Postcard from Borneo #6: Of birds, buttresses and butterflies

Well... let's start with the buttresses then:

Mangrove trees along the river

And some wonderfully mossy buttresses in the rainforest.


The trees were incredible: this one was a strangler fig. There was once another, live tree in the centre of this tower of trunks.

And some were so huge they made Californian redwoods look feeble.

Butterflies.... well, they were just everywhere.

(we took ages wondering what this lot were so excited about: was it that bit of brightly-coloured plastic? Or something rather more yucky? We decided probably the latter, so didn't go and investigate).


And not forgetting the birds....


Did you know that birds can't see at night? So if, as happened in this case, you chance upon a snoozing kingfisher by the riverbank, it will freeze and hope you don't see it rather than fly off since it's worried it might fly into something. We could have reached out and picked this one off the branch above our heads: it would have just about fitted into the palm of my hand.

Postcard from Borneo #5: Of plants that eat animals

You can't talk about plants and Borneo in the same breath without mentioning pitcher plants.

Nepenthes, as they should more properly be known, are something of a Borneo speciality. There are 32 known varieties on the island: many are found nowhere else on earth.

In case you've been hiding your head under a pile of sand for the last decade or so, pitcher plants are famous for 'eating' live creatures. Those quotation marks are advised: actually what they do is dissolve flies, insects and anything up to a small mouse in digestive juices held in those curious jug-like bladders. They may be ghoulish but there's a certain fascination about them: and maybe even beauty. They do also flower (safely high above where the pitchers grow, so beneficial pollinating insects aren't accidentally eaten by their host).

I wasn't visiting Borneo at the best time to see pitchers, as the dry season was well set in and most of them had dried into brown, papery husks: but there were a few spectacular specimens about which gave me just a glimpse of what might be out there.

Nepenthes ampullaria

...and again

Nepenthes burbidgeae

... and an unknown variety, possibly another N. burbidgeae but mis-labelled as N. rajah - the largest pitcher plant in Borneo and one I'd dearly love to see (about four times the size of this one). I didn't have a chance to root around for any other labels as I was a little preoccupied in preventing the Chinese lady next to me throwing stones in to this one's mouth to see if she could make it close. I gave her a very polite lecture on the habits of pitcher plants and the difference between them and Venus flytraps, and she was rather touchingly grateful and thereafter assumed I was a tour guide. She was very smiley, though obviously habitually misguided.

Postcard from Borneo #4: Of orchids

Orchids are everywhere in Borneo: a tenth of the world's wild species are found here. They festoon trees in the forest and scramble over stones and stumps in gardens and parks, and I have not the faintest idea what most of them are called: but oh, they are so heartbreakingly beautiful to look at.

(Actually I do know what this one is. It's the Rothschild Slipper Orchid (Paphiopedilum rothschildianum): phenomenally rare, and flowering its heart out just for us.)

Postcard from Borneo #3: Monkey business

Long-tailed macaques (I won't mention what these two were up to five seconds before this photo was taken)

Awwww.......

Yes, it is. Six feet long and only 'mildly' venomous. These mangrove snakes were not only hanging over our heads in trees in a mildly terrifying way but also slithering around among our riverside huts. Oh yes, and there were pythons too. And crocodiles in the river.

Chameleon trying to look inconspicuous at Poring Hot Springs.

And this, of course, was what we were all there for (well, that and in my case, the rare plants). Orang-utans have now lost 80% of their natural habitat and are increasingly confined, as this one was, to rehabilitation centres like the one at Sepilok.

However we did also - amazingly - see three of these wonderful creatures in the wild: but you'll have to take my word for it as I was holding someone else's camera at the time so they've got all the evidence.

Postcard from Borneo #2: Of forest flowers

At Poring Hot Springs (and they were, very hot) halfway up the mountain, there were lots of these gorgeous things: blowed if I know what they are though...

Ah: this is easier. Heliconia are everywhere in Borneo: just the one variety, but beautiful.

Wild datura trees on top of a hill

Hibiscus growing on the same hill: a possible garden escapee, I thought

A wierd and wonderful ginger flower bud; this one in the Rainforest Discovery Centre near Sandakan

One man's weed..... Morning glory is the Borneo equivalent of bindweed. Wish I had that problem.

Postcard from Borneo #1: Of mountains and jungles

Apologies for the lengthy silence - I've just been off on my hols. And we're not talking Torremolinos: I abandoned small children to ever-patient husband and set off halfway around the world to explore the jungles of Borneo.

Since there is, unsurprisingly and rather refreshingly, no internet access in the jungle, I thought I'd follow the time-honoured tradition of only sending your postcards once you've arrived home and hoping nobody notices the postmark.

Mount Kinabalu, just outside the capital, Kota Kinabalu and the view that dominated the first half of the week.

This is not a small mountain: 4000 feet or so of solid granite, and it's still growing.

Best of all, it is cloaked in rainforest: and there be rare plants in them thar hills.....

Wordless Wednesday

Emerging rhubarb bud

Moving matters #4: Things ain't what they used to be

Just got back from my first proper day of house-hunting.

Things are getting a little panicky at home as we've started getting people offering actual money for our house and this has made us realise that when you sell the house from under your feet you aren't allowed to live in it any more.

This means you have to find another house to live in. Quite quickly.

So I began my odyssey around the south-east of England - more specifically, my home county of West Sussex - to work my way through the "hmmm.... maybe" houses we've gathered in our long, long spell of whimsical drifting around internet house-hunting sites. Mostly drive-bys to check out gardens + locations, though I did go inside a couple of them.

This made me realise that houses, and more to the point gardens, have shrunk in the eight years since I last did this. And West Sussex is all but unrecognisable from my admittedly nostalgia-tinged memories of a rather idyllic childhood spent riding ponies around the South Downs.

First, most of the area from Arundel to Petworth to Chichester to Rowland's Castle - that's much of the south-east of England - has been paved over while I wasn't looking.

Second, the bits that are not paved over are eye-wateringly expensive.

So here's what house-hunting is like in our credit-crunched topsy-turvy times:

House 1 was right on the high street of an extremely busy (but quite pleasant, if you didn't have to open your front door onto it every day) country town. Didn't stop long enough to see the garden or I would have caused a traffic jam right in the middle of the Saturday shopping crowd.

House 2 was said on the estate agent's particulars to be "a plot of 0.7 acres". Sounds good, doesn't it? Until you realise that a) the estate agent clearly has his acres confused with square metres, and b) about 0.6 of the 0.7 is house.

House 3 was the only one I saw all day which was in a location I would have lived in. Stunning views across the countryside, pretty village, primary school, nice neighbours.... The garden was quite manicured in an uptight sort of way (pampas grass, trimmed euonymus, spiky things in tubs) but not too unpleasant - only trouble was the estate agents' blurb hinted there was much more of it than appeared to be the case. Though I might have got the boundaries wrong. Another major setback was that the house was more akin to a beach hut.

House 4: in such a nightmare location I couldn't stop without causing a pile-up (I was going 50mph at the time like the three lanes of traffic beside me and only just glimpsed it out of the corner of my eye).

House 5 was a pretty little bungalow - normally I'm very biased against bungalows but this one was gorgeous, all hung with creeper and cottage garden. Like many streets where bungalows are found the neighbours scored quite high in the blue rinse stakes but at least it was peaceful. Quite keen on this one until I got home and found it had already been sold.

House 6 had a fantastic garden with quite the biggest greenhouse I've ever seen in a domestic setting. It stretched from one side of the garden to the other - that's about 40 feet - and there was a second (more normal-sized) greenhouse as well. If I tell you that even with both greenhouses and a summer house there was still loads of garden left you'll realise what a covetable space it was. Only trouble was that you'd have an audience for every spadeful you dug: there were no fewer than five houses backing onto one side, and two backing onto the end. Talk about gardening in a goldfish bowl.

House 7: why do people choose to live in places where you get mashed to a pulp by speeding motorcars on taking more than two steps from your front door?

House 8: the chavs over the road were doing something so complicated to their souped-up car (spoilers plus decals) that they had to play VERY LOUD MUSIC to get the screws to loosen off. I'd have my screws loose living opposite that lot for long. It was a shame really as this one had a huge garden with a pony paddock in the bottom too: mind you the chav music was almost - but not quite - drowned out by the relentless howl of combustion engines from the not-very-far-away A3.

Conclusion from the day: we can't afford to live here.

Plant of the month: March

Crocus chrysanthus 'Snow Bunting'

Like jewels warmed by the sunshine, the crocuses are waking up.

I have many in my garden: deep purple and profligate Crocus tommasinianus, purest yellow C. chrysanthus, pale violet hybrids of uncertain descent.

But the most beautiful crocus in my garden is one which I only planted for the first time last year, despite many years of coveting its silky white blooms. I now wouldn't be without it.

C. chrysanthus 'Snow Bunting' was bred by the legendary E. A. Bowles, who was something of a crocus buff in his time and produced about 14 hybrids, all named after birds. Most can be found in the National Collection, held at Myddleton House in Enfield.

I have a dozen 'Snow Bunting' in a deep blue ceramic container just outside my back door, rather fancifully planted with some dark bruise-coloured pansies in a vague sort of black-and-white concoction.

Never mind the cliché: it looks utterly fabulous and has me smiling every time I walk out the door. Even when the sun isn't out (i.e. most of the time) the crocuses still look elegant with threads of purple running up the outsides of their closed buds.

But the other morning, the sun came out and hit them full on. I think the only things more excited about it than me were the bees: they couldn't get enough of those joyous butter-yellow throats. And nor could I. The scent filled the air - I've always had to get down on my hands and knees for that exquisite perfume before, but not this time.

It's moments like this that spring was invented for.

Meet my baby

Isn't she sweet? Actually she's one of three - triplets, you might say - and I've had them all tucked up in pots over winter on my herb shelf, which is up against the house wall outside so quite a sheltered little spot.

The reason I'm so chuffed with my babies making it through winter is that they're Erygium agavifolium, a plant I have admired in other people's gardens for many years. It's a very spectacular and somewhat exotic-looking eryngium, sometimes known as the button eryngium; like most sea-hollies it has bracted rather thistle-like flowerheads, but in this case they're 6ft tall and come in huge ghost-white clusters. The plant is also evergreen with imposing and I hope you'll agree rather attractive rosettes of glossy mid-green toothed leaves. It's borderline hardy - which is why I put the littlies up by the house.

More to the point, these particular ones were free. I spotted a forlorn single remaining specimen while I was at West Dean Gardens near Chichester last year and pounced on it (slightly manically but I don't think anyone noticed). Imagine my glee when I realised that nestled under the main crown were three little babies. Not a word did I utter to the nice lady at the checkout: I paid for one plant and got four. Of such stuff are gardeners' dreams made.

Once home I split the whole lot up, potted up the babies and popped mum in the border by the pond, where she's looking a little battered after this awful winter but still healthy (rather giving the lie to the minus-five minimum temperature usually given for these plants: as usual I think it's the wet rather than the cold that you've got to watch out for). Now I'm looking forward to a fourfold display of spectacular ghostly fireworks this summer. There will be photographs.

Back indoors again

Arrrrrrrgggghggeeeeeuuuuuucchchhhhhhhgggggggggrrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmmfffffff

I HATE February!

Especially THIS February! ¹

The gods of weather up there are looking down at me and laughing themselves sick. Right, they say. We've given her ice, snow, hail, sleet and torrential rain on a Biblical scale for the last three weeks: now let's give her a nice sunny Saturday. Look! Lovely! Warm temperatures, and no rain at all! We won't even make it windy! Let's make it that exact Saturday she's got to stay indoors because it's her little girl's birthday party and not even she can come up with an excuse that can get her out of that so she can go gardening.

Then on Sunday, when there's nothing much going on and gardening to do, let's unleash the forces of hell on her! Yay! Lashing rain - tick! Howling gales - tick! The kind of temperatures that freeze your nose off as soon as you look outdoors - tick! Oh, what fun we had!

Harrumph. I've had to retreat back into the greenhouse again, as you may have guessed. I do actually like my greenhouse, but it is so frustrating not to be able to get outside.

Anyway: enough moaning. There's been a lot going on in both greenhouses just lately (wonder why that could be?). The one in my garden is chocablock with seedlings after I (again) started sowing a little earlier than I should. And up at the allotment there are changes afoot.

For the last six years since I put the greenhouse up there has been a fine crop of dandelions pushing their way up through what passes for a path (trodden earth, doncha know... that's code in gardening books for gardeners who couldn't be bothered to lay a proper path, and is almost always a very unsatisfactory option to choose). It's extremely irritating, especially as they seed themselves into the border, occasionally grow big enough to trip you over and generally make a nuisance of themselves.

So I've been spending the last few sessions up there fixing the problem. And here's what I did.


Before I started: see what I mean about that path? Not really up to scratch, and certainly not model-allotment stuff. You can even see the failed previous attempt at path-making there. Let nobody ever accuse me of seeing a job through from start to finish.

Anyway: the dandelions were history after a bit of brisk hoeing, and I was ready to go.



First job was to hold the borders back with a smart edging of gravel boards. Actually they're the gravel boards you can (just about) see in the above picture after cleaning up. Recycling and allotmenteering were made for each other.

The weed-suppressing membrane is recycled too: a gardening job I did where I had to rip up a membrane someone put down over a potato bed after planting (don't ask...) I've stapled it on as insurance against pesky weeds pushing through the gap - a lesson hard-learned from previous experience.

Sand was next: this evened out the bumpy bits nicely. I used a load of sand I had left over from doing the path in the garden (see? Nothing goes to waste around here!) and trod it down with the gardeners' soft-shoe shuffle (you'll see the same dance wherever lawns are to be laid: pretend you're an Egyptian mummy swaddled from head to foot in bandages and then try to move your feet up and down and you'll have it). Once raked and levelled with another board dragged over the surface it was ready to go.



Ta-daaaah! Almost the finished article: my camera ran out of batteries before I got the sand brushed into the cracks to finish it off. I would have mixed cement with the sand had I been really serious as the weeds will still grow through the cracks using plain sand - but at least I'll be able to pull them out easily.

By the way the concrete slabs are recycled too: I picked them up from our local primary school after they had a patio lifted.

So all this cost me... well.... nothing. Apart from about three or four half-hour sessions down the lottie. Not bad, eh? Wish I'd done it years ago now...


1: except the crocuses, I like those. And all those buds and shoots I was wittering on about the other day.

Be careful what you wish for

I hesitate to admit this in public, since anyone who knows how scruffy my garden really is (as opposed to how it's represented on this blog) will snort in a disbelieving sort of way into their sleeves at the news, but it's been a secret and long-held ambition to create a garden of a standard where I can think about opening it to the public. A couple of days a year under the wonderful National Gardens Scheme would be enough, like Martyn and Victoria. We'll overlook the fact they're both better gardeners than me and almost certainly a great deal tidier.

You'll note I say "think about". Actually all I really want is to have the sort of garden I don't have to apologise for when people outside the immediate family see it. And just in case the sheer impossibility of someone with my shortcomings in the neatness department turning out a spectacularly well-manicured garden like I would need didn't put me off, I was recently sent a cautionary tale in the form of a poem written by one Caroline Palmer, who clearly has all too much experience in these matters, which has confirmed me in the view that letting people in to admire the garden may be good for your ego, but not so good for your sanity.

When you open to the public

They come along and say

'Oh what a lovely shrub that is'

And take a piece away.

They also like to know the names

of all the plants on view

They never bring a notebook

So they take the labels, too.

They like a pretty garden

And expect a damn good tea

And though it's all for charity

take extra cakes for free.

Because they weren't invited

Inside the house to pass

You'll find them in the flowerbeds

Their faces to the glass.

Wordless Wednesday: The green shoots of recovery

Goodbye to a dear friend

RIP Allotment Dog

2004-2010

Just too sad to do anything just now, so I'm taking some time off. Normal service will be resumed in a week or so when I can be more cheerful again.

Moving matters #3: Home improvements

You know that thing you do when you're selling a house when you rush round getting all the jobs done that needed doing for the last five years but you've never got round to? Just in time for someone else to enjoy the fruits of your labours?

Well I've discovered the same thing applies to the garden. Now - brace yourself: this is a bit of the garden I never - and I mean never - show people if I can possibly help it.

Here's a 'before' shot, taken in June 2008 when it was at its absolute worst, of the middle section of the garden: the section we've been about-to do up for quite some time.

You can see why I avoided showing it to people, can't you?

Over the ensuing two years progress has been painfully slow, but there has been progress of sorts: we've moved the shed which you can see to the right, and cleared the undergrowth and much of the junk. However it has still remained the bonfire spot of choice and the place where large loads of manure, sand and topsoil get dumped for want of anywhere else. My experience of this little wilderness has led me to form a firm belief that scruffiness just breeds scruffiness.

Anyway: the idea was always that there would be a central children's play area to house slides, trampolines and the like (it's opposite the wendy house) and I would plant it up with something cottagey around the edges.

The imminent prospect of dozens of people walking through my garden and seeing the scene of wreckage above has acted like a large box of nitroglycerine delivered beneath our backsides: and we've finally got on and done it.


Do you know what - it took about three hours to install it and was really, really easy. Hubby has also laid a nifty little path across to it since this photo was taken.

Now for the exciting bit: the plan is to rotavate all the spare ground around it and seed it with one of those lovely Sheffield mixes of meadow-style annuals from Pictorial Meadows. A quick fix akin to painting over the stains on the walls with a swish of Dulux: but much, much prettier.

It is so maddening that you always get these things done just in time to leave them behind. I would have saved myself a lot of abject apologising had I got on with it, say, two years ago, and I'd also have been able to enjoy those sparkly meadow flowers all for myself every summer.

I think there's an aberrant and probably masochistic gene which only switches on when you begin moving house. I have it in spades: it impels you to demonstrate to yourself what might have been, had you been more efficient, more perfect, and just a bit less inclined to procrastinate.

Upside-down tulips

You know all those dire warnings always to plant your tulip bulbs (and indeed any other type of bulb) the right way up, so the pointy end goes upwards and the basal root plate is pointing down? Ever had a crisis of confidence over those fiendish corms like ranunculus or cyclamen when it's sometimes impossible to tell which end is up?

Well I thought I'd put your mind at rest. Last autumn my little girls were given a packet of tulips (praestans 'Fusilier', in case you're interested) and we had a lovely muddy session in which they enthusiastically planted them all in their little gardens outside the wendy house. I did tell them which way up to put them, but, well, when you're seven you get a bit carried away sometimes.

So - I was weeding that bit the other day and accidentally dug up one of the tulip bulbs (a bit of an occupational hazard at this time of year I find). And this is what I found.

Now, doesn't that make you feel better? No matter which way up you plant a bulb, it seems, it manages to sort itself out perfectly well, thank you very much. So next autumn, sling 'em in and as long as they're not waterlogged or pulled up by squirrels, things will turn out just fine.

I re-planted this one right away. Upside down, of course: it seems to like it that way.

Gardening on air #3: Painting with words

A little poetry today, written by Andrew Young, a 19th-century Scottish botanist and clergyman who is said to have seen almost every single British plant for himself: no mean feat in those days. I hadn't come across this before, but it's one of the most vivid evocations of the end of winter I've ever heard.

Last Snow

Although the snow still lingers

Heaped on the ivy's blunt, webbed fingers

And painting tree trunks on one side,

Here, in this sunlit ride, the fresh, unchristened things appear

Leaf, spathe and stem with crumbs of earth clinging to them

To show the way they came

But no flower yet to tell their name

And one green spear stabbing a dead leaf from below

Kills winter at a blow.

As heard on Poetry Please with the inimitable Roger McGough yesterday on Radio 4.

Butterflies at Wisley 2010

Not quite as many to see this year as it's been so cold - we're planning to return in a few weeks when it's a bit milder - but still enough for some magical moments.

Wordless Wednesday

Pavonia x gledhillii

as seen in the glasshouse at RHS Wisley

And now for something completely different

Look what I got my hands on at the weekend!

I've been trying to track down one of these for years. I've put my name on waiting lists, sent hopeful emails to likely friends, even posted messages on message boards, but to no avail.

They say it's when you're not looking for something that - ping! - it shows up, and so it has turned out with my yacon crown, which I found while at the 12th Annual Hampshire Potato Day on Saturday at Whitchurch, near Andover. I've gone on about this at greater length on t'other blog I write for crocus.co.uk, as it was a revelation: I never knew so many potatoes existed in the world.

But potatoes weren't the whole story, and there were some fantastic nurseries in attendance too: Pennard Plants whose collections of heritage vegetable seeds I'd already admired last year at the Wisley Flower Show, and Edulis, possibly my favourite nursery of all time. This is because they specialise in unusual edible plants: I've seen them at many shows and plant fairs before and every time I've found myself in raptures over their plants (and usually laden with carrier bags before I can tear myself away).

My eye was caught by a little tray of bright orangey-pink oca, another vegetable I've been wanting to grow for ages and haven't seen anywhere else. While I was dithering over that, the lady next to me asked what the big yam-like tuber behind them was (being observant, I hadn't actually noticed them despite the fact that they were at least a foot long).

"They're yacon," the man said. At which I suddenly started jabbering away at him in a state of extreme over-excitement, the lady previously mentioned backed away cautiously and my kids (who have previous experience of these outbursts of mine) went off to hide under a nearby table.

The man turned out to be Paul Barney, the lovely and very kind owner of Edulis who clearly knows an obsessive when he sees one. He reached down and produced a big yacon crown he'd been hiding in a plastic bag on the floor. He said it was his last one, but never mind, he cut me off a big chunk anyway (I do like gardeners) and I skipped off with a grin on my face like the cat who got the cream.

Now I've got to figure out what to do with it. Paul said there's enough there to allow me to split it still further if I want to, but as a yacon novice I don't think I'll dare try that until next year. So for now I'm potting it up and keeping it on the dry side in the frost-free greenhouse before starting it into growth at about the same time as my dahlias (which it very closely resembles, only about six times the size). And then... well, let's cross that particular bridge when we get to it. For now, I'm just happy my search is over.

GOOPs February

Notes to self:

1) In winter, branches on apple trees are full of water and therefore VERY heavy.
2) You know that little cut you do on the underside of the branch to prevent it falling and stripping away a load of bark on the way? You do that FIRST, even if you think it might be slightly in the wrong place so you'd better just do a little cut in the top first to make sure you're going to line the two up.
3) When you ignore the two points above, the following happens:

• you slice through around, oh, let's say 10cm of the top of the branch
• you suddenly realise that previously stout branch is inexplicably moving away from you
• there's a sort of creaking noise and the sound of splintering wood
• your chicken run fence disappears under half a tree that's now lying on the ground
• because you failed to make the underside cut first the branch takes with it a massive strip of bark and you have revealed yourself to be crap at pruning trees.

My final weekend finishing off the apple tree pruning didn't go as well as I'd hoped. Fortunately I'd made this rubbish cut halfway along the branch so I could get rid of the top weight before making a neater cut closer to the tree - you see I do know the theory, I just don't always follow it - so I was able to cut away most of the shockingly big tear, but there's still quite a bit left and I feel the tree is reproaching me every time I look at it now.

This post is inspired by GOOPs - Gardening Oops, a meme probably dreamt up especially for me as it encourages us gardeners to stop taking ourselves so seriously and more to the point 'fess up that we're not all as perfect as we'd like everyone to think we are. So thanks Joene over in Connecticut - lesson in humility duly learned!