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I have never felt so privileged, to have a two acre garden in the country and a partner to be locked down in it with. For so many people in this pandemic this is luxury beyond belief. So I thought I would cheer some of those people up a little with some schadenfreude, and tell of the latest garden disasters.

We all know that every garden is lovely, but Veddw may be an exception. Veddw is not a garden of Eden: it is full of worries and problems. Our evening walk in the garden is a strange mix of pleasure, wine, adding to the ‘to’do’ list – and feeling sick about some of the nasties.

Many of you will be aware that we have been tortured by box blight. Our originally ‘free’ hedges, grown from someone else’s clippings, have become a major expense, with spraying to contain the blight. This has caused real grief to all of us every time a new outbreak is discovered. I console myself every time we see it worse, (see below) but really other people’s suffering is small consolation. I will write here one day about how we’ve decided to deal with this long term and how successful (or not) that is.

Blight in Cardiff city centre. We have never yet (fingers crossed) had it this bad.
Am I tempting fate?? We do still have box hedging like this.

And now, we have holly blight. The hollies in the wood are mostly destroyed. The standard hollies we grew from babies are ruined. Holly blight attacks from the bottom of the plant, so there is no possibility of trimming it off and it looking ok on a standard and the dead branches will never regrow.

Still standing. What do you suggest?

I persuaded Charles to grow ivy up the standards in the Veg Plot, in order to take over from the holly at the top one day. Then, surprise, surprise, someone accidentally cut the ivy off one of the trees.

We have now, after much time and grief, beheaded them. We now wait to see what we think of having ivy pillars.

You can see the naked post on the right….

Elsewhere Charles just cut down the remnant of a magnificent Ilex x altaclerensis ‘Camelliifolia’ which we were foolish enough to admire last winter. We will see whether it will regrow. If it does, then there will be more executions.

You see the holly remnants in the trailer….

Then – maybe the worst, because this is our own fault. We could have prevented this. We left a tap dripping over a long long time. Then it rained all winter (or most of it). We should have drained the pool, because the excessive wet has killed some of our yew hedge.

This was due to the pool overflowing too often…
This to a continually dripping tap. Be warned.

We were disappointed last autumn when we were going to be filmed for Great British Gardens, but then we were not because they needed another garden nearby in Wales for some filming reason. (check it out – yes, they are all in geographical pairs!). I don’t know what Coronavirus has done to the filming but this is one spring when we’re now feeling quite relieved to not have a film crew here.

So, what other disasters can I cheer you up with? Last year we discovered a rose (Moonlight) suddenly revived and flowering. This spring we find it dodo like…..

The Cornfield Garden is in its third attempt. We have spent much money on plants for the latest attempt. We began the spring with a crop of novel weeds from the mulch. Then we waited for our proper plants to appear. And waited, waited, still waiting…

This morning….

Remember that blue wood anemone I mentioned? Not long after its mention and worldwide fame we visited the Coppice to find that we couldn’t find it. I have no idea what ate it but it’s not the only thing to get chomped….

And, sigh, what about the lawn mower service and repair which cost an arm and many legs? We were looking forward to the brake being sorted. I have come to hate this machine, which Charles pointed out cost the same as a small car, because it is supposed to STOP when you take your foot off the accelerator. But it doesn’t. There is no foot-brake, so the only way to bring it to a sudden emergency halt is to step on the reverse pedal. Which, as you’ve no doubt worked out, could have disastrous consequences as you abruptly cannon backwards.

So after the ££££££ service was this mended? It wasn’t. Thanks Countax for a mower with safety features which drive me mad (it stops cutting when you reverse) which I am scared to use.

And no, I am not now going to end in that classic depressing way with a cheerful reminder to count our blessings. But I will give you a nice flower to cheer us all up.

The montanas are out…
Anne Wareham portrait

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