bulb orders (and a purely hypothetical artwork)

I've thought of an artwork that would fill up a hunk of the Tate nicely.  Since it would be modern, and I'm British, it would do equally well for Tate Modern or Tate Britain.  Radio 4 after The World at One broadcast a programme about terrible food (fortunately by then we had more or less finished lunch) which featured a long and presumably embroidered tale by a man who collected roadkill.  As well as eating it, he said that the pelts 'came in useful' for taxidermy.  I hadn't previously thought of a stuffed animal as something useful.  A talking point, possibly, or a bizarre piece of furniture, but not a utilitarian object, although if it were a largish animal you could put coats and things on it.  However, it gave me the idea for the artwork.

I propose stuffing a large number of roadkill animals.  Instead of restoring them to an active and lifelike pose, they should be stuffed prone and squashed, just like they were when they were lying by the side of the road.  They will cover the floor of the entire gallery, and will symbolise humanity's violation of the natural world, the destructive effect of the motor vehicle on social cohesion, or the losses we suffer by rushing through life without noticing the small everyday things.  Choose your own symbol.  I will have to subcontract the actual taxidermy, since it isn't something I've ever learnt to do, but that's fine.  Damian Hurst doesn't paint all his own dots.  Sadly, not being an established artist I fear they may not offer me the gallery space.

Anyway, I was not intending to blog about fantasy stuffed animals, but autumn bulb orders.  It feels very early to be thinking about such things, but catalogues are arriving, and if I leave it too late the choice and interesting plants may be sold out.  There are a lot of naturalised bulbs around the garden, and nowadays I top up things that are doing reasonably well on a rotating basis, so last year I added more small daffodils, and this year it's the turn of dwarf tulips.  I like to experiment with something new, and if a species really hasn't thrived with me I try to take the hint and not keep persisting with it, or at least not in the same place.

I put in an order this year with Avon Bulbs, having admired a wonderful Mexican umbellifer on their Chelsea stand and written its name down in my notebook for the second time.  It is called Mathiasella bupleuroides 'Green Dream'.  The catalogue describes it as looking like a hellebore crossed with angelica, which is an excellent way of putting it.  I was going to order two, hoping for some viable seed, and then decided to push the boat out and go for three to make a good group.  I ordered some other rarities as well, to spread the delivery charge over more than three plants.

I really like the Avon Bulbs catalogue.  I have always found the people pleasant to deal with, and the plants are almost always top-notch (they did send me an iris root with bindweed mixed up in it a couple of years ago).  The eye-watering part is the prices they charge.  I know that I ought to support the specialist suppliers who offer unusual species and varieties I won't find elsewhere, but it feels like the dutiful penance of shopping in good independent bookshops, knowing that I can get most of what they offer on Amazon at only two-thirds of the price.  The Amazon of my bulb world is Peter Nyssen, wholesalers also selling direct, which I've used two or three times now.  The plants have been correctly labelled and a good size and quality, and they are so much cheaper, not just pennies, but being able to get 25 bulbs for less than the UK growers charge for 10.  I put in my Peter Nyssen order last night, for standard things like tulips to go in the pots in the front garden.  I'm trying a new (to me) variety of hycinth called 'City of Bradford', a very pale blue that Sarah Raven speaks well of.

The catalogues from the UK companies have two despatch seasons, late summer for things like autumn flowering crocus that need to be planted early, and the main autumn season.  Orders from the late summer section carry their own delivery charge, as they come separately, and I tend to be too mean to pay it and skip that part of the list completely.  This year I've put in a late summer order with Broadleigh just for colchicums, four different sorts.  When the bulbs arrive in late August there will be a panic to work out where to fit them in, but the bulbs I've planted in a panic in past seasons have turned out very well, so I thought I'd try a wider range than I'm going to find at work.  Some people grumble about their large leaves, but in a large garden I'm generally happy for anything that helps cover the ground.  Mine fit towards the edge of a mixed bed, jostle shoulders quite happily with silver forms of Brunnera, and tuck in around the feet of the roses and hydrangeas.

I might do just one more order, to a Scottish nursery I haven't used before, who offer a good range of fritillaries at sensible prices, or I might tot up the number of bulbs I'm already commited to potting or planting, and call it a day.

If you like the sound of any of these you will find them at Avon Bulbs, Peter Nyssen and Broadleigh Bulbs.

some March flowers

I've just taken a stroll round the garden to see what's blooming.  It's drizzling and 4.0 degrees C outside, and most of them look as if they wish they hadn't bothered.

The display of Hamamelis x intermedia is coming to an end.  The red ones are lasting later than the orange and yellow, having opened after them, with the variety 'Rubin' the last.  The hazels are showing what genetic variation there is in the wild population, as some still have bright yellow catkins while others are going brown and shrivelled.  Daphne bholua 'Jacqueline Postill' still has plenty of buds, and the white form hasn't really got going at all yet.  The Viburnum x bodnantense 'Charles Lamont' has flowers open, but the overall effect is a bit pink and brown.  The Ribes laurifolium is still blooming, but I think that whatever animal is terrorising the back garden has had a chew at it.  Mahonia japonica is flowering quietly in its corner.  It got rather overshadowed last year by a rambling rose that is supposed to be growing up a tree, but instead flopped around and over the mahonia.  I have a feeling I shall be returning to the question of training roses up trees.

Shrubs that are new blog entries for March include Corylopsis sinensis var. sinensis, whose yellow flowers are just opening.  This suffered dieback last winter, but seems untouched so far this one, despite it being colder.  Maybe the fact that the deepest frosts came before Christmas this winter helped, if it is less vulnerable to cold damage when still tightly in bud than when the sap is rising.  I think it is going to be far too large for the space where I have put it, and I wonder if I can trim the tips back after flowering.  I don't think the books recommend this treatment, but Chris Lane says it works for witch hazels, which are not supposed to like being pruned.  We visited Cornwall a few years ago, and I noticed how many of the gardens had terribly tall specimens of  Corylopsis, with bare trunks at eye level and the flowers carried way above our heads, so some pruning to keep new growth coming low down might be a good idea.

There are a few flowers on the winter flowering cherry, but I'm sure that when it comes into leaf there will be a mass of dieback.  The water table has risen under it and it's sitting far too wet.  I've been eyeing up possible spaces for a replacement in the front garden.  Pieris 'Katsura' is opening its dusky pink buds like giant heather bells as if nothing had happened, which is surprising and delightful after the winter weather.  I've a feeling the frost danger for pieris is to the emerging leaves more than the flowers, and the flowers were still in very tight bud when the worst of the weather came.  No flowers on the Edgeworthia, though.

At ground level the hellebores are looking good, the Lady series and their offspring in the front garden and assorted hybridus forms and their seedlings in the back.  A yellow form that has not been so vigorous is doing quite well this year, with several nice solid butter-yellow flowers.  H. x ericsmithii is flowering profusely, with petals of yellowish cream with pale plum backs.  'Pirouette' was a new purchase last year, and has made a chunky plant so perhaps it is a good doer.  It is a pinky plum with a formal double centre, and I planted it partly for its own sake, because it is very pretty, and in the hopes of some exotic babies in that part of the garden.  It got rather shaded last summer as a shrub rose leant all over it, but seems none the worse for the experience.  New hellebore varieties are so tempting, but not cheap, so I tend to try just one the first year and see whether they seem to have a robust constitution in a garden setting.

The primroses and polyanthus are starting to get going.  I love the wild yellow primroses, but like the pink ones too, and the more highly bred polyanthus, which I have in soft and strong yellow, and all shades of pink from pale and grubby to magenta and purple.  Some were from an alleged woodland walk seed mix, which came less true to description than any other seed I've grown, and some particularly vigorous yellow ones in a good clean shade of dark lemon were half price at B&Q.  The violets are starting bloom under the roses, my ambition being to cover the ground entirely with them and other ground cover so that there's no room for weed seedlings at all.  The white bergenia has two flowers on it, and not as many leaves as it should have, so something is eating it.  Driving back from Colchester today we passed a mass of a pink flowered variety, which reminded me how full and lush bergenia should be looking at this time of the year, if it is happy.  There are a few pulmonaria flowers out, in mid blue, bricky red, and a good red-blue with bright violet and purple overtones.  The pulmonarias started out as named varieties, but over the years self-seeding and the destructive effects of birds and animals on stick-in labels means that I don't know what most of them are.

The snowdrops still look good from a distance, but close up you see that they are starting to go over.  There are some flowers of Cyclamen coum, but not great sheets as I would like.  I plant a few more each year and they gradually spread and bulk up.  Something has dug up the majority of the crocus bulbs from the borders, though not so far from the grass.  I need to go over the borders and smooth down every last hole and scuffled area, then inspect them daily for fresh signs of digging to work out how often whatever it is comes.  We tried the trail camera on one badly affected bit of border one night, but didn't photograph anything.  It has been set up on that area again for tonight, and we'll see what we get.

The dwarf iris have just gone over, but Iris unguicularis is still sending up new flowers.

failure of the rodent operatives

Something has been eating the crocus bulbs in the bed by the ditch.  When I was weeding there (mostly pulling out goose grass seedlings, which come up as thick as a box of supermarket cress at this time of the year) I found their poor stalks, severed and discarded.  I presume it is mice, or voles, or some sort of wretched rodent, and feel slightly aggrieved that, given we are over-run with cats and owls, something couldn't try a bit harder to keep the rodents under control.

The cats don't do rodent control.  Once it gets dark and cold and we light the stove they lie in front of that, or within a three metre radius of it, thank you very much.  The only cat that patrols the garden properly is Black and White Alsatian Killer Cat.  He is a short haired, short legged black and white creature that got his name because early in our acquaintance he jumped up and snapped at my forearm like a police dog.  I was wearing a heavy coat at the time, and didn't pay undue attention.  Then he started coming into the house, and after he had bitten both of us (he got me on the wrist and I spent a week on antibiotics and it took a couple of months to regain normal sensation in one finger) he was evicted from the house.  Then we discovered he was nominally the neighbours' cat, and had his own bed and a name and everything.  We explained that we had enough cats of our own already, besides which he was a biter.  Nowadays we have reached an understanding.  Black and White Alsatian Killer spends a lot of his time slinking around our garden and sitting in the borders.  We don't try to touch him, and he doesn't try to bite us, just gives us an enigmatic but vaguely unpleasant glance as he passes.  Sometimes he comes and sits and stares in through the veranda window, like the evil manservant Quint.  Our neighbours don't mind not seeing so much of their pet now that they have discovered he hates both of them, and only likes their daughter-in-law.

dwarf iris

In the past couple of days the first of the dwarf iris in the middle of the front garden have started to open, which has concentrated my mind on weeding the gravel around them.  They will show to their best advantage standing like little jewels among the stone chippings, not as they were this morning emerging from a mat of low growing weedy vegetation.  First to open in quantity is a relatively large dark purple flowered variety with yellow splashes, and there are plenty of less advanced clumps to come.  I see from my records that I've planted 'Cantab', 'George', 'Harmony', 'J S Dijt' and 'Katherine Hodgkin' at various times, but apart from 'Katherine Hodgkin' I've lost track of which is which, having not gone for the pets' graveyard approach of labelling each individual clump.  'Katherine Hodgkin' is an unusual mixture of blue and yellow, strange and lovely.  I think the large and early one is 'George', and 'Cantab' will presumably be light blue.  They are all very pretty, purple or blue iris flowers standing above strappy foliage, which lengthens as the flowers fade to 20-30cm tall, but quickly dies down.

These are hybrid forms of Reticulata iris.  They have a reputation for not being reliable repeat flowerers, partly because the bulbs can break up after their first flowering into many small bulbs that take years to grow back to flowering size.  I called the other day at the house of a very knowledgable and experienced gardener who had one early 'Katherine Hodgkin' out by her front door, and as I admired it she observed that they tended not to last with her.  I said that they were fairly perennial with me on very light, poor soil and she replied (with a hint of asperity) that her soil was pretty well drained.  I don't claim any credit for ours, but the conditions do seem to suit them.  I start them in 1L pots so that I can plant them out in the spring when I can see what other bulbs are there, so they grow in an island of multipurpose compost plunged into extremely light acid soil.  They are mulched with gravel, and receive no kind of top dressing of organic material because of the gravel.  They get sun for most of the day and are exposed to the south westerlies.  Annual rainfall is around 21 inches or 525mm.  Some say that if you plant the bulbs deeply they are less likely to split.  Mine get potted with 2-3 inches or 5-8cm compost above them, which is dictated by the dimensions of the pots, and I plant them out to the same depth.  And that's it.  They seem to last for several years, and I periodically top them up.

As well as the dwarf iris there are Scilla siberica, Chionodoxa and miniature tulips.  One of these has been seeding itself and I kept finding tiny bulbs amont the weeds, which I buried again.  This area of the garden hosts an annoying fine leaved annual grass which is entirely absent from the heavier soil further down the slope.  I did find a seedling Genista aetnensis, which I ought to pot up quickly while it is small as I rather think they dislike transplanting.  The gravel needs topping up, but with any luck there'll be enough in the thick bits round the edge of the drive for me to take it from there.  I'm going to have to order another load one of these days, but I'd rather not at the moment, as there are enough jobs to do already without saddling myself with a large pile of gravel in the front garden urgently needing to be spread out.

snowdrops

The snowdrops are well above ground now, still in tight bud but I can see the glint of white.  I love snowdrops and have planted a lot over the years, mostly the common sort Galanthus nivalis.  That is partly because this is a large and wild garden in which tiny treasures get lost, and I couldn't afford to plant the unusual named varieties in the quantities that would be required to make an impact.  However, it's mainly that I like the common ones.  Their size and scale look right here, and I don't get that excited by a green spot more or less.

A great deal gets said and written about the right time to plant or move snowdrops.  Planting in the green is recommended, when they are in active growth, which means they are offered for sale from now until the end of February as freshly dug bulbs, but some experts say that it stresses the plants to damage their roots at this time, and that the ideal time to disturb them would be in late August when they were first starting into growth.  The obvious practical difficulty with moving them then is that nothing remains above ground to tell you where on earth they are, or what other bulbous treasures might be lurking below.  At least in February you can see clearly what is going on.  Lady Skelmersdale, owner of the excellent specialist small bulb supplier Broadleigh Bulbs explained in an RHS lecture she gave at Writtle College a few years ago why buying bags of dried out snowdrop bulbs in autumn is not a good idea.  They hate drying out, she said, and by the time you buy them they may already be dead.

I have planted snowdrops in the lower part of the garden, and, after some soul searching, in the wood.  The wood though very small is presumed ancient, and contains a mixture of ground flora characteristic of wet alder woodland, including opposite leaved golden saxifrage.  Snowdrops, which were probably introduced to the UK and are so are not part of the native flora, don't form part of that natural mix.  But they are not too competitive and won't hybridise with any of the existing wild plants.  I would never plant Spanish bluebells anywhere in the garden given that the British sort grow in the wood.  The aesthetic desire for a snowdrop woodland walk won out.  It is interesting watching how bulbs grow in there.  The bluebells make dense stands in some places and don't grow at all in others, presumably reflecting local variations in moisture or soil or some aspect of the conditions.  The snowdrops are similarly picky, so I plant thinly into new areas, and then the following season bulk up the planting in the bits where I can see they are doing well.  My contibution to the great debate over when to plant them is to advise that if you are planting them in an area where you already have some snowdrops then leave planting more until the display from the existing ones is going over.  The newly planted ones tend to flop and start dying down prematurely, which detracts from the overall appearance, if the established ones haven't finished flowering.  Once they have started to flop too it doesn't make any difference.

In the interests of fairness, having mentioned Broadleigh I should also mention Avon Bulbs, my other favourite supplier of top quality small bulbs.  They are not the cheapest, but their plants are very good and they list some interesting and unusual things.  For common snowdrops I don't use either of them, but one of the bulk suppliers who advertise in the backs of the gardening magazines.