This is the goddess of my garden. She oversees all, winter and summer, the blue anemones below her in spring, the birds and snails, the falling leaves, the depredations of winter. In summer you can hardly see her peering out from the dogwood which has grown around her. She keeps the garden in order. She gives and she takes. Her smile is the careful smile of a Victorian lady. She watches over the snow, the slush, the winter nights, the stars, the straw yellow lawn of summer. The dog, the children, the silence, the...
> MOREBetter No Plants than Sick Plants! Eighteen months ago box blight descended. Either side the path I had low rows of dwarf box, Buxus suffruticosa, and beautiful they looked too. Then in the cold damp summer my bright green box turned dull brown. They became two rivers of death. Box blight attacks box leaves and stems and is caused by two fungi specific to box. Dwarf box is particularly vulnerable, but the common box, Buxus sempervivens, is more resistant, and my topiary balls of ordinary box emerged virtually unscathed. The blight...
> MOREPeter Wake who grew roses at Hambleden used to say he never picked flowers because ‘it’s like cutting off the heads of friends’. But where would a house be without flowers, and many plants the more they are picked the more they produce flowers. Wanting to learn more, I went for a day course by Sarah Raven’s on cutting flowers from the garden. We usually think flowers from our gardens won’t last as long as florist flowers. Sarah said, not so! She gave us some golden rules. Pick at the right time of day, she said. ...
> MORESUCCULENTS I must have about fifteen different succulents and the odd thing is, when I think of the dozens of plants I’ve managed to kill over the years, I’ve barely lost one. I love them outside in bowls in summer, but particularly I love them now, indoors on the window sill. They include include several sedums, stonecrops, agaves, aeoniums, echeverias and more. Each bowl is a garden in its own right. They cope with drought by storing water in their leaves. They are sun loving, and come in subtle shades of blue grey green. I started with...
> MOREIt rains, every day. Bob has installed the old wooden butt I used on the farm and in two days it’s overflowing. There’s no tap – it’s just a dipping butt. The rain patters persistently, softly. It nags. The greenhouse I sited in a concrete dip so the neighbours would not be annoyed by the sight of it, sits in a pond.
> MOREApril 20th. Seeds on the kitchen window sill have germinated far better than in the cold greenhouse. Up have come seedlings of a perennial sunflower in a beautiful soft yellow (in the catalogue anyway) Helianthus maximiliani – chosen for Max aged six, he will be pleased – which apparently has a chocolate scent, plus lobelia (easy I know) and Tagetes minuta, whose roots are supposed to have a secretion deterring or even killing weeds, including ground elder and the like (some hope! but …). Meanwhile, in the...
> MOREMARCH GARDENING Why grow your own vegetables? In these hard times, growing your own helps ease the family budget. The mail order seedsman D.T. Brown for an initial outlay of £34.36 grew and harvested summer vegetables on a plot 30 by 9 feet, giving the plants and soil no special treatment. Results included climbing beans at a market price of £48.22, courgettes costing over £30, and many more, altogether saving over £260. You can find full results on their website www.dtbrownseeds.co.uk. How does the novice choose &...
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