stacking the tunnel

My task for the day was to move the magnolias up in their tunnel, to make space next to them for those plants that need to be kept on the dry side in their pots through the winter.  I don't mind moving the magnolias around, in that I like them as a group, and it is a chance to see what's in stock.  There were some lovely young plants of the yellow flowered variety 'Lois', which the boss claims is the best yellow because the flowers don't fade with age.  Unfortunately by the time he said this I had already planted another yellow variety 'Elizabeth', but I think that may have succumbed to muntjac attack, in which case I could replace it with 'Lois'.  The bed concerned is a long way from the house, close by the edge of the wood, and the things planted in it were slightly left with two choices, live or die, but it needs a good weed and tidy this winter.

The list of plants that need to be kept dry over winter was quite long, but in practice not everything on it was in stock.  A couple of the more tender buddleias come in, and the pineapple brooms, and cordylines (but we only had one of those left).  All of the yuccas and the indigoferas, the lavateras and kalmias.  I think of Kalmia as needing a humus-rich, moist but well-drained, woodlandy sort of soil.  I suppose the clue is in the phrase 'well-drained'.

Vitex agnus-castus or the chaste tree comes in to the dry, the origin of whose common name I learned in the Alnwick Castle poison garden.  Apparently the seeds produce a chemical that suppress testosterone production, so monks drank a liquid made from them to reduce those urges incompatible with vows of chastity.  It has been in cultivation in UK gardens since around 1570, and I have seen a very large and fine specimen growing in the botanic garden at Leiden.

We always refer to the autumn process of putting plants under cover as stacking the tunnels.  I don't know if the phrase is in general use in the horticultural industry, since is the only nursery job I have ever had.  Moving plants on a list from point A to point B sounds as though it ought to be a menial, unskilled job, but in practice is made much faster and easier if you have a reasonable knowledge of and interest in plants, or at least the ones on the list.  Otherwise you would have very little idea where in the plant centre point A was, and if you couldn't recognise what you were looking for you would have to read every label, which would take an insanely long time.

None of the individual pots I moved were very large, apart from one Magnolia grandiflora which I dragged instead of lifting.  However, by the end of the day I'd rearranged the whole of one side of a polytunnel to the depth of about a metre.  I didn't pace the length of the tunnel out, but it must be around 25 metres.  The plants weren't quite pot thick (in nursery parlance that means touching, as fully packed in as is physically possible) but they weren't far off, and the plants I moved into the tunnel I had to lift twice, once at each end of the journey.  My shoulders do now feel as though they had done a lot of lifting for one day.  There again, it's all healthy exercise, and the upside is that I still don't mind wearing sleeveless dresses, which are a no-no for many middle aged ladies.