Inspiration

It's fair to say that when one of your room-mates greets the day with the words "Did any of you used to watch Tenko?" you're unlikely to be in particularly luxurious accommodation.
 
In this particular case, I was sharing a room with five other 'ladies of a certain age' and one younger colleague at the Stayokay hostel near Arnhem in the Netherlands, as part of a study tour group from Reaseheath College, visiting the ten-yearly Floriade festival and the gardens at Appeltern.  To be fair to the Stayokay, the Tenko reference was a bit unfair as there was plenty of food and if anything the guards could have been a little more vigilant as our male colleagues awoke on the last morning to find an additional unscheduled guest occupying the spare bed in their room!

'Butterflies' at the Floriade

Unfortunately we had pretty poor weather on the day we visited Venlo where Floriade was taking place and in fact it appeared that the site had been hit by similar cold and wet weather to that which has plagued the UK this spring.

The exhibition was not quite as I had expected; I was expecting more conventional 'show gardens' of the type we see at Tatton Park, rather than the large scale planting schemes, large pavillions and conceptual gardens, and some things that were, to be honest, just plain weird!

Flowers in the rain at Floriade

There were some glorious examples of mixed tulip and perennial or spring bedding planting in a range of colour schemes.

Spring bedding

One excellent feature was a cable car running north to south across the huge site.  The rain rather spoilt the view from this, but it was the best way to give a sense of scale - the shot below shows just one huge glasshouse pavillion which was full of fantastic floral displays. 



From the cable car

  

 This huge pavillion really was truly spectacular, but there were also some things that were surprisingly odd.  One stand which we expected to have real tulips in looked more like the hold of the wretched spaceship at the beginning of Alien:

Knowing what happened to John Hurt, we left quickly without getting too close...

Appeltern was an entirely different experience; a vast array of beautiful show gardens under a clear blue sky and on a mild spring day.  Unfortunately, having been pretty chilly the day before, I erred on the side of caution and kept on my 'Darth Vader' boots and two pairs of socks, so didn't enjoy the fine day quite as I should.

There was a lot to see, so I'll write that up as a separate post shortly.

I also have a decision stillto make regarding future study at Reaseheath since, against my gloomy predictions, I managed to pass all of my RHS Level 2 exams again and, ironically, got the best results for the final paper (89%) which was the one I was certain I had completely flunked.  The big decision is, do I do the much-praised RHS level 2 'Practical' or go on to Level 3?  Either is an option, but I keep changing my mind! 



Staffordshire Spring

No sooner do I complain of constant rain than there's a brief break in the clouds, enabling me to scamper (if someone of my size can truly be said to 'scamper') out into the back garden to snap some photos.

It's a real pity that there has been quite so much heavy rain since I invested in a lot of jonquil narcissi for the herb garden area and hoped to be able to enjoy their fragrance while working outdoors during the spring.  Instead, the only way to appreciate them has been to pick a few stems to bring indoors.



Focal point at the moment is the 'Doyenne du Comice' pear tree that I am rather proud of having trained and pruned to rather a nice 'festoon' shape which enables it to carry a good crop and look ornamental at the same time. In a little while there should be contrasting pink blossom on the crab apple behind it.

I put some tulips, bought as a special offer, into pots around the patio and herb garden this year and they seem to have escaped the worst ravages of both the weather and the slugs so far.

The back garden tends to be at it's best between now and the end of June though I hope that some extra planting last summer to add astrantia and penstemons to the borders might extend the season.  It's just a shame that the last time we were able to sit out in it was the end of March before most of these plants were in flower!

Drought conditions? I don't think so...

It's almost the end of April and - shock, horror - I still have most of my potatoes to plant and a lot of work to do in the garden and on the allotment.  But not right now, because the ground is just too wet.  It's ironic that with hosepipe bans in force around the country, rain is stopping me from doing any meaningful vegetable cultivation, but that's the way it is!

Meanwhile (exciting news) I do have a proper commercial garden project in hand and it's a real challenge for me as my clients' taste in garden design is very different from my own, with a keeness for specimen plants, clean lines and formality rather than my cottage garden chaos look.  My mission is essentially to get these playing as team rather than just being outstanding individual talents, hence the nickname 'the Manchester City Garden'.

There is also a wish to encourage more wildlife into the garden, so I'm trying to identify well-bahaved and structural plants that also bring in the bees and butterflies.  Sedums look like a good choice at the moment.

Fortunately the garden in question has raised beds and flagged paths it is workable in all weathers, so hopefully more can be done between the showers during the coming week.  Whereas at home, it looks very much like rain continues to stop play...

Beautiful Bodnant

No posts for a while must surely mean one of two things.  Either I have been busy working hard in the gardens of eager customers, or...

That's right, we've been on holiday.  We had a few days over in Snowdonia celebrating Jon's birthday, which was one of those significant ones.

There's a lot to do now that we're back and the weather has decided to be unpleasant again and so rather than try to write a long descriptive article about the glorious gardens at Bodnant near Llandudno, I thought I'd see if a slide show could be attached as an alternative...

http://www.flickr.com//photos/30634865@N03/sets/72157629751705485/show/

Hope the link works - if so, enjoy!

Triffids of the Day

One of the scariest books concerning plants ever written begins along the lines of, "When a day that you are sure is Wednesday starts off sounding like a Sunday, you know that something, somewhere is seriously wrong."

A possibility that didn't perhaps occur to John Wyndham when he was writing 'The Day of the Triffids' was that you might simply be in North Staffordshire.  It's pretty quiet up here.  We do have our triffids, though.  Or rather, I have my triffids...

Sarracenia selection - there are more!

I have been gathering a collection of Sarracenias for the past three years, all bought at local flower shows (Tatton Park, Shrewsbury) either from Hampshire Carnivorous Plants or the excellent P & J Plants (formerly Marston Exotics) from Herefordshire.  I recommend P&J's website and their plants very highly and have also found them to be generous with advice and encouragement.

From P&J Plants stand at Shrewsbury Flower Show 2011

Sarracenias are the classy end of the carnivorous plant spectrum.  They are photosynthesizing femmes fatales.  None of the cheap mousetrap mechanics of the Venus Fly Trap - there is something alien and yet Art Nouveau about Sarracenias. 

While they all share the same basic trumpet snare for their prey,these can be squat and rounded or very long and tapering.  Some are rather frilly, others have crisp, clean lines.  But they are all equally deadly.

The first of the collection (see above) took up residence on the kitchen window sill in the summer of 2009, and immediately set about proving its killer credentials.  I was making jam one afternoon and a wasp decided to come in to investigate.  That proved to be a fatal error as it was lured to its doom within one of the trumpets.  I heard a faint buzzing coming from somewhere, then spotted the wasp's silhouette through the translucent plant.  It made a brief but futile attempt to chew its way out, before being overcome by whatever intoxicant Sarracenias use to drug their prey.

Dicing with death

They can be almost too successful.  I have had to cut off trumpets so stuffed with dead flies and wasps that they were putrefying.  On one very grizzly occasion I decided to do a length-wise dissection of one long trumpet while talking to the local school about carnivorous plants.  We hadn't reckoned on the maggots...

Doomed!

They are crafty plants, producing their flowers about now, before the trumpets come to maturity so they don't eat their pollinators.

Flower of Sarracenia flava

Sarracenias need to soft water and an acid growing medium.  Quite a few of my plants now need repotting or divison (they are herbaceous perennials and will propagate successfully that way).  The expert advice is to grow them in peat...

Peat.  To the ethical gardener, purchasing peat is like buying crack cocaine.  Another moral dilemma!

Crap carrots and other confessions.

I am very relieved to be able to put this photograph on the blog today, of germinated broad beans, ready for planting out on the allotment very shortly. 

I wrote a post last month entitled "Sowing the First Seeds of 2012" proudly showing off my eco-friendly recycled bean planting system and encouraging readers to adopt it themselves.  The seed packet suggested beans should start to appear within 10 days.  When, a couple of weeks ago and about a month after planting the beans, there was still no sign of growth, I thought I would have to admit a failure and print an abject apology.  But the beans have spared my blushes on this one.  Its seems they were just delayed by the cold snap in February, and are now doing fine.  Phew!

This is probably as good a time as any to own up to the fact that not all of my experiments in eco-friendly (aka "cheapskate") gardening are guaranteed to end well.  You should, for example, probably use proper tree ties to hold your fruit trees to their stakes, not laddered stockings.  Unless you fancy playing "Russian Roulette" with your seedlings and damping-off disease, do not try to re-use seed compost two or three times in succession just because "it's a bit pricy".  The seed you will waste is probably pricer.  I've been lucky so far this year, which will only encourage my bad habits.  Definitely do not re-use the string with which you tied your tomato plants to their canes; that isn't economising, it's an illness.

In short, this is not the blog of a gardening expert.  I am no Jedi Master, merely an apprentice.  And one who's trying to make a light sabre out of a fluorescent lighting tube at that.

In particular, I never have a day's luck with carrots.  I like carrots a lot, raw or cooked (but not grated for some reason probably connected with school salads).  I have tried to grow them both here in North Staffordshire and in Southampton for many years, but with no success whatsoever. 

I still persist, though increasingly it feels less like sowing carrot seed and more like making some kind of pagan spring sacrifice to the capricious gods of horticulture.  Personally, I wish I could persuade them to accept something else instead - a Wicker Slug, perhaps - but it always seems to be the carrots that the gods claim as their own.  Especially if I've got a packet of unusual or expensive seed, like 'Purple Haze'.

My carrots succumb to a variety of sad fates.  Some simply fail to germinate because it unexpectedly turns chilly or very wet immediately after the seed goes in.  Others have been killed with kindness.  Scorched to death by unforecast sunshine blazing down through the cloches set out to protect them from the predicted cold or wet.  Trapped beneath the surface crust of the seed bed which was prepared so carefully for them that it got totally overworked and became a tomb.  Pests take their toll too.  Little grassy carrot seedlings are swiftly annihilated by slugs and snails.  One day you have a row of carrots just showing through, the next there is no evidence that they ever existed. 

In the garden, and to a lesser extent on the allotment, it is also true that cats in search of somewhere to defecate like nothing so much as the fine sandy tilth of a carrot bed.  Not pleasant to clean up, and a disaster for germinating seedlings.  Sorry people, I am no fan of felines. 

Most notoriously, there is carrot root fly.  I have tried 'companion planting' with spring onions and/or garlic without success.  The carrot root fly hereabouts are not so easily deceived.  Last year I spent quite a lot (by my standards) on some fleece cloches to cover the rows of carrots on the allotment, thinking this would keep them root fly free.  For a few weeks they simply provided a cover under which slugs could go about their nefarious business unseen, picking off the carrot fly resistent cultivars first.  The cloches then got torn apart by the wind and the carrot root fly were straight in; the few roots which survived the slugs were riddled with their burrowings and unusable.

So, as the Spring Equinox approaches, it must be carrot-sowing time again.  After all, it won't do to offend the gods...

St Patrick's Day in the Garden

A very happy St Paddy's Day, one and all. 

As the last few posts have been quite wordy, I've decided it's time for some pictures, and a stroll round the back garden to see what's growing before the promised heavy showers drive us indoors for the day.

Narcissus 'Tete-a-tete'

The snowdrops and crocus are long finished, but the early narcissi are still flourishing and the first hyacinths are coming through.  I think the tulips will be early.


View down the back garden path

On the left-hand side is the small lawn and the flower borders, containing Narcissi, Alchemilla mollis, Heucheras, Aquilegias, Penstemons, Peonies, Phlox, Astrantias and Japanese Anemones.  The herb garden is on the right.

The herb garden

The 'herb garden' has been under-planted with a lot of spring bulbs.  The crocus were a bit of a 'flash in the pan' this year with the unusually warm temperatures, but the tete-a-tete narcissi now look lovely, and the herbaceous perennial herbs will start to grow up through these soon.  The woody perennials, two sage cultivars and two lavender, are still fairly small plants but will hopefully come into their own this summer. 

Double hellebore

Along the border between this and the path are some truly gorgeous hellebores.  They were bought as a mixed random selection, so I don't have individual cultivar names, but they are fabulous flowers.

Inside the greenhouse

The greenhouse is in full herb production now, with lots of young plants doing well, being kept clean of aphids by their ladybird friends.  I will be looking for opportunities to sell them in May and June.

Salad selection

 Jon's famous coldframe, which he admits is a marvel of over-engineering, has been planted up with some fresh salad seedlings alongside the last few leaves from the autumn.  I'll grub these out when the fresh stuff is ready.  There are more trays of salad leaves germinating now.

The vegetable garden

Beyond the greenhouse and the cold frame, the veg plots are also in use for propagation of some shrub cuttings and some daffodils, for selling at the gate as cut flowers.  If I can keep the slugs off them.

'Herself' digging in compost

So that's how my garden looks today.  There will be more of the usual daft stuff again soon, I'm sure.