When I got to work I discovered that they have finally done something about the muddy track across the back of the plant centre. For years, in fact for the whole of the plant centre's existence, the route from the back of the shop to the loo and the office consisted of a desire line across a patch of grass, which wore away the grass and left a chain of puddles in wet weather. The staff periodically lobbied the boss that we needed a proper path, because it looked awful, and because we were left shuffling around in the puddles if there were any plant deliveries after it had been raining. The boss always harrumphed about this, and said that he didn't want a cowboy job, and it would get done properly at some point. I have no idea if it has been done with proper foundations, but the gardener has cut away the damaged grass to form a broad, straight path, which is lavishly coated with fresh gravel. It looks about a thousand times better.
The latest delivery of large specimens from Italy came in as well, on Friday, and is sitting on the grass at the back of the plant centre, half of it still tied up in net bags. The manager left us a long list of things to do over the weekend, but removing the bags didn't feature until Sunday, and as we didn't manage to finish Saturday's jobs we never got on to de-bagging. I felt sorry for the plants, which looked as though they could do with some more air, but one more day probably won't make a great difference. And the first delivery of herbs had arrived since the last time I was at work, and some roses.
A cheerful and courteous man and his wife bought over £650 worth of plants, which helped swell the day's takings. As I put the contents of their three trolleys through the till, which took some time, his wife fetched him a chair to sit on, and he explained without rancour that he had bad sciatica, and it was a damn nuisance. His wife had vetoed his preferred treatment, which was for two beautiful women to walk up and down his spine, though he said she had offered to walk on it herself. He asked to be remembered to the boss, and when I asked his name it turned out to be one of those great gardening names that are commemorated in a group of plants. They'd driven up all the way from Sussex with a van.
Another customer rang to ask whether we sold spiral rabbit guards, and how much they were. The answer was yes, and 50p each. She said she needed quite a lot and would there be a discount? Quite a lot translated to 20, which is quite a few tree guards, but still only ten pounds worth. I don't think a tenner gets you a discount anywhere, certainly not with us. The famous name from Sussex didn't get a discount, though when he enquired amiably if he could I did suggest he should speak to the owner.
The strategy of putting the large and expensive Edgworthia by the till finally resulted in a sale, as I remarked (apparently casually though really with intent) to someone who was admiring it that we had some smaller ones in the tunnel, and she went and got one. I still think that there is only a limited amount that the staff can do to sell more. We can help customers find plants they would otherwise miss, and suggest good planting combinations, or in this case offer temptation in the form of smaller specimens, £20 suddenly looking a bargain when the big one is twice that. But in the end they come in with an idea and a budget, and all we can do is enhance things at the margins. All of our wiles and strategems in the course of an entire week don't make as much difference as whether or not Mr famous name decides to make a trip up from Sussex with a van.
The day's takings were further boosted by a couple from Lavenham who bought £450 worth of plants, including seven trees, and overall we were busy, which is good, and what you'd hope for at this time of year. In the morning I'll discover if we made any mistakes on the till.
Showing posts with label gravel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gravel. Show all posts
Saturday, 10 March 2012
Thursday, 8 March 2012
in the garden
It was a beautiful morning, sunny and bright, and I had the whole day to spend in the garden. I started off by weeding the gravel in the front. That is, weeding part of the gravel. There's a lot of it, and so keeping it free of weeds and leaf litter is an ongoing project. I decided to devote some time to the gravel, despite the borders crying out to be weeded and the seeds needing to be sown, because a mostly used bright green dumpy bag of gravel had been sitting near the entrance for weeks, and it seemed to me that using it up and getting rid of the bag offered a favourable ratio of effort to visible cosmetic improvement. There was no point in chucking perfectly good gravel on top of the weeds, hence the weeding. Although it was sunny, the wind was keen and made my eyes water, with the irritating result that I kept crying on my glasses. Once I'd cried on them I couldn't see properly, so kept having to stop weeding, take off my gloves, and rummage around under my fleece to find the hem of my cotton shirt to wipe them dry. This is why I have a pair of glasses specifically for gardening.
After I'd cleared the green bag out of the way I returned to the climbers under the veranda. I'm on the home straight (I tell myself), tackling a large honeysuckle that has grown up a huge elder. The honeysuckle was full of dead twigs, and as I cleared those out the underlying structure of twining stems revealed itself. I was able to tie quite a long section of honeysuckle and climbing rose into the trellis under the veranda, once I'd cleaned out all the debris. I'm cutting down the elder, but not until I have tidied the honeysuckle that's hanging from the top of it. That's a task that would be a hundred times more fiddly with the honeysuckle lying in a big collapsed heap around my knees. As I picked up years' worth of fallen twigs I uncovered a mysterious disc of something that looked vaguely unpleasant, and as if it might once have been alive. I wondered if the previous owners had ever had a tortoise, and if I had stumbled upon its shell, and then whether it was a gigantic hibernating toad. Investigating it cautiously I discovered it was an old birds' nest, that had fallen to the ground and started to solidify as it decomposed.
The Trachelospermum jasminoides does not look at all happy, which is a shame since it was starting to look quite good by the end of last summer. Its leaves have gone dull and hand down at the wrong angle. I blame the very cold snap, but maybe I have let it get dry. I put a can of water on it last week, just in case. The Berberidopsis corallina has lost a lot of leaves and the ends of its shoots have died in the cold, but it is throwing a new stem from ground level that looks healthy, and I think it is minded to live.
As I feared, those two nights when the temperature plummeted to around minus 12 C have hit several plants. The Pittosporum tenuifolium 'Wrinkled Blue' that had made good growth in its first season in the front garden has lost all the leaves from its upper branches. I thought they were doomed just after the frost, when they had gone the wrong colour. The branches at the very bottom of the bush look OK, so maybe it will sprout from the base. I'm starting to get chary about using pittosporums as structural features, pretty as they are. It is probably safer to regard them as ephemeral, charming while they last, but not to be depended on long term. Some people are like that.
The hyacinths in pots are opening. I tried a new (to me) variety, 'City of Bradford'. They are a soft blue, with a definite flush of pink while in bud, extremely attractive, and I'm delighted with them. Hyacinths are good bee plants, and today as well as the honeybees I saw a great queen bumble on one of the flowers. One stem had flopped over, and I took a couple of minutes to fetch a slim stake and some string and tie it up. It's worth making the effort, because hyacinth flowers last longer if not allowed to fall down.
After I'd cleared the green bag out of the way I returned to the climbers under the veranda. I'm on the home straight (I tell myself), tackling a large honeysuckle that has grown up a huge elder. The honeysuckle was full of dead twigs, and as I cleared those out the underlying structure of twining stems revealed itself. I was able to tie quite a long section of honeysuckle and climbing rose into the trellis under the veranda, once I'd cleaned out all the debris. I'm cutting down the elder, but not until I have tidied the honeysuckle that's hanging from the top of it. That's a task that would be a hundred times more fiddly with the honeysuckle lying in a big collapsed heap around my knees. As I picked up years' worth of fallen twigs I uncovered a mysterious disc of something that looked vaguely unpleasant, and as if it might once have been alive. I wondered if the previous owners had ever had a tortoise, and if I had stumbled upon its shell, and then whether it was a gigantic hibernating toad. Investigating it cautiously I discovered it was an old birds' nest, that had fallen to the ground and started to solidify as it decomposed.
The Trachelospermum jasminoides does not look at all happy, which is a shame since it was starting to look quite good by the end of last summer. Its leaves have gone dull and hand down at the wrong angle. I blame the very cold snap, but maybe I have let it get dry. I put a can of water on it last week, just in case. The Berberidopsis corallina has lost a lot of leaves and the ends of its shoots have died in the cold, but it is throwing a new stem from ground level that looks healthy, and I think it is minded to live.
As I feared, those two nights when the temperature plummeted to around minus 12 C have hit several plants. The Pittosporum tenuifolium 'Wrinkled Blue' that had made good growth in its first season in the front garden has lost all the leaves from its upper branches. I thought they were doomed just after the frost, when they had gone the wrong colour. The branches at the very bottom of the bush look OK, so maybe it will sprout from the base. I'm starting to get chary about using pittosporums as structural features, pretty as they are. It is probably safer to regard them as ephemeral, charming while they last, but not to be depended on long term. Some people are like that.
The hyacinths in pots are opening. I tried a new (to me) variety, 'City of Bradford'. They are a soft blue, with a definite flush of pink while in bud, extremely attractive, and I'm delighted with them. Hyacinths are good bee plants, and today as well as the honeybees I saw a great queen bumble on one of the flowers. One stem had flopped over, and I took a couple of minutes to fetch a slim stake and some string and tie it up. It's worth making the effort, because hyacinth flowers last longer if not allowed to fall down.
Thursday, 24 November 2011
working and not working
When I read the headline that David Cameron said people should take their children to work with them on the strike day, I thought what a gift for the scriptwriters of The Now Show. Given that this morning even the Today programme was taking a poke at it, they may feel that by Friday night it will have been done to death. We'll see (or rather, hear), though the Systems Administrator and I may not until Saturday lunchtime. On Friday evening we're going to see a Now Show stalwart live, as Mitch Benn is appearing at The Colchester Arts Centre. ADVANCE NOTICE Mitch Benn and the Distractions are performing tomorrow night at The Colchester Arts Centre, and as of this moment tickets are still available.
Apparently children will be allowed into Number 10 next Wednesday. This slightly makes me think that the government machine is not running as tight a ship as it could be. At my place of work it would be difficult to take children in for the entire day, supposing you had any. The staff room is honestly rather insanitary, and rather cold, and smells rather mouldy, for it to be a suitable place to park a child for the day. They would get chilly and possibly wet wandering around outside, and it is not exactly a hazard free environment for a small child. The owners probably believe that while they are paying their staff, we should be concentrating on doing our jobs, not on preventing our children from ingesting chemicals, drowning in the ponds, messing up the tills, or otherwise causing injury to themselves or disruption to the business.
As a customer I'd like to feel that staff I was dealing with were concentrating on the job. I don't want to go for a haircut and find that the hairdresser's attention is mostly on what four year old Tristan has got up to now, and whether he is safe, while she absent mindedly tonsures me. Nor do I want to have my septic hand examined by the nurse while her bored 14 year old in the corner checks out Facebook on her mobile. Not all places of work have a spare room and a more or less free member of staff to run an impromtu creche for mixed ages.
A friend of ours was recently made redundant by one of the big banks. The bank is cutting 20,000 worldwide, with 250 to come out of the division our friend used to work in until the week before last. Staff set off to work for business as usual on Monday morning. On Wednesday rumours were circulating. On Thursday the people being laid off were told, handed in their laptops and passes and went home. On Friday they didn't go in. Employment finished. Our friend was the last person in his department to get the call, and by 4.30pm he was thinking he'd missed out. He is close to retirement age, has lots of hobbies, and was really keen to be allowed to spend more time pursuing them. Not everybody was in the same fortunate position. I was surprised the bank had bothered to make him redundant, given he'd have soon gone anyway, but the SA pointed out that under new age discrimination legislation he might not have chosen to leave at 60, plus getting rid of one person who wanted to go saved the job of somebody else who didn't. Thus our lives in big organisations hang by an arbitrary thread. A divisonal head has to get rid of 250 people. Are you number 250 or number 251 in the queue?
Meanwhile, back in the world of unpaid work, I have finished weeding the gravel by the entrance. It's as good as it's going to be, at any rate. The creeping sorrel will come up again, as it is impossible to get every scrap of root out, so the improvement is transient and somewhat illusory, but then so is the effect of mowing the lawn. I topped up thin patches in the gravel, taking some from the bag of new gravel, and some from the edges of the drive where it gets spun out by vehicle wheels. I want to use up the bag because then I won't have a bright green bag taking centre stage just inside the entrance, but I grudge running out of the supply of clean, weed-free gravel. The garden layout does not work well for bulky deliveries, but that's one of the things you only discover after the event. I would know next time, but there isn't supposed to be a next time.
Gravel gardening is quite fun, and you can achieve some interesting dynamic effects with self seeding, but it is not low maintenance. It took over two days (admittedly short ones at this time of the year) to weed the entrance gravel, which is a very small part of the whole garden. OK, if you laid a thick layer of gravel and blasted the entire area with weedkiller a few times a year and raked the leaves off in autumn it would be low maintenance, but if you want plants growing in gravel you will spend a long time weeding, picking leaves out from among them, and topping up the bald patches that appear. As for plants growing through holes cut in a membrane mulched with gravel, I wouldn't touch them. The membrane will show at the edges of the holes, and you lose the attractive elements of self seeding. Plants you want won't be able to grow to flowering size sitting on top of the membrane, but hairy bittercress will still find a foothold.
Apparently children will be allowed into Number 10 next Wednesday. This slightly makes me think that the government machine is not running as tight a ship as it could be. At my place of work it would be difficult to take children in for the entire day, supposing you had any. The staff room is honestly rather insanitary, and rather cold, and smells rather mouldy, for it to be a suitable place to park a child for the day. They would get chilly and possibly wet wandering around outside, and it is not exactly a hazard free environment for a small child. The owners probably believe that while they are paying their staff, we should be concentrating on doing our jobs, not on preventing our children from ingesting chemicals, drowning in the ponds, messing up the tills, or otherwise causing injury to themselves or disruption to the business.
As a customer I'd like to feel that staff I was dealing with were concentrating on the job. I don't want to go for a haircut and find that the hairdresser's attention is mostly on what four year old Tristan has got up to now, and whether he is safe, while she absent mindedly tonsures me. Nor do I want to have my septic hand examined by the nurse while her bored 14 year old in the corner checks out Facebook on her mobile. Not all places of work have a spare room and a more or less free member of staff to run an impromtu creche for mixed ages.
A friend of ours was recently made redundant by one of the big banks. The bank is cutting 20,000 worldwide, with 250 to come out of the division our friend used to work in until the week before last. Staff set off to work for business as usual on Monday morning. On Wednesday rumours were circulating. On Thursday the people being laid off were told, handed in their laptops and passes and went home. On Friday they didn't go in. Employment finished. Our friend was the last person in his department to get the call, and by 4.30pm he was thinking he'd missed out. He is close to retirement age, has lots of hobbies, and was really keen to be allowed to spend more time pursuing them. Not everybody was in the same fortunate position. I was surprised the bank had bothered to make him redundant, given he'd have soon gone anyway, but the SA pointed out that under new age discrimination legislation he might not have chosen to leave at 60, plus getting rid of one person who wanted to go saved the job of somebody else who didn't. Thus our lives in big organisations hang by an arbitrary thread. A divisonal head has to get rid of 250 people. Are you number 250 or number 251 in the queue?
Meanwhile, back in the world of unpaid work, I have finished weeding the gravel by the entrance. It's as good as it's going to be, at any rate. The creeping sorrel will come up again, as it is impossible to get every scrap of root out, so the improvement is transient and somewhat illusory, but then so is the effect of mowing the lawn. I topped up thin patches in the gravel, taking some from the bag of new gravel, and some from the edges of the drive where it gets spun out by vehicle wheels. I want to use up the bag because then I won't have a bright green bag taking centre stage just inside the entrance, but I grudge running out of the supply of clean, weed-free gravel. The garden layout does not work well for bulky deliveries, but that's one of the things you only discover after the event. I would know next time, but there isn't supposed to be a next time.
Gravel gardening is quite fun, and you can achieve some interesting dynamic effects with self seeding, but it is not low maintenance. It took over two days (admittedly short ones at this time of the year) to weed the entrance gravel, which is a very small part of the whole garden. OK, if you laid a thick layer of gravel and blasted the entire area with weedkiller a few times a year and raked the leaves off in autumn it would be low maintenance, but if you want plants growing in gravel you will spend a long time weeding, picking leaves out from among them, and topping up the bald patches that appear. As for plants growing through holes cut in a membrane mulched with gravel, I wouldn't touch them. The membrane will show at the edges of the holes, and you lose the attractive elements of self seeding. Plants you want won't be able to grow to flowering size sitting on top of the membrane, but hairy bittercress will still find a foothold.
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
gravel today
I spent today weeding the gravel in the front garden. It's a gentle task that doesn't involve any very strenuous activity with the left hand (given I am right handed) or the risk of banging my knuckles into anything hard. There is something satisfying about pulling out the roots of sheeps sorrel. You curl your fingers under the tuft of leaves, trying to find the long running yellow root, then lift that, seeing how long a piece you can extract in one go, and trying to get it to break leaving a visible end protruding from the soil, so that you can have another bite at the same cherry.
This part of the garden is infested with a fine leaved, clump forming grass. I don't know what species. It isn't Poa annua, annual meadow grass, though it is an annual. There are also patches of a perennial weed grass with a running root, but not couch grass. The root curls more than couch grass roots. That one dives deep as well as running near the surface, and buries itself in the bases of shrubs and hedges where it is impossible to dig all of it out, so I should be vigilant with the spot weedkiller in the spring. I am not very good at the names of weeds, though I can recognise them. There is another annual, a little yellow flowered member of the pea family, and an annual spurge. Then various plants spill out of the border which suddenly count as weeds when they seed in the gravel, including Geranium sanguineum and Lychnis coronaria. Actually, the Lychnis has proved such a smotherer that nowadays I don't want it in the border either. This just goes to prove that a weed is indeed any plant in the wrong place.
The ivy hedge never recovered over the summer, so I've been pruning the dead branches out. Bits are still alive, but there are many leafless branches which are now visibly dry and dead. I was honestly expecting it to shoot again, given how indestructible ivy normally is, but there's been very little regrowth since winter. I presume it was the winter that killed out patches of it, and that it hasn't had the strength to regrow because the soil is so poor and the rainfall overall has been low. I'll sprinkle bone meal along the base of it for now, then give it a higher nitrogen boost next spring, and see if that kick-starts it into action. If it fails to regenerate then maybe it is time to start taking box cuttings. I liked that ivy hedge. The variety has smallish, crinkly leaves in a pleasant shade of greyish green, and a graceful, branching growth habit. I lost track of what cultivar I settled for, which is irritating, but it made a very neat hedge up until last year, and didn't run across the ground as manically as the other hedge in a different (unknown) cultivar does. Which does suggest it is not an especially strong grower.
There is one seedling which is quite definitely Morina longifolia, so I carefully avoided weeding it out. I was pleased when I found it, but now I've read John Hoyland's article for the Telegraph I feel a little miffed to have only got the one. There again, conditions in north Essex are far from those he describes as ideal for Morina, and a pretty poor substitute for 9,800 feet in the Himalayas, so I should be grateful the plants consent to grow at all.
One of the surviving Gazania still has a flower and two buds on it, an incongruous sight on 22 November. I shall definitely add some more next year, sowing seed if I get round to it, or splashing out on a garden centre pack of plugs if I don't, or if the seeds don't germinate, or damp off.
By ten past four it was too dark to see what I was doing weeding, and I had to come in. I was listening to a Radio 4 programme about the brain, which said that the most rewarding activities, defining rewarding as producing the most dopamine, were those were the outcome was not assured and there was an element of uncertainty. That makes gardening a very rewarding activity, I thought. I dream and plan, plant and prune, and have an idea of what could happen. Flowers. A profusion of tulips. The ivy hedge restored to health. A glittering array of south African daisies in the gravel. But nothing is guaranteed. Voles. A long cold winter. That amount of uncertain reward should get the dopamine flowing all right.
This part of the garden is infested with a fine leaved, clump forming grass. I don't know what species. It isn't Poa annua, annual meadow grass, though it is an annual. There are also patches of a perennial weed grass with a running root, but not couch grass. The root curls more than couch grass roots. That one dives deep as well as running near the surface, and buries itself in the bases of shrubs and hedges where it is impossible to dig all of it out, so I should be vigilant with the spot weedkiller in the spring. I am not very good at the names of weeds, though I can recognise them. There is another annual, a little yellow flowered member of the pea family, and an annual spurge. Then various plants spill out of the border which suddenly count as weeds when they seed in the gravel, including Geranium sanguineum and Lychnis coronaria. Actually, the Lychnis has proved such a smotherer that nowadays I don't want it in the border either. This just goes to prove that a weed is indeed any plant in the wrong place.
The ivy hedge never recovered over the summer, so I've been pruning the dead branches out. Bits are still alive, but there are many leafless branches which are now visibly dry and dead. I was honestly expecting it to shoot again, given how indestructible ivy normally is, but there's been very little regrowth since winter. I presume it was the winter that killed out patches of it, and that it hasn't had the strength to regrow because the soil is so poor and the rainfall overall has been low. I'll sprinkle bone meal along the base of it for now, then give it a higher nitrogen boost next spring, and see if that kick-starts it into action. If it fails to regenerate then maybe it is time to start taking box cuttings. I liked that ivy hedge. The variety has smallish, crinkly leaves in a pleasant shade of greyish green, and a graceful, branching growth habit. I lost track of what cultivar I settled for, which is irritating, but it made a very neat hedge up until last year, and didn't run across the ground as manically as the other hedge in a different (unknown) cultivar does. Which does suggest it is not an especially strong grower.
There is one seedling which is quite definitely Morina longifolia, so I carefully avoided weeding it out. I was pleased when I found it, but now I've read John Hoyland's article for the Telegraph I feel a little miffed to have only got the one. There again, conditions in north Essex are far from those he describes as ideal for Morina, and a pretty poor substitute for 9,800 feet in the Himalayas, so I should be grateful the plants consent to grow at all.
One of the surviving Gazania still has a flower and two buds on it, an incongruous sight on 22 November. I shall definitely add some more next year, sowing seed if I get round to it, or splashing out on a garden centre pack of plugs if I don't, or if the seeds don't germinate, or damp off.
By ten past four it was too dark to see what I was doing weeding, and I had to come in. I was listening to a Radio 4 programme about the brain, which said that the most rewarding activities, defining rewarding as producing the most dopamine, were those were the outcome was not assured and there was an element of uncertainty. That makes gardening a very rewarding activity, I thought. I dream and plan, plant and prune, and have an idea of what could happen. Flowers. A profusion of tulips. The ivy hedge restored to health. A glittering array of south African daisies in the gravel. But nothing is guaranteed. Voles. A long cold winter. That amount of uncertain reward should get the dopamine flowing all right.
Friday, 29 July 2011
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.
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.
Friday, 15 July 2011
ground cover for gravel
I continued weeding the gravel today, working along the back of the long bed. The creeping thyme is beginning to spread itself usefully. This is Thymus serpyllum ((link to image) which forms low dense mats, in mid July covered in pinky-mauve flowers beloved of bees. The original plants were raised from seeds, sown in pots then pricked out into modules, 6x4 plugs in a standard sized seed tray. Once they had formed solid root balls they were planted into holes scooped in the gravel, and grew away easily. Having experimented with spring and autumn sowings I should say that spring is better, as the young seedlings tend to languish in the greenhouse over the winter, and succumb to the damp, cold and lack of light. There are a few common thyme plants here and there, but they tend to grow somewhat upright and straggly and the creeping sort looks prettier.
The thyme project ran out of plants half way along the gravel. I'm keen to get more ground cover here, because weeding that area of open gravel is a big job, so I want plants I've chosen to smother the ground and out-compete the weed seeds. I've got some seed raised Dianthus deltoides, so am planting those out. They too should self-seed into the gaps and help cover the ground with desirable plants. In the long bed I'm having some success with germander, Teucrium chamaedrys, which after a painfully slow start (admittedly in the worst soil in the entire bed) is forming dense low bushes with little evergreen leaves, covered at the moment with spikes of small tubular dead-nettle type flowers. It is a member of the family Lamiaceae, and like many of its relatives is attractive to bees ((link to image). Clumps of that would look good standing up among the thyme.
I've got a couple of dwarf pines to plant in the gravel. I love pines, and they do well on sand, or at least many of them do, so I bought these as features I wanted rather than ground cover per se. I need to position them so that each has its own space to grow and be seen, rather than forming an amorphous supermarket car park lump with its neighbours.
The ground surrounding the garden railway was landscaped into small hills and hollows, to make it more interesting from a scenic point of view for the railway. The tops of the hills get incredibly dry, and are proving a challenge. Some box plants that went in a year or two back are clinging on to life, but not much more. Their foliage has gone bronze, indicating that they are hungry as well as thirsty, so they had better have a sprinkling of fish, blood and bone and maybe 6X to encourage them. Plants for a garden railway need to have small leaves and flowers, to keep the overall sense of scale. They don't look like a miniature version of full size shrubs and trees, but at least they give the right feel. Modelling magazines give ideas and examples, but many of their suggested plants would never grow on our sand.
As I crawled along the gravel I realised that it really does need topping up in places. Of course the patches where it is thinnest and meanest are those furthest from the drive, since it is the hardest work to push the barrow that far, so they got skimped on first time round. The thought of having to shift another dumpy bag of gravel is a bit daunting, as is the thought of the lorry from the builder's yard squeezing its way into the front garden again, but the gravel really does need to be thicker. It is much easier to weed when there is a good loose layer on top than when the weeds can root straight into the soil. The last time I had gravel delivered I found bits of broken orange plastic afterwards in the hedge, which I fear came from one of the delivery lorry's lights.
The thyme project ran out of plants half way along the gravel. I'm keen to get more ground cover here, because weeding that area of open gravel is a big job, so I want plants I've chosen to smother the ground and out-compete the weed seeds. I've got some seed raised Dianthus deltoides, so am planting those out. They too should self-seed into the gaps and help cover the ground with desirable plants. In the long bed I'm having some success with germander, Teucrium chamaedrys, which after a painfully slow start (admittedly in the worst soil in the entire bed) is forming dense low bushes with little evergreen leaves, covered at the moment with spikes of small tubular dead-nettle type flowers. It is a member of the family Lamiaceae, and like many of its relatives is attractive to bees ((link to image). Clumps of that would look good standing up among the thyme.
I've got a couple of dwarf pines to plant in the gravel. I love pines, and they do well on sand, or at least many of them do, so I bought these as features I wanted rather than ground cover per se. I need to position them so that each has its own space to grow and be seen, rather than forming an amorphous supermarket car park lump with its neighbours.
The ground surrounding the garden railway was landscaped into small hills and hollows, to make it more interesting from a scenic point of view for the railway. The tops of the hills get incredibly dry, and are proving a challenge. Some box plants that went in a year or two back are clinging on to life, but not much more. Their foliage has gone bronze, indicating that they are hungry as well as thirsty, so they had better have a sprinkling of fish, blood and bone and maybe 6X to encourage them. Plants for a garden railway need to have small leaves and flowers, to keep the overall sense of scale. They don't look like a miniature version of full size shrubs and trees, but at least they give the right feel. Modelling magazines give ideas and examples, but many of their suggested plants would never grow on our sand.
As I crawled along the gravel I realised that it really does need topping up in places. Of course the patches where it is thinnest and meanest are those furthest from the drive, since it is the hardest work to push the barrow that far, so they got skimped on first time round. The thought of having to shift another dumpy bag of gravel is a bit daunting, as is the thought of the lorry from the builder's yard squeezing its way into the front garden again, but the gravel really does need to be thicker. It is much easier to weed when there is a good loose layer on top than when the weeds can root straight into the soil. The last time I had gravel delivered I found bits of broken orange plastic afterwards in the hedge, which I fear came from one of the delivery lorry's lights.
Thursday, 14 July 2011
a fantasy beach garden
I've been weeding the gravel in the front garden alongside the long bed. This is a fiddly task, though the results are immediate. Gravel is a wonderful growing medium for seedlings, and if you ever find it described as a weed supressing mulch I suggest you skip straight on to the next article.
One end of the long gravel is subdivided off into the foreground for the System's Administrator garden hut. The rest of it forms the backdrop to the garden railway, which currently needs some work doing to get the track up to the mark. All of it was originally lawn, which did very badly on the light soil, and was never used for anything in particular, so was scrapped years ago.
The hut was built from scratch from timber, not bought as a kit. Even the window is homemade, though I think the door is prefabricated. It is furnished with a very small woodburning stove, and some pictures, and a desk, and a shelf with the only two trophies we ever won for Old Gaffer racing, then a lot of modelling equipment found its way in and it became a garden room cum miniature engineering workshop. It was built partly because the S.A. likes designing and building sheds, and its purpose now is for the S.A. to have somewhere to go that is not in the house. For this reason it had to be fairly close to the house, and so it ended up crammed in next to my greenhouse and right in front of the hedge.
The hut is modelled loosely on a beach hut. This reflects the influence of the general 1990s fashion for beach themed gardens, but was also a conscious choice given we live only four miles from the sea and have had a boat of one sort or another for the past quarter of a century. It is painted blue (definite shades of Alan Titchmarsh) and has a little porch and you can see it here. It is traditional for beach huts to have a name. The best one I ever saw was at Harwich and was called Arijaba (try saying it out loud). The blue hut is called Dunadmin, and a friend made us a sign to go over the door.
The divider between the blue hut's garden and the rest of the long gravel is made entirely out of reclaimed and found materials, which I'm rather proud of. The posts were begged from work when they demolished a pergola that used to have vines growing over it and house the shade loving plants. (Clearing the vine leaves off the plants was a wretched job, and it was a great relief when the structure was replaced with a tunnel with shade netting on it). The S.A. worked out the relative heights of the three posts using the golden ratio as a starting point, and the proportions do look right. The chain is an old anchor chain from a former boat, which we have used for its original purpose in years gone by. You can see the approach to the blue hut here.
There are rings of stones with holes in hung from the posts, which I've collected over the past couple of years while weeding. I almost never used to see any, but I must have got my eye in as I find them regularly now, and being a Darwinist as opposed to a Creationist I assume they have been on the premises for a few million years and didn't just appear. They are threaded on to nylon fishing line, which has many uses (including repairing the cat's knee). The anchor on the ground came with a boat, and we didn't fancy using it for actually anchoring, and the brass navigation lights are off another former boat. We did use them for a while, though with electric bulbs rather than oil lamps, before deciding that modern lights were less picturesque but safer. The squashed lobster pot on the porch was bought at the Rye branch of Nauticalia the day after my fourtieth birthday.
The upright piece of timber with a hole in it was salvaged from a beach in Northumbria. I found it, and instantly coveted it. The Systems Administrator said 'I've already tested that, it's too heavy for me to carry'. There was no way I was going to give up a lovely piece of driftwood like that, and I said with hauteur that I would carry it myself. It was very heavy, and we were a good half mile from the car. I did have to stop for a lot of rests. As we neared the car park an old boy eyed it up, and asked if we were going to have a bonfire. Er, no. Bits of wood like that cost good money at Hampton Court Flower Show, and anyway things you have found or made yourself have more significance.
I did have to buy the baulks of wood for the path. They came from a garden centre specialising in landscape materials, and described as railway sleepers, though they were brand new and not coated in tar (a plus) and I think railway sleepers are larger than that, and nowadays made of concrete anyway. I did my lower back a serious mischief settling them into their holes, which I only realised afterwards. If you are contemplating making anything similar then do be very careful how you manipulate large pieces of wood in holes in the ground. They get slippery in the winter, and the S.A. isn't very keen on them.
As a fantasy garden feature it is gloriously hackneyed, rapidly becoming a period piece, and I'm fond of it. I've just planted some seed-raised sea campion along the bottom of the post and chain. The problem is the setting, sitting as it does right in front of a native field hedge which does not say 'seaside'. If it was in the middle of a large expanse of gravel, or in front of a tamarisk or sea buckthorn hedge, or even a concrete wall, it would be much more convincing. And the crab apple just beyond the divider doesn't scream 'seaside' either, but it predates the blue hut and is a good tree and I'm not getting rid of it. And the greenhouse doesn't help at all, though I have partially screened it with a trellis I built myself (it took a very long time). Designing a garden is largely about the intelligent division of space. We have succeeded pretty well in the back, but not really in the front. But the blue hut is fun, and the Systems Administrator likes it in there.
One end of the long gravel is subdivided off into the foreground for the System's Administrator garden hut. The rest of it forms the backdrop to the garden railway, which currently needs some work doing to get the track up to the mark. All of it was originally lawn, which did very badly on the light soil, and was never used for anything in particular, so was scrapped years ago.
The hut was built from scratch from timber, not bought as a kit. Even the window is homemade, though I think the door is prefabricated. It is furnished with a very small woodburning stove, and some pictures, and a desk, and a shelf with the only two trophies we ever won for Old Gaffer racing, then a lot of modelling equipment found its way in and it became a garden room cum miniature engineering workshop. It was built partly because the S.A. likes designing and building sheds, and its purpose now is for the S.A. to have somewhere to go that is not in the house. For this reason it had to be fairly close to the house, and so it ended up crammed in next to my greenhouse and right in front of the hedge.
The hut is modelled loosely on a beach hut. This reflects the influence of the general 1990s fashion for beach themed gardens, but was also a conscious choice given we live only four miles from the sea and have had a boat of one sort or another for the past quarter of a century. It is painted blue (definite shades of Alan Titchmarsh) and has a little porch and you can see it here. It is traditional for beach huts to have a name. The best one I ever saw was at Harwich and was called Arijaba (try saying it out loud). The blue hut is called Dunadmin, and a friend made us a sign to go over the door.
The divider between the blue hut's garden and the rest of the long gravel is made entirely out of reclaimed and found materials, which I'm rather proud of. The posts were begged from work when they demolished a pergola that used to have vines growing over it and house the shade loving plants. (Clearing the vine leaves off the plants was a wretched job, and it was a great relief when the structure was replaced with a tunnel with shade netting on it). The S.A. worked out the relative heights of the three posts using the golden ratio as a starting point, and the proportions do look right. The chain is an old anchor chain from a former boat, which we have used for its original purpose in years gone by. You can see the approach to the blue hut here.
There are rings of stones with holes in hung from the posts, which I've collected over the past couple of years while weeding. I almost never used to see any, but I must have got my eye in as I find them regularly now, and being a Darwinist as opposed to a Creationist I assume they have been on the premises for a few million years and didn't just appear. They are threaded on to nylon fishing line, which has many uses (including repairing the cat's knee). The anchor on the ground came with a boat, and we didn't fancy using it for actually anchoring, and the brass navigation lights are off another former boat. We did use them for a while, though with electric bulbs rather than oil lamps, before deciding that modern lights were less picturesque but safer. The squashed lobster pot on the porch was bought at the Rye branch of Nauticalia the day after my fourtieth birthday.
The upright piece of timber with a hole in it was salvaged from a beach in Northumbria. I found it, and instantly coveted it. The Systems Administrator said 'I've already tested that, it's too heavy for me to carry'. There was no way I was going to give up a lovely piece of driftwood like that, and I said with hauteur that I would carry it myself. It was very heavy, and we were a good half mile from the car. I did have to stop for a lot of rests. As we neared the car park an old boy eyed it up, and asked if we were going to have a bonfire. Er, no. Bits of wood like that cost good money at Hampton Court Flower Show, and anyway things you have found or made yourself have more significance.
I did have to buy the baulks of wood for the path. They came from a garden centre specialising in landscape materials, and described as railway sleepers, though they were brand new and not coated in tar (a plus) and I think railway sleepers are larger than that, and nowadays made of concrete anyway. I did my lower back a serious mischief settling them into their holes, which I only realised afterwards. If you are contemplating making anything similar then do be very careful how you manipulate large pieces of wood in holes in the ground. They get slippery in the winter, and the S.A. isn't very keen on them.
As a fantasy garden feature it is gloriously hackneyed, rapidly becoming a period piece, and I'm fond of it. I've just planted some seed-raised sea campion along the bottom of the post and chain. The problem is the setting, sitting as it does right in front of a native field hedge which does not say 'seaside'. If it was in the middle of a large expanse of gravel, or in front of a tamarisk or sea buckthorn hedge, or even a concrete wall, it would be much more convincing. And the crab apple just beyond the divider doesn't scream 'seaside' either, but it predates the blue hut and is a good tree and I'm not getting rid of it. And the greenhouse doesn't help at all, though I have partially screened it with a trellis I built myself (it took a very long time). Designing a garden is largely about the intelligent division of space. We have succeeded pretty well in the back, but not really in the front. But the blue hut is fun, and the Systems Administrator likes it in there.
Tuesday, 26 April 2011
revamping the gravel
I've been replanting the gravel in one half of what we call the Italian garden. The term long pre-dates Monty's excellent TV series, and in truth the resemblence to anything Italian isn't very marked. The Italian garden sits at one end of a largish turning circle, which was laid to grass when we moved in. It was weedy and pathetic turf on the thin soil, and we never used it for ball games (don't play them), sunbathing (why would you choose to sunbathe in your front garden when you have a much more private back garden?) or anything else. It required cutting and looked dull. So we gave up with grass entirely in the front garden, and turned it over to gravel. While we were at it we dug a square formal pond, and made a paved area by the pond, and a paved path across the turning circle. The path is carefully aligned with the front door and is the same width as the porch, an attempt to relate the geometry of the garden to the geometry of the house lifted straight out of the pages of John Brookes. It does work visually. Visitors occassionally notice it, and point it out to us as though it were a marvellous accident we might not have noticed.
The paved area wasn't really used for anything for years. I bought four cube shape lead planters, and a terracotta greyhound couchant from the Whichford pottery, which lounged alongside the pond, and that was about it. We had a small fountain for a couple of years, until it broke down. They always do. The grounds of Writtle College were littered with defunct water features when I studied there. At one point we divided the turning circle in two with a breakwater made out of reclaimed timber, and the other end began to develop a character as a seaside garden, but the end with the pond remained mainly an area that we walked through to get to cars parked on the other side of the drive. It was planted with rosemary, lavender, and a curry plant that spread hugely, plus some self-seeding Euphorbia characias and agapanthus, but it wasn't very interesting. Eventually I got round to buying a cafe table and a couple of chairs, and started putting out pots of geraniums and things for the summer and, based on the mediterranean planting and collection of hardware, it became the Italian garden, or when I'm feeling long-winded, 'the mad decayed Italian garden'. The paving, which was only laid on sand and not hardcore, has become uneven over the years, and poppies and blue Nigella damascena seed freely into the cracks, as do weeds.
I had begun to resent the amount of space that the curry plant took up, and realised I didn't really like the smell, which made me worry that the chicken house needed cleaning out, so I was quite glad that last winter did for it. Removing the remains of that, and the rosemary bushes, which were dying off in patches, has cleared a large space. Some new rosemary and lavender plants went in today, and an Aloysia triphylla, the wonderful lemon scented verbena, which may or may not survive a winter outside. I'd like to add an extra-blue, extra-tender teucrium, when they turn up at work, and some different euphorbias. This scheme was cooked up months ago, when I was tidying the hot tunnel at work, but it's amazing that it is actually happening the same year I thought of it. The winter killing so many of the incumbent shrubs forced my hand rather.
I'm waiting to see if the olive tree will sprout again, or if last winter really was a step too far for it. It made it through the previous one, just, so I don't know whether, if it is dead, to risk another olive and hope we don't have another winter quite so severe for a good while, or whether to substitute with something like Eleagnus 'Quicksilver'. Olives do have such a distinctive habit. Van Gogh captured it exactly in one of the drawings shown in the Royal Academy's exhibition a while back (which was so good that I am prepared to forgive them Modern British Sculpture, as long as they don't do anything else like that for a long time). The deciduous eleagnus are pretty and graceful and have silver leaves, but they don't honestly look a lot like olives.
I feel a bit hypocritical buying the gravel. It came from a local builders' merchants who did a leaflet campaign, and I saw I could buy it by the bulk bag, delivery charge included in the price of the bag. Of course delivery is not actually free, as the gravel costs more, but it does mean I can buy a single bag and not feel I ought to get more to make the delivery cost more economic. After today's efforts I'm about two-thirds through the bag, and wondering if I should have got two bags, except that after the experience with the left-over sand I was trying not to repeat that error. Getting the delivery lorry up the drive was slightly traumatic and I'd rather not order a second bag for a bit, until we've trimmed the hedge along the drive. The new gravel is a perfect match for the existing stuff, which came from the Birch quarry, and I suspect that it came from the same place.
The reason why I feel hypocritical is that there is a planning application in the offing for a large gravel quarry in our parish. I don't honestly want a gravel quarry up the road, and my partner lodged an objection against it on behalf of our household. If the quarry happens it will probably not be a disaster for us. I expect there will be a bit of extra background noise and dust on top of what we get anyway, from the roads and planes and lettuce farm, but when we go for walks past the other quarries in the area they aren't that awful. Until the application is settled one way or the other we would probably find it difficult to sell our house, but fortunately we weren't planning to move at the moment. If the application goes through the house will probably be worth a bit less than it would be otherwise, though if we can stick it out for twenty years or so we have been promised a nature reserve at the end of it, which would be nice. I expect we'll survive the quarry if it happens. But on the whole I would rather it didn't, so I feel mean buying bags of gravel from Birch, where the locals don't want a quarry either. But not so mean I won't buy the gravel.
The paved area wasn't really used for anything for years. I bought four cube shape lead planters, and a terracotta greyhound couchant from the Whichford pottery, which lounged alongside the pond, and that was about it. We had a small fountain for a couple of years, until it broke down. They always do. The grounds of Writtle College were littered with defunct water features when I studied there. At one point we divided the turning circle in two with a breakwater made out of reclaimed timber, and the other end began to develop a character as a seaside garden, but the end with the pond remained mainly an area that we walked through to get to cars parked on the other side of the drive. It was planted with rosemary, lavender, and a curry plant that spread hugely, plus some self-seeding Euphorbia characias and agapanthus, but it wasn't very interesting. Eventually I got round to buying a cafe table and a couple of chairs, and started putting out pots of geraniums and things for the summer and, based on the mediterranean planting and collection of hardware, it became the Italian garden, or when I'm feeling long-winded, 'the mad decayed Italian garden'. The paving, which was only laid on sand and not hardcore, has become uneven over the years, and poppies and blue Nigella damascena seed freely into the cracks, as do weeds.
I had begun to resent the amount of space that the curry plant took up, and realised I didn't really like the smell, which made me worry that the chicken house needed cleaning out, so I was quite glad that last winter did for it. Removing the remains of that, and the rosemary bushes, which were dying off in patches, has cleared a large space. Some new rosemary and lavender plants went in today, and an Aloysia triphylla, the wonderful lemon scented verbena, which may or may not survive a winter outside. I'd like to add an extra-blue, extra-tender teucrium, when they turn up at work, and some different euphorbias. This scheme was cooked up months ago, when I was tidying the hot tunnel at work, but it's amazing that it is actually happening the same year I thought of it. The winter killing so many of the incumbent shrubs forced my hand rather.
I'm waiting to see if the olive tree will sprout again, or if last winter really was a step too far for it. It made it through the previous one, just, so I don't know whether, if it is dead, to risk another olive and hope we don't have another winter quite so severe for a good while, or whether to substitute with something like Eleagnus 'Quicksilver'. Olives do have such a distinctive habit. Van Gogh captured it exactly in one of the drawings shown in the Royal Academy's exhibition a while back (which was so good that I am prepared to forgive them Modern British Sculpture, as long as they don't do anything else like that for a long time). The deciduous eleagnus are pretty and graceful and have silver leaves, but they don't honestly look a lot like olives.
I feel a bit hypocritical buying the gravel. It came from a local builders' merchants who did a leaflet campaign, and I saw I could buy it by the bulk bag, delivery charge included in the price of the bag. Of course delivery is not actually free, as the gravel costs more, but it does mean I can buy a single bag and not feel I ought to get more to make the delivery cost more economic. After today's efforts I'm about two-thirds through the bag, and wondering if I should have got two bags, except that after the experience with the left-over sand I was trying not to repeat that error. Getting the delivery lorry up the drive was slightly traumatic and I'd rather not order a second bag for a bit, until we've trimmed the hedge along the drive. The new gravel is a perfect match for the existing stuff, which came from the Birch quarry, and I suspect that it came from the same place.
The reason why I feel hypocritical is that there is a planning application in the offing for a large gravel quarry in our parish. I don't honestly want a gravel quarry up the road, and my partner lodged an objection against it on behalf of our household. If the quarry happens it will probably not be a disaster for us. I expect there will be a bit of extra background noise and dust on top of what we get anyway, from the roads and planes and lettuce farm, but when we go for walks past the other quarries in the area they aren't that awful. Until the application is settled one way or the other we would probably find it difficult to sell our house, but fortunately we weren't planning to move at the moment. If the application goes through the house will probably be worth a bit less than it would be otherwise, though if we can stick it out for twenty years or so we have been promised a nature reserve at the end of it, which would be nice. I expect we'll survive the quarry if it happens. But on the whole I would rather it didn't, so I feel mean buying bags of gravel from Birch, where the locals don't want a quarry either. But not so mean I won't buy the gravel.
Saturday, 5 February 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, 23 January 2011
grooming the gravel
I have been weeding the gravel. There is a lot of gravel nowadays in the upper part of the garden in front of the house. It was originally lawn, which did very badly, the soil being so sandy and poor, and was never used for any lawn-like purposes such as sunbathing or ball games, so it was glyphosated to death and several lorry loads of 10mm Birch gravel went down in its place. It provides a good spot to grow things that like free drainage and disdain nutrition. Unfortunately this includes sheep's sorrel, which creeps about with yellow underground stems and occassionally sends deep roots straight down. It's impossible ever to extract all of it, and it regenerates inexorably from what remains. It is a characteristic plant of light acid soils, and is said to have medicinal and anti-scorbutic properties. I wouldn't care to eat it myself: I've seen what the cats do in that gravel.
Things seed joyously, some of which are allowed to stay. The teasels are kept, except around the edges of the gravel where I want there to be a clear path. This is a biennial so seedlings are needed to keep the display going. The spiky remains of last year's stalks I shall leave standing for another month, as they are still handsome. The flowers are attractive to insects, and the seeds to goldfinches. I have seen flocks of finches on them, although not very often. I found some viola seedlings. I don't want those in the gravel simply because they don't fit with the spiky sunbaked aesthetic, but moved them to live under the Mahonia by the oil tank. A small prickly seedling with piecrust edges to its leaves could be a Morina, which would be nice as I'd like more of those, but could be a Silybum that's strayed from its area of the garden. I'll leave it and see what it turns into, if it survives. It was looking a bit mashed up with cold. There were a lot of seedlings of a biennual verbascum which I decided to leave this year. It's fun to ring the changes. I mused on getting some gazanias: I had them two years ago and enjoyed them. They are almost hardy: given a mild winter and a seaside location you might get away with it.
I am not a fan of using mypex fabric under gravel to cut down on work. This is quite often suggested in gardening magazines, but my experience of cutting holes in mypex is that bits of fabric always stick up out of the mulch and look a mess. Anyway, you lose the self seeding element which is part of the fun of gravel gardening. It is a labour intensive activity, and that kind of fingertip weeding is hard on the back and your gardening gloves. I can't manage more than a half day of it, and try to alternate crawling and weeding with other jobs that involve walking about.
Things seed joyously, some of which are allowed to stay. The teasels are kept, except around the edges of the gravel where I want there to be a clear path. This is a biennial so seedlings are needed to keep the display going. The spiky remains of last year's stalks I shall leave standing for another month, as they are still handsome. The flowers are attractive to insects, and the seeds to goldfinches. I have seen flocks of finches on them, although not very often. I found some viola seedlings. I don't want those in the gravel simply because they don't fit with the spiky sunbaked aesthetic, but moved them to live under the Mahonia by the oil tank. A small prickly seedling with piecrust edges to its leaves could be a Morina, which would be nice as I'd like more of those, but could be a Silybum that's strayed from its area of the garden. I'll leave it and see what it turns into, if it survives. It was looking a bit mashed up with cold. There were a lot of seedlings of a biennual verbascum which I decided to leave this year. It's fun to ring the changes. I mused on getting some gazanias: I had them two years ago and enjoyed them. They are almost hardy: given a mild winter and a seaside location you might get away with it.
I am not a fan of using mypex fabric under gravel to cut down on work. This is quite often suggested in gardening magazines, but my experience of cutting holes in mypex is that bits of fabric always stick up out of the mulch and look a mess. Anyway, you lose the self seeding element which is part of the fun of gravel gardening. It is a labour intensive activity, and that kind of fingertip weeding is hard on the back and your gardening gloves. I can't manage more than a half day of it, and try to alternate crawling and weeding with other jobs that involve walking about.
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