Sunday garden visiting

Ambrose Place back gardens in Worthing are well worth a visit. They are open once a year and on the Sunday of our weekend we toured the one way system of Worthing until our eyes were caught by the distinctive yellow signs 'garden open'. For 25 years some of these gardens have opened and this year there were 14 to see. Apart from two, all are very narrow, mostly without lawns and an inspiration for what can be achieved in a small space.

There were many visitors and we had to shuffle, sometimes sideways, or wait to enter a garden until someone else left it. But what a treat! One had four water features including a rill and pond with bridge, another had a very narrow 'canal'. There were fig trees in fruit, cordylines making umbrellas of foliage above our heads, oleanders and a huge Judas tree with wonderful pink seed pods.

One garden was a mass of herbaceous planting, rainbow coloured, another colour themed, another made for children. But all were inventive and fun, with ideas that could be copied or modified.

It is always a treat to find the owners in such gardens and find out the name of that tree or rose and also to give praise.

There were plants for sale too and I bought at least three. Unnamed, but I shall find out what they are eventually! One an Aeonium type, green rosettes, another slightly spiky hairy leaves with a delicate white flower and I cannot remember the third!

From there we went to Great Dixter, arriving a lot later than we had planned and at the same time as a coach load of Dutch tourists. That was a pity, because some of them were rather rude and unfortunately rudeness is often more noticeable than politeness. Never mind, the gardens are the thing.

Christo is still there in spirit for me. I last saw him picking grapes in the sunk garden and putting them straight into his mouth. The garden is full of him. The meadows were colourful, with orchids and hardy geraniums among the ox eye daisies and buttercups. There were purple irises in the moat. The old rose garden is best later in the year - but still of interest - and the long borders splendid. There seemed to be even more wonderful planted areas and a newish area that was obviously a work in progress. Water lilies on the horse pond were flowering. It was all a treat as it always is.

We roamed the nursery. I did not know what to buy, but had to have something. In the end I went for a challenge - a Tetrapanax. While paying I discovered they had seeds of Persicaria orientalis which I have been looking for since I saw it at Dixter and also at La Jardin Plume in France a couple of years ago. Highly delighted!

Hope they grow.

What a weekend. We drove home, full of that feeling that makes you say 'Aaah!' Satisfied and sated. And full of plans.

Though why I keep buying plants when we are hoping to move house I don't know.

Perfection?

West Dean gardens near Chichester was our next destination. A delay on the M25 (of course) and we arrived about lunchtime. The signs indicated An Event - why didn't I see that on the net? and my heart sank. But it was a bonus - lots of plant stalls (hold me back!), lovely food, crafts and 'sundries'. I dipped into my purse often, ate lamb and pumpkin pie with mash (superb), my first raspberries of the season, with cream, and bought herbs including Blackcurrant sage, a Hemerocallis 'Morning Chimes', a couple of grasses and I cannot remember what else.

Eventually we entered the kitchen garden, which had been the original focus of the visit! Wow, wow, wow! Go!

Goblet and cone trained fruit trees, cordons and espaliers. Red cabbages the size of a tractor wheel. Currants in double cordons. Thirteen Victorian glasshouses with all that fantastic engineering to open vents and pipes for warmth with the whole house partly sunk into the ground or lean to style with the back wall covered in trained peaches and nectarines, or grape vines. How we wanted to close our hands around a peach, so perfect, hanging there, rosy and furry. Old fig trees fruiting well - I did not know that there used to be fig orchards in this country with dozens sent to London each day. Each glasshouse was a treat, filled with tomatoes or melons, or peppers, chillies, orchids, Pelargoniums, cucumbers etc etc. And everything was immaculate. Not a discoloured leaf, not a bug. I saw one wilted Streptocarpus - the only noticeable defect. The outdoor veg were all as perfect, beautifully laid out. I especially liked the boot scrapers at the corner of each bed, to keep the mud off the paths!

Bliss!

In Euphoric state we hardly noticed the rain that turned from mizzle to something altogether more drenching and sat outside (under umbrellas) for a cup of tea.

A place to revisit. Without a doubt.

Because of the Event, the car park was large. And did I make a note of where the car was? Fortunately I always leave the sunroof up, come rain or shine. ( A gardener's car is a smelly place). But, as another visitor said to me, I should have noted that it was near some sheep droppings. As was his.

Garden visiting

I have just had a weekend off! A long weekend in fact, taking Friday too. I abandoned the hoe and the fork, the secateurs and the mower and went garden visiting.

My mother came too and our first port of call, at the gate as it opened, was Sissinghurst.

Not a wow though. Pretty good, but not wow.

Loved the nuttery which I remember as quite ordinary, but now is a tapestry of shade loving plants - ferns, Veratrum nigrum, (pictured) Epimediums and Martagon lilies. It is glorious.

The rose garden hit us with scent and beauty, great mounds of mainly pink, gorgeous roses with wonderful names. 'Chapeau de Napoleon' for example. Did he have a hat like that? There were huge swathes of starry Allium Christophii, some flattened by wind as if by a huge hand. It is a great place to find roses that maybe I have only seen in a picture or a catalogue. 'William Shakespeare', for example, has smaller flowers than I expected and 'William Lobb' was not a nice colour at all. And what about Rosa viridiflora? A most strange thing. Is it meant to look like that? The big old roses are staked beautifully, making huge structures maybe eight feet across. But I wish there was a path to every one. I just wanted to stick my nose in!

The 'cottage' garden, aflame with hot colours, had suffered from the wind of the previous day, but was still fantastic. The white garden was lovely of course, especially as the rose that covers the Gazebo in the middle (Kiftsgate?) was in full flower. Standing under it we could hear the buzzing of dozens of bees.

I was disappointed within the walls where the borders are red and blue and purple. Some of the colours jarred and were quite wrong. The lovely Clematis Etoile Rose was perfect over a shrub and completely lost in another spot partnered with a rather washed out apricot rose. A rather hideous gladiolus kept popping up with a harsh colour between red and shocking pink. Is one of the gardeners there colour blind? And worst of all were several new terracotta pots, very orange in colour, sparsely - no, meanly - planted with shocking pink flowers. Some of the shrubs needed a good tidy up with dead twigs evident. And there was quite a lot of bare earth. In June?

I expected better from what is supposed to be a flagship garden. I am not sure I will rush back.

Snail war

On my regular morning walk to the greenhouse I cast a cursory eye over the vegetables sitting about the lawn, squashes and courgettes mainly, hardening off before the journey to the allotment and killing the grass in neat yellow circles. There is a small tray of Shoo-fly plants (Nicandra physalodes) potted on a few days ago. They are sturdy and well grown. Except that one has been felled like a little tree. A half inch stump remains while the rest lies nearby. The tell tale slime is the evidence.
What monsters slugs and snails are!
I would not mind so much if they had eaten it. What happened? The slug/snail took a bite and did not like it? It only liked the stem? Or just vindictive?
I have tried to be more and more organic and not to grow food they like in the garden. No Delphiniums or Hostas. But vegetables we like and they like. So I buy organic slug pellets, which is more work. They seem to have to be renewed more often. And this warm wet weather is ideal for the molluscs.
I planted out a lot of Morning Glories, quite decent size plants. For a few days they were untouched. Then one night the whole lot were gone. Why did the slugs and snails delay? I sowed the seeds, nurtured them in a propagator, transferred them to the greenhouse. I potted them on and hardened them off. Compost, water, modules, pots, sticks to support them, space in the greenhouse. And not one plant.
I caught a snail laying eggs in one of my pots. You have to be vigilant, but it is easy to tell when they are doing it. A sort of concentrated look comes over them and you can pluck the snail out mid-lay. And hurl it over the fence. Then winkle out the eggs with a twig or the end of a label. They are fragile and won't survive.
I have learned that the most important time to protect the plants is when they are tiny. Once courgettes on the allotment get beefy I give up with the pellets. Occasionally there is a horrid moment when a fat slug is discovered inside the picked courgette, about to be sliced. But they don't seem to eat the yellow ones as willingly. I don't want to use pellets. There are slow worms and a toad who could eat them too, via the hated molluscs. But when a tray of lovingly grown peas is decimated overnight my principles waver.
Do not believe the myths about slugs and snails.
They are very fast. Just buy an expensive Delphinium, plant it and wait. Next morning there will only be slime.
They are incredibly athletic. As athletic as squirrels. They will climb anywhere, any height. Don't assume your hanging basket is safe.
And remember, if you kill too many they will only go into overdrive reproducing. So what is the point?
One of my customers had reached her eightieth year believing that slugs were snails that had left their shells. Finding empty shells about she wondered how they knew which shell to return to! I love the idea of a six o'clock whistle and all the slugs return to their shells to become snails again!
Handy tip - use large empty snail shells as cane toppers. There is a twisted satisfaction in ramming these skeletons onto canes. This not only means that you won't poke yourself in the eye. You never know - the sight of snail remains may deter the others.
You can always hope.

Operation garden-move

We put our house on the market in the middle of April. Not the best timing.

In the first flush of enthusiasm I washed the kitchen floor, painted the porch and began digging up the garden. I intend to take everything. Not emptying the garden you understand, but taking divisions and cuttings. The number of pots outside the back door and alongside the greenhouse is escalating fast. Other plants have been moved to the asparagus bed on the allotment. The asparagus didn't want the bed. Those expensive crowns refused to produce a single spear.

Last time we moved I took hardly anything and regretted it. The new owners wiped out the lot. Ironic when the garden was displayed as a particular Feature. The estate agents wanted to list some of the more permanent plants which included a very nice Eucalyptus. While the house waited for a buyer the tree died. Greatly concerned, I rang the estate agents fearing that a buyer would be looking for the tree, since it had been itemised. I gave the agents some amusement anyway.

It is not that my plants are very special, but think of the expense of starting a new garden. And some have to come with me - Aunt Sophia's dark red rose, my tree paeony 'Joseph Rock', my gorgeous irises, Rose 'Abraham Darby, my fairly new Damson tree and my Blueberry bushes from the Dorset Blueberry Company (recommended). It took me ages to find some of the ferns in the front garden, noting their names on visits to Chelsea and hunting them down in garden centres or nurseries on visits to Mum or one of my sons. Clematis are easy to buy, but it took time to find 'Etoile Rose' and a montana called 'Marjorie'.

Our house has not sold, but regularly we look at what is around for sale (in the hopes that it will go eventually and so will we.) It is very hard to buy a garden with a house when you are Small Fry. We are not in the House and Grounds category and unless the garden size can be measured in acres there is almost no information. We squint at photos trying to get some idea of size - there are never any measurements. Words like 'good-sized family garden' are meaningless. 'Family garden' means lawn and nothing else. Courtyard garden means virtually no garden. Mature garden means a big shrub or two and maybe a tree. Amazingly, when I say that a garden is vital I get sent details of flats!

My dream is to grow vegetables in the garden. This is not a pipe dream. Plenty of ordinary houses have decent size gardens - I work in them and how wasted they are and often unwanted. Strange how I want a garden wih a house; many people buy a house with no regard for or interest in the adjoining garden. Communist tendencies aroused again.

With the housing market juddering to a standstill and no-one keen to buy ours yet, I believe I have plenty of time to take cuttings, dig up my huge Allium giganteum - still flowering long after 'Purple Sensation - , divide, divide, divide.

Make hay while the sun shines

Being a very shallow sort of person I like novelty. So I like beginning work on a new garden. This one is overgrown and needs rescuing. The owner is very aged, but knowledgeable and bright as a button.


The house sits back from the road at the top of a very steep lawn which is mainly moss. Green anyway. The narrow borders have board edges, which is just as well or there would be no end to the lawn and no beginning to the borders. A few Aquilegias struggle. The lawn makes it as far as a double set of French windows under a balcony. It is rather English colonial style and very nice. At the back the slope continues and concrete steps lead up to the first lawn well above the ground level of the house. This first lawn is flattish so one is lulled into a false sense of security, because the next up is mountainside stuff. Small, but steep. I did not even climb as far as the third. The lawnmower has to be hauled up many steps and the cuttings carried down. The grass was generally of hayfield standard. About two feet high. The mower coped with the length, but a small hover would have been preferable on the slopes. Or a goat. My mower does not lend itself to being dropped and hauled on a gradient.


The first challenge was the power point which is above the door of the outside loo. A most sensible spot, but I could not reach it! Eventually I found a good sized flowerpot and climbed upon it. Resourceful, I felt.


There are plenty of shrubs, but all needing work, and herbaceous borders are full of bindweed, grass and other goodies. In the first visit I could only reduce the grass height and remove a large dead Photinia near the front gate. A weekly visit would be desirable, but I am behind because of the rotten weather, so I cannot see that I can do more than once a fortnight.


I have taken a couple of photographs to cheer me on - I like to see what I have done - and it will be good to see the garden emerge. In fact I was intending to post one of the pictures, but I have spent some time trying to remember how to transfer them from mobile to computer. Then I lost them. They have to be in here somewhere, but I will have to wait for a son to come home. Maybe they are lost forever.
The aged lady seemed pleased with the first efforts, but I did not get a cup of tea.
And such things are very important.

Into each life a little rain must fall

'Who'd be a gardener!' said Mr E on the phone this morning.

If I had webbed feet the last week would not have been too much trouble, but I haven't and it has.

This morning it continued to rain so that the new week would begin behind and therefore muck up a new customer starting Wednesday. She may be Friday now.

But as bad as the rainy days that put paid to lawns and hedges were the last two weekends, including a bank holiday, with scarcely a gap in the deluge to get to the allotment.

In May and June I regret having an allotment. I know that while I am not there the weeds are reaching for the sky and the most recently weeded beds have a new covering of tiny weeds. The bindweed is flexing its muscles and entwining the potatoes and beans. Meanwhile, with the weeds to give them cover, slugs and snails are rampaging in the warmth and wet, chomping through the peas and broadbeans, sugar snaps and spring cabbages.

I become almost afraid to go there, knowing that an hour spent weeding will make hardly any impression and an hour spent planting out leeks (why did I sow so many?) is an hour not weeding. It becomes another pressure and chore instead of the wonderful escape it normally is.

This time last year the squashes and courgettes, cucumbers and aubergines were already planted out. When almost the only time to get there is the weekend and it rains.. and then I take a day off in the week and - guess what? - it becomes hard not to take it personally.

I keep peering at the parsnip bed and the swede bed. Nothing but weeds. After a month do I give up and resow? When do I decide that they are never going to come up? I know that parsnips can be temperamental. I sow Nigella in the row, but so far only the ferny heads of the Nigella (Love-in-a-mist) are showing. Not a parsnip. Not a swede.

I need a good few hours of weeding to get the upper hand again, some time to plant, ideally a helper and time to rekindle my love of my allotment.

I shall contemplate some photos, remind myself how much I have done so far, and remember that in a month or so there should be little to do there but harvest, with all the beds planted and everything growing.

But the garlic has rust and I feel I may be going the same way myself.