Ne'er cast a clout....

...till May is out. So the saying goes.

It's one of the oldest ones in the book - but there is a certain amount of debate as to what exactly it means.

The clouting bit is clear enough: it's all to do with warm clothing. A 'clout' is an olde-Englishe word for 'cloth' - so 'casting' (throwing) a 'clout' (cloth, or coat) means taking off your coat.

So you might interpret it as warning you against thinking that just because there's a spate of warm weather going on early in the year, you can go ahead and act like it's summer: chances are we've got more cold weather on the way and that coat will be going back on.

In gardening terms, this means you can't be absolutely sure there won't yet be a late frost - even if it is 25°C, hasn't rained in weeks and everyone's heading like lemmings to the seaside.

But what about the 'May is out' bit? Some say it means you shouldn't lower your guard (or your horticultural fleece) until the beginning of June. But, it has also been pointed out, it could refer to the old word for hawthorn - still known as 'may' by my mum, who used to eat the leaves when she were a nipper. She called it 'bread and cheese', but don't try it - it's horrible.

Well guess what.

This is the may in my hedgerow: it opened its pure white flowers over the Easter weekend and is now 'out' in the outest way it is possible to be.

So to continue my selfless pursuit of research and truth in the services of English etymology: this is by way of marking your card. If there is no further frost from this point forward, I think we can safely say that 'may' in the saying refers to the hawthorn.

If however I have been entirely duped and bamboozled and my new potatoes - now already at the earthing-up stage and about as vulnerable to frost as it's possible to be - are clobbered to black slime by a perfectly normal May frost, I think we can probably conclude that the May in question is the month.

Actually, for completeness, I could do with some fellow researchers a bit further north: is there anyone not quite as close to the south coast as I am with may in blossom at the moment? Let me know and we'll see if you get caught short by a late frost too. Citizen science - it ain't just the Natural History Museum at it, you know.

Oh, and I hope you all had a very happy Easter, by the way!

By the way....

...it did flower for me after all :D

The unseasonably sunny weather over the last few weeks played in my favour so I had this to look at and swoon over out of my garden room window.


Actually it doesn't stop there: there are two more flower spikes, both at the stage this one was at a couple of weeks ago and looking a little dicey as to whether they'll actually make it to full glory.

However it must be said we have now had our first ground frost (to one degree above, so it doesn't really count, but it was a warning shot across the bows). So my triffids are safely stashed in my insulated and soon-to-be-heated greenhouse, which I hope will soon be filled with the scent of gingerlily flowers.

Collateral damage

Oh dear.

A quick tour of my so-called jungle garden (i.e. the place I so optimistically planted up with climate change anticipation plants last summer) reveals I didn't exactly get out of the recent cold snap scot free.

This is (or was) a purple cordyline. I was rather fond of it as it made a snazzy contrast with the libertias and hostas, to say nothing of a canna behind it, and gave me the pleasant illusion that I was quite good at putting plants together. I thought they were meant to be bone hardy, too.

The remains of a Melianthus major that was just getting into its stride last autumn...

...and my poor Astelia chathamica 'Silver Spear', lately of Chelsea 2008, which also looks to be less hardy than you would think.

Some of these might - just - come back, though I'm not sure they'll ever be quite the same again. Now, here's a quandary. do I press on and insist on a jungly area at the bottom of my garden anyway? (I'll have my banana-mad eight-year-old daughter to answer to if I don't). Do I resort to drought-tolerant Mediterranean plants only to have them washed away and drowned in a sea of mud every winter? Or do I plant a sea of English flowers and water them every five minutes all summer, also risking the customary deluge turning to a desert-like scorcher and the whole lot frazzling to a crisp as soon as I turn my back?

You know, this gardening lark isn't as straightforward as it looks.

The great thaw begins

Walking down the garden drops of melted hoarfrost are falling from the trees, and for the first time in three weeks, there is water on my pond.


It's still three-quarters frozen, and all pond-life is suspended just beneath the surface like a snapshot of the moment before the cold snap began: this water soldier (Stratiodes aloides) is meant to have sunk to the bottom for its winter sleep but it obviously didn't get away in time.


My pond is a little shallow so I'm hoping all the newts are still OK in there.

I may be getting optimistic here but who knows - I may even get gardening again soon!

Indoor gardening

Frost has stopped play. The pond hasn't defrosted for a week, and part of the lawn is permanently white. As for the allotment... we had to go and buy some parsnips the other day as the ones I've grown so lovingly are now concreted in to a rock-hard veg bed (yeah, I know, should have lifted them and heeled them in somewhere sandier, didn't get around to it).

The BBC's rather awe-inspiring monthly weather forecast says this will carry on for the rest of January, as it's caused by a wodge of high pressure that's apparently "notoriously difficult to budge". Oh help. I'll be reduced to making curtains soon.

Anyway, I'm trying to comfort myself with the thought of millions of tiny slugs freezing solid, and meanwhile doing some indoor gardening. This is long overdue: I'm very late in planning my seed order, which I must send off this week as otherwise the spuds won't be chitting in time. I've also, at last, come up with a coherent design for the front garden, and I'll be measuring up those bits of the back garden I'm not already digging up shortly - all part of the Great Garden Makeover of course. The only trouble with plans is, you then have to put them into some sort of action... which in my case almost always means half-finished projects all over the garden as the summer rush takes over yet again.

I've also been making some New Year's Resolutions to ring in 2009. A bit of a pointless exercise, of course, but I like to see how quickly I jettison them each year. This year, they are more informed at least thanks to all this blogging (mine but more frequently other people's).

• I'm going to start a diary (I do this every year. Never got past March yet. At least I know what I was doing in early spring back to about 1975).
• While I'm taking those photos for Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day each month, I'm also going to photograph the whole of my garden, warts and all, as a record of all these improvements I'm making (this of course will be strictly not for publication: all photography found on this blog is a triumph of the macro lens over reality).
• I'm going to start some of those projects I'm planning (see above)
• I'm going to finish some of those projects I'm planning (see above)
• I shall try not to get impatient when my eight-year-old wants to plant tulips in my potato beds, but shall let her with a beneficent smile in the interests of keeping her gardening (and will secretly replant the tulips back in the same spot after harvesting the potatoes).
• My reading of other people's blogs shall not take over my working life
• ... and nor will surreptitious trips to the allotment when I should be at my desk
• I shall cram in as much knowledge as I can about gardening, plants and plantspeople, and hopefully end the year a better gardener.

Right, that'll do for now. I wish everyone who drops by this blog from time to time all the very best for 2009. Happy New Year!

And so to bed

After all that snow last month, with accompanying panic involving yards of horticultural fleece and bubble-wrap, I finally got round to doing the job properly.

My poor banana plant...

I hope to goodness I'm doing this right. This year was the first time I've ever grown bananas, and I've become completely hooked - something about watching them grow by about a foot a day - but this is a bit nerve-wracking. I looked it all up, and they say you have to chop off all the leaves and put it somewhere frost-free. I've potted it up in a 50:50 mix of compost and sand, which should take care of the drainage, but oh it looks so miserable. To say nothing of that worrying list to the top spike. I think I may have removed one too many leaves. Well - it'll live or it'll die, I suppose.

More straightforward was the Musa basjoo by the pond. When you chop the leaves off this one, you don't have to look at it as you immediately cover it in lots of straw, so you can kid yourself it's all cosy and warm in there. I've used an old bit of green plastic fencing to hold it all in place, and that plastic on the top is a bit of bubble wrap just to keep the worst of the rain off and stop it all rotting. I'll also be wrapping a couple of layers of fleece round the whole thing, partly as insurance, partly because it'll look marginally better if I do.

I hear of lots of tales of Musa being left outside all winter long these days with never a setback, but since we're not really within the London microclimate here and this is only a one-year-old plant, I thought I'd best not risk it. One day I'll have a 20-ft monster which I'll be only too pleased to have cut down by the frost - but not just yet.

Frosty morning

I know frost is meant to be the gardener's enemy. I, like no doubt many others in the vicinity, spent much of yesterday running around frantically squirrelling things away in my greenhouse as the weather forecast got gloomier and gloomier. This morning, I still found I had several casualties when I woke up to find it went down to minus 2 or so. But oh... it was so beautiful.


This was one of my casualties - the Nicandra physaloides, now reduced to a sodden mess in the corner. But didn't it look lovely as it died.

I thought this Goliath poppy was being a bit optimistic, producing flower heads this late in the season!

Verbena bonariensis is, I often think, at its best after a good frost.

The frost melted pretty quickly but even that sent me into rhapsodies - this is Melianthus major which holds onto the droplets like jewels. The little spider was up early, too.

Another one that's looking good as the frost melts off it - this is Eucalyptus gunnii, kept coppiced for that glaucous, rounded young foliage.

And even the nettles were pretty. It doesn't get much better than that.

First frost of the season!

I can't believe it... we had our first frost of the year at the weekend.

This is the first time I can remember having a frost before November down here. We're an energetic spit from the M25 after all and what with global warming I was looking forward to comfortably making it through to Christmas before turning on the greenhouse heater before many years had gone by.

But no - we woke to a lawn frosted with ice. I raced off down the garden, heart in my mouth to have a look at the Ensete ventricosum that my father-in-law lovingly raised from seed and then gave to me (or rather my eight-year-old daughter); it's been growing like topsy all year and is now a good 10ft high and still heading skywards. It's been my pride and joy, and I was just getting ready to dig it up for winter and snuggle it down in the greenhouse, but here I was, caught short.

I was so relieved to find that that Colutea arborescens which arches over it had kindly protected it from the frost and it was still intact and as robust as ever. Lucky escape. Not so fortunate were the crops up at the allotment - the Sarpo Mira potatoes had all the tops frosted (not such a big deal as I was already harvesting them) and more upsettingly the sweetcorn I rescued from rat attack with the help of my feline friends had been totally clobbered, as had the butternut squash underneath. I had a nice big squash ripening up too. That's got an ominous grey patch on it but I'm hoping I can salvage at least some for my favourite roast veg dish.

Blimey, I can't keep up with this climate thing. I can cope with daffs in November; I can even see the bright side over these ridiculous amounts of rain over summer (I haven't had to water the allotment for a whole two years now). But the unpredictability is a little unnerving at times like these. I just wish it would make its mind up and stay like that for a bit.

Magnolias at Kew

Yes, I know it's long past magnolia season but I thought I'd just recall for everyone just how lovely these trees are. My excuse is that I've been having a bit of a magnolia fest this year, as not only did I get to write a whole article about them which included talking to some of the country's best growers and enthusiasts but also got to see the National Collection down in Caerhays which got me totally smitten - especially this fine specimen.

Well, just a few days after I got back from Cornwall I was over at Kew on another journalistic jaunt (I do love my job) and while wandering back from doing my interview, went to have a look at the magnolias. They'd been rather clobbered by frost, unfortunately - occupational hazard if you're a magnolia - but there was still enough there to make me swoon.



This one was amazing (and this pic is now my desktop - VP take note, I've shown you mine now too!). This is M. 'Phelan Bright', and these flowers are 10" across. Pretty amazing anyway, but even more so when you consider the tree is only 3 years old (some magnolias can take up to 20 years to flower).


Sadly this lovely thing was just about the only flower on the whole tree not reduced to brown and tattered ribbons by frost. Made it all the more special that this one survived. This is M. heptapita 'Yulan' - I'd never heard of the species, but the flower colour was the purest white of the lot.


Magnolias aren't often praised for anything except their flowers, but the buds are just gorgeous (fuzzy brown nutkins you can't help but stroke) and the leaves are often spectacular too. None more so than the leaves of M. grandiflora - it's evergreen and as you can see has lush, almost tropical foliage.


I love magnolias for their branch structure and their habit of flowering before the leaves come out - yes, it exposes them to frost, but it also shows you how spectacular pure white flowers against the stark outline of a tree trunk can be. This one is M. x veitchii 'Alba'.

Note to self: plant another magnolia. I only have M. stellata but every time it comes out in my front garden it looks more spectacular and I promise myself I'll get another one soon.

Back to work

At last - the sun is shining, the frost has stopped (for the time being at least) and I can get outside again. I realised this morning that what with a combination of bad weather and Christmas, I only gardened one week in December... that must be some sort of record for me.

One thing I did do in my own garden - which didn't require treading on the frosted grass, which at one point didn't defrost for five days in a row - was to sort out my willow tree. This is the goat willow (Salix caprea) that's by my pond - you can see another picture of it covered rather fetchingly in snow here. You might be able to see from the earlier picture that it was overhanging the fence quite considerably - well on the other side of the fence happens to be my cut flower garden, so it was quite urgent that I take out the overhanging branches and let in a bit more light.

The depths of winter are a great time for pruning trees - you can really see what you're doing, and create a good, balanced outline. You can also get a good look at the general health of the branches, and those which are crossing other branches or generally growing in the wrong direction become very obvious when they're not hidden by leaves. In this case, I aimed for quite a tall, upright shape which was well-balanced but didn't cast too wide a shadow.

When pruning trees, you need to take care not to cut too close to the trunk. If you look at where a side branch leaves the main branch or trunk, you'll see there's an obvious junction. This is called the collar - it appears as a slight swelling between trunk and branch. You should cut on the branch side of the collar - not through it, or on the other side of it, as it contains lots of good hormones which promote the rapid healing of the wound. You can see where I've done this on the big cut facing you in the picture.

It's a good idea too to cut quite close to the collar, as if you leave too much of the branch on the tree, it'll die back and could rot and let in disease - I could have cut fractionally closer here, in fact, and it's not always easy to get it absolutely right. One tip is to cut away the branch little by little, from the far end back towards the trunk, so you get several chances to cut it to exactly the right point.

First frost of the year

We had the first really hard frost of the year last night - down to minus 7 degrees, which is pretty low for any time of the year in this part of the world. We've had a couple of minor ground frosts in the last few weeks, but this one has really sent temperatures plummeting.

I love frosty nights, mainly because they're almost always followed by a day of glorious winter sunshine which makes the garden sparkle as if it's been dusted with diamonds. I've left as many of the seedheads on this year as I felt I could, and it's in these conditions that they really reward you for it: the ones in the picture are Helenium "Moorheim Beauty", which were beginning to go a bit soggy and brown but have been transformed this morning by their frosting of mini-icicles.

Leaving seedheads on à la Piet Oudolf can be a bit hit-and-miss, I find. Some are strong enough to cope, but others (even ones Mr Oudolf recommends) collapse very quickly into a rather uninspiring mass of damp bobbles. A client of mine has an otherwise lovely clump of Rudbeckia, which are supposed to stand most of the winter, but despite my exhortations to last at least until Christmas I think I'm going to have to tidy them up in a week or so as they look just awful at the moment.

The lovely fluffy puffballs that adorn my cardoons (Cynara cardunculus) on the other hand have been wonderful - the birds think so, too, as everything from great tits to starlings have been tugging great clumps of fluff out of them to line their winter quarters with. I've got another flock of bluetits which have been stripping the seeds off the Stipa gigantea (which has been truly gorgeous this year - you can see why everyone raves about this fabulous grass). They also perch precariously on the wildly-waving bobbles of Verbena bonariensis to feast on the seeds inside: now this is one plant which stands bravely no matter what the weather, though I think mine are about to lose their heads if the birds carry on the way they are. It may be winter, but it's not boring.