Birds and hedgehogs don’t go into the cold frame so there is no danger of them coming into contact with them.

What wouldn’t you be without in your garden or on your plot? What piece of gardening kit has really made a difference for you? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Trying to be Organised

Tags

allotments, Growing Celeriac, organic gardening, seed sowing, verbena bonariensis

I’m a list maker. Not as bad as my mum who writes everything down on Post-it notes, which are stuck all over the house but a list maker non the less. Last year, however I didn’t have enough lists. It was my first year with an allotment and I spent most of my time feeling overwhelmed by the jobs to do. I always felt I was playing catchup. I would pick up a book or magazine and read that I should have pruned my gooseberries months ago or given my roses their high potash feed. It’s not that I’m short of information, far from it, my bookcase groans under the weight of gardening books offering tips and advice. The problem is finding the relevant bit when needed and having to wade through lots that I just don’t need for my own garden. So this year I decided to draw up month by month lists of tasks to do that were relevant to my own garden and allotment.

2012 will be the year my roses are pruned and fed at the right times, the year I don’t forget to sow the Antirrhinums in early March and the year I achieve some sort of successive sowing. Well that’s the theory anyway.

Confined indoors over the last week or so by the cold weather I went through my gardening books and created a tailor made to do list. I now have 2 sowing lists, one for the veg and the other for the cut flowers and a list of tasks to do, such as pruning and feeding. Suddenly everything seemed clearer and less daunting. Would it be taking it too far to get them laminated? Mmmm probably, although it won’t be long before they’re covered in muddy finger prints and water stains.

Buoyed by my feeling of organisation and the relatively mild weather I tackled the first job on my list for February, feeding fruit. Now is the time to give your blackcurrants, gooseberries, raspberries and strawberries a sprinkling of a balanced fertiliser. I use one from the Organic Gardening Catalogue.

Then it was time to prune the autumn fruiting raspberries cutting last year’s growth down to the ground. I can already see new growth at the base of the plants that will become this year’s stems and hopefully by August they will be groaning under the weight of fruit.

Back at home I filled a seed tray with 50:50 multipurpose compost and vermiculite and sowed some celeriac and Verbena bonariensis. You could use a special seed compost but I don’t really have the space to have different types of compost. I find a good quality multipurpose compost such as New Horizon mixed with some vermiculite works well for me. I haven’t grown Verbena from seed before, I normally buy them as small plants and once in the garden they do self seed but I find the plants you get from these seedlings are often quite spindly and never really bulk up like the ones that have been raised under cover. I collected some seed at the end of last year so I thought I’d see if I could get some earlier plants from starting them off indoors. I just used one half tray for both seed types. Dividing the tray in half and being careful where I sowed I find this works when space is limited. I only want 9 celeriac plants for the allotment and although I sowed more than 9 seeds in case some don’t germinate I couldn’t devote a whole tray, even a half tray to just celeriac.

Celeriac is another new addition to the allotment this year. Apparently I have to be patient because it is slow to germinate, up to 4 weeks I’ve read. Not really my kind of seed, I like French beans and courgettes which can be up within days of sowing but I love celeriac mashed in Bubble and Squeak so wanted to give growing it a try. It’s strange to think that I am already planning for this autumn by sowing seed for such long growing plants as celeriac but a whole spring and summer will have passed before I come to eat it.

Stress Relief and Broad Beans

Tags

broad bean sowing, clare matthews, frustrations of modern life, RHS Award of Garden Merit, The Low Maintenance Garden

Somewhere to Escape - My Garden in Summer

I’ve just spent half an hour on the phone to my bank whose security features are so robust I can’t even access my own account. They’ve implemented a new faster payment service but are now so worried about fraudulent transactions, every time I use the account it is frozen. This is even after I have had to undergo the tortuous process of remembering passwords, ID codes, pin numbers and obscure security questions such as my favourite food to make the transaction in the first place. Am I the only one whose brain struggles with the myriad of pin numbers and passwords I need to retain? For heaven’s sake, I even need a pin number for my library card.

Then there’s the washing machine which has managed to time it’s hissy fit until it is safely out of the guarantee. Are these machines programmed to do this? And don’t get me started on the supposed advance in technology that is digital TV and it’s ability to scramble the picture at crucial points during a programme.

As modern life gets more complicated and the gadgets that were supposed to save us time actually create more problems I don’t think it is a surprise that so many of us retreat to our gardens and allotments. These spaces really do feel like an escape from the modern world.  I nearly always feel better about the world after an hour or so on my plot. The jobs such as weeding, staking and deadheading are simple but incredibly absorbing, a form of meditation really. There is always so much to do, there is little time to stop and think and that’s how I like it.  The tools I use are simple, no complicated buttons to press, nothing asking for a pin number before I can use it here. I love how even a short amount of time spent in my garden or on the allotment reaps instant rewards. Even if it is as simple as weeding and making a patch look tidy I go away feeling satisfied but with a lot of modern life there isn’t that same sense of achievement.

The ground is still a bit too wet to do anything on the plot but I knew I wanted to do something that would take my mind off the frustrations of modern life so I sowed some broad beans in pots on my window sill. I didn’t grow broad beans last year but they’re one of my favourites and always really expensive to buy. I choose the variety ‘Masterpiece Longpod’ on the basis that it is strong growing, has an excellent flavour, apparently and has an AGM award from the RHS. The Royal Horticulture Society performs trials of selected plants every year, growing a number of varieties of each to see which perform the best and then awarding these the Award of Garden Merit (AGM). It’s always worth looking out for the symbol, a green label with a white trophy in the centre, on plant labels and seed packets. There are so many varieties out there and sometimes it is overwhelming deciding which ones to pick. The AGM award gives you the reassurance that that variety performs well.

You can sow some varieties of broad beans in late autumn but I read in Clare Matthews’ The Low Maintenance Garden that if you live somewhere with particularly wet winters, and I do, it is best to sow in late winter. Once the seed have germinated, I’ll put them straight into my cold frame and then hopefully it won’t be long before I can plant them into the ground.

A little spot of seed sowing wasn’t quite as effective an antidote to modern life as an hours digging but I’ll take what I can get at the moment.

The Ethical Way to Say ‘I Love You’

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Anna Pavord, Cornish daffodils, The Curious Gardener, Tregothnan Estate Cornwall, Valentine's Day

Why not buy some daffs this Valentine's Day

So it’s that time of year again, Valentine’s Day, when the colours red and pink take over every shop you walk into, in a celebration of love and romance. I once lived in a town where even the local hardware store covered it’s shop windows in red and pink hearts. I’m not sure whether it just felt left out but I half expected to see a sign inside saying ‘Nothing Says I love You More Than a Cordless Drill’.

Of course, it’s flowers or more specifically, red roses that are still the number one choice of gift for a loved one on Valentine’s Day. The red rose has long been the symbol for love and billions are sold around the world on the 14th February. The deep red, velvety roses are beautiful but I was reading Anna Pavord’s The Curious Gardener recently about her experiences in Ecuador at the flower farms there and it made me wonder whether there was an alternative to the now ubiquitous red rose.

In order to supply the ever increasing demand across the globe Valentine’s Day roses are grown intensively in South America and Africa using chemicals that are banned in Europe, with little attention paid to Health and Safety, causing pollution to the local area and health problems for the workers. The crops are often grown in places where there is the need for irrigation, using up limited water resources and then flown thousands of miles around the world to their final destination. Ethically, red roses get a big thumbs down.  You can read more about imported flowers in my previous post about British Cut Flowers.

It got me to thinking about why the rose has become the gift of choice. In the days running up to 14th February you can’t get stirred for dark red roses and the prices charged are eye-watering. When I asked Wellyman what he thought about flowers for Valentine’s Day, he said that a dozen red roses are seen as the done thing, that’s what all women want. But I’m not quite sure where this idea started. Does it really say ‘I love you’ if you and millions of others purchased exactly the same thing? Or does it say ‘I believe this is what global consumerism tells me I am supposed to buy you today’?

So what are the alternatives? Even in February it is possible to get flowers that have been grown in Britain. This is the peak time for daffodils from Cornwall. Cornish Country Flowers for instance, sell 60 stems of daffodils for £16 that will be delivered to your door. How many red roses would you get for £16 and just imagine the house full to the brim of daffodils?  The Flower Farm also sell a range of Cornish daffodils which includes a selection of scented Narcissi. Tregothnan Estate, again in Cornwall, have a range of beautiful British grown Valentine’s Bouquets for delivery. It’s also coming into the British tulip season with some stunning colours available from most florists.

So, Wellyman if you’re reading this it’s seasonal, British flowers for me. That should be a bit kinder on the bank balance, too.

A Brambly Hedge

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Brambly Hedge, hedgerows grubbed up, Jill Barklem

My favourite childhood book

I enjoyed reading the recent posts by An Urban Veg Patch about a book she had picked up from her library called  A Roses’s Garden and Anna at Green Tapestry with her Winter Aconite Flower Fairy post. They both made me think about my favourite childhood books from the Brambly Hedge series.

The books by Jill Barklem were about a colony of mice who lived in the trunks of hollowed out trees. Jill trained at St. Martin’s School of Art and it was on her long train journeys to college that she came up with her imaginary world. Using inspiration from walks in her local Epping Forest she filled sketch books with drawings of mice, trees and plants from the hedgerows and created the world of Brambly Hedge.

It was her illustrations that I loved the most. I was and still am mesmerised by her drawings of hollowed out trees with names like Crab Apple Cottage that had staircases winding up inside them leading to a myriad of rooms, with roaring fires, four poster beds and kitchens laden with food gathered from the hedgerows. I was fascinated by the idea of twinkling lights appearing from windows in the tree trunks, as night fell and mice with names such as Poppy Eyebright and Wilfred Toadflax scurrying back to their cosy homes. Jill Barklem’s Brambly Hedge books imbued me with a love of the countryside which has never left me.

Ironically, as Jill was writing her books the quintessential British hedgerow was continuing it’s decline. Between 1986 and 1996 the Independent estimated that Britain lost more than 110,000 miles of hedgerows, grubbed up to make fields easier to farm with large machinery. Hedgerows, it is believed, had been a feature of our landscape even before the Romans conquered and up until the Second World War they were a vital tool for farmers to manage their land, defining boundaries, dividing up land and providing shelter for livestock. The oldest known surviving hedge in England is ‘Judith’s Hedge’ in Cambridgeshire which is over 900 years old. After the Second World War there was pressure on farmers to produce more food and cheaply. Changes in agriculture meant smaller fields divided by hedges were not the most efficient way of farming and so vast tracts of hedges were destroyed, some may well have been there for hundreds of years. Norfolk, for instance has lost half of it’s hedgerows since the Second World War.

It wasn’t until 1997 that the Hedgerow Regulation Act required landowners to submit a hedgerow removal notice to their local planning department which gave councils the chance to protect ‘important’ hedges by issuing a retention notice. It seems crazy that it was only 15 years ago that hedgerows were given some protection when they are recognised as incredibly important for biodiversity. According to CPRE more than 80% of farmland birds rely on hedges for protection and food and many threatened mammals feed on their fruit and seeds. Geoffrey Lean writing in the Independent  says they are home to over 250 species of plants and nearly half of lowland butterflies breed on them. Hedgerows even lock up carbon, a 2km stretch of hedge can absorb between 1200 and 1600 kg of CO2. An average car travelling 6000 miles would emit this amount of CO2. (Norfolk Wildlife Trust)

Hedgerows criss-crossing the countryside

All is not lost though. Some counties such as Devon, Cornwall, Herefordshire and my own Monmouthshire have held onto their hedgerows. The topography suiting small fields and a predominance of livestock farming rather than arable meant there was no need to grub out hedges. Devon, in fact has more hedgerows than any other county with 33,000 miles and one quarter of these are over 800 years old. (Devon County Council website) I love holidays in Devon and Cornwall at any time of the year but in Spring a real treat is the sight of the deep and tall earthbank hedgerows alive with wildflowers. Driving down tiny lanes with tall hedgerows and trees creating a tunnels of dappled light with drifts of bluebells, wild garlic, red campion, cowparsley and foxgloves lining the lanes. A beautiful and integral part of our landscape that should be more appreciated and protected.

For more information there are some great websites out there. CPRE produces a small guide to hedgerows with a handy pull-out identification chart. Devon County Council’s website has an excellent section on hedgerows. I’ve included links for both in the post above. If you would like to survey local hedgerows contact your local Wildlife Trust.