Wordless Wednesday

Tulipa 'Love Song'

spotted at RHS Garden Rosemoor, Devon

Perfect partners #5

Tulipa 'Chinatown', Heuchera 'Beaujolais' and Anemanthele lessoniana

as seen in the Floral Pavilion at the Malvern Spring Gardening Show

Wordless Wednesday

Tulipa 'Rococo' about to unfurl

Good tulip, bad tulip

Right, that's quite enough cheerfulness, time to start complaining again.

My tulips are lovely, and I feel a little mealy-mouthed saying anything but delighted things about them, but they are not as they should be.

As usual I popped a slew of extra tulips in last autumn to back up what might or might not have survived the winter: I have pretty good tulip-overwintering soil, being sandy and free-draining, but you never can tell.

However the tulips I put in were not, you might say, the tulips they purport to be.

For example:

Tulipa 'Apeldoorn'

Good tulip:


Bad tulip:



Tulipa 'White Triumphator'

Good tulip:


(with thanks to Crocus for the pic)

Bad tulip:


And even worse tulip:


Tulipa 'West Point'

Good tulip:

(Crocus again)

Bad tulip:

The 'Queen of Night' are looking like they ought to at the moment, but there is an ominous streaking to my 'Orange Cassini' buds. And the 'Ballerina' and 'Spring Green' aren't open yet so I shall be interested to see what we end up with there.

It's not that I'm complaining exactly: I still have a spectacular display of rather lovely tulips (except the split 'Triumphator' - I really do detest those). But they ain't what I ordered.

To their credit the bulb company have apologised profusely and I shall be enjoying a free supply of 450 tulip bulbs this autumn. But I do have to wonder what happened.

Did they think most people wouldn't know their 'West Point' from their 'President Kennedy' and don't care anyway ('it's yellow, innit?')

Or is there some wierd virus mutation thing going on here? Is the purity of tulip bulbs becoming muddied by the endless hybridising and the multiple-million bulb turnovers of the big Dutch companies?

Answers on a postcard, please...

It's not often I like my garden but...

...today I do.

The sun is shining, the sky is clear and blue and aeroplane-free (thank you, oh thank you Icelandic volcano) and my tulips are out and singing to the world. I was clipping my rosemary hedges when I glanced up and saw this. And I grinned, rather foolishly, but entirely happily.

This, I do believe, is what it's all for. What more can a girl ask?

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.

Ouch

There's one thing they don't tell you about gardening before you start: you only find out once you're well and truly hooked and it's too late. It can be, and almost always is, excruciatingly painful.

Most of the time it's true that we all spend our time wafting about in floaty Laura Ashley dresses and floppy hats (except, in public at least, if we happen to be male gardeners) with trugs overflowing with floral bouquets on our arms exclaiming over plant combinations and quoting poetry at each other.

But it is also undeniably true that I'm almost always bleeding, bruised or aching - sometimes all three - from some gardening-related wound or other.

At the moment it's a blister. And not just any blister: a huge gobstopper of a blister, right slap bang in the middle of my left palm.

Now for any normal person, this would be an odd place to have a blister. On the curve of your thumb, maybe, if you'd been, say, rowing or painting a ceiling; or if you were a particularly keen letter-writer you might develop a carbuncle on your top middle finger joint just where the pen rests. But in the middle of your palm?

Seasoned gardeners will know all about this pecularly November-related affliction, and will probably sympathise. I've been planting tulip bulbs. Hundreds of them (well, 350, to be exact, which isn't a lot by some people's standards but is quite enough by mine). And that spot where the end of the trowel rests as you gouge a 4" hole in the earth over and over again is, you guessed it, right in the middle of your palm.

I've been planting my tulips in bursts so when the central-palm blister got just too painful I decided to transfer over to my hand-held bulb planter, not usually my favoured option as I find it a bit heavy-duty for my purposes, but at least its sturdy wooden handle would lie across the 20p-sized wound on my palm in, I hoped, a soothingly non-abrasive way.

I didn't reckon on the action the sides of the bulb planter would have on each side of my hand where I twisted it into the ground. I now have two more blisters to match: one on the outside of my palm, just where your clenched fist would rest on the table; and the other just on that fleshy bit between thumb and forefinger.

I have to return to my bulb-planting tomorrow for one last push: I'm seriously considering attaching a spike to my foot. But then I'll end up with blisters on the soles of my feet, too.

I won't mention the rose thorns semi-permanently embedded in my fingers (I've lost some of them - where do they go, do you think?) or the barbed-wire lacerations which stripe my arms from January to March and again from about July until September (pruning season). I've even found berberis thorns sticking out of my head. And that's not even counting the sundry rashes, broken nails, skinned knuckles, stone-bruised knees, groaning backs or aching shoulders I've sustained in the course of pursuing the gentle art of growing things.

Actually, I find whenever I get together with other gardeners we almost always end up comparing wounds at some point with a sort of childish fascination. I had a great time earlier this year when I was sporting a livid gash about 6" long on my upper arm. It elicited horrified admiration from all around, who assumed I'd slashed myself with a chainsaw or other viciously sharp pruning implement and only just avoided severing my entire arm.

Unfortunately for my gardening cred, it was actually an oven burn, sustained while reaching across a scalding hot baking tray to get something from the cupboard. But don't tell anyone. It makes a great scar.

Flowers for cutting

I thought I'd say a bit about my cutting garden, as it's this year's project and very much at the front of my mind just now.

I've carved out a more-or-less square plot, about 19ft x 19ft, on the far side of my greenhouse where it's pretty sunny most of the day. It's overshadowed by a large goat willow, but not too badly, and I'm in the process of raising the willow's crown so it doesn't cast too much shadow.

The design is quite simple: a 2ft bed around three sides of the square (the fourth is for my greenhouse and coldframe), with two 4'6" wide beds across the middle. It'll all be enclosed in 1" x 4" pressure-treated timber to define the beds and make maintenance easier. There are also 30" paths around the beds for access.

The area was previously a herb garden (a bit ott since I had it in mind once upon a time to set up a herb nursery - then realised how much work was involved). Result is I need to dig out large amounts of lemon balm, chives and lovage before I can plant. The good news there, though, is that the soil is in good heart as it's already been dug over and improved once.

So far I've got lavender and Rosa gallica officinalis, also known as Apothecary's Rose, along one long side, for drying as pot pourri; the short side will be for perennials for cutting - so far a clump of asters dug up from the main herbaceous border, but I'll be adding bulbs (daffs and tulips), a statice (great for drying) and whatever else I can find. I've added a Chimonanthes praecox (wintersweet) in the corner - again rescued from imminent suffocation in the big herbaceous border - thinking I'll cut branches if ever it gets around to flowering (they're notoriously slow to settle). Along the front edge will be dahlias, chrysanths and any other late-season perennials I can think of.

In the centre beds, so far there are only sweetpeas climbing up rustic hazel poles: but my antirrhinums are chomping at the bit in the coldframe waiting to be planted out, and I've got plenty more coming on to join them there. It just needs me to keep up with them by digging out a home, and we'll be raring to go!

More weeds than plants

This time of year it always happens, just the same. I look out at my garden and suddenly realise that without my even noticing it, there are more weeds than plants.

How does it happen? One moment it's all tulips and forget-me-nots (and boy was the display gorgeous this year), the next I realise I haven't thinned the honesty seedlings which are now monsters staging a border takeover, and there's a whopping thistle poking its head up and vying with the alliums for top billing.

Nothing for it - out into the beds wielding a fork and laying waste to all that greenery I had so innocently thought was plantery I wanted. Next spring I'll keep up with the weeding from the moment those little thugs start off, instead of being distracted by all those sweet little seedlings poking their heads out of the potting compost in the greenhouse and demanding water, potting on, hardening off, planting out... well, maybe...

Tulips again!

I'm currently reading Anna Pavord's "The Tulip" - it's been around for a while, but I thought since I've spent much of last autumn planting over 100 tulips in my own garden it was about time I found out about them.

What a lovely book. It's quite heavy-going, I find, largely because the scholardship is so dense: but once you've got into it, you can't help but be drawn in by the extraordinary story of this unique flower.

It's evident from the first page how well-educated Anna Pavord is: I'd always suspected it of her, but now I have proof that she not only speaks French, but 17th century French at that: the only trouble is she does rather assume her readership is as erudite as she is, and leaves great passages untranslated. I'm lucky enough to speak near-fluent modern French - but I find this is beyond me.

Never mind: it's not necessary to enjoy the book. It's full of little amazements: did you know, for example, that the French had their own version of tulipomania a full century or so before the Dutch? Or that the Turkish, who began the tulip craze, spurned the traditional European goblet shape (or more accurately, didn't even consider it in the first place) for the acutely waisted shapes only seen these days in Parrot tulips and the like?

Anna Pavord is one of those people who has always existed in the horticultural firmament. I can only wish I were half as good - or indeed as successful - a garden writer as she. I can't make out a professional gardening connection, but she's one of the best kind of gardeners: that is, one who has learned her craft through her own personal experience. She spent 30 years restoring a garden in Dorset before moving and starting again. She made her name with this book, though she has several others to her name, all sharing her particular brand of intelligence and insight. She just seems to be a true enthusiast and scholar of all things garden-related.

It's made me see tulips in an entirely different light. I'm looking forward to my spring blooms all the more for reading this: a whole new layer of knowledge and pleasure to add to what I hope will be a wonderful display.