Bluebell Cottage Gardens and Nursery

In the beginning...

2012-02-04T19:16:00.003Z

It's five years this week since Dave and I ended up at Bluebell Cottage.... I am still asked quite regularly how we ended up here. So here's the story, with the benefit of the clearer perspective of a rear-view mirror. Go on, you know you want to know...

Dave and I ran an IT company together, both working full time there from 1996 to 2006. He was happy enough, but I had become desperate for a change. I slowly dropped into part time work, studying at Reaseheath College for the RHS Level 2 in Horticulture one day a week, and volunteering as a gardener at Dunham Massey for half a day too. To say I was an avid gardener would be something of an understatement. I kept a blog, Diary of a Weekend Gardener.

I don't remember how or why, but I sent off an application for the BBC's Gardener of the Year competition that summer. I have never entered a competition before or since. To cut a very long story short, I got through the Q&A round and the garden visit round and got into the final. I drove to Tamworth with my valiant assistant Hazel (our eldest) in a large white van to build a real garden against the clock and under the merciless eyes of a suite of TV cameras. After three frantic days of garden building and question answering, Joe Swift told me I had won and gave me a pretty little glass trophy. The programme was filmed in September 2006 and broadcast in December 2006.

A few weeks before filming, I had visited Lodge Lane Nursery, looking for plants for the competition garden. The place was clearly run down, but the plant range was fantastic, albeit weed-ridden. I found a chap called Rob, who was attempting to weed one corner of a huge polytunnel. He explained that the original owners, Rod and Diane Casey, had moved away two years ago. The new owners had soon found that running the place was beyond them. Key staff had left and the remaining people were struggling to to cope. But he helpfully found me many of the plants I wanted and sent me for a wander round the (closed) garden while he tidied them up.

A few days later, I suggested to Dave that we might go there for a walk along the nearby River Weaver (and to pick up a few more plants of course). The ever-helpful Rob once again sent us for a stroll in the garden. We walked up between the apple trees, heavy with fruit, and stopped at a seat at the top. The sound of a heavy diesel engine chugged towards us on the other side of the hedge and we peeked through, expecting to see a tractor. It was a canal boat. The garden backs onto the towpath side of the Trent and Mersey canal. Dave was clearly impressed and said 'You know we've been thinking of moving when Holly finishes college? Well, if this place came on the market, it would be perfect...' I said, 'Dave, we could never afford it, and anyway, whoever lives here isn't going to sell in a million years...'.

We went to collect our plants from Rob, said our thanks and goodbyes and went home.

Three days before I left for Tamworth, I realised I had a bit of money left in the garden build budget. I drove back to Lodge Lane Nursery to see what I could pick up. There were two signs on the gate. One said 'Clearance Sale, All Plants Half Price'. The other was an estate agent's 'For Sale' sign. I phoned the estate agent from the car, then took a deep breath and phoned Dave. 'Do you remember that place by the canal, the one you said...' He remembered, of course. The asking price was more than we thought we could raise, but the place was in need of a lot of work.... Dave's advice was sound. 'Forget it for now, get that competition out of the way, and if you win it, we can talk about it when you get back..'

Well, I won the competition and five months later we bought the cottage, garden, nursery, meadow and woods. And that, folks, was just the beginning...

Dave still runs the IT business - I'm still closely involved but rarely need to go there now. His commute is now twenty minutes instead of two, but this is a fabulous place to come home to. I run the nursery and gardens and Dave mucks in on summer weekends. I finished the RHS Diploma in 2010 and have a host of new friends, new skills and fresh adventures under my belt. It's turned out to be the best thing we've ever done.

Philosophy and the art of apple tree pruning

2011-12-28T09:06:00.001Z

Present me with an apple tree in need of pruning and I become a touch philosophical. I could write a book about pruning a single tree - not so much about the technical how-tos of the pruning itself but about the whys and wherefores. The vexed question of how much to direct the tree by pruning and how much to let it be the tree it wants to be. The temptation to satisfy my aesthetic sense and remove a wayward branch, set against the tree's innate instinct to grow as it sees fit. Does the tree know best? Whether to let a fat bud burst into flower, or whether to sacrifice it in favour of its better placed neighbours. Do I know better? The impossibility of capturing an entire, graceful, rounded tree on a small, flat, two-dimensional photograph. How the palest grey branches turn black when viewed against a near-white winter sky. The ladybirds sheltering in the bark crevices, the robin perched on a bouncing twig two feet away, black-eyed and hopeful.

And around me, a scattering of mahogany-hued prunings, offspring-in-waiting if I only had rootstocks to graft them onto. The buzzard wheeling overhead and the slow-moving blue and red canal boats lapping softly through the brown water nearby. If I was a poet, I'd write an entire book of poems - perhaps Zen and the art of apple tree pruning. Preferably something less plagiaristic.

Apple blossom (1.)

I think the cause of all this musing is the relationship which develops over time between the tree and the tree pruner. Each cut is a response to how the tree grew last year, which is in turn a response to how I pruned it the year before. Apples develop where I asked for them two years ago by pruning a new spur. Young branches exist because I encouraged a branch to grow there by leaving a longer leader.

Perhaps, like dogs, apple trees come to look like their owners. Mine are in generally good health, minor flaws are accepted or ignored. They are allowed to grow into their natural overall shape, but pruned to control excessive growth. I feed them sparely and avoid chemical treatments. Mostly they are slightly over productive. They could do with thinning out in June but like me, they aren't great at prioritising.

Spartan apples

At least they all have names now, my five teenage foster-trees. With help from Derek Jones at Reaseheath College we finally identified the large tree near the nursery entrance as Winter Gem. It's badly cankered from the ground up but still productive. The others are:
Egremont Russet (foppish and a little weak),
Spartan (sturdy and fecund),
Monarch (buxom and rosy cheeked),
Bramley (energetic and bountiful).

I planted a Laxton's Superb maiden last year, trimming its whippy six foot leader down to 4 feet to make the mature tree more accessible. It's forming its first baby branches now. If I live here long enough I plan to climb it when I'm 90.

Dave shot some video footage of me pruning apple trees yesterday. I should have spent this last hour editing the footage to provide a helpful 'how-to' video. But writing is infinitely more enjoyable than battling video editing software. So you'll have to wait a few days for the practicalities and settle for my idle musings in the meantime.

Most of our 2010 crop

1. The observant amongst you may look a little closely at this apple blossom image and decide that it all looks a bit of a tangle underneath that froth of pretty blossom - hardly a masterful example of apple tree pruning. You are undoubtedly right. It's an old image, but a fetching one nonetheless.

All I want for Christmas....

2011-12-12T09:54:00.001Z

Want to buy a plant for Christmas for the gardener in your life? My guest blog on the BBC Gardener's World website might help....

Sue's Guest blog on BBC website

How to: put on a tree tie

2011-12-10T22:27:00.001Z

It's bare root planting season and if you do one thing this winter, plant a new tree. I don't buy the 'my garden is too small for a tree' nonsense. The floor space that the trunk of a small tree takes up is negligible. The shade it will cast is either too little to worry about if sits to the north of your garden, or a welcome break from the sun's glare otherwise. Choose the right tree (a subject for another day) and you'll get blossom in spring, fruit for you or to bring in wildlife in the autumn and it will make your garden properly three dimensional. Show me a garden that doesn't need a tree and I'll - I'll call it a balcony.

Anyway. I digress. I watched the Christmas edition of Gardener's World on Friday 9th December and among much to enjoy, one little clip had me reaching for the replay button. Monty planted a gorgeous new apple tree and wrapped a tree tie round it in a figure of eight. I empathised immediately. A few years ago I stood with one of those long rubbery tree ties in my hand and messed with it for ages trying to work out which bit went where. Perhaps it's a girl thing, but instead of giving up and wrapping it round randomly, I went online and looked it up. I know I'm being unfairly sexist, but men never RTFM.

So, here it is, no whizzy music, special features or celebrities. The chickens refused to get involved too. But, when you find yourself with a tree tie in hand, wondering which bit goes where, you'll be back...

33 degrees south....

2011-12-02T22:44:00.001Z

For each of the last five years I have blocked out two clear weeks in my diary in November to make space for a proper holiday. And each year it's been whittled away - (I'm going to mostly, but not entirely fairly, blame Dave) - until we've been left with three nights, two days and a long drive either end to somewhere windy, wet and barely above freezing. Top destinations in recent years have include the Llyn Peninsula (North Wales), Christchurch (Dorset) and the lovely, if foggy, Langdale valley (Cumbria).

But I was 50 earlier this autumn and in a moment of wonderfully romantic exuberance, Dave promised me a fortnight in South Africa. There were witnesses. So we left cool, rainy Manchester behind one November evening and flew south through a long night, watching on the little screen as the plane inched down that marvellous graphic of the sun's curved light and shade pattern on an oddly rectangular planet. We dropped through the southern sky and into Africa as the sun rose.

We'd seen snatches of the South Africa v. Australia test match the week before, played at the Newlands, with the sun blazing in a hot blue sky over Table Mountain. I packed one fleece. But this is Cape Town and the weather is nothing if not fickle, and we landed in exactly the weather we left behind - 11C and raining. The same, but most assuredly not the same.

(Bear with me for a minute or two longer. I assure you we'll be back to plants in no time...). Let's be frank. The details of other people's holidays are always a little dull and faintly depressing. Photos of slightly sunburned people smiling maniacally into the camera with some lesser known monument over their shoulder accompanied by enthusiastic, lengthy tales about people you've never heard of and they will probably never see again, all enjoying themselves hugely while you were working. So, I shall spare you the details and give you the potted summary.

We were sandblasted in a gale at Cape Point. (The picture above is not quite Cape Point, which is a little less scenic than this nearby view). We passed a group of bikers on Harleys n the Cape Reserve coast road with an ostrich in hot pursuit. We admired the posh yachts in the smart new V&A Waterfront and the huge moray eel in the aquarium. We ate and drank like royalty for not very much money. We slept wonderfully as long as the curtains were heavy and blocked out the blazing morning sun. We almost lost a borrowed canoe in a sudden storm on a lagoon in Wilderness. We didn't see whales or swim in the sea (too late for the former and too windy and wild for the latter). Neither did we visit the much lauded Stellenbosch. We just couldn't be bothered with all that restauranting. The Cape is rich, poor, beautiful, energetic, enterprising, struggling, young, optimistic, threatened, scenic, windy, proud, welcoming and astonishingly westernised. I loved it.

There. That's the holiday basics dealt with. But there are some proper treats I want to share with you - knowing that my audience here is largely of a horticultural leaning. The Cape, as plant devotees there are keen to tell you, is home to one of of the world's seven distinct major floras, and by far the smallest. (Most of the northern hemisphere above 40deg North is all defined as one flora, so you get the picture).

So, emboldened by Dave's developing interest in plant-shaped things, we did a bit of plant-spotting on our travels. By the end of the fortnight he could tell his Leucospermums from his Leucodendrons and had actually stopped by the side of the road twice to let me hop out and snap something that had caught my eye. Of course we visited Kirstenbosch (twice), the Cape's famous botanic garden. We bought a couple of wildflower identification books and tried to make sense of a totally unfamiliar plant world. Call it a busman's if you like. But it's in my blood now. Seeing plants that are new to me just makes me happy.

So here you go. A few choice shots from Kirstenbosch to get you started.
Just a few from the Protea family. So much more to come...

A close-up of a King Protea in Kirstenbosch. We searched for these, finally concluding that we'd missed the season before following the song of a sugar bird and finding them close by.

A perfect King Protea. It's the size of a man's two cupped hands.

Leucadendron discolor. I love the waxy, greenish-lemon petals of this cone flower.

Leucanthemum catherinae.
So named for its resemblance to a catherine wheel firework when viewed from above. I preferred it from this angle.

Stunning Leucospermum reflexum. There's a pretty yellow version too.

You get the picture. Just a small selection of the stunning plants that greet you at every turn. Plant porn, if you wish. Or as I prefer it, essential research in an area of huge personal interest......

But what makes Kirstenbosch so special isn't just the plants. It's the setting.

Look up, and every plant is framed by the back of Table Mountain. You can simply walk out of the garden up into the wild Fynbos area that inspired it and to the top of the mountain if you choose.....

....or look down and you see across Cape Town's suburbs to the mountains beyond and to Table Bay. Everywhere there is a view. Every picture has a frame.

That'll have to do for now. Back with a bit more from the Fynbos in a few days......

Well almost all for now anyway. This is the plant nursery at Kirstenbosch. We almost missed it as you have to walk through the gift shop to get to it. But it is surely the most lip-smacking nursery on the planet, stuffed with plants which are only found in the wild within a few miles of its doors.

Yes we bought some protea seeds and the necessary smoke papers to grow them on. Yes, I know it is futile but I really don't care. No, we won't ever get them to grow in the garden but it will be fun trying.

And finally, truly finally, there was a stunning display of sculpture in the garden under the collective title 'Untamed'. I was wowed.

Just a little longer...

2011-11-29T17:08:00.001Z

We've been away for our annual winter break. It has become a Beesley tradition to plan to take a fortnight off, but for it to get whittled away at the edges until all that's left is a three day break in Anglesey in a howling gale.

This time we did it properly - a fortnight in the Western Cape, South Africa. Such a brilliant place, mountains, two oceans, unique flora, fascinating culture, very rich, very poor and everything in between.

So, I promise you, a blog post on our SA adventure is on its way. More than one post probably. But first I need to unpack, catch up with emails and generally get my life back in order. Bear with me....

The joy of change....

2011-10-31T22:07:00.001Z

This summer was my fifth at Bluebell Cottage Gardens. Conventional wisdom has it that you should spend at least a year in a garden and observe it carefully before making major changes, rather than rushing in. Fortunately for the garden, my vast appetite for change has been more than sated until now by the huge potential presented by vast areas of unwanted lawn.

In the first winter we created two new 100 square metre beds and filled them with drifts of perennials and grasses. I converted the tired yellow garden to the vibrant exotic garden in the second winter, created the bird border in the third, and turned the prim lawns under the fruit trees into the Orchard Meadow in the fourth.

But all these well-received changes only served to show how aged and lacklustre the two largest borders have become. The Canal border hasn't been overhauled since it was planted 20 years ago. And that is a very long time to leave Lysimachia clethroides and Crocosmia 'Lucifer' to spread unchecked. I also think it's just too dull - it lacks height and any sense of rhythm.

So, the canal border's time has come. I'll try uploading a drawing, but imagine, if you will, a straight border 25m by 5m with round ends. Its long northern border is bounded by a 2m wide strip of lawn, then rises to a mixed hedge of hawthorn and elm. On the other side of the hedge is the towpath side of the Trent and Mersey Canal.

On the long south side is a very wide grass path. Opposite it are the two square borders that I created in 2008, shown here, with large drifts of herbaceous perennials and grasses.

The grand plan is to add height to the back of the canal border with trees which will carry through to the woodland corner at the far end. The height will scale down to a herbaceous leading edge which will echo the colours and shapes in the borders opposite.

So, to work. The first job was to lift the grass path at the back and alter the front line to better match the borders opposite.

The wooden post in the foreground is at the edge of the border in the picture below...

Next, we extended the border at the end closest to the camera to include an established Prunus serrula which had been sitting in a little island bed on its own. Two young P. serrula have been added along the emerging woodland path which will weave along the back of the border.

And with the weather with us, this week we finished digging out the last of the old perennials and cleared the border. All the perennials we want to re-use have been lined out in the border and labelled.

Finally, for now, we lugged the four Betula nigra that we used at Tatton Show in 'Grasses with Grace' through the nursery, up through the orchard and into the newly emptied border. These will add height to the back and punctuate the space, creating distinct sections into which I can plant the taller perennials.

That's it for the moment. This ongoing mild spell has me slightly in a quandary as to what to do next. It's getting late for planting perennials and grasses. But the soil is still so warm and light that it seems too good an opportunity to miss. And there is so much else to do in spring. I'll probably make a start and hope for the best.

This blog post has nothing to do with gardening

2011-09-29T23:49:00.003+01:00

Tonight is one of those rare nights that I already know I will remember. It's 8pm on the 29th September and pitch dark, but I am sitting outside, warm and comfortable in my work shorts and one of Dave's thin wool jumpers. We recorded 26.7C in the shade today on the nursery. It's still warm now. My laptop is balanced somewhat precariously on my knee and the arm of a chair. I'm typing by the friendly yellow glow of a hurricane lamp - (they are as cheap as chips and much better than any posh candle thing). One of the few useful things I learned at F.E. college was to touch type - I just need the light occasionally to relocate my hands on the keys. Dave is out here too, but I'm not being unsociable - he's setting up his telescope. Confident of clear skies all night, he's experimenting with some new lenses and a webcam. Jupiter will rise soon in the east, glimmering at first through the sprawling crab apple tree before soaring over the house, brighter than any star.

I looked at Jupiter through binoculars last night and could see that it was a disc. I could just see three moons too, though hazy and moving in and out of my focus, mainly because I knew to look for them. But that was with 20th century lens technology. Galilleo saw four moons 400 years ago when he didn't know they were there, with the very limited glass quality of the era. It seems quite astonishing. Through Dave's scope I could see the four moons clearly, with two bands dark bands across the planet and just make out a bulge in the bottom band - the red spot.

It is absolutely still. I can hear passing cars on the road a mile away, a train on the distant West Coast mainline and the faint hum of the tracking drive on the telescope. The only other sound is the regular thwack of large yellow crab apples dropping onto the conservatory roof and bouncing onto the path below. I don't really mind that these are largely man made sounds. We are product and part of nature after all, if a rather noisy part. Last night we heard owls, but I think it's too early yet. Something is biting at my legs. How good to be in England and not worry what the bite might carry, other than an itch.

This appears to be turning into one of those irritating day-in-a-life blog entries of no interest to anyone other than the writer, but it's my blog so I may as well roll with it, now that I've started. I don't do it very often.

The nursery closes for the winter in four days time, which seems quite amusing just now, given the weather. We close for many reasons, mostly because there is no point standing around in an October gale waiting for one customer to come in, shuffle around in the rain, have a chat to be sociable, buy a cup of tea for 80p and go home. But it's partly pragmatic. The nursery's water supply freezes and has to be turned off, so there are no toilets, except in the house. It makes commercial sense to close, but it also gives everyone and everything a break. Just as I will look forward to customers in March, right now I am more than ready to shut the doors. It's hard to explain why. It's just time to go quiet, to think and dig and plant and watch and think a bit more. After the summer months of continuous conversation, I barely speak all day in winter, except to Peter. Though that's not really talking - more the occasional exchange of syllables, grunts and nods. That's me, of course. Peter, largely silent in summer, does the talking in winter - of ravens, waxwings, fieldfares, moles, the cold, his dodgy knee and tales of his many alleged misdemeanours from his youth. I just listen and enjoy it.

We came indoors to watch Outnumbered, which is still very funny, but growing up. The news was the usual western-centric mix, prefixed with a description of Angela Merkel as 'The most powerful woman in Europe'. She is of course the most powerful person in Europe, of either gender. Much ado about the possibility of raising the motorway speed limit to 80mph. Nothing about millions displaced by flooding in India. Eno Eruator presented the weather in the most stunningly bright shiny pink top and fitted skirt with a deep orange leather belt and tangerine 5" heels. Honestly, I generally pay no attention to people's attire. But Eno, you shine so brightly. Good on you.

It's conference season and Ed Milliband's speech is being dissected to the nanosecond. I'm depressed by politics. The Liberals still have me logically (I'm essentially an economic Keynsian - I think the job of government is to check and balance a vibrant free market - and very much a social liberal). But the necessary pragmatism which drove Nick Clegg into coalition and the blue tint that has washed over them since has driven away the left wing half of the party and it is facing another 20 years in the wilderness. The Tories look increasingly desperate to appease the financial sector, which shafted the economy in the first place, by holding the line on spending cuts while the economy stagnates. (I think we should be taking advantage of astonishingly low interest rates to borrow and invest in the nation's capital infrastructure to boost growth now and productivity in the future). Meanwhile Labour are wallowing in a morass of retrospective self-flagelation.

It's a bit of a mess. Though not as much of a mess as Greece is in. Tonight the Germans voted through a massive bailout fund. Whether or not it works, for now the Germans are the ultimate Europeans. For now. How long ageing Germans will work and pay taxes to fund early retirement for Greek civil sevants before they complain in their droves is anyone's guess.

So, a very ordinary night at home, with Dave, a bit of TV, a glass or three of red wine, some chocolate, an occasional glance at Twitter, me mulling on things I know next to nothing about. And all this ordinariness made extraordinarily memorable by a chance high pressure system over Scandanavia pulling a heatwave up from Greece. Like I said before, how good it is to be in England, and not in Greece.

Soft, soporific September

2011-09-27T09:58:00.002+01:00

I do love the garden in September. I know that it is past it's colourful best and that there are gaps where earlier flowering plants have died back. But, rather like me at 50, the autumn garden is silvery, softening and running to seed. It has its own appeal and I like it very much.

The ongoing loan of Juliet Scott's 'Grace' has given the square borders a natural focal point and she looks entirely at home set amongst the grasses. To the left is Stipa 'Wind Whispers' - a form of tenuissima, but the fronds keep a pleasing 'combed through' look all winter and don't get the matted look of the parent. Top right is Miscanthus 'Undine'. Lovely pinkish flowerheads, not too tall and emerging fairly early for a Miscanthus. The tall, fine fronds emerging from around the base of the sculpture are Stipa pseudoichu. A new one for me this year - I bought a few plugs in on an impulse from CGF and it has been gorgeous. I shall watch its performance through winter closely.

The same border looking down the garden to the gap in the yew hedge. (A reminder to me to increase the width of the Calamagrostis clumps next year)

Staying with the silvery theme, Lunaria rediviva was spared the dead-heading frenzy this year and now looks stunning, its long tapering papery pod centres glittering in the low light. Peter looked askance at the brown, dead looking pods I was so keen to keep. But I've been collecting the seeds carefully over the past couple of weeks, peeling off the outer cases with their sparse haul of seeds, leaving just the central oyster-shell parchment. It's one of those fiddly jobs I like to do for a minute or two when I'm in a ponderous mood.

I spent a good few hours yesterday really studying areas of the garden, planning changes for next year. Mostly this is about aesthetics - my aim is to create a continuous sequence of vistas which work one after another as you wander round the garden. Different areas come into their own at different times of year, but it's vital that none are ever 'dead' zones. So, for example, the exotic garden, which looks its best in late summer, has a late spring display of bold tulips and then giant alliums before the main event kicks in.

But for me it's also about plant diversity and experimentation. It's a big garden so I like to embrace all possible colours somewhere, including different flower forms, contrasting formality and informality. I enjoy the very, very tall (Peucedanum verticillare and Rudbeckia maxima) and the very tiny (Acaena microphylla). There are open areas and closed areas. Bold, colourful areas and cool restraint. The garden is eclectic, if you are being kind. Lacking a singularity of theme, if you are not. But I'm aware of this, and that it mustn't be a mish-mash. I'm working on it. It will take time.

I managed a surprising amount of planning - actually writing things down and drawing too, but then got utterly distracted by the butterflies and general buzzing insectivorousness of the day. I spotted at least four Commas. This one is on Aster 'Harrington's Pink'

This bright pink aster was beseiged with butterflies and hoverflies all day. I don't know which cultivar it is, but I was quite transfixed watching their endless, frenetic feeding. The compositae group of plants - daisies, if you prefer - are so important as a food source for butterflies. Every gardener should grow them, whether you like them or not. So there.

Now, you were going to get a lovely set of pictures of the apple trees, groaning with tantalising shiny red fruit. But uploading pictures for this one has been too tortuous for words. Some have been rotated against my will. Others I can't post text next to. I don't know why. But I've had enough of fighting it and I'm off to do a spot of gardening.

A bit of a rant about Plant Breeder's Rights...

2011-09-17T22:59:00.000+01:00

Bear with me - this is not the usual 'all royalties are theft' complaint. I don't really object to people earning royalties from introducing a new plant. The sums are usually pennies per plant so the actual royalty cost makes no material difference to the retail price of a plant. And if Elizabeth Macgregor earns herself a nice pension through royalties for Anemone 'White Swan', well, she's earned it through years of hard graft. I might need the same income source one day so I'm not about to knock it.

No, my grouse is with the system for collecting royalties for Plant Breeders' Rights licenced plants. Or rather the complete lack of one. If this is unfamiliar territory for you, let me explain.

I have a large clump of Brunnera 'Jack Frost' in the garden. I can dig it up and replant divisions in the garden, but I can't dig it up, divide and sell the offspring because it is a licenced, PBR plant. I can only buy this plant from approved sources who pay a per plant royalty to the breeder. The royalty usually adds between 10 and 25 pence to the wholesale price so the cost is not a big deal. No, the big issue is supply. It's fine if your preferred wholesaler keeps a regular stock. But it's a complete pain in the neck if you sell more than you expect and can't source more. It's like having a well of spring water in your garden, but having to buy the same spring water in bottles from a supplier who only delivers twice a year. Inevitably when I see stock available I end up over-ordering to avoid running out. It's not great for my cash flow and potentially deprives other nurseries (and thus their customers) of stock.

Let's take another example - Geranium 'Orkney Cherry'. Very nice plant, drapes itself prettily over the edges of paths. I have a large and much admired clump in the garden. I buy my bought-in plants from four regular wholesale suppliers, but none of these are approved stockists, so to get Orkney Cherry for my customers I need to open an account with a new supplier, meet their minimum order conditions and pay cash up front because I'm a new customer. It's not ideal. Another is Pulmonaria 'Victorian Brooch'. I brought this lovely plant with me from my old house because I liked it so much. It is also subject to plant breeders' rights. But it is not on any supplier listings anywhere and even the breeder seems to have removed it from their wholesale listings. But it is still illegal for me to dig it up and propagate it.

Perhaps more frustrating still are plants which are ridiculously easy to propagate vegetatively, yet which I must still buy from an approved wholesaler, incurring unnecessary transport costs and requiring me to purchase plants grown in peat which I prefer not to use. Two perfect examples are Persicaria 'Red Dragon' and Campanula 'Purple Sensation'

And (oh yes, there's more), try finding out - definitively - whether a plant is subject to PBR. Try finding out who the rights holder is - and when the expiry date is. Try emailing them to ask which UK wholesalers stock their plant. Try pretending you are a nursery and asking them for permission to propagate their plant and pay them a royalty. Go on. Just pick a plant, any plant and see how long it takes and how far you get.

Inevitably, the breeders and the first line bulk propagators invest a great deal in each new plant and promote it heavily to wholesalers and the buyers of garden centre chains. This takes cash and resources and the supply chain is narrow. It's one reason why some easy to grow perennials are £8.99 in garden centres.

The present system is a creaking muddle. It means that breeders miss out on royalties and the buying public miss out on great plants or pay over the odds.

So that's my complaint. But I try never to complain without proposing a solution. My solution is to set up an organisation like the Performing Rights Association. Create a central online listing of all ornamental PBR plants with owner and expiry date. The system should be paid for by a percentage of royalties collected. Let any nursery propagate any plant. Require them to complete a return listing any plant they have propagated from the list and distribute the royalties to the rights holder. Spot check for transgressions (as now).

It would create a proper market in great plants, increase royalties for the smaller breeder, reduce the supply bottleneck which drives up prices to consumers and leave nurseries free to grow in their choice of growing medium.

There. Rant over. Now - how to actually do something about it.... Shall I just propagate a few PBR plants and try posting a cheque to the holder? Believe me, easier said than done.....

To Southport and beyond.....

2011-08-24T05:43:00.015+01:00

Somehow I knew that Southport Flower Show was the right place to take a first, tentative dip into the murky waters of floral marquee exhibiting. And so it proved to be. With around 80,000 visitors the show is not much smaller than Tatton and the quality of exhibitors is high - many are veterans of the Chelsea/Hampton/Tatton circuit. But the place has a cheery, entertaining buzz about it. It feels like a cross between a horticultural show and a county fair, with show gardens and a big Grand Marquee, but also an arena, complete with jousting knights, sheepdog displays, falconry and clowns.

So Southport was where I chose to dip my horticultural toe and I duly won my first floral marquee silver medal. The show is reassuringly firmly judged, it seems. A couple of old hands peered at my medal, raised their eyebrows and said, in effect, 'well, you're a first timer. You'll do better here when they are used to seeing your display'. Which was interesting. I think they were just being encouraging, looking with hindsight at my rather gappy effort. It's taken me 5 years to get the measure of show garden judging and now I'm starting from scratch again in the marquee. So far I've gathered that plant size and quality is almost everything, whether you cut a stem and arrange it in a vase, or place plants in a mock garden display. Gaps are most assuredly frowned upon. Ideally the display should fill the stand from top to bottom in a seamless ripple of colour, and the more colours the better, at Southport, it seems. My restrained palette of purples, pinks and blues looked decidedly dowdy against the giant, neon-pink begonias opposite me and the eye-wateringly bright cut gladioli nearby, both of which won a coveted Large Gold medal.

I like the culture of the floral marquee - many of the people have clearly known one another for years, touring the country through the season in overlapping zigzags. Some meet up almost every week, others just once a year. It has something of the sense of an extended family in a travelling fair. There is plenty of banter, and lending and borrowing is the norm, but you are left alone to get the job done - time and focus is precious. I felt welcomed, encouraged even. The marquee is also fantastically egalitarian. A lone woman lugged in 20 trees and a pile of boulders and single-handedly built a display of acers with a mossy stream through it in three days. Right opposite her, four beefy Geordies who would not look out of place in a shipyard carried in racks of cut chrysanthemums, their soft hands gently easing every incurved bloom into a pristine display of perfect domes.

I learned much - but the main lesson was that the marquee is where I belong - with thanks to Jim Hillier for the gentle nudge. There's no question that I got the same PR value as building a show garden, plus a valuable opportunity to sell plants. It's still very hard work, but takes so much less time than building a show garden. In here I can focus on the plants alone. Which is good. Very good.

Anyway, it's all over now and back to the garden to smarten it up before our final NGS day of the year on Bank Holiday Monday. The plum crop is ripe and the damsons will be in a day or two. The orchard is reddening beautifully - the apple trees are laden with a crop so heavy that a couple of branches have broken under the weight. Soon we will be overwhelmed with produce to store, preserve, sell or give away. It's a nice problem to have.

'Grace' is gone, but not forgotten.

2011-08-02T22:21:00.015+01:00

There is a definite post-Tatton buzz about the place this week. Visitor numbers and plant sales are up, which is good. Several people have told me directly that they went to Tatton Show, saw the show garden and decided to visit us as a result. This is even better - it helps me justify to myself spending so much time, energy (and some hard cash ) building a show garden in the first place. Otherwise it would be a vanity project and that would never do.

But (you could feel a 'but' coming, couldn't you?), well two buts.

The first is that I'm still drained from the whole all-consuming physical and mental experience, and don't have the energy yet for successive enthusiastic conversations about the ideas/how/why/who/what/which 'celebs' I met/hugged/kissed etc.

And secondly, I've always had a difficult relationship with praise. I do know that to reject proffered praise is just rude, and have learned to say 'thank you' quite nicely. But I get myself in a right mental muddle if someone is too complimentary - as some people are wont to, faced with a REAL LIFE RHS GOLD MEDAL WINNER!! Finding precisely the right degree of acceptance, while maintaining one's self respect seems tricky. Apparently I should by now have the medal certificate blown up, framed and mounted on the tea room wall, have ordered 'Sue wins Gold!' t-shirts for all the staff and emblazoned 'Gold Medal Winning Nursery' all over my van. Thankfully new van signs were delivered just before the show, sans gold medal text, of course. Such things are not my style.

I may relent and permit a copy of the certificate to be mounted on the tea room wall. I think that's probably acceptable. But that's it. I am very proud of it, and will be able to say for evermore that I once won an RHS gold medal for a show garden. But that was three weeks ago and the future isn't running towards me any slower for that. Laurels cannot be sat upon.

So, here's the end of Grace - the reality of how show gardening ends for the small-time show gardener. The dancing girls have gone and the lights are cold. The cleaners are sweeping up and the last act is wiping off her make-up and packing her costume. Spot the last of the four lovely Betula nigra hanging out of the back of the trailer and the poor Nissan's rear wheel arches weighed down with the last of the block paving. It's all over till 2012.

So, next up is Southport Flower Show - my first proper shot at a floral marquee entry. I'm not too worried about the display - I've kept back enough good plants to make the stand look fine. But the nursery is not geared up for floral marquee sales - my plants are mostly in 2L pots, way larger than normal for show sales, so I don't know how the logistics, stocking and selling will work. It's only an hour each way though for re-stocking so I'll just take what I can. I hope I enjoy it - floral marquees are the way to go for me, I think.

On a brighter note I've been collecting seeds madly this week - great carrier bags full in some cases - for others just a few in a tiny envelope. I have a detailed mental seed map of the garden - I know exactly what is where and what stage they are at. A few get accidentally dead-headed when I'm not here, but my squeaks of anguish followed by frantic rummaging in the compost bin in previous years have made everyone jumpy about removing seed heads without checking with me first. I sow the tiniest percentage of what I collect, but they feel to me like vital insurance policies against loss and future non-availability. And growing our own seed-raised plants is a key part of what makes us a proper nursery.

Back with pics of the garden in a day or two. It does look great :-)

P.S. I wrote this on the 2nd Aug and didn't post straight away. It's now the 6th. I feel brighter already, but thought I'd post this anyway, for the record.

Pictures of 'Grace'

2011-07-22T21:40:00.005+01:00

By popular request, some new pictures of 'Grasses with Grace'...

And a link to my guest blog on the BBC Gardening website on summer flowering grasses

'Grace' wins Gold!

2011-07-20T21:00:00.005+01:00

What a difference a day makes.

On Monday morning my willing finishing team and I were holed up in our little marquee shletering from the rain, frustrated and bored, peering at the sky and hoping we would get just two dry hours to finish off.

On Tuesday afternoon I was presented with my first RHS Gold Medal for 'Grasses with Grace' and I stood there grinning with glee as the garden sparkled gently in the evening light.

I'm certain it was a close call - I can do gold medal planting but have neither the budget nor the energy or inclination for complex structural stuff. And it is Tatton, not Chelsea. But it's still a proper, pukka, show garden RHS gold medal and I'm very proud and pleased, for me and for everyone involved.

A few heartfelt thank yous:
- Juliet Scott for the loan of the lovely 'Grace'
- Marshalls Landscaping provided the Tegula block path
- Abel Landscaping did an excellent job of laying the path in very short time
- Dave Atkinson did a wonderful job of making the elm bench
- Pete at Bartington Forge made the lovely steel spiral poles

and to everyone else involved for helping me get the plants ready, turning up on site to build it and providing vital support services behind the scenes - ferrying stuff, food, housework etc. You all know who you are :-)

So, here's a pictorial timeline - the evolution of a show garden:

'Grasses with Grace' gets a hammering...

2011-07-17T22:04:00.004+01:00

By way of an diary update:

Saturday: Heavy downpours but enough dry spells to get on. Pushed on hard to finish planting up two of the three remaining areas. But by 4pm it was raining and miserable and I ran out of steam. More than that, I completely ground to a halt. Hit the wall. I drove home, bleary eyed, abandoned the van in the nursery and collapsed on the sofa. Poor Dave had to endure an evening of me gloomily muttering 'What's the bleedin' point?' and swearing I'd never do it again.

The day did have its lighter moments. A vision appeared at the showground gate in the shape of 5'11" Alison, whose first move was to discard her jeans and give her very long, tanned legs a bit of an airing. She proved a hit with me (strong, energetic, positive, fun and lovely) and a huge hit with some of the guys on site too. I shan't say who, but the words Bay Watch and Amazonian were mentioned... :-)

Sunday: Couldn't wake up but had a vague notion of Dave getting up early, very early. A mug of tea arrived at about 6.30 and I hauled myself up, aching and gloomy. But not only had he made me a cup of tea but he'd emptied the van of all the crap from the day before and then left home before me to get to site and make a start. Exactly the support I needed. I got to site just before 8 with one goal in mind - to finish the final two square metres of planting. It took me five hours. More than half of that was spent cowering in the marquee as another big wet squall blew through. Dave helped, handing me plants and trugs of mud to back fill with. Ruth (an Arley Hall volunteer who appears to have defected to me) turned up to provide moral support and the all important clearing up behind me.

You're probably thinking that I'm making a right fuss about nothing. That it can't be that hard putting a few plants in, rain or no rain. You're absolutely right. But the 26th mile of a marathon, uphill into a headwind in the rain is like a second marathon all by itself and that's how it felt.

So, it's Sunday night now and there is one day of preparation to go. I know I'm in a much better position than many of the other show gardens who had to press on with planting today in driving rain and a gale to stand any chance of finishing. That doesn't make me feel better - the success of the show matters as much to me as my personal outcome. The forecast is a little better tomorrow and we'll make another early start.

Links to pics....

Grace in the rain
Planting finished - lots of clearing up to do

'Grasses with Grace' is born..

2011-07-14T20:40:00.008+01:00

This is going to be a quick, one topic blog post.

I have spent the last 10 days at Tatton Park, building a show garden, 'Grasses with Grace'. The garden was conceived about 9 months ago, centred on an idea of ornamental grasses with a sculpture. It was been gestating slowly in my imagination, growing a little each day, its shapes and colours slowly crystallising. A few months ago I sketched an outline of how I hoped it will look and wrote carefully considered words about it, but until last Monday the garden existed only in my head. Last week I saw its outlines for the first time in the shape of an oval circle in Tatton's turf and now, ten days later, it's rising from the ground under my soil encrusted hands.

I love this experience. Over the past five years it's become the anchoring event in my gardening year. There's no question for me that creating a show garden is a form of 3D art - you conceive an idea, develop it into a complete piece in your mind's eye, bring together your selected materials and set them together to create a specific visual experience for the viewer. Go on, tell me it's not.

Whatever show gardening is, it's slow, slow work. By my reckoning it takes about 2 hours per square metre of planting. Each plant needs cleaning up then placing and balancing with its neighbours. I do this for about half a dozen plants at a time. Then we take them all out, dig holes, drop the plants into place, turn each one to its best aspect before back filling and finally mulching.

And this is on top of the time spent deciding if it is the right choice of plant in that spot and re-planting when an idea doesn't quite work out. It's easy to see how a morning can slide by.

It's painstaking work, but this is how I have to do it, so I start planting early to allow time for my slow ways. I started planting four days ago and there are four days left. We have finished about two-thirds of it. Some of the show gardens have not planted a single plant yet. They will probably be fine, but I couldn't work like that. It leaves no time for thinking, for engaging with the plants and for them to settle into place. And it most certainly doesn't allow time off for bad weather. And bad weather is exactly what is forecast for the weekend. I hope they are OK, for their sake and the show's sake.

So that's it for now. I just wanted to collect my thoughts. I might post a couple of pictures tomorrow...

Sacred cows.....

2011-06-25T22:45:00.008+01:00

On Friday afternoon I loaded the van with some of my best looking plants, drove to Arley Hall just up the road and began setting up a small plant stall at Arley's Garden Festival. It took two more round trips in my little van to deliver enough plants to fill the stand. Early on Saturday morning Dave and I put up a B&Q gazebo, set out two trestle tables from Costco, covered them in black fabric and I carefully set out my lovingly grown plants on and around them.

I fluffed out the leaves to let each plant show its individual beauty and rearranged them to make the colours look pleasing. I wrote out missing information labels with my personal description using my favourite silver pen on black angled labels and stood back admiringly at my small, but colourful little stall. The whole thing took quite a time, as you can imagine.

Late on Friday night, on the stand right behind me, a man pulled up in a 7.5 ton truck, lowered the tail-lift at the back and rolled off ten Danish trolleys. Each one was packed tight with perennials in 9cm pots, all tied up tightly to canes, wedged into trays. He laid the shelves from his trolleys onto upturned black crates on the grass and stood the plants in their trays on them, exactly as they came off the trolley. He erected a placard stating '3 plants for £10' and drove off. Job done.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that I was hacked off that I had taken such care to grow and present my plants and was now faced with an pile-'em high, flog 'em cheap costcutter and that I spent the day fuming at my ill-fortune. I'll admit that was my first, fleeting thought.

But he was the talkative sort and decently offered to get me tea when he went for one. And I was curious about his lifestlye and business model, so he told me. And I learned a great deal.

He and his wife grow all their plants on their 5 acre nursery from seed or cuttings. There are just the two of them. He has a sand bed capillary watering system in his polytunnels to minimise water use and let plants take up water on demand. He doesn't use overhead sprinklers as they spread disease more quickly and waste water. He swears by compost tea and proudly shows me his Monardas, impressively free of mildew. He has designed the whole nursery to minimise the need for human intervention, developing his methods over many years of experimentation.

He has standardised on one pot size to simplify everything from potting to labelling, van filling and display layouts. His wife is chief pricker-outer of seeds and can do 4000 a day if he fills the compost hopper often enough.

His nursery is in the South East - he sells at shows in Ireland and Scotland as well as all over England. He drives all over the country in his truck, sleeping in the cab to save hotel costs. Most weeks in the summer he does two shows a week. He pines for home and says he is permanently tired. I believe him, he looks knackered. Stand rentals of over £3,000 at Hampton Court means he must sell 1000 plants to cover that alone before the transport costs, overheads and of course, the cost of producing the plant in the first place.

He is snortingly derisive of self-styled specialist nurseries. 'Look at my range' he says, and I do, approvingly. 'The only difference between me and the so-called specialists on Arley's gravel drive is that they produce 20 of a plant and I produce 500'. 'And for most of them its a second or hobby income. But this is my only livelihood - I can't pay my bills if I don't sell.'

He has a very good point. His plants are a bit etiolated from being so closely grown, but they are otherwise healthy, true to type and individually labelled. He knows his stock because he grew it himself and is proud of it all. He sells a lot of plants because he must and he can do so because he has invested in efficient production systems, has driven down his cost of production and works extremely hard.

I wandered into the gravelled drive area after the show had closed. One 'specialist' nursery with a cute hand painted sign had some weedy looking Anthemis 'Sauce Hollandaise' at £5.00 and some 1 litre Helenium 'Moerheim Beauty' at £6.00. That's not specialism, that's taking the proverbial.

I came away thinking I had much to learn from him. I don't want to be a factory producer of plants, but there are costs from inefficiency and underinvestment that can be driven out, and the savings turned into reduced prices for customers and increased profits for the nursery. And there is no shame in that at all.

ADDENDUM:

He told me today that he had a row with another stallholder at a plant fair last year and has been banned from returning. His side of the story is that the other person was loudly telling all his customers that his very cheap plants were grown for love, not money, that growing plants was his hobby and he had a 'proper' job during the week. My chap took him to task, pointing out that he was undercutting him unfairly and talking down HIS proper job, by suggesting than running a nursery was just a hobby occupation. It turned into a row, apparently, and he got banned.

I can see why he got annoyed. Imagine a new hairdresser opened up, doing haircuts at the weekend for £5.00 because they just loved cutting hair and had a proper job during the week which paid the bills? It wouldn't do, would it?

How to - propagate Sedums.

2011-06-19T20:34:00.008+01:00

Sedums, you're thinking? Why trouble yourself to write about propagating sedums - it's just so easy? Well yes it easy. In fact it's so easy you may be making life more tricky than it is.

You could take a standard cutting - cut just above a node for the top, through a node at the bottom, removing the bottom two leaves and one of the top ones (you can see the scars at the bottom of the stalk). But this costs you two nodes per cutting.

Better, don't worry about a node at the rooting end - just cut above a leaf or leaf pair, leaving a short stalk. This is a bit more efficient as you get a cutting for each leaf node.

But Sedums are even more generous than that. If you peel off every leaf, keeping a little fleshy heel from the stem, it will root from that, giving you a new plant from every leaf.

So lovely seeing the new shoot emerge from the protective embrace of its parent. This is the gorgeous Sedum 'Red Cauli' - I fell for it at Trentham Gardens two years ago. I was pleasantly surprised to find that it is not subject to plant breeders rights either. Result.

You'll get a new plant quicker from a stem cutting, as you can see from these two - both cuttings taken on the same day of Sedum 'Purple Emperor'. The stem cutting on the right has twice as much new growth. So if I've got plenty of material, I take half a tray of stem cuttings and half of leaves only. These cuttings are 30 days old.

But a whole tray of leaves is a very pleasingly symmetrical thing of beauty to see in the greenhouse. This is the lovely trailing Sedum 'Vera Jameson'. These are 15 days old and have rooted. I'm just keeping an eye open now for the first shoots.

So, the practical stuff done, I tripped off up the garden to take a very close look at the poppies...

How to... take clematis cuttings.

2011-06-13T19:34:00.018+01:00

I love propagating plants. Actually that's something of an understatement - at this time of year it's more of an obsession. The garden and nursery are heaving with potential cuttings material and the seed harvest is taking off in earnest. I hardly know where to start. So I'll start at the plant nearest the back door, Clematis wilsonii. It's easy when you know how. Here's the quick version if you just want the basics:

Choose a healthy length of stem, this year's growth, preferably without flower buds.

Note which way is up - the two little buds in the leaf joint are always 'up'. (Click on the picture for a better close up)

Starting from the bottom of your length of stem, cut as follows for each cutting. I like to use a slim pair of deadheading snips - easier than a knife.

- 2" below the leaf joint
- just above the leaf joint, taking care not to damage the two buds
- snip off one leaf completely
- snip the middle leaflet off the remaining leaf.

and your cuttings should now look like these.

Mix up a very open compost - mine is peat free multipurpose with the bark bits left in, a bit of grit sand for grittiness and a good proportion of vermiculite. I like to set them out across the pot, thus avoiding the tricky problem of leaves hanging too much over the edge of the pot. Push the stems all the way in until the leaf joint is sitting on the compost surface.

Put somewhere warm (bottom heat is good), in the light but out of direct sunlight, keep moist and wait 6-8 weeks.

So that's a basic 'how to'. And in case you were wondering...

Is early June the ideal time to take clematis cuttings?
Yes-ish. The plants are putting on good extension growth so there is plenty of material available. But they are quite slow to root and it can be tricky to get newly rooted clematis cuttings through the winter. So about now is the latest I would take them.

Does it matter which plants you take the cuttings from?
Possibly yes. Shoots from young plants seem to root better than the same-looking shoots from old plants. The biological age of the plant can affect rooting ability.

Shouldn't you make the bottom cut through a node for best rooting?
Yes, in an ideal world because cambial cells are clustered at the nodes. But with clematis and other climbers the cuttings would be unfeasibly long, as you must cut above a node to get growth shoots. There are enough cambial cells in the stem for internodal cuttings to take.

Why do you snip off all of one leaf and part of the other one?
Since I have cut off the cutting's roots it can't support much leaf area. I therefore reduce the leaf surface area by 2/3 making as few tiny snips as possible, causing as little damage as possible to the remaining leaves. The reason for leaving any leaf on at all is so that the plant can still photosynthesise.

Why don't you put the cuttings around the edge of the pot?
There is only any point putting cuttings around the edge of unglazed clay pots as they are air porous. Roots need oxygen to respire and grow. The edge of a plastic pot is not a great place for a root to grow - less oxygen and prone to great heat changes

Do you use rooting hormone powder?
I do when I've got it to hand, for clematis. But it's important not to over-use it as too much can inhibit rooting. Just touch the cut end onto a small amount and flick to remove surplus. On balance, it's probably best to use it for clematis.

I've read that commercial growers root them in pure perlite - why don't you?
Mainly because I don't like the stuff - it behaves weirdly, floats and won't stay still. It also dries out in no time. Probably fine if you have a full time job propagating clems and are onto them all day, but I'm busy. I need a compost that will stay reasonably moist for at least half a day at a time, if not longer.

Where exactly should I put them now?
Ideally, the cuttings should be somewhere warm (20-25C), not subject to a draught or too much temperature fluctuation. The air around them should be consistently humid to reduce stress on the rootless cuttings. It should be light, but shaded from direct sunlight. Warmth from below will speed up rooting. I put mine in a large home built propagator. The floor is a sand bed with a soil heating cable going through it and a sheet of weed control fabric on top.

Any notes on aftercare?
Don't reach for the watering can if the top of the compost looks a bit dry. Check the pot weight and if it seems heavy, mist the cutting instead. The root area doesn't want to be soggy and wet.

It is important to keep the humidity high around the leaf area. The cutting cannot pull up moisture to cool itself and keep the leaf turgid. High humidity reduces the stress on the leaf.

Resist the temptation to tip the cuttings out and check for at least six weeks. It will probably be about 8 weeks before they're ready to pot on. If they aren't ready by mid-September leave them until March. Really. They are more likely to survive.

On not being here...

2011-06-11T22:14:00.007+01:00

Our much loved friend Greg invited us to join his 40th birthday celebrations near Bergerac, France this weekend and in a moment of rare conviviality we gritted our teeth, gave Michael O'Leary £36, and jumped on a plane from Liverpool on Friday morning leaving the nursery in the safe hands of Janet, Sally, Holly and Alison.

Suffice it to say we had a magical day of sunshine, rainbows, bee-laden lavender, serial wine tasting, wine drinking and feasting. I felt a little like a square yellow pea in a bowl of shiny green round ones at times, eschewing as I did the much-praised pate de fois gras and poche de veau in favour of fish balls and a poached plaice, but I am where I am, foodwise.

Leaving here for more than a couple of hours is a slightly unhinging experience - probably because I do it so rarely in the summer. Within a few hours I'm mulling on alternative lives unlived, countries unexplored, books not read, careers untapped. I design radical solar energy solutions (papering house roofs with leaves - their photosynthetic capabilities hardwired straight into the house) mentally write several potential first lines to a beautiful and compelling, critically acclaimed yet commercially disastrous novella, and commit to improving my sub grade one piano playing next winter. Or bugger all that and just become a total slob. That's it - I decide to practice being a much better slob.

But then the plane home lurched downwards leaving my stomach as well as my fantasies at round 25,000 feet and we dropped out of the blindingly bright sky into driving rain and the unseemly chill of Liverpool Airport on a wet June morning. Having paid £36 for both of us to be lifted high into the air, deposited 800 miles away and safely brought back again, we coughed up £49.00 to retrieve our car from the short stay car park. Unlike us, it hadn't moved. It had simply been permitted to stand still between three white lines for precisely 29 hours. Capitalism is mostly bonkers.

I didn't resist the return to 'normality'. I allowed the nursery to reabsorb me, plant by plant. In the greenhouse, the Cavallo de Nero seeds I sowed on Tuesday have already germinated. The Buddleia alternifolia cuttings I took on Thursday have perked up and will surely take. I lift and check each seed and cuttings tray more slowly than normal, re-acquainting myself, one friend at a time. A double bise, a la Francais, for each one.

The garden has changed in a day. The oriental poppies in the square borders have just peaked. Still lovely, but quietly giving way to the opium poppies which would have the place to themselves if we let them. I sowed drifts of 'Black Paeony' three years ago, but their rampant gene swapping produces ever more garish combinations of pink, red and purple each year. Elsewhere, roses are superceding paeonies and Lychnis coronaria's hot magenta caught my eye for the first time.

But I indulged my semi-detached mood for the rest of today, avoided strenuous effort and people as best I could and wandered round the garden with a handful of paper bags, collecting seeds. This is pure pleasure. I have had my eye on all these plants for weeks - months - watching and waiting. It's only June, but the harvest has started in earnest. You have to be vigilant. One day the Lathyrus vernus seed pods are plump and green. The next day they are dry, brown and splitting, scattering tiny speckled brown peas deep into the borders. One gorgeous deep pink/purple specimen is next to the tea room and I picked up about 30 seeds which were rolling around on the paving slabs underneath it. Pulsatilla seeds are blowing around the garden like giant dandelions. I traced my one Primula elatior plant, buried deep in the woodland corner, picked off a seedhead and prised the still green seeds from their paper-thin capsule in the hope of speeding germination. I also collected some Geranium 'Beth Chatto' seeds (which I suspect may come true), captured before the spring catapult mechanism fired them off into the undergrowth, and the lovely little red Anthyllis in the scree bed.

June is the best of times. The spring rush has gone and with it the accompanying pressure. Parts of the garden looks utterly gorgeous, if I may say so, and I can allow myself a little time to think about the magic of plants and possibilities for the future. I feel a lot calmer. Clearly we should go away more often.

On not catching up, and Chelsea.

2011-05-31T23:29:00.007+01:00

The longer it is between posts on this blog, the harder it is to decide what to write about. It's tempting simply to post a list of things I've been doing by way of catching up, and to justify my absence. But that would be dull. So I'm going to skip the lot and just write about Chelsea.

In previous years I have gone on my own, or with a friend. Dave has declined on the grounds that the crowds will be insufferable. But he's become something of a show gardening junkie and an increasingly confident plant admirer, so he broke his duck and came with me. Did he enjoy it? Well, you'll have to ask him yourself, but he wants to come again next year, so it can't have been too dreadful. Here he is helpfully comparing the hardiness of an array of Arisaemas for two lovely ladies.

So, my verdict. I thought the judges were right about Bunny Guinness's garden. It looked a bit claustrophobic and I didn't see any vistas I wanted to photograph (not that I could get close enough), and personally I wouldn't have stepped on that glass floor - my knees would have gone. But I did like the woven wicker raised benches and the curved wooden tops.

The Cornwall garden was confusing. Gorgeous carved rivulet water feature - I loved that. But Meconopsis? In Cornwall, next to a sun-baked swimming pool? I don't think so. The planting didn't do it for me.

Sarah Eberle's Monaco garden was simply stunning. The warm orange wooden deck stretching out over the deep, glass-sided pool, the colour picked up by the Geums and the Osteospermum climbing the green walls. The cool structure at the back and the lavender roof perfectly matching the lavender loungers down below. So poised, so confident, so clean and uncluttered. She's very, very good.

Cleve's Libya garden looked very good, but it took me a while to see why the judges gave it best in show. I don't know for sure of course, but I saw the round columns and the round water spouts, the planted borders giving way to repeated echoes through the sunken route through the sparsely flowering desert, the wall painted ochre to match the sand, the brilliant use of Dianthus cruentus, its blood red flowers leading they eye on through the garden to the shade area at the back. But was it best in show? Was it? Why exactly?

I can clearly see why Cleve's garden beat Luciano Guibbilei's Laurent Perrier garden - I don't understand why the Independent thinks otherwise. Yes the plant colours were stunningly blended. But it was nothing we haven't seen before - a central path with prettily planted borders each side under trees leading to some kind of structure at the end. It was boring and unoriginal, I thought.

Which leads me, skipping neatly over the ones I didn't really respond to, to Diarmuid's Sky garden. I could do without the crane. A hydraulic pole would have been better. And Wonkovator was a truly stupid name for the pod. The florid planting flopping out of the inside of the pod looked a little out of kilter. But the garden itself - the yew and box mounds, the softly rippling Hakonechloa macra moving gently amongst the fixed topiary shapes. The green Hostas, the trees, the round, still pools and the steel walkway. I loved it all. I didn't expect to, I expected it to be naff. But it wasn't. It was fantastic and fantastical. It got the media's attention and it deserved it.

In the Grand Pavillion, I fell for a beautifully simple display of box topiary and Euphorbia leucocephala (which I believe is marketed under the snappy pseudonym of 'Silver Fog'). The stunning display of alpines at Kevock Plants' stall bowled me over. Surely it deserved a gold? I know it's a monocarpic perennial/annual but that Meconopsis punicea was an absolute beauty. I like some Heucheras, but increasingly prefer the ones with less showy leaves and more traditional Coral Bells type flowers. A trip down the road to Plantagogo is called for to stock up. Crug Farm Plants's planthunter's collection not only scooped a gold at the first attempt but the President's medal as well. Just as at their nursery, I barely recognised a single plant on their display. Leaves me feeling a total amateur.

I'm beginning to imagine creating a display in the Pavillion one day. Especially since Dave's up for it. One day.

Possibly the most mind-blowing display was the Singapore

Dear Alan Titchmarsh,

2011-04-20T21:52:00.015+01:00

Dear Alan,

I won't lie to you - you aren't my favourite all time presenter of Gardener's World, that badge goes to Carol Klein 'das Gritmeister' (sorry Monty, pipped to the post), but you were at the helm during seven critical years when my gardening morphed from a weekend hobby to an all-consuming passion. I think you may be partly to blame and for that you have my admiration and respect both as a superb gardener and as a talented communicator.

I've loved all my gardens, but have always felt that the creation of pleasure in my small patch should not be at the expense of someone, or something else's larger patch. If I thought that my choices had led to a worse outcome elsewhere, my pleasure in my own garden would be tainted. But like all decisions in modern life, it's not always possible to figure out what is the best, or the least worst thing to do. It's often just too complicated, or information is scant. Some choices however, do appear to a bit more clear cut and reducing peat extraction seems to be one of them. I won't pretend to be an expert on peat sustainability. I understand that peat locks up carbon during its formation, as any fossil fuel does and that's a good thing as it helps reduce atmospheric CO2. I understand that some peat habitats are unique and special and it would be desirable to leave them alone.

These things I understand to be true, but second hand, from information relayed to me by others. What I absolutely know, first hand, is that peat is not essential to good gardening. Large scale horticulture has adapted itself to take advantages of peat's characteristics, to increase mechanisation and drive down costs. (It could adapt again, as needed). But for all amateur gardeners and most smaller nurseries it is more than possible, it is quite simply easy, to create a beautiful and productive garden and to produce plants commercially from seed and vegetative material without using peat at all.

I haven't used peat for over 10 years. Until four years ago I was an amateur gardener, growing everything from leeks to Meconopsis in a sequence of increasingly large back gardens. In 2007 I took over a garden open to the public and a nursery producing 30,000 herbaceous perennials, shrubs, trees and annuals each year. I brought my gardening principles with me and the nursery has not used peat since I took over. We grow from seed, from cuttings, from divisions from the garden, from bare roots, plugs, liners, the works. Everything goes in commercially supplied peat free compost, sometimes with the addition of a little grit sand, or vermiculite for seeds. We grow salad and veg plants for our own little kitchen garden too. No special effort is required - in fact visitors comment daily on how healthy our plants look. They are currently flying out the door faster than I can restock.

As a private individual, I don't much mind that you use peat now and again. I'm sure many of my own purchasing habits have equally dubious consequences (my dutch red pepper habit is probably high on the list). But I really mind very much that, as the nation's Favourite Head Gardener, you have said publicly that, in effect, you can't grow plants to your satisfaction without it. The amateur gardeners of the world listen to you, and the message is clear - if the great AT can't grow without peat, then they surely can't. And that, I'm sorry to say, is simply not true.

Along with many other contended peat-free growers who have been quietly getting on with it, letting visitors admire our produce first and telling them the provenance of our compost second, your message is a step back for the peat reduction cause. I wish wholeheartedly that you had used your huge influence to say something more positive about not using peat, or alternatively that you had said nothing at all. You probably feel that you are speaking up for the majority who still use peat, perhaps for lack an apparent good alternative, but mostly through lack of confidence.

I think your special status means you can and should lead from the front, help drive up demand for high quality peat-free composts, to thus drive up standards and give gardeners the confidence to follow your lead. That's what I wish you'd said. I sincerely regret that you didn't.

Yours affectionately, (but a little less so than two weeks ago)

Sue

PS -it will come as no surprise to say that all the seedlings and plants pictured above have spent all their lives in peat free compost. I took all these pics this week - they just happen to be what we have here now. And if we can do it, you can, and so can anyone else.

To read Alan's pro-peat use piece in the Express, click here

STOPPRESS - The bluebells are out...

2011-04-16T10:01:00.003+01:00

...and looking lovely. Not quite a carpet of blue yet, but well on their way. If you're coming this weekend, the short walk to the woods is well worth it.

Almost as good - Cathy and team are here with home-made cakes this weekend. Scrumptious.

Tulipmania

2011-04-15T21:56:00.011+01:00

The first tulips have opened and the gentle greens and pastel colours of early spring have been cut through with their bold show. I can take tulips as bold as you like, provided that in any one vista they complement one another. And I don't like more than two tulip colours in one view. Few words tonight, but lots and lots of pictures:

'Shirley' is marvellously tasteful, toning beautifully with Heuchera 'Midnight Rose' underneath it. Most of the combinations in this garden are accidental, but I will humbly take full credit for this one

'Flaming Spring Green' is a stunner. I first saw it at Chelsea three years ago and sought it out. These are second year bulbs, left in situ (as mine always are) and have flowered again well. Always a bonus in a tulip.

I like to make an early colour statement in the exotic garden - start as I mean to go on. The flamed yellow is Banja Luca. The blood red one is Jan Reus which I picked out at Chelsea last year. A bright red would be a better partner and Jan Reus is a little short as a match, but it's a pleasingly colourful combination in this hot spot. Will add some Fritillaria imperialis for next year.

I adore this tulip. The white of 'Carnaval de Nice' is pure as snow, the red a masterclass in artistic, arterial blood slashes. And it holds its incurved, cupped form for days and days, repelling the weather and opening ever such a little for sunshine. Makes my little heart flutter every time I see it.

Two species tulips brighten up the scree bed, on different sides. This is Tulipa clusiana var. chrysantha

And Tulipa wilsonii. This quick snap doesn't really do credit to the brilliant intensity of this tiny crimson tulip.

Up in the square borders, where the mounds of herbaceous perennial leaves are pushing through quickly now, 'Jan Reus' weaves through in a wide ribbon. This ribbon used to be 'Angelique' but I always thought it rather insipid and blowsy. The pale Angeliques are still mostly there, but the deep, warm red makes a much more effective show. For next year I'll haul out all of the remaining Angeliques, I think and plant - a cream, or a lemon perhaps?

The Berry Border, planted to provide berries and seeds for birds, doesn't get going early, so I planted these Imperial Fritillaries last autumn to give it an early lift. I am completely bowled over by their unreal form, intense colours and early emergence. Weird smell, which I don't dislike, but truly stunning.

This orange one has stunning chocolate brown stems above the final whorl of leaves. (Note to self - look up the cv. name)

Last year, I took up all the turf under the orchard and sowed a wildflower mix instead. In the autumn, we planted a few hundred Narcissus 'Hawera', chosen because it seems to flower late here and is likely to be in flower for the end of April when we open for the NGS. The first ones we planted are in flower. The later batch on the other side are just coming through. I think they will hold on - they stay in flower for a long time.

But while the tulips catch the eye all round the garden, these two shrubs catch the nose - their joint scent carrying across the whole garden. This looks like a Daphne, or perhaps a Jasmine, but it's a shrubby honeysuckle, Lonicera syringantha. Quite a large shrub now, 5ft in all directions and plainly completely hardy, given the past two winters. The scent is stunning.

It's just a shame perhaps that this Viburnum (probably a x carlessii cultivar) is so close to the Lonicera, above. The scent is even stronger and sweeter, overpowering perhaps by comparison. Anyway, together they perfume the garden beautifully

Finally, folks, a word on peat use following Mark Diacono's blog entry and the subsequent discussion. Everything, and I mean everything, on our nursery is grown without peat. I don't see it as a big deal. There is no sign over the doorway proclaiming that we don't use peat, just as we don't have we have a sign declaring that we don't wear fur coats to work or that we don't sell plastic flowers. We just don't and that's that. We grow from seed, from plugs, from bare roots, from cuttings of all sorts. I've yet to find something I want to grow, but can't because I don't use peat. Some things don't grow because I don't do the right thing to help them along, but that's all. Plants don't need peat. Use it if you wish, I'm not telling you what to do. But don't tell me that this or that can't be grown without it. You'll get one of two answers. Either I'll say 'Oh yes it can', or 'Fine - if it absolutely won't grow without peat, then I don't want it'. I don't think I'm missing anything, in fact, I know I'm not.

What's in flower right now...

2011-04-09T19:36:00.005+01:00

I've had so many positive comments about the garden today, I thought I would make a real effort to note what's actually in out in flower now. So, in no particular order, I make it 65, counting all the different Narcissus as one, and ignoring the hybrid tulips which aren't really out yet:

Erythronium 'Pagoda'

Lunaria annua

Anemone nemorosa

Vinca major

Vinca minor var. oxyloba

Euphorbia palustris

Euphorbia polychroma

Kerria japonica

Kerria japonica 'Flore Plena'
Fritilaria meleagris (purple and white forms)

Pulmonaria 'Silverado'

Pulmonaria 'Blue Ensign'

Pulmonaria 'Sissinghurst White'

Pulmonaria 'Diana Clare'

Pulmonaria 'Leopard'

(several other unnamed Pulmonarias)

Muscaria botryoides

Muscari botryoides 'Album'

Bergenia 'Bressingham White'

Bergenia 'Bressingham Ruby'

Helleborus foetidus

Helleborus orientalis (loads, including doubles)

Helleborus argutifolius

Lamium orvale

Cardamine quinquefolia

Dicentra 'King of Hearts'

Dicentra spectabilis (now Lamprocapnos...)

Dicentra spectablis 'Alba' (ditto)

Prunus x subhirtella 'Autumnalis'

Prunus cerasifera 'Nigra'

Pyrus salicifolius

Symphytum (lots)

Symphytum orientale

Fritilaria imperialis (2 forms)

Berberis thunbergii 'Atropurpurea'

Amelanchier lamarkii

Osmanthus delavayi

Exorchorda x macrantha 'The Bride'

Chaenomeles - white and salmony pink

Leucojum aestivum

Primula elatior (Oxslip - has spread at last!)

Primula veris

Primula vulgaris

Lonicera syringantha

Viburnum - probably carlesii. Smells fantastic

Epimedium x versicolour

Epimedium youngianum 'Niveum'

Brunnera 'Looking Glass'

Brunner 'Jack Frost'

Brunner 'Betty Bowring'

Pulsatilla vulgaris - and some doubles

Narcissus bulbicodium

Tulipa clusiana var. chrysantha

Phlox subulata

Plum tree blossom (probably Marjorie seedling)

Pear tree blossom (three different ones

Spirea - a white one

Omphalodes verna 'Alba'

Lathyrus vernus

Magnolia 'Sundew'

Viola labradorica

Caltha palustris

Aponogeton distachyos (Water hyacinth)

Winter aconite (not sure which one)

And a load of miscellaneous Narcissus

Plus celandines, various violas, yellow rattle, Blackthorn etc.

Not bad for a northern garden in early April!

In addition to the plants I know the name of, here are four that I don't. Idents, or suggestions welcome!

I think this is Prunus padus, possibly corollata? But it's a proper shapely tree, not a shrubby thing.

I did know this and I've forgotten. It's not grape hyacinth.

This gorgeous Pulmonaria has been in flower for a month. Lovely delicate pale blue and pink. Pretty.

And this white Pulmonaria was the first into flower in early March. It's not Sissinghurst White - the flowers are smaller and somewhat transclucent. All the flowers are white - no pink or blue.

Spring is most definitely sprung.

2011-03-27T22:51:00.020+01:00

The plum tree and the damsons are in flower, the Pulsatillas are ablaze on the scree bed and we spotted the first swallows further up the lane last night. The days are mild, the evenings scented and long. It feels like a proper spring.

The mild weather and recent rain have been perfect for mulching. Ewan has been steadily chomping at the huge pile near the entrance, heaving it into the little trailer behind the mower and spreading it ever so delicately through the borders. They look so smart now with their matt black coats, and it sets the herbaceous shoots and bulbs off beautifully. Not only does it look fabulous, but of course it saves us weeks of weeding later in the year as it suppresses the annual weed seed population almost completely. But you know all that, because I've said it before. I know, I am a total mulch bore.

There are areas where I'm a bit more sensitive about what I spread on the soil, especially around the Trilliums, Meconopsis and where I'm keeping a more naturalistic, woodland look. These special areas get the finest mulch I know of - home made leafmould. Well, home made, but not home sourced - as our garden doesn't produce enough leaves to make enough mulch for my voracious demand. I rely on Janet, who gathers up the copious oak and beech leaves from her garden, bags them and lugs her precious cargo here in her car when she comes to work in trip after trip each autumn. I could not be more grateful. When she moves house, as she probably will this year, I'll have to find a new supply. Sieved, it makes the loveliest, soft, lightweight compost which I mix with our standard peat free to make a woodland pot compost. Unsifted it makes a thick cover, more attractive and a better blanket than uncollected leaves.

One step ahead of the mulching trailer, I'm lifting and dividing perennials to increase clumps and to make babies for the nursery too. Right now, it couldn't be easier. The soil is light and warm and plants fall apart in my hands. Today was Geranium phaeum 'Album', Sinacalia tangutica (yes I know it's invasive, but I'm always asked for it), Inula hookeri and Arisarum proboscideum. We do buy in a lot of plants at the moment, but the goal is propagation self-sufficiency except for PBR plants. In the 'Grand Plan', this year I will completely dig out and replant the old, unruly stock beds. The new beds will be logically organised according to an as yet undevised planting scheme, free of marestail, ground elder and couch grass and managed according to a biennial cycle to ensure a completely sustainable growth and production rate. Well, a girl needs a dream.

But before I really get stuck into bright visions of the future, I need to do a final clear out of victims of the past. I moved hundreds of pots to a quiet spot at the back of the nursery and have left them alone for the past few weeks, giving them one last chance to stir themselves into life, but they are, as I knew all along, as dead as doornails. We probably lost 20% of our over-wintered stock this winter (I know some nurseries lost a lot more). Plants which slept soundly and have bounded happily into life in the open garden rotted and died in their pots on the nursery. The death rate was cruel, random and inexplicable. Geranium pratense types survived, the slow growing (lovely) and velvety leaved G. wlassovianum thrived, 60 Geranium phaems all died. Geranium phaeum! Unbelievable. Aconitum napellus thrived, Aconitum carmichaelii died. Tired of selling out of tiny Brunnera 'Jack Frost' each spring, I bought 200 plugs last August to grow on. Confident in their total hardiness, I put the newly potted on plugs outside in late September. The whole lot got wet, froze solid and died. Everything in the polytunnels survived, even though they are unheated with mesh sides and dropped below -10C. But I can keep plants dry in the tunnels. Lessons learned. If it's in a pot, bring it under cover. (Except Lychnis chalcedonica, which is absolutely, totally, bomb-proof)

And despite upping the insulation and heating in the greenhouse, I have still lost plants - not through cold but through misjudgement. In January, my beautiful, huge leaved, black stemmed Colocasia fontanesii tubers were firm and surely alive. But in late Feb, early March when the sun pushed the temperature in their heated plastic tent into the mid 20's, I watered them. Big mistake. The moisture and warmth brewed a hot compost stew and rotted the dormant tubers. I should have left them dry until they sprouted. I have been gardening for the past thirty years, professionally for the past four, spend almost all my waking hours with, or thinking about plants and I still mess up big style. Is that depressing or reassuring?

But now that there is so much loveliness in the garden and the nursery is awash with greenery and early flowers, I no longer really care about what's gone. It's done and dusted, ditched into a barrow and the contents spread on the veg plot. I've moved on. This weeks' show-stopping stars are the Fritilaria imperialis in the 'berry border'. Yes, I know they don't produce berries, or do anything else helpful towards bird life. But this border needs some spring oompf and these do the job perfectly. They are improbable looking things, emerging and bursting into flower in about three weeks flat. Such energy, such a growth rate. Just imagine the rate of cell division and specialisation, to transform a dry underground bulb to this in a matter of days. Quite incredible.

The annual spring sprint.

2011-03-23T21:28:00.027Z

The days are flashing by faster than I can think, let alone stop and write everything down. I know it's not right - to only glance briefly at the first perfect purple Pulsatilla, to note that our big cherry is in flower in passing, instead of standing still to watch it, to really see it properly. I could argue that we've been really busy with re-organising the nursery and of course, potting up all the new plants, as you can see...

We're even tidy and stuffed with plants behind the scenes, in the polytunnels...

And on the new, outside growing on area - formerly a derelict slope at the top of the nursery...

So you see, we've been busy. But if I don't have time to catch the scent of a flower, it's my own fault. The weight of work to do is entirely the product of my own over-ambitious plans, of saying 'OK', when I mean 'I really don't want to', of my desire to do all things well (impossible) and to be available to anyone who wants my attention, all undermined by my legendary personal inefficiency. I am told that the inefficiency doesn't really show, unless you look in my office. I do hope so.

What finally stops me running, what makes me stop and look properly is mostly the desire to record what's happening now, to write it down or photograph it for my own benefit in the future and also to share it here, for others. In truth, these are poor reasons. The best reason would be simply to enjoy it in the moment, to experience pure and direct enjoyment here and now. But that's a pleasure I am deferring. I hope to live long enough to spend entire days laid on the grass under this cherry tree, watching and listening to the drone of a thousand bees feasting on its nectar. If I don't live long enough, I'll never know to regret it. And if I do I'll know I earned it.

The nursery is more or less straight now, so naturally I'm twitching about the garden. The gardens open to the public next week, but a few little gems are out now and may be over before we open the gates, like this fabulous cherry...

This little Erythronium dens-canis is tucked in a corner of the woodland garden.

I love this combination of the white hellebore flowers nodding over the blue Scilla sibirica which seem to be reaching up into them

But there are parts of the garden in desperate need of improvement - among them the 'exotic' garden, which looks great in late summer, but is still cluttered with elderly shrubs, very unexotic plants such as Aquilegias and a matted tangle of a very invasive perennial sunflower - probably Helianthus decapetalus.

Thanks to Janet and Sally for running the nursery today, I snatched a welcome day in the garden. I finally got rid of a ghastly Kerria, a near dead Physocarpus and a couple of scraggy Lonicera nitida, leaving a lovely big space. I planted a couple of yellow stemmed Bamboo, Phyllostachys aurea in their place - a more appropriate backdrop for the theme. I also took the plunge and lifted the clump of Arisaema consanguineum corms, partly to check that they have survived yet another horrific winter (they have), but also to separate them, to create new clumps.

This Arisaema has to be one of the signature plants here - for its spire-like shoots in spring...

Its stunning cobra head spathe in June...

And a brilliant scarlet seed pod in autumn

Finally, I know it's ages since I last posted here. You might like to know that we caught the mole and the tunnelling has stopped. But blogging takes ages - rounding up the pictures and uploading them and getting the text and images to mesh together properly. By comparison, twitter takes seconds to update. So if you want to find out what I'm up to between blog posts click here

Outwitted and outrun.

2011-02-23T19:24:00.012Z

We are being outwitted by a small furry creature with a brain smaller than a pea. Our resident mole has been meandering around near the cottage for a couple of years, throwing up mounds of soil and dislodging paving slabs in an area that visitors don't tend to linger in for long. It's been a bit annoying at times, but outweighed by the gentle entertainment to be had from tracing his route each morning and imagining his solitary, dark underground labours.

But now that he has ventured into the open garden and under the lawn, the balance of his presence has tipped towards his becoming seriously troublesome. I am no longer amused. Last week he meandered alongside the pond (I could tell, because the Equisetum hymenale were no longer vertical), across a lawn path and into the scree bed, throwing mounds of earth up onto the newly cleaned up gravel. That was bad enough, but this morning he went a step further and headed for the open lawn. Peter has set traps (which he has tunnelled around), blocked his path, dug down ahead and behind him to no avail. Today he chased him straight down 2 feet into the lawn, only for him to dart off sideways seconds ahead of Peter's shovel. We could see the earth being kicked out behind him as he headed due north in a narrow horizontal tunnel deeper than the length of my arm. He's a wily creature. Peter is ruefully acknowledging that he has met his mole-match. But really - we have to catch him, dead or alive.

The garden is almost clear and ready for its spring mulch. For the past three years I have used Chester's finest homebrew - Gowy Composting Facility's composted green waste. It is lovely dark crumbly stuff, still smoking on arrival and we have had no weed seed germination from it at all. But last year we noticed a sharp increase in plastic waste shreds in it, so I went along today to find out why. As is so often the case, people are key.

Head honcho composter Steve Kay showed me round the composting yard, with six long heaps of material, each one 10 foot hight and 100 feet long. Each heap is left to self-heat until it reaches the requisite temperature and is then turned by composting ace Jackie and her JCB and 'cooked' again six times until finally ready to meet the screening machine. This enormous device shakes the compost through a 1cm screen to produce a gorgeous black, crumbly material which smells and looks lovely. A sample gets sent off for lab testing for 'fines' and if passes it's approved for use. This picture is of the finished product. It's just fantastic stuff, apart from the tiny bits of plastic in it. And here's why.

Green waste used to come to the site directly from the householder. Some householders tidily, but wrongly put their green waste in black bin liners before putting in the bin. Others fail to differentiate between green waste and general rubbish. But on arrival at the yard, Jackie used to spread it all out with her JCB and gently pick out most of the plastic before adding the cleaned material to compost pile number one. But now it comes in already shredded and part-composted. And full of plastic as you just make out in the rather dark picture, left. There is nothing Jackie can do except rely on the screening machine to take it out again at the end. Which mostly it does. The screen is smaller than the one they used last year, so I'm going to give it another go and see how much debris we get. But the answer is to market and sell this fabulous stuff, rather than give it away, and reinvest the proceeds in better householder education and pre-screening.

Elsewhere, the new nursery growing-on terraces are coming on delightfully and will give us much needed space for our doubled plant stock. Pics to follow in a day or two. A lull in bare root deliveries has given me time to lift and divide some of our own: Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster', Helenium 'Sahin's Early Flowerer', Stachys officinalis 'Hummelo', and Geranium phaeum 'Jean Baker', to name a few. It's tough work, but I get real pleasure from lifting a large, congested plant and taking care to produce the maximum number of healthy pieces with minimum broken off roots and shoots. It's the essence of why I love this job.

Today's slight rise in temperature brought a shoal of tiny fish to the surface of the pond and I heard a frog plop into the pond tonight as I went to lock up the chickens. Three buzzards circled the meadow this afternoon, screaming over control of the huge lime tree in our woods. And a clutch of purple crocuses near the cottage opened for the first time. Spring is most definitely on its way.

Bare roots and new shoots

2011-02-12T18:36:00.027Z

Ten days ago 56 cardboard boxes packed tight with bare root plants arrived and, for lack of a better home, were piled up in the tea room. After a few sprint potting sessions, mostly by Janet and Sally, with fitful contributions from me and Ewan, there are 12 full boxes left to go, a huge pile of empty boxes in the back of the potting shed and half a polytunnel beautifully laid out with happily growing plants.

It's a delight to see so much done at this stage in the year, though it's just the start - there are more bare roots to come in the next few weeks as well as our own division work to fit in. I try to space the deliveries out to give us some breathing space - we'd be overwhelmed otherwise.

When I first took over here, I wasn't quite sure what to expect from my first bare root delivery. Before the advent of plastic pots it was the main way of supplying plants to gardens, but while its still fairly common for trees and hedging, it's now very rare for retail customers to buy bare root herbaceous perennials. So let me show you what we get.

See? Exactly as described. Bare rooted. These are Echinops ritro 'Veitch's Blue', lifted from a field in Norfolk last week, packed tight in boxes and shipped to nurseries like mine for potting up.

There are 80 plants in this one box, so you can see how efficient it is as a method of distributing semi-mature plants. These are about 10" long and will go straight into their final pot size. Buying like this means we can use our own peat-free compost, thus minimising both transport weight and costs and unwanted peat use.

While everyone else has been focused and productive, I've been flitting, as usual. Half a day in the potting shed, half a day laying a new floor in the polytunnel, a few hours tidying the nursery, some messing about making the new chicken run and a short spell in the garden. Peter does the bulk of the winter tidy-up in the garden, working his way methodically through each border, carefully weeding and cutting back. I zip about, staying one step ahead of him so that I can prune the shrubs as I like and then following behind him to pick off the jobs he hates, like tidying the Yucca.

It is a fearful beast of a plant, each leaf ending in a terminal spike hard and sharp enough to spear leather with. Peter will wear gloves if need be, but won't be seen dead in a pair of protective glasses. I'm not so proud - I'd rather keep my eyes intact, thank you.

Two very cold winters have damaged many of the older leaves and the central trunk had rotted right through. It's really a case of getting stuck in with a saw and a very sharp knife:

The garden is slowly coming to life too, though as I've said before, the original owners didn't plant it for winter especially. I'll change that over time. There's a lovely burnt-orange witch hazel in the cottage garden, but it's set a long way back in the border and is flat-lit by the sun. Unless I step over the pond to get the sunlight behind it, it just looks like a straggly shrub with a few brown, dead leaves clinging on.

Way up at the top of the garden is a Parrotia persica, which I've never seen listed as a winter interest shrub, but right now it is dotted with tiny little jewel-like pomegranate coloured flowers. It's not showy, but it is fascinating.

And in the exotic garden, now almost empty but for the bare stems of the Paulownia, the ground is dotted with cricket ball-sized Petasites japonicus flowers, as if tossed onto the soil in some bizarre version of french boules. Very strange they are indeed.

In other news, my show garden design for Tatton Show has been accepted - I now need to work up the planting list and attempt to draw it. I could sub the drawing job, as I have done for the last two years, but feel I should attempt to finally master an actual drawing. It can't, just can't be totally beyond me.

And I have received my very first rejection from a publisher for my book. Exciting - a real rejection letter! So much better than nothing at all. I will admit that writing it has all but dried up. In the absence of a real deadline to finish the book, the nursery and garden have me in their spring thrall...

As you've been good enough to read to the end, I shall tell you that the photo at the top is Geranium himalayense 'Gravetye' I love the fresh spring shoots - the best colour of all I think. Wonderful ground cover plant, even for dry shade.

And I have been reading 'The Anthologist' by Nicholson Baker, in little slivers of time between other things. Loving it - the perfect antidote to a jam-packed life.

On embracing mediocrity...

2011-02-02T21:10:00.020Z

I spent all of December and much of January with my newly-rearranged foot propped up on the sofa (it's perfectly functional now, thanks for asking. It's not yet ready for 4" heels but frankly never was). On the plus side a horizontal life gave me a short opportunity to find and read all the gardening blogs I had ever heard of and a few more besides. Some, it must be said, are a little pedestrian and these I have quickly forgotten.

But out there, nestling quietly in servers in the digital ether, I have stumbled on some absolute beauties, wonderful writing that wriggles under my skin, ideas that unfold before me in full colour 3D, stories and perspectives on the world that rebound unbidden in the middle of a poor night's sleep. Collectively they are a treasure-trove that I will plunder for as long as they exist. I admire their authors and adore the writing. I'm not going to pick them out individually, but try the 'Favourite Gardening Blogs' list on the right.

There is always a price for such pleasure. I now know even more clearly than I did before that my own writing is not 'great'. It is generally quite good, sometimes average, sometimes really rather good. My blog posts have even been known to raise a wry smile. But my writing is never sublime, never magical, never wondrous. In a word, it is mediocre. I have the same feeling I had when I first read Jeanette Winterson's 'The Passion'. It was one thing to read Wuthering Heights and feel the intense creative magic of Emily Bronte's extraordinary novel, brewed as it was in the emotional cauldron of a constricted life in 19th century rural Yorkshire. It was quite another thing to read the words of a modern woman much the same age as me, albeit with little else in common. (I have met her twice at book signings. Both times I said something stupid and she replied with the fixed grimace of the tortured writer on tour). Around then I stopped messing around with an abysmal embryonic novel I had barely started. I'm grateful to JW for sparing me the obvious waste of my time.

But I'm older and a little wiser now. I am not put off from finishing my new work-in-progress despite the knowledge that it will not be world-class. Accepting my place in the hierarchy of garden writing is just a question of understanding what I can and can't do. I can write clearly and invitingly about plants. I can bring to life the pleasures and problems of running a nursery. I can explain, explore and clarify. But I can't write deeply emotive prose that leaves the reader on the edge of tears. I can't produce mind-blowing metaphors that stretch the imagination beyond breaking point. And my word-pictures won't keep you awake at night. But that's fine by me. I'm content where I am. (Incidentally, JW seems to have run out of creative steam. It is the curse of the precocious talent.)

Well, I'm much happier now that I've got that out of my system. And much happier too that I'm off my backside and back in the nursery full time. The first delivery of 1500 bare root plants has arrived in fifty neat open-topped cardboard boxes. I am torn between delight at the prospect of their summer beauty and panic at the potting workload (it's just the first batch...). Each box is packed tight with mounds of pert little shoots standing proud of a spidery tangle of bare and rapidly drying roots. For now the boxes are stacked up somewhat precariously in the tea room because it's dark and cool in there. Tomorrow Janet and Sally start the marathon task of potting them up, so my job today was to lay a new floor in the back polytunnel ready for the newly potted plants to stand inside for a few weeks before facing the harsh world outside.

It was an algae-covered, lump-ridden area yesterday, but looks great now - well worth the hours spent levelling the soil underneath, trampling and raking it flat, laying out the mypex and crawling around on my hands and knees nailing it in place through wood batten to the polytunnel base rail. Peter and I steadily lifted and relaid all the central path slabs on top of the new fabric, finishing off just as the light faded.

The front polytunnel has had its winter clear up too. All the plants have been cut back, fed with controlled release fertiliser and topped up with fresh compost. And at the top of the nursery, Ewan is creating a series of wide terraces as a growing on area. By the end of today we'll finally have space to decide where best to put each group of plants, instead of squashing them in where we can. At last I'm beginning to feel that we have the place under control.

Our 2011 Plant list is out...

2011-01-09T22:02:00.004Z

The new 2011 plant list is on the website! Click here to find it. I can't guarantee we'll have everything in, all of the time - it is my entire forecast list for 2011. So do email me or phone first to check if you want a specific plant.

I'm glad I've got this job out of the way, it takes ages cross-checking all the plant names against the latest correct list. Two major name changes to point out:

- Schizostylis becomes Hesperantha. This one's OK, I quite like the new name and will get used to it

- Dicentra spectabilis becomes Lamprocapnos spectabilis. This one is horrible - a cludgy word, made more complicated by the fact that some plants stay in Dicentra, though not this best known one, the common Bleeding Heart.

Finishing the list leaves me a bit freer to get on with the book, although with the weather improving it feels as if I should be making serious progress outside - our first huge delivery of plants arrives in a month and we aren't ready. And the talks season starts tomorrow.

New Year, new plans

2011-01-02T20:02:00.007Z

This is my fourth New Year at Bluebell Cottage. I spent the previous three champing at the bit to get on with major structural changes to the nursery, the gardens or both before the spring opening. But this year I decided that we would make our major changes in the autumn and keep the weeks after New Year clear to improve what we already have. So the much needed revamp of the canal border and the redesign of the grasses garden will have to wait, again.

But I hate not having a new project on the go. If I haven't got one, my brain keeps me awake at night until it thinks one up. And the one it has come up with this time is the completion of a book that has been brewing for a while. 'A Year at Bluebell Cottage' will trace the shape of the year at the nursery, give a behind the scenes perspective on our work here, talk about plants and propagation and tell the story of how we came to be here.

I can't say it will be any good, I don't even know if it will get published. But I do need to write it. I'm telling you about it here to make it harder for me not to do it. Encouraging comments and general bullying are very welcome. And if you happen to know a friendly publisher or agent who might be willing to read a synopsis and a couple of chapters do let me know.

My blog posts have generally been quite lengthy in the past - but they'll be shorter (and probably therefore better) for the next few months as I need to keep my pen sharp for the book. But I will keep you up to date and post a few pictures

The snow and frost has gone now, leaving a wake of collapsed and blackened stalks across the garden. The only evidence of the cold snap is the huge slab of ice still under the melted top surface of the pond and a ripple of snow between two of the polytunnels from where the snow slipped off. The snow and ice was a pain and I'm glad it's gone, but the world is a less attractive place now. I can't see anything nice to photograph now, so I'm going to cheat and post a couple of shots from last week when the world was much prettier.

A very Happy New Year to you all.

Fennel in the snow

Miscanthus gracillimus. Never flowers here but makes beautiful arching shapes.

Verbena bonariensis stands amazingly well in winter. Yet another great feature of this ubiquitous plant.

Eupatorium - the white one as it happens. Great winter structure.

Christmas nibbles

2010-12-27T12:28:00.013Z

The snow kept my parents in Eastbourne for Christmas, so while they enjoyed a brisk stomp along a snow-free seafront, Dave and I shut the doors on the subzero weather, lit the fire and settled in for a quiet, candlelit, Christmas on our own. Dave eschewed turkey for one and joined me in the vegetarian option of mushrooms and chestnuts in filo pastry parcels. I made Gordon Ramsey's deceptively tricky cranberry and apple sauce and all was lovely. We got our slice of festive mayhem at Dave's parents in the evening and so Christmas was done.

Boxing Day (or Thumping Box as my once-small baby brother used to call it, gleefully convinced it was a day devoted to bashing people), is a kind of delayed solstice for me: Christmas is over and the year has pivoted delicately, but so far invisibly on its icy heel. So with that sense that we are not quite in the old year or the new, clarity is out and idle meandering is in. So, some idle thoughts for you.

On life and age: My oldest friend's mother is 90 this year. When we were about nine, she was fifty, greying, floury and wise and I adored her. But at that tender age I felt sorry for my friend that her mum was so old, compared to mine, and would therefore clearly not be around when she was a grown up. But here are, heading towards 50 ourselves. My friend's children, the grandchildren I thought she would never see, are young adults themselves, and she is still very much a part of their lives. Some people - too many - die too young. But for the increasing number who make it with their mental health intact into their hundredth decade and beyond, life is long. So many days, so many thoughts, so many experiences, so much time to spend as you wish, or to find ways to fill. If only we knew how long we had, how differently we might live.

On apples and survival:
Back in October we harvested the apples, carefully arranged them in crates and stacked them inside the tea room. But all of the outside buildings have been well below zero inside for the past two weeks. A bottle of antifreeze froze in its container in the garage. So when Dave went to get apples for the aforementioned cranberry sauce, they were frozen solid and blackened to the core. How our ancestors survived winter after winter to produce us is quite astonishing. All those skills, all those strong genes passed down through all those centuries of survival. All that, to produce a generation that flop about on the sofa, flicking a switch to keep warm, writing about losing the entire apple store to frost while eating an imported clementine and worrying not one jot about where lunch will come from.

On snow and light: For the past week the sun has pierced the house deeply and etched the back walls in moving squares of light as it traces its low trajectory across the winter sky. Like the inside of a Pharaoh's tomb, there are parts of this house which see the rays of the sun for just a few hours a year. It's one of the more pleasing aspects of our latitude that the sun offers the house the most penetrating light when daylight is most scarce. This lightening effect has been enhanced by the snow and frost, the sparse sunlight bouncing off every surface in a glittering display of colour, making the near-white house walls change hue every hour. Pinks and oranges in the morning, purples and turquoise in the late afternoon. Today's slow thaw will turn the outside world black and grey. It will be thankfully less lethal, but so much less soul-brightening too.

On Derren Brown: I don't believe I have much in common with Derren Brown - although he is apparently related to my father's best man. But it is always a pleasurable surprise to read someone else's eloquent expression of something akin to your own feelings, but which you have never quite been able to express in words. He has pinned it down for me on:
- vertigo
- 'I love you'
- repeatedly imagining doing something unbelievably stupid that you know you aren't going to do
- actually doing/saying something very stupid when faced with someone you admire too much
- the futility of strategies for avoiding losing things.

Thank you Dave for Derren's insightful if mistitled 'Confessions of a Conjuror'. As he says, people are either bemused and shocked by his mental revelations or, like me, relieved to find that knowing you are but an accidental muscle twitch away from diving off Beachy Head is wholly ordinary.

Finally, I have tried daytime TV, but I still prefer this - and so do the cats.....

(Need to figure out how to narrow the video next time...)

The reassuring sound of normality...

2010-12-15T10:39:00.019Z

It's nearly three weeks since anyone did anything in the garden. I've had my newly sliced up foot propped up indoors for 10 days and the nursery team packed up when I turned off the water supply to the nursery for the winter. But Peter's not been for three weeks either and that's unusual. He sometimes goes awol - usually because the weather's bad, occasionally if he's not well and very occasionally if he just takes it into his head to do something else. One day his racing accumulator habit will pay off big time and I'll never see him again. Or so he tells me.

Anyway, the reassuring sound of the hedge trimmer going on Tuesday morning told me he was back. And all's well. I miss our little rituals when he's not here, such as they are. In winter when there's just the two of us here we each do our own thing, but I take him a strong tea (half a sugar) every now and then and we have a minute or three. I mooch about inspecting the buds on an apple tree while he finishes a bit more of what he's doing. Eventually he stops, sticks his knuckles in the small of his back, has a stretch and shakes his gammy leg. 'How's the knee?' I ask, handing him his tea. 'No worse' he says. He curves his back against the biting wind and lights a cigarette. A robin peers hopefully at the ground under our feet. He takes a long suck on his fag and nods in the general direction of the road 'Ave y'eard about 'er up there?' 'Who - thingy?' (I guess the name - everyone is 'er or 'im) 'Aye....' and I get an entertaining update on the latest bits of local gossip - who's left who, who's gone on a flash holiday/bought a new car/drove their car into a ditch etc.' There's not a lot he doesn't know - he's the eldest of 11 and has lived locally all his life. The robin scratches around a bit more and we listen to a train swoosh by on the west coast main line. 'Saw a flock of Waxwings in the fields last week.' He updates me on all his bird observations. His favourite is the solitary Raven with its deep throaty caw. 'Early for them, must be cold over yonder, where they come from.' He flicks ash into the hedgerow and I absent-mindedly tug weeds out from under a shrub. 'What do you think we should do about the mice/pigeons/dead tree/broken trailer/burst pipe?' I ask. He shrugs 'I'll sort it'. And he does. Sometimes I ask him how, and offer to help or organise parts. Mostly I don't. But I know it's on his to-do list now. He goes back to his task, hanging his empty mug on a tree branch. I go back to the potting shed and so the winter days tick by.

When the nursery re-opens, the garden and I revert to our sociable summer personas, but I do enjoy the bleak peace and the sparse conversation of the winter months.

You've made it to half way through this blog post - your reward is this shot of two field fares and a Redwing in our Sorbus 'Joseph Rock' (Thanks to Kath for the correction!).

This tree was the inspiration for our new berry border - just one year old, but will hopefully prove a great natural bird feeding station in future years.

I mentioned on my earlier post that I've been twittering. I started mostly because I felt I should know what a hashtag is #admitssocialmediaignorance and partly because I was bored stiff sitting on my increasingly plump backside. I've only been playing around on it for a few days and am still a relative newcomer, so it was interesting that the subject of comparative/competitive tweeting and blogging has come up spontaneously amongst my circle of fellow tweeters on the aforementioned J-A-S blog. (Scroll down to comments)

My own take on it is roughly this. Blogging for me is about posting a series of sketches about this place and about my work here for the outside world to see. Posts can be thought about, edited, kept for ever or deleted. Of course it's a self-conscious exercise, but I do it for pleasure - I'm not capable of doing anything I don't enjoy. I lack that kind of self-discipline. Tweeting is micro-blogging in one sense - still a conscious self-portrayal, but other topics also fly by and you can quickly get totally lost, or equally, caught up in rapid fire, multi-way conversations about stuff you didn't realise you cared about, and thus accidentally reveal much more about yourself. It is extraordinary how easy and quick it is to read people's characters through their brief posts - warm, serious, arch, flippant, verbose, outrageous, uptight, blatant self-publicist, straightforwardly sociable, political, etc. I recognise that I am just as transparent.

Some people are there purely for social reasons - Twitter serves as a kind of substitute water cooler for the homeworker, but most people have an agenda of some sort, even if it's just to ensure that people know about them and their wider work. That's understood and no-one minds, or at least, they shouldn't mind. Except that we all mind a bit when friends promote their work to us, don't we? The point about Twitter, I think, is not to regard it as a source of friends, though friendships may and do develop, but rather a circle of contacts with overlapping, shared interests - a set of Venn diagrams, if you like. But just as you feel you're getting settled in, one click on the profile of a follower may reveal that they are having a much more interesting conversation with someone else at precisely the same time as they are maintaining a polite but much less interesting conversation with you. Twitter is totally meritocratic. Anyone can post anything, but ultimately your @mentions, retweets and followers are in direct proportion to how interestingly you tweet. That's the way it is.

It is also a wonderful source of recommendations, referrals and great people and for that reason alone I'll stay engaged on some level. And to plug my own blog/nursery/forthcoming book etc. of course... :-)

Your reward for reading to the end of the post is this lovely picture of some barbed wire:

STOP-PRESS: Monty Don returns to GW

2010-12-07T18:03:00.008Z

The BBC announced this afternoon that Monty Don will be returning to GW next spring. Toby Buckland's contract hasn't been renewed. More surprisingly, Alys Fowler is leaving too. Monty Don returns to GW

The programme was becoming dull and lightweight and something needed to change. The Greenacre site was a bigger problem than Toby, I thought. But you need presence to lead a top BBC programme these days and Toby never quite nailed it. Monty has that presence in spades, plus a string of beautiful and earnest publications to his name. I like and admire him as a gardener. He was a worthy lead presenter and no doubt will be one again. But...

I don't think programmes should go back. Actually, I think going back is, in general a bad thing. And the BEEB have not only dropped Toby, they've dropped Alys Fowler too. Alys wasn't everyone's cup of tea with her home-made plant pots and pernicious weed soup. But she was new and different and quirky and fresh. Instead, Rachel de Thame, the lovely and beautiful natured Rachel, has been restored to the programme. I met Rachel when we filmed GOTD in September 2008. She is a superbly professional presenter and a much more knowledgeable gardener than she is given credit for. But, like Joe and Carol, she's been part of the GW team for many years. So when the programme returns in spring, all of the recent past will have been erased and we will be back in 2003. The programme had problems and something needed to be done. But I don't think going back 7 years is the way into the future. Alys especially is the baby being thrown out with the bathwater.

So how will Monty get on? The world has changed, even in the three years that Monty has been gone. People still want to garden and they want help to do it. But they have even less time than before and need it to be easy. They need to be allowed to shop in garden centres - those places most people associate with gardening - places Monty hasn't visited for 10 years. Will Monty let newbies have some quick fixes - will he allow Tomorite and Ferric phosphate slug pellets? Or will it be home made comfrey feed and nightly salt hunts for slugs? If the BBC want to get back to 4million viewers I think GW needs an easy-going, compromising Delia or a Jamie, not a Gordon or a Heston. This would provide a platform programme from which interesting, more specialist angles can be developed in additional, perhaps out of season extras.

I wonder how long it will be before the familiar accusations of elitism and remoteness rise again. Fingers crossed for you Monty. Hope the skin's a bit thicker and the blood pressure is firmly under control.

Addendum: Just a note that the BBC can hardly be accused of ageism at GW with their new team. Joe is the youngest at 45. Rachel is the same age as me (just a smidgeon over 45...) Monty is 55, as per the press release and Carol is ageless.

The world from my sofa - Day 3

2010-12-07T14:55:00.019Z

I had two major worries on the first day of my sofa confinement. The first was the risk of a numb backside from sitting down so much. Well I'm up and about on two feet if I need to be so no great problem there. The second was that I would have nothing to write about except birds. Birds! So many and so much to say. How could I have thought for one moment that so great a topic could be of little consequence?

Let me set the scene...

My sofa looks out of the front of the house, facing south across the now almost bare front garden, over the lane, through a field gate and to the tree in the distance. Yes, it's pretty idyllic. The room we're sleeping in at the moment is directly above, so has the same view but from a little higher up. The Heptacodium is to the left of the window looking out and the bird table is tucked under it, right in front of the window. This means that for most of the day I'm facing what sunlight there is. Great for the soul, but troublesome for photographing birds, backlit by a low sun.

We woke to another deep, hard frost, but sunshine, blissful glittering sunshine, the field and distant trees glowing a soft pink in the early light. The frost sits prettily on the Heptacodium, forming little white baubles on the seed pod remants tipping each branch.

The shrub ripples all day with the comings and goings of bird life. As the sun slowly melts the frost on the branches, each new arrival sends a fresh rain of drips onto the ground below. The action never stops, except for a few seconds as a car, or a walker with dogs passes by. The morning starts with the house sparrows which nest in the cottage eaves. I love their energetic chattering as they dart past the window down to the table and onto the floor below. They arrive and leave in a muscular gang, scattering in a nattering pack at each fresh interruption.

If you look carefully at this one, you can see the Nuthatch on the front of the bird table and a robin in flight.

The great tits land confidently in the shrub, pecking steadily at bits of bark before dropping for a few select morsels from the table. Bluetits (left) fuss and fidget, stabbing furiously at a tiresome piece of twig as if wresting the life from it before hitting the table for a flurry of pecking and beating a quick retreat into the hedges.

Coal tits fly in unannounced, pick and turn in a second, leaving the scene in a blur of feathers. They've been the hardest to capture on camera, but I got one half decent one, on the right of the bird table. The one on the left is a great tit.

One small personal goal for this week was to take a better picture of the nuthatch. This one isn't bad. As with children, one shouldn't have favourites, but I love the warm amber of his underbelly, the slate blue of his back and that dashing, dark grey, go-faster stripe along his side. That and the fact that he hangs around long enough for me to photograph him. As you can see, he likes the black sunflower seeds the best. I'm pretty sure there's only one, but he drops by every ten minutes or so, diving in from the undergrowth on the other side of the lane.

It's dusk now. All the birds dropped by for a last feeding frenzy, perched high in the branches, catching the last rays of the faint sun as it fell behind the trees. It's a long time till morning when you only weigh a couple of ounces, you have legs like matchsticks and the temperature is -8C for 14 hours. You need a full belly at bedtime.

The last arrivals were a pair of collared doves. It takes them a few fluttering attempts to get the approach right so that they land inside the table, rather than on top. Once there, they gorge themselves silly before retiring to the telephone wires for a final sunbathe. I don't mind that they eat so much. They eat what the smaller birds don't want - the wheat and the millet. Our chickens hoover up whatever the birds spill and the result at the end of each day is an all but bare table.

It wasn't going to be like this today. I need to do the nursery's accounts and file them before the end of December. But the sunshine, and the birds and a welcome visit from Dave's Mum and Dad pushed thoughts of work away. Tomorrow will bring the hard reality of a pile of paperwork and a list of outstanding phone calls. But for today it's been good to sit still, wait and watch and enjoy the show outside the window.

The world from my sofa - Day 2

2010-12-06T17:09:00.015Z

A change is as good as a rest, so I have spent today facing the other way on the sofa. It's important to keep mentally sharp when prone. This way round I get a better view of the bird table and the perpetual battle over the best branches on the Heptacodium. It also means I have my back to the TV, thus deferring once more the temptations of daytime TV.

I re-joined Twitter last week and still feel quite the new girl, but I landed just as the Guardian Media Guilds were announced at a swish lunch last week. Naturally I wasn't there, but anyone who mattered clearly was and had a fine time, with much reminiscing since by the Twitterati. The upside is that I've discovered some superb blogs, and with time on my hands for once have chance to read them. I'm taking my time.

This year's winning blog was Lia Leendhertz's Midnight Brambling. It's beautifully written of course, heartwarming and earthy but with a firm spine of principle.

Another discovery is Mark Diacono's Otter Farm blog. As far as I can gather though his blog hasn't won awards his photography and writing have. The blog photography is stunning. I love his November entry about Trent, very moving.

A long running favourite is James Alexander Sinclair's Blogging from Blackpitts. Part horticulture, part gossip, part erudite nonsense, it was last year's winner and remains the most entertaining and commented upon of horticultural blogs.

Carol Klein's marvellous shoes get a special mention in James's latest blog entry. She's clearly a girl with at least two rows of shoes in her wardrobe - perhaps even three! It may be some time before I can get into any of the 6 pairs of shoes I own (two of which are gardening boots). In a homage to Carol's footwear and James's photography, here's my latest footwear acquisition.

Dave is gallantly sleeping on the sofa each night so that my foot can have the 'Princess and the Pea' treatment it needs with 33 pillows. Naturally, he has to leave the cricket on to stave off the night frights from sleeping downstairs. I put R4 LW on from time to time and we connect silently through the floorboards with mutual knowledge of the state of the Australian innings and the impending rain in Adelaide.

My foot sometimes throbs gently, but I can't give it more than a pain score of 2, what with me being female. Dave says he'd be at a 4 just looking at the bandage. I'm still taking the painkillers but am now concerned that I'm now partly responsible for the loss of Zoroastrian culture in India. Seriously-ish.

Finally for today, Dave is taking the opportunity to attempt to make sourdough bread the hard way - leaving the flour and water to grow its own yeast. Cyril, as he is now known, seemed fluffy and healthy yesterday, but today he stinks. If he's the product of our household's airborne yeasts, we all need a bath.

The world from my sofa - Day 1

2010-12-05T12:01:00.018Z

I know some parts of the country have had a thaw, but it rained ice in the night, tiny hard crystals which have coated the road, the roofs and the garden in a fresh, sparkly white crust. The sun broke through the fog first thing, creating ethereal light patterns through the gloom, the sun a soft, moon-like disc. Dave was out early and took this picture across our grass borders. I love how they all turn much the same shade of straw-blonde but have such different shapes. The loose one in the foreground is an unknown form of Molinia caerulea, the very upright one is Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster'. To the back Miscanthus gracillimus which never flowers and in the far left corner Miscanthus 'Undine. They will all stand until February without trouble.

The early sun melted the ice on the field gate opposite and on the large shrub outside the spare room window, each branch glistening with a necklace of drips. The birds love this shrub. It's a mature Heptacodium miconiodes about 15ft tall and 20ft wide, and it's alive with sparrows, blue/marsh/great/coal and long-tailed tits who use it as a jumping off point for the bird table underneath. In between diving for seeds, they pick at the shrub with real gusto, presumably in search of insects under the peeling bark of the older branches.

The identity of this shrub stumped us for a while when we first moved here. It has pairs of elegant long, downward-held, incurved leaves, rather Cornus-like. It flowers in autumn, with sprays of white flowers followed by reddish seed pods. I took a branch into Reaseheath College a few years back and it was finally clocked by Advolly who worked at Woolerton Old Hall - they have a specimen there which I've since seen. Theirs is slightly tucked under a more vigorous tree in part shade and isn't in great shape to be honest. Since this plant was only re-introduced to horticulture in 1980 (First collected by Wilson in 1907 in China, but it didn't catch on) it is quite possible that ours is one of the best specimens in the country.

This is it in October, in full leaf with a mixture of flower and seed heads.

It's completely bare now, but it's one of those plants that looks good naked. I'll try and get a decent picture of it tomorrow when (if) the sun comes out.

My new home on the sofa looks out at the underside of the Heptacodium and the bird table. A Nuthatch lives in the hedgerow opposite and he's a regular visitor, staying to fill his beak before diving back across the road. My aims this week are few, but one is to take a perfect picture of him/her. The light is appalling at the moment, but here's a first attempt. It can only get better.

An update on the foot, etc. I slept upstairs in the spare room (our room is still decommissioned) with my leg propped up on a rising tower of pillows. A mince pie at bedtime was a bad idea, pulse rate up which made my foot throb uncomfortably. Got about 4 hours sleep, took another couple of paracetamol at 2am, listened to the cricket on and off until 6, then slept till 10. Woke with foot feeling fine. Had a flannel wash in the bathroom and hubby washed my hair over the bath. I feel almost human. Pain score during the day today - about 2/3. Dave's been a love, done a load of washing, made me tea etc. Newcastle v. West Brom is just starting on the box - I looked up from my laptop to see some vast Geordie flashing his tatooed belly at the world.

So I've no worries on the foot front, except getting a numb bum from so much sitting down, and having nothing to blog about except birds.

In appreciation of my feet...(Updated..)

2010-12-02T22:01:00.023Z

I spend my days walking from one part of the nursery to another in a state of almost perpetual motion. But I'm going in for an operation on my right foot tomorrow. (I'd love to proudly claim it was a bunion brought on by years of strutting in Jimmy Choos, but it would appear to be a simple case of wear and tear). Anyway, I shall be required to stay put with my feet up for at least a fortnight, and then be very careful for a good few weeks. It will feel very strange indeed not to leap up and do things when the mood takes me. It will feel even stranger to have to ask for help.

The positive effect has been that I am unusually well ahead with winter tasks in the garden. The general year end clear up is done, the apple and pear trees are pruned, the greenhouse is insulated and all the young plants are fleeced. And there is no shortage of 'sit down' tasks to do. I will have no excuse for not getting my RHS Plant Finder list done on time, or my accounts. I'm planning to update the website, write up two years of propagation notes, sort out all the seeds and just possibly start the book I've been planning.

It's an opportunity to think, to plan, to imagine and to write. I'm hoping I'll find that I can enjoy the break from intensive physical activity, but I don't know yet.

My last job today was to do a final stock check so that I won't need to go out on the nursery's icy paths again this year. I had to scrape off the snow to read some of the labels, but the new benches look very smart and at least next year neither you nor I will have to bend to ground level to read the labels.

For the medically curious amongst you, behold my sturdy, hitherto reliable size 5s as they are now. I was going to give them a hot bath and a home pedicure before showing them to the world, but blogging, tweeting and watching the ashes have eaten up my evening. So here they are in their unimproved state (though my toenails don't look yellow in real life, I promise). Now, if you have a grand pair of perfectly good bunions you'll be looking at my right foot, scratching your head and wondering why I'm letting a man with a scalpel anywhere near it. Fair enough, but it's persistently sore underneath the toe joint so I now walk on the outside of my foot. And if I do that for the next 10 years I'll need a new knee or hip. So the foot cops it.

I promise not to post any gory post-op pictures without a health warning...

UPDATE - 4th December...
Back home, parked on sofa, my new home for a fortnight. Bunions are clearly the stuff of humour, but there are enough 'should I, shouldn't I have mine chopped off too' questions flying about for me to share what happens to me. So here you go.

Spot the arrows, reassuring to see the surgeon didn't rely on 'now which one is it we're supposed to slice up?'.

The post operative article. I have a natty blue velcro shoe and two crutches to get me where I have to go, but I'd much rather rest it on a cushion and avoid the throbbing. Foot still a bit numb from a huge dose of local anaesthetic so I don't yet know what the unnumbed product feels like.

You can't beat a hardy bird...

2010-11-28T20:43:00.011Z

To state the bleeding obvious, it's cold. How cold? Our outside thermometer dropped to -10C last night. I thought it was faulty at first until the BBC weather site confirmed some of the other lows in the area. Our high today was -2C. But brilliantly, blindingly sunny.

The ground is frozen rock solid - if you jump up and down on it it doesn't budge a millimetre. Happily our chickens seem unperturbed by the cold, even the 9 week old chicks are thriving, despite living in a sub-zero shed. For those of you who know our birds, here's an update. The white Sussex looks wonderful with her new coat of pure white feathers, unsullied by the cockerel's footprints. She's not laying at the moment so he's leaving her alone. The black Sussex - the one that nicks biscuits from the unwary - isn't laying either but she's fine. The two bantams that hatched out in 2009 are both laying lovely little eggs every day, despite the cold. The cockerel as as handsomely regal as ever and spends his days working his way through all the neighbouring free range hens before returning to us at night.

Of the five new chicks I think there's one obvious cockerel - with a silvery chest. He's the first to show a comb and he has a definite set of pectorals. He's the one at the back facing the small brown one.

Anyway, talking of hardy, we went for a wintry walk around Jodrell Telescope and Arboretum this afternoon. I must say the Arboretum is a bit haphazard and not well labelled, but it was a lovely site for a stroll and with the telescope breaking through the vista, quite visually stunning too.

The trees help to give a sense of the scale of this enormous telescope, but this gives you a better idea. Spot the bloke with the yellow jacket on underneath it, and Dave at the far bottom right reading a board. The story has been told many times, but I love the idea of Bernard Lovell knowing he wouldn't get the money if he told the Uni how much it was going to cost, so he just kept building it a bit at a time, scavenging bit of battleships and railway, each time he ran out of money daring people to pull the plug. A fabulous bit of British Heath-Robinsonesque pluck.

'So, are you having a nice rest now that you're closed?'

2010-11-22T21:49:00.011Z

I never know quite what to reply to this question. Surely people don't expect me to say 'Of course! I've got my feet up watching daytime TV'?

The reality is a continuing avalanche of projects in the nursery and garden being squeezed in before the anticipated big freeze. Our two week autumn holiday somehow got compressed to two days - but a very lovely two days in pretty Christchurch on the Dorset coast. Thankfully the local council have protected this natural harbour from the high-rise nightmare that now surrounds Bournemouth (understandable) and Poole (inexplicable). Christchurch sits gently in the landscape with all the new development strictly low rise. The most recent looks like so many yacht sails from a distance. Pricey I'm sure, but lovely. The beach huts are a snip at £150K, we heard...

If you really want to see our holiday snaps click here. I promise they won't make you jealous....

Back in the real world, the old greenhouse has been moved and transformed from a greenish, sagging slime-creature to a sparkling edifice with a straight ridge line (oh, what sublime joy) on a new, flat concrete base. A feat of patience and invention on Pete's part - assisted by Ewan and me when we were allowed to. Rather than insulate and heat the whole thing, I've boxed in one bench with bubble wrap and put the heater in there. Hopefully it'll keep the heating bill down a bit.

The chicks have made it out of the broody coop and into the hen-house proper. They spent the first few nights sheltering under Mum in one of the nest boxes before she decided to lead them up onto the roost. It took about half an hour of fluttering and over-balancing before they all made it - the two black ones either side and the little brown one tucked under Mum. Note that the other three hens are firmly out of the way at the other end of the perch with the cockerel keeping order in between.

Talking of heating bills, we've had 6 proper frosts already this year and a whole load more to come this week. And it's still November. OK, they are pretty, but we can't get anything done when the ground is frozen. A good frost does reveal whether a border has good bones, though, and pleasingly I think this new one does. The other picture is Acer 'Osakazuki'.

Sorry for the break...

2010-10-15T20:02:00.007+01:00

I've been slightly distracted by Facebook, after an invitation to a 30 year reunion which I couldn't attend and joined in 'virtually' instead. On one hand, it's much easier to quickly type in what you're up to on FB. On the other hand 420 characters doesn't give you much scope to expand, explain or add a bit of purple prose. I'll stay on it, because it's a great place to keep in touch. But this still feels like the place to really write about what's happening. Anyway, here's a speedy round up to bring you up to date.

HK, the 5 remaining chicks are doing fine. Of the original 21 eggs, the hen pushed out 8 leaving 13. 9 hatched out and 4 chicks died on the first day - they found their way out into the run and failed to find their way back before succumbing to the cold. We blocked up the chick hole until they were 10 days old, much to the bemusement of the hen who kept stepping over the threshold and pecking away at food, quite unable to figure out why the chicks didn't follow. Chickens aren't bright, are they?

I'm leaving the garden alone for a while to slide quietly into winter, though this long mild spell is keeping it going beautifully. The Asters and the exotic garden especially look very colourful and lush. I'm keeping an close eye on the forecasts: I'll have to move fast to bring in the Colocasias and the Cyperus papyrus as they cannot stand any frost at all. Looks like next week could be cold.

The top priority at the moment is the nursery. Having run it for four seasons I know now what works and what doesn't. So the whole place is getting rearranged and smartened up. The two big polytunnels have sparklingly clean new covers and mypex floors, the two old, small greenhouses have gone to new homes and the big one is being moved to the heart of the operation.

New main entrance gates were installed today, and a workstation area out on the nursery so that we can greet visitors and chat while we're potting up. Wooden display benches are being installed to to raise most of the plants up to make it easier for customers to read labels and to help us keep it smart and clean. New paths are being run across the top of the polytunnels which are wide enough for trolleys. This will cut down some of the manual lifting. Next up is a new yard shed for the mower and garden tools, followed by a huge clear out in the potting shed. I do love a big sort out.

In the meantime we're getting on with propagation, and I'm starting to plan this winter's garden changes. The canal border will be dug out and replanted around a central summerhouse, and there are 2,000 bulbs to plant. All I need now is a winter we can work through...

Freebies and bargains.

2010-09-18T16:03:00.004+01:00

Firstly the freebies -

Two small greenhouses, one wood, one aluminium. Structurally OK, but need cleaning and some new glass. We'll help dismantle and can deliver locally if need be. Pics to follow.

We're clearing out the boxes of seeds collected at the nursery between 2004 and 2008. All labelled and we're giving them away free over the next two weeks.

Now the bargains:

- Sunday 26th September is Jam Swap day - 1pm to 5pm. Bring your surplus jam/chutney/pickles/jelly and swap with others or buy some. Free garden entry for all on the day. Cathy will be serving home made cakes and teas. Donations for swaps to the DEC Pakistan flood appeal.

- All our remaining Kings veg and flower seeds are half price! All are in date for next summer.

- We're selling off plants that have been around for a while, one offs and uncertain cultivars. All £2.

We close on the 3rd October, so you've got 11 days left to visit us..

And then there were three.... plus twenty one.

2010-09-05T20:35:00.012+01:00

Our four remaining hens (plus 'Handsome', the cockerel) appeared to have been reduced to three a fortnight ago when one simply vanished during the day without a trace. Last week Peter attacked the chicken pen, clearing mounds of nettles and comfrey around their shed. And there under the shed, was the missing hen, flattened out like a pancake, clearly as broody as only a broody can be.

I braved her indignant pecks and the nettles, shoved a hand under her and counted about 12 eggs. We concealed her as best we could with plywood sheeting and left her be. On Friday she emerged for a drink and a feed and I could clearly see 16 eggs. Tonight we lifted her off her improvised nest and moved her and 21 eggs into the more secure broody coop. Poor thing, she's only a little bantam and can barely spread herself wide enough.

For those of you who've never kept hens, when one of them goes broody, the others appear to stop laying. But watch carefully and you'll see them climb in the nest with the broody and lay their egg next to her. She will quickly tuck it under her and add it to the nest. The layer wriggles out of maternal duty and hopes hers hatches out.Clearly our other three hens have been wriggling under the shed to add their eggs to hers.

Of course this strategy fails after the first few days, as the later eggs are way behind the initial batch. When the first eggs hatch, she'll go into mother hen mode and lose all interest in sitting. But now we've no idea which are which so we'll leave her be and see what happens. She may lose them all if she can't keep them all warm enough.

Sultry September

2010-09-04T22:59:00.002+01:00

If I let my memory ramble, September makes me think of roses, tupperware bowls piled with blackberries, scratched and purple-stained fingers and arms, golden sunshine, daddy-long-legs, swimming in the warm, deep sea (years later, in the dark), new school shirts, a freshly stocked pencil case, fresh, clean school books as yet free of doodles and love-lorn poems, heart pounding at the first sight of last year's crush object not seen since July, a shiny new season ticket not yet lost, stillness.

Some memories are happily just that - mercifully the destructive teenage crush is one of them. The roses turned out to be me not noticing them in June and thinking the reflowering in September was a first effort. Swimming in the warm September sea is something I'll return to one day. But the stillness, the ripening, the warm sunshine before the autumn storms. That's September to me and that's how it's been this past week - just so perfect.

The softening sunshine makes the garden glow gloriously - the late summer Rudbeckias, Heleniums, Salvias and grasses are at their best. The exotic garden knows nothing of the seasons, but just keeps growing and flowering until caught unawares, like an innocent abroad. It's lovely to hear the compliments of visitors, especially when I'm not the intended audience.

My own laptop is bust, so uploading pictures from the camera is a pain.I'll do it later. In the meantime, notes to me...
- the swallows still haven't gone - still gathering on the telephone wires each night to gossip
- tortoiseshell butterflies all over the buddleias, Echinaceas and Bowle's Mauve
- Leucanthemella serotina cuttings all took in three weeks. Don't know why, but I didn't expect that.
- Wollerton Old Hall.Stunning planting, very pretty, narrow paths, tight turns, claustrophic-ish, neat, prim in places, think I want to make more rooms here, but keep them bigger and more contemporary
- Came away thinking we could do better than we do now. Well, SusanJane. Best put up or shut up, I say.....
- Visited Hillview Hardy Plants. Bought some plants, but wow, what a mess...
- Dropped into Ashwoods. Total contrast - absolute order, superb choice and quality, but totally sold out to the garden centre tat element. Had to look away from the plastic sheep and toadstools - they hurt my retinas.

Is there a happy medium? A great nursery, well presented, accurately labelled, superb choice, no weeds, no tat, knowledgeable staff, sensible prices. Oh and a beautiful, well-designed garden alongside. I hope it's possible - that's the plan and that's where we're going. Let me know when we get there....

NGS open day on Sunday

2010-08-03T21:55:00.007+01:00

Our second NGS day of the year is marching unstoppably towards me, so I've been whizzing round the garden, filling in gaps, dead-heading here and there and fretting over the proliferation of dandelions in the lawn. The field across the road froths with their seed heads each spring - I don't stand a chance. I could inch my way across the grass with one of those special dandelion uprooter things, but I think there are about 3,000 of the perishers, and I have a very low boredom threshold. So far we've managed 3 and a half years without chemicals in the nursery and garden, but the dandelions are weakening me.

Going round the garden with a medium toothcomb has given me chance to see what's looking lovely - here's a snapshot, literally. First up is the Catalpa in flower - it's quite foxglovish.

The light underneath this tree is quite magical. The leaves only emerge at the end of the branches, creating an almost perfect dome of gold leaves, filtering a rich honeyed light beneath it.

Much has been made of the comparative hardiness of Echinaceas lately. This is Green Envy. It's been in the garden for two years, and come through two very cold winters - down to -15C. The soil is light, but even so, I'm impressed. The pale one behind it is Fragrant Angel which has also done well.

Finally, Hemerocallis 'Marion Vaughn'. A gorgeous creamy yellow with huge flowers, and a floriferous habit. Don't know why it didn't go like hot cakes last year. I love it.

P.S. I've changed the template for this blog. It looks a bit bright, a bit tellytubbies to me. Not sure if I like it. Opinions please

P.P.S. Ben Chester where are you? I can't find whatever I wrote your email address on and I've searched for you on Facebook under every variation of your name plus Pizza plus Hut and failed. Do get in touch....

Just a note...

2010-07-30T23:15:00.002+01:00

A note to myself to remind me that:
- the Catalpa is in flower - I've never seen it flower before, so I'm interested to see what happens
- after the deep cold of last winter, I only lost two Pittosporums and three tree ferns. Everything else I thought was dead has re-sprouted. Buddleias, Bay laurel, Arbutus unedo, Musa basjoo, Tetrapanax, Paulownia, Cycas revoluta, even Strobilanthes. I can now say that every herbaceous plant in the ground has come through fine with minimal or no protection which is pleasingly reasurring.

The feel of the garden has changed while I've been at Tatton Show. It has ripened and matured, sagging gently at the edges like a plump aunt settling into a comfy armchair. In June it looked taut and pert and somehow I missed the transition. It seems quite transformed now and I like it. James Alexander-Sinclair described it in the August edition of GW Magazine as a 'post-coital cigarette' feeling. How did he get away with that!

Silver-gilt at Tatton Show

2010-07-22T08:06:00.008+01:00

(Update 26th July 2009) Sorry - I didn't realise I'd posted a heading with no text - don't know how that happened! Well yes, I got a silver-gilt medal - missed out on a gold once again, but there's always next year.

I took the garden apart today - months of thinking and planning, 8 days to build it and one day to take it apart. But in between I got six days of very appreciative and complimentary visitors, gave out 2,500 Bluebell Cottage Garden leaflets and got some first class PR:

First up on Tuesday was a visit from Chris Beardshaw who was very complimentary about the garden both on and off camera. I do wish I'd worn a slightly less butch t-shirt though!

I was interviewed about my garden by the RHS. Since Chris arrived as I finished, he stayed put to do his show interview, also with my garden as a backdrop! Chris Beardshaw interview.

Just then the BBC turned up with Toby to film my garden for their Tatton coverage. Cue interesting 'hello, haven't seen you for ages' conversation between the present lead presenter of GW and the one who got away, conducted over my Echinaceas. All perfectly friendly, of course.

More pictures:

The wooden egg bird feeders were a huge hit - albeit they clearly looked more like tulips, poppies or burst seed pods to some.

I've put the rest of the pictures on Facebook as it's a lot quicker to upload. Click here to view

Dodging the showers

2010-07-16T21:39:00.007+01:00

All day long huge black clouds billowed ominously over the trees and slid by, letting us off lightly with a few wet spots or a stiff blast of wind. We were lucky indeed and have made wonderful progress today. We are further ahead than we've ever been on a Tatton Show build.

We had our fingers crossed first thing, hoping that our trees were still upright after overnight gale force winds. But they are both fine, probably because both are planted almost a foot lower than their natural ground level.

Anyway, here's an picture of part of the garden as of tonight:

And here's one from yesterday with veteran back-to-back creator Jacqui Brocklehurst on the sedum roof, sharing a laugh with my trusty assistant Ben Chester.

I promised an update the on the elm creations - I'll do it tomorrow...

Thunderstorms and blowing a hooley. Must be Tatton build week....

2010-07-15T22:24:00.002+01:00

I love Tatton Show. It's only a few miles away from home and set in a gorgeous natural amphitheatre of open parkland. It's a spacious, creative, innovative and community minded show and I wouldn't miss it for anything.

But by some stroke of fate for the past four years the eight days that I've spent on site building my show garden has been afflicted with torrential rain, high winds or both, like today. And it isn't as if we're having a wet summer - the irony of building a garden in torrential rain following a four month drought and with a hosepipe ban in place is not lost on me.

Still, the decision to avoid hard landscaping has paid off - at least we are into planting now thanks to help from hubby Dave, Ben Chester (Young Designer of the Year entrant), Jacqui Brocklehurst (a regular on the Tatton back-to-back scene and herb grower), Marilyn (invaluable Thursday helper) and of course the team back at the nursery, Ewan, Janet and Tracey.

So it's all looking good at the moment. Just as important, I do feel I've found a style I feel comfortable with: soft, relaxed planting set in natural, local materials but with bright colours and a feeling of fullness and exuberance. It's taken me a while, but I'm beginning to feel I know where I stand in aesthetic horticulture.

Tatton Show beckons...

2010-07-08T22:05:00.003+01:00

June has slipped by in a blur of sunshine, never-ending watering and a near-continuous stream of garden visitors enjoying the glorious summer. The garden has never looked better and it's been lovely to hear people's positive comments and to see them getting such pleasure from being in it.

We don't do much sitting out in it ourselves but had a lovely evening last weekend with all the nursery staff here for dinner in the garden. Dave's borscht and caponata went down a storm - recipes to follow here...

But June leads inexorably to July and July means Tatton Show. I'm building my fourth back to back show garden called 'A Banquet for the Birds'. As you might guess from the name, it focuses on trees, shrubs, perennials and annuals that produce berries and seeds for birds to eat, and to create a bird-friendly habitat.

But there will be an additional 'feature' to which end a tree surgeon came here today to cut down some dead elm trees which I then took to a local woodturner. Intrigued? I'll post you a picture tomorrow.

Identification answers - and growing for GW live...

2010-06-08T20:42:00.003+01:00

A couple of answers to recent ident questions that cropped up when I've not been here:

- the fluffy, low growing magenta flower in the canal bank is Phuopsis stylosa
- the stiff, silvery leaved plant with the large blue daisy-like heads which has self-seeded by the polytunnel is Purple Salsify, or Tragopogon porrifolius

Top of my worry list at the moment are the 400 or so plants I'm growing for Toby Buckland's family garden for GW live next week. The order was only placed in early May, so we've had just six weeks to get them big enough and in flower. The cool spell in May got them off to a slow start, and some like Echinacea were always no-hopers really. Many plants got to the bud stage last week, but have ground to a halt again with all this rain and cloudy weather. Most have been moved into the polytunnel, and I've stuffed our biggest greenhouse full of Lychnis coronaria 'Gardener's World' and Anthemis E.C. Buxton. I'm now praying for sunshine - they've got six days to get flowering...

Survivors...

2010-05-31T21:08:00.005+01:00

With a fortnight of mild weather behind me and after a night of heavy rain, I decided to plant out the exotic garden. Out from winter hibernation came the sole surviving small clump of Cyperus papyrus (all the rest died, despite being in a greenhouse, in a polystyrene fish box, wrapped in straw and fleece), Colocasia fontanesii (treated the same as the Cyperus and came through just fine), Salvia patens 'Guanojuato' and two of the remaing three Jacarandas I grew from the seeds I collected on Sydney harbour. Into the mix went some Dahlia 'David Howard' and 'Arabian Night', a few Geranium palmatum (pitifully small at present), some young Paulownia which I grew from root cuttings last year and a big variegated Yucca which seems bombproof. The dead tree ferns remain as supports for Ipomea 'Grandpa Ott', which should add a splash of joy.

My urge to plant up was partly inspired by my delight at the emergence of the spears of Arisaema consanguineum, so late, but bigger and better than ever. I really did think they had bitten the dust, but in fact even some of my seed-raised babies in the polytunnel have come through temperatures as low as -10C.

A few other survivors have finally sprung into growth - the Musa basjoo which stayed outdoors are sending up new shoots from ground level, as are the Tetrapanax and a couple of Eucomis. Around the garden, the strawberry tree, Arbutus unedo, is sprouting warily along its old branches and the ancient, gnarled Rosemary in the scree bed is in flower and looking surprisingly chipper. Even the young Callistemon citrinus I planted last autumn have come through. But not so the Australian mint bush, Prostanthera cuneata, which revealed its tender nature after surviving at least 10 Cheshire winters outside. My attempts at propagating it from cuttings and seed failed last year, so that's it, I guess. Still, the biggest surprise is the death of several buddleias - their trunks ringed with dead bark lifted by the frost. Yet the supposedly tender Buddleia alternifolia looks as healthy as anything. Most odd.

Elsewhere the garden is looking lush, ready to burst with the first great flush of herbaceous colour, now that the tulips are over. The biggest swathe of colour is from Allium Purple Sensation, now in great drifts across the not-so-new square borders. It's been a very busy Bank Holiday weekend - I'll try to take some pictures in the week. TTFN.

Off to Chelsea

2010-05-25T08:31:00.005+01:00

I'm on the early train to London, heading for Chelsea Flower Show. Pleased to see the forecast is much cooler than yesterday's 30C - must have been unbearable. Still, if the Queen can take it...

My expectations of Chelsea are always low, and thus always exceeded. Something catches my eye or imagination, and the simple fact of a day out sends me home renewed. More later...

'Later' is here and I'm on the train home (superb service to the north west now, left Chelsea at 18.30, will be at home near Warrington by 9pm. Train takes well under 2 hours). Enough waffle about trains - what about the show?

Andy Sturgeon won best in show and for a while I couldn't quite see why. The Leeds garden was far the most exciting exhibit and Roger Platt's garden was superb in shape, planting and eye-candy beauty. But I think he wins on use of colour. There was an obvious pick up between the bronzey Irises and the metal screens, but also between some of the plants and the painted back wall. The whole thing had a mellow warmth to it. But then to add silver and lemon highlights with the Verbascums was a touch of real painterliness, like the sparkle in the corner of an eye in an old master. Using so many half- hardy shrubs after the winter we've had struck a slightly odd note, but he wasn't to know that when the garden was planned. And all that fuss about the trees - the pines looked fine.

I still liked the Leeds canal garden best for sheer audacity and wow factor. My favourite small garden was Kate Gould's 'Joy Forever'. At first sight nailed on for a gold, but got a silver-gilt. Wonder if it was overplanted? Or perhaps she alluded to 'not much time for maintenance' in her brief as in her leaflet. It most certainly wasn't low maintenance planting. (more in a mo...)

As to plants, I liked Tulipa Jan Reus, a stunning blood red which will look fab with my Carmival de Nice. I spotted some unusual obelisks for the square herbaceous borders. Others: Rosa Queen of Sweden, Digitalis heywoodii, Paeonia witmaniana, Rosa Chevy Chase and some stunning Arisaemas.

Hello to James AS, to whom I think I've now made amends for not saying hello at Chelsea last year. I was forgiven with a hug, which was lovely. :-). All power to your cacti.... My Mum made a beeline for Christine Walkden earlier in the day, shook her hand and got her knuckles crushed!

Much more I could say but I'll sign off while I've still got juice in the trusty iPhone battery. That's it, day off done, 8am start tomorrow at a client site to plant up new borders. Back to the nursery on Thursday and get set for the ling weekend. No let up this time of year!

Managed to miss the diamonds garden completely. Oh well.

Update on Telegraph coverage....

2010-05-11T13:48:00.004+01:00

We currently have the headline photo and article on the Telegraph's gardening page. Click on the headline and scroll down for Bluebell Cottage Gardens.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening

Thanks Joanna :-)

Updated update:

We're still on the Telegraph site, but we've moved to here:
Link to article

Slightly distracted...

2010-05-11T10:16:00.004+01:00

The garden has temporarily slipped down my attention list as the country awaits Nick Clegg's decision. I wouldn't be in his shoes today.

He'll be damned by most of his own party (who may not back the move anyway given their triple lock controls on policy change) if he does the arithmetically rational thing and settles in with the Tories to form a majority government.

He'll be damned by the electorate if he pitches into a more natural coalition with Labour and forms a minority goverment of all the losers.

And he'll be damned by history if he passes up this opportunity to secure a step toward PR by pitching in with neither and leaving the Tories to form a minority government in such troubled economic times.

What would I do? I would hold my nose and step in with the Tories, hoping to demonstrate that coalitions can work in the national interest, and thus demonstrate the potential benefits of PR when the referendum comes around.

Poor bloke - no wonder he looks a bit pale.

Poppies and Pulsatillas

2010-05-10T22:22:00.000+01:00

If you know, or think you may know, the ident of the stunning red Papaver orientale in this shot, do let me know. Ta

'Wierdly wonderful'

2010-05-08T11:24:00.002+01:00

A quick update - we've got a nice write up in the Telegraph today, courtesy of Joanna Fortnam who dropped by on a tour of Cheshire gardens a couple of weeks ago.

The 'wierd' refers partly to our little collection of Arisaemas which I added to at Malvern earlier this week. More to follow when I get a mo...

A bit late, but still lovely

2010-04-29T22:30:00.005+01:00

I was wrong, the bluebells were late. They are usually out by the 25th April, but I think last week's cold spell slowed them down.

Anyway, late or not, they are well on their way out now and will look fantastic for the next two weeks. We're open all this weekend including Bank Holiday Monday. If you are coming to visit us do wear sturdy footwear as the forecast rain may make the woodland paths a bit muddy.

It's been a frenetic few days, with 130 visitors turning up for a somewhat rainy NGS open day on Sunday. A huge thank you to Sheila and Gordon who not only came up with a gorgeous array of cakes with just a few days notice, but stayed to run the tea room with style, raising £200 for charity. Well done and thank you to you both.

Yesterday and today I held my favourite events of the year - two propagation workshops. I remember clearly the hunger I once had to get first hand experience of techniques I had only read about. It's such a pleasure now to be able to share the real reason I love running a nursery, the joy of successful propagation and the continual learning which underpins it. It's a bit of a squash fitting everyone into our potting shed for the practical session, but we had a great time snipping, separating and seed sowing together, sharing our experiences and swapping tips. The participants all said they enjoy the workshops, but I have the most wonderful time delivering them.

Our lovely Red Hat group visit on Wednesday enjoyed gorgeous spring sunshine, but they outshone the garden in their fabulous red and purple outfits. Thanks Val for bringing your friends - see you at choir soon.

Today's visitors, Kingsley Garden Club, ignored the rain and turned out in fornce to afternoon to explore the gardens and woods. A very knowledgeable group they are too and one of the best local garden clubs with a thriving membership.

Cakemakers for charity?....

2010-04-16T21:41:00.009+01:00

It's our National Gargen Scheme open day next Sunday and the garden will look lovely. But I've left it late to confirm the catering arrangements and our usual charity can't do it.

So, if you know a group that would like to provide cakes for about 150 visitors next weekend and use the proceeds towards a registered charity, please get in touch! Urgently!!

It's been a while since I posted a picture of the garden and the cherry tree inspired me. Most of the blossom is now on the lawn, but it still looks pretty whether on the tree or the ground. The tree is a magnet for bumblebees - there's a mesmeric hum all around it - and the bare soil underneath it is now covered in little hills with a neat hole in the top - some sort of miner bee I guess.

So it's NGS next weekend, and last weekend we held a very well attended plant fair. The weather was perfect, our superb guest nurseries did well, and it was lovely to see the place abuzz.

Jacqui Brocklehurst's herbs were especially popular. You might recognise her from Tatton Show. She designs gardens and grows fabulous herbs which we stock at the nursery. You can find Jacqui at http://www.colourmygarden.co.uk.

I'll post contact details for the other nurseries shortly.

2010-04-11T10:09:00.000+01:00

This is an extract from book I'm writing - ‘A Year at Bluebell Cottage'

From ‘April, come she will’

The garden is slowly clothing itself in a haze of virgin green buds. In winter I can see right through the bare stems in borders nearest the cottage through to the newly carved out Berry Border on one side, and the orchard on the other. But now these two views are veiled in a soft wash of green leaves. The garden changes quickly in April; what was visible two weeks ago is vanishing behind freshly formed screens. If I want to see behind them I must go around them and look. Garden designers often talk about the importance of creating journeys through the garden, of the importance of enticing you further into it by partial concealment. Evergreens such as yew and box are often used to this effect, but I generally prefer to use deciduous shrubs. In summer, their foliage provides the full screening ‘come hither’ effect, but in winter, when there is a strong disinclination to venture further than necessary, a glint of colour through the screen from an emerging clump of cream crocuses has just the desired effect and draws me through. Perhaps it’s also part of living further north – every scrap of winter light is valuable. I find most evergreens too heavy, unchanging and dark. They seem to form dark blobs in the garden and deny life to the ground around them with their dense, unbroken shade.

Deciduous shrubs may lack leaves in winter, but for me they don’t lose their interest. As the leaves fall, pale winter sunlight trickles through them, and the bare stems lift the garden, glistening in the frosts, or catching the morning light, creating pleasing patterns of light and shade. Vistas open up through the garden that were closed a few weeks before, and plant shapes reveal themselves, shorn of their summer clothing. Bulbs thrive underneath and herbaceous perennials nestle up to their stems. And each tree and shrub has its personal moment of awakening in spring, as one after another finally decides that its moment has come and bursts its buds. Most have a good covering of green now, but there are still a few yet to be roused from their slumber, despite the temptations of a few mild days. The pale stems of Hibiscus ‘Blue Bird’ has only the faintest hint of green in its tight buds and the Gleditsia triacanthus by the pond appears still to be completely dormant. (For the first three years Dave glanced askance at this bare tree each spring and asked me if it was still alive. But he is learning fast now, he not only knows it will sprout leaves late, he knows its name, and that of many plants here. It’s inevitable – he’s learning the very best way, by osmosis).

Sue Beesley

Swallows and hailstones

2010-04-05T19:43:00.006+01:00

The swallows have arrived, surely earlier than usual, or does it just seem early because it's still so chilly? Peter clocked them first on Thursday, wheeling in a flock of 40 or so overhead. A few peeled off and settled on the telephone wires and the rest flew on, as if some invisible, airborne bus had set our birds down at their stop, waved them off and driven off with the rest of the passengers.

Some welcome they got, as they were followed a few minutes later by a deafening hailstorm which laid half an inch of hailstones the size of marrowfat peas across the entire nursery. Still, no damage done.

The garden is slowly coming to life, as are our customers, wrapped up against the cool wind and finding a welcome refuge in the re-opened tea room, which Cathy Bell and her team adorned with bunting, fresh coffee and home made cakes for the Easter weekend.

A reminder that we're hosting a plant fair on Saturday 10th April, 11am to 4pm - there will be 8 other nurseries from around the north west so do come along and see what you can pick up. Half price entry to the garden if you buy a plant from the plant fair.

And I'm going to make a prediction - that the bluebells will be in flower as usual by the third week in April. I think their flowering is governed more by the timing of the tree canopy opening above them and day length, than air temperatures. I think another cold spell would delay both, but it's now forecast milder for the next week or so so I think we're back on track.

That's it for now, folks. Pictures next week....

Update on 'Dead or Alive'..

- Fatsia japonica - more dead than alive.
- Fig trees - significant die back, I think.
- Arisaema consanguineum - corms in pots dead. Hopefully the ones in the garden have made it, but if not I have some healthy seed from last year that I've sown.
- Dierama pulcherrimum - looks dead in pots, the ones in the garden look alive, but I'm not sure yet.
- Arisarum proboscideum - all in pots dead, all in garden fine.

Dead or alive?

2010-03-16T21:53:00.003Z

At last we have a predictable mild spell ahead and it's time for a first assessment of the winter's damage. I've been round scratching at bark and tugging at dead-looking stems. I unwrapped the exotic garden yesterday, with some trepidation, to look for signs of life. I wrapped many up again later in fresh straw and fleece, but it was a good chance to assess the damage. Just to reiterate, we had one low of -16C and probably 60 sub-zero nights in total. So:

Dead: Geranium maderense (just had a bit of straw over it)
Alive: Geranium palmatum (as above)
Dead: Ensete murieliae (wrapped in straw and fleece, but in a pot so roots died)
Dead: Jacaranda (wrapped in straw and hessian sacking)
Alive: Tetrapanax papyrifer (straw and fleece)
Dead?: Musa basjoo. All four are dead at least to ground level. Not sure if they'll shoot from below ground. All were wrapped in straw and fleece.
Alive: Canna indica. Covered with a pile of straw and fleeced over.
Alive?: Colocasia esculenta - feels firm under the soil (Covered in pile of straw and fleece)
Alive?: Cyperus papyrus. This is a big surprise. The plant outdoors does seem to be still alive under a pile of straw. I really thought this one would have gone.
Dead: All the Pittosporums in the garden. Dead as doornails
Dead: Bay laurels. I'm not surprised that the potted ones are dead, but the big one in the front garden looks dead too. I'll give it till May to shoot
Deadish: All the phormiums are badly damaged. Still, it's an excuse to get rid of some of the very old, large ones
Deadish: Libertia grandiflora. Just a few green shoots in the centre
AliveThe variegated Yucca, fully exposed in the scree bed. It looks almost unmarked, to my great surprise.
Dead?: Kniphofia uvaria var nobilis. I'm quite surprised at these - they all look dead on the nursery
Dead: Kniphofia caulescens. A big one in the stock beds has turned to dust.

Most of the tree ferns have solid cores and the Butia capitata seem OK, if a bit brown. The big Cycad's leaves are brown, but the core is solid so it should produce fresh ones. All in all, no great crises. The loss of the bay in the front garden would be the biggest loss.

Amongst all this damage, the sunshine is easing the garden into life. One brave narcissus opened today, and the Hellebores, usually over by late March are opening with more confidence. The freshest green is from the mounds of frondy Aconitum leaves. It will all look lovely in a few weeks.

Delightful by day, deadly by night.

2010-03-07T19:52:00.009Z

During most winters, I keep a rough count of the frosty nights. But this year it's more a case of counting the frost free nights. We had one this week, and I can't remember when we had one before that, it was so long ago. Last night was -6C and tonight is forecast -5C. The big pond has a decent coat of ice every morning and there is no sign at all of frogspawn.

With lots of new bare root plants here being potted up, watering is a trial. The pipes are frozen in the morning, as are the pots - even those in the polytunnels. But the warm sunshine takes tunnel temps up to about 18C in mid afternoon, putting stress on plants in dry compost.But if I water, I risk freezing the roots overnight. So I'm trying to water only those that seem really dry, as soon as the pipes defrost and hoping surplus water has run out by the time it gets dark.

Still, the days have been beautiful - I've been gardening in a t-shirt twice this week - and the first clutches of Cream Beauty crocuses are tentatively opening in the icy sunshine.

And the bright sunshine means that our rooftop 'hot-bath-making-machine' is working a treat. I'm recording the stats daily now - on a typical sunny, cold day (max temp outside 6C), the panel reaches 75C and heats a tank of water to 60C, justifying a much needed hot bath.

Anyway, I've had enough of talking about the cold, and I'm sure you have too. So, no more. It's plants and flowers all the way to summer now. I hope.

Temporary, but welcome respite from the cold

2010-02-24T20:46:00.009Z

I've not blogged for weeks, I've been too cold to sit still for long enough. And I've lacked inspiration - the novelty of frost-laced photos wore off some time ago. Blissfully, the sun came out this afternoon, the ground defrosted enough to allow for a bit of planting and weeding and the sun on my gently sweating back tempted me down to a t-shirt and one fleece, discarding the second fleece, body warmer and waterproof in which I've been swaddled for weeks.

We've actually got a lot done in February in hours snatched between the morning defrost and the afternoon re-freeze (I've stopped counting the sub-zero nights as they became the norm some weeks ago). So here's a bit of an update.

Firstly, here's the updated picture from the orchard. The plan is to sow the bare areas with wildflowers, using seed saved from our nursery patch from last year.

I'll post a picture of the area under the Cedar later...

Here's another before/after set....

No doubt you prefer the 'before', but it was in reality a bramble-ridden wasteland, formerly known as the old stock beds. We dug out all the useful plants before enlisting Bill and his JCB to create roughly flat tiers. It will become our outdoor growing on area, hopefully enabling us to keep much larger stocks and a much wider range.

Despite the deep freeze, I'm pleased to say we're still occasionally raiding the garden for food. Leeks are the perfect nature's freezer food - as long as you can get them out of the ground of course. These were pulled and eaten tonight, and they were tender and tasty.

And the carrot clamp worked perfectly (see post from 27th October 2009) The top few have a touch of frostbite, but the lower layer is fine. They won't last much longer though as they are starting to sprout. Monty Don was reminiscing about carrot clamps in his GW article this month. Monty - the outdoor freezer is as good as ever.

Defrosted and motoring...

2010-01-30T19:07:00.013Z

January's frozen spell is broken and my spring change urge is at full pelt. I always allow months and more for new ideas for the garden to brew before committing to big changes, but once an idea has become so clear in my mind's eye that it seems more 'real' to me than the actuality of how things are now, then it's time to go ahead.

So this week I hired a turfcutter and a trusty operator in the shape of Tim Atkinson to lift a lot, and I mean a lot, of grass. I can use the machine myself and lifted some more after he had gone, but all heavy garden machinery seems designed for use by a 14 stone, 6 foot man, not a 9 stone, 5'4" woman. I guess there's not much of a market for a 3/4 scaled device, though I'd happily buy a full set. Anyway, here are the before photos of the two areas in question - I shall leave you to ponder on the end result. I'll post some more when we've tidied up a bit. Right now there are rolls of turf everywhere.

I've now started four big garden redevelopment projects this winter that remain 'in progress' rather than completed. I've almost finished replanting part of the cottage garden and the front garden is ready to plant - it just hasn't quite hit the top priority spot yet. Plus the Mobberley garden to finish replanting and the Lion Salt Works butterfly garden. So no pressure then, especially with the first of the new plant stock deliveries now scheduled for next week.

Still, I do have a small army of helpers (apart from the ever-reliable Peter that is). I barrowed leaf mould into the new cottage garden area to give the new Trilliums a good home and it was feverishly raked over the plot for me by the chickens. Must be something irresistable in it.

Talking of Trilliums, I've managed to source a few varieties as stock this spring. And talking of stock, the winter weather was a great opportunity to sort my website out and update the 2010 stock listing too: Click here for 2010 stock list

Berry bonanza for the birds.

2010-01-10T18:28:00.019Z

One of my favourite snow pictures last week was of the orange berries of Sorbus 'Joseph Rock' with pyramids of snow piled on top. But it won't last long. The tree has been ignored until now, but after exhausting all the red holly berries and the last few crab apples, the sorbus has become the top food source in the garden this week, attracting Fieldfares, Redwings and Song Thrushes in numbers.

It's very difficult to get them in focus, or to show you how the tree trembles constantly under the constant thrashing of beaks and wings. The tree is clearly visible from the gate on the lane, if you fancy coming and having a look. But be quick...

Two Fieldfares and a smaller Redwing at the bottom.

Five Fieldfares and one Redwing, smaller, bottom left.

A somewhat out of focus Mistlethrush

And finally a Songthrush, recognisable by the lines of upside down heart-shaped spots. They seem disinclined to compete for fruit in the tree and are happier on the ground, foraging for breadcrumbs and seeds.

A cold, beautiful, stopped world.

2010-01-09T12:41:00.011Z

The snow has played havoc with my plans for January. I was going to prune the apple trees, finish planting the shrubs at Lion Salt Works, lift the turf under the orchard trees ready for the wildflower meadow seeds, create new nursery plant bays etc. etc. All very proper, western work-ethicky things to do once the Christmas break is over.

But thwarted by temperatures between -8C and -4C during the day, I've spent hours just gazing at the world outside - the snow, the shapes of ice crystals, the birds, passers by with pink cheeks, plumply wrapped against the cold, cars attempting the slope up to the brige and just as often reversing back again a few moments later to try again. It's all very slow for me, I'm not used to such enforced inactivity.

Yes, there have been snow related jobs, tracking down frozen pipes to defrost, clearing snow for the chickens. But there's no point doing anything in the nursery right now. It's time to stop, and watch.

Snowy picture puzzle

2010-01-07T11:26:00.005Z

Some joker keeps leaving me blog messages wanting a riddle. He/she/it's a spammer I'm sure, but here's one anyway.

As Rolf would say 'Do you know what it is yet?'

Snow-bound, but not stir-crazy yet...

2010-01-07T08:09:00.006Z

7" of snow fell on Tuesday, and last night the temperature fell to -14C. That's what the car thermometer said at 7.30am, right next to the house, it would have been lower in the garden, but the outdoor thermometer is buried under the snow somewhere and it can stay there for now. Nearby Woodford recorded -17C.

Dave has set off in the 4x4 for a meeting in Oxfordshire where it's -17C right now. I'm going nowhere in my old car - except online to window shop for a Land Rover...

Actual gardening is clearly out of the question, but with a new camera lens to play with I'm not short of things to do....

A sparkling, ice-bound world on hold...

2010-01-03T19:45:00.023Z

In a perfect world I would spend the first few days of the New Year pruning the apple trees in the orchard, waving occasionally to brightly-coated canal boaters chugging by beneath me. I love pruning fruit trees – it's one of life's great pleasures on a sunny winter day - the feel of the older hard rippled bark in the first strong branch crooks, the softer young, smooth stems with their fat fruiting buds, anticipating the hum of spring bees and the cascade of fruit which will follow. Then there’s the sheer grin-inducing pleasure of hauling myself up into a large old tree, a less lithe echo of my 10 year old scruffy self shinning up a walnut tree in the local park, throwing green walnuts on the kids below. What is there not to love about it?

But apple tree pruning will have to wait a week or two this year. The cold snap has frozen the ground solid - the pond is frozen hard enough to walk over and the ground is so stiff that bare soil doesn't move a fraction if I jump on it. I’m reluctant to walk on the grass too much as it will damage it. The canal was frozen an inch thick yesterday, despite daily through traffic. A canal boat plowed through a few minutes after I took the first picture, the ice creaking and humming ahead of the boat before splintering and shearing off into huge, bobbing slabs.

Cat on ice. Not impressed?

How about Dave on ice?

The few hours of weak sunlight each day are just enough to soften the frost on south-facing slopes before the freeze returns overnight (The solar water heater is still getting to 40C on good days btw!). The sunlight cheers me up wonderfully - the grim, gloomy, dirty-ice days earlier in December left me feeling similarly dispirited. It feels good to feel good, if that makes sense.

Today's sunshine enticed me to try out a treasured Christmas present - a new fixed 50mm lens for my camera, recommended to me by Jane Burkinshaw. Having no zoom takes a bit of getting used to, but the clarity and intensity of the images was plain to see straight away. The berries are from the Sorbus 'Joseph Rock' which the birds have yet to strip. The cockerel is from the batch that we hatched in May - isn't he a beauty?

The Birthday of the Unconquered Sun....

2009-12-21T08:36:00.005Z

It's the final run-up to Christmas, often a week of frenetic activity, stress, excitement, irritation or all of the above. Whether you celebrate Christmas as the birthday of Jesus, or whether for you it's just a break from work, what is certain is that today marks the true midwinter, the pivotal point in the year where the northern days will begin to lengthen and life begins to return to the frozen land. (And deeply frozen it is too today. I've just walked across our lawn and the thin snow is so hard that I left no footprints.) Here's a bit of solstice celebration history:

In the northern latitudes, midwinter's day has been an important time for celebration throughout the ages. On this shortest day of the year, the sun is at its lowest and weakest, a pivot point from which the light will grow stronger and brighter. This is the turning point of the year. The romans called it Dies Natalis Invicti Solis, the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun.

The Roman midwinter holiday, Saturnalia, was both a gigantic fair and a festival of the home. Riotous merry-making took place, and the halls of houses were decked with boughs of laurel and evergreen trees. Lamps were kept burning to ward off the spirits of darkness. Schools were closed, the army rested, and no criminals were executed. Friends visited one another, bringing good-luck gifts of fruit, cakes, candles, dolls, jewellery, and incense. Temples were decorated with evergreens symbolizing life's continuity, and processions of people with masked or blackened faces and fantastic hats danced through the streets.

The custom of mummers visiting their neighbours in costume, which is still alive in Newfoundland, is descended from these masked processions.

Roman masters feasted with slaves, who were given the freedom to do and say what they liked (the medieval custom of all the inhabitants of the manor, including servants and lords alike, sitting down together for a great Christmas feast, came from this tradition). A Mock King was appointed to take charge of the revels (the Lord of Misrule of medieval Christmas festivities had his origin here).

In pagan Scandinavia the winter festival was the yule (or juul). Great yule logs were burned, and people drank mead around the bonfires listening to minstrel-poets singing ancient legends. It was believed that the yule log had the magical effect of helping the sun to shine more brightly.

Mistletoe, which was sacred because it mysteriously grew on the most sacred tree, the oak, was ceremoniously cut and a spray given to each family, to be hung in the doorways as good luck. The celtic Druids also regarded mistletoe as sacred. Druid priests cut it from the tree on which it grew with a golden sickle and handed it to the people, calling it All-Heal. To hang it over a doorway or in a room was to offer goodwill to visitors. Kissing under the mistletoe was a pledge of friendship. Mistletoe is still forbidden in most Christian churches because of its Pagan associations, but it has continued to have a special place in home celebrations.

In the third century various dates, from December to April, were celebrated by Christians as Christmas. January 6 was the most favoured day because it was thought to be Jesus' baptismal day (in the Greek Orthodox Church this continues to be the day to celebrate Christmas). Around 350, December 25 was adopted in Rome and gradually almost the entire Christian Church agreed to that date, which coincided with Winter Solstice, the Yule and the Saturnalia. The merry side of Saturnalia was adopted to the observance of Christmas. By 1100 Christmas was the peak celebration of the year for all of Europe. During the 16th century, under the influence of the Reformation, many of the old customs were suppressed and the Church forbade processions, colourful ceremonies, and plays.

In 1647 in England, Parliament passed a law abolishing Christmas altogether. When Charles II came to the throne, many of the customs were revived, but the feasting and merrymaking were now more worldly than religious. (Janet Shotwell)

So, regardless of faith, there's every reason to bring in evergreens and adorn them, give presents and feast yourselves this week. I decorated our live Christmas tree last night (dug up from the garden last week). For once I didn't rush, just took my time draping it with lights, tinsel and baubles. A small, symbolic act of respect for its rare greenness and life at this stilled time of year.

So tip your hat to the sun today, and celebrate on Friday without hesitation or humbug for whatever reason you choose.

A magical hot bath making machine or an economically ruinous bit of political posturing?

2009-12-19T12:05:00.016Z

I heard someone on the radio this morning sounding ominous notes about how Gordon Brown's COP15 commitment to reduce the UK's carbon emissions would cost the economy dear. And yesterday even Saint Polly of Toynbee threw in the towel. You know the argument - tackling climate change means we'll all have to freeze in dingy hovels, wear hair shirts and go nowhere, except backwards. Well I disagree - I think moving to a low carbon economy can make us happy, boost the economy in the short term and make it supremely better in the long term. It just takes a shift in mindset.

Here's an example.

Last year we purchased a luxury item costing about £3,000 from a local company. The item itself is made in the UK and the parent company's head office is in Northern Ireland. The installation of this item required the services of three different local tradesmen. Thus our self-indulgent purchase boosted the local economy and contributed to the UK economy, which was nice.

The item in question gives me a great deal of pleasure - I think about it several times a day and look at it often. It's beautifully crafted from black glass, copper and stainless steel, with no plastic in sight, and is clearly a fine piece of engineering. I find it attractive too; sleek, dark and elegant. I feel happier for owning it, I like the fact that it's visible to other people and I love it when people notice it and ask about it.

It's definitely a luxury - we didn't 'need' it, but it does deliver some practical pleasures. Firstly, it magically fills our water tank with hot water every day in the summer, giving me a 'free' bath almost every night - a real personal luxury. And since we bought it, our fuel bill has dropped by at least £500 per year. Odd really, for a luxury to be so useful?

The item in question is of course a Thermomax solar water panel, which now adorns our cottage roof, not moving or making any sound, consuming nothing but sunlight and emitting nothing but lashings of hot water.

Oh, I forgot to mention, I feel that I'm helping the country economically and politically - reducing our dependency on the oil imports that we must otherwise have. And as it happens we're reducing our carbon emissions too and thus helping to 'save the planet'.

There, I've gone and spoilt it, haven't I? My luxury item has been transformed from a shiny and elegant hot bath making machine into an irritatingly worthy piece of political polemic.

Look, I know that £3,000 is a lot of money. But many people spend that much on a holiday each year, or on 'stuff' for the house, or on upgrading the car. And for the truly well off it's a drop in the ocean. Suppose it became a fashionable purchase among celebrities? Suppose Simon Cowell, or Jeremy Clarkson bought one? (OK, I know that's pushing it - but does he really love paying his heating bill? Really?) Everyone would want one. Demand would soar, investment would flow in, prices would ultimately come down as mass production took off. Houses without a south facing roof would drop in value. Neighbours would enviously ask 'how hot is yours?.

You see? It's just a question of mindset. Go on, treat yourself to a real solar panel. Because you're worth it.

2009-11-26T19:52:00.005Z

Where to start after a month's absence. As usual after a blogging break this will be more of a news report than anything more insightful or evocative. But it brings us up to date.

Let's start with last week, spent very pleasurably in Italy enjoying a much needed break in unseasonally warm Sorrento. Dave and I both love Italy. For a start the food is superb despite apparent simplicity - first class ingredients left to speak for themselves with the minimum of embellishments. And then there is the sense of people living a real, interconnected life. Sorrento's main street is closed to traffic on Saturday nights and Sunday mornings and the entire town turns out to stroll, meet friends and gossip. Best clothes are shaken out and worn for pleasure and display, small children are coo'd over and every few yards people stop to exchange a handshake and a chat. Though few shops were open, you couldn't see from one side of the road to the other for people.

Talking of friends, hello to Lana and Kirill, new friends from New York thanks to a piece of classic abysmal Italian driving. A car reversed into the coach we were travelling in between Naples and Sorrento, and we got chatting over the ensuing chaos. It turned out we were staying on the same floor of the same hotel and shared several very happy evenings of fine dining and great conversation. Hope the twins have remembered who you both are!

We didn't hire a car, relying instead on Italy's excellent public transport to get us to Pompeii (mind-blowing, wonderful)

, Capri (scenic, but overrated, overpriced and largely shut down for the winter), Amalfi (lovely, friendly, nice shops) and Positano (very pretty and a cracking restaurant on the beach). We'll be back.

Holidays aside, I've been working on two customer projects - a Butterfly Garden for the Lion Salt Works in Northwich, and a garden revamp for a client with a large garden in Mobberley. I'll post some before and after pictures one day.

But in between I've sneaked in a few hours of gardening pleasure here. My top treat was planting the four different varieties of garlic I bought from the Garlic Farm. Last year I only grew about 20 bulbs and we got through it all in no time. This year I've planted about 250.... First up, Albigensian Wight - huge softish white cloves. Next Early Purple Wight - smaller and, er, purple. Third was Picardy Wight - hard, heavy bulbs and a nightmare to separate. Feels like a good keeper. Finally Venetian Wight, small slim firm cloves. It'll be interesting to see if there's any real difference between them in growing performance and flavour.

I snatched an hour today to sow the sweet peas - 7 varieties from Eagle Seeds, heartily recommended by keen sweet pea grower David K from the BBC Gardening Message Board. Good seeds they seemed too and not too late to order if you fancy a go.

Otherwise, the nursery is largely put to bed for the winter and Peter and I are now busy ripping bits of the garden apart. As usual I've probably started more projects here than we've got time to finish and I keep tweaking the plans as we go along, but Pete seems to take it all in his stride.

Overwintering experiments

2009-10-27T22:06:00.011Z

The great thing about exotic, or specifically day neutral plants, is that they have no idea that winter is coming. So while the weather is mild they just keep on growing and getting better and better, blissfully unaware that it will all end, very soon.

I've been watching the forecast for any sign of a cold spell on the way, but decided today that I can't leave the job any longer - it's time to dismantle the exotic garden and put it to bed. Seems a shame really - it looks fantastic!

Anyway, for the record, this is what I've done:
Cyperus papyrus, Colocasia Black Magic and Colocasia fontanesii - packed in trays of compost (the Cyperus is in a polystyrene frozen fish trough thingy, the others are in black nursery crates) in the greenhouse topped with straw. I keep the greenhouse just above zero with an electric heater.

More Colocasias, Canna indica, Canna Stuttgart, Thalia dealbata, more Cyperus papyrus - in a straw lined cold frame in the polytunnel, which is unheated.

One of each of Cyperus papyrus, Colocasia fontanesii and Canna indica left outside and mulched with straw,

Two small Musa basjoo repotted and in the polytunnel, two larger ones left out
All the Dicksonia left out - to be wrapped up
Two smaller Ensete murielii taken in, one large one left out
One small Cycad taken in, the large one left out and wrapped up
Tetrapanax left out
I'll split the Arundos and take some in as an insurance policy
Salvia patens 'Guanojuato' - bits in all places and some left outside
Dahlias -all the ones outside are staying out and I'll mulch with straw.

BTW - a big bale of straw - more than I can use really - £3.25. Cheap insulation!

While on the subject of overwintering, I've built a carrot clamp - first time experiment so we'll see how that goes:

The clamp is a raised earth bed, followed by layers of straw, carrots, earth, straw, carrots...
...topped off with a mound of earth. Which would be just fine, except that the chickens can't resist newly turned soil...
.. so I've added a fleece cover, partly for additional insulation, but mostly to discourage the chickens

Planting up a container on Channel M

2009-10-19T20:07:00.001+01:00

My latest Channel M video on planting up a winter container. I quite like this one - perhaps because I watched it with the sound turned down!

How do I love thee, (Autumn),

2009-10-18T15:43:00.004+01:00

Let me count the ways:

60 plants in flower
12 grasses in flower, or seed heads
11 plants with colourful berries/hips
18 plants with striking autumn colour

And that's not counting the ones with the odd single flower still just about hanging on, like the Lychnis coronaria, or evergreens and conifers, or plants which haven't started to turn yet, like the larch, or those just generally green but otherwise unremarkable. David and I toured the garden and stock beds this afternoon, noting and photographing anything which looked really good, and the list is pretty impressve.

Some have just never stopped flowering, like Geranium 'Jolly Bee', Anthemis 'E.C. Buxton' and Penstemon 'Garnet'. Others are in their prime, like the Schizostylis and the Asters. Many more are having a late re-flowering, having been dead-headed earlier, notably Helenium 'Sahin's Early Flowerer'. Whatever the reason, the overall result is a garden slowly slipping into autumn, but with colour and interest everywhere.

Pictures to follow here in a bit, but for now, here's the full list.

In flower, 18th October 2009
Fuchsia magellanica var. molinae - natural late flowerer
Fuchsia riccartonii - natural late flowerer
Abelia grandiflora - natural late flowerer
Persicaria amplexicaulis - continual flowerer since July
Geranium 'Jolly Bee' - continual flowerer since June
Achillea 'Summerwine' - continual flowerer with dead-heading
Sedum 'Autumn Joy' - natural late flowerer
Verbena bonariensis - continual flowerer since June
Anthemis 'E.C. Buxton' - continual flowerer since June
Astrantia major - repeat flowerer with dead-heading
Cirsium rivulare 'Atropurpureum' - continual flowerer since May
Cephalaria gigantea - repeat flowerer with dead-heading
Echinacea purpurea - natural late flowerer, prolonged with dead-heading
Aster 'Harrington's Pink' - natural late flowerer
Aster 'September Ruby' - natural late flowerer
Helianthus salicifolius - natural late flowerer
Helenium 'Sahin's Early Flowerer' - repeat flowerer with dead-heading
Nepeta 'Walker's Low' - repeat flowerer following shearing back in August
Rudbeckia 'Goldilocks' - natural late flowerer
Geranium 'Orion' - repeat flowerer following shearing back in July
Geranium 'Nimbus' - ditto
Penstemon 'Garnet' - continual flowerer since July
Prostanthera cuneata - continuous light flowering since first main flush
Erigeron karvinskianus - continual flowerer since July
Schizostylis 'Mrs Hegarty - natural late flowerer
Agave - variegated - natural, but only occasional, flowerer.
Campanula poscharskyana - continual flowerer since July
Dianthus 'Doris' - continual flowering since June
Nerine bowdenii - natural late flowerer
Viburnum bodnantense 'Dawn' - natural late flowerer
Salvia patens 'Guanojuato' - continual flowerer since July
Dahlia 'Arabian Night' - natural late flowerer
Dahlia 'David Howard' - ditto
Dahlia 'Honka' - ditto
Salvia 'Indigo Spires' - ditto
Lonicera - probably Dropmore Scarlet - natural late flowerer
Lonicera - a lovely pale yellow one that I don't know the name of
Aster x frikartii 'Monch' - natural late flowerer
Lupinus arboreus - all three tree lupins are in flower - white, blue and yellow
Helianthus 'Lemon Queen' - natural late flowerer
Salvia macrantha var. macrantha - natural late flowerer
Salvia 'Carradonna' - repeat flowerer following July dead-heading
Spiranthes 'Chadd's Ford' - natural October flowerer
Geum borisii - natural repeat flowerer
Anemone x hybrida - lots of different colours/cultivar
Tritonia disticha ssp. rubrolescens - natural late flowerer
Rosa 'The Constant Gardener' - repeat flowering following dead-heading
Leucanthemella serotina - natural October flowerer
Liriope muscari - natural October flowerer
Rudbeckia fulgida var. deamii - continual flowerer since late July
Rudbeckia 'Goldsturm' - continual flowerer since late July
Papaver atlanticum - repeat flowers on and off all late summer
Aconitum carmichelii - natural late flowerer
Nicandra physaloides - late flowering annual
Nasturtium - late flowering annual
Aster divaricatus - natural late flowerer
Heptacodium miconioides - natural late flowering tree
Vinca major - will flower on and off all winter
Cyclamen hederifolium - natural late flowerer
And a low mat forming plant that I don't recognise at all...

Berries and hips
Holly
Rosa rugosa
Rosa canina
Malus 'Golden Hornet'
Sorbus vilmorinii
Sorbus 'Joseph Rock'
Callicarpa bodinieri 'Profusion'
Iris foetidissima
Arisaema consanguineum
Cotoneaster - possibly dammeri
Several gorgeous culinary apples, notably Monarch

Plants with great leaf colour
Forsythia (surprisingly good!)
Hamamellis mollis - and all the lovely blossom still to come
Rhus typhinus (frankly its only redeeming feature)
Cotinus coggygria 'Royal Purple'
Liriodendron tulipifera - wonderful golden foliage
Parrotia persica - scarlet and yellow leaves
Berberis thunbergii - bright red leaves
Libertia 'Taupo Sunset' - striking gold upright leaves
Enkianthus campanulatus - good red leaves
Vitis cognetiae - huge red leaves
Cornus elegantissima - the white margin is fading to a gentle pink
Acer palmatum dissectum - golden filigree foliage
Gleditsia triacanthos - fine golden foliage
Fothergilla major - bright yellow foliage
Acer 'Osakazuki' - just beginning to turn bright red
Acer 'Sango-kaku' - beautiful, divine, lovely. The best of all...

Grasses
It's grass season anyway really so this is basically a list of plants we've got and that I've got names for...

Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster'
Stipa 'Wind Whispers'
Molinia - ident uncertain, but really lovely
Molinia 'Karl Foerster'
Deschampsia caespitosa - its seeds have fallen but the bare stalks are lovely
Calamagrostis brachytricha
Miscanthus 'Yakushimanum Dwarf'
Miscanthus 'Zebrinus'
Miscanthus 'Gracillimus'
Miscanthus 'Morning Light'
Hakonechloa macra 'Aureola'
Stipa gigantea

ILove my IPhone..

2009-10-12T21:36:00.003+01:00

I didn't want one. I thought it would be too big, too delicate to carry around in the garden, and I was sure email and web on it would be unusable, just like Windows CE.

I was wrong and I repent. I love its slidy screen, the pop up touch keyboard, the built in satnav, the big calculator, the silly pint-drinking graphics, the calendar that integrates to my Exchange account. I could go on. But yesterday I finally got round to doing what the rest of the country does, loading ITunes and looking for music to download. And my world has changed.

I didn't have a Sony walkman, or an IPod, or anything in between. So wandering around the house serene in my own world of music is a novel experience. I just can't believe that I can hear so loud and clear and those around me hear nothing. Bear with me, it's just the enthusiasm of the novice - it will wear off.

Anyway, first thing I did was looked up two pieces I used to listen to when I belonged to a choir in the early 1980's. The key thing for me was finding the exact recordings, by listening to samples. Took a while, but I found them. So, without apology, my first two downloads were:

Polegnala e Todora (Love Song) 3:38
Bulgarian State Radio & Television Female Vocal Choir Le mystère des voix bulgares

Dixit Dominus, HWV 232: 7. De torrente in via bibet
Ann Mackay, Choir Of King's College, Cambridge, English Chamber Orchestra

With those two tucked away, tonight's mission is to find a very weird track I once heard which essentially comprised a ball bearing being bounced on sheet metal.....

Channel M latest - lawn care

2009-10-06T12:05:00.003+01:00

More videos from me on Channel M

Autumn Lawn care video

Sweet, smoky October

2009-10-05T21:11:00.011+01:00

What a month of contradictions October is. My breath drifted ahead of me on my morning stroll to let the chickens out and I left a trail of smudged footprints in the heavy dew on the lawn.

Yet by mid afternoon the sun was strong enough to have me stripped to a t-shirt, sweating over several barrows of acrid chicken-shitty straw and squinting at the bright sun. The solar panel has belted out a tank full of hot water and I've had to water the nursery again. Oh for rain, any rain. We've had none for nearly a month.

The day ended with a crimson sun setting behind the trees and a golden moon rising in simultaneous opposition. The eerily still air was rich with wood smoke mingling with the warm sweet toffee apple scent from the Katsura Tree. It was nearly dark by 6.30 and the temperature plumetted as quickly as the setting sun. October is the month of Libra and the year is at the point of balance. Just one frost will tip it over.

The grass under the apple trees is polka-dotted with Saturnine rings of plump amber and ruby spots as the Egrement Russet and Spartans shed their crop each night - it's as pretty as spring blossom. I leave the pocked fruit for the chickens and blackbirds and collect the best of them as we need them. I know we'll never use them all and I won't be able to keep them against the frost and mice either. So we use them as we go along and give the surplus away. If you happen to wander along the Trent and Mersey Canal about a mile south of Preston Junction tunnel in the next few weeks then do stuff a carrier bag in your pocket - you might strike lucky.

Where were we?

2009-10-03T20:40:00.004+01:00

It's hard to know where to start when I've not updated the blog for three weeks. On Sunday we closed the garden and nursery for the winter - always a moment of mixed emotions. The place softens at the edges when we aren't open as we don't trouble with appearances so much, and a stillness descends after the hum of summer. For my part closing up means I have more time to think and to make changes I've been dreaming of all summer. There will be times in mid-winter when I speak to no-one for days. I rather like it.

Dave and I have been away in Prague for a few days but the usual nursery team have been in, clearing out the middle polytunnel in readiness for the exotics to come in for winter, and Peter has cracked on with hedge trimming in the dry weather. I'm lucky and grateful to have a team I can leave to get on with it.

Talking of dry weather, we've had no rain here for nearly a month. The trees are showing clear signs of drought distress and the soil is dust. It surely can't last, but there's nothing on the forecast. Very odd.

By way of a general update, I filmed five more Channel M pieces a couple of weeks ago - here's the first one, on planting an apple tree. I'm quite pleased with this one, probably the best so far.

I appear to have passed my RHS Diploma too, with a scraped commendation in the practical and a decent pass in the final written exam. If my maths is right, I should have a commendation for the overall Diploma. Which I'm quietly rather chuffed about.

Four cockerels and a bowl of raspberries.

2009-09-14T08:51:00.002+01:00

Our suspicion that four of our six May chicks are cockerels was put beyond doubt this morning. The usual manic pecking around for corn and morning wing stretch was accompanied by a four way show down as the four largest birds squared up against one another in every combination for prime position on the compost heap. And fine birds they are too with their ruffs up and spurs jangling. I've no idea who won, they all just seemed to get tired of it and wander off. But there's no doubt now which is which. The two obvious hens (smaller, no combs, no spurs) simply ignored the whole malarkey.

The trouble with chickens as a food crop is that you can't just pick of a leg and come back the next day when it's grown a new one. And all four are all quite magnificent creatures, with irridescent black tail feathers on two of them, and gorgeous marmalade hues on the other two. Such a shame to have to strip them of all that finery and reduce them to barely recognisable body parts to make a meal from them. And no, we can't keep four cockerels.

The rasperries are another matter entirely. On recommendation from a tutor at college I planted 10 'Polska' canes this spring. We've been picking them on and off all summer and now they've exploded into fruiting. So each day for the past fortnight I've gone up to check on the chickens out and come back with a handful, and sometimes a bowlful of the sweetest, best flavoured raspberries I've ever grown. And unlike the poor cockerels, I can eat them in all their unsullied magenta gorgeousness. And the more I pick, the more I get. Now that's a crop.

When Sally ate sweetcorn...

2009-09-06T19:43:00.003+01:00

Wow. Streuth. Cor. Ooo er missus. (Best stop there, my parents read this blog ...)

I planted two blocks of sweetcorn (Northern Extra Sweet F1). The badgers got all the ones in the veg plot, but never found the block near the house. We picked the first ones tonight, boiled them for a few minutes and ate them on their own, glistening with butter and black pepper. And they are just wonderful - sweet, meltingly soft but crisp too, and none of that annoying skins-between-the teeth chaff. They've shot straight into my top ten of joyous food experiences and I swear I shall never bother buying corn on the cob in a shop again.

The future's yellow, the future's homegrown sweetcorn.

...'as if craving alms of the sun'

2009-09-04T08:50:00.003+01:00

Wuthering westerlies have sent us scurrying from shed to shed this week, diving out of the heavy showers and whipping wind. The trees are taking a battering too, perfectly illustrating Emily Bronte's description as the wind bends them in unison to the east.

We've let the chickens out into the garden - they're gorging on fallen apples and unwittingly playing russian roulette as a fresh one thumps to the ground every few minutes.

Visitor numbers are understandably quiet, so we've been able to start the grand 'end-of-season' clearup. This year we sold out of so many plants that people asked for. The aim for the rest of this year is to clear huge amounts of space inside and out so that I can double or treble our stock of the really popular plants. Hopefully I won't spend so much time next year saying 'Sorry, we've none left'.

..like the eternal rocks beneath...

2009-09-02T23:09:00.002+01:00

Joy, tears and frustration, just as it should be. Well done ITV. An adaptation is always an adaptation, but I was captured. Joy and tears watching Wuthering Heights unfold beautifully on TV, for once. Frustration because I forgot to record the second part on Monday night.

OK. I know I can watch it online but it's not the same, and it's not as if I don't know how it ends. So if you recorded it and are willing to send me a copy, I shall be almost eternally grateful.

Wuthering Hopes

2009-08-30T22:46:00.003+01:00

I fell for the bleak beauty of Emily Bronte's masterpiece as a love-lorn teenager, despite being required to read it for the 'O' level English Literature syllabus. It has stood up to multiple re-readings as an adult and I still think it the greatest novel I've ever read. I've followed many radio/tv/cinema adaptations over the years and found most of them wanting. Either they centre on a non-existent 'ghost' story element, or they soft-focus the black heart of the novel out of existence.

Two exceptions stand out against the dross: a BBC radio adaptation in the early 1990's which had it to a tee - proper Yorkshire accents and all, and a modernised TV drama interpretation from about 10 years ago which I can't find or remember the name of, but included a scene in which a young woman stood on top of a car and smashed the windscreen with a sledgehammer. The writer perfectly captured the frustration and powerlessness which afflicts all of the book's characters, one way or another.

So I've recorded the new ITV drama and hope very much to find my favourite novel finally captured on screen, though in truth I'm not optimistic. I think I'll just re-read my lovely 1930's hardback edition sometime this winter.

Postscript: The TV drama was called Sparkhouse.

How to build a heated propagation unit....

2009-08-25T21:29:00.010+01:00

I've had the parts for ages but was goaded into building it 1) because the days are getting shorter and will soon be colder too, and 2) If Toby Buckland can do it in half an hour.... OK, it's much bigger but it took me a whole day and I needed a hand here and there. I feel so inadequate... Anyway if you missed the expert sprint version on GW, here's my slo-mo propagator.

First things first - I laid the soil warming cable out first and measured up the frame to suit.

A bit of a jump forward, but it's only joinery. Four planks to make the basic box frame, screwed together with posts in the corners which will support the bubble-wrap tent. Then lined with polythene stuck down with gaffer tape

Fill the inside with sheet polystyrene, lay the soil warming cable on top (which will fit perfectly of course!) and tape it down with gaffer tape to keep it in place. The soil warming cable is wired into a thermostat (black box on side with a metal probe poking into the box) which is in turn plugged into a proper, pukka waterproof socket (yes, it's wired back to an RCD)

Then fill with sand to about 2", making sure the thermostat probe is covered completely. Bubble wrap the back before filling with sand, cos it's impossible to move afterwards.

Cover with permeable membrane fabric stuff (have I got it the right way up?)

and then add bubble wrap tent which folds over the front.

I'll use it for speeding up rooting of cuttings, and when the temp drops it will be a higher temp area inside the greenhouse to overwinter the Colocasias and Cyperus papyrus.

Costings:

Wooden frame (from stored off cuts - hence odd painted bits)
Polythene (filched from father-in-law)
Polystyrene (recovered from tea room walls when renovated last year)
Soil warming cable £25.00
Thermostat £2.50 (bought from friend who bought three on Ebay)
Sand (left by builders who did the house)
Membrane fabric (happened to have it, but about £3.00 in garden centres
Bubble wrap (sort of filched it too....)

Happy Birthday, David.

2009-08-23T21:22:00.002+01:00

My beloved received only a few books and some promises from me for his birthday. But I threw salt over my shoulder, whispered sweet nothings to Gaia, looked out for pairs of Magpies and black cats and twiddled my lucky charms. Maybe something worked, for England won the Ashes on his birthday and made one lifelong cricket lover a very happy man indeed. Happy birthday, sweetheart.

Congratulations Monty

2009-08-21T21:34:00.004+01:00

Congratulations to Monty Don on winning the PPA's Columnist of the Year award. It's reassuring to see that first class writing still wins out in a media world largely driven by scoops, stories, sleaze and sex. Over the years Monty's Observer columns helped me see the beauty beyond the banal practicalities of what and how in my garden and the simplistic colour combinations of my early experiments. He definitely played a part in prising open the mind-doors to the lifelong voyage of discovery I'm now on. Thank you, Monty.

Link to PPA awards listing

I don't believe it!!

2009-08-19T21:15:00.003+01:00

I've been keeping a close eye on the sweetcorn, watching as the tops started to turn brown and anticipating that first, buttery, barbecued corn on the cob. And then last night the badgers crossed the meadow, worked their way through the stock beds, stepped delicately over the courgettes and carrots, ignored the beans and peas and gorged themselves on our almost ready sweetcorn. They've even nibbled neatly around the cores and left them strewn across the veg plot.

And to think we've been tiptoeing around the woods so as to leave the sweet little b*****s to reproduce in peace....

UPDATE: In keeping with my 'better to light a candle than complain about the dark' ideology, and since we happened to have a handy roll of chicken wire, I thought we might just have a go at keeping the not-so-little pests out. I suspected a gap in the wire fence between the stock beds and the meadow and sure enough there was a small, neatly worn track on both sides of the approach. But no human has been near the gap for a year and nature has had its wicked way. It should have been a 10 minute job (which I promised would slip effortlessly between Dave's spatchcock chicken going in the oven and dinner). I slightly underestimated. We strimmed 20 feet of 6ft high nettles and hacked out mounds of blackberry-laden brambles to get to the gap in the first place. But once I've started a job.... Anyway it's a HeathRobinson-esque construction comprising an old door, some seeping railway sleepers and two layers of chicken wire. I know I'm going to regret this but if the pesky badgers can be bothered to get in now, then they deserve their sweetcorn supper. And Dave's chicken was only a little bit overcooked.

2009-08-17T20:41:00.003+01:00

Is this the most perfect Dahlia? The warmth and complexity of colour, the rich dark foliage gently supporting the flowers with their perfect neat form. That 'Frank Cooper Oxford Cut Marmalade' blend of soft orange. I love it.

Embarrassing dreams

2009-08-13T21:42:00.005+01:00

My RHS Diploma practical results are due any day and I must be subconsciously more jittery about it than I'm prepared to admit. Last night I dreamt I'd got the results through and though I'd scraped a pass, I got 0/100 on one of the papers - not one I remembered sitting. One question was four pages long, another was on Bulgarian chaffinches and another on a Batman romper suit - did it or did it not protect against radiation? In my dreamstate I was torn between wishing I'd applied myself more to the bird ident and arguing with the examiner about the length of questions.

Can I just have the real results please? I'd quite like to get back to my normal I-promised-to-be-somewhere-missing-the-train-suitcase-with-ticket-in-is-in-a-hotel-bathroom-on-Jupiter-have-to-find-an-astronaut-he's-having-dinner-in-restaurant-in-a-coal-mine-won't leave-without-blue-fish-from-tank-but-tank-is-marine-aquarium-can't-find-any-salt-train-left-10mins-ago-impossible-situation-may-as-well-wake-up dreams that I'm used to. OK, sometimes my dreams are much more fun than that, but I'm not describing them any time soon.