wretched wind

Another bank holiday Monday, another day at the plant centre.  I woke up this morning full of ideas of what I was going to do in the garden, then remembered I had to go to work.

The wind is a real nuisance in a plant retail operation.  Pots blow over, plants break their branches or crush their neighbours, and the compost dries out terribly quickly.  It's impossible to use the overhead irrigation systems, except for the trees where the nozzles are low down, as the water blows around everywhere instead of soaking into the pots, so everything except the trees has to be watered by hand.  Sometimes you stand a pot back upright and it has blown over again before you can water it.  We started watering at just after 8.00am, and I was still watering until 10.40am, then started again at 4.50pm and went on until 6.00pm.  My colleague was watering the behind-the-scenes area the other side of the car park, that customers don't go into, until noon.

There is a Paeonia rockii in one of the borders in the plant centre, in full flower.  A customer asked me what it was, and I had to tell her that we didn't have any, and might not be getting them for a long time.  Other customers wanted to know where they could get lunch: we don't have a cafe.  Given the tough time British pubs are facing, it seems very unenterprising of our local hostelries not to put leaflets about their food offering in our shop.  We don't do food, except for biscuits, apple juice and coffee out of a machine, and we're always being asked for recommendations by customers who are making a day out of it.

Somebody wanted an idea for a shrub to flower late on in the year, and seemed happy with my suggestion of  Heptacodium miconioides, the Seven son flower of Zhejiang.  It comes from China, but was only introduced to UK gardens relatively recently, and doesn't even have an entry in my copy of Bean's Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles.  It carries white, scented flowers at the ends of its branches in autumn, and after the petals drop the display is continued (in a good year) as the calyxes turn red, and (in a good year) it produces red berries.  It is one of those plants that I liked as soon as I saw it.  It is a rapid grower: the plants we have in the plant centre have made at least 20cm of extension growth already this season, while confined to their pots.  Another customer was greatly taken with the leaves and open habit of  Lomatia tinctoria.  It is a good-looking plant, and I was able to tell her that based on my own (statistically insignificant) experience of growing one plant, once, it seemed straightforward and easy in cultivation.  I do like it when customers are keen and willing to try unusual plants.

The William and Kate tea towels haven't sold.  I didn't think they would.  I suppose the owner can always use them in a post-modern ironic way to dry things with.