Idleness is Nothing Unless it is Well Carried Out

This time of the year can be a little frustrating for gardeners and furballs alike. The incessantly damp weather certainly curtails activities outdoors. Of course, with half decent waterproofs and a pair of wellies we can still venture into the garden, but repeated walking or standing on the lawn or any borders is not really advisable. Compaction of the soil would undermine all the hard work spent forking and aerating the grass just a few weeks ago.

Still, when the opportunity arises a breath of fresh air is good for the soul. It is not possible to do too many jobs, in between the showers, but a nice hot cup of Bovril will warm the insides. Of course, if you are anything like me, you will have to fight the urge to start doing things. My advice, if it is not essential and the Met Office has given you only a small window of opportunity, just chill.

I am very much reminded of a favourite saying of my Grandmother Dickinson, 

"Idleness is nothing unless it is well carried out"

In the photograph Mili can be seen contemplating the world, I am sure it is also important for her (and her "sister") to get some outside time. Now they are both cats of a certain age it is noticeable how much less time they dare to venture outdoors. I am totally convinced that they like it best when the "gardener" is out there to keep an eye out for "bandits". They can feel so much more safe and secure when there is one of their humans about and in sight. 

So my top tip: for the well being of both you and your cats, be sure to make time for some idle contemplation in the wintry outdoors. Take a nice warm brew and do it properly.

Architectural Interest in the Garden 

Wistfulness

Wistful: sad and thinking about something that is impossible or past

 Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary 

A succession of mists have engulfed our side of the Pennines this week. They have infused the valley with a sense of wistfulness. I think this is not unusual as the winter closes in upon us all, but this year the feeling is that much more acute. While the garden has been a retreat from the sad news of the pandemic that has defined 2020, it is now a paradoxical place with both a degree of melancholia yet the promise of the inevitable rebirth and regrowth. 

The ailing health of the cherry trees at the top of the garden has not helped but at least there is something I can try, to help rectify their situation. I am hoping the application of copper sulphate powder and slaked lime will, up to a point, serve to arrest the fungal attacks. This is to a degree in my control. However, winter and the pandemic will have to run their course. 

Of course, a little feline company, a nice warm brew and the garden are always a reliable restorative, as Hippocrates wisely observed 

 "Nature itself is the best physician.”

 

Autumnal Colour and Some More

 The Greek philosopher Heraclitus once said, "The only constant is change." Autumn reminds us that our bodies, minds, and surroundings are always developing. It focuses on the impermanence of life, emphasizing how vital it is to embrace the present. By doing so, we can savour what we have before it is gone. Autumn is undoubtedly a season of beautiful colour. While most might focus on the gorgeous fading greens, yellows and reds, you do not have to look far to realize that autumn has so much more to offer chromatically. 

Grey skies commonly frame the valley sides, a brooding backdrop but an atmospheric treat to match the autumnal chills. The dahlias still have the last of their blooms and Tibetan cherry is a distinct burnished bronze. 

Top tip: get outside and enjoy all the colours of the season before the winter arrives and the covers have to go over the garden furniture.

Gray skies to the North

Dahlia bloom in November

Tibetan Cherry

 

But just as lovely are the blacks and the whites, all have been spotted out in the Pennine garden over the past few days. 

Mili in the autumn leaves

Mili being closely followed by Hecate

      

Badger on nightly patrol, by the pond

Gardeners World Viewer Contribution

Earlier this year I responded to the Gardner's World request for some viewers videos. During the first lockdown making TV programmes was quite a challenge, hence their appeal for material to help fill their show with segments other than repeats. Sadly, mine was not selected for screening, I am guessing the ambient noise from the virtually ever present breeze in the Pennine garden might have been the reason. Alternatively,  it could have rejected on the basis that my less than photogenic film star good looks were just not quite right aside:  but surely Mili would have compensated with her last scene appearance! 

Anyway I hope you enjoyed my little attempt, or at least had a chuckle at my screen presence!

Hecate and Mili in the Sunshine

The two cats have been enjoying the last of the nice weather when the opportunity presents. Perhaps they can anticipate the on coming autumn or perhaps they are just soft and feel more comfortable when the gardener is around to offer a little protection from visiting bandits!

Pots for Winter Interest

In a recent post I revisited the idea of putting together our bulb lasagnes. In a similar vein my better half decided that it would be a nice idea to have some winter interest, in the form of two winter pots. Placed on the patio near to the kitchen door she has composed two linked displays that should look just right all the way through to next spring.

The pots are packed with evergreens, they have plants with different shapes and form and only one specimen is duplicated, the red hook sedge. But the red hook sedge and the fact the pots themselves are matched serves to unify the two displays into a coherent and interesting splash of colour.

Top tip: when planning little displays such as these winter pots consider how you might be able to use the plants afterwards. For instance, if you use a dwarf conifer (as shown in the pot on the left) think about where it will be relocated to when the tub is emptied out in spring. I have a little space in the heather beds earmarked for this fine specimen.

Alternatively,

Top tip: to keep the costs of winter tubs down you might consider utilizing plants that you already have in the garden, not surprisingly, the grasses where taken from seedlings that had just self seeded and the red cyclamens is a survivor from previous years.

Roses in Autumn

The grass borders can always be relied upon to look good at this time of the year. The fact that at least half the varieties in our bed are technically sedges and therefore mostly evergreen ensures that this will be the case. But full on prairie planting (which is not dissimilar) is renowned for looking at its best late on in the year. 

Fortunately, this year the summer colours are lingering on and the roses are still very much in bloom with plenty of new buds. The photographs below were all taken in the past few days.

Top tip: if you are limited for space and can only have one or two rose bushes then consider going for a repeat bloomer.

Hecate and Mili explore the grass border

 

New Recipe: bulb lasagne revisited.

 

It is over three years and more than a hundred entries ago since I last featured the bulb lasagne on these pages. This year I have changed the recipe just a little and started to put them together a few weeks earlier. The thinking behind the rush to get them started is that I like to make up the odd extra tub to give to friends. However, this wretched pandemic has prompted the earlier than usual planting up of the tubs, before the next attack on our civil liberties results in a new lockdowns.

The one seen in the pictures above is for the next door neighbours who kindly look after our two felines when we go away. Another has found its way to a very good golf buddy and his understanding wife. They have a refreshing new found passion for all things horticultural and a recent visit to their garden has sparked a few promising ideas of my own. The pictures show how the layers are built up starting with usual crocks and drainage materials before the first compost layer is added.

The alteration in the recipe for this year has been the addition of some crocus in the second layer. So working from the top down, this years tubs have:

~ winter pansies on the top, although they will fade quite quickly they can be deadheaded to prolong their display and they do seem to distract the squirrels from excavating the buried bulbs (I hope this is not famous last words)

~ first sub layer are the irises and crocuses, this year iris reticulata Joyce and crocus Orange Monarch.

Depending on the severity of the winter they will start to show in January or February

~ second sub layer are the daffodils, narcissus King Alfred and narcissus Jonquilla Martinette, hopefully they will emerge in March

~ the lowest layer is the tulips, and this year the complementary Triumph Slawa and Triumph Synaeda Amor should complete the display by April/ May time.

Despite this focus on next spring, the garden is still doing its best to hang onto its summer glamour so I have been in no particular hurry to start the cutting back and tidying up!

Top tip: over the past 30 years the September climate statistics clearly indicate that a late "Indian Summer" is always a distinct possibility. So planning for late season colour is more important than ever. 

 

 

Goings On

  

Mili is apparently intrigued by the goings on across at the opposite border. First, her attention is caught by the woodpecker, soon to be followed by an inquisitive grey squirrel who is also keen to check out the competition. Perhaps, the squirrel, being native to the Eastern half of North America, may be privy to the  wisdom of the first nations people, who prescribe the woodpeckers drumming as a means to journeying (transcendentalism), and so many tribes considered the woodpecker as an other-worldly messenger, and a prophet. Hopefully a good sign!

                                                                                                        

Little Details

 

The details of a garden are critical to the bigger picture. The pond shown above needs a sympathetic surround of apparently overgrown walling with hidden architectural detail, where as the orange crocosmia seems so much more vibrant with the background of the weeping copper beech. While some of these finer points are simply happy accidents, others have been deliberately engineered but with the hope that they look quite naturalistic.

When combined the effect can be quite pleasing to the eye, hopefully without being too obvious. The bigger picture of the ornamental grasses hopefully gives this impression.

Top tip: when visiting other gardens take a little time to study the more intricate points, take photographs of the finer details and try to look beyond the bigger picture.

Of course, Hecate likes to be part of the bigger picture too!

Why I love August

I wonder how many people are like me and strive for the impossible photograph that will capture the essence of the garden. Different views, aspects plants, lighting are all variables that cannot be encapsulated in a single image. The view above is particularly nice at the moment but it shows only a fraction of the flowers that are in bloom in August. 

By contrast the image below is a montage of flowers and blooms taken on 12th August 2020. None of the plants are duplicated but it still does not convey the spirit of the Pennine garden. However, it speaks quite eloquently of why I love August. 

 

The Colour Purple

It occurred to me when writing an earlier blog entry on the pastel bed, that the colour of the season is most definitely purple. Of course, when an idea like this has germinated it is strange how much more evidence you can find to back it up. Even though the weather has kept me indoors more than I would like the colour purple is still there.

The house plants by the door leading out to the patio are doing very nicely and are all the better for the purple flowers of the orchid and the purple tinted foliage of the tradescantia purpurea, which makes for a lovely little cascade of purple leaves over the edge of the stand. Spiderwort, as it is also known, is supposed to have properties to cure the bite of a spider, as the twisted joints were are thought to resemble the legs of the spider. I just hope I am never bitten by an arachnid big enough for me to require the medical attention!

Elsewhere, the indoors has a certain attraction for all of us in this unseasonable spell of weather. If Hecate looks a little sheepish it is because she has nabbed the head gardeners place the moment my back was turned!

Crystal Halo

 
Having had some trouble with the iris Germanica with its changing colour, I am chuffed that my new iris has produced some stunning blooms. Iris Ensata "crystal halo" is really a bog iris and as such should not really be growing on the sloping bed on the north side of the garden. I had intended to put it by the lower pond but in practice the space I had envisaged was just not quite big enough. So I have deviated from the adage "right plant right place" and put it here. However, to get it to grow successfully I did plant it in a good sized hole that was lined with an old compost sack to create an artificially ill drained spot in the border. It proves that with some ingenuity a lot more is possible than the text books might have us believe.

Top tip: never be afraid to try something different, a gardener will have many failures even if everything is done by the book so taking a chance with something less orthodox adds a little spice and intrigue.

The Pastel Bed

It struck me recently how much a garden will evolve without any help from the people who might tend it. I was weeding in and around the pastel bed and realized how it was losing some of its intended lighter shades of colour. This year the gaura "Sparkle White" has yet to show, the lavatera "Barnsley Baby"is well behind and the gypsophila did not survive the winter, meaning the predominant colours are shades of purple and blue.

The achillea cassis, the eryngium, alliums and the astilbe do a good job but it is not quite how it looked last year. I suspect the achillea (yarrow) is out competing some of the other plants so I will be careful to gently redress the balance in the future.

However, I will still enjoy the display and be thankful that the astilbe is the white variety (quite appropriate as its English name is the evocative "false goat's beard" 

Elsewhere in the garden the evolution is more orderly and the beds around the new cherry tree are filling out nicely. Hopefully they will do well into the autumn when they can die back gracefully to leave the bronze bark to illuminate the quiet late autumn and winter .

Top tip: at the design stage, think how a border will look throughout the year and consider what will give a succession of seasonal interest. Small shrubs are often the most straight forward way of achieving this, they can have form to provide structure, many are evergreen to provide some hint of life and others have the most beautiful stems, such as the dogwood which has a multitude of colours depending on your chosen variety.

Summer time and the Livin' is Easy

Although the longest day is now behind us, we are now at the mid point of summer meteorologically speaking. The garden is filling out in its seasonal finery, although it would look a little better if we had some sunshine.

 

 Mili and Hecate are getting outside when it isn't raining but patrolling and marking out their territory seems be a very low priority.

By contrast the blackbirds have been exceptionally busy feeding their young. They are nesting in the ivy and conifer hedge at the side of the house. It is positively exhausting watching how busy they are going back and forth with provisions for their young. Pictured below is the female blackbird with a mouth full of goodies for taking back to the nest.

My approach to the garden is distinctly leisurely by comparison to the no stop activity of the blackbirds. Perhaps I should be a little more forgiving of Mili and Hecate for taking things real easy..... George Gershwin had it about right. 

Early Evening

Over the past few weeks I have been enjoying some early evening excursions up the garden. This has been primarily to set up the wildlife camera but it is also a good excuse to just enjoy the peace and tranquility of the evening. It also offers some lovely low light photographic opportunities. Mili, never a one to miss her chance, likes to accompany me and of course to do her best to get herself into shot.

Top Tip: remember to enjoy your garden at dusk; despite the midges and the desire to do a slug patrol, it is an ideal time to watch the sunset, listen to the last of the birdsong and even to take a photograph to share with your friends