Unfathomable mysteries of the garden
Karen Roe/Beaulieu Abbey, Palace & Gardens 22-09-2012/Flickr
It must be said that some of the dames are not as green-fingered as they’d like to be.
Earlier in the spring they were quite enjoying everyone’s beautiful garden pictures, but now a couple of us are starting to get a bit narked – yes, naked envy is rearing its ugly head.
Year after year the same obstacles crop up and none of the gardening books offers any answers. (The problems themselves aren’t even mentioned in the index!) So in case anyone out there has the answers, here is a selection of our various gripes:
1. How are you supposed to get at half the stuff you need to tend? Every year I try to grow sweet peas (not from seed – I know my limitations). There is a sunny place for them by the fence and netting for them to cling to. But of course in planting them, I have to trample across the flower bed, compacting the sodden London clay. As they begin to flower, other things in the bed are coming up, so getting to the sweet peas to tie them in and cut off the blooms becomes more and more like a game of horticultural twister as I try to find somewhere to put the other foot down. None of the books ever warns you about this.
2. What is the real secret of pruning? Anxious to do things by the book, I ‘cut back to a few inches above ground level’ three shrubs – I can tell now that I will never see them again. Somewhere, I imagine, the authors of these books are having a jolly good laugh at the hapless fools (or fool? . . . perhaps it’s just me) who took them at their word. Meanwhile, the weigela, on which I am advised to ‘cut back flowering branches lightly once blooms have faded’, is now looking like a triffid.
3. Why does my garden specialise in the single bloom? As I knelt shivering in the autumn twilight, dibbing with my dibber and planting dozens of bulbs, I kept myself warm with visions of the drifts of spring flowers I would be rewarded with. I got one yellow crocus. It was followed by one white jonquil. For several years I got one purple fritillary. Even that failed to show up this year. I have also in my time had a solitary hollyhock and a lone red-hot poker. I just despair.
4. How can I keep my neighbour’s vine under control? Each year I get the secateurs out, but before I know it those green tendrils are on the loose again, seeking entry into my garden shed, occupying the space between it and another neighbour’s wall, where I can’t attack it, and smothering the honeysuckle. I wouldn’t mind, but the grapes are small and bitter, and the vine unstoppable. What if it joins forces with the weigela?
5. Do oak barrels have a sell-by date? I have grown herbs in my barrel for years, but now my thyme is getting distinctly woody and the sage has disappeared completely, although the little bay tree is soldiering on. Should I turf the whole lot out and start again, or am I just trying to cram too much into one container? Help is needed, as my meals are becoming rather bland!
And finally, where oh where can I get unbreakable solar lights that actually illuminate? I have learnt not to place them in flower beds, where the dog seems to be determined to dig them up, and now just put them in containers, but the light is still very weedy. Is there a Rolls-Royce garden solar light?
Answers on a postcard please, or at least in the comment column below. There must be some greener-fingered dames out there.