A Grand Day Out

We are dedicated gardeners but spending all four days of the bank holiday weekend tending the plot is a bit much.  So, we dodged rain showers and enjoyed a great day out at Clumber Park near Worksop.  We spent a long time in the walled garden which is well worth a visit!

The garden is huge and is home to the National Trust’s largest glass house which adds architecture and stature to the garden.  It is gardening on a grand scale and the plot has walls within walls to create different garden rooms.  There are thirty local varieties of apple, grown as standards, espaliers or step-overs and if you like rhubarb there are over a hundred varieties.  It is a celebration of all things edible.

 

For late August the deep flower borders were full of colour and buzzing with bees from the apiary.  We wandered round for ages, taking inspiration not only from the many varieties of fruit and vegetables but also the standard of horticulture.  All the plants are grown well and it is a pleasure to see such high standards. 

 

We enjoyed a lovely lunch at Barkers restaurant which was originally the Head Gardeners house and sampled produce from the garden.  The ambience, food and service were the same standard as the garden.  I love cooking but it was really nice to feel spoiled. 

Since the weather was unexpectedly good during the late afternoon, Doc cut the grass when we got home whilst I picked the beans.  However, it wasn’t long before I spotted that (thanks to all this moist, warm weather) the outdoor tomatoes have succumbed to blight.  We have never grown outdoor tomatoes before so this is a new (and unwelcome) experience for us.  I had to clear the bed and take everything to the bonfire heap.  This is another good reason for continuing with our usual greenhouse tomatoes.  They are growing well and despite the challenging season, we are harvesting a decent crop - and there is no blight.  

Making Do

I was talking to a neighbour the other day and she was surprised when I said I was fed up with disentangling the bramble runners from the flower bed at the foot of the lawn.  I have been pulling and tugging the monsters for several painful years and even investing in a decent pair of leather gloves has not minimised this horrible chore.  The aim is always to attack them with the secateurs before they attack me and get as many as I can on the bonfire heap in the shortest possible time. My neighbour was dismayed and thought that since I am (in her eyes) an experienced and competent amateur gardener, I would have the skills and knowledge to deal with the problem permanently.

But a gardening life is not quite like that, is it?  It is not straightforward and although I aspire to do things properly, sometimes things get in the way and I have to cut corners.  The flower bed we were discussing is very old.  It probably took several decades to establish it and several more for it to deteriorate.  We garden on a hill and although the bed is 4 feet wide at the front, which is the pretty side, it is actually a steep bank and drops away sharply at the back.  The thicket of overgrown shrubs masks the hidden danger of the bank and I have more chance of breaking bones than finding the source of the brambles.  Somewhere at the bottom of our list is ‘clear banked bed’ but it would be a major restoration job and several weeks work.  We are secretly hoping that we will have been admitted to a nursing home before the task reaches the top of the list.

So, I make the bed look as good as I can under the circumstances.  I haul the brambles out twice a year which stops them from reaching the lawn.  I hack at the shrubs as neatly as I can and plant attractive plants at the front for colour and to give the impression that all is calm and under control.

‘Making the best of it’ also applies to a lovely pink hydrangea I was given on my 50th birthday.  At the time, we had the builders in and the garden was a disaster zone.  So I quickly plonked it in a pot and it grew quite well for a couple of years and I even remembered to water and feed it well. 

When I discovered it was pot bound, I quickly found it another temporary home, in the border which surrounds the terrace.  It was totally the wrong place, being south-west facing, far too dry and sunny in the summer and too windy in the winter.  But, seeing as this was only going to be a stop-gap to finding it a permanent position, I was happy.

But of course, it was left longer than I had planned - a few years longer.  The move from pot to bed decreased flower production and then we had two dry summers and two really bad winters.  Last year I thought I had finally killed it and felt very guilty and sad.

However, this summer it seems to have sensed my sorrow and shame and perked up. When much of the garden has been challenged this summer, this is my hydrangea’s best year for flowering and it has grown quite large.  The wet weather must have suited it and it is going to be a mass of pink mop heads contrasted with lush bright green foliage.

It is still technically in the wrong place but I cannot bring myself to move it again, even if it is to a moister, sheltered, semi-shady area of the garden – where it belongs.
 
I am bemused by the colour-changing quirk of the ‘mop’ hydrangea.  Apparently, those with
blue or pink flowers tend to be blue in acid soil conditions and pink in alkaline soil.  We have rhododendrons, a camellia and azaleas so we definitely have acid soil.  However, our pink hydrangea is definitely pink!  I think the soil varies in different parts of the garden.

I quite like to leave the flowers until they have completely faded and have that interesting papery quality and I will leave them there until next spring, to protect the plant from frost during the colder months.  Well, that is the plan anyway. 

Gardens are so peaceful....

We are still catching up in the garden and because the plot is large, we divide the work up so that it is manageable and achievable in the time we have available.  We both like to start and finish a task and have found that if we wander from job to job, here and there, we never feel in control and can't tell what we have accomplished.  

Doc has been pruning and tieing in our new cherry tree called Stella which is in its second season and growing very well.  With patience and care, we hope to harvest some fruit in the next couple of years.  It has a warm south facing aspect in Mr Macgregor's Garden and Doc is training it into a compact fan shape against the trellis.  This will make it easier to net the tree when protecting the crop from the birds.  Doc has also thinned the fruits on the long row of cordon apples.  This feels like we are breaking the rules of the larder but it has to be done to enourage larger fruits. 

Last Wednesday, I allocated the whole day to the garden which is unusual for me as I am usually fitting my garden tasks in between rushing around in the car, eating a sandwich and hanging out the washing.  However, an appointment was cancelled and the weather forecast was good so I decided to give the borders a thorough tidy up and treat the chickens to a spring clean.  I was full of energy and motivated.

They say a garden is a wonderful place of solitude, where you can lose yourself in therapeutic labours and gentle birdsong.  I have indeed experienced this many times but not last Wednesday because last Wednesday was black Wednesday. 

Our neighbours were away and they left had their builders behind to get on with laying a new, rather large patio. With an angle grinder and a cement mixer for company they diligently set to work and declined my offer mugs of tea (for my benefit, not theirs), telling me they preferred to crack on and get the job done.  On top of that, our neighbour
next door-but-one to us decided to cut his lawn with a ride-on lawn mower and the neighbours the other side of us had two gardeners hard at work, one strimming the edges and under the trees and the other mowing the lawns with his ride-on mower.  It was noiser than Heathrow airport.

I am proud that I struggled on for 6 hours but when my head started to thump I had to admit defeat.  I came back into the house, grabbed some paracetamol tablets and flopped in a chair for some peace and quiet.  The silence was truly golden.

There are some noises in the garden which are loud but not invasive.  Children playing outside does not bother me because they are having fun. We have a restored railway line a couple of fields away and yesterday there was a steam train pootling up and down, just like a Thomas the Tank Engine and I swear it was pooping its whistle at me.  I wanted to put on a white pinny and stand on our steps, waving a white hankerchief but Doc says I am no replacement for Jenny Agutter. 

Anyway, we all appreciate labour saving equipment and thankfully, black Wednesdays do not come round very often.  Our neighbours are lovely and we are generous to one another.  What is one headache between friends? 

Since builders dust and bedding plants do not mix, my neighbour (the one with the dedicated builders) gave me her hanging basket to watch over.  It is overflowing with yellow and red begonias and purple trailing petunias.  The perfume from the petunias is sweet and exotic so when the builders went home and the gardeners retired to their compost heaps, I dared to venture out of our back door. I stood underneath the hanging basket and inhaled, very deeply.  Suddenly, the world was a better place.    

Home Again

We have a new baby in the family - our first grandchild – and we have fallen in love with her.  She was born just before the Olympic Games opening ceremony and she is perfect.  There will always be a special place in our hearts for Olympia, our little golden girl.   (But please don't tell her Mum and Dad that we are secretly calling her Olympia because they prefer the name they have chosen.....) 

Our son and daughter-in-law are both thrilled and exhausted and we felt sad to leave the new family behind in Belfast, knowing that Olympia had probably grown bigger and produced yet another load of washing by the time we reached the ferry terminal.  I do wish I could pop in and give her Mum a hand.  But we have skype and I am boring everyone with a wallet full of pictures, including the dentist.  Bless him, he made all the right noises but I expect he thinks babies are all alike.

We have also taken refuge in the garden because there isn’t much it cannot cure or help us endure. It has been a long time since we have left Springfield for more than two weeks and I expected lots of weeds but for August, the amount of growth and intensity of green is astonishing.  Usually, the top lawn is parched but it is actually, dare I say it, verging on attractive.  The hedges are in need of a second trim and considering how many drenches the flower borders have had, they look lively and fresh. 

Doc picked some raspberries and more redcurrants which we open froze on trays.  There is a second flush of strawberries on the way so I have netted them in readiness.  We have our sights set on Eaton Mess  - which will have to be another source of comfort in the absence of Olympia.

The indoor tomato plants are very healthy and Moneymaker is producing the largest fruits. The outdoor tomatoes are disappointing and are suffering from greenback which I think is caused by insufficient feeding during our absence.  Perhaps the rain has washed away the nutrients in the soil?  Many of the fruits have been eaten though, not by our neighbours, but by un-named beasties who have generously left the tomato skins behind.  (The usual suspects are mice and slugs.)  I have enjoyed growing outdoor tomatoes for the first time but I won’t be doing it again.  Greenhouse tomatoes are much more successful.

Before we left for Belfast, I removed all the courgette and runner bean flowers in order to stall their growth and this has been successful.  There are now lots of new flowers to brighten up the veg plot and I picked 3 semi-decent courgettes for our supper today.  As for the leeks, they seem to love the wet weather and have doubled in size since we went away.  Even the beetroots are swelling nicely.  I planted masses of them but only a couple of short rows survived so I am grateful for whatever we have. 

Many of the lettuces we left behind have either been harvested by our chicken sitters or gone to seed.  However, when I cut lettuces I always leave a stump and roots behind to encourage re-growth.  So we have come home to fresh lettuce leaves which are a bonus.   I plan to sow some cut and come again salad mix tomorrow, to keep the supply of salad leaves coming.

Of course, there has been weeding to do and I have tidied up some of the perennials and climbers which have finished flowering.  This will allow those which are yet to flower the opportunity to take centre stage.   August can be a difficult month in the garden but not this year.  Despite the rain, it is bringing forth an abundance of colour and energy to brighten up our lives, just like our gorgeous Olympia.

Is it time for a sleep yet? (Mum and Dad would like it to be!)

  
PS  Apparently, there a variety of chrysanthemum called Olympia which is white with tinges of yellow......  must check that one out.