My very first blog (I think) was about a big new border at my new home. I had planted it in lines, one metre apart, basically as plants came out of the back of the van. I’ve moved plants around every year since, in particular to break up the obvious lines of the same thing, but I have kept the basic idea of the lines. It is only in the early spring that it is obvious that things are in lines – the rest of the year everything blurs in together.
Now, some three years later, the rows are still there, and I realise just how practical they are, but also a very good research and documentation tool. They make weed control easier, which is a great relief – you can hoe or spray off whatever comes up between the rows – allowing for some self-seeding and spreading.
In terms of documentation, the lines make for very easy recording – simply number each row with a low profile numbered peg, and then stretch a tape measure from the fence at the rear to note where everything is. The results can then be recorded on an Excel spreadsheet. In theory I’m going to redo this every year – in fact, this year, it didn’t take very long at all. Anything which self-seeds or spreads into the areas betweent the rows can be allowed to do so and recorded – a useful measure of spreading ability. I might also start planting some plugs of certain species as well in the gaps.
So, here is the ‘plan’ of a border which is still very much in the process of development.
The numbers along the top are metres from the fence at the rear (which is the left), indicated by the numbers of the rows, which also represent the number of metres from the other end (at the bottom). You can see in more detail by toggling the little rectangle symbol in the top right hand corner of the Scribd window.
I hope this makes sense! It took me a whole evening to work out how to turn an Excel file into something I could blog.
Big Border Data 2
Big Border Data 1
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Penelope Hobhouse at Vista.
Penelope Hobhouse was our guest at Vista (London’s Garden Museum) last month. The podcast is now up on the Gardens Illustrated website:
http://www.gardensillustrated.com/podcast_vista.asp
Penelope talked to us about her life and career, which has been a varied one. She has made several gardens (Hadspen and Bettescombe), written about colour, design, garden practice, garden history and Islamic gardens. The breadth of her knowledge and experience is huge, which makes her very interesting. She can also be irreverent and funny – which surprises people; just before we started she whispered to me that we should make some jokes to lighten the atmosphere up – I think Tim and I obliged, its remarkably how one can produce humour when the pressure is on. The Vista audience were a bit overawed – there is something about Penelope which pushes a “girl school headmistress” button in a lot of people which is shame, because she isn’t actually like that.
The previous week I had spent a morning with her at her new home back at Hadspen, going over the ground for the Vista evening. So much of what she spoke about rather sent me off down memory lane – the height of her career was when I was just starting out running a nursery, doing some garden design and beginning to write myself. Things have moved on so much though: garden history has had its moment (in Britain at least), and Americans are no longer interested in hanging on to every word from British gardeners (thank goodness). Penelope’s interest in the US garden scene in fact waned before they really declared independence though. Part of the reason for this is something I really warm to about Penelope, a distrust of clients with only money to spend – for her there has to be something deeper and more meaningful in garden making. From USA to Iran was an interesting change in loyalties, but the Islamic garden tradition (which is actually pre-Islamic) offers a spiritual/aesthetic exploration of space and a set of intellectual challenges.
Next month at Vista – James Hitchmough
http://www.gardensillustrated.com/podcast_vista.asp
Penelope talked to us about her life and career, which has been a varied one. She has made several gardens (Hadspen and Bettescombe), written about colour, design, garden practice, garden history and Islamic gardens. The breadth of her knowledge and experience is huge, which makes her very interesting. She can also be irreverent and funny – which surprises people; just before we started she whispered to me that we should make some jokes to lighten the atmosphere up – I think Tim and I obliged, its remarkably how one can produce humour when the pressure is on. The Vista audience were a bit overawed – there is something about Penelope which pushes a “girl school headmistress” button in a lot of people which is shame, because she isn’t actually like that.
The previous week I had spent a morning with her at her new home back at Hadspen, going over the ground for the Vista evening. So much of what she spoke about rather sent me off down memory lane – the height of her career was when I was just starting out running a nursery, doing some garden design and beginning to write myself. Things have moved on so much though: garden history has had its moment (in Britain at least), and Americans are no longer interested in hanging on to every word from British gardeners (thank goodness). Penelope’s interest in the US garden scene in fact waned before they really declared independence though. Part of the reason for this is something I really warm to about Penelope, a distrust of clients with only money to spend – for her there has to be something deeper and more meaningful in garden making. From USA to Iran was an interesting change in loyalties, but the Islamic garden tradition (which is actually pre-Islamic) offers a spiritual/aesthetic exploration of space and a set of intellectual challenges.
Next month at Vista – James Hitchmough
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Sunday, March 1, 2009
On galanthophiles and perennials
A trip to Scotland to go to Cambo House, famous for its snowdrops, although I’m writing about the garden in September. The snowdrops are pretty spectacular, along with snowflakes (Leucojum vernum) and other woodland goodies. It feels like a pretty remote spot to me, but I guess there must be a lot of golf widows wending their way down from St. Andrews; and it’s only 1.5 hours from Edinburgh. The sales area, snowdrop gift shop etc. is all very understated and tastefully done.
Despite the reputation for snowdrops, I’m not sure Catherine Erskine of Cambo really wants to be known as a galanthophile. Over lunch she tells me about new varieties selling for what seem like absurd sums of money, then appearing on Ebay next year after having been split. And snowdrops from gardens disappearing. The truth is that any genetically varied population of snowdrops is going to show quite a lot of variation in the flowers. BUT Brit snowdrops are genetically limited, as they are not natives, so we see little variation – any that does occur seems to cause a galanthophile rush. A colleague at the Ljubljana Botanic Garden did a research project on wild populations in Slovenia – showing the level of variation. He should probably have split them all up and sold them to gullible galanthophiles over here for some easy research funding. Catherine’s opinion is that there is no point adding to the list of cultivars (apparently 1,000 and growing) unless something is really distinctive.
Meanwhile, the rest of the garden at Cambo.
Having been banging on about naturalistic planting for years (since about 1996 I reckon) I sometimes wonder just how much impact I, and other proponents of ecology-inspired planting have had. There is a terrible tendency for people to take things up in a very superficial way – plant a couple of miscanthus in their border and rename it a ‘prairie’ border. Wyevale garden centres are handing out a glossy leaflet which tells you how to plant up a prairie border too; it recommends planting in clumps. AAARRGH. They have clearly paid no attention.
So, pure joy to be at Cambo where head gardener Elliott Forsyth has clearly done his homework, and been to Germany to visit Westpark and Hermannshof, and is planting big borders with perennials and grasses, diffusing varieties through and trying lots of ways of combining and juxtaposing varieties. His wife Sue is an artist, so he has been swotting up and putting into practice some art theory too. I long to see it all in summer, but winter was convincing enough, as they had left all the seedheads up for me to see. This spring a huge 90 species prairie is going in, with thousands of plants which have been grown from seed over the last year.
Wonderful that someone has been listening!
The article about Cambo will be in the September Gardens Illustrated.
Cambo House is open daily. www.camboestate.com
Despite the reputation for snowdrops, I’m not sure Catherine Erskine of Cambo really wants to be known as a galanthophile. Over lunch she tells me about new varieties selling for what seem like absurd sums of money, then appearing on Ebay next year after having been split. And snowdrops from gardens disappearing. The truth is that any genetically varied population of snowdrops is going to show quite a lot of variation in the flowers. BUT Brit snowdrops are genetically limited, as they are not natives, so we see little variation – any that does occur seems to cause a galanthophile rush. A colleague at the Ljubljana Botanic Garden did a research project on wild populations in Slovenia – showing the level of variation. He should probably have split them all up and sold them to gullible galanthophiles over here for some easy research funding. Catherine’s opinion is that there is no point adding to the list of cultivars (apparently 1,000 and growing) unless something is really distinctive.
Meanwhile, the rest of the garden at Cambo.
Having been banging on about naturalistic planting for years (since about 1996 I reckon) I sometimes wonder just how much impact I, and other proponents of ecology-inspired planting have had. There is a terrible tendency for people to take things up in a very superficial way – plant a couple of miscanthus in their border and rename it a ‘prairie’ border. Wyevale garden centres are handing out a glossy leaflet which tells you how to plant up a prairie border too; it recommends planting in clumps. AAARRGH. They have clearly paid no attention.
So, pure joy to be at Cambo where head gardener Elliott Forsyth has clearly done his homework, and been to Germany to visit Westpark and Hermannshof, and is planting big borders with perennials and grasses, diffusing varieties through and trying lots of ways of combining and juxtaposing varieties. His wife Sue is an artist, so he has been swotting up and putting into practice some art theory too. I long to see it all in summer, but winter was convincing enough, as they had left all the seedheads up for me to see. This spring a huge 90 species prairie is going in, with thousands of plants which have been grown from seed over the last year.
Wonderful that someone has been listening!
The article about Cambo will be in the September Gardens Illustrated.
Cambo House is open daily. www.camboestate.com
Blogged with the Flock Browser
A cue for Kew
Quite a historic occasion at Kew last night. The first time in nearly a century that the directors of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and Edinburgh and the Irish National Botanic Garden are on the same public platform – along with the director of the new Welsh botanic gardens. And I’m chairing it, along with Denis Murphy, Professor of Biotechnology at Glamorgan University. The format evolved out of the series of evening public conversations that Tim Richardson and myself have been having with figures in the garden world at the Garden Museum in Lambeth.
I was nervous about the event, a bit beyond the safety zone. That inferiority complex that gardeners have about botanists and botanic gardens. Denis and I probed them on a number of issues, such as the possibly negative impact of the Convention on Bio-diversity on research and plant exploration, how the gardens relate their mission to the public, and how they see their mission conserving plants in the face of climate change. Two hours were hardly long enough. Everyone seemed to enjoy the event and find it interesting.
The ‘Vista Debates’ at the Garden Museum are great fun, a bit like running a private dining club. We have an onstage discussion with a guest/s (last month it was Penelope Hobhouse), followed by a jolly good meal cooked in the museum kitchen – often quite adventurous cooking - I shall never forget the delicious cardamom-flavoured polystyrene noodles we had on the first night we did. A lot of the success of the evening centres on the rapport Tim and I have with each other, coming as we do from different ends of the spectrum of what makes people interested in gardens. Lila Das Gupta on her blog recently called us the “John Bird and John Fortune” of the gardening world.
You too can listen on a podcast, generously hosted by Gardens Illustrated.
http://www.gardensillustrated.com/podcast.asp
www.gardensillustrated.com/podcast_vista.asp
I was nervous about the event, a bit beyond the safety zone. That inferiority complex that gardeners have about botanists and botanic gardens. Denis and I probed them on a number of issues, such as the possibly negative impact of the Convention on Bio-diversity on research and plant exploration, how the gardens relate their mission to the public, and how they see their mission conserving plants in the face of climate change. Two hours were hardly long enough. Everyone seemed to enjoy the event and find it interesting.
The ‘Vista Debates’ at the Garden Museum are great fun, a bit like running a private dining club. We have an onstage discussion with a guest/s (last month it was Penelope Hobhouse), followed by a jolly good meal cooked in the museum kitchen – often quite adventurous cooking - I shall never forget the delicious cardamom-flavoured polystyrene noodles we had on the first night we did. A lot of the success of the evening centres on the rapport Tim and I have with each other, coming as we do from different ends of the spectrum of what makes people interested in gardens. Lila Das Gupta on her blog recently called us the “John Bird and John Fortune” of the gardening world.
You too can listen on a podcast, generously hosted by Gardens Illustrated.
http://www.gardensillustrated.com/podcast.asp
www.gardensillustrated.com/podcast_vista.asp
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
An attempt at summarising my PhD
I've been slogging away for years, off and on, at a PhD, looking at long-term performance of ornamental perennials, now passed, so Dr.Kingsbury, I made an attempt at summarizing it for 'popular consumption' but was told that it was "too much like lecture notes", but in the vain hope that some of you might find it interesting - here we go:
British gardens overflow with a cornucopia of plants from all corners of the world. We have no shortage of reference books to give us basic descriptive information and to advise us on what to grow where. But once plants start to interact, to compete with each other (or with weeds), things get complicated. This is when horticulture merges into ecology – a place where outcomes are much less predictable. With many more gardeners making naturalistic gardens where plants grow cheek by jowl and local authorities and community groups trying to manage ornamental plantings on minimal resources, I thought it would be interesting to try to apply some plant ecology science to familiar garden perennials. And so…. I began a part-time research PhD with the Department of Landscape at Sheffield University.
Like most researchers, I have not found out anything really new. But instead I feel I have been able to clarify and systematise some of the vast body of anecdotal and unrecorded knowledge that many experienced gardeners have. In particular I feel as if I am in a good position to predict the performance of anything unfamiliar I come across. My task has been largely a lonely one, sometimes engaging in activity which others find bizarre – drying leaves in the oven and weighing them to an accuracy of 0.01 gram, drawing schematic diagrams of leaf and stem connections, planting out hundreds of tiny plug plants in geometric blocks. Trips to Sheffield are rare, but intensely social. In particular I have loved meeting overseas researchers, and have already been on a Mexican lecture tour as one result of a friendship.
So what can I pass on to other gardeners? Perhaps the most useful is the realisation that perennials can be grouped into a rough series of categories based on several factors which revolve around their garden performance: lifespan, spreading ability, time at which growth begins in spring, persistence of dead foliage. Above all, I would stress the importance of closely observing your plants and trying to make connections between their physical appearance and their behaviour over the year.
Perennials are not always perennial
The perfectly satisfactory plant that suddenly drops dead is one of the mysteries of gardening, but a lot of perennials are more correctly ‘short-lived perennials’. A key distinction is between perennials which have spreading shoots which root as they grow (eg. most hardy geraniums), so ensuring a potential for infinite constant increase, and those which just have one single point of connection between their roots and above ground growth (eg. the popular dark red scabious Knautia macedonica). The latter indicates firstly that the plant may live for only three, or five years; it may live more, but it will not live for ever; and in any case, this one connection point between stem and root gives it an inherent vulnerability to gnawing vole or misplaced boot.
Some perennials spread like crazy, but this is not always so bad.
A lot of less experienced gardeners look with horror on plants like Euphorbia cyparissias that after one year in the border start sending out underground runners that pop up some way from the parent. Relax. The fact is that most plants with what ecologists call ‘guerrilla spread’ cannot penetrate the clumps of established plants. The species in question can be a real bonus filling in the gaps between larger plants.
If a running habit is combined with height, as in the old cottage garden favourite, the yellow loosestrife, Lysimachia punctata, then a real ‘thug’ is in the making. How useful! These plants are ideal for filling difficult to maintain or out of the way spaces.
Timing is everything
British springtime is a drawn-out affair; some perennials start into growth really early, others very late. Perennials from Mediterranean regions tend to get going around Christmas – at least in our current run of mild winters. If their foliage is attractive they can make a great contribution to the spring border: globe artichoke (Cynara cardunculus) and species of Acanthus are two. Those that start late include many from continental climates where spring is short and intense. The increasingly popular grass Panicum virgatum is one of these, and it can suffer as a result, crowded out by earlier-growing perennials or mistaken for a weed grass.
Dead leaves have their uses.
Ecologists have discovered that plants which dump lots of dead foliage around them in autumn can suppress the growth of other plants around them, especially of seedlings. In other words these plants are self-mulching. Gardeners however tend to clear away dead foliage. Leave it, and you may well find that weed seed germination around these plants is greatly reduced. Geranium species do this, and even more effectively, Iris sibirica. This iris is one of the great survivors in neglected borders, its leaves take a long time to rot down, and until they do they carpet the ground in a thick layer of mulch around the core of the plant.
Big plants may not be survivors
Generally speaking, large size equals an ability to dominate, in wild plant communities, as well as the boxing ring. But not always. There is a clear distinction between perennials with large basal leaves, which tend to flower before mid-summer and those with tall, upright stems, with lots of small leaves which flower later. The latter, such as asters, heleniums and rudbeckias, may be tall and vigorous, but they do not shade out competition around the base. Species of Achillea and Geranium may be a lot shorter, but their combination of early season growth and sideways-spreading leaves ensure that over time they will shade out and suppress other plants around them.
British gardens overflow with a cornucopia of plants from all corners of the world. We have no shortage of reference books to give us basic descriptive information and to advise us on what to grow where. But once plants start to interact, to compete with each other (or with weeds), things get complicated. This is when horticulture merges into ecology – a place where outcomes are much less predictable. With many more gardeners making naturalistic gardens where plants grow cheek by jowl and local authorities and community groups trying to manage ornamental plantings on minimal resources, I thought it would be interesting to try to apply some plant ecology science to familiar garden perennials. And so…. I began a part-time research PhD with the Department of Landscape at Sheffield University.
Like most researchers, I have not found out anything really new. But instead I feel I have been able to clarify and systematise some of the vast body of anecdotal and unrecorded knowledge that many experienced gardeners have. In particular I feel as if I am in a good position to predict the performance of anything unfamiliar I come across. My task has been largely a lonely one, sometimes engaging in activity which others find bizarre – drying leaves in the oven and weighing them to an accuracy of 0.01 gram, drawing schematic diagrams of leaf and stem connections, planting out hundreds of tiny plug plants in geometric blocks. Trips to Sheffield are rare, but intensely social. In particular I have loved meeting overseas researchers, and have already been on a Mexican lecture tour as one result of a friendship.
So what can I pass on to other gardeners? Perhaps the most useful is the realisation that perennials can be grouped into a rough series of categories based on several factors which revolve around their garden performance: lifespan, spreading ability, time at which growth begins in spring, persistence of dead foliage. Above all, I would stress the importance of closely observing your plants and trying to make connections between their physical appearance and their behaviour over the year.
Perennials are not always perennial
The perfectly satisfactory plant that suddenly drops dead is one of the mysteries of gardening, but a lot of perennials are more correctly ‘short-lived perennials’. A key distinction is between perennials which have spreading shoots which root as they grow (eg. most hardy geraniums), so ensuring a potential for infinite constant increase, and those which just have one single point of connection between their roots and above ground growth (eg. the popular dark red scabious Knautia macedonica). The latter indicates firstly that the plant may live for only three, or five years; it may live more, but it will not live for ever; and in any case, this one connection point between stem and root gives it an inherent vulnerability to gnawing vole or misplaced boot.
Some perennials spread like crazy, but this is not always so bad.
A lot of less experienced gardeners look with horror on plants like Euphorbia cyparissias that after one year in the border start sending out underground runners that pop up some way from the parent. Relax. The fact is that most plants with what ecologists call ‘guerrilla spread’ cannot penetrate the clumps of established plants. The species in question can be a real bonus filling in the gaps between larger plants.
If a running habit is combined with height, as in the old cottage garden favourite, the yellow loosestrife, Lysimachia punctata, then a real ‘thug’ is in the making. How useful! These plants are ideal for filling difficult to maintain or out of the way spaces.
Timing is everything
British springtime is a drawn-out affair; some perennials start into growth really early, others very late. Perennials from Mediterranean regions tend to get going around Christmas – at least in our current run of mild winters. If their foliage is attractive they can make a great contribution to the spring border: globe artichoke (Cynara cardunculus) and species of Acanthus are two. Those that start late include many from continental climates where spring is short and intense. The increasingly popular grass Panicum virgatum is one of these, and it can suffer as a result, crowded out by earlier-growing perennials or mistaken for a weed grass.
Dead leaves have their uses.
Ecologists have discovered that plants which dump lots of dead foliage around them in autumn can suppress the growth of other plants around them, especially of seedlings. In other words these plants are self-mulching. Gardeners however tend to clear away dead foliage. Leave it, and you may well find that weed seed germination around these plants is greatly reduced. Geranium species do this, and even more effectively, Iris sibirica. This iris is one of the great survivors in neglected borders, its leaves take a long time to rot down, and until they do they carpet the ground in a thick layer of mulch around the core of the plant.
Big plants may not be survivors
Generally speaking, large size equals an ability to dominate, in wild plant communities, as well as the boxing ring. But not always. There is a clear distinction between perennials with large basal leaves, which tend to flower before mid-summer and those with tall, upright stems, with lots of small leaves which flower later. The latter, such as asters, heleniums and rudbeckias, may be tall and vigorous, but they do not shade out competition around the base. Species of Achillea and Geranium may be a lot shorter, but their combination of early season growth and sideways-spreading leaves ensure that over time they will shade out and suppress other plants around them.
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Thriving? The National Botanic Garden of Wales
A trip to the Welsh Botanic Gardens (www.gardenofwales.org.uk). First time I have been for years, and good to see how the whole place is settling down, trees are growing, shrubs spreading, the blocks of rock in the vaguely arty geological display on the central walk up are growing lichen – the whole place is slowly acquiring a respectable patina of age. More crucially after a series of crises (7 directors on 10 years), mostly caused by financial problems, the place seems on a more even keel. People are coming in greater numbers, making repeat visits, and generally the feeling is that this is a place worth coming to. Unlike almost any other bot garden in Europe that I know, this one is surrounded by countryside, much of which it owns – in fact the garden is in the middle of a 600 acre farmed nature reserve, so it is impossible to tell where the gardens end and the countryside begins. This makes the place really special.
What was particularly wonderful was walking into the great glasshouse (the largest single span glasshouse in the world), and realising that I had supplied the very first accessions. Back in the late 1990s, when the garden was not even a building site, I sold Ivor Stokes, the garden’s first Director of Horticulture a vanfull of South African and Australian plants which I had been growing in the nursery I ran at the time. It was wonderful to see my ericas, banksias, dryandras, melaleuca and calothamnus all thriving, some of them enormous, and clearly having flowered in the last year. Its funny how quickly it is possible to recognise something you grew yourself. These were plants I was making (a somewhat vain) attempt to market as perfect plants for the rash of conservatories which were then sprouting on houses across the land. West Australian flora in particular is incredibly rewarding to grow, and much easier than is often made out. Some ‘zonaldenial’ folks have even tried growing them outside in Cornwall.
This is a place well worth visiting, on its way to finally becoming an established part of Welsh life and, for outsiders, a part of a holiday in Wales. It deserves it.
What was particularly wonderful was walking into the great glasshouse (the largest single span glasshouse in the world), and realising that I had supplied the very first accessions. Back in the late 1990s, when the garden was not even a building site, I sold Ivor Stokes, the garden’s first Director of Horticulture a vanfull of South African and Australian plants which I had been growing in the nursery I ran at the time. It was wonderful to see my ericas, banksias, dryandras, melaleuca and calothamnus all thriving, some of them enormous, and clearly having flowered in the last year. Its funny how quickly it is possible to recognise something you grew yourself. These were plants I was making (a somewhat vain) attempt to market as perfect plants for the rash of conservatories which were then sprouting on houses across the land. West Australian flora in particular is incredibly rewarding to grow, and much easier than is often made out. Some ‘zonaldenial’ folks have even tried growing them outside in Cornwall.
This is a place well worth visiting, on its way to finally becoming an established part of Welsh life and, for outsiders, a part of a holiday in Wales. It deserves it.
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Sunday, January 25, 2009
COUNTRY LIFE IS NOT NECESSARILY QUIET
Weeks go by and nothing notable happens up here in Herefordshire, then it all happens at once. On Thursday we had three people working here: our new WRAG trainee, Advolly, Andrew the hedging guy and Will, our occasional creative-handman. Will was laying herringbone paths in the salad/cutting garden, so we can walk and kneel and generally fiddle about with lettuce seedlings and suchlike, without getting covered in mud.
Andrew’s hedging was mostly just cutting back to get some more light on the bottom of the wildflower (not)meadow, some hedge-laying but also selective cutting back which is a technique I just invented. Problem is with mixed country hedges is that if you don’t cut or lay them they turn into trees/shrubs – they make great windbreaks but they develop gaps lower down, so folks on the public footpath can peer into our garden and basically cease being a hedge. But…. if you cut or lay the lot, the wind will come howling into our garden (we are near the top of a hill), so I thought , why not cut out about 20% of the contents and let them regenerate, and then repeat next year, and start a rolling programme of cutting back and regenerating.
Then Advolly the WRAG. Stands for Women Returning to Amenity Gardening – I think it grew out of the wartime landgirl thing, a trainee scheme for women making midlife career changes. Advolly is serious mud-stained glam, Zimbabwean-heritage, and hair in African cornbraids but otherwise as English as you can get, especially her incredible enthusiasm for plants and garden history. It’s a great thing having such an enthusiastic and high-powered trainee, makes you sharpen up about why you do things and how you explain them.
Oh, the guys from Southern Solar were fixing the solar-thermal hot water system which gives us fee hot H2O from April to October. Then a guy turns up we have never seen before, with weird tattoos all over his face, and an in-yer-face style which alternates with the synaptic gaps of someone who has over-indulged in LSD at some stage in what looks like a very colourful career, announcing that he is going to build a shed in the woods which overlook us (he owns a strip, but that is another story), and possibly a recording studio (will this be the world’s first wood-powered recording studio?) The only way he can get his kit up there is by hiring a local agricultural contractor who drives it up there in the bucket of a Manitou (a huge 4x4 ag . vehicle , for those of you who think that farming is all about organic lambs bouncing about in fields of bright green grass). In doing so the public footpath is turned into the most horrific quagmire.
Andrew’s hedging was mostly just cutting back to get some more light on the bottom of the wildflower (not)meadow, some hedge-laying but also selective cutting back which is a technique I just invented. Problem is with mixed country hedges is that if you don’t cut or lay them they turn into trees/shrubs – they make great windbreaks but they develop gaps lower down, so folks on the public footpath can peer into our garden and basically cease being a hedge. But…. if you cut or lay the lot, the wind will come howling into our garden (we are near the top of a hill), so I thought , why not cut out about 20% of the contents and let them regenerate, and then repeat next year, and start a rolling programme of cutting back and regenerating.
Then Advolly the WRAG. Stands for Women Returning to Amenity Gardening – I think it grew out of the wartime landgirl thing, a trainee scheme for women making midlife career changes. Advolly is serious mud-stained glam, Zimbabwean-heritage, and hair in African cornbraids but otherwise as English as you can get, especially her incredible enthusiasm for plants and garden history. It’s a great thing having such an enthusiastic and high-powered trainee, makes you sharpen up about why you do things and how you explain them.
Oh, the guys from Southern Solar were fixing the solar-thermal hot water system which gives us fee hot H2O from April to October. Then a guy turns up we have never seen before, with weird tattoos all over his face, and an in-yer-face style which alternates with the synaptic gaps of someone who has over-indulged in LSD at some stage in what looks like a very colourful career, announcing that he is going to build a shed in the woods which overlook us (he owns a strip, but that is another story), and possibly a recording studio (will this be the world’s first wood-powered recording studio?) The only way he can get his kit up there is by hiring a local agricultural contractor who drives it up there in the bucket of a Manitou (a huge 4x4 ag . vehicle , for those of you who think that farming is all about organic lambs bouncing about in fields of bright green grass). In doing so the public footpath is turned into the most horrific quagmire.
Blogged with the Flock Browser
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