playing with pots

We slept right through the earthquake, but when I went down to the bottom of the garden this morning the Whichford Pottery torso of a maiden was lying flat on her back in the border.  I righted her, wondering whether she had been pushed over by a passing muntjac or felled by earth tremors. I mentioned it to the Systems Administrator, who initially poo-poohed the earthquake hypothesis, but then added that come to think of it, some little pots of modelling of paint had been lying on their sides in the blue shed, making the SA fear another outbreak of mice.  Although the epicentre was in Kent, the map on the Telegraph website showed earthquake symbols going as far as the Essex coast, and which is more likely, that we should have been hit by a very tiny tremor, or that a garden statue and the SA's shed should both have suffered animal attacks in the same night?  If the mice are back in the blue shed the SA will soon know about it, since they'll start eating the paint pots.

I spent a happy day sorting through the plants in the greenhouse, moving tender ornamentals out to the paved square by the pond now that it's the latter part of May and frosts are unlikely in southern England.  My ears pricked up when one radio weather forecast talked about the risk of overnight frost, but that was for parts of Scotland.  Some of the overwintering geraniums have still got root aphid despite previous treatments with Provado.  I treated those that were only lightly infested again, and put some of the worst rootballs in an old compost bag to take to the dump, after taking cuttings.  If the cuttings fail then that's just tough.  I don't think any of them are so rare and precious that I couldn't buy replacements, though the fact that I don't know most of their names might be more of an obstacle.

I have been planting up pots to go in front of the house, where I cleared away the overbearing conifer.  I've got two different tobacco plants that I raised from seed, the straight white scented Nicotiana sylvestris, and a variety called 'Tinkerbell' whose red flowers are green on the reverse, and with a green eye.  More seeds germinated than I could possibly use in pots, even though I didn't sow the whole contents of the packets, and I pricked out more seedlings than I needed, in case of losses further down the track and because I couldn't bear to throw them away.  I'm moving the spares on in to nine centimetre pots for now, in the hope that I can use them in the garden, but I've a dark suspicion that some will end up on the compost heap.

I called into one of the local garden centres on my way back from the dump to buy some hand cream, and departed with the hand cream plus six bedding plants, three of a dark purple leafed ipomea and three of the trailing silvery leafed and orange flowered lotus.  Each trio went into a separate pot.  Mixed pots can be fabulous, and maybe I should be more adventurous and try and unleash my inner Powis castle gardener, but I tend to find unmixed single variety pots easier to manage.  It means that everything in the pot has the same water requirement and saves me the problem of something always starting to flag while its neighbours are still wet, or one element of the planting starting to look distinctly past its best when the others are still good, or proving unexpectedly vigorous and crowding everything else out.  Or maybe its because the unmixed pots look bolder, given that my mixed pots of alpines don't seem to cause any trouble.  Anyway, that's my way of doing bedding in pots.  The ipomea is destined to go by the pink flowering fuchsias outside what is functionally the back door though actually at the front, and the lotus next to the apricot and amber calibrachoa next to the front door.  The two displays, one themed around soft shades of orange and the other in pink, red, and purple, will be separated by only the width of a box cushion, since the front door which we only ever use for building works, parties and getting the Christmas tree in and out is also at the front, where you'd expect it to be.  I am hoping they will not clash, but I don't have as much space to play with as on the terrace at Powis.

I know that bedding is not ecologically friendly, but it is great fun.  Not for nothing did the prize for the best display in the whole Chelsea pavilion go to Birmingham City Council's joyous extravaganza.