The Write Stuff

Alchemilla mollis - does 'herb garden' and 'ground cover'.

Well, wouldn't you just know it; home again from a few days on the narrowboat and damn me if it isn't another cold, wet day!  The sort of day when merely getting out from under the duvet is a challenge, let alone venturing out to see what the slugs and snails have been up to in our absence.  So I haven't, yet.  Gone out to see what the slugs have been doing, that is - I have managed to crawl out from under the duvet and rashly committed myself to a morning of proper commecial gardening tomorrow.

Yes folks - proper commecial gardening!  A project for someone who isn't a friend and former work colleague, but is a lady in need of a herb garden and some ground cover for a rather dry front garden.  Precisely the type of work I need and enjoy!  She also lives in a very salubrious neighbourhood so if I can make a good impression I may find more customers in the vicinity.  Fingers crossed...!

I was beginning to wonder if it wasn't time to consider alternatives to the life horticultural.  A great friend and keen reader of this blog, impressed by my writing, recently remarked that I should 'write a book'. 

A cunning plan, though whether my literary talents would stretch to anything commercially viable in the current post '50 Shades...' climate is, to say the least, questionable!  I can't help thinking that if I attempted the proverbial 'bonkbuster', complete with sighing, swooning, profoundly annoying unassertive heroine and mean, moody, anatomically implausible hero, the result would be rather too tongue-in-cheek, and nowhere much else.  Things might get very dirty, but only in the way you do handling fresh compost or silty soil.  And the title?  See if you can guess it before we get to the end of this post.

There is already a dangerous precedent in that no lesser horticulturalist that Alan Titchmarsh once won a 'Bad Sex Award'.   Apparently his novels aren't that good either... 

(And there goes my chance of ever working for B&Q!)

When it comes to horticulturally-themed parodies, I would have to work very hard indeed to trump this rather excellent effort from the Guardian's Simon Hoggart that had me crying into my cornflakes a few weeks ago.  "He stood above her, holding a rope, thin, silky, sinuous, as if it were possessed by a life of its own. 'You know what I'm going to do with this?' he said slowly with a beguiling smile on his fleshy lips. 'Yes, I'm going to tie up the sweet peas before it starts raining.' "

It is tempting to wonder if it isn't just the grey skies that are to blame for the apparent lack of interest in gardening this year.  Once upon a time, they used to say that 'gardening is the new sex'.  Now it seems sex is the new gardening; respectable suburban folk who would normally be pondering whether to go for begonias or bizzie lizzies in their bedding schemes are sitting indoors clutching their 'Kindles' and pondering an entirely different concept of bedding!

And if I am reduced to writing 'mommy porn' for a living, the Potteries-based horticultural bonkbuster would have to be called...

Fifty Spades of Clay!

Ouch!

Tatton Park - Flowers and Photos

Just a few words this time and the link to Flickr where the best of my photos from Saturday can be found, which is:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30634865@N03/sets/72157630716883358/

One of the things that always intrigues me with flower shows is the way certain colour schemes or plants seem to be everywhere - this year there were a lot of gold-red themed planting schemes and Achillia appears to be the perennial of the moment.  I suspect both owed their prominence to what proved to be the misconceived idea that the gardens for this year should be planned to cope with drought conditions!

Catching up with my Reaseheath College colleagues and tutors, apparently it was a thoroughly soggy few weeks for the 'build' but everyone felt suitably proud of themselves at the end.  'Nature Squared', their fabulous show garden demonstrating that you can do eco-friendly and stylish in the same plot, missed out on the coveted RHS Gold Medal by a whisker, but all credit to them for their Silver Gilt.

It was a shame to see fewer 'back-to-backs' this year, the small show gardens that are often a good way for new designers to establish themselves, but perhaps that's a sign of the times?

RHS Tatton Park 2012 - Squaring the Circle

Self portrait?  Look carefully in the mirror...

Finally, a bright, dry day and the ideal one to visit the RHS Tatton Park Flower Show and see how my colleagues from Reaseheath's 'Nature Squared' garden looked in reality.  It was fabulous, but it's going to be the subject of another post, another day.

This may prove to be a turning point in the year as the day the weather changed for the better and summer began, but for me it feels like a turning point in another sense altogether.

Ever since I took voluntary redundancy from Stoke-on-Trent CAB, I've felt an awkward disconnect between the part of me that's still a welfare rights adviser at heart, and the part that wants to sow, grow and garden for a living.  The activist and the horticulturalist elements have seemed to be at odds with each other; the green-fingered side of my personality clashing with the red flag waving side, and vice versa.

Today, however, peace broke out thanks to some extraordinary show gardens.  These proved, without doubt, that you can dig for a cause with beautiful and inspirational results.

From a bleak place...

The first of these was 'Metamorphosis' by the Women of HMP & YOI Styal examining the 'Journey of a Prisoner' and the role that a horticultural project growing flowers and food crops plays in the support and rehabilitation of some of the inmates. 

...to somewhere beautiful.

Young designer Katherine Wells also addressed the practical role garden design can play in bringing inner calm and reflection, and thus rehabilitation, to offenders.

Ring the Changes

Another beautiful concept was 'Ring the Changes' with its raised, wheelchair-accessible planting areas and potting benches produced as a collaboration between Bridge College, a specialist college for disabled students and Manchester College.

A World Without Torture

Quaker Concern for the Abolition of Torture produced a garden that was both disturbing and uplifting, with its security fencing and barbed wire failing to contain a female figure releasing a dove to freedom and a better world.

Before...

Groundwork and designer Chris Beardshaw showcased their work on inner city regeneration in 'Urban Oasis' with a clever 'before and after' design transforming a bleak patch of littered scrub into a community garden.

And after

There were fewer 'back-to-backs' this year, but two really moved me almost to tears.  'Growing together' celebrated the Family Refugee Support Project in Liverpool and their innovative work with families seeking asylum creating a garden in Toxteth.

'Sister Suffragette' remembered that it is just 100 years since Parliament voted to allow votes for women, noting that it would be a further sixteen before women had the same voting rights as men.

The Journey towards Equality

So after today, gardening no longer feels like a sell-out - it's clearly possible to mix plants and politics.  The question now, of course, is how? 

Knotty Problems - Tall Tales from Ford Green Hall



Knot garden and dovecote at Ford Green Hall

I have been known to grumble about the size of my feet and, when I was younger and hadn't the funds to buy specialist clothes for tall women, have been known to wish my inside leg measurement slightly less, but I have never, ever minded being quite tall (5' 11" in 'old money').  From a gardening perspective, and many others besides, it is generally a blessing.  Where another would require a step-ladder, I can often reach to trim a hedge or prune a tree just with a brief lift onto tip-toe. 

Due care is necessary when selecting digging tools to suit the taller frame, especially the taller female frame which is generally longer from the waist down than that of a man of similar height - hence my wish that designers of train and plane seating should actively recruit tall gals to try out their designs as it is us who will most obviously notice inadequate leg-room.  I guard my long-handled fork and spade with my life when working away from my own garden.  

Before...

Sadly, being tall proves to be a pain in the, er, lower back when the task in hand is pruning the box hedges of a 17th century-style knot garden.  I have therefore tackled this in four stages, doing a quarter on each of four successive visits and stopping from time-to-time to do standing-up-properly jobs.  

...and after!

There were weeds and the inevitable ash saplings dotted in amongst the box and around the rose bushes and I have managed to get most of those either out or cut to the ground, though the centre bed and two furthest from the house still need a final tidy and topping up with compost.  We're also short of one rose bush, so I may see if I can make an appeal to one of the local garden centres for a charitable donation.

Current view from the top of the rampart around the site 

But when I stood up straight on Sunday afternoon, having finish trimming the knot, I was very pleased with the end result - then I noticed that there are two more small box-enclosed knots at the front of the house to do too!

Financial advice - buy shares in Radox, now!

Work in Progress - Return to Kev's Garden

Has my persistent ranting about the weather and threatening to abandon horticulture encouraged the gods to relent a little?  To show just a tiny morsel of mercy to this poor gardener in her hour of despair?

Perhaps not today; the rain pours down on the roof of the lean-to greenhouse as I sit at the computer trying to concentrate on three projects at once and finally settling to this one, but at least at the weekend the sun shone and real work happened on two of 'my' gardens.

The first job was a return to my first ever garden for someone else, namely my friend Kevin. 

Kev's garden looked like this when I first went to tackle it last autumn.  You can't fault it for eco-friendliness, but it's not going to pick up an RHS Gold Medal any time soon (unless we can fool them into thinking there's a 'concept' in there somewhere, perhaps?)

By the time I had finished with it, it looked like this:

I think you'll agree that was much tidier and it had the added advantage of making it easier to find where Kev's deadly cats had dropped the rats they catch and kill, and of course to spot anything else they deposit.

And now, with the perennials having grown up and filled out and the digitalis just past their best, it's looking like this:

You can't hear the bees buzzing from the picture, but I assure you, they most certainly are!

I'll need to do a bramble-busting session next time I'm there and root out a few dandelions, but the overall effect is the wild-life friendly, largely self-caring plot I had hoped to achieve.

I'm also sorting out some pots for the front and back paved areas.

At the front, which is dry and sunny (please note that this is in the North Staffordshire sense of 'dry and sunny', meaning 'has occasional days when rain does not fall for the entirity of a 24 hour period and there may be glimpses of blue sky between clouds), it's herbs and sempervivums. 

The safety boots aren't a decorative feature, by the way; they're to stop me slicing my toes off with strimmer cord though arguably were this to occur, it would make the purchase of conventional footwear more straight-forward.  I can't remember if I've treated readers of this blog to my various tales of shoe-shopping woe, but if on review I haven't, I'll be sure to revisit the subject in due course.

At the back, which is currently not looking particularly photogenic, it's to be ferns and ivies to cope with the shade and damp and, much though it's bad form to speak ill of a loyal customer, inevitable neglect.

I also made some further progress at Ford Green Hall on Sunday afternoon, but I'll do a separate post about that in a day or two.

A Thought-Provoking Reunion

Placard from last year's March for the Alternative

On Wednesday this week I kept a long-overdue promise to call in at my former workplace, Stoke-on-Trent Citizens' Advice Bureau, to give the back garden there a good weeding and trimming.  In practise not a great deal needed to be done except the removal of some pretty formidable brambles, and even some of these were best left untouched as a dunnock was nesting in one clump of ivy nearby.
I'm pleased with the way the ivy plants have clad the rather dull wall at the back and the astilbes were looking good too.  A lot of the shrubs could do with a serious prune during the autumn and I'll probably make a date to go back with the shredder then and turn the scraps into some much needed humus for the clayey soil.

Small sanctuary - the CAB garden

So that was all well and good, except that being back with my old comrades gave my conscience a damned good kicking.

Before I opted to take voluntary redundancy almost 15 months ago, I worked there as a welfare benefits specialist.  My job was to interview clients with benefit entitlement problems, assist them to make appeals against suspect decisions, gather evidence in support of those appeals and often to accompany them to their tribunal as their representative.  It was a type of work that I had been doing, on and off in between a variety of housing-related jobs, since I was a volunteer adviser with the Students Union at Sheffield University almost thirty years ago. 

I always knew I would miss it to some extent, but I also knew that I was in danger of getting 'burnt out'.  Not by the clients themselves, or even the sometimes horrible and distressing circumstances they were trying to cope with, but by the ever increasing workload and targets which became ever more meaningless as far as quality of work was concerned, and yet all-important in terms of funding.  A break, possibly a complete change, was the order of the day and so I jumped ship, signed up for my horticultural studies at Reaseheath and embarked on a new way of life.

And then the present government started playing the 'welfare reform' game.  Making Employment and Support Allowance almost unclaimable if you actually have a pulse.  Using the old cry of 'the system needs simplifying' to tear away rights and income from poor people with complicated lives.  Threatening to leave some of the most disabled people without the funds they need for care and transport with a punative rejigging of Disability Living Allowance.  Slicing the Housing Benefit budget to make both councils and their tenants poorer.  All this, and the threat of much worse to come.

It isn't easy watching from the sidelines.  Bizarrely, of course, I am actually freer to comment publically on it than I was while working for the CAB, as if I have a bloody good rant, either to the local paper or to my MP (both of which happen from time to time) it's no longer a potential problem or embarrassment to my employer.  So in that way, hopefully, I can do more to expose the lies and propaganda that makes this evil agenda 'popular' with the general public.

But it isn't the same as actually being involved, talking to the real people at risk from all this.  Right now, as I ponder whether to sign up for another year at 'Hogwarts' and if so, whether to pick RHS Level 2 Practical or Level 3, it does feel just it a little bit like deciding which corner of my tent I'm going to sulk in.

On the other hand, as I observed a few weeks ago on Facebook, one advantage of working in horticulture is that, when the peasants do finally revolt, you're never too far from a pitchfork if you want to join in!

Return to Ford Green Hall

Here are a few photos showing the first stages of progress in the garden at Ford Green Hall.

Herb garden at the start of the restortaion project

Most of the beds had been taken over by the most vigorous species, smothering the less thuggish plants.

Looking tidier after a couple of hours

It didn't take too long to tidy them up and thin out the mint, lemon balm and soapwort.  The fragrant herbs were taken into the house for drying, as they would have been when it was first built.

Knotty problem!

In addition to the herb garden, there are also flower beds and borders and a knot garden full of lovely roses.  Unfortunately, there is also a potential forest of ash trees!

Clipped

The first quarter of the garden has now been clipped and cleared of weeds and topped up with fresh compost.  Doing this much at a time is enough - it's a recipe for a bad back to try and tackle it all at once.

The weather forecast is, unusually, dry tomorrow so hopefully I can continue with this very enjoyable project.

Restoration, Restoration, Restoration

Ford Green Hall, Smallthorne, Stoke-on-Trent

There's nothing quite like a proper project you can really get your teeth into to banish the bad weather blues and thankfully, such a project has come my way!

After the dismally wet day that thwarted their 'Garden Party' at the beginning of this month I was determined to do something to help the Friends of Ford Green Hall as they go through the tricky transition from being a City Council run museum to a self-governing independent project. 

I'm not going to get into the politics of that; if you haven't picked up my opinion on public spending cuts etc by now, you haven't been paying attention!

Ford Green Hall is an early 17th Century house operating as a museum and education centre.  I first visited a couple of years ago with a party from the school where I've been doing the allotment project and we had a fabulous time with the staff really bringing the place to life and giving the children a proper flavour of life in Stuart-era England.  The highlight was probably the moment when, asked why people in those days saved the urine in their chamberpots in a big barrel, one girl suggested "to make gravy?"

There's an idea now, Heston!

Overgrown herb bed

My mission has become to get the garden looking in tip-top condition ready for whenever the official launch comes along.  Initially, that involved taking a tough line with the mint and soapwort hell-bent on domination of the six raised beds used for growing herbs.  These are classified as 'culinary', 'domestic', 'cosmetic', 'medicinal', 'textile' and 'magical'.

Presumably some of the local ne'r-do-wells assumed you might be able to smoke those in the last category, because most of them have disappeared!

Now you see them, now you don't!

It's early days yet and I'll post some more pictures as things progress, but as well as taming the herb beds I've also clipped one section of the knot garden and started doing battle with the ash saplings and bindweed invading the flower beds.  It's already visibly better after just three afternoons. 

And it's so good to have the privilege of combining my love of history with that of horticulture.  Watch this space for further progress - between showers, of course.

Reasons to be Cheerful - Part One

Sepervivums - where there's life, there's hope!

I fear that under the glowering skies of an unspeakably wet summer, this blog is becoming too much a tale of woe and cynicism. 

Where is the optimism with which we set out on this journey from the troubled life of a welfare rights adviser, beleaguered by impossible targets and merciless regulations, into happy horticultural Arcadian simplicity?  What happened to that enthusiasm for learning new skills and acquiring greater knowledge of all things green and growing?  That keenness for new projects bringing the colour of flowers and the fragrance of herbs to overgrown or empty gardens?  That joy in germination, that passion for propagation?

In short, call yourself a gardener, Honeysett, if a bit of rain and a handful of slugs get you down?  You'd be no good faced with a tower full of orcs and a giant spider, would you?

For the benefit of current and potential customers, please note that dealing with towers full of orcs, giant spiders and any other tasks incidental to the disposal of unwanted items of jewellery may incur a higher charge than my usual rate, whether it makes for a tale worth telling generations later on or not. 

Actually, as far as the Tolkien analogy goes, I came to the conclusion some while ago that I'm no Samwise Gamgee. I'm far too tall for that role.  If anything, I think I'm probably an Entwife!

Well, since the weather gods briefly relented yesterday and allowed us a few hours of brilliant sunshine, it seemed only fair to take stock of some of the brighter happenings in the garden right now.

Bringing in the harvest

Firstly, it has been a good year for autumn-sown onion sets and garlic.  We brought home a wheelbarrow full yesterday.  Although they aren't intended for storing, they will certainly see us through the summer/autumn for salad and cooking purposes; in fact, with exactly one hundred, we probably have more than we actually need so should put some out for sale at the front of the house.

Jon getting to know his onions

Against the odds, there are some very decent-looking red cabbages growing in one of the plots where early carrots failed miserably.  That they have survived despite the slug plague is probably down to their defence being the beer trap rather than the eco-friendly pellet, the latter having been dissolved by the rain.  If they can hold on, they'll be great either for coleslaw or cooked with autumn casseroles.

Flowers on Sempervivum arachnoideum

The delightful surprise in the ornamental part of the garden has been the success of the sempervivums I bought in Holland and immediately split from the original five plants to give me two trays of off-sets for propagation for sale, and a cluster for terracotta pots for display.  The S. arachnoideum is already flowering profusely and gives a cheerful splash of colour as you look out of the kitchen window, even on the dullest day.

My major project from last year (Kev's garden) has turned out much as hoped and although the foul weather has made maintaining it trickier than hoped, the flower area was doing well last week.  The Digitalis purpurea have reached that awkward stage where the section of stalk and seed pods is slightly too long to look elegant, and I will probably cut half down next time I go round in the hope of keeping the plants perennial for some flowers next year, while I'll let the rest set seed for flowering plants the year after.  Kev can almost certainly expect to end up with some of the sempervivum offsets in his empty planters at my next visit.

Kev's triffids

So it's not all doom and gloom after all - in fact, the sun is shining again and if I do Andy Murray a favour and don't jinx his game this afternoon by watching him, I might go over to Ford Green Hall and do some more pottering about in their herb garden and even clip the box hedges. 

And there will be no eavesdropping!

Filthy Weather

A couple of days ago one of my friends in the South posted on Facebook that there were due to be some fine and sunny days in her part of the world and friends should bear this in mind and organise their washing days accordingly.  As you can tell already, some of my friends lead lives even more thrilling than my own.

I was deeply envious, but also inspired to humour and replied to the effect that "Up here, 'Fifty Shades of Grey' isn't a dirty book, it's the weather forecast."  That's probably my second funniest line regarding that notorious book.  It got a 'LOL' from my friend.  Probably not quite sufficient praise to quit horticulture and try stand-up comedy instead, but who knows.  I am going to need a Plan C at this rate (see previous posts re Plan B).

Today has just seen continuous heavy rain and there is flooding all around the local area.  I was woken up by it drumming on the flat roof over the front bay, followed by a clap of thunder, and it's been pouring down almost all day.  Mercifully, we live on top of a hill, but Jon has been trying to work out the logistics of getting two of each species of local fauna safely stowed on the narrowboat.   

So please excuse me while I spend a few moments railing against the injustice of the fickle and heartless weather gods.  It is now a year and a quarter since I left paid employment with the intention of taking something of a sabbatical, studying horticulture and setting up as a gardener.  I envisaged spending last summer taking it pretty easy and having a proper chill out; deck chair on the lawn, glass of wine, good book...  But no, it was not to be.  We had a truly foul summer and the small compensation of some hot weather in October.

This summer the plan looked more like spend lots of time on the narrowboat, also accessorised with glass of wine etc, and occasionally come ashore to keep our garden looking nice and tend to the lawns and flowerbeds of my loyal customers (both of them).  Instead, despite two sowings of the traditional sacrifice to the gods of expensive cultivars of carrot seed, I am blessed with 'the wettest June since records began'. 

That's not the deal, guys!

None of the root veg has survived; if it germinated at all, it has now been taken out by slugs.  Last week I planted out six robust little courgette plants in quite sheltered parts of the garden.  There is not a sign now that they ever even existed.

(I've just been interrupted by a cry of 'Oh! Sunshine!" from Himself, but after the initial excitement it seems he was actually just watching the tennis and there are blue skies over Wimbledon at the moment.)

Oddly, in theory I have a choice of weather forecasts from the BBC site each day.  I can type in 'Stoke-on-Trent' and get a forecast based on West Midlands weather.  Alternatively, if I put in my postcode (a Stoke-on-Trent code) I get an alternative forecast based on North West weather and with subtle variations regarding exactly when the rain will be torrential and when it will merely be drizzling.

In either case, if you look more than a day or two ahead and see some of those funny little symbols with a yellow circle and little rays coming out, rest assured you are looking at a work of fiction.

And my best 'Fifty shades...' joke?  (Tories and bankers look away now!)

- I can't imagine why so many women apparently want to read/fantasize about being screwed by a sadistic rich boy when they already live in a country that's being screwed by sadistic rich boys!  I'm tempted to rejoin the Labour Party to help fight the Coalition, but would that just be masochism?

Okay, I won't give up the gardening just yet.  And no, I haven't read it.

Garden Party Blues

If you've read the early posts on this blog, you'll know that it was started to record my progress (laughs ironically) as I attempt to establish myself as a professional gardener.  You may also have gathered, from various posts regarding unsuccessful deals with farm shops and weather-related issues that a 'Plan B' may be required since, so far, this is not proving to be an especially profitable enterprise.

Plants and painted ware loaded and ready to go...

For example, on Sunday 1st July I had a stall booked at a local historic house, Ford Green Hall, where the annual Garden Party was being held.  I hedged my bets, taking both herb plants (which seemed apt to the 17th Century environment of the house itself) and some of my 'Roses and Castles' painted ware, which I hope can be sold at autumn/winter craft fairs when gardening work is likely to be in shorter supply even than now.

Canalware stall, plus hippy in dodgy hat!

We set up in dry but fairly cool weather for July and, moments before the event opened to the public, the heavens opened, and it continued to pour with rain for about an hour and a half.  The North Staffs Accordian Band played on with a fortitude unseen since a more famous set of musicians foundered with a notorious liner a hundred years ago.  Volunteers from the Hall sold tea and cakes to keep our spirits up as no doubt their forefathers (and foremothers) did during the darkest days of the Blitz, but the event was largely a washout.

And the band played on...

I sold no plants.  I did sell six 'roses and castles' hand-painted cards, a small painted rolling pin and a plant pot, raising a total of £11.50.

The stall cost £10 (to the Friends of Ford Green Hall, so in no way begrudged) and we spent £4.50 on cups of tea, largely to keep our hands warm.

You do not have to be Joseph Stiglitz to appreciate that in economic terms, this is not a good outcome. 

But much good may have come of this.  Firstly, I have volunteered to smarten up the herb garden at the Hall.  Yes, I know: 'volunteered' means I will be working for no money.  But I get to renovate the garden of a 17th Century house, so that's lots of fun researching the right cultivars for the era and finding plants to add to the beds, not just ripping out the rogue ash trees and destroying bindweed (though there is much of that).

Ford Green Hall's herb garden at its best

I've also been told that I can put some plants out for sale and do some modest advertising, so that could be a really effective way of promoting myself, as long as I can make a good job of getting the garden back under control. 

Herb garden as it is now

And unlike cutting lawns, it's work that I can do even in the rain!