Ups and downs

As the year comes to an end, looking back over our gardens' successes and failures seems a sensible tradition to follow, to learn from our mistakes and recognise where we can do better is no bad thing in the garden as it is in the rest of life.

This year I thought my meadow lawn was splendid, but apart from raking seed into the bare bits and keeping my husband away from his mower I can take no credit at all, the wild flowers just love my free draining soil, as do the tulips.

The red ones in the grass were so cheerful with the buttercups, the deep dark burgundy 'Ronaldo' and the pale cream 'City of Vancouver' were just lovely and would have been even better if I'd planted them together instead of at opposite ends of the garden, so I've ordered more for next year and will do just that.

Some short and squat shocking pink ones whose name I have forgotten were a big mistake, they disgraced the front border for weeks this spring, so I've made a mental note to pick them as they come into flower next year before they can shriek at more unfortunate passers by.

Embarrassing as the horrible pink tulips were, they paled into insignificance in the face of the dismal autumn fruiting raspberries which I neglected so badly that from a double row I picked no more than a handful of berries. Left smothered in weeds and unwatered who can blame them, but being at the back of the house at least my failure was private.

A shame though that the pond is out of sight too, the plants around it did beautifully, much to my and my bees delight.

A big surprise were the French beans which produced the loveliest pale apricot and cream flowers for months, despite that we only had a few meals from them but you can't have everything and if our gardens teach us anything it's that.

Every year has its ups and downs but one thing we gardeners have in common is an unfailing optimism and belief in the promise of another year.

As this one ends and our gardens appear uninviting, look closer, the hellebores are in bud and under the ground things are moving, bulbs are getting ready to push their noses up through the soil and a whole new cycle of life is just about to begin.

An incredible number of edibles.

Making a cup of mint tea from the patch outside the back door reminded me of the lemon verbena I also like to make tea from, it sits among a few plants in pots which I like the look of together and by coincidence are all edible. 

The garlic chives and varieties of thymes for when I want something to taste of Italy and the scented Pelargonium leaves and the lovely lavender for flavouring cakes.

For no better reason than idle curiosity, and discounting the vegetables which are grown only for eating, I've added up all the plants in my garden that earn a place for other reasons but are also edible. Bay, rosemary and sage are great ornamental shrubs in a dry raised bed through which runs purple fennel for height and very useful near the kitchen no matter what meat's for Sunday lunch.

There are fruits all around the garden, apples, Japanese wineberry, rhubarb, raspberries, wild and cultivated strawberries and in the hedges up sprout hazels, plums, blackberries and elder, from which I make cordial and elderberry flu remedy. I've no idea if it works but it tastes wonderful.

There are less obvious wildlings too, wild garlic packs a punch when the leaves are young and nettles are actually ok if you cook them when very new and in with other things; apparently they're packed full of vitamins.

If I include all the things my chickens peck at in order to make their eggs for me and all the nectar rich flowers the bees forage on to turn into honey then the list is staggering.

It's a huge plus to be able to enjoy the taste of my garden as well as its beauty and the close contact with wildlife it gives me.

Freshness and flavour are guaranteed, totally pesticide free and unlike the number of miles much of our food has travelled to get to our kitchens the few steps needed to pick from the garden are insignificant.

So as I sip my mint tea and wonder if I should freeze some leaves or dry then for using over winter, I realise that the fruits are all finished, the leaves will soon be gone and only the hazel nuts are still to come. It will be slim pickings over winter, thank goodness for Waitrose!

Whatever next!

Every summer begins with my firm intention to visit a few private gardens open to the public, especially those that have been planned by other garden designers. Most summers come and go and the good intentions remain just that but this year I was determined and made the time to get to several. Each one had something to make the trip worthwhile.

In one garden I found not only inspiration but also a challenge to a very long held prejudice where a beautiful burgundy red flower on a lush and leafy perennial grabbed my attention. Stunned, I recognised it straight away as a Dahlia, a species I've never liked nor given house room to in my own garden, despite their return to fashion in recent years.

What a fabulous flower, matched only by two others in different gardens, one of which was another Dahlia!

What a mistake to dismiss a whole species and miss out on such beauties particularly at this end of the year when as I can now see, their bold forms complement the glowing colours of autumn so well.

In complete contrast the other stand out plant was much more to my usual taste, a lovely sky blue Salvia uliginosa, head and shoulders above everything else waving around in the wind among the bleaching heads of tall grasses, a perfect combination.

Other grasses were memorable too, Miscanthus used as a monoculture completely surrounding a swimming pool was simple and serene, a perfect plant for the application as wind break and screening and at its best in mid to late summer when the pool would be most used.

The garden was designed by Tom Stuart Smith so I had anticipated brilliance and found it not only around the pool but also in the way it made me completely rethink my opinion of clipped and shaped yew.

Earlier in the year I'd visited a garden known for its use of tall yew hedges which I'd found dark and oppressive, but here they were much lower, rhythmic and playfully shaped providing a very different atmosphere.

Pictures of gardens might give us the general idea but it's only by being in them that we can appreciate how they make us feel and visiting open gardens is a brilliant opportunity to understand how we respond to them, experience other people's tastes and most importantly question our own.

This year I've been converted to Dahlias, whatever next!

Saving the seeds of success

There are some lovely late summer flowering combinations to enjoy this month. In full sun, tall asters like 'Monch' shine brightly among ornamental grasses like the stately spires of Calamagrostis 'Karl Foerster'. The beautiful white Japanese anemone 'Honorine Jobert' partnered with Hydrangea quercifolia glows in cool shade and the hot oranges and reds of Crocosmia are looking wonderful, but some earlier bloomers are now definitely past their prime.

Having flowered their hearts' out through spring and early summer, for some plants the job is done for another year and the seed of the next generation has been set, so now is the perfect time to take advantage of their generosity and if they have been successful and already proved their worth in the garden then we know that they will thrive and the more the merrier.

In my garden opium poppies have produced enough seed to populate the whole of Monmouthshire with their varied progeny, some in quite astonishing colours but all equally beautiful. The seed heads make statuesque additions to the borders right through late summer, autumn and into winter, so I leave most of them alone to do their own thing and scatter the ripe seed themselves as they sway in the wind, but I like to shake the seeds from a few heads into paper bags 'just in case' which I keep over winter to sow myself in spring in places where they haven't yet colonized.

Forget me not and Aquilegia have much the same prolific nature, they are stalwarts of my garden and have been reliable early flowerers for generations of gardeners before me.

Wild carrot, a biennial mainstay of newly sown meadows and Verbena bonariensis are relative newcomers to our gardens, but when happy will seed themselves around freely. Like the lovely soft feathery leaved herb fennel with which Verbena looks wonderful, they will flower in the first year so can be treated like annuals and sown in autumn or spring just where you want them to flower.

Gardening can often be a very expensive occupation requiring more than a little hard work so when I'm offered lots of easy plants for very little effort and completely free then I'm all for it and if my plants are happy enough in my garden to want their next generation to live here too then that's great.

Happy plants, happy garden, happy gardener!

My Garden And Other Ecosystems

In an effort to keep reasonably fit I try to exercise regularly and it struck me recently that I should do something to keep my brain fit too so I signed up for an Open University course about ecosystems.

It's not just been useful in my work but it has also given me a greater insight into my own garden's ecosystem. I've learned more about what makes it such an interesting and diverse place, a series of interactions between plants converting energy from the sun and a multitude of living, breathing, growing organisms from the birds and bees to the microbes and fungi which eventually return all that life to the earth.

I have often thought that nature would do a better job without my interference and find its own balance, but what I've been reminded of is that for my garden to retain all of its biodiversity, it does require a degree of management or it would eventually return to woodland, the climax vegetation that all land aspires to be.

As it is, a mix of woodland (the fruit trees), woodland edge (the hedges), woodland clearing (my mini meadow) and open water (the pond) it provides accommodation for species perfectly adapted to the conditions. From blue tits dangling precariously from the slender birch twigs, midges dancing in the early morning sunlight and the pair of wild ducks which have graced my pond with their mating displays, to the many hundreds of species of insects and other invertebrates that I can and can't see without a microscope. They are all part of my gardens ecosystem, some absolutely essential, others perhaps like the sparrow hawk which only I would miss, but all with a role to play.

When we've decided that enough is enough with holes in the Hosta leaves and the green fly on the roses just have to go, it's all too easy to sprinkle round the slug pellets and reach for the insecticide spray. But in doing so we're introducing deadly poisons into the garden's food webs, depriving birds of some of their natural food and adding a toxic mix of chemicals to those that remain. 

When we reduce biodiversity we do ourselves no favours. Although I've netted my vegetables so the rabbits and cabbage whites can't get to them before I do, it's live and let live here, my kind of ecosystem management doesn't recognise anything as a pest in my garden, just part of life's rich variety.

First Love

If we're really lucky and in the right place at the right time, there will be a day this month when a perfect blue sky will coincide with the opening of one of the most exquisite flowers in the plant world. Rising out of pointed silver buds to form globes of waxy petals, Magnolia flowers will grace us with their presence and for a short few weeks these epitomes of refined elegance will lift our gardens out of the mundane and into the realms of aristocracy.

They are the most grown up of flowers, neither bright nor particularly cheerful, but calm, serene and understated.

It was the glimpse of a Magnolia soulangeana in full bloom from a bus window on the way to my first job that began my love affair with plants and like many a first love it stayed with me and blossomed over the years to embrace other more exotic species of Magnolia like grandiflora, wilsonii and acuminata.

There are some lovely trees in Monmouth, opposite the Priory and in Powell's Court are two beauties, but strangely for a few years now my affection has centred itself around a particular young Magnolia which I've watched rise steadily from behind the bare brick boundary wall of a small garden. Which named variety it is I'm not sure but the flowers are primrose yellow glowing candles and I know that I shall soon be making any excuse to drive past in the hope of catching them at their best before an almost inevitable late frost blights their perfection.

Being a self confessed plantaholic, I'm usually incapable of restraint and if I really covet a plant, believe it will grow in my garden and can afford its price then that's the deal done, but when it comes to Magnolia it's just not that simple. It seems that my love for them has always been from afar, if I had one of my own at close quarters it might lose some of its allure, familiarity might breed contempt and I couldn't risk that, not with my first love.

Genius Loci

To begin the design of a garden by looking at what's around it might not seem to be the obvious place to start, but the view out is really important to the layout and the planting, it's part of what gives the garden its unique character which the Romans called Genius Loci, the genius of the place.

If there are features of the design and plants which root the garden into the surrounding landscape then it will soon start to look as if it has always been there and feel as if it really belongs.

Most of us like a good view, I think it must go way back into our ancestry when the need to keep a lookout for attack by lions or rival tribes was a matter of life or death. Now it's just nicely comforting to see the glow of lights in neighbouring windows and really useful to see the rain clouds approaching from the west, a bit of advance notice to bring the washing in.

There's a lot to be said for having an 'inward looking' garden too. Surrounded by high fences or walls, an enclosed space can be very calm and restful, think of monks and cloisters. By its architectural nature it belongs much more to the house than the landscape around it and like another room can be secluded and private.

Fortunately we don't usually have to choose between one type of garden or the other, there are spots in most gardens with a view of something pleasing where a bench can be placed for when the sun's in exactly the right place, and for when we're feeling introspective or just want a bit of peace and quiet, then enclosure is relatively easy to create with plants.

Hedges are perfect for this, they have after all been surrounding fields for a very long time.

Their formal straight lines make living walls and clipped to grow no higher than we choose, the species used make visual links with the landscape around them even if from within their shelter we can't see it. They can mark the seasons with clouds of white spring flowers like blackthorn or hawthorn, or like holly cheer up winter with bright red berries.

Even when we can't see it, the view is important to the garden and like hedges the idea of Genius Loci has been around for a very long time.