Off The Edge Gardening

This hydrangea head is possibly the most beautiful spent flower in the world.  Of course I am open to correction about this outrageous claim, but today at L&L’s it seemed that way.  My morning spent digging out a raspberry (and ground elder) bed was enhanced by the sight of its gloriously maturing blooms.  If Helen Mirren was a flower, then this would be her, confident in her ripe beauty.

Whilst remembering the forbidden fruit that I had sampled just a few weeks ago from these canes, I asked Lionel if scrumping referred only to apples.  “Well” he told me “When I was a boy I would scrump apples, pears, plums and cherries.”  This made me feel much better about my foraging. However I cannot blame the impetuosity of youth, just the devil-may-care of age.

We have all been guilty of it.  We see a plant that we like, in fact it is love at first sight.  We must have it right away, now, without delay.  The only spanner in the works of this burgeoning affair of the hortie heart is that we can’t plant it out straight away.  There could be many reasons for this first hiccough in our relationship.  Perhaps we are off trekking across the Hindu Kush and can’t rearrange.  Maybe a total revamp of the garden has been planned and it can’t be used until the Japanese Tea House has been built.  Or maybe a little juggling needs to be done before it will actually fit anywhere.  So it stays in the pot.   It then gets shoved in a cosy corner for the winter with good intentions to give it our full attention in the spring.  In the spring it looks a little grim so we keep it in the pot for a little longer to recover.  Then one morning 20 years later, it has become a 3m tree.  Still in its pot.

Would someone please knit me a jumper in these colours.  Preferably in mohair, wide stripes and big and baggy. Thank you.

On many occasions recently  I have been tempted to feature nerines.  It is after all their time to shine in all their pink trumpety glory.  There are specimens in almost all of the gardens I visit and I have photographed them in various guises, “wet”, “dry”, “open”, “closed”, even “over”.  But somehow it didn’t seem quite autumnal enough, so many other summery things were going on to distract me.  I wanted to wait for the perfect opportunity, the perfect mood.  Today is the day.

Autumn flowering aconites.  The End.

The top ten reasons why being a gardener is so great (assessed at today’s date, it may very well all change tomorrow):

1.  Seeds
   For me the joy of the amazing miracle of germination never diminishes.  This is true whether it is as easy as a lawn of cress or needs quadruple stratification, nicking and soaking whilst doing the hokey-cokey before just one little leaf seed appears.  A subsection of this category is “seed collection”, a tic that I cannot shift in the unfailing desire for the thrill referred to above.
2. Cuttings
   The sight of a delicate searching rootlet groping out of the bottom of a pot is ever satisfying.  The root above, escaping from its nursery, is from a cerise flowered cistus (to be honest long over due potting on).  If they make it through the winter there will be four more wonderful plants in the world.  And I made them!  Of course I didn’t really make them but I helped them along a little, which must count for something.
3.  Plant Sales
   Recently I purchased a Hamamelis x intermedia “Jelena” for £5.  Reduced from £44.99.  I nearly fainted.  Need I say more?
4.  Flower buds
   The buds are often more exciting than the actual flowers.  The anticipation is the perfect part, the promise of things to come, as they swell and flirtatiously emerge from their casing.  When the plant in question hasn’t flowered before, it is almost unbearably fraught.  Will the bud fall off before blooming?  Will some hungry passer-by consider it an opportune snack?  Or will I get caught napping and miss the wondrous event, only to return and find a shrivelled memory of the glory that had gone before?  Stressful, but in a good way.
5.  The People
   At the risk of being taken behind the cycle sheds and being beaten up for being a creep, one of the best things about my job is the people I come across in my professional life.  Be it clients, other gardeners or nursery folk they are all entertaining, generous and appreciative.  If they aren’t then I just move on out …..
6.  The Seasons
   Only when you work outside can you truly appreciate the changing of the seasons.  It is not about dates it is about signs; smells, sounds, sights and feelings.  The first haze of spring green, the buzz of high summer, the ripeness of autumn and the still centre of winter.  These things are immovable and inevitable, there is something very comforting in that.
7.  Cake
   Home-made, shop bought, chocolate or carrot, I am not fussy.  There should be a class at horticultural college on this subject.
8.  Wildlife
   There is nothing better to raise the spirits than a close encounter with the wild side of life.  It is a privilege to work in close proximity to the inhabitants that lurk in many of our gardens. Frogs, toads, slow worms, birds and bees, badgers and foxes.  Even the more (note I am not saying “totally”) domesticated creatures give me great joy including puppies, pigs and ponies.
9.  The Weather
   Sun when rain is forecast.  Rain when the water butts are empty.  Early morning mists and cool breezes on a sultry day.  All most welcome.
10. Doing Something Positive
    Attempting to create something more beautiful or productive than before is a marvellous thing. As is helping a tiny part of this beautiful earth become less poisonous and more nurturing to flora and fauna.  To spend your day trying to enhance our environment, in however small a way, and sharing that experience with others is a feeling very hard to explain.  It is an amazing feeling.  It makes me happy.  I would recommend it to everyone.  It is good for my soul and hopefully other’s too.

And for all these things I count my blessings.

Investigations into the Great Pasty Theft continued at The Farm today.  CSI scoured the site looking for crumbs, rejected crusts or even signs of the plastic wrapping, all to no avail.  It is becoming evident that we are up against seasoned professionals.  Tiny was keeping tight-lipped about his part in the misdemeanour.  We are hoping that one of the lop-eared sows will squeal.  (Sorry)

Autumn sunshine + flower spikes of Miscanthus sinensis “Adagio” = something to remember

Occasionally I struggle to think of even a few words to accompany my meagre photographs.  On these uninspired days some will arrive eventually and, to give them their due, they rarely let me down completely.  Today, however, my problem is one of too many words.  A lexicon is zooming around in my head, bouncing off the sides in a truly chaotic manner.  Do you remember when you were little and you ran too fast for your legs to cope with and so fell over?  That is what I feel like today, but with thoughts instead of feet.  What should I mention first and what will I have to omit about my day at RHS Rosemoor?

Shall I mention the excellent company?  It would be only fair as Torrington Tina and Crystal contributed greatly to this wonderful day.  They were perfect companions both during our extensive wanderings and later scoffing raspberry & almond cake and rosemary & chocolate shortbread in the restaurant.  What is more TT came bearing gifts, a box of delights including Aloysia triloba, Salvia elegans and other delicious morsels.

What about the weather?  Bright and almost cloud free, warm enough to be coatless but not so hot as to induce any unladylike perspiration.  The light was flattering for photo and folk.

Or perhaps I should mention the wonderful gardeners?  Kind, generous and oh so very very clever.

Surely we can’t ignore the vistas, the landscape at this time of year is punctuated by brazen bonfires that will not expire until the wind whips off the last burnished leaf.  Or perhaps the restful pine forest with its fern carpet leading to the reflecting lake, so mirrored you could skate upon its surface.  The potager with black kale and nasturtium, the curtain call of the rose gardens, sizzle of the hot garden, all contained by stately yew hedges freshly sculpted by a master mathematician.  Harry Potter (thanks TT) conifers move only when heads are averted striding through flowering grasses and bamboos.  And the gentle meanderings of the winter garden, preparing for its moment of glory.

Then of course there are the plants, the commonplace as cherished as the rarity.   Beech rubs shoulder with Zelkovia, aster with isoplexis.  None are forgotten; bog, carnivorous, scree, shrub, alpine and herb, all are here.  Labels once noted in shabby notebooks are now photographed for later reference.

The sum of these many and marvellous parts is hard to calculate, I would imagine the result is a very large number.