I used to weed out ones I wasn’t so keen on, the pale pinks, the small flowered ones, they’re insipid I said, but now (age, my age!) I let them be, and they have affairs and breed, and this moment it’s a ball – girlish colours, pale yellow with magnificent spurs, powder blue and white, pink, pink and white beside dark macho blues. They sway together, bending and kissing. Promiscuous is the word botanists use about flowers like these, condemning their glorious open handed love. How they love this chalky soil, dry...
> MOREWhat I like about containers is that when the rest of the garden looks tired or in a mess, I have my containers under control – weeded and watered, even in late August, but at the same time sporting a wild, exuberant look. So, I’ve been planting up the four large stone bowls on the patio. I love doing it, I love the feel of the compost, weedless and stoneless, as I add jelly granules to hold water and slow release fertilizer (‘wear gloves’ say instructions – what rubbish). It’s like sifting...
> MOREJane, who lives across the yard from me, has the tiniest slit of a garden border which currently sports the earliest and best yellow rose of all, Canary Bird. I’ve never grown it, because I haven’t room for something large and rangy which it normally is, sending out great spurs which reach seven feet. But with her Canary Bird, Jane clips it in due course so tightly that when it blooms it’s just a ball of golden flowers. Slight scent when the sun is on it, which in Bay Tree Yard is only half the day. It usually...
> MOREThe place is awash with tulips. And to think I used to think them vulgar, gaudy, like plastic beakers for a children’s picnic, not my thing at all because I was too shy and introverted. But these sing and dance and do the cancan, and all I can do is take hands and join in, and laugh. They’re mostly Apeldoorn varieties, plain Apeldoorn, Golden Apeldoorn and Apeldoorn Elite, because these are mostly perennial, coming up year after year. The fiery colours mix well. (One year I had in nearby pots some purple ones, which looked...
> MOREApril 1st. The trees boom in the wind –something is happening up there. I was reading The Lord’s Army, about the army of children in Uganda who murder, burn and steal as best they can. They are organised by a man named Kony, who believes he is God. Spirits are everywhere – and Kony is possessed by a murderous spirit. But, though the book is about this evil in a corner of Uganda, I keep glimpsing beyond in the rest of Uganda and in Africa a glorious animism . Everything is alive with spirits, and the churches are full, and...
> MOREThe garden: sacred sanctuary, place for scientific study, haven for solitude and thought, or just a space for sociable delights? Children’s playground, sculpture park? For me it’s a bit of all of these but especially a private place where I grow plants and sow seeds, weed and exult over a plant I’d thought lost, where I interact with nature and am blissfully at one with it. I don’t have to talk with anyone. I put my arms round the birch, my lady of the woods. Together with plants and trees extending new shoots, I...
> MOREMarch 13 The snowdrops are fading, their souls are elsewhere, they no longer speak, only their plump green ovaries glisten above the dry brown petals. Soon they will go, leaving not a trace as leaves die and fall on the soil. It was only when I picked some a month back to bring inside, that I realised they had a glorious honey scent. For the moment, I’ve already dug up and replanted some of Ma’s Mules Ears (maybe Armine, or Benhall Beauty? A thick green band above the bridges) in a position where I can see them from the house. I...
> MOREJonquil had to choose between her bedroom with its sky view, and her basement with its garden view, and she chose the former. I thought she was mad, but now I understand. I lay in bed, sleepless. The dark sky became dull gold, then bruised yellow and mauve, then it had a band of brilliant rose against blue, which faded, and it became stippled with little clouds. It changed each moment. It was my garden in the sky. An effortless garden. Every day different. Then I fell...
> MORECatkins, yellow and pollen grainy, hang from the hazels. Cornus buds and new stems are swelling red. There’s a single yellow crocus, where did it come from? And in a sunny corner a crowd of blue Iris unguicularis with their tiger skin badges. In the sitting room the little orange tree has fruit and buds, and longs to go outside but I said, not yet. In the greenhouse two pots of new alliums show pleated leaves two millimetres high – their names are Midnight Blue and Back to Black – and I am thrilled. They...
> MOREI picked some snowdrops in full bud, and within an hour they had opened their propellers to release a honey scent – and though I’ve seen thousands in woods and gardens, I never realised snowdrops were fragrant. Snowdrops – I love them en masse in the woods, but also I love them in the garden where I can pick and examine them like a jeweller, comparing the detail, gloating over differences. Some are double like ballerinas in their green lined tutus, some – viridipice – are tipped green at the outer petal...
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