Success and Failure ⚖️

Gardening can teach us many things but the Buddhistic exhortation to apply oneself diligently without grasping at outcomes or focussing on results is a hard one for me. That much was pretty plain in Garden Talk. Gardening is certainly a lived model of effort without control. We prepare the soil and water etc but we cannot control the weather and we cannot force growth.

Whilst the end of June and the beginning of July does find us pricking out the seedlings of biennials - foxgloves, hesperis, myosotis etc we have not sown any perennials this year. Last year’s aquilegias, apart from var. Golden Queen and the native variety were too disappointing. Sorry, Buddha.

Is it us? We’ve raised a batch of the white ‘Kristall’ for two consecutive years and both times the plants have simply refused to grow under the ash tree - no matter how much they’ve been nurtured. It’s a variety that used to do well there. Is it the seed? Is there an aquilegia sickness like there is a rose sickness? The Aquilegia ‘Rose Queen’ (from seed) also failed to thrive at Dovecote End. Can’t even blame Peter Rabbit for this particular problem.

A couple of lonely white polemoniums seem to have flourished under the ash tree so we’ll try a basic variety of white polemoniums for next year - but reared on from plugs. For commonly available plants, plugs are cheap, convenient and less work.

To further cut down on work, we’re experimenting with some different and hopefully robust perennials that we’ve bought in as one litre sized plants. Since the success of T. ‘Black Stockings’, I’ve been rather in thrall to thalictrums so now the annual echiums and the second aquilegia disaster area (ie var. ‘Rose Queen’) at the bottom of the bank will be replanted with a mixture of Thalictrum Nimbus, a relatively new selection, and Cirsium Trevor’s Blue Wonder' (officially registered as 'Trevor's Felley Find') which, in other locations, has been a tough, reliable flowerer for us. If the Nimbus are a bit dull or disappointing, the self sown poppy ‘Lauren’s Grape’ will hopefully pop up again to save us for a couple of weeks. And then there’s some Aquilegia Rose Barlow plugs which are Plan C … But, of course, I am not focussed on the results. Not at all. Not even a little bit. In theory, one can plant container plants at any time but more heat is apparently on the way so they will be easier to care for on the benches, potted on if necessary, and we will reorganise the beds, including splitting some of the grasses and Siberian irises, in the autumn.

In contrast to selections like Kristall and Rose Queen, the seed raised native aquilegias performed exceptionally well. I would also note that the most enduring and robust aquilegias we have are self seeders - one in the gravel in the backyard and others in cracks in the tarmac of the tennis court. And I’m sure there’s some sort of lesson there too, as we review a season of pronounced contrasts.

Over Performance and Under Performance

So yes, the native aquilegias did well in Merlin’s Garden. It seems, rather oddly, to be a naturally fertile spot - knowing that it was going to be planted up with natives we did no soil enhancement. Yet everything in there is over performing. Plants and grasses alike have got so tall that they are detracting from the henge. Considering how trying it was to get those slate standing stones delivered, I think the focus needs to be more on them. Whilst sticking with the native and folkloric/herbal theme, we nevertheless need an autumn rejig with a distinct inclination towards the squat and stumpy.

But, whilst noticing the over performance in Merlin’s garden and the underperformance in other locations, I was somehow failing to notice the most outstanding case of underperformance. On a prominent corner, a large juniper, Juniperus x pfitzeriana, was busy dying. In fact it was dead. And we had opened with it in that state! Disclaimers were profuse when I expressed horror. ‘I thought you knew and were just leaving it for now’. Don’t they know me at all?

But indeed, how could I not have noticed? My field of vision is limited but even so … It is remarkable how one can just stop registering something that has been there for pushing 20 years. The Juniper was bigger than I am, situated at the end of a border and I walked round it on every trip to Skimmia Gap. And, considering how much trouble Skimmia Gap gave us, that must have added up to a lot of walk rounds. However, my focus and my thoughts were not on the Juniper. Once noticed of course … well … Right thought, right action, the Buddha said.

‘Get it out!’

In short, the May Bank Holiday Monday and the two ensuing days were a scramble. It’s astonishing how large a heap of brash a six foot by six foot dismembered juniper can make. And how big a hole it can leave. It was fortunate, given my mania for symmetry and my dislike of dysmaturity, that we had a substantial yew in a container in the back yard to act as a replacement evergreen anchor and a large potted miscanthus on the tennis court which could pick up the area’s miscanthus theme. Along with some asters (surprisingly good doers) and Siberian irises ( always reliable with enduringly good foliage after flowering) plus a few other makeweights that we had on the benches … well … it wasn’t great but it was better than a dead Juniper and it will be modified come autumn.

Some dead things are actually alive.

As mentioned in the January newsletter the Choisya ‘White Dazzlers’ that we transplanted directly into Skimmia Gap last autumn died. Slowly but progressively. Given the post transplant attention that had been lavished upon them, I was curious to know if it was just the top growth that was dead. These were relatively young plants, after all. They were each cut back to about eighteen inches and potted up. Three poor little skeletons sat reproachfully on the benches for weeks and then, just as the point of keeping them came up for consideration, there was an all over breakout of green shoots and now they are wonderfully fledged nursery quality 2 foot shrubs again.

Not too astonishing, I suppose. It is obvious that during transplants, disrupted roots may have difficulty supporting a lot of top growth. And yet, as I’ve mentioned before, we’ve bought 5 foot laurels and yews with bare roots merely wrapped in burlap and these have been fine. The difference is that the nurseries have done the job correctly by systematically root pruning their plants in preparation for subsequent lifting. Severing longer, thicker roots triggers the plant to regenerate fresh, fine, fibrous feeder roots directly behind the cut. These are the roots that efficiently absorb water and nutrients and they are often given an encircling ring of nice friable soil/compost to encourage them. Once this has happened, 6 to 10 weeks, the plants are lifted. But then again, rarely but significantly, some things actually benefit from not being done.

No Mow May

‘No Mow May’ is Plantlife’s annual exhortation to let the lawn grow during May, thus helping nature without lifting a finger. Following the enthusiastic launch of this idea in 2019, investigations have apparently shown that if you mow less, the pollen count on your lawn can skyrocket. People were asked to count the wildflowers in a square metre patch of lawn and the results apparently indicated a tenfold increase in the amount of nectar available for pollinators.

Daisies, creeping buttercup and germander speedwell were the most commonly recorded plants. We do mow, as it happens, though never that closely because we are open in May and the lawn gets hectically trodden. Nevertheless, we can add to the listed wildlings, birdsfoot trefoil, dandelions and selfheal. Later in June there is a lot of white clover, little hawbits, and fox and cubs (which tries to hide it’s orange face in the hedges so that we overlook it, as does the straggly lady’s bedstraw). Except for the latter two, the plants seem to accommodate to being mown by flowering at a lower height. Does the lower height matter? Doesn’t seem to.

As it happens, the most favoured early flower here is Geranium phaeum with its exposed stamens. During their spring flowering, those in the woodland are always covered in bees.

Flowering trees on the other hand, though quite dramatic to look at, are not as useful pollinator wise. We have an accidental arboretum in the field which I will talk more about in the October newsletter but the spring flowering of the trees is quite something. Especially the wych elm - see photograph.

The wych elm, Ulmus glabra, found more in Scotland and the north, is Britain's only truly native elm species. Elms are not the iconic sight they used to be in the landscape due to the devastating effects of Dutch elm disease which, for me, makes the flowering of our wych elms particularly pleasurable. Being wind pollinated, wych elm flowers don’t need to produce nectar but the quantities of pollen may help some early bees and flies and their leaves provide fodder for types of moth caterpillars and those of the odd butterfly.

Caterpillars are important to birds. Watching a blue tit that had a nest in a bird box on the verandah, plying back and forth to the roses, obligingly picking off the greenfly, it occurred to me that green fly alone could not adult blue tits make. With a sudden pang, I remembered that we had just sprayed against box caterpillar thus destroying a nearby blue tit protein source. Hastily, I had to confirm that the bacterial preparation that is the biological control we used was not dangerous to fledgling birds if they are fed on half dead box caterpillars. Phew.

Preserving both wildlife and gardens is a difficult balance.

After the last newsletter in which I raised this subject, a cousin in Australia, a great gardener - hello Jenny! - commented that even bees were not entirely a plus because a species that they have there had seriously reduced the aesthetics of her rose foliage.

As it happens, for all bees everywhere, May 20 was International Bee Day. I found that out from a routine email trying to sell me Bee Pollen - ‘a natural superfood, helping to support energy, metabolism, and overall wellness’. Our local bees were obviously aware of this and, feeling suitably bumptious about it, set about invading the top story of the house - two lots of them. Ousting the Jackdaws, they tracked along the route of some plumbing pipes and emerged in Todd and Rebecca’s sitting room, filling it with angry buzzing.

There must be something about the top of this house because we have bats as well, a maternal colony of brown long eared in the summer and also some pipistrelles - according to the experts. One only sees the bats at dusk but as it happens, during the day, they are very good at closing down telephone sales calls about yet more loft insulation.

The bees, which didn’t seem to be honey bees swarming with a queen in a fashion that might prompt a call to the local beekeepers’ association, were energetically driven out of hastily opened windows and threatened with a quick trip up a vacuum cleaner hose if they didn’t go.

Eventually, some of them set up a disorganised looking home in an old bird box in the potager. We couldn’t catch the scene effectively on camera but, on a sunny day, there was always a cloud of them queuing up to get in. I also watched them systematically stealing the fine bark that was the topping on a few pots of violas. They shifted a surprising amount of it. I watched their depredations with some anxiety. These were special violas, bought specially. Viola odorata is a British native and it was here in various uncultivated corners when we came. Somehow or other, in spite of my best efforts, it just disappeared. We have been trying desperately to reestablish it.

I love the smell of violets which was very popular in perfumes and talc when I was little - as were violet flavoured cachou sweets. And the bees were potentially interfering with all of this, the violets’ roots getting more and more exposed. Stubbornly enough, the bees weren’t interested in the alluring little piles of fine bark I placed nearby for their convenience. Wrong sort of bark obviously! Finally we just repotted the violets in a soil based compost and that was that.

The temporarily displaced Jackdaws reestablished morale by swaggering about on the lawn, exuding a ‘come on if y’think y’hard enough’ attitude. Unfortunately, they weren’t as hard as the dog and we had to rescue one of their youngsters. As you can see below, its feathers were rather bedraggled but otherwise it seemed fine. After all my moaning about them, why didn’t we just despatch it? It could grow up to steal other birds’ eggs and nestlings.

Back in the seventies in rural veterinary practice, we were hardened to both the incidental cruelty of nature (seagulls ugh!) and the practical requirement to despatch not only the incurable but the unloved, the unwanted and the impossible to home. Over the years, we’ve progressively lost all of that emotional pragmatism ie the conditioning that was essential for doing the job. Not that it was foolproof. We ended up with six or seven cats at one point. (Oh dear, think of the songbirds!) But now, we find that we can only put an end to those creatures that are irreparably damaged.

The loss of the conditioning has meant that living life in contact with nature means being endlessly aware that nature’s beauty goes hand in hand with its ruthlessness. It can be difficult being both the apex predator and the lifeform with the most highly developed consciousness. According to one of our visitors, it certainly creates distress for a lot of people who work at Slimbridge Wetlands Centre during the spring months. To appreciate what she meant, look for a moment at the photograph below and imagine it being snatched up and killed by a seagull or a crow.

One day in April, Andy was on the tennis court and this ingenuous, helpless little thing was suddenly following him around. Why? Why was it wandering around alone? We’ve all heard of imprinting but this seemed suicidal. He picked it up and went to the nearest water.

This duckling is what Jemima Puddleduck had been up to. On the island in our wildlife pond there was a barely noticeable nest, just a few twigs and dead fern fronds, with two more ducklings, both covered in green pondweed (hell to get rid of, but that’s another story) plus one unhatched egg which is now resident in the kitchen for some reason. I hope to goodness nobody tries to eat it.

The duckling was reunited with its brethren but Jemima herself wasn’t around and the heart just twisted at the sheer helplessness and frank hopelessness of it all. The reason that wild ducks and ducklings always seem so clueless in this modern world is, apparently, the result of a high volume (up to 12 eggs) high loss evolutionary strategy in which ducklings have to have a high level of independence, foraging for themselves, being neither fed nor nurtured. Whilst dedicated incubators, ducks are not renowned for active parenting. You can read about it as well as I, but the upshot is that, if you don’t actually live in wetlands anymore, it can be a haphazard business that frequently doesn’t look too smart.

Fortunately, in spite of all our forebodings, this particular duckling saga progressed better than one would frankly have expected. The entire family disappeared from our pond within a couple of days and, though we feared the worst, a couple of weeks into May, Andy saw Jemima and three well grown ducklings on a much larger pond on a nearby common. I wonder if all three made it to adulthood.

There is a new ecological landscape in which gardeners are now supposed to operate.

Looking back at Chelsea we can clearly see this new imperative in action. Contemplating it, I sometimes feel as much at a loss as ducklings are - unprepared by a combination of both evolution and education to cope with conflicting horticultural demands. As previously mentioned, slugs and snails eating the salad crops have been rehabilitated as horticultural heroes, the caterpillars eating the cabbage are prospective butterflies, those eating everything else from Solomon’s seal, to box to verbascums all turn into something prettier that will have a huge fan club somewhere.

If you want to have the lovely cinnabar moth you have to have ragwort or groundsel, if you want to see a hummingbird hawk moth (and the one we saw the other day was amazing, especially its proboscis) you have to stop pulling out all the cleavers and lady’s bedstraw and for red admiral butterflies you should leave nettles … And to further complicate things, the precursors of butterflies ie caterpillars are, as mentioned, prime fodder for baby blue tits. Talk about the circle of life … We now have to create a biological balance sheet that gets us both the garden of our dreams and hummingbird hawk moths.

One can easily see how Chelsea has become the way it has in terms of planting. Indeed, Sarah Eberle’s garden seems more and more relevant. Supporting endless species and their conflicting demands could certainly be viewed as the job of Gaia’s edgelands. You do what you can that is consistent with maintaining an actual garden and she picks up where you’ve drawn your line.

We are lucky here because we have our own edgelands that we can manage accordingly. The field is an obvious one, but the edges of the tennis court and even the holes in its tarmac grow surprising things - huge native verbascums, burdock, teasels, jack-by-the-hedge, pentaglottis, feverfew, foxgloves, pink campion, aquilegias …

But totally abandoned edgelands, like the neighbouring common that is smothered in nettles, brambles and sycamore seedlings - not to mention rubbish and the fact that our native grasses are powerful competitors that leave little breathing space for pretties like campion and ragged robin etc. means that they do not provide as much help to species/nature as they could if they were managed. In less populous times, there may have been so many edgelands that maximum performance from any single one was not necessary. But as the cry goes out for more and more homes and more and more people and more and more infrastructure, Sarah Eberle’s Chelsea garden becomes more and more pertinent.

To focus public interest/awareness and be appreciated and maximised for their contribution to both human life and nature, existing edgelands need our help. We need to sanctify our common places and make them both purposeful and beautiful.