gravel

I've been weeding the gravel, and dropping extra shovelfuls and handfuls on to the thin patches.  The large bulk bag, when it arrived, looked an imposing amount to have to shift, and yet after taking just a couple of barrow loads, not even full ones, it seemed to have gone down alarmingly, and I thought that one bag was never going to be enough.  It isn't, but I should get it spread out fairly quickly, and I can always order another one.

Hand weeding in a garden that exploits self-seeding as a deliberate effect requires a practiced eye for what the seedlings of weeds look like, compared to plants.  Or rather, plants that you want to keep.  I am gently amused by the customers who come into work with their mystery specimens and the question 'is it a weed or a plant?'.  Sometimes I can identify the unknown garden occupant, then I can tell them how it is likely to behave, but sometimes I can't.  Weeds are plants too, I then tell them.  Do you like it?  If so then why not keep it?  This is slightly unfair, since many weeds are classed as such because of their terrifying ability to spread themselves around.  For a full discussion of what constitutes a weed, for those who like that sort of thing, I recommend Michael Pollan and Richard Mabey, two thoughtful and considered writers with interesting things to say about humanity's relationship with the rest of the natural world.  But I don't think some of the customers have thought very clearly about what they mean by the question, plant or weed.  It could be that they are concerned about the unknown thing spreading intemperately, or about incurring ridicule for being seen to deliberately cultivate weeds, but I think it is more a desire to fit in with the established categories society has set down.  It is comforting to think that there is a set of rules.  These are things we have in our gardens.  Those are not garden things.  This is how it is done.  Don't risk being an accidental iconoclast.

I have one mystery plant that came up in a border last year.  I didn't recognise the seedlings, so left them to see what they turned into, which turned out to be something I still didn't recognise with small and rather boring purplish flowers.  I really don't know if I tried years back from seed and didn't think much of, or if birds spread it, or if it is a native wildflower or exotic, or what it is.  This year it has (I think) seeded itself into the gravel, and the young seedlings look confusingly similar to those of the teazels, that I want to keep, which is annoying.  A surprising turn is that violets are seeding themselves around in the gravel.  This is a small leafed violet which came in to the garden mixed up in the roots of other plants I was given.  I think it is a UK native, and I associate it with shady hedge bottoms and woodland, so it is rather disconcerting to see it growing happily in gravel on very light soil in full sun.  This is one of the limitations of the ecological planting approach.  Ecologically speaking, it is obviously very happy with its new niche in the gravel, and I have found a plant that wants to grow in the prevailing conditions.  The trouble is, it looks incongruous, and doesn't chime with the desert wash influenced, arid aesthetic I'm trying to cultivate in this area.  I left the seedlings in situ, since it seemed a shame to waste them, but I think I'll have to move them.  It will be salutory if they fail when given the semi-shaded, moister conditions I feel they ought to like.

Two gazanias have made it outside through not just the last winter but the one before that, which is fairly incredible given they are not supposed to be hardy.  I like gazanias, and nearly bought some more this spring, but held off on the grounds that I needed to concentrate on restoring the structure, key plants and ground cover, before spending too much time on decorative fripperies.  I grew the last lot from seed, and they spent their first winter miserably languishing in the greenhouse because the site wasn't ready for them that summer, so the ones in the gravel are probably over three years old.  One has a yellow flower on it, very cheerful.  If it sets seed I suppose I ought to keep it, and see if I can progress towards breeding a hardier strain, but I suspect the very sharp drainage had a lot to do with their survival.  My Zauschneria californica, a subshrub that carries red tubular flowers in the autumn, has also reappeared, and they aren't the hardiest things.

There are an immense number of ants' nests in the gravel, and I have to be careful not to kneel on them.  Ant bites up your legs are very unpleasant.  They have undermined and killed some plants, which is a pity but again all part of the shifting aesthetic of this kind of gardening.  Pulling up a tuft of dead thrift yesterday I uncovered a really large toad.  It remained motionless, as toads do, but I moved it to the shelter of a hedge before the chickens could find it.  They had got one once in their run, and were shaking the poor creature first by one leg and then another.  I presume they ate it.