{"id":7580,"date":"2020-07-05T17:24:41","date_gmt":"2020-07-05T17:24:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=7580"},"modified":"2020-07-05T17:24:42","modified_gmt":"2020-07-05T17:24:42","slug":"its-growing-on-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=7580","title":{"rendered":"It’s Growing On Me"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

My evolution into Fotherington Thomas is complete (a \u2018wet and a weed\u2019, according to Molesworth). It\u2019s all \u2018Hello sky, hello trees\u2019 these days and now, finally, after over thirty years, I\u2019ve developed warm feelings towards my garden. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the beginning I largely ignored it, and it wasn\u2019t until, yes, The Blessed Alan Titchmarsh appeared on our screens with his gardening course that I decided to get a grip. There was a moment, though, when I nearly got sucked into virtual gardening, because it was such fun to match a plant with the type of location that favoured it, then click and drag your little bergenia or whatever to the right spot and be rewarded with a big green tick. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s been an extremely shallow learning curve. How many\nseasons has it taken me to learn that you really can cut stuff back hard and it\nwill regrow lustily \u2013 as long as you do it at the right time. I can still see\nthe look of mingled pity and horror on a colleague\u2019s face when I told him on\none October Monday morning that I\u2019d given the mock orange a fierce pruning over\nthe weekend. And he was right to be appalled, as the mock orange joined my casualty\nlist. Similarly, shrubs in our garden have spent years in suspended animation,\nneither growing nor dying, as they struggle to establish themselves in the\ninadequate planting holes I\u2019ve dug for them: too small, too tight, the soil too\ncompacted for their poor little roots to find succour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Lone crocus<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The internet has been a godsend. In the early years I had to rely on books but I could never find the answers to my questions in the index. Clearly I was asking about problems that proper gardeners didn\u2019t even register as a thing. Now I can google any daft question and it comes as a huge comfort to realise that many out there have grappled with the same issue and I can benefit from their advice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Much of my annoyance with the garden was because I felt that I put in a lot of effort only to end up with a comedy garden. If I\u2019d done nothing and settled for the unkempt look, I could at least have been relaxing with a book and getting an even tan on my legs. But no, I\u2019d been out there digging and stooping and hauling, and for what? The Single Flower ( a speciality of mine \u2013\u2013 see pic), the red hot pokers that ended up as long black sticks, the gigantic mallow that had only one flower at the end of each waving branch, like a demented triffid in training.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the horrors I had to face just for this: the\nstomach-turning beer traps full of rotting slugs; the trellises turned turned\nmulti-storey snail parks, which on closer inspection turn out to be love hotels\nand nurseries; the not-so-deeply buried cat poo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Look, no black spot!<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Looking round it today, though, I realise I\u2019m happy with it. It will never be manicured, but there is little bare earth to be seen and some lowly bedding plants I thought would last only one summer have become cherished friends blooming year after year despite, if not because of, my benign neglect (yes, I\u2019m talking about you, peach dascia).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s more, by now it\u2019s full of associations: here\u2019s the holly bush planted over the ashes of our beloved family cat Holly, here the hydrangea my sister gave me (and the plucky box shrub from her is now rallying after two seasons of box blight). My late father-in-law\u2019s spiraea is just finishing, and the purple loosestrife we bought from the South London Botanical Institute, the curious Kew-in-miniature just round the corner from us, has completed its invasion of the back to the largest bed. Hello flowers, hello bees \u2013 I rest my case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

the multi-storey snail parks turn out on closer inspection to be love hotels and nurseries<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7582,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,297,298,67,182,55],"tags":[299,300,301],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7580"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7580"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7599,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7580\/revisions\/7599"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}