The BBC is clearly determined to wring every last drop of interest out of the Olympics. This morning The Today Programme had got on to the subject of the planting at the Stratford site, with Evan Davis asking about the difference between annual and perennial planting in tones that suggested he couldn't quite believe that a metropolitan sophisticate should be occupying himself with such things. I couldn't quite believe that the fact that there was some new-wave inspired planting at the Olympic park, that had been there for ages, counted as news and current affairs, but maybe having to step back from wall to wall Olympics coverage to talk about Syria, the Euro, the deficit, and the assorted human tragedies of the past 24 hours was just too much for the production team to bear. Evan asked whether you didn't have to impoverish the soil, and said hopefully that presumably you didn't have to weed it.
No, no, no, no and no. Thrice and five times no. I have tried to get a Noel Kingsbury, Piet Oudolf et al perennial meadow affair going several times over the years, and it is jolly hard work. It might all be different in a commercial setting, where I could treat the entire site with the sorts of soil sterilants not available on the amateur market, and there wasn't too much pesky wildlife to spread seeds around, and too many stands of weeds in the surrounding countryside all casting their fluffy thistle heads and suchlike into the air to blow into the newly cleared ground thoughtfully prepared for them in my garden. If it were planted up at some incredible number of plants to the square metre, as experimental schemes tested by the academics in charge of the Stratford site, that might help make it weed proof, if I could afford to buy that many plants or had the space and time to propagate them. Doing it yourself, on a shoestring, in rough ground surrounded by countryside, is bloody hard work.
Weeds arrive. I was glad that whoever it was that Evan was interviewing did the R4 equivalent of wriggling uncomfortably in their seat and said that no, you did have to weed it. Weeds just arrive. Creeping grasses that were not completely eradicated by digging creep back again. Birds that have gorged on hawthorn and ivy berries crap over your meadow to be, and the seeds, dormancy well and truly broken by passage through the bird's gut, germinate like cress. Nettle seeds blow in, or are carried in by some vile creature. Jays bury acorns and hazel nuts. I have holm oak seedlings coming up all over my garden, and the nearest tree is five doors down, a quarter of a mile away. The ruddy rye grass that was sown over the whole field in the short period between when we bought the property and when we fenced our bit off still persists in the areas of long grass, providing a ready supply of seeds to infest the prairie planting. Evan, you have to weed it. I can't see Evan weeding, somehow. His natural habitat seems more like a very trendy coffee bar, definitely not Costa or Starbucks, if it is morning, or an even trendier nightclub, if it is late.
Looking at the quantity of weeds in the front garden, before ever getting as far as the meadow, I wondered where to start, and decided to go round pulling out the tall obvious ones. This made a great difference very quickly, and I alternated between chasing weeds, cutting down the all too visible dead flower stalks of the verbascums, and trimming the ivy hedges. The Strulch does work. Once I'd pulled out the large weed stalks it became clear that there weren't many others, and the bed overall was actually pretty clean. I disentangled what proved to be the remains of a pale yellow or white balloon, tied to a pink ribbon, from a purple leaved sage. I expect a cloud of them were let off at some wedding reception, or christening, or something, and they probably all looked very romantic and pretty as they floated off. If I were a livestock farmer, and a cow of mine had just jammed up its stomach eating a balloon, I would be extremely cross.
The garden club ladies were fine when I got there. They were mostly ladies, only three or four brave men at most in the audience. They said they enjoyed the talk, though they did a fair bit of talking themselves while I was still on, which was rather disconcerting. They bought quite a lot of plants, and were helpful about ferrying the unsold ones back to my car, which was kind of them. Two of my former fellow mature students at Writtle were in the audience, but they both said it was OK. After years of practice, mostly for the woodland charity, I'm fairly hardened, and not much would stop me talking, short of the ceiling falling in or a member of the audience having a heart attack part way through.
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