Life must be filled up

The trees are in full, fresh green leaf, candles on the horse chestnuts, cow parsley and hawthorn in the hedgerows and they’re playing cricket up at the Sports and Social club (which everyone calls the cricket club). It must be spring. You’d think I’d lived long enough not to be surprised by spring but I am, every year. It seems that one day, the garden is full of daffodils and primroses and the next, the daffodils are all deadheaded, the primroses fading and the Aquilegias and foxgloves starting to stand tall.
Here’s what’s in flower now. I should have gone round with a notebook but this is just from memory.
Shrubs. Japonica (Chaenomeles, quince) is almost over. The tree peony over and done. A white clematis which I thought was dead. Weigela. Azalea starting. The pale pink cistus which grew so much bigger than I expected it to. Climbing roses with fewer buds than they had last year, Berberis with yellow flowers.
Perennials. Erigeron karvinskianus (slashed to the ground earlier in the year) in beds and paving cracks. Hardy geraniums. Geum bulgaricum. Gladiolus byzantinus (which never showed last year) has its first flower open. Lily of the Valley, another plant I thought I’d lost, is no longer filling a bed and spreading everywhere but has formed an orderly line and started to flower. London Pride, another which shrivelled last year (and I thought they were indestructible!) is flowering, if in smaller clumps than before. Aquilegias are flowering, purples, pinks, whites; all self-seeded, nothing fancy. Foxgloves taller every day and some showing colour. Solomon’s Seal now in full flower. Pulonarias. The totally tough perennial cornflowers. A basket which I put together a while ago and has been living in the greenhouse, is now getting a daily airing before being hung up for the summer.

Nothing is so beautiful as Spring –
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
I must have quoted this many times in my journal but it’s always true.

There was a strange weather phenomenon yesterday. In the afternoon we had a thunderstorm, with rain bucketing down, When I went to draw the upstairs curtains in the evening, a layer of mist was hovering over the field next door. I could see my garden clearly but beyond that, just the tops of trees in the distance. Weird and beautiful.

Today we had a ‘scheduled power cut’ for ‘essential maintenance’. The only thing I hate less than an unscheduled power cut. I had to think of things to do which didn’t require electricity or much light, so I set about some much-delayed dusting and polishing. I even cleaned some silver! This house is sparkling, I tell you, sparkling. It’s not often I can say that (almost never, actually). There may be more ‘interruptions to your power supply’ on Monday. Our road will be closed except for access while the electricity chaps dig a large hole right in the middle of my roadside hedge (good luck with that), put in a new telegraph pole, transfer the cables and remove the old pole. Oh great, men all over my garden for a day. Such fun!

In garden news, while some areas have been flooded and the Test Match at Lord’s was rained off yesterday, we’ve had hardly any rain at all. My gardener has emailed me to say he’ll come tomorrow to ‘tidy’ the grass. Ha, ha! What grass? There are a few weeds to be removed. I’ve suggested another useful job he might do, which is too much for me to manage. Only my pots and baskets are worth looking at because I am strict about not watering the garden proper. The plants must take their chances and, if they can’t cope, be replaced. I keep meaning to put up a list of plants which are doing well in spite of the drought.

I took these photos before the storms. There are now far more daffodils out; there’s a bed full of miniature ones. Up the road, there are large trumpet daffodils flowering, which seems very early. The solitary large, purple crocus, which comes up every year by the bird bath is flowering now and there are pale, wild-looking crocuses in the grass. It’s no use putting crocus in beds because the mice and squirrels get them.
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My goodness, my Trudy post yesterday was surprisingly popular.

The first thing I saw when I pulled up one of the kitchen blinds this morning was that my pink double hellebore has started flowering. No picture, because it’s hanging its head. At last, I’ve achieved my ambition of having hellebores and snowdrops flowering together in the same bed. The snowdrops there are ones I’d moved. Most of my snowdrops are on a bank and last year I transplanted a clump further along. Hurrah, they’ve taken and are flowering. My hope is one day to have colonies of them all the way along the bank. I grow on any hellebore seedlings I find and one is about to flower. I’m so keen to see what it’s like and decide whether it’s worth keeping, that I’ve put it right outside the kitchen door.

The bad? The second thing I saw was the remains of a large bird. When I went out, I found it was mostly feathers and in three parts, likely to blow around. Our instructions for dead creatures, like mice, are to double wrap them and put them out with ordinary rubbish. I was armed with two bags and, gingerly and shuddering the whole time, disposed of these remains as demanded. Ugh. It’s nice to see birds but not to handle them, especially when they’re dead.

Driving home a couple of days ago, I was struck by how quickly everything has turned green. And the cow parsley is out! Just what May should be. In the garden, though, all is not well. I reckon we’re about a month behind a ‘normal’ year. I can tell this because it should be Chelsea time and the right flowers are not out. This is mainly due to cold and lack of sun. I’ve only ventured out to bring in the bins this morning and the wind was biting! How can the poor plants thrive?

I’ve already mentioned the shrivelled hydrangea. I have a Clematis montana on a fence, a plant I’ve always thought was tough as old boots. I keep noticing that the only green on the fence is from ivy creeping in from the field. Seeing nothing but white wood, I thought the whole thing was dead; closer inspection shows a few leaves, shrivelled up like those on the hydrangea. Last year, the whole fence was covered in pink flowers. Will I see any this year? Then there’s the hardy fuchsia, which should be four feet tall by the end of summer. When I went to prune it, I could see no buds on it at all. I was ruthless and cut it right down. Yesterday, I noticed one new shoot at the base, so I may be lucky. The other main problem is all those plants in the greenhouse which should be hardening off. I haven’t the heart to put the poor things outside in the cold wind.

Thank you, plants which flourish whatever the weather: primroses, aquilegias, osteospermums (although the flowers only open in sun), perennial cornflower, spurges and that wonderful plant Erysimum ‘Bowles’ Mauve’, which is covered in flowers and glows violet at dusk. The garden is full of foxgloves again this year but although I think of them as a ‘Chelsea’ flower, they are way off flowering yet. Lily of the Valley and London Pride are flowering cheerfully as is a gorgeous Solomon’s Seal. What was I complaining about?

PS, after looking out of the window: hawthorn, quince, a Cerinthe which over-wintered and the first hardy geraniums.

Years ago, a nice old boy came to give a talk to the Horticultural Society. To my delight, he called hydrangeas hy-dee-rangers. His advice was good, though. Yesterday, on Gardeners’ World, Monty Don pronounced that now is the time to prune hydrangeas. Hmm. I always used to do them in March, work a little rose fertiliser round them and let them get on with it. That’s why I like them: one job, once a year and months of flower. This year, we are still having quite heavy frosts every morning, so I’ll be postponing that pruning for a while.

Sissinghurst. An Unfinished History, Adam Nicolson 2008
My Garden World, Monty Don 2020

Adam Nicolson and Monty Don are almost exact contemporaries (Nicolson describes Don as a friend since university days) and they have a lot in common. Both are keen on the environment and on sustainability. Both have fond memories of the countryside of their childhoods, which has vanished. The difference is that Monty Don lives in a house (or two) which he bought, whereas Nicolson inherited Sissinghurst. Well, sort of. The National Trust began as an idealistic venture to preserve the countryside for the whole nation. Increasingly, and especially after the Second World War, owners of grand houses were persuaded (usually by snobby old James Lees-Milne) to give their inheritance to the Trust. Not only did they thus save millions in inheritance tax but as ‘donor families’, they were allowed to live in their ancestral homes. This has always seemed to me a strange anomaly. What happens when, as described in this book, the donor doesn’t like the way the Trust administers things?

Sissinghurst has only been in the Nicolson family for eighty years, so hardly counts as ancestral in the way that Knole would, had Vita Sackville West been able to inherit it. The first part of Adam Nicolson’s book is a lyrical and beautiful description of his childhood exploring the Kentish countryside around Sissinghurst, with small farms, hop harvests and great characters. When he moves on to a detailed history of Sissinghurst he is less successful, in my view, because some of his ‘history’ seems to me to be purely speculative. Nicolson’s father, Nigel, adored Sissinghurst and when he died, Adam continued the tradition. But he was dissatisfied. Where was the holistic (as he saw it) use of the countryside? The connection of the house to the land? He wanted to reintroduce farming and to grow organic vegetables to feed the hordes of visitors. This set the cat amongst the pigeons all right. I did see some of the television programme about this and I could see how he and his wife Sarah Raven might get up the noses of people who’d been (as they saw it, successfully) doing things a certain way for years.

At one of the many meetings, Simon Jenkins, then Chairman of the Trust, said, ‘Adam has an agrarian vision, wants to return Sissinghurst to the conditions of his childhood in the 1960s. Why should the National Trust do that? Other people, who work there are just as attached to the highly successful Sissinghurst of the 1980s or the 1990s. Why should Adam’s vision of a dream world have priority over any other? Why is his childhood important?’
Harsh but fair, I think, although I was shocked, reading the book, by just how rude some people were to the Nicolsons. The battle has been partly won and vegetables are grown for the restaurant. It remains to be seen how many more battles Adam Nicolson will win and what his son will do when his turn comes.

By the way, I have never visited Sissinghurst and I don’t want to because the garden is too perfect. The only place for a perfect garden is at the Chelsea Flower Show, in my opinion. I’d much rather visit a garden featured in the Yellow Book, worked in by its owners. I wouldn’t mind the weeds.
( Monty Don )

The heating may be on but summer hasn’t given up yet.

See here https://callmemadam.livejournal.com/667649.html

I bought this cyclamen (https://callmemadam.livejournal.com/666410.html) in a sale at the garden centre just after last Christmas. They had it outside but under cover, so I wasn’t sure if it should grow indoors or outside. To be on the safe side, I put it on the same cool windowsill where I grow orchids. To my delight, after being watered carefully during the year, it’s flowering again, as you see.

Yesterday afternoon, we had one of the wildest spells of weather I’ve ever experienced. First, it was black as night. Then the wind started whipping trees and shrubs about and then, whoosh! In the space of about five minutes a deluge turned the road into a fast-running stream, there was a huge puddle at the base of the drive and standing water on part of the garden where this sometimes happens. Within half an hour the sun was out and everything calm again. While peering out of one of my kitchen windows to see the damage I noticed that a white cyclamen is also flowering in the garden, but it's the type where the flowers appear before the leaves.

I’ve already been round the garden picking up chunks of oak tree which had come down and no sooner had I got indoors, than it began raining out of a sunny sky. So bizarre. I did say ‘things’, plural, to please. The cyclamen are two. Another is that I’m now eating my own tomatoes and have a fine crop of peppers on the way.

There are photos of pink flowers in my garden on LJ.