Life must be filled up

Watching Gardeners’ World yesterday evening, I was intrigued to see Joe Swift learning how to make Kokedama, or hanging plants encased in moss. I see this is a trend which has swept the globe but passed me by. Behind the times as usual. I liked what I saw on Gardeners’ World: a shed with hanging plants dangling along the front. I’m less keen on the idea of having these indoors and also put off by the high maintenance. Watering my pots and baskets is one thing, soaking a root ball every day quite another. So is it genius or a daft idea which I suspect exposes plants to too much potential root drying? Opinion seems widely divided between, ‘Gosh, what fun!’ and ‘Pah! What a messy waste of time!’ Anyone had a go?

There are tutorials on YouTube and lots of examples on Pinterest.



Photo from here.

Possibly these works of art are more suited to a city garden than to one in the country. And we're kidding ourselves if we think we can make our gardens look Japanese. You just have to be Japanese to understand how their gardens work. Or so I think.

It’s raining steadily today, which means there will be fewer outside sellers and car booters down at the market but I decide to go anyway; I’ve nothing else to do. First off I see some fine plants for sale and snap up this Pelargonium ‘Cornish Flair’ for £3.50.



As I’m first on the scene I pick the best one, with lots of buds. When this variety was introduced, plants cost about £20.00 each, so I’m pleased. New geranium stowed safely in the car, I make my way inside and buy a new-old basket to replace the ancient one which is becoming a barbed menace to fellow shoppers. The seller says gallantly that he will tell his wife the basket has gone to ‘an equally lovely lady’. He reduces the price, too. ( inside )

At the market this morning I fell in love with this plant and had to take it home. It's Ornithogalum dubium or Snake Flower. Usually one thinks of Ornithogalum as white and green but this stunner is brilliant orange. At £2.00 a pot they were selling like hot cakes as house plants. The label instructs that they can be put in the garden after flowering: we shall see. After stocking up on free range eggs and fruit and veg. as usual I also bought three books by Katie Fforde as I've never read any before

It was quite a day for book buying as there was a book fair in town. I was very pleased to get Barbara Comyns' Our Spoons Came From Woolworths after enjoying Sisters by a River so much. As well as the pile shown here I got a couple more plus a number of very early issues of Collins Magazine, which promises a happy evening. In the afternoon I went back to the book fair to meet up with D. (waves) for browsing, coffee and yet more shopping. It was a good way to spend a rainy day.

I finished knitting and sewed up cybersofa's pullover.

The cheap plant man at the market sold me a lovely bowl of white hyacinths for the kitchen windowsill plus an unusual cyclamen which was only 50p!

I made a cake, opened a tin to put it in and found two mince pies which had been made before Christmas. They looked good as new but went down the waste disposer.

A combination of wind, rain and antibiotics has kept me out of the garden and stopped me planting the vegetables. Never mind, everything is looking green.



A couple of weeks ago I cut all the old brown fronds off this lovely Shield Fern Polystichum setiferum so as to enjoy watching the new ones unfurl. As it's right by the back door, under the tap, I never miss anything.

Here is a logpile, beloved of ecologists and no doubt seething with life. The fern has seeded itself and I'm wondering if I could dig up a root of Solomon's Seal and persuade it to grow here, as I think it would look rather well.



I'm not keen on too much variegated foliage in a garden but this one is jolly



Astrantia major 'Sunningdale Variegated'. I wonder if Linda Snell has planted it at Ambridge Hall? Another very good variegated plant is Lysimachia punctata 'Alexander's'. The early foliage looks like this



and it keeps its variegation all summer. It's just the old Yellow Loosestrife with pretty leaves. Some people think loosestrife rather weedy but I like it because it clumps up so well and also because it reminds me of childhood gardens, when everybody had it. Like all Lysimachias it hates to be dry, so I've moved some to a damper spot. These old fashioned plants are tough and they don't come much tougher than this Centaurea:



Someone once said to me that she thought this plant must be in every garden in Dorset. It is the ultimate survivor. I'll end on a green note with another fern which has decided for itself where to live.

This clematis, that is.



I never planted it, I don't have anything else like it in the garden. It must have seeded itself, then grown secretly, unnoticed, to suddenly produce a mass of flowers this year. The benefits of not being too tidy a gardener.

Once a month, from September to April, our local NCCPG group meets on a Saturday afternoon. You can bet your boots that if the previous three Saturdays have been miserably cold and wet, this one will be glorious. So it proved today, when a hundred keen gardeners spent the best Saturday afternoon of the year so far inside a community hall, with the curtains drawn, listening to a talk. Luckily, it was a very good talk. So I was unable to spend the afternoon putting in the bargain plants I'd bought earlier at the market.

A chap there had a notice saying, 'nursery sale' and he was selling perennials in two litre pots for a pound each. I bought a new variety of geum, an eryngium and a phormium. He'd unfortunately lost the label from the phormium pot and the name he told me I know to be impossible. It has very narrow, purple leaves and I shall wait to see what it will do. I also bought, from another seller, that super plant Erysimum 'Apricot Twist'. A strange name, as it is more orange than apricot but it's a real doer, flowering for months. Sadly, like most perennial wallflowers it is short-lived and soon looks gawky, so you really need to take cuttings every year to keep it going. I'd failed to do this and the plant didn't enjoy the bitter winter, so I lost it. I wanted to reproduce the effect I'd got last year by planting it in front of Spiraea 'Goldflame',which is such a bright little bush at this time of year. I managed to stick it in before lunch and it looks something like this:



but brighter. In other news, here are the epimediums which were slashed to the ground about three weeks ago.



Worth doing that little job, eh? One of my favourite plants at this time of year is Lathyrus vernus. This is a bone-hardy perennial which makes a neat little bush smothered in purplish-blue pea flowers.



Even prettier is the form 'Alboroseus'.



These plants are very easy, if slow, to raise from your own seed, collected in June. I never pass on any plants without letting them flower first, as you can get all sorts of variations. I now have a white form and a pale mauve one.

I was in the middle of photographing my lovely erythroniums when the batteries gave out on the camera, so a chat on those will follow.