Garden Centre

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

What happened to the sounds of summer?

I’ve just got back from a week in France and there was one thing I couldn’t help noticing. Over there you could sit in the garden and hear very little but the sound of pigeons, neighbours picking figs and beans, and the occasional slosh of water from cans or hosepipes as it splashed over the huge leaves of courgettes and pumpkins.

But then I came back and took my morning cup of tea out into the garden on Sunday … to find myself surrounded by those traditional rural sounds: power washers cleaning 4x4 cars, hedge-cutters ripping through privet, wood chippers mashing up the trimmings produced by the hedge-cutters, tractor lawnmowers (why? Nobody around me has a lawn bigger than a couple of double sheets) and drills. There was somebody (presumably a man with a middle-aged crisis going on) working on the engine of his jetski who seemed to feel the need to rev the engine every two or three minutes for two or three hours …

At least I have some idea why. Apparently we Brits are spending more time gardening as the credit crunch bites home. According to Legal & General, 42% of us spent between £1 and £1000 on garden equipment or home improvements in June. Then investment group LV found more families are going on a ‘traditional bucket-and-spade seaside holiday’ in Britain this summer as 71% admitted being concerned about their finances. So it’s not surprising that the power tools have come out and the men of the house are wielding them – the logic must be that it’s cheaper to do home improvements themselves than to pay a professional to come and do it. And that means that my Sundays will be orchestrated by motor-mowers etc until the recession recedes again. I do wish we had more of the Indian style of lawn mower though – perhaps if things get bad enough, people will think the petrol costs are so high they’ll invest in an oxen-powered instead?

Lawnmower courtesy of foxypar4

Labels: garden sounds, lawn mowers, recession gardening

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:18 AM 1 Comments

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Friday, July 18, 2008

Gaps in the garden

If you’re anything like me, it can take you a while to notice what isn’t there – especially at this time of year. This morning, touring the ‘estate’ I realised that something wasn’t there that should be.

There are not any foxtail lilies – proper name eremurus, which originated in Northern India and Persia. I bought five, four years ago. Last year only three of the five flowered and this year, none. I can’t understand it.

They are said to enjoy being planted in the same conditions as paniculata grandiflora and Azalea mollis and both of those do well in my garden. They require shelter from spring frosts, which I gave them, and they need their roots planted well down, at least six inches below soil level – which I did! They thrive in deep, rich, sandy loam, with the addition of some well ripened cow manure, and that’s exactly what I gave them. The proof that conditions were good for foxtail lilies can be found in the fact that they flowered for the first two years, but now they are definitely AWOL.

I have my suspicions … I think the squirrels have had them!

Labels: eremurus, foxtail lily, july bulbs

The All Seasons Gardener at 10:31 AM 0 Comments

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Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Another dangerous garden!

Well, the garden wasn’t dangerous in itself, no man-or-woman-eating plants or concealed pits, but dangerous for me, because it’s given me ‘ideas’ – himself has gone into hiding already, knowing that garden tours always result in my coming home with a madly grandiose plan.

This time it’s a greenhouse. Not any ordinary ‘just for growing things’ greenhouse, but a proper conservatory, with a space for me to do yoga, a desk for my laptop so I can write about gardening matters in an inspiring environment (your screen will fog up, says himself, in a doom-laden voice) and a wooden trellis up one wall so I can grow hibiscus.

I mean look at it! Who could resist a wall of hibiscus? (It will hide insects, the wood will rot, you’ll want something else within a year or two, says himself.) And our garden is not equipped to grow it, so we need to do something that allows us to grow it, right?

Himself points to the pot of hibiscus I have bought during my visit. How much did that cost, he asks. £2.99 I answer (it’s a bargain, you’ve got to admit.) And you want me to build a £3,000 conservatory for it, he says.

I couldn’t think of an answer for that one …

Labels: garden tours, garden visits, greenhouse, hibiscus, open gardens

The All Seasons Gardener at 9:35 AM 2 Comments

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Saturday, July 12, 2008

July garden tasks

Apart from sitting in the sun, and weeding? There are loads, but it depends how committed you are to gardening:

Necessary tasks - Removing faded flowers on perennials like lupins and delphiniums because cutting them back early often encourages a second flush of flowers later in the season which allows you to look smug when the neighbours peer over the hedge. You need to cut the flower-spike just above a new shoot or leaf, and give each plant a generous liquid feed to encourage fresh growth.

Useful tasks - cutting the seedheads from aquilegia to prevent them from spreading. Well, not in our garden, because the few columbines we have are scrupulously looked after and I’d love them to spread: fat chance!

Tasks for the dedicated – it’s a great time to turn the compost heap. Oh … everybody seems to have stopped reading! Perhaps I’ll just go and sit in the sun ….

Labels: aquilegia, columbine, deadheading, garden compost, july garden tasks

The All Seasons Gardener at 2:40 PM 1 Comments

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Thursday, July 10, 2008

What's best in the garden in July?

In my view, the answer is obvious. Lavender!

I have three kinds: angustifolia (silver-grey heads streamlined along the stems), stoechas (the kind that have a rounded, tightly-packed lower bracts and extended flaglike flowers in the upper bracts, usually in bright purple) and a white lavender, genus and variety unknown, I got it as a cutting at a fair! This is the time when flowering stems can be harvested for drying and storing, although the weather just isn’t cooperating. You need to wait for a dry day and cut the lavender with fairly long stalks when the buds are beginning to show colour but are not yet fully open. Tie the stems in loose bunches and hang upside-down in a reasonably warm, dark and airy place.

You can do all kinds of things with the dried heads: make lavender bags, put a couple of heads in a tea infuser and drop it in the bath for a lovely scented soak, or (my favourite) cook with them!

Dilly biscuits

125g butter
100g caster sugar
1 egg
2 tsp dried lavender flowers (make sure you haven’t used pesticides on the plant you harvest from and angustifolia are best for this)
150g self-raising flour

Cream together butter and sugar, and add the egg. Beat well stir in the lavender flowers and fold in the flour. Mix lightly.

Use a teaspoon to spoon out onto a greased baking tray, leaving plenty of room between each one for them to spread. Bake for 15 minutes at 170 degrees Celcius (325 degrees Fahrenheit), then turn out onto wire racks to cool.

Why ‘Dilly’ biscuits? Well, "Lavender’s blue dilly dilly, lavender’s green … "

Lavender courtesy of ilovebutter

Labels: july tasks, lavender, lavender recipes

The All Seasons Gardener at 5:25 AM 0 Comments

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Sunday, July 6, 2008

July apple tasks

After all the fun of garden visits, it's down to earth with a bump, or rather, up in the air and hoping not to have a bump!

As regular readers will know, we ‘bonsai’d’ one of our two, extremely ancient, apples trees in January. As a result, there’s nothing to do to that tree this year, it’s just a mass of sappy, suckery branches and although we had some blossom, we won’t be seeing any fruit.

The other tree is a different matter – it’s about eight feet too tall (yes, more than twice the height it should be) so all maintenance has to be done up a tall ladder (damn the previous owners for never pruning the apple trees when they owned the house!) and our main job in July is going to be thinning out the fruits, because left alone, particularly on an old tree, all you get is a huge crop of tiny, bitter, woody apples and probably nothing at all in the following year because the tree is exhausted.

So now the fruits are set, which means you can see tiny apples actually starting to form, we have to get out the ladders and remove the middle apple from each cluster: we start with that one because it will tend to be of the lowest quality and by being squeezed by its outer neighbours often ends up being misshapen. Then we take off any other already blemished and oddly-shaped fruits.

In August we look at the tree again and see if any more thinning is needed.Because our trees are so big and old the branches never need supporting (you could actually hang a swing from them, which is an appalling state for a fruit tree to have got into) but on younger trees it may be necessary in August to support heavily-laden branches with props or get really ruthless with the thinning!

Apples courtesy of Eamonn

Labels: apple trees, july apple tasks, thinning apples

The All Seasons Gardener at 8:52 AM 2 Comments

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Thursday, July 3, 2008

It's dangerous to visit other gardens ...

If you’re like me, there’s a real risk when you go to visit other people’s gardens – there’s the normal risk of garden envy (theirs is always greener, neater and more elegant than mine) but there’s the other risk: garden makeover bug.

Take this week. I went to see a nearby garden which has been lovely designed to make the most of a largely south facing slope. It’s full of nooks and crannies, gazebos, arches, pergolas and cunning corners. The colour palette was largely cream, pink and blue, with a little purple for contrast, and the whole effect was a lovely blend of secret corners and soft cool colours. I felt immediately that my own garden was too open, positively tundra-like actually, and far too bright, full of garish reds and oranges, blatant yellows and shocking pinks.

Over the course of the next couple of days I sat and looked at my garden and planned to change everything. Then himself took a hand, pointing out that two small dogs would wreak havoc with the idea of arches and pergolas as they tear through the garden like jet propelled missiles and that although pink and blue and cream are very nice, it would mean removing 70% of our perennial plants and shrubs to stick to that colour scheme, and that our garden isn’t actually south-facing, or sloping, so we’d have to dig a slope …

So I had to give up, but I still want a pink, blue and cream garden with nooks and crannies – I just want my own garden as well!

Labels: garden makeovers, garden visits

The All Seasons Gardener at 9:04 AM 3 Comments

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