A Chelsea Complex and a Young Pretender

The new Mediterranean border is coming on nicely. The trellis is up and painted in my favourite shade of aqua and the neighbours approve – although I did have a heart-in-mouth moment when, having thoughtfully painted both sides I realised that it is quite a full-on colour and they might not like it.

I am now planting up and trying to resist the ‘I want it all and I want it now’ urge (something I am rather prone to at the best of times), which is common to anyone who has ever built a show garden and then has to garden like other ordinary human beings with a timescale of years and a shoestring budget. Simple maths. If you have things that will be 4ft across, plant them 4ft apart because they can be expected to grow 2ft in each direction. Even if they are only 6inches across now. Yes it looks tiny and dotty at first, but if you pack everything in so it looks wonderful you will have a fight on your hands in about a fortnight. This, people, is what annual bedding is for. That is what I keep telling myself, anyway.

Unaccountably, my other half seems suddenly resolved to have some sort of hard landscaping-off with Joe Swift. There we are on Friday night, cheerfully pre-empting the advice on Gardeners World, as we do (the long evenings just fly by), and the boy Swift is making a pond with a pond-liner he has just fortuitously ‘found’. (We believe you Joe, millions wouldn’t). Anyway, he breaks out his spirit level and some sage advice on keeping the thing straight, when I hear a hiss from beside me on the sofa “If he gets out a bag of ready-mix cement I’ll kill him”. Heavens. Saturday dawns, and the spousal element is busy constructing a very tidy strawberry bed from off-cuts of timber, to the merry refrain “Joe Swift, you’re out of a job; Joe Swift, you’re out of a job...”.

I don’t know why the sudden sense of competition. Joe seems an amiable sort of chap. He bought me a drink a couple of GMG Awards ago; he is President of the NGS; he enjoys the puckish witticisms of James Alexander Sinclair with good grace and amusement. Not sure my partner threatening to drop him in a water feature with ready-mix boots on is socially advisable. But were the spouse to follow through (with the construction competition, not the mob-style sticky end), he might well prove rather good at televisual spirit level wrangling. Time, as they say, will tell.

Caught my son giving the sedums a premature Chelsea chop while singing ‘I Gotta Feeling’ by the Black Eyed Peas.

Found myself on the school run looking like I had come off worst in a shootout at a porridge factory. Not far from the truth, as it happens. The glamour is endless.

I am, as always, hugely excited by my heated propagator. You put in seeds, turn it on and two days later, voila! Seedlings. Magic. See picture above, which I particularly like as the sun is shining through the leaf and you can see the veins.

A Different View

Sharp angles and offset rhomboids: Heligan in Winter I woke up this morning convinced that it was late. The light was grey behind the curtains and the room was silent. Reluctantly, I looked at my phone and discovered that it was in fact early. It has been a busy few weeks, but walking up the road, the magnolia buds are suddenly swelling in furry promise, and lilacs pertly tipped with green; Crocus tommasinianus have appeared where there were none. Acer griseum and white-barked birches stand bold, in full knowledge that their spare charms will soon be overwhelmed with spring. Time has passed while I was not looking. So as the season creeps forward - and faster it does, when ignored - I am looking back, with a kind of regret. The thing is, that although gardens are considered 'off peak' in winter, there is often no better time to see them. This is the point where they show their true colours and strengths. As a visitor, you can read their geometry and detail without

The Essential Apocalypse Skillset

Let me tell you a story. Several years ago, I was painting the bathroom of a house in Bristol. The window was open and it was a pleasant sort of day and people were wandering past. Around about four o’clock I heard a couple of sets of feet come down the hill and then stop. “Look, cherries!” said one voice (female, mid to late teens). “No, I don’t think they are. They can’t be.” Said the other, doubtfully (ditto). “Well, they look like cherries. Let’s try them!” “No, they are probably berries. Completely different. Some of them are not red, they are blackish. They are probably poisonous.” “Oh. Yes, I suppose so.” (disappointed) The feet moved on. I looked out of the bathroom window at the large and heavily laden cherry tree leaning over the wall of the garden opposite and wondered what the world was coming to. Red Sky in the Morning, Shepherds Warning ((c) N Slade) I am actually still wondering. When my grandfather was a child, he and his brothers (and a dog) ran

On The Road

Galanthus 'Fly Fishing' at Bellefield House . My latest snowdrop crush. Back in the dim and distant mists of time, when dinosaurs roamed the land and pterodactyls were frequent bird table visitors, I spent an enjoyable few years managing rock bands. There were headline gigs, support gigs. Mainstream venues and pubs. In some places the PA was state of the art, in others you thanked your stars for the decent size amp in the back of the van. Some nights the crowd was ecstatic. Others, the bar man, his dog and a couple of regulars would sit there, nodding and comparing the band to musicians that had died before the lead singer was born. Occasionally people listened to the first thirty seconds, got bored and went off to get drunk and find someone to sleep with. So it goes. I have just finished a modestly epic tour of the land, promoting The Plant Lover’s Guide to Snowdrops . And, as I pull myself vertical, brush off the debris and straighten out again, there are som

Electric Green

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