Just how important is detail in the garden – or, at what point does it begin to matter??

The planting in the front garden at Veddw at this time of year has quite bold patches of telling foliage and flower. The effect is kind of clean.. But then the variegated ground elder flowers. And to my eye the frothy flower, – see it there at the back left of the picture below, shown up by the darker hornbeam tunnel behind it? –  ruins the look of the front garden. It looks great elsewhere  where froth is what is needed. I noticed Charles taking this photograph of it last night and inwardly cringed. (never mind that horrible, soon to be replaced bird bath..) What look like dead sticks are the purple shrub which is soon to leaf up and add more zing to this scene..

See the contrast: (this is last year, before the box balls were removed – but you can see the spoilers…)

Now there’s also that pink…

And then, that thalictrum is – awful? It’s the pink thing on the left. It’s seen in bud below..

About to ruin the scene?

I don’t think it works with the wonderful orange of the euphorbia.  OR – the way they scream at each other does work???? There’s quite a bit of it  and I’ve never quite made up my mind.  But no-one has ever commented…..So – is it me being over fussy to concern myself? Should I bother to remove it or continue to puzzle about it?

Worse – we usually have a view down the drive at this time of year of this orange and purple combination backed by a pink Clematis montana growing all over the garage roof. Ouch! Which do I remove? You guessed – I haven’t..and no-one has ever complained..

But it is just these clumsy juxtapositions that destroy the look of a garden. And on the other hand, it is the joy of great combinations which lifts the heart and makes it all worthwhile. So it is an important, inescapable and relentless issue…

In the conservatory at Veddw we have a display of succulents, which we love and other people seem to, too. Makes for visitor entertainment when they are sheltering from the pouring rain.

Charles’ picture. They flowering.

Personally, I like them better when they’re not flowering.

Anne’s picture. Not flowering.

But Charles takes better pictures and likes them flowering.

Some time ago I noticed that occasionally a ‘leaf’, or whatever that bit of a succulent is called, drops off and starts rooting in the gravel all by itself.

And for some reason these look really cute. A sort of horticultural equivalent of kittens.

Though they are quite hard to take pictures of, if you’re me.

They even start flowering.

But of course, or of curse, what happens when I discover this is that I start picking them off and starting them in the gravel myself. And then I get preoccupied with whether they need watering or not. And generally I start fussing. And I’ve got myself an extra job.

Can’t just accept my blessings, can I? Got to meddle….

And please don’t ask what any are called – I do have labels somewhere but……not another job, please…

After writing about destruction, time to write about some mending. Some people will remember the removal of the box balls from the front garden.

Now Jeff has made created a new front garden for us (ish – the plants are all the same..)

Jeff starts work…

This was no small task, as the garden, in spite of appearances, is not rectangular. And it’s not level. So to get the railings looking right took a lot of brain work then a lot of careful adjustment. And it looks great – thanks, Jeff.

Railings!

We just need to get rid of that old birdbath which offends me, now. We are working on commissioning one from Chilstone, who are working very hard and patiently to create something so different from their usual designs. Watch this space – it’s scary! Our first sight of it will be when it arrives here…

Meanwhile, the fence which appears on the cover of Charles’ book  had disintegrated. With a little help from many years, weather and a club hammer.

Dead Fence

So, with help from Jeff, then much more help this time from Charles and me, we resurrected it. Much hard work, cursing, swearing and remembering happy times together making this garden. O, nostalgia..

Begining..

then…

It was all smiles…

And finally… result!

Arrival

and my favourite view of it

Love the contrast with the Leymus arenarius..

Veddw may not be an over gardened zone, but it does make demands. Last year three full grown trees – cotoneasters – died and had to be removed. A huge job and many thanks to Jeff for doing all that work.

That disaster was then followed by heavy snow – about 10 or 12 inches. (the joy of no editor: we can have inches, feet and yards here!).

Snow…frozen on stems.

The snow brought down the hollies which were planted in amongst the cotoneasters because they were suddenly without the support which had previously surrounded them. Squashed holly, all tangled up in remains of cotoneaster and vast amounts of flattened chaenomeles.

It was a miserable and frightening sight. This time we all had to get in to it, though Jeff and Charles did the majority (within a week I was also ill, and was sickening at the time). We hired a shedder – moving the stuff to the bonfire site was unthinkable, there was just such a vast amount of branches to cope with. We spent long enough just dragging out tangled branches, half of it on to the meadow. I despaired of clearing it all before the bulbs would be appearing and be trampled on in the work.

But! – the men got through it. Jeff shredded relentlessly – and that was no joke with a big heavy machine like that. Shred shred shred – and eventually it was all reduced to a pile of shreds. I called to halt to a rather over enthusiastic Charles, who was wielding his chain saw at, it appeared, everything, alive or dead.

Bulbs safely appeared

We cleared up. The bulbs arrived safely untrampled and we are left with – rather a sad absence of things. The hollies will recover and will replace the cotoneaster. I love holly – handsome, shiny evergreens, so I will be happy in the end. Some years hence. At the moment I am looking every day to see if the chaenomeles is going to green up. Some has a lot of green tips, others less…There are gaps, the view has changed and not for the better…

This is where people get all philosophical… Bugger that. It was a great loss- the cotoneasters used to be heavy and bowed down with branches laden with brilliant red berries in winter. The hollies were well grown and handsome. It was horrid, it IS horrid and only time and much mending will make it really right.

And, yes, that was all in addition to having to remove the box balls in the front garden. And – don’t ask….

Don’t ask….

Good job it’s a big and full garden.

Meadow now.

I’m sorry to begin another post with a disagreement with a much respected colleague, (see also) but here I go again. And it is also one of the joys of blogging that I can. Once we had to struggle to get a voice, now we can take one…

Nigel’s piece

I was just reading the RHS ‘Garden’ – perhaps because I’m in it.

My piece (on the RIGHT)

And Rory Stuart’s interesting book What Are Gardens For?  is both discussed and reviewed by Nigel Colborn VMH.(congratulations, Nigel.xxx) Nigel says – .

“But experiencing and admiring other people’s gardens, like studying pictures in a gallery or attending a performance of Lohengrin, is a passive occupation….the only part of you doing any work is your brain”

He goes on to suggest that the kind of gardens referred to in Rory’s book (which includes Veddw, as a matter of self promotion)

That squiggle is the author’s signature.Who’d have guessed?

have value ‘almost exclusively in their visual effect.’ Then, if I understand what he is saying, he suggests that the garden he enjoys is not one of those, but his own, where he finds ‘beauty and solace’ – brain activities perhaps? And privacy, gardening, wildlife, birdsong, butterflies. All of which, of course, may be found when visiting a garden, if you’re lucky. I think his point is that he energetically contributes to those outcomes in his own garden.

This is a curious concept of passive – that appreciating a work of art is passive. Brain work, sensations and emotions are hardly passive. But let that choice of word go. The suggestion is that gardening is superior to visiting gardens, which, maintaining the art analogy is like saying that that painting is better than studying a painting, and writing music superior to listening to it. Which seems daft, really – why the comparison??

I agree absolutely that they are different activities and that people who may prefer to avoid any contact with a spade or hoe may delight in visiting a great garden. Their delight may also be increased by reading Rory’s book and bringing a greater ability to appreciate what the garden offers as a result.

But both garden appreciation and gardening are active activities and comparing them at all seems a little pointless. And those plaudits for the virtues of gardening are becoming inescapable, like a prolonged and endlessly repeated advert on telly.

XXXXX Anne

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The book under discussion

I did some hand weeding the other day.

I know. I know. First time since never…. All the better to learn something then.

And I did – see if you agree. It was the creeping buttercup curse. I used to think I would never get on top of this. I have had colour schemes in the garden deliberately designed to allow for buttercup yellow in spring so that I could allow the bloody thing to get the better of me sometimes. But in the end I got the better – by close planting of vigorous perennials, all now well established. If there is much creeping buttercup I no longer notice it.

It has it’s little hideouts, but on the whole it is, I realise, a pest of new gardens. because I have a new garden ( a newish garden at Veddw – I haven’t moved)  and it is there, being a pest. There it was, trying to hide amongst the very similar leaves of Geranium macrorrhizum. Didn’t fool me. So a bit of weeding seemed to have to be.

So what did I learn? First – fingers are no good with that thing – you get very muddy and all to no avail as you pull away at it until – it snaps. OK.

So I went off for the tool shown above. Thought I’d get a grip..

But useless – there is no leverage to be had in soft earth so no way to get any more purchase than I had with my fingers. (However – it’s just the thing for removing paint tin lids). Back to the potting shed. For the Universal Tool

The Universal Tool

There is nothing like a bread knife for sooo many garden jobs. That did it – cut round the root with it and out the bugger came =

Got it.

Done.

Well, that one, anyway.

XXXX Anne

(If you subscribe, I will pop up now and then in your emails and terrify you!)

Sometimes I get really fed up of ‘lovely gardens’ and all the other lovelies…and then I remember this poem…

Everything In The Garden Is Lovely by Alasdair Aston

Even the fat slug

That drags its belly nightly

Over dank paving

And into the heart of the lettuce

Is lovely.

And the seething myriads in the ant-hill

Are lovely.

The stealthy, disruptive mole,

The grubbing, wet-nosed hedgehog

Are lovely.

And the millipede,

The centipede,

The sexually reproductive woodlouse

Are lovely.

The dung fly and the dung beetle

Are double lovely.

The burying beetle, the emmet,

The devil’s coach-horse, the dor

Are lovely.

Bean blight, leaf scab, club root,

Rose canker, cuckoo spit, wireworm

Cutworm, carrot fly, codlin,

Woolly aphis, apple weevil,

Leaf curl, algae,

Big bud, brown spot,

Rust, smut and mildew

Are all of them lovely.

And the flowers are lovely, too-

Nightshade, broomrape, henbane,

Love-lies bleeding and dead-men’s fingers,

Viper’s bugloss, red hot poker,

Wormwood, woundwort, rue.

And the gardener himself is lovely-

With one eye on the stable clock

And the other on lovely nothing,

Flat on his back where he fell.

The lovely flies walk in his lovely mouth.

Everything in the garden is lovely.

Alasdair Aston 1975

Dying creeping buttercup. is lovely..

I love it when Charles works on Veddw: his pictures are so much better than mine. It’s like keeping the garden, saving its best bits: he only does best bits. Professional photographers aren’t interested in the bits that don’t work. They don’t sell. Hence the deluded garden world.

Nor do people visit the garden and lie down a bench to view the garden sideways….so there’s another unreality…

I find Charles and his camera, especially Charles and his tripod, very sexy. Is this very peculiar? Couldn’t find a tripod pic so this will have to do.

But it’s not sexy.

Anne XXXX

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Monty Don started it apparently, suggesting everyone hunts around, under and in their pots and seed trays to find slugs. Yuk. And then, presumably, squish them..I didn’t see it. The thrills I miss. But I didn’t miss an article online telling us the slug is back. That despite the prolonged cold winter they are full of vim and vigour and prowling our plots once again.

Well, it is true that Veddw has not dried out for about 10 months now, so you would expect slugs to be in slimy slug heaven. But if they are, they must be feeling too lazy to get up, because I have, so far seen no sign.

And no – I haven’t gone searching under flower pots and crawling round the greenhouse looking. I have added a few judicious anticipatory slug pellets but seen no evidence of slugs lunching on them.

The first sign of slugs here is usually when I find, too late, that Ligularia dentata ‘Othello’ is full of holes. Which start small then grow and grow and grow until HUGE and disfiguring. The wonderful purple leaves get ruined. However – this year – one little hole in all the several plants. (see above)

I guess we’re just lucky, hey? Well, this year at least. Or the ‘slugs are back’ piece was (I have no doubt) filed a long time ago, in expectation..

I wonder why slugs like Ligularia and not this — ?

Rheum palmatum ‘Atropurpureum’

A wonderful plant, quite apart from slug free. See that red bit on the left? That is going to grow up and look totally, embarrassingly, unmissably obscene in a few days. Oooo.

XXX Anne

If you subscribe (see subscription thingy in right hand column) I may show you it when it has..erm.. grown a bit.

When I first had our seats made at Veddw I had to work out what colour to paint them.

Crocosmia Lucifer by seat

I tried lots of colours and found pink kind of worked – but I thought it was weird. Until I realised that the gravel, which is from a local quarry, is pink when wet. And when the fields are ploughed you can see – the soil is pink. Ours isn’t – is that the result of years of mulching, I wonder?

Pink field

Subscribe! Subscribe! and I’ll try to entertain you. See bottom of right hand column….. (and you could even buy the book..http://amzn.to/11oH527  ) XXXX Anne