Few things in the garden stoke the fires of the imagination as hotly as the notion of a newly-defined planting area. First in concept and then marked, carved and dug out upon the land, the power is in the potential…
Read moreDay 11: and the beet goes on
I was a latecomer to beetroot. I think I’d had uninspiring experiences of the pre-boiled and shrink-wrapped version (surely the weirdest way to sell any foodstuff, boiled and then suffocated in a bag. What’s next, ready-masticated veg? “We chew so you don’t have to”), and decided it wasn’t for me.
Read moreDay 10: Water like a stone
The freeze is well and truly here, and the daily observances include making sure there’s accessible water in the birdbaths for the feathered contingent of the garden…
Read moreDay 9: Seeds of hope
I remember one of my gardening lecturers telling the class that you’d have to be bonkers ever to buy a pot of Verbena bonariensis, given that it seeds so freely about. He was right – on one level at least…
Read moreDay 8: licence to scrabble
Some scrabbles are permissible, in the garden at least. I wrote on Day 3 of the bramble inveigling it’s way into the branches of a viburnum, but there are occasions when we deliberately send a climber clambering up into a tree…
Read moreDay 7: Under glass
A morning of heavy rain and flooded roads, the icy January wind probing insistently, intent upon exploiting any gap between scarf, hat and coat. Coming and going, low clouds shroud the North Downs and offer teasing glimpses of distant snow-covered slopes…
Read moreDay 6: Bricking it
When we originally laid out the garden, I always intended a path of old red bricks winding its way between beds. For various reasons it’s yet to happen, and while a sinuous grassy path is not a thing to be sniffed at, turf doesn’t make for the most practical of surfaces…
Read moreDay 5: Marked for removal
Somewhere lurking beneath the mahonia and fatsia jumble is an odd little tutsan (Hypericum androsaemum) that’s in decidedly the wrong place. The three were planted together fifteen years or so ago, after a trip to a local nursery specialising in shrubs and rather before I had much of an idea what I was doing in the garden.
Read moreDay 4: Winter warmers
Snow is falling, everywhere but here. At least, that’s how it seems, the best we can muster in this part of the world apparently being a fleeting filigree edge to the leaves of Salvia uliginosa (the bog sage).
Read moreDay 3: Belonging
Winter presents the ideal opportunity for getting to grips with the brambles, but who really belongs more in the garden – the weeds, or the gardener?
Read moreDay 2: Vivipary
The antics of my artichokes have become a talking point. Beneath a similar picture to the above, posted to my Instagram account a few days ago, a friendly discussion ensued as to whether or not what’s going on here is vivipary in its truest sense.
Read moreDay 1: Betwixtmas
Back in your inboxes and the blog after the year we won’t mention, and belatedly shovelling tulip bulbs into the ground like some kind of demented squirrel. It’s what Betwixtmas is all about.
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