The Gardening Lecturer - Gardeners deserve the best

How well is the average gardener catered for on mainstream TV? Not too well, it would seem. The new series of Gardener’s World (the UK’s flagship gardening TV program) is only a few weeks old, but already the knives are out - and not for taking cuttings. A serious question mark …

The Rural Gardener - Exploring Avenues New!

My mother in law was a farmer. She once told me that anybody who kept livestock should expect to have dead stock! This is sadly the obvious truth.  Not every lamb and calf survives a birth and now and then you loose an older animal who was a real character. My daughter’s cockerel Paxo who had become quite a local celebrity, eventually fell in a cattle trough and drowned.

What relevance do these ramblings have to a gardening blog, I hear you ask?

As I have mentioned before, I consider myself lucky to spend my days in such a pleasant working environment! Be under no illusion here, it takes time, thought, hard work and occasional moments of stress to create a new garden which fulfils a client’s desires and still comes in on budget! The ‘thought’ part often takes a lot of time developing, popping into my head when I am otherwise occupied with the weekly shopping list or the farm VAT return. So once the project is complete, it is quite normal to feel a certain ongoing emotional attachment…isn’t it?!

A garden is a living, growing creation. It changes throughout the seasons and develops year by year. Unlike producing a piece of furniture or a sculpture, producing a newly planted garden is not the end of the story. I do find it rewarding to be involved with the maintenance of the gardens I have designed. When you have a particular vision in mind, even the so called, ‘boring jobs’, are not that much of a chore. I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist and often the desire to achieve a particular effect, allows me to weed or prune manically for hours at a time.

I also work in a small number of gardens in which I have had no involvement at all with the design and original planting. One such garden is Vanessa Cook’s delightful country garden and nursery, Stillingfleet Lodge just South of York. http://www.stillingfleetlodgenurseries.co.uk/ Vanessa established the garden 30 years ago and I imagine will have her own memories of working out designs and planting many choice trees and shrubs, which are now mature specimens set amongst a series of separate gardens.

Now, my mother in law prepared me for the possibility of dead stock on the farm and in much the same way we need to be prepared for occasional losses in the garden too. This can be very sad, especially if the plant which dies has been there for over 20 years and is a big tree. You do become emotionally attatched to plants, and their loss can be quite upsetting. Just Imagine then loosing not one but ten trees! This was the situation at Stillingfleet in The Avenue last year.

The Avenue comprised of two double rows of five Sorbus esserteauana in an avenue of grass running between two 60 foot herbaceous/mixed borders. The trees were beautiful and also created shade during the summer. After two very wet years it became clear that all was not well with the trees and eventually all but the two top trees looked dead or sick.

Vanessa took the decision to remove all of the trees and create a completely new look Avenue! Although nobody would have wanted the trees to die, change in the garden is a natural part of it’s evolution. 

The work of removal and replanting was done during the winter when the garden is not open to the public. Two young chaps, wearing shorts, came in November to remove the bulk of the rootballs after the tops of the trees had been previously removed leaving about 4 foot trunks as levers to help rock the rootballs out.  Lifting the surrounding slabs and removing the remaining roots kept Mick and I warm enough during some chilly winter days. 

I am sure you will be desperate by now to know what has been planted in the new Look Avenue! I think I will leave this question unanswered until next week and let you think about what you might have done yourself! 

I would suggest that if you are close enough to visit the garden, do so. You will find details on the web site link above and as next Saturday is the first in the month the gardens are open. If you are not able to visit, there was an article in the April issue of The Garden about The Rill garden and I believe there will be one in the July issue about the wild flower meadow.

The Gardening Author - All fired up

Every now and again, I come across something that makes me realise how important gardening is in the lives of so many people. This time it was a visit to Harrogate, set in the rolling green fields and hills of North Yorkshire, to the Royal Horticultural Society’s garden at Harlow Carr and the Harrogate Spring Flower Show.

The weather was idyllic, with glorious warm spring sunshine and clear skies, and it brought people out in their hundreds. These are the gardeners who don’t need to rely on books or TV programmes because they learnt from their grandparents, parents and friends - and by making mistakes. Yes, they may need to consult a book about a new plant or a pest problem, and they probably devour magazine articles about new plants and techniques with a passion, but they are the people who get outside and do it. It would do “media” gardeners good to get out and attend shows like this and talk to real gardeners, rather than simply trying to dictate which plants are in or out of fashion.

The atmosphere was buzzing with enthusiasm at both places, although in differing ways according to the situation. The garden was a tapestry of colour as the early flowers and plants put on their displays, and both the stream area and Rhododendron woodland were stunning. I heard many an “ooh” and “aaah” at the site of a glorious flower or inspiring view and notebooks were being filled with ideas. There are many new developments happening at the garden to keep things topical and interesting, but also to provide a wonderful learning environment for the next generation. This is crucial, because in our work-obsessed lives, we are sometimes too busy to pass on what we know. The gardening we learnt from previous generations may be lost if we no longer choose, or have time, to put it into practice. 

At the Show, the hardest choice was what not to buy! When the growers have worked so hard to put on the best possible display and everything looks so good, you need ruthless self-control to select the plants that will actually live in your garden (and you have room for). Certainly, by the end of the afternoon, there were very few people going out of the gate without having bought something. By now, I’m sure most of those purchases will have pride of place in their new surroundings and be bringing joy to their new owners. It was infectious and, yes, I did buy a plant.

Our Rural Gardener mentioned last week that gardens nourish the soul and I whole-heartedly agree. Returning home, I felt a new enthusiasm for this hobby/career I have chosen and I can’t wait to get into the garden and put the new ideas I’ve had into practice.

Once it stops raining………

The Rural Gardener - The Power of Plants

Plants, as we all know, are necessary for our very survival. They provide oxygen, fuel, fibres for manufacturing in to clothing and other materials and medicine. We all rely on plants for food, either eaten directly or having been previously eaten by our Sunday roast!  

There was a report on the TV news recently about a new agri-industry in an upland area of Wales, where fields of daffodils have now replaced the sheep which traditionally grazed there. Apparently, it is now commercially viable to extract the Galanthamene produced by selected daffodil varieties, particularly those grown up in the hills. The Galanthamine is a natural alkaloid used in the treatment of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Whereas food, shelter, medicine and oxygen are all vital for our survival, plants provide us with something so much more than this.

As I saw the daffodils on the TV report, I felt somehow uplifted! Now don’t get me wrong, I imagine that eventually the sight of acres of daffodils could be a novelty that wears off, as with any mono-crop. But for now, the sight was so unexpected and even viewed on the screen it made me smile. I am sure that we have all experienced these little moments that focus our attention, however briefly on some display or other produced by plants. Woods carpeted with bluebells, that favourite familiar tree which you recognise apart from any other and the scent of honeysuckle flowers on a warm evening…these are things which make life worth living.

As a gardener, I like to create a practical space for my clients that fulfils their specific requirements. I also feel it is equally important to create a garden that gives us a little soul food! A garden should stimulate the senses and can be as beautiful or thought provoking as any painting or sculpture.

It has been well documented that there is an increasing number of people interested in growing their own fruit, veg and salad due to the recession (programmes such as River Cottage have had an influence too I suspect) Producing tasty fresh food for the table will hopefully be enough of a reward for many new gardeners to continue with growing for years to come. After all, there is something quite magical about sowing your own seed and being involved at every stage of the process of producing food. 

Spending time out in the garden to tend the vegetables is something I am all for encouraging. Much of the enjoyment gained from home produce comes from actually producing it and being in touch with the garden environment. During the war years, many people had to devote their gardens purely to the production of food crops. Luckily this is not currently necessary. We still have choice available to grow whatever makes us happy! Surely this is exactly what we all need to cheer us up. 

Herbs are really easy to grow and apart from being useful, many are scented and attractive. Lemon balm, Melissa officinalis is a perennial which grows to approximately 50-60cm. It has very fragrant lemon scented leaves and is attractive to bees even though the white flowers seem rather insignificant. As with most herbs, you can cut it back regularly through the growing season to keep it tidy and producing young fresh leaves. It grows easily from cuttings and does seed about if you let it. The leaves can be used to make a refreshing tea, much nicer than many of the expensively packaged herbal teas available commercially! It can also be used in stuffings for lamb and pork and tastes really refreshing in fruit drinks and I like to put some in with stewed gooseberries.

Thyme comes in many varieties and the common garden thyme, Thymus vulgaris  which is used in  bouquet garni  is a useful cooking herb. It grows to approximately 45cm and is an evergreen perennial with mauve flowers in the summer. A cup of hot thyme tea with honey at bedtime is supposed to help you sleep and the plant also has antiseptic qualities and has been used medicinally for hundreds of years. There are many varieties of thymes available with green, silver and gold foliage and flowers of white, pink, mauve and purple and if you plant an area of low growing ones in a sunny spot, the carpet effect produced looks lovely. The scent and the bees provide the soul food I am talking about!  Obviously there are hundreds of herbs suitable for different spots in the garden and this is only one group of plants! 

Planting Spring flowering bulbs in the Autumn gives something to look forward to during the winter months. To add to the pleasure of seeing the flowers brighten up the garden in Spring, many can be cut and enjoyed indoors as well.  

Most gardens have space for at least one carefully selected tree. Perhaps as the economy improves and we all feel a little more financially secure, we could all continue growing our own produce and use the money we save to buy a special tree! 

Some of the Acers make lovely trees for all but the smallest of gardens.  Acer griseum,  the Paper-bark maple is a slow growing deciduous tree with orange peeling bark and is an attractively shaped tree which looks good throughout the year. It’s green 3 palmate leaves turn orange and red and scarlet in the autumn.

Never underestimate the power of your plants and the ways in which they can affect your everyday life!

The Natural Pest Control Consultant - Some tips to help protect new plantings

Gardening retailers are reporting healthy Easter sales, the sun is shining and it is budget day as I write this, oh well you cant have everything… However what a great start to spring. I am off to Harrogate flower show at the end of the week and am looking forward …

The Gardening Author - Newsworthy or not?

Every Friday as I sit down with the main UK gardening trade magazines to write the newsletter for our website, I’m struck by the sheer quantity of news that has been found. Some is need-to-know, some is nice-to-know and some is, frankly, irrelevant to anyone without a specific interst in whatever subject it is (well, how much does anyone else need to know about a sports turf aerator, for instance?).

One of these magazines covers matters pertaining to the many municipal parks departments throughout the country, so they will have articles about amenity matters, training and awards for excellence. It’s good to know that so many of these hard-pressed departments are still upholding the tremendous heritage we have in the UK of the park as a place within a town or city where you can walk, sit, play or even learn. These are fantastic resources and it is a crime that some have decayed over the years. One of my own personal favourites, Sefton Park in Liverpool, is about to have a major makeover and resoration. Designed as the winning entry in a competition, this superb area contained lakes, cascades, fountains, a grotto and a palm house. What a place to show children how horticulture can be used!

Other news is aimed at growers of both plants and fruit, which is where I try to keep up with new introductions and practices. The surveys they conduct are both interesting and useful for me in terms of what we need to film for the home grower visiting the website. For instance, the UK consumer will spend up to £1.99 on a punnet of fruit, but above that, they consider it a luxury and tend not to buy it unless it’s a special occasion. As a result, the size of the average fruit punnet is shrinking. Now, when you bear in mind how easy strawberries, for example, are to grow (and how few fit into the small size of punnet), this tells me that growing strawberries at home is going to make economic sense at the moment, so we have covered it.

Wherever possible, I try to make sure that the news I put into the weekly newsletter is as relevant as possible to the home reader. If there’s a good offer to be had, then it goes in, such as a recent offer by the bulb suppliers de Jaeger for a free bulb planting guide. It’s getting harder to do this now we have subscribers from so many different countries, as I have to make sure that the offer concerned can be obtained by e-mail, but I’m working on it.

News is fascinating, whether it is general news on tv every evening or specific news about your subject once a week. I don’t understand people who say “Oh, I never watch the news” because to me, that’s like not breathing! The world happens around us, and we might not like all of what happens, but it does happen and ignoring it won’t make it go away.

The Natural Pest Control Consultant - Water conservation the next “organic”?

A couple of wet summers in the UK have slowed up media interest in water as a valuable resource. However who knows what will happen this summer? Will we see pictures of dried reservoirs and read about the number of leaking pipes in our capital city? One thing is for …

The Gardening Lecturer - Level playing field

I work on four different radio stations; three of them are a regular commitment and the last is on an ad hoc basis, but probably amounts to about six broadcasts a year. It puzzles me why gardening is given such a low profile and low priority by many stations, especially when …

The Rural Gardener - The Perfect Garden

What makes the perfect garden? 

To some people it is a well tended, weed free lawn where as others would choose a wild flower meadow alive with butterflies and bees. Perhaps your dream garden is full of roses, hollyhocks and honeysuckle and enclosed by a white picket fence? Or maybe you sit shelling home grown peas on a wrought iron seat in a French style potager garden. Your perfect outdoor space could be somewhere to spend time with friends on long summer evenings or a secluded place to hide and read a book. Maybe your perfect garden is simply a safe area where the dog or the children can burn off excess energy.

Occasionally I have been been asked to design a garden for clients who claim they have no interest in the garden, they just want somewhere that is maintenance free and looks tidy. I do not believe there is such a thing as a maintenance free garden, any more than I believe there are people who can’t be given a garden to interest them!

A garden can be as individual as you are. We don’t all share the same taste in food, holiday destinations, clothes, hobbies and music and therefore our perfect garden will not necessarily be identical to any other. Different personalities and priorities can greatly influence our homes and gardens. There are those amongst us who can not tolerate dust or clutter in the home and would not feel comfortable with weeds in the garden.  Some people have little interest in the aesthetics of a room, only concerning themselves with it’s functionality and may take a similar approach to their garden.

As Garden Design as a whole is too big a subject to discuss here, I will be taking a brief look at a few specific areas over the next few weeks.  I have written briefly about paths and rabbit proofing and will be covering screens and hedges as garden divisions/boundaries, followed by Seating areas soon. If there are any particular subjects you would find interesting, please let me know!

Remember the clients who had no interest in the garden? One man in particular…(he knows who he is!) presented quite a challenge for me. In trying to generate some interest and enthusiasm, I suggested a seating area. He thought about this for a while and then informed me that they didn’t sit in the garden. I asked if they actually had a seat…no they didn’t, he admitted! We finally agreed that a willow arbour would provide a good focal point even if they never sat in it and would look right in the garden which was designed to attract birds and butterflies. Once the garden was planted up and the willow arbour established, the whole place quickly filled with birds which always happens when you provide feeders and height in the form of trees and shrubs. Not only did they use the willow arbour seat on a regular basis, they also requested further seating areas in the garden to fully experience different aspects of the garden. 

If you do not yet love your garden, search your heart and decide what you want to use it for. Over the years our garden has been a football pitch, camp sight, venue for birthday parties, somewhere to tether pet lambs and set up a dog agility course. It has been frequented by cats, kittens, dogs, puppies, ferrets, calves, hens, a pet cockerel called Paxo, guinea pig, rabbits and a shire horse. One year my step father dressed as a giant yellow rooster, in a costume clearly not designed for a man of over 6 feet and proceeded to lay creme eggs around the garden as a surprise for our daughter on her Birthday. The garden has been used for bicycle repairs, moped repairs and hanging out the washing. It has provided a safe play area… then in later years a ’not so safe’ zip line constructed by the children between the oak tree and an ornamental cherry! It has educated through plants and creatures and given us produce to eat!

Gardens are about far more than plants and everybody should use their outdoor space for something! My daughter, home from university over Easter, took this photo of a goldfinch taking santolina from the garden. We assume it will be using it to line a nest, I like to think it will benefit from the natural pest repellant and fresh clean smell! Emma also told me to check out some of the moss grafitti websites.www.storiesfromspace.co.uk/data/html/mossgraffiti.html

Don’t be afraid to do your own thing, whatever that may be!

The Gardening Author - Ghost in the machine

Is ghost-writing justified? Should the personality concerned simply admit that they no longer have the time (or inclination) to write their own work? Is it purely vanity that makes them want to say “Ive written 50 books” rather than “I’ve written 40 books”? Of course it is … but it’s also the royalties it will bring and the fact that it gets them back on the chat show circuit being interviewed and back into the public eye. The bigger question is: is it professional prostitution to actually do the writing?

You could argue that any writing is better than none, especially in lean times when the bills still have to be paid, but it’s a fact that ghost writing is poorly paid (most of the money goes to the celebrity) and it undermines the ability of writers generally to get work in their own right. It also strengthens the position of the book companies when they insist that only the “big names” sell books these days.

I have mixed feelings about it, but it’s not a subject I can view from both sides, as I can’t envisage a situation where someone is ghosting for me! I have more respect for the “name” if they do actually read the text before it goes to print to make sure they endorse what it contains and change things if they feel it’s necessary. There was an instance in gardening a few years ago where a less-than-qualified author wrote the text for a particular gardening presenter (who claimed he was too busy to read it) and it went into print containing some indefensible errors. It left both book and “author” open to critism.

Overall, ghosting serves a purpose and, of course, if I take the moral high ground and refuse to do it, someone else will jump at the chance, so I’m not going to! It seems that writing is like so many other jobs in that the reality doesn’t match the perception. I wish it were the case that I could simply take an idea to a publisher and have them take it up, but the few times we’ve done that, the idea has been refused - only to reappear some time later under another author’s name. Ah well, you live and learn. Better to get a cheque and no recognition than no cheque at all.

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