Snowdrops in the rain

I am no galanthophile but the sight of a bank of these dear little white blossoms does indeed lift the spirits, which at this bleak time of year are much in need of lifting.  The sun was shining as we stirred this morning, so a plan to seek out some snowdrops was hatched and we headed for Brockhill Park; a truly splendid country park only a very short drive up the hill.  The car park was quite empty as we arrived, just a few hardy joggers preparing to outshine us in the fitness stakes, and after resolving our lack of suitable coinage we duly displayed our ticket and set off. The sky was varying from blue and sunny to grey and brooding by the minute, and it seemed that within just a few seconds the heavens began to open.  We carried on, having only just fed the car park machine we wanted to get our money's worth, but sense made us take shelter under a very dense holm oak until the worst of the rain had passed.  It wasn't long before we could carry on along the path and down to the lake.

Like the rest of the country, we in the southeast have had a lot of wet weather recently and the ground was very soggy so care had to be taken as we descended the slope.  Younger, more adventurous visitors behind us took the shortcut across the grass and suffered the hilarious consequence of going over to much laughter and lots of shrieking.

We took the easy option of circumnavigating the lake, along the designated path, to enjoy the splendid sight of clump after clump of snowdrops all now glistening with drops of fresh rain making them almost iridescent.  My photos don't do them enough justice really, but I think go some way to illustrate the prevailing conditions.

It was an excellent time to be in the park since we were almost entirely alone.  The sky continued to change  by the minute with scudding clouds giving way to bright blue and warm sun, then back to being grey and heavy again.  While the sun shone it was tempting to think that winter has gone, but, of course we know different.  However, while it did shine we enjoyed it and soaked up its warmth while looking at the flowers down on the ground, and the catkins waving in the high branches.

We had only just got home and removed our muddy boots before the rain turned briefly to sleet so we congratulated ourselves on our early start and having avoided the worst of the weather.

Our own garden is still in full wintry mode with just a few hints of what's to come.  A few hellebores have started to flower and we have several clumps of those long stemmed plants that look like snowdrops but are as tall as narcissi, I believe them to be Spring Snowflakes or Leucojum Vernum.  We also have just a couple of proper snowdrops which were already here in the garden, so I can take no credit for them.  Along with these we have primroses which flower abundantly in the south facing front borders, and some bergenia.  None of these are down to me, but we enjoy their beauty and thank the previous owners for their input daily.

January went by in quite a rush; we enjoyed several social events that seemed to extend the festive season well into the new year.  I spent many hours absorbed in various crafty projects too; a complicated knitted jumper, started on Christmas Day evening and finished on 22nd January; a crocheted cowl, a knitted one too, a bobble hat (for next year's charity gift boxes - it's never too soon to start!) and some secret crochet gifts ready for Easter.  Emma Mitchell's excellent book 'Making Winter' has been inspirational as have the blogs attic24 and talesfromahappyhouse both of which I follow for hints, tips and ideas.  And now, with a Valentine's Day special outing planned, a new art project to work on and more crochet I can only believe February will be just as enjoyable and by its end we will definitely be able to know that spring is just around the corner.

I first heard The January Man performed by the Albion Christmas Band and each year at this time I play it often, here's the first verse:

Oh the January man he walks abroad in woolen coat and boots of leather

The February man still wipes the snow from off his hair and blows his hand

The man of March he sees the Spring and wonders what the year will bring

And hopes for better weather.

Don't we all?

Happy Happy New Year to one and all!

Five years or so ago I signed off from this little blog space in a somewhat downbeat manner having just experienced what I felt was a rather lacklustre response to our second open gardens event in Sandgate.  I expressed my wish for things to change, for pastures new even.  The intervening years have indeed brought many changes to our lives, some good, some not, and it's at this time of year that one traditionally reflects on what has gone before in order to plan ahead.  So I feel a brief resume of these missing five years might be appropriate; in short we've moved, twice!  The whys and wherefores are not really of interest to anyone else, suffice to say, country living, even semi rural, is not for us, and we are now settled in our forever home.

Just a couple of miles along the coast from our house and garden in Sandgate, our new (well newish now, we've been here eighteen months) home provides all we need, including a garden that is both challenging and interesting, at least to us.  The estate agent's blurb described the house as having 'once landscaped gardens' and, as we have discovered over the last season, these must indeed have been glorious.  We moved in during the late summer of 2016 having had much work done to make the house comfortable for us.  Part of this refurbishment was to have tree surgery to several mature trees in both the front and back gardens.  This was both terrifying and exciting in equal measure as the  trees in question were very large having grown for fifty years or so seemingly unchecked.  While they were good, healthy in most part, specimens they had clearly outgrown the space allotted to them and showed some signs of decay.  An arborist and the council agreed they should go.  After three or four days of loud, hot and messy work, we were left with piles of bark chippings, some rather ugly    stumps, and a feeling that we'd rather nuked the garden.  However, the upside was amazing since we now have clear views across the town to the sea from all the front windows, and the neighbours behind have improved views too.

Many aspects of our lives have altered since I last blogged but one constant that remains with me is my love of the garden, not just ours but 'the garden' in its widest sense and with that in mind I intend to rekindle this blog to record any changes we make to our garden, to log any visits we may make to other gardens and to document our time here.

Today has been grey, wet and mostly very wintry although an amazing sunset gave the most glorious light through the house for a few minutes just now.  Earlier, in a bid to shake off the New Year lethargy I took a short stroll around the lanes near us, returning via the front garden to take some pictures, specifically with this post in mind.  The pictures are not good, so I will spare you the pain of viewing them however, there is promise already in the borders with one hellebore, primroses and bergenia in flower along with lots of spring bulb leaves pushing their noses through the soil.  Now, since we're  past the shortest day we can look forward to the garden coming back to life, so watch this space for updates.  Happy 2018!

'You can lead a horse to water

but you can't make him drink', or, in the case of Sandgate's Open Gardens event, 'you can offer the village horticulture, but you can't make them visit!' (I still prefer Dorothy Parker's version but didn't think I should print that.)

Hey ho, such is life and it was a really bad day weatherwise with a deluge just about the time we were all due to open our garden gates and let them in. Still, the hardy souls who braved the elements seemed to enjoy themselves, and we are very grateful indeed for their support. We had visitors from Hythe, Canterbury and Ashford, so the word had got around, as well as some Sandgate residents whom we'd not met before. Plus we raised just over £200 for the Sandgate Community Trust, so not a complete waste of time.

The other participating gardeners have all been thanked personally, but I must publish here my gratitude for their stirling efforts. Many of them are quite elderly and their energy and enthusiasm put me to shame. I just hope I shall be around as long to enjoy the fruits of my labours.

The garden still looks tidy and verdant which, given the amount of rain recently fallen, is not surprising and, at last, I have one sweetpea flower in bloom. Albeit a very small sweetpea flower, but the promise is there of more to come. There are dahlias too, with skeletal leaves because the flesh has been eaten away, but still we have dahlias, cosmos, more hardy geraniums, roses with bowed heads weighted down by the wet, and even a lime green nicotiana. The leaves of the echiums still impress but don't produce any flowers, as yet, and the leaves of nicotiana sylvestris almost beat them for size; can't wait for those flowers to appear.

Now the big day has come and gone I'm taking some time to plan for the future, which most probably won't include opening the garden again. Friends and family are welcome to come anytime and toil up the slopes, but my thoughts are flying forward to projects for the autumn and winter months. I feel the need to start afresh, by digging up and replanting, moving and replacing, just making a change; a new plot even?. Should there be anything worth shouting about I'll let you know, in the meantime dear followers, thank you for reading and happy gardening!

Right on cue

Golden Celebration, the last of the 'new' roses to bloom in the top garden, burst into flower overnight. Well, ok, just the one flower at the moment, but more to come I'm sure. There are also now a few blooms on the verbena, one dahlia flower and a cosmos for visitors to see along with all the other hardy favourites.

We've spent today making final preparations, signage, mowing, removing a few visible weeds (there are lots more,if you look closely which I hope visitors will forgive) and generally getting ourselves, and others, ready for the Open Gardens Day tomorrow.

The forecast is ok, a bit breezy, that's seaside gardens for you, but overall dry and even sunny at times. So now we've reached the '5.30 on Christmas Eve' moment, there's nothing more we can do except hope visitors come and we all have fun while raising money for a worthwhile local cause.
Look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

The Glory of the Garden

'Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made

By singing:-" Oh, how beautiful," and sitting in the shade

While better men than we go out and start their working lives

At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.'

So said Rudyard Kipling, some time ago (1911), when no doubt he was sitting in his lovely study at Batemans whilst better men were grubbing the weeds from his gravel paths. I have some empathy with those better men, having spent much of this morning on my knees, titivating the edges of our grass and turning over the soil in the borders to at least make our Sunday visitors think there's been some serious gardening going on. I was not alone today either, with David hard at work making sure the brick pathways are as level underfoot as possible, and our young friend John beavering away at path clearing at the eastern end of the plot. Youth and energy personified, John simply gets on with the task in hand, and in two good mornings of work has reinstated the old brick pathway from the back gate down the side of our garden. A feat neither David nor I could have hoped to have completed before the big day.

The garden itself is looking ok now, with lots of roses in bloom, including Princess Charlotte as seen above, one of the new aquisitions that I've been looking forward to blooming for a while. The iris sibirica have all but finished but have been replaced by lots of the foetidissima or 'stinking' iris, also pictured above. On a recent visit to a spectacular garden in Bladbean (open again on 19 August for NGS and most definitely worth visiting) I overheard a gentleman remark to his wife that these iris 'always look half dead to me'. Well sir, look again, the fine markings on the very pale blue, sometimes almost brown, petals, are so delicate and what's more, after the flowers come brilliant orange shiny berries in a sweetcorn like mass. A plant that's very much at home in seaside gardens and certainly nothing to do with my efforts, it's here because it wants to be.

The veg beds aren't flourishing nearly as well as the flower borders, but I haven't given up hope that we'll be eating some homegrown produce by the end of the summer. Also, the greenhouse plants are doing really really well with lots of tomatoes appearing on all the plants and even two courgettes nearly ready for picking.

So, just a couple of days left to do the final chores on the lists, including one last mow, get the plant sale table set up and then welcome our visitors - a lot we hope! Fingers permanently crossed that the weather stays as it is right now.

Lots of other people around the village are working hard to make this second Open Gardens Event go well. A very welcome addition to our 'garden attractions' will be photographs by my lifelong friend Melanie Chalk, which will be on show at the Chichester Memorial Hall during the event. Also there, Melanie and Michael will be on hand to serve tea or coffee and cake to any weary footsore garden visitors.

To give Rudyard Kipling the final word:

'So when your work is finished, you can wash your hands and pray

For the Glory of the Garden that it may not pass away!

And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away ! '

Less than a week now

With time pressing (it's only six days now until the event) I rose early this morning and was in the garden working by 7.30 a.m. A beautiful time to be in the garden on a lovely day as this one promises to be. Still mighty damp underfoot, but at least the weeds are easier to extract. With a 'to do' list as long as my arm I made a start but, as invariably happens in our garden, I became distracted by something else that needed to be done. Hence, here I am at the computer, having just about worn myself out moving a huge pile of cut off timber from the steps at the back of the house and bags of kindling to the garage in readiness for next winter. I was a Girl Guide, so I know the need to be prepared! I am rewarding myself with a cup of coffee before starting the second shift of the day.

The images above were taken a couple of days ago. The tomato is just one of quite a few now, on plants thriving in the greenhouse border. The courgette flower, on a plant in the raised veg bed. We've started eating our new potatoes and, as I dug up the plants to get at the potatoes, I filled in the resulting space with Turks Turban squash plants. Not a variety I've grown before, but chosen for its very appealing markings. We have flowers on our runner bean plants, and on the purple dwarf beans too but little else in the raised beds shows much sign of life yet.

Our new roses continue to tease by showing lots of buds, but keeping their flowers still tightly furled. There are also buds on the verbena bonariensis and several of the dahlias and cosmos, both recently planted to fill in gaps in the long border. Fingers crossed that this little sunny interlude will continue as promised by the weathermen and the buds will burst forth just in time for Sunday, 12 o'clock!

'Gather ye rosebuds .....

while ye may, old time is still a flying. And this same flower that smiles today, tomorrow will be dying'. (Herrick 1648).


Indeed, earlier today in the garden, I counted at least nine different rose bushes all 'smiling' in their own special way. From pure white, through white tinged with pink, pink flushed with orange, to pink in its own right and on to red, brighter red and the deepest of deep reds, all smiling in the morning sun.

Up to now I haven't really been into roses at all, thinking that they're more of a problem than a pleasure. All that black spot to watch for, the thorns, the lack of fragrance in modern ones etc etc. However, of late, it's come to me that they are really quite splendid plants to have in the garden and I realise, if a little late, how lucky we were to have roses still blooming through all the weeds and brambles, when we took over the garden some eight years ago. Most of those originals are still blooming. Last year I was particularly pleased with the salmon pink/orange rose that blooms in the garden at the back of the house and already this season it's flowering its heart out. The flowers have a delightful fragrance and make a charming cut flower to grace the dining table too.

My newly triggered interest in roses led me earlier in the year to buy five new, bare rooted plants from a well known rose grower. I followed all the instructions and gave them the correct dose of mycorrhizal fungi (I even weighed it out!) and rose fertilizer at planting. It paid off, we now have royalty visiting our garden in rose form, namely Princess Anne, featured above in the picture is a sweet shade of pink. A slightly prickly specimen (like its namesake?) but nonetheless welcome indeed to the mixed border. Harlow Carr, another pink one has also started to bloom, with clusters of smaller flowers and we await with anticipation the flowers from Princess Charlotte, Golden Celebration and New Dawn.

I now have a wish list of roses, well one anyway, Rhapsody in Blue, which I saw in a garden in Elham at the weekend. We were visiting their Garden Open Day for the NGS, and saw eight delightful gardens, and this rose was climbing over an obelisk in one of my favourites of all the gardens. Perhaps it's an age thing, but I found myself trying to drop off to sleep last night, planning where I could put such an obelisk, and one of those roses.
Answers on a postcard please!