Season of mists, mellow fruitfulness and bonfires. The gardener at work had a bonfire, that put smudges of ash over my car. He said it put them on his car as well, and I dare say they'll wash off when it rains.
I moved a lot of pots today. Really a lot of pots. I haven't even begun to work out how much they must have weighed in aggregate, but many times my own body weight in compost. First of all I transferred the magnolias from the edge of the tunnel, where they are next to the polythene and could get too cold in a harsh winter, to the aisle down the middle of the tunnel. That was OK. I read some of the labels as I went along, to try and learn something, and left gaps in what I hoped were sensible places for new stock arriving over the winter. I like the sound of 'Piroutette', which only grows to 3m and has large white flowers, according to the boss's description.
Then I moved the bamboos in from outside. They stayed out last winter, and suffered badly, so this year they're coming in. To save space in the tunnel in the plant centre, only three specimens maximum of each variety went in there, and any surplus was wheeled over to the Other Side. I brushed the dead leaves off each pot, and as I stood with 10L pots of giant grasses balanced against my stomach with one hand, while dusting down the surface of the compost with the other, I began to think I should have been on that manual lifting course. I'm not good at bamboo nomenclature, not helped by the fact that it has kept changing throughout my gardening life, and getting the bamboos in strict alphabetical order took serious concentration. Overflow plants that wouldn't fit inside the shade structure with the rest of the bamboos during the summer had been put down around the outside of the shade tunnel in no particular order, making the exercise into a strange bamboo mail-merge.
I gather the lifting course consisted of being told to think before lifting anything heavy or awkward in case there was a better way of managing it, avoid twisting, ask for help if needed, keep your back straight etc, but not much actual supervised practice lifting, so maybe I didn't miss much. I know the theory already. The trick is to realise when you are twisting, using your back more than you should, and so on. In my Pilates lessons I am forever being told I have made some movement or adopted a posture I wasn't aware of, and that's before I've got several kilos of bamboo rootball balanced on my stomach while the topgrowth tries to poke me in the eye.
Two gardeners from one of the UK's grandest stately homes (well, Chatsworth, actually) came to collect some shrubs they'd reserved, and choose some other things while they were at it. They asked advice on the hardiness of Olearia, and mentioned a glasshouse, so I asked hopefully if they might like a 4m tall Norfolk Island Pine, but they said they had one already, that someone had given them and that had outgrown its space, and they couldn't work out what to do with their's either, as it was now too large. The (I presume) head gardener had overwintered Norfolk Island Pine outside in Cornwall, where it had survived, while not being very happy, but he didn't hold out any hope for Derbyshire, or Essex.
The manager was disconcerted recently to be asked by a customer why we had so little stock, and whether we were closing down, so I was tasked with composing a notice explaining that a lot of shrubs had been moved into the tunnels for the winter, and why. I came up with something suitable, which the woman who works in the office typed and laminated, and the gardener managed to find the notice boards on stakes we use for open days, and put the notices by the entrance to the plant centre. It is because roots in a pot are more likely to freeze than if they are in the ground, which disagrees with some plants, especially evergreens that go on losing water through their leaves regardless. Also because compost in pots can get sopping wet, causing the roots of some species to rot. I added words of reassurance about how most of the plants would be fine outdoors in winter once they were planted in the ground, not a pot, and how customers in doubt about the hardiness of any plant could ask a member of staff. The real mystery, which I would love to know the answer to, is why we leave Sarcocca and Skimmia outside, and they are mostly OK, when we bring in Ilex aquifolium and Viburnum tinus.
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