A father's day cake

The Hunk is one of those people who appreciatively wolfs down anything you put infront of him - it's one of the (many) things I love about him. So when I placed the pelargonium flowers on top of this cake and it looked unspeakably girly, I knew it wouldn't matter a bit. Sure enough, when I gave it to him and harrumphed about it being a bit 'princessy' for a boy, he said 'babe....it's CAKE!' - enough said.

Scented leaved-pelargoniums are one of my favourite plants...mostly because they appeal to my nose. You can get them in little plugs in the springtime and in rather larger pots right now, and their scents range from violet to rose to coca-cola (yes, indeed). i like to use rose-scented Pelargonium graveolens, for punch (see The Virgin Gardener) and cakes, but any scented-leaved pelargonium will add something to your baking and this time round I used a deliciously apple-rose scented pele (whose label I have, predictably, lost).

I grow all my pelargoniums in pots of John Innes No. 2 compost. I keep them outside in summer and bring them inside my kitchen window for the winter. Those I don't have space for but don't want to lose, I take cuttings from (incredibly easy....I will show you how very soon).

I got the recipe from the gorgeous book River Cottage Cakes by Pam Corbin. I love this book because it is pink, but ALSO, because it has a recipe for dog-biscuits in it, in which Pam begins by saying 'I do think it's important to keep everyone in the family happy'....Mr Pug would agree wholeheartedly.

This cake is called Scent from heaven cake and calls for lemon verbena (which I've already blogged about here). She uses rice flour in hers...I had none, so just used self-raising flour. It's delicious...mostly because it's one of those cakes that you 'feed' with flavoured syrup (in this case, pelargonium-flavoured), so that it gets saturated with yumminess.

Enjoy your weekend...it's gonna be a scorcher apparently I'm on the tellybox tonight, on ITV at 8pm for THREE WHOLE MINUTES...go me!

Sexy salad

I've got the drabbest, emptiest, saddest side return ever.  I was going to make it over for Love Your Garden but stuff happened, and the idea was scrapped.  I've decided to do it anyway, but not right now....right now I'm going to fill the troughs that I had ready for the transformation, and because I can't afford the plants I really want to put in them I'm going to.....  

Sow some nasturtiums (or, moustarshalumps, as I think Pooh calls them).

This is really the last possible moment for it, and they are the most ridiculously easy thing to grow in the world.  You can use anything to grow them in, (as long as you water the things), but they're best raised up high because like clowns, they adore to tumble. The leaves are as beautiful as the flowers (if not more so) and yes, this is an edible plant, (flowers and leaves), so munch munch munch away. Quite the sexiest thing you can do to a salad methinks.

You need A container Multi-purpose compost with a few handfuls of grit added Nasturtium seeds

Method Fill you container with compost and push in your seeds, 12cm apart and 1.5cm deep.  Cover them with compost and water the whole thing well so it gets thoroughly soaked.  Your seedlings will appear in a couple of weeks.  Let them grow on for a couple more, and then steel yourself and pull out half of them so that each plant has 25cm of space....Brutal but necessary (sorry).

Never ever ever EVER let the compost dry out.

Enjoy your day-glo cascade

Squish black-fly as and when they appear, or hose them off with a jet of water, or spray them with a weak washing up liquid solution....Just don't do nothing, because the critters are sap-suckers and, well, you want your flowers to bloom bodaciously don't you.

Have fun lovely ones.  I will post a picture of mine when they are up and blooming; in the meantime you will have to be content with this...bit silly but, well, I AM a bit silly.

x

This is why I love gardening....

...The unexpected things are always the best

This is the garden of some friends who had some building work done to produce a sunken seat in the space. Before the builder got there, the garden had one small patch of poppies. He turned over rather a lot of earth and it got spread about a bit....

...and this was the delicious result:

A forest of poppies.

Something for the weekend

Perhaps it's the weird weather but everything in the garden centres seems so have gone over so badly that it's beyond useable.  Not good news if you want to do something gorgeous to your window-box or terrace this weekend, unless, that is, you go for something that looks fabulous all the time.

Sempervivums are just perfect for year-round table-top glamour.

Even better, they need practically no care and attention whatsoever.

I have a tableful, planted in various shallow containers (semps are perfect candidates for crevices and crannies - they love to live between roof tiles which is why they're called 'houseleeks')

I've got an urn that's not much good for any ordinary plant because the sides are so ridiculously shallow.  I used to grow ivy in it but I got bored, as you do, so I used it for this project, but honestly, you could use anything, from plastic pot saucers with a hole or two punched in the bottom, to the hollow of an old brick...up to you.

You need:

1 container of your choice - terracotta or something porous is best because these plants need to stay dry.  A hanging basket, suspended at eye height is another nice way to display them (see above)

Small pots of different sempervivums - number depends on the size of your container but make sure you leave plenty of space between them when you plant, because they're going to spread.  If you want to get geeky, (and treat yourself), then there's no better place to go than here.  Always remember that semps are like jewels -  you can never have too many.

Compost - I use a mixture of one quarter John Innes No 2, one quarter peat-free multi-purpose and one half horticultural gravel or grit (see below) This will produce a very free-draining soil for your semps

Small horticultural gravel or grit -available in bags at the garden centre

Broken pieces of polystyrene, or terracotta pot to lay over the drainage holes if you are planting in anything but the shallowest of containers.

Method

Mix your compost, throw a couple of crocks into the bottom of the container and fill it to the top with your mixture.  Now carefully remove the plants from their plastic and plant them firmly in their new home.  Make sure your semps are a couple of millimetres proud of the top of the compost so that their leaves don't touch it too much.  You can even mound the compost up in the middle of the container if you like, to get that vesuvial look.  Leave ample space between your plantings to allow the plants to spread.  Each 'mother' plant (the hen) will produce lots of 'chicks' which are attached to her by stems.  Eventually the mother rosette will die (just remove it carefully when this happens) and the chicks will carry on growing...it's a beautiful thing.

When everything is where you want it, water the pot and then cover the gaps between the plants with gravel (I pour it into the gaps, using a plastic measuring jug) which will soak up any extra water on the base of the rosettes. I like to plant semps on a sunny day because they the rosettes dry out quickly from their initial watering, reducing the risk of rot.

That's it...water just occasionally to keep the compost from completely drying out (although if you do forget, they won't hate you). You can leave them outside all year round - don't water them at all in winter.

A perfect posy

Forgive me...I know I shouldn't but the babety gave this to me yesterday She chose and picked everything herself and my mother held the tiny bottle so that she could arrange the flowers.

It's quite the most perfect posy I've ever received....but then I am a mother, and as a breed, well, we're utterly blind aren't we.

Here's what's in it:

4 daisies from the lawn - ones you might make a chain with. One of them has been bruised slightly (the babety picks FLOWERS, not STEMS) 1 common lawn geranium - I don't know the name of this. It grows in my lawn.  I call it a geranium because it looks like one but is tiny. This particular one has two flowerheads on the stem, one of which has set seed and the other of which is going over, with two petals left opposite each other, and curling slightly. 1 forgetmenot (remarkably unscathed actually) The bottle is one of hundreds I found at the bottom of my garden when I was digging the flowerbeds. A neighbour told me that there used to be a perfume factory on this site, so that would figure.

The May garden

Here's my May garden....I love it - everything has burst and I'm about to indulge in some chopping back to give me a longer summer (and no staking).

The main difference this year is that there are no annuals - I don't have room, and I'm thankful for that, because I've been busy finishing my new book and filming for Love Your Garden which starts very soon....(I shall be hiding behind the sofa...see you there).

The geraniums are amazing...not 'Johnson's Blue', but 'Orion' - they are totally rocking my world, together with the lychnis and my four vast verbascums (one is in total shade and it makes not a jot of difference).  You'll notice that there's a slight problem with the crambe (that cloud of honey scented white)....there are actually supposed to be three, but only one has flowered (I think the chilly winter got the other two, which are very much there but not doing their THING, so to speak.

Here's everything from start to now:

February 2010

March 2010

March 2010

April 2010

May 2010

June 2010

July 2010

August 2010

September 2010

October 2010

January 2011

March 2011

April 2011

May 2011

A promise, kept

Back at the beginning of the year, I planted a pot of little alpines to make me feel better, and I promised to post a photo of it when it had flowered...Here it is.

Here's the before shot....no less pretty methinks....

...and the plant list: Jasione laevis 'Blue Light'

Ajuga reptans 'Braun Herz'

Sedum 'Cappa Blanca'

Erodium 'Bishops Form'

Sedum reflexum

Cyclamen neapolitanum

Has it made me feel better?....well, let's just say it's impossible to be sad when you've got an erodium peeping up at you, so yes, it has.

x

...And then there were ALLIUMS! (April)

A VERY tardy post to show you my Aprilly magical garden, which exploded with tulips (which I didn't photograph) and alliums (which I did).  I did all the planting in two very wet days last autumn, and never expected such heart-stopping pop.  Go me (or rather, my bulb-planter). APRIL

The wallflowers were supposed to be sophisticated, fiery shades of burnt umber, but i got swizzled and ended up with day-glo which looked just juicy, thank you very much (I shall never try to be poncy again)

Here's everything from start to now:

February 2010

March 2010

March

April

May

June

July

August

September

October

January

March

A quick spring posy....

....for my mother as it happens ...and featuring one of my precious fritillaries, amongst other things from the garden...

Cowslips, dicentra, muscari, tulips, nepeta, narcissi and forget-me-nots... Needless to say, she loved it

Hooray for lovely, happy, eggy spring x

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.