Revision
15 February 2010

The first sniff of spring in the air today; aconites opening, snowdrops unsheathing, tree buds showing signs of life. There is a growth scent in the air, despite the frost, that makes my spirits surge. It also makes me think how deep my hibernation has been these last two months, and how timely. The dormancy of the garden has given me a respite from the temptation of outdoors, time to sit and concentrate on the book I’m writing.

Or rather rewriting. I first wrote it half my lifetime ago, in 1973. How I had the nerve I don’t know. I was mocked in Private Eye. ‘Johnson admits that until he had signed the contract he had never seen a tree.’ Miraculously, readers don’t seem to have twigged that I was only one step ahead of them, if that, in my studies. What they could tell was that I was loving it. Not half as much, though, as I

Pulling through
13 February 2010

There will be plenty of time for post mortems after the winter has done its worst. Previous cold winters have taught us not to be hasty: miraculous resurrections are not unknown. What I am seeing now, though, is the survival (albeit in a battered state) of plants that the books say should be dead.

Painting with Plants
1 February 2010

I envy analytical gardeners; those who can (or instinctively do) say "A bold upright there and there, a clump to balance them there, something big and jagged like a yucca over in the corner and a screen of something filmy up here near the terrace".

You have to be a professional, I’m afraid, with a deadline facing you. Decisions must be made. Experience has told you that there is no uniquely right answer to any garden-planning question. So off you go: if you choose good plants and have a clear idea about colour there will never be a Chilcott Enquiry into how you reached your decision.

An amateur like me needs help, not just in coming to a decision (it’s probably too late for that) but in seeing the building blocks for what they are. Why am I

Splitting hairs
25 January 2010

Nigel Colborn makes a powerful case in The Garden this month: that there is too much random plant-breeding going on and too many new cultivars are being sold. The gardening world has become a jungle of fancy flowers with fancy names and no one can keep track.
The standard response of course is that no one is obliged to buy or plant them, and that the laws of natural selection will ensure the survival of the prettiest, or the most pest-proof. The multiplication gives innocent pleasure to anoraks of different stripes. Where would galanthophiles be in the snowdrops-and-marmalade season without tiny green blotches to discuss?

Friend or foe
22 January 2010

Is moss friend or foe? I’m never sure whether to apologize for my apple trees or admit my pride in them. At the end of a wet winter their branches are thickly coated on their upper sides with an emerald-green fabric like baize crossed with velvet. It is thicker on the trees on the shadier side of the garden, and thickest, covering much of the trunk too, on the tree in the south west corner that gets the most shade from the house and the churchyard wall.

Our trees have been pruned for many years, perhaps always, into open goblet, or even parasol, shapes to let light into their canopies, cutting off the year’s new growth but leaving fists of old wood on snaking stems; hardly a classical method but wonderfully energizing to flowers

am loving revisiting my old state of innocent ignorance to bring myself up to date.

The solid elements I can add now are, first, experience. In 1973 I had planted a mere handful of trees and never cut one down. 37 years later I have planted thousands, some of them successfully, others no doubt ill-advisedly, and cut down almost as many. In other words I have turned forester as well as gardener. Decades of collecting, observing, calculating and just adoring trees have given me a lot, probably too much, to say.

Second new element: refreshed expertise from John Grimshaw, whose New Trees, introductions, that is, since 1970, was published by Kew last year. John is, unexpectedly for a tree expert and enthusiast, resident galanthologist at Colesbourne, the Gloucestershire estate of the Elwes family. Henry John Elwes was the (Edwardian) co-author, with Augustine Henry, of the monumental Trees of Great Britain & Ireland. There is a pleasing symmetry here.

I can handle the temptation while the ground stays hard and until we see touches of leaf. The counter-pull of books piled round me, the red fire and the cold hypnotic screen are holding their own for the moment. I must press on before my resolve thaws, too.

I only planted my old aspidistra outside as a joke; a sort of mock hosta to frighten visitors. Confirmed house-plant it may be, but it is very much alive under (and over) its blanket of mulch. Unmulched, left where it seeded itself, Geranium palmatum, both adult with its huge leaves and baby seedling, look perfectly happy. A seedling of Euphorbia mellifera is only a little brown at the edges. In fact I see hardly any obvious mortality so far. I am worried about my fish, though: what do last year’s little fry do under the ice: suspend animation?

verbalizing this? Because an old friend has come up with a formula that (maybe) fills my need.

Linden Hawthorne and I used to play at bookends with The Garden magazine. I was the first editorial page, Lin was the last. We didn’t exactly consult – we sort of responded to each other’s columns.

Lin is a professional, directing operations on the ever-developing grounds of the Storey estate in North Yorkshire. Have you noticed how properly-trained gardeners do things in an organized way that easily-distracted dilettantes can never manage? Her column done (at about the same time as mine came to an end) Lin turned to serious writing – and here you have it, in her book titled Gardening with Shape, Line and Texture. (She wanted to call it Painting with Plants.)

After laying down some fairly alarming first principles (alarming to me because they involve maths) she categorizes the world of (mainly herbaceous) plants by their garden stature, their overall shape and feel. This provides the structure for a list of what we use as ingredients, in the voice of a long-practised chef. There are many ways a gardening writer can string his or her (don’t you hate ‘their’?) experience into narrative. Lin’s list works because she recounts, quite crisply, how she uses each plant and how it behaves in real life.

So I have all the tools at my disposal. Next excuse?

Anything that sharpens observation, you could argue, has a merit. It has a de-merit, though, too. It baffles and confuses those who just want a straightforward answer, and the means to create a simple, strong and memorable garden effect.

Snowdrops aren’t the only thing; nor is horticulture alone in hair-splitting. Wine-lovers are prone to debating the merits of different patches of ground, different farmers on the same patch, the smell of oak from different forests, and whether a Belgian bottling doesn’t capture more of the essence than the domaine’s own efforts. A wine-lover, though, is not painting a picture or laying out ground. He/she is just reporting the messages from his/her taste-buds and olfactory nerves.

Is hair-splitting bad news for gardening? One answer is that it is not gardening at all.

and fruit. The combination of gnarled and writhing grey wood and the emerald moss gives me enormous pleasure. Visitors gasp and get their cameras out. Serious fruit growers give me recipes for moss removal. Should I be worried?

It was in Japan that I first appreciated moss as a plant that could transform a garden. Saiho-Ji, the monastic moss garden, is only the most notable of many where the moss on rocks, paths, on the banks of streams and the trunks of trees, feels like a spell cast by an old green witch. In winter it is almost lurid green, in summer shades of green and brown, but the muting, softening effect is permanent. There are no sharp edges: no ultimate focus except the textures, the (rather rare) shock of pure clean petals, and the contrasting polish of water.

In this garden moss has crept up on me. It must be cumulative in the whole garden, endemic (and increasing) in the lawns, overwhelming on the abandoned tennis court, and presumably finding its perfect perch on the apples.