Now we are ONE

Here it is...The garden at the beginning of Year Two Along with the tulips, a love-seat has appeared - a present from dear friends who find that it is just too squishy to seat two comfortably...but that doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Last year there was nothing: This year there are tulips and forgetmenots and lilac buds and blossom...and, well...a GARDEN.

I feel rather good about that.

Here's how I got there...December, November and February are missing, I know (stuff happens) but you get the picture: February 2010

March 2010

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

January

March

March Nirvana

When I saw these, my first snakeshead fritillaries growing in the long grass at the side of my 'lawn' (such as it is) I nearly took all my clothes off and ran round the garden screaming.  I'd always grown these in pots (because, obviously they are must-have plants) but they're SUPPOSED to live in the meadow-like atmosphere of your lawn-outskirts and multiply with abandon to provide you with carpets of bliss every spring.  With this in mind I planted some bulbs in September last year, very hurriedly and without much ceremony...just removing a clod of lawn, dumping the bulbs in and replacing the clod...I didn't even water them....I never, ever expected them to come up.  Fritillaries seem to hold some sort of mysterious allure to me - their beautiful nodding, tessellated petals and wiry stems seem to whisper "I'm too beautiful for an ordinary mortal like TOI"

But hey....as with most things in life, I am wrong.

If you want to grow fritillaries order your bulbs well in advance and plant them in autumn for flowers the following spring.  They will have their delicious moment pretty much right now and be over before you know it.  Go next year to somewhere like Magdelen College in Oxford and have a look at them en-masse - it is heart-stopping.  They come in every shade of purple, and white, but you see the chequered pattern better on the purple.  Once they're over the stems grow much taller and they dry out to disperse the seed from those fat capsules, so don't even think of chopping them until the wind has done its dispersal job.

Love love love

First posies of 2011 and I am in LOVE... First, snowdrops, which have been appearing everywhere.  I had quite forgotten how many I planted last year.  I haven't a clue what sort they are.  They are now in my bedroom offering honey-scent with typical generosity.  Thank you snowdrops.  You can buy snowdrops right now, in bloom in little pots, or if you're a stickler for a particular variety, then order them (crossing your fingers that you're not too late) right now.  To me, they are like white peach bellinis - extremely difficult to resist; but anyway - as I'm constantly being told by all my gardener friends - you can never, ever have too many.

Then there are the little irises.  These are called Iris reticulata, and you can get them pretty much everywhere right now in little pots.  If you want squillions of them, it's best to wait until autumn and order a whole load of little bulbs because it's cheaper that way, and you get more choice.  Personally though, if you don't have any of these in your garden, it's worth getting a few for your table, keep them in their pots and then plant them out in the garden when the flowers fade.

And last but not least, the daffs, which are just coming up gorgeously.  These come from bulbs I planted in autumn from a packet I found at the garden centre....I don't recall the name and it really doesn't matter to me.  I'd pluck armfuls of these, but I want them outside, so I'm rationing myself to three at a time.

Better-making things numero trois

I think I could go on forever with the better-makers....but here's the last three for now: Nothing like something fresh and green to lift the spirits.  This is a packet of oriental salad leaves I'm growing inside my kitchen windowsill.  I enjoy looking at it just as much (possibly more) than I love eating it.

Viburnum tinus - people are often a bit rude about this plant, saying it is carparkey...I think they need a visit from Miss Manners.  This is one of my favourite winter cheer-me-up shrubs.  It has honey-scented flowers and I wouldn't be without it.

And last but not least...a little-known cultivar called Book delivered.  There is still a lot to be done, but the bones are there and it feels like something 'created' (which is very better-making).  The book is still untitled (the quote is there because it's how I feel).  I am waiting to be inspired...

Better-making things 2: A six-pack in a pot

Here's the perfect pot for January - a little sea of perfection with the promise of tiny blooms. I love picking up an alpine six-pack from the garden centre.    Making this pot was the first bit of gardening I did after the horror.  It helped, somehow.

Gorgeous, even without flowers...

To make a little pot of alpines you need:

One terracotta pot, shallow and wide - or you could use one of those lovely tufa tubs

Multi-purpose compost mixed with a good few handfuls of horticultural grit to make your alpines feel at home

More horticultural grit, or pea gravel to top-dress your pot

A selection of darling little alpine plants (I get mine in a six-pack from my local garden centre).  This time they were:

Jasione laevis 'Blue Light'

Ajuga reptans 'Braun Herz'

Sedum 'Cappa Blanca'

Erodium 'Bishops Form'

Sedum reflexum

Cyclamen neapolitanum

Method

Simply plant them (being especially careful with sedums as they are so brittle) and cover the surface of the compost with a layer of grit or pea gravel, which will keep things nice and dry up top so the leaves of the plants don't get sodden and rot.  Water the pot well and put it on a table or somewhere you can see and appreciate it and where it will get full sun.  These plants don't care about the cold, but they don't like the wet, so if torrential rain is forecast, I tend to move the pot somewhere out of the impending deluge.  I'll post a photo of this when it flowers.

Better-making things

This is the first of a series of posts - because you can never have too many better-makers.

In first place....

Sarcococca by my bed

Nice isn't it? Someone said the other day that they found the smell of Sarcococca overly sweet...I couldn't agree less.

In joint second place....

Narcissus 'Tete a Tete' standing sentry outside my house, my first snowdrop, Iris danfordiae and cake

The cake is this delight from the beauteous Debora who gave this post its name, and with whom I had lunch the other day, along with Mark. They are, together, the human personification of 'better-making', particularly when you add Boudin noir from here....just saying.

...and last (but only because there has to be a third... Hyacinths, because-in ones-they look rather sweet if you surround them with the detritus of everyday life...(and I have a lot of detritus).

More better-making things soon (I've been hard at it) x

A snowdrop with some sadness

I should begin this entry with an apology…something along the lines of ‘I know this is supposed to be a gardening blog BUT (insert weird thing that happened which has caused me to vere off course) – but I’m not going to, because this is me…and the weird thing that’s happened is a part of my life…and this is my blog, and I’m going to write about it…..

SO:

Early on Sunday morning I had a miscarriage.  I was four months pregnant with my second child and so thrilled and excited that I'd told everyone at twelve weeks.

I’m going to keep it short but let’s just say that miscarriage at sixteen weeks is like something out of a horror movie but you don’t get to walk out of the cinema and forget about it.  My poor husband just had to stand there, unable to help me. Then everything went pear-shaped and I lost too much blood and had to be resuscitated and cleaned out and given a blood transfusion and basically I feel like a pile of excrement and my little baby is gone …BUT….

Here’s the thing…I was finally discharged this afternoon and I came home to my angel daughter – magical and laughing but a bit confused and needing me…and we went out into the garden and there was my first snowdrop (one of three that I had transplanted from a pot when we got here early last year and had forgotten about, and all the sadness just seemed to lift – not evaporate…it’s still there, but it’s just not so very heavy as when I was alone there in that hospital bed.

It’s not what I’ve lost that’s humungous any more…it’s what I already have that’s vast and joyful – my family, my husband, my daughter and my garden.  I’m deeply lucky; I’m acutely aware that I wouldn’t be so quick to see this without the miracle of my comparatively uneventful first pregnancy and resulting bundle of yumminess.  Strange to feel so very sad and yet so very happy all at once, and I think I am finally beginning to grasp how complex and rich life is when you love people, and that the histories we weave are always in flux and ever-changing, and that things aren’t black and white…not ever.

....That life is so very much like a garden.

There…I’m going to press ‘play’ on this quickly, before I start agonising about it…because perhaps one day I’ll regret letting these very private things out into the sky…but perhaps not.  Possibly it’s too soon, and I should wait until I can be less emotional about it…but the writing of it helps me, so perhaps the reading of it will help someone else…I don’t know.

Babies, buds and recent unfurlings

Sometimes it's the little things...nothing more beauteous, I find, than a tightly shut bud, full of promise...

Gardening has been sparse to say the least this winter, partly because I was struck down with monstrous morning sickness (expecting another baby at the beginning of July...yay!), but mostly because the whole family has been ill with one thing and another, and I hadn't managed to get out into the garden with my camera until yesterday.

Ladies and Gentlemen....I found treasure:

The garden looks grandly gorgeous in its winter clothes.  There is something lovely about the promise of it all.  Now that I am finally up and about I have at last managed to get out there cut away all the dead stuff.  I've never understood this idea of 'putting the garden to bed' -mine is certainly not sleeping.

Winter things, with summer reminders

Things never happen like you think they're going to do they...every time I go out into the garden I'm reminded of this.  Things grow without any help or encouragement from me...they grow in the strangest of places - the sort of places that 'the books' say they will never ever grow...things grow strong and tall almost in spite of me, and it's glorious.

I've been trying, even though it's winter and things are growing so slowly, to take some direction from my plants and be more like them; do more like they do.  I've been ill you see...not seriously or anything, just a boring old chest infection that won't go away and leaves me downcast and demoralised.  It's like being constantly trodden on again and again (by something rather heavy).  Plants get trodden on  a lot in my garden - because I am clumsy and forgetful, but they don't get sad about it, they just un-crumple themselves and keep on growing.

I noticed the same thing with my daughter who caught my bug recently - she's a bit baity and wakeful but she's not SAD - she's not walking around under a cloud of  'I'M ILL' - just going from moment to moment feeling whatever she's feeling...popping up again, like a daisy in a lawn.

Things are ever so slightly shambolic round here - I have presents to buy and wrap, mince pies to make and a book to finish.  I can't find my digital camera card - it's under the the messy pile that is my life right now - so I can't show you my Chimonanthus praecox which is subtly, sublimely and 'smellily' in flower right now, or the beautiful flowering ivy which is covering my garden walls and which I've used for my wreath and other lovely decoratey things.

Instead, here's someone small and rather portly sitting on a haystack to remind us that Spring is coming, and then Summer.

Have a happy, healthy Christmas everyone.

...in which we go on a 'mini-break' (!)

It's really most upsetting to have to face up to the fact that I won't be Queen, so to make things feel a bit better (and celebrate marriage to someone far far hunkier than Prince William will ever be) we jumped in the car for a weekend away - no Babeties allowed.

I had carefully planned the whole thing so that we could drop in to Easton Walled Gardens, and then...oh joy...it SNOWED!

Okay, now you can't do much plant-spotting when everything's covered in snow, but you can appreciate stuff like this:

It was the kind of stinging cold that makes your nose hurt, and then feel like it's fallen off....the kind of cold that needs hot chocolate and mince pies in the tea-room...(which, by the way, is warm and has spotty table-cloths and pretty mugs to drink from)...

There is gorgeous ironwork, old gates leading seemingly nowhere, an ancient yew tunnel and absolutely everywhere, there is stuff for children to enjoy.

There are bird-watching hides and secret dens, and there is a bridge that looks like it should have impossibly skinny Kiera Knightly sitting on it in a bathing suit - spine painfully bent....

There is a terraced lawn which needs me to toboggan down it.....

...and there are grand steps that make me want to curtsy

I shall come back and see the sweetpeas in the summer...(and so should you).

It's worth noting, by the way, that this entire restoration project has been undertaken by the deeply charming Ursula (Queen of Easton), slowly, thoughtfully, and on a shoestring...makes me realise anything is possible.

..and talking of inspiring women, we went home via the rather pretty town of Stamford and had a cosy drink with the one and only Miss Pickering and her Hound.  I discovered Miss P through her totally beauteous blog.  She loves dogs and despises gerberas...what's not to adore?  Her shop is a jewel-like treasure-trove and her chat is as fragrant as her flowers.  Enough said.

Smugness alert!!

Back in June I took some leaf cuttings of a particularly beauteous streptocarpus and now, five months later, the first of my 13 babies has started flowering. Yip Yip!

This stuff takes a bit of time and care but even a small plant like this costs around £3.  I'm going to have this gorgeous star-like flower absolutely everywhere.  I have another lot of cuttings ready to be transferred to little pots soon, so no surface will be safe.  Buying enough plants to do that is just something I would feel a bit naughty doing....hence the smugness.

These little babies will stay in their little pots (they do better if slightly confined) and in Spring next year I'll stick one of those streptocarpus food tablets into each one and hopefully they'll really flower like mad.

I'll take a picture of my blue and white streptocarpus living room forrest next year to complete the cycle...until then, I'll shut up about them.

November loveliness

I won't lie, November is so very much richer now that I have a real proper garden.

Pear perfection

Perennials get away with looking rather past their best when they're in a garden; when you're gardening in pots in a tiny area, you tire of the old and gravitate towards the shiny and new much earlier.

Some things just keep bringing it (Geranium 'Orion' and Achillea millefolium) ...And the evergreens begin to have their moment - especially if, like me, you get out and plant some... Here is my yew hedge...newly planted, and about which I am stupidly excited.

An Autumn Table (with dinosaurs)

I get quite excited by autumn (principally because it means Christmas is coming, but also because colours start getting juicy).  Here's a simple autumn table that you can make in ten minutes and will be quite happy for weeks as long a you give it the odd night out(side).

Dinosaurs, birds and gourds are optional of course, but I find them necessary to keep The Babety occupied at mealtimes - anyway, I feel vindicated in my use of plastic animals because the ever-chic Miss Pickering does it too (but better).

You need:

1 long tray - I use a black plastic one that I got with a window-box

1 small pot of very beautiful small ivy

3 pots of cyclamen

1 small bag of sphagnum moss

5 small terracotta pots - make sure they can hold the cyclamen without any plastic pot showing

A small amount of multi-purpose compost

Make sure everything is watered well before starting

Method:

First, put the tray on your table and line up your five pots along it.  Now divide the ivy into two by carefully teasing it apart.  Re-plant each piece in a terracotta pot with some dampened multi-purpose compost.  Plonk them second and fourth in your terracotta army and then simply drop the cyclamen plants into the three empty spaces...(you could bother to plant them up, but I don't because, well, laziness, and the fact that I might wake up one day and want white instead of pink....it happens).

Now tear off bits of sphagnum moss and arrange them around the base of the pots so no tray is showing, and finally, arrange your ivy tendrils artfully around the pots.

That's it...you're done.  Water as and when needed, and in-situ (hence the tray)...just stuff your finger in the compost and see if it's dry or not.  The whole thing would, as I said, benefit from the odd 'night out'...not on the town, but in your garden, or in an un-heated room to keep the cylcamen perky for longer.  But honestly, as long as you dead-head them when the flowers are over, and you don't live in a sauna, they should be just fine.

This bit of loveliness will last brilliantly well into Christmas, when you will, I'm sure, want holly and stuff.

It is a truth universally acknowledged....

...that a new garden, in possession of a number of juvenile shrubs may be in want of some STRUCTURE ...and because I am feeling a tad verbose today I shall add:

There are very few gardens that the addition of a some strategically placed balls of clipped box and the odd bay standard will not VASTLY improve.

To which, I shall shut up and prove it with pictures:

Apple garden, without box balls...and with:

Apple garden from the other end, without box balls...and with:

And the rest of it, without darling little bay lollipops, and with:

I know I know...I should have done this months ago but I was too carried away planting flowers...and actually, I'm glad I waited because it was only when the splendour of the summer was waning that I could really see what was needed (which was less than I had anticipated).

I got the box and the standards from Chris at Gardening Express who is one of those people who really cares about giving brilliant service. He even sent me pictures of the exact plants I was getting and made sure they were delivered at a time that suited me so I didn't have to wait at home all day...I'm all over that.

Next time I will tell you about the longed-for hedge he sent me...could things possibly GET more exciting?

My favourite gardening books (right now)

I don't read book reviews, preferring to use that age-old method of judging a book by its cover.

I do understand though, that not everyone is as shallow as moi, so....

Here's a list of what's on my bedside table right NOW

1. A Taste of the Unexpected by Mark Diacono

This is a seriously inspiring read.  It tells you how to grow what I call 'luxe crops'...stuff that you'd have to pay good money for in special shops, or that you might instinctively think is 'hard to grow' because, well because it's not a potato really.  Baby-bottomed apricots the colour of a cockateal's cheek, quinces to scent your life and sex up your manchego, alpine strawberries (Mr Pug's favourite food)...the list of fruit goes on, and brings to mind scenes people like this.  But I've met Mark, and he's really quite a regular kind of guy - he has a farm in Devon where he grows all this marvellous stuff, and where he and his family feast on fuschia berries on, like, a weeknight while they're watching the telly... which proves the point that all these riches are perfectly growable by us mortals...yes, even szechuan pepper.

There are recipes too, dreamt up by the divinely clever Debora Robertson, and beautiful photography from Mark himself and the obviously very talented Laura Hynde.  Mark's writing is both witty and informative, and that, my friends, means that you can use this book to grow your own egyptian walking onions, or just read it in bed and dream (I do both).

2. Food for Friends and Family by Sarah Raven

Okay, so it's not strictly a gardening book (but I'm not strictly a gardening girl)...all the greatest pleasures in life - beautiful gardens, yummy food, laughing babies, emeralds - are inextricably linked in one way or another.  Sarah Raven manages to get the perfect balance of 'look at my perfect life' and 'hey, you can do this too', and a cynic might say that this is because she's a wily, clever business-woman (which I'm sure she is) but when you read her writing, and look at the sheer volume of her output, you know all that can't come from a person unless she's in possession of some serious, genuwine passion.  This book is full of food I want to cook.  It's set out by season, which is a winning trick for me, as I get anxious when presented with too much choice; being separated into seasons means that I can confine myself to a comfortable quarter of it when I'm looking for something to cook.

The photos need a paragraph to themselves.  It's obvious that the Jonathan Buckley/Sarah Raven combo is a match made in heaven.  She seems to specialise in those juicy, jewel-like colours that he loves to shoot.  This book has quite a few beauteous pictures of Sarah and her family chilling and eating and generally having a fabulous time in various delectable locations.  If it's staged, then they've got me fooled...The photos, the recipes and Sarah's writing make me want to be friends with her (but only if she cooks me the party plum tart on page 204) x

3. Thoughtful Gardening by Robin Lane Fox

I'm reading this right now and am only 90 pages in, but I am devouring it with the same zeal I usually reserve for Heat Magazine.  I have loved Robin Lane Fox's column in the FT for ages...he's one of those writers who dispenses pearls of wisdom amidst witty prose that have you reaching for your notebook and pen or tearing out bits of pink broadsheet and vowing to stick them somewhere.  (I have piles of torn bits of paper everywhere...recipes, gardening advice, illegible notes from the Hunk...all waiting for one massive cutting and sticking session that I absolutely KNOW will never happen).  Anyway, I am besotted with RLF because he is an experienced gardener with lots of know-how who can write really well.

The book is a collection of essays really, set out seasonally but not limited by that; A brilliantly informative note on mahoniais followed by his musings on the great Nancy Lancaster and her last garden at Haseley Court, where he lived and gardened for a while.  I have to give you a quote - because then you'll understand how addictive this book is:

"By the time I knew her, Nancy had lived the grand life and spent money as freely as water from her garden hose.  Nonetheless, she worked outdoors whenever she could, alarming my wife and myself by tugging the hose through the ground floor of the cottage which we rented from her and calling at six in the morning,  'When are you going to have babies or shall I come upstairs and show you how to do it?'"

How utterly FABULOUS.

x

One-pot-wonder: An October offering (not pansies)

So here's the thing -

I love cyclamen and pansies as much as the next person

...and I have buckets of them everywhere...

...but right now I'm in the mood for something that'll go the distance with me...

Here's a lovely pot that will remain lovely all year round. I've been growing hellebores in pots and window-boxes ever since I began gardening and they are completely low-maintenance and trouble-free. I've added some bulbs to this pot for spring zing, but a hellebore and some pretty ivy is enough for me...enjoy.

You need:

1 gorgeous hellebore...they're on sale now and there are a squillion different permutations 3 little ivy plants 5 dwarf daffodil bulbs A pot (mine is 30 cm diameter) Some multi-purpose compost, mixed half and half with John Innes no. 2, because this pot is not a flash-in-the-pan part-time lover...it's a keeper.

Simply fill the pot with compost half full and put a circle of bulbs around the edge. Place your hellebore in the centre and fill in the gaps, squidging your ivy into the sides as you go. Don't worry about the bulbs getting through...they always manage somehow. Water it thoroughly and enjoy x

Autumn wonder

I love Autumn

...and not just because it's my BIRTHDAY (15th October if you must know)

This year I have this lovely bumper crop of knobbly, warty gourds

I'm also loving my blueberry...almost as much as I love it when it actually has blueberries on it...in fact, probably more. The Autumn colour is just yummy, like sweeties:

I'm taking Mark Diacono's book 'A Tast of the Unexpected' to bed with me every night and dreaming of mulberries and szechuan pepper (amongst other things). It's quite the most sumptuous and inspiring thing I've read since Jilly Cooper's Riders which made me want to put on jodhpurs ....well, this makes me want to cavort with carolina allspice...sorry to be bossy but you really should buy it, like, immediately. Mark blogs here with something magical that makes you giggle and cry all at once...I defy you not to go back for more.

If you want a bowl of gourds like mine (or better than mine) for next year, then it couldn't be easier.

Timing: Late Spring/early summer

All you need do is go out an choose a packet of gourd seeds that you love. You need fertile soil and a sunny, sheltered site.

Just sow your seeds 2cm deep and three at a time, under an up-ended jam-jar and choose the best one to grow on. My advice is just to let your gourd gallop.

I love the way they climb over everything, growing their enormous leaves, clothing and covering everything in their path.

Leave the fruits on the plant for as long as possible before the first frosts. I've cut mine off early this year because its so wet and I don't want any rottage. Actually, I think it matters not one jot. Just cut them whenever you fancy, along with a length of stem and bring them indoors to display to your heart's content.

Stuff to do in October

...should you be so inclined....

1. Get some bulbs in the ground....or if you don't have any ground, get some planted in a pot. Right now I am layering up crocus, iris, daffs, tulips and alliums..yes, that's december to June loveliness (if the squirrels don't get them first)

2. Plant some wallflowers - lovely groundcover all winter and knock-out scent in the spring. I've bought some plants from a nursery (it really is okay to do this...you're not cheating). Bung them in the ground (or in a pot, why not?) and enjoy.

3. Lastly, one word....Hippeastrum. I know these bulbs are expensive, but it's so worth investing in a few and putting them in pots, say three per month until January for total indoor drama between winter and spring.

A New View

I did a big old garden clear-up yesterday and ripped out the sweetpeas

They had had their moment

...and served their purpose, which was to act as a temporary hedge until October when I planned to plant a proper one....the idea was to have the bottom of the garden all secret... I was about to put in my order for several yew plants... but now I'm not so sure... ...all of a sudden the view is clear, and I'm loving it

Of course, this could have something to do with the sweetpeas which had gone all crispy and mildew-ey...i still got a bunch of flowers every day, but I wasn't looking after them like I should. Picking my last posy wasn't at all sad...I've had enough (there, I've said it).

So, should I keep going with this hedge idea? It would obscure the main part of the garden from view initially...but the surprise element would be gorgeous. What think you?