Basil smugness

The Hunk decided we had to christen his new barbecue tonight.  Please note that I had no part in the barbecue buying bonanza...it just arrived at the door one day, in a huge hulking box, to add to the plethora of hulking boxes (still un-packed) we already have in our sitting room.  Furious, I called him to squalk something about our daughter's inheritance à la Theo Paphitis on Dragon's Den but privately I was thrilled, because I love, adore and salivate over barbecue'd food, and because I loathe and detest smelly, smokey kitchens and spitting fat.

I happened to have italian sausages in the fridge...(a good thing, no matter how you look at it) and I actively encouraged him, saying that we could barbecue, as long as we had champagne to barbecue TO (so to speak).  He came home from work empty handed, saying he had to go off and get 'gas'...bastard...I thought barbecu-ing was done with coal and so-forth...this is cheating.  Anyway, I waited and waited (and ate chocolate egg left over from Easter and a primula salad that I had made for the shoot I did today for Virgin Gardener book Two)...and finally he returned with an (ugly) gas canister and champagne (phew).

BUT, during the long wait for my chef to return with his barbecue paraphernalia, I had time (snore) to think of something to make our supper more rounded and less saussagey.  The only veg I had in the fridge was tomatoes (yum), to which I added some of my HOME GROWN BASIL....yes folks, YAY, my seed-raised, home-grown basil has been a success and is now ready for picking....so it is with UTTER, despicable smugness, that I offer this tomato and basil picture:

Nosy corner: Bergenias on a busy road

I've been thinking about bergenias (above) a lot lately because certain people have been debating them on twitter (Helen Johnstone and Anne Wareham in particular).  They've never been a must-have plant for me, but then today I was walking home from the tube with the pram (not something I attempt every day, a trip on the underground with a pram) - and I saw this lovely front garden, which makes, well, AMPLE use of bergenias (there's loads of them just by the front door too) and is really rather gorgeous I think.  I love the generosity of the leaves - it creates a feeling of largesse in this small space...particularly with all the itty bitty stuff behind.  The fact that this house is on a really busy road hasn't stopped the owner lavishing love on this plot; there's a huge variety of different plants here, and this person obviously loves their garden, and for that reason alone, I love it too.  Here are a couple more photos:

The prettiest bit of my patch...

I write after two solid days of preparing my soil...

For What?...(i hear you cry)

Well:  here's the thing - I've kind of haemorrhaged money on this garden already and whilst I shall probably haemorrhage a bit more, I'm feeling a bit pinched right now. ...To WHICH, I'm about to do a mass sowing of hardy annuals - the cheap way to be spectacular without breaking the bank.

If you're a virgin, then by annuals I mean stuff like nigella, poppies, marigolds, dill, larkspur...that sort of thing (haven't totally decided yet).

I'm in love with hardy annuals...they were my first plant love before I discovered perennials.  Annuals grow, set seed and die, all within one year...flash-in-the-pan you might say...rather like a very handsome, charming man who loves you and then leaves you.  Perennials are the equivilent of someone who properly loves you and stays with you year in, year out, forever...much better...much, much much better..of course.

I've been growing this sort of stuff from seed for a while now, but never, ever on this scale.  Small-scale annual sowing gives one the peculiar advantage of being able to BUY the proverbial 'fine tilthe' rather than having to CREATE it...easy peasy pudding and pie....

...but that was then - this is now, and I have to get on with it.  The weed seeds are appearing, and that's a good sign - it means that the conditions are perfect, and the time has come to sow some seeds.  (You can also sit on the earth with your pants down, and declare it 'pleasant' but noticing the emergence of weed seeds is less potentially problematic).

In order to sow my James Bond/Jason Bourne plants I need the above-mentioned fine tilthe.  This means that I've got to clear my beds of any stones bigger than, say, an almond, and of any weeds emerging or otherwise.  This is where I could have saved myself a lot of work if I had only done it properly when I first started blah blah blah YAWN...nobody does that do they? - We all get excited about planting and skip stone-chucking episode so we can get the plants in and sit back to admire our hard work.

Today and yesterday I removed weeds and stones like a person who simply exists to remove weeds and stones.  I decided not to look beyond the patch I was working on, so as not to be discouraged by the amount I had to do...and in two days (and with the help, it must be said, of a wonderful childminder), I have finished the lawn beds.

Now I have four buckets full of stones and rather a lot of weeds for the compost - most of it's grass from left-over bits of turf when I was cutting the beds.

I have an aching back and a very sore bottom and legs because nasty stinging ants kept biting me as I laboured.  Also my nails are hideous and I have that thing of soil having EMBEDDED itself in my skin...no amount of scrubbing will get it out - I shall have to wait until new cells grow.

I still have the bee border to do but having accomplished the lawn beds, this doesn't worry me in the least because I am quite frankly a superwoman.

...but nothing I do will ever come close to the prettiest part of my garden right now (see top of page)...Forgetmenots with brambles and something else unidentified...gentle, gorgeous, unassuming loveliness that's perfect because it's supposed to be there...and all without a scrap of back-breaking work from me....makes me smile.

The Apple Garden

My Apple Garden (or as I like to call it, my 'APPLEYDAPPLEY garden') has had  a bit of a bad deal so far.  I've only just begun to tackle this part of my space - it's the bit closest to the house and I call it the Apple Garden simply and only because it has two apple trees in it.

I'm a very naughty girl...a naughty and ungrateful one.  This bit of my garden is a good size; in fact, it's the exact same size as my neighbour Deborah's garden, and rather larger than that of my Dove-owning neighbours on the other side....but I've left it till last, concentrating all my efforts on the big space down at the bottom; I should call it the Cinderella garden really.

There were existing flower beds here, with a mixture of foxgloves, bindweed and more foxgloves, punctuated by the odd (dead) hydrangea and a couple of standard roses which someone had clearly tried to plant at some point.  After watching the digitalis and the bindweed come to life and threaten to take over I took drastic action and dug the whole lot up at the beginning of this week with the help of a couple of fantastic men (sorry for not doing it myself this time dear reader, but I have quite simply run out of PUFF).  It was a mammoth job (bindweed is a b***ch to remove) and it's not over yet because the stuff will keep appearing, and I have to stay on top of it.  Here are the before and after photos:

....phew!

All that's left is a couple of blue-bells and some sweet-cicely (which has fabulous sweetening properties...more on that another time).

The roses are gone, except for the climbing one which was practically strangling one of the apple trees when we arrived, so I got the Hunk to cut it down to about a foot above the ground (you can see the stump sticking out of the ground on the right) -   Sure enough, it's sprouting again, ready to climb once more.

Now for the fun part - the planting.  A heady combination of having hundreds of pots of plants and practically no money means that I'm filling this area with all my balcony and back-yard spoils.  I put all the pots out and watered them ready for planting, and there were still vast gaps.  I needed ground-cover, and fast so I went to the garden centre and bought  a few pots of pulmonaria (the blue one), another daphne (far, far too expensive) and a couple of choisya.  By virtue of the fact that most of my plants from my old place were white (yawn), most of the apple borders will be green and white, with a smattering of blue...all frightfully tasteful.

I started planting yesterday, but got waylaid by all sorts of things (well, babies need feeding and watering, and playing with etc, and then there's the fact that they get up rather annoyingly early, which means I can't even get up at 5am for a couple of hours in the garden...But you know...the up-side is you get inspired...and you do more than you would if they weren't around....honestly.  We also spent the whole of today with cousins in the glorious sunshine - twelve little ones squealing under the sprinkler reminds me what a garden is really all about, and that I should never forget that I'm creating a space for running around in and having fun.

So I think I'll finish the Apple beds tomorrow, when I've decided where to put the water slide that has suddenly become compulsary.

Mr Pug and cobaea

I've been asked for a puggy picture...so here you go.  Yesterday was so warm and delicious that I put my little baby cup and saucer vines (Cobaea scandens) out for the first time.  They were doing some 'hardening off' but Mr Pug was simply sunbathing....as he gets older, his teeth and tongue start sticking out a bit...I guess that'll happen to us all at some point.

Nosy corner - basket cases

An early morning walk yesterday..and three hanging baskets.

Look familiar? - I've had quite a few that looked like this over the years.

The thing about hanging baskets, and the reason they so often end up like these ones, is that they're really hard to water.  Even if you water them every other day say (and that's pushing it for busy people), you still have to take them down off their hook and put the whole thing in some sort of container and leave it there, full of water, so that the compost can soak it up and become fully moist.  Watering a hanging basket when it's still on its hook, especially when the compost is dry, is pretty much a waste of time, because it all just pours out of the bottom.

There is an answer:....WATER RETAINING GEL OR GRANULES.

If you put a handful of this stuff in when you're planting up, you'll have a much easier time of it in the long run.  The water retaining granules capture the water and swell up, releasing it slowly as the compost gets dry....much better.

"When in doubt, plant a geranium" (Margery Fish)

I am in doubt...lots of it - I want a lovely blooming garden by June and I don't want to toil too much to get it.  I've planted up all my shrubs and stuff and if I were a patient soul, I would just sit back now, hoe in hand to nuke the odd weed, and wait for everything to fill out and cover the bare soil....but typically, I want this to happen in a trice.  The answer is a hardy geranium or fifty.

I love, adore and revere hardy geraniums, particularly when they're planted by the boat-load (or 'en masse' as the gardening world likes to describe it).  I ordered as many as I could afford from this place a couple of weeks ago, (brilliantly knowledgeable they were too, and very helpful in choosing the varieties) and they arrived looking deliciously gorgeous but painfully small.

There are three varieties:

'Dragon Heart' for the Bee border (deep pink with a black centre)

'Orion' for the lawn borders (blue as blue is blue)

'Buxton's variety' for the Apple borders (paler, softer blue and used to an altogether shadier time)

I planted them today - each one tucked in nicely and watered with love, and I'm hoping these will wash my garden with colour, and that this will last well into autumn....let's wait and see if anything comes of my geranium dreams...

Summer Flavour...in spring.

Today is the day I launch my blog.  I've properly got butterflies...please be nice.

We had an utterly delectable day yesterday here in London - the kind of day that makes you want to take a fair amount of clothes off and feel fresh air on your skin.  The garden is slowly but surely taking shape.  I started off in the middle of February, with a larger-than-average space, pretty much all of it lawn.

After many days of ruminating and cogitating and many more days of digging and weeding it looked like this:

...and then after many more days of planting and planting and more planting it finally looked like the beginnings of a garden:

This garden is about creating a space for my family - a space to play and eat and sit and love.

This blog will chart the development of the garden right from the beginning (complete with all my mistakes...I LOVE mistakes).

All this will go into my second book, which will show you how to create a garden from scratch, and have it up and blooming come summertime, without haemorrhaging money or having a hideous time with builders.

I'd love and adore it if you'd come with me, and leave your comments and criticisms.

Elsewhere I'll be showing you fun, easy, chic stuff to do with plants even if you don't have a garden (this is my first one, and my pot-gardening habit isn't going anywhere) - I'm still a windowsill girl at heart.

So yesterday I had the sunshine on my skin, and  the urge, suddenly and without warning, to eat slices of beef tomato with basil en masse (so to speak)...If you've read my book, you'll know that I've had a nightmare with growing basil from seed, so I tend to get a basil plant from the supermarket and divide it into little bits...this way it lasts much longer than it normally would, and you can start munching in a few days rather than a few weeks.  I did this yesterday, using the remnants from my division to feed my desire for summer flavours and planting up the rest into three little pots.  I must say though, that I have managed to germinate some basil just before I moved, (fluke of flukes).  This makes my heart sing and I want to run out into the street and hug total strangers...It was easy peasy to do and I'm going sow some more tomorrow to make sure it wasn't a complete fluke...

Ladies in waiting....

It's April...and that means Epimedium.  Little bobbing butterflies above heart-shaped leaves...what's not to adore?  It's hear-stoppingly gorgeous and deserves to be in a delicious bed under the dappled shade of an apple tree.  Sadly, it's not there yet and has joined the ever-increasing ranks of my 'Ladies in waiting'.  The culprit is, of course, bindweed.  Here it is:

If things work out like they are in my head, then I will have tackled this by the middle of next week and then I'll be able to plant all my ladies in waiting.  Apart from the epimediums, there are these lovelies:

...and so much more...waiting waiting (I feel like I'm in a Chekov play) - which brings me to the vast CRIME I discovered that I had committed today.  I found several raspberry canes that i had ordered back in FEBRUARY, utterly forgotten about and still wrapped tightly in plastic.  They had fallen victim to 'the move'.  The poor things had tried to put on some growth, which was flaccid and completely anaemic.  I almost threw them out, but there was a half hour of daylight left, The Hunk was babysitting and I dug a quick trench, added a bit of manure and planted them anyway (without even soaking the dry roots).  Honestly, I don't hold out much hope for the poor little blighters in terms of fruit....but I'm sure they'll survive okay, and perhaps next year I'll have raspberries.

This was one of those days when the garden seemed to change dramatically as a result of my efforts; mostly due, I think, to the addition of lots of vertical elements which give the impression, not only of growth, but of seclusion.  I've put hazel tripods in the lawn borders, and peasticks in my skinny trenches, creating an instant 'hedge' through which I shall grow sweetpeas or runner beans...who knows:

A Picnic...at last

My crambe cordifolia arrived yesterday, along with a fig tree and various other lovelies.  No time as yet to plant any of them - the pots are standing on my still-too-bare flowerbeds waiting for my attention.  Yesterday and today has been all about hoeing the borders- (I say 'all about' as if it took me hours, but actually it was a matter of a few minutes)- and sorting out which plants are going in the apple garden (that bit closest to the house that has two apple trees in it).  I have it in my head that I'll tackle these early next week (yeah yeah) but it's always good to set wild intentions I find.  These beds are choc full of digitalis and bindweed, along with three roses that have seen better days.  I have pots and pots of viola odorata, epimidiums, ferns and other lovelies all ready to be set free in here...fingers crossed I get my act together.

On an altogether more important note, we had our first ever PICNIC today.  The Hunk made sandwiches with a set-fire-to-your-nose amount of mustard, and Mr Pug ate bits of bread and cheese out of babety's fat hands (they have a symbiotic relationship - he helped incubate her by lying on top of me for nine months; she knows this and duly rewards him with extra food).  Glorious day...over all too soon.

So much else to say - cherry blossom out and proud, pear about to burst forth...oh, and I planted a row of shallots (can't remember when) and they're UP.

OMG WOW!

YAY! -my new potatoes have come up!!!

New potatoes are ridiculously easy to grow so I don't know why I'm so surprised...but actually I'm always a-gog when something I plant actually emerges from the earth.  This is deeply thrilling....  I'm going to wait now, until the stems reach about 15cm high, then cover the whole lot up again with some more compost.  I planted these in a pot on Friday 19th March, so that's just over two weeks.  I still have lots more chitting that I'm going to put in the ground when I stop being lazy.

On the subject of potatoes - I've been falling so in love with the chitting shoots on my egg-boxed lovelies.  They look like scruptious tiny hairy pineapples:

An Easter Table

Here we are already at Easter weekend and I haven't even unpacked most of my belongings.  Everything is everywhere (and shall probably remain so for the forseeable future). But I have unpacked some stuff, including my array of containers and vases.

The Hunk and I suddenly felt lonely and orphan-like when we realised we hadn't planned anything for Easter. A mad rush of telephoning later, we managed to round up some similarly orphaned friends for lunch, and had spring chicken and chocolate eggs at the ready. For the table, I plonked these exquisite fritillaria in a faux-mossy container, covered the gaps with sphagnum and that was that. Everyone adored this chequered beauty, which was all the more delectable for its being up-close and personal (something you rarely get when they're in the ground...unless you're the sort to get down on your hands and knees).

So, for an easy, Easter lunch table, you need:

1 pot Fritillaria meleagris - in bud or flower..it matters not.

A suitable container, that will fit the plastic pot

Sphagnum moss

Method:

Put the plant inside the container and cover the gaps with the moss. You can plant the fritillaria outside in the garden when it's over - they love open meadows, so will do well in any moist, well drained soil, and will come back up and see you year after year.

An April Offering: One-Pot-Wonder

Opw April Some calming, pared-down chic before the party that is summertime beginneth… I love it. Here’s what’s in it:

  • 1 Dicentra spectabilis ‘alba’ (Dutchman’s breetches or Lady in the Bath)
  • 1 Leucojum aestivum (Summer snowflake)
  • 3 Primula vulgaris (Wild primrose)
  • 2 Anemone blanda (Grecian windflower)
  • I used peat-free multi-purpose compost and the pot is 30cm diameter.

It's a Jungle in there....

Tarzan's house HAPPY EASTER!

It's a jungle in there....

It's still raining (yawn) but our house is still so full of boxes from the move, that we get cabin fever and have to get out.  The babety wakes between 5am and 6.30am, and this morning the three of us were trudging the streets looking for somewhere to have breakfast in our new neighbourhood at a seriously ungodly hour.

We had to wait for the place to open (yes, we were up THAT early) and found these gems as we walked around the block to kill some time.

Tarzan's house (above) was nothing compared to his mum's:

....Extraordinary...I do hope they have those nice rope-things hanging from their light-fittings so they can swing from one corner of the room to the other, yelling arrrrrgggh!

On a different (exterior) note, there was this:

VERY jolly!...like it a lot....and this:

Ummmmm....not so much.

Lastly..oh JOY...this:

What a brilliant walk!

Oh I nearly forgot...one more thing - this is priceless (sorry, not horticultural at all)

April.....

....whenever I hear that word my mind always adds '...is the cruellest month' (throwback from my schooldays, so forgive me) - and I suppose April is rather cruel in a sense, as - gardening wise- we are hit with unexpected frosts and seemingly un-ending rain, just when we think things ought to be feeling just a teensy weensy bit ...well....BALMY?

Anyway, TS Elliot was rather a grumpy old kermudgeon wasn't he? - I thought about him again today as I walked in the park with the babety and Mr Pug and we feasted our eyes on this delicious scene:

Somehow I think he wouldn't have thought the candy-floss shade of pink and the blowsy magnificence of the blossom quite 'the thing'.  I adore it...wish I had room for one in my garden...wish I knew the cultivar because I will definitely have an avenue of them like this in my next garden....

But back to my own back garden - It's been a pretty soggy round here lately (by which I mean it hasn't stopped raining even for a polite amount of time).  It's good in some ways, because the garden has been planted (of shrubs at least) and the torrential down-pours mean I don't have to be out there watering every day...but the SQUELCHINESS is sort of getting to me and I'm dying for some drier weather just so I can go out without wellies on.

Leek and Potato Soup, and some Sweet Violets

Okay, it’s time to ‘fess up – I’ve just moved into my new garden, and I’m harvesting precisely nothing at the moment except bundles of herbs. In the spirit of optimism, I’ve made leek and potato soup , because i MEAN to harvest lots of lovely fat leeks NEXT year. The recipe is so simple it’s embarassing:

A couple of fat leeks a good 2 tablespoons of butter 3 large potatoes about 1.5litres chicken stock (or water if you don’t have it) a dash of dry vermouth a good handful of parsley salt and pepper

Method:

Chop up the leeks and sweat them in the butter for a good ten minutes in a heavy pan until they are soft.

Add the potatoes and cook them in the butter for 5 minutes.

Add the stock or water, the vermouth, salt and pepper bring the whole thing to the boil and allow to simmer for a good 40 minutes or so until the potatoes are really soft.

Allow to cool, add the parsley and then blitz the whole lot in a food processor until you get your desired consistency (sometimes I want velvet, sometimes I want lumpy).

Put the soup back in a saucepan and season to taste (this will need quite a bit of salt).

Eat piping hot with really gorgeous bread and lashings of butter.

Crystalised violets

One thing I am getting in great abundance is sweet violets…I’m crazy for these, and spend probably far too much time kneeling on the wet ground with my nose buried in them. They have the most fabulous scent on their own, but if you smell them on the plant, you get the earthiness of the leaves and soil too, which I love. I shouldn’t have enough time to paint violet petals with egg-white…I don’t know what it says about me…but I do manage to fit it in somehow. Put them, ceremoniously a-top a bought cupcake (or one you made yourself of course)…or treat them as glorious sweeties (they keep for ages in the fridge).

Method

Make sure the flowers are free of aphids, and dip them either whole, or as single petals, into whisked egg-white. Put them carefully on a sheet of greaseproof paper (use tweezers), and shower your little beauties with granulated sugar (caster sugar with dissolve in the egg and you’ll get clumpy petals).

Leave them to dry somewhere out of the way and eat them with other girls (in my experience, boys don’t seem to get how beautiful and special they are, so I don’t offer these to the Hunk – however, you may have altogether better males in your household).