A sight for sore eyes

Lately, gardening has been both difficult for me and a distraction because I have developed a painful eye condition.  Everything is a struggle at the moment.  Whilst Doc has been busy re-laying the gravel paths, (I am convinced the gravel fairies have been steadily removing the paths, grain by grain in the night), I have been planting out peas, mange tout and lettuces and pottering in the greenhouse.   But there are a lot of jobs to do and I feel frustrated that my energy levels are lagging. 

But who could not be uplifted by the sight of the swathes of narcissi in the orchard?  Certainly not me.  As I squint and blink my way round the plot in a fog of eye drops, the daffs are bobbing in the breeze, calling for my attention.   And much as it pains me, literally, they do make me smile.  We have had an amazing display this year due I think to the abundance of melted snow which swelled the bulbs.  I have brought bunches and bunches of them into the house to continue the good cheer.

We cannot take credit for the bulbs in the orchard.  There are so many of them that it is impossible to count them and we must thank a previous generation of Springfield gardeners for the legacy.  The wild bluebells may have arrived by magic but it must have taken a long time (with aching backs) to plant the original snowdrops and daffodils.  They are naturalised now and must have multiplied tenfold over the years, far beyond the expectations of the gardeners who planted them.  But that is one of the great things about gardening.  We do things for ourselves in the here and now and we also try to leave something behind for future generations to enjoy too.

Of course the previous generations have also left us with some things we would rather not have!  Some people are cursed with a ‘swathe of leylandii’ whereas we groan over our laurels.  Whilst a splash of their bright green evergreen foliage in winter is nice (and useful in a Christmas wreath!) we do have rather a lot of them.   There is a huge one right at the bottom of the garden which is the size of a small house and if it was not for the fact it is out of sight from the rest of the garden, it would have been hacked down long ago.   As for the rest of them, we compromise with firm but gentler pruning.

So what do we hope to leave behind?  Our most heartfelt wish is that the garden remains a garden forever.  It doesn’t matter to us what type of garden it becomes, as long as it is someone’s garden and that it is valued and loved for that and for that alone.   We live in an area where ‘garden grabbing’ is the norm, where helicopters circle overhead preying on the land and where postcards are dropped through letterboxes inviting us to discuss ‘exciting opportunities’.......

There are no guarantees that Springfield will remain forever.  It may eventually be carved up and sold to the highest bidder.  All we can do is to enjoy gardening whilst we are here and try to make it a space that our descendants will want to keep – as a garden.

We are introducing a wider range of plants and adding more colour by planting new flower borders.  I have also decided to add to the bulb collection but I need to be careful though.  Tulips are not long lasting and can suffer in wet winters so I prefer to put them in pots, in layers so they look plentiful. 

One day last week I found a snake’s head fritillary in flower - it must have arrived by accident in a pack of bulbs – and the next day it was gone.  No doubt a rabbit ate it for tea and I fear that crocuses would suffer the same fate.  

I have considered planting some of the more unusual or new daffs, the frilly edged types, orange ones, doubles, dwarfed and scented ones, even some rare ones, but I do wonder how hardy and long lasting the hybrids are.  Perhaps William Wordsworth had the right idea: ‘.....A host of golden daffodils.....’ I think I will keep it simple.  Daffs should be bold and in your face.

We hope the new fruit trees in the orchard and the cordons in Mr McGregor’s Garden will be a legacy for the future and still going strong for decades to come.  Hopefully, children will be able to enjoy helping the grown-ups harvest juicy damsons, apples, pears and plums and what could be better than leaving behind a virtually ready-made larder? 

Hopefully my eyes will get better soon and I will be up to full speed again.  I noticed yesterday that the dead heading season is fast approaching.  I have not yet developed a fast method of dead heading hundreds of narcissi but I have plenty of opportunities for practise!  I favour the scissor technique this year so we will see how my patience goes.  As for the foliage, tying it up is not practical here and it does not look very attractive.  Mitch will just mow a path through the orchard and let the rest of the grass grow.  The dying foliage will soon be disguised and the emerging bluebells and wild summer flowers look wonderful.