scrantling

We scrantled two acres today.  Well, not two acres, but the daffodil lawn and the long grass in the lower part of the garden.  It hadn't been cut since last winter, and was ceasing to be a thing of beauty, and approaching that dangerous stage where, if we keep getting rain, we can't cut it because it is wet, and then the grass all falls over and it really is impossible to cut at all.  The first half of September is the time to do it.  We visited Great Dixter on this day, nine years ago, and their meadows were all cut down.

The scrantler is a petrol driven power scythe.  The Systems Administrator bought it at Chelsea some years back.  We had parted company for an hour or so as we usually do, each to look at their favourite bits at their own pace (the floral marquee in my case) and when we met the S.A. said 'I've bought you a present' and I had visions of a stainless steel water feature.  In fact it was the power scythe, which turned out to be much more useful.  Before we had it we cut the long grass either by smashing into it with the lawn tractor on its highest setting, which caused the engine and gears to whine horribly and can't have done it any good at all, or else I walked up and down swinging a heavy duty strimmer.  That was punishingly hard on the back and I am definitely too old and stiff for that sort of caper nowadays.

The power scythe was soon christened the scrantler, in homage to Stella Gibbons' peerless book (thought the film version with Kate Beckinsale before Hollywood ate her, and a young and ridiculously handsome Rufus Sewell was pretty good as well).  We both make references to Cold Comfort Farm, with cries of What about the spring onion harvest, that be man's work, when there is some heavy duty task to be done, clettering dishes, and I did, F. Poste as a rejoinder to a repeated question.  Sometimes I feel like Aunt Ada Doom, with my enthusiasm for looking at the church of any village I visit (Wymondham,see 24th March; Clavering, see 12th August), and anything by a journalist with an unlikely name is likely to remind me of Flora's conclusion that Mr Mybug must be a genius, otherwise he would have changed his name by deed poll.

The scrantler chops down the long grass in a slightly ragged fashion, but the cuttings can go on the bonfire heap, and once the surface of the lawn is exposed to the sun and wind and dries out some more, the S.A. will be able to go over it with the conventional mower.  My job is to rake up the fallen grass and help load it into the trailer.  An awful lot comes off, but it hasn't been cut all year.  We always disturb some toads in the course of this exercise, ranging in size from tinies smaller than my thumb to big fat ones.  Fortunately they seem to be able to duck down below the height of the cutter blades, though it must be terrifying for them as the machine goes overhead.  Most of them instinctively make for the nearest edge of the lawn, and I always wonder how they do that, though one small one today was heading back towards the middle.  We pick them up carefully and put them in a border before they can be scrantled, or raked up.

My remaining task is to cut the sloping side of the daffodil lawn by hand, as it is too steep for the machine, and to cut the tufts on it, as there isn't room to get the lawn tractor in and it is very uneven due to the huge number of anthills.  I expect the woodpeckers will deal with some of those soon enough.  There is quite a lot of work still to do,but the key thing is that  the weather-critical part for which I need the Systems Administrator to muck in, as I can't even start the scrantler, is safely done.  A good afternoon's work.

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.

a fortunate toad

I trimmed the edges of one of the beds in the back garden.  I am not as conscientious about doing the lawn edges as I should be, since keeping them defined is probably the single thing that most makes a garden look cared for.  As we were told on a Writtle trip to Wakehurst Place, if the edges are neat most people don't really notice what's going on in the beds, so if you've only got time to do one thing, do the edges.  I don't like them too nerdily sharp, since everything else is a bit shaggy, and the odd stem overhanging onto the lawn is fine by me, but there is a middle way between obsessively tidy edges and a marginal fringe of long grass complete with seed heads.  I'm trying to find it.  Edging a bed each time I'm out there before moving on to other tasks is one way.

As I was shearing a little patch of longer grass under an overhanging rose bush, that the lawnmower had swerved around, I had a close encounter with a toad that has to be the luckiest creature still alive in the garden.  Brushing up the grass I'd just cut I found it flattened into the turf.  I couldn't see any blood, so gave it a gentle and experimental prod with one finger.  It very slowly raised itself up, and eventually hopped away into the safety of the bed.  If I hadn't stopped to pick up the fallen grass at that point, and shuffled another pace forward to continue cutting, I'd have knelt on it.

I like toads.  I found another later on, that emerged while I was weeding in the gunnera bed.  They have such ancient, fathomless faces.  If you disturb other creatures they run or fly away, but toads believe the thing to do is to remain very still, presumably hoping you won't notice them if they don't move.  I found a couple in recent days while weeding the gravel in the front, pulling up a large clump of unwanted vegetation each time to reveal the toad sitting resolutely underneath.  Sometimes I have picked one up to move it out of harm's way, cupping it between my two palms, and when they wriggle they are surprisingly strong.

A space appeared in the front of the gunnera bed.  Trying to remember what used to be there, I think a Rheum died in the winter.  It was looking pretty poorly last year, and I don't think previous winter did it any good, so 2010-2011 must have finished it off.  Rheum die down completely in the summer after flowering, so are not really great plants for the front of a border anyway.  Further back it would be easier to hide the gap.  The space provided a home for a rather smart Thalictrum I bought months ago at work, which has been hanging around for quite long enough in its pot, and some sad-looking Lobelia I raised from seed last year, which have definitely spent too long in their containers, plus some Geum rivale 'Lemon Drops', also from seed, which are the survivors of a vine weevil attack in the greenhouse.  Vine weevils are very partial to Geum (also Primula and Heuchera).

Addendum  The grey tabby has had a crooked back and walked oddly for years.  We don't know what she did to it, but it hasn't been right for a long time, and now aged 12 she can not longer manage to look after her fur, which is long, extraordinarily crimped, and always charged with static (the sort of fur that sticks to the walls and has to be vacuumed off).  Very unpleasant knots had begun to form over her flanks and tummy, and for some days I've been combing these out.  She seems to understand I am trying to help, and purrs loudly while also wriggling and tottering around the kitchen table (I do disinfect it before cooking).  Today she took a swipe at my hand with her claws, and drew blood along half the length of my thumb.  If she could I think she would be one for throwing telephones at her assistant.

pondlife, and coastal climbers revisited

Looking into the formal pond in front of the house, I've seen newts.  The pond is slightly failing in its role as an ornamental feature, as a carex that formed part of the original planting has seeded into all the other containers and largely overwhelmed the rest of the marginal plants, while the water surface is a mess of duckweed, and the body of the pond choked by the submerged oxygenators that have multiplied wildly.  As a wildlife feature it's doing a great job.  The actual water is limpid, crystal clear, and full of life.  The newts have grown crests for the breeding season, but since they are very small, and when I see them the rest of the time they are crestless and the usual common newt brown and orange, I'm sure they are common ones and not great crested (if I thought there was any danger we had great crested newts in the front garden I would keep very quiet about it).  The newts swim about the edges of the pond, tiny toes outstretched.  When I disturb them around the garden while weeding at other times of the year they sham dead, to deter me from eating them.  The first time one did this I thought I must have somehow killed it, but have since discovered that this is normal newt behaviour.  As well as the newts I saw a couple of what looked like small flint cylinders, with tufts of weed growing on them, bumbling about, and I presume these were the larvae of some insect.  I need to clear the pond out at some point, but this is definitely not the right time.

I found a toad as well yesterday, while I was weeding in the back garden.  I picked it up carefully and put it in the middle of a Podocarpus where it wouldn't get disturbed again.  Toads have a very poor sense of self-preservation.  If uncovered by somebody weeding then instead of shuffling off as fast as they can crawl to put distance between themselves and the potential danger, they move about a trowel's length and stop as soon as they are hidden from view, so in a few minutes they get dug up again.

I find the presence of amphibians reassuring, apart from the fact that I like toads, as it makes me feel that the garden must be reasonably healthy and unpolluted.  We very rarely get frogs, but I have been told that they tend not to co-exist with toads.  I don't know why not.

Fired up by the question about climbing plants for a windy garden right by the sea, I re-read one of my few books about coastal gardening, Gardening at the Shore by Frances Tennenbaum, published by Timber Press.  They are north American publishers, and she is an American author whose examples are all drawn from north America, so it requires a little intelligent thought to extrapolate her views to gardening in Felixstowe, but many of the points she makes are just as applicable this side of the Atlantic.  Neither the text nor illustrations make much mention of climbing plants.  As is often the way with this sort of book, there is a final section on suitable plants for the matter in hand, and the section on Vines only names two.  One is Carolina jasmine or Gelsemium sempervirens, which sounds very useful, apart from the fact that I can't recall ever seeing for sale here.  The other is Parthenocissus quinquefolia, Virginia creeper.  I'd never thought of that as specifically good for coastal conditions, but she says it will grow on dry dunes and even the ocean shore.  In the body of the text in the earlier chapters she suggests that it is worth experimenting with roses, if they are given a modicum of shelter.

I checked the list of shrubs and climbers for specific purposes in the back of Graham Stuart Thomas's excellent Ornamental shrubs, climbers and bamboos, but the only climber included among shrubs for exposed gardens at the seaside was Muehlenbeckia complexa.  Then I tried the RHS on-line plant selector, going for climbers for a coastal position, and leaving all other conditions such as soil type and flower colour entirely open.  This came up with a list of 24 names, including quite a lot of different honeysuckles, common jasmine, wisteria, a few rose varieties, plus, rather bizarrely, one Raymond Evison clematis, the variety 'Rosemoor'.  I can't believe that 'Rosemoor' is so uniquely gifted among all other clematis varieties as to wind and salt tolerance, but there it is.  The RHS doesn't mention muehlenbeckia.  Maybe they don't count it as a climber.

After my quest for knowledge I felt that on the whole gardening experts didn't associate climbing plants with coastal gardening any more than I did.  I don't think this is just down to habit, prejudice or fashion.  Leaving aside other parts of the world with very humid climates where forests grow close to the sea, coastal vegetation around the UK and northern Europe tends to be low-growing, due to the blasting effect of salt laden winds.  The reason why plants evolve a climbing habit is to hoist themselves up to the light, whether by mountaineering up other, taller plants, or by scrambling up rock faces.  If you come from coastal conditions where there aren't other tall plants to block the light, and the general name of the game is to hunker down low out of the worst of the salt wind, you don't need to climb.  That's not to say that some climbers from inland areas won't turn out to be salt-tolerant, but there's no reason to expect that many will be.  UK gardens close to the sea that do manage to grow tall plants inevitably make use of extensive shelter-belt plantings, to cut down the effect of wind and salt within the garden, and in the case of the great Cornish gardens are often tucked into valleys that give additional protection.  The wonderful garden made by Derek Jarman at Dungeness, which was an immediate response to the shingle and the sea, with no shelter belt, did not use climbing plants.

So I'm afraid the pleasant couple from Felixstowe, with their series of big arches that they want to cover with flowering climbers, have set themselves a difficult challenge.  If they had been designing the garden with respect to its surroundings and the wider landscape maybe they shouldn't have had big arches.  Or if they want pergolas covered in flowering climbers maybe they shouldn't have chosen to live right by the sea.  But I will try to get down to the sea-front gardens at Clacton at some point this summer, and see what's growing on the pergola there, and how it's doing.