Saturday 5 July 2014

Springing into life




THIS BLOG is springing into life in mid-summer, just when my garden is in full bloom. But while the plants in my garden seem to be rushing through the year, this blog is likely to take things a lot more slowly. That's probably because the plants in my garden are ruled by nature and seem go through life automatically, but this blog is the result of conscious thought, I think!
Until I started to write these words I hadn't really thought about why I wanted to write about the garden. Why do I want to share thoughts and ideas about gardening with people I don't as yet know? We'll I think it's probably because I lost my life-long gardening sounding board a few years ago.
Every Sunday morning, Dad would phone me or I'd phone him and most of our conversation would be about our gardens. Living almost 300 miles apart, me on gorgeous deep free-draining fertile soil, him on thick, thick clay; me within sight of the sea and he about as far from the sea as you can be in England, meant our gardens were very different, so there was always a lot to talk about.

"I dug a hole big enough for me to sit in"

My earliest memory of  Dad is in a garden, picking apples from a tree beside the house where I was born. I was probably two-and-a-half years old at the time.The following year, in the garden of the house we'd moved to, I was given my very own patch in the garden. So, at the age of three, I set to with my little spade and began digging. I hadn't learnt the finer points of gardening at that stage, so instead of just turning over the soil, I dug a hole big enough for me to sit in. And in this rather large - to a three-year-old - hole, I sowed sweet peas.
My decades-old memory of that summer tells me those sweet peas not only grew but flowered profusely - my first gardening success.
A lot of our Sunday morning conversations were about Dad's allotment. He always grew all the vegetables the family needed and he was an allotment gardener until he was 90. While I've grown vegetables in my various gardens -  there's nothing like being able to take something straight from the garden to the pot - I've never had Dad's dedication. So now my garden is purely ornamental; somewhere to sit, enjoy and smell the flowers - when I'm not gardening.

"She's my gardening chum"

I shouldn't really call it my garden because it's our garden, as my wife is equally involved. It's a joint effort, a joint choice of plants, a joint decision of what we do and how we do it. She's my gardening chum and she loves our garden as much as I do. Not long after we met she asked if she could change the garden I'd been developing at the cottage where we lived. To her surprise I said "Yes", and with her artist's eye it took on a new, more harmonious look. And we've worked together on our current half-acre plot for almost 25 years, starting with a blank canvas and developing something completely different.
It's not finished yet. There are areas which are a ragbag of plants, put in as a temporary measure but they're still there. And there are weeds to be tackled and hedges that are getting too tall and trees that really shouldn't be there at all.
So I'll be sharing my thoughts about all of that but, more importantly, I'll be writing about the plants, because it's plants that make a garden. I suppose you might call us plantsmen because we're enthusiastic about our plants, and take the trouble to find out about how to grow them, where they come from and the growing conditions that they enjoy.

  "They have to compete with those alongside them,
and last and last and last and last"

Most of our plants are perennials, and to succeed in our garden they have to compete with those alongside them, and last and last and last and last. Some have been with us from the start, and some from before that, coming from our parents' and grandparents' gardens. Some of the biggest and most spectacular have been grown from seed and with others we've started with a single plant and propagated by seed or cuttings to increase the stock.
So in this blog I'll be sharing our garden as well as my thoughts, and sharing some pictures too - especially of our favourite plants. But it's oh so difficult to choose because we have so many favourites.
And I'll be sharing in another way too, with some choice surplus plants and seeds that I've been selling online for while, now. So just follow the link to see what's available now.
And you'll be able to follow me here on Twitter, where I'll highlight what happening day by day in fewer words when I haven't the time to write a longer piece.
I hope you'll enjoy our garden and exchange your thoughts and ideas too.

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