Category Archives: bulbs

this morning’s crop

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Two more little bunches for the weekend – a mixture of muscari and narcissus, above, and below, another narcissus/hyacinth combination.

I’m off to Pembrokeshire for a few days and although I’ve been looking forward
to it for months, I’m worried that the rest of my tulips will appear while I’m
away: all over the garden they are looking ready to pop.

But as this is the time of year when the garden suddenly goes up a gear, it’ll be exciting to see how it has come on in my brief absence. The daily changes are quite dramatic at the moment, and it feels as though you can actually see things growing: the nepeta at the top of the steps was only the size of my fist three days ago, but this morning it’s a clump the size of my head.

Anyway, better get a move on. There are children to chivvy, a car to pack, and,
having enjoyed these flowers over breakfast, I’m giving them to my neighbour – don’t want dead smelly flowers on our return.

a tulip!

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The first of my tulips appeared yesterday. I feel ridiculously excited about this. I have grown tulips before, but only in very limited quantities, usually a packet or two planted very late (February). On occasions, when I’ve missed the boat entirely, I’ve resorted to picking up the odd pot here and there at the garden centre.

But last year I went slightly mad, ordered hundreds of bulbs from Nyssen’s and then, spurred on by the horror of finding those bulbs mouldering away, still in their bags in February, I actually got busy with the trowel and planted them all.

This first batch are in a deep metal container which was home to the Narcissi which flowered over Christmas. Although I don’t remember doing it, it seems that I have also filled it with tulips and alliums. I’ll be interested to see how many months the container is in flower. I’ll dig out my Nyssen order and add the name of the tulip later today.

spring

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They’ve taken their time, and there have been moments when I thought that perhaps I’d killed them, but at long last my Hyacinths (Woodstock) have burst into bloom. I moved the box this morning in order to block one of Sybil’s routes around the garden as she was crushing the new shoots of various plants around the base of R. Veilchenblau.

I’ve never grown Hyacinths outside and I didn’t really know what to do with them, or even where to put them. I thought they might look odd in what I knew would be quite sparse-looking beds, but stranger still in ones and twos in little flower pots – though I think I was wrong about that. So in late November, I think, in slight desperation, I turfed some mint out of this old wine box and shoved the bulbs in. Then I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. This is something to repeat next year, but with more wine boxes.

Elsewhere in the garden other containers are doing their spring thing. I can’t remember for certain what these are, Narcissus Bridal Crown maybe, I need to trawl through receipts and orders to check. It smells delicious and I’d like more for next year.

Out on the street everything seems to be blooming. Spring has sprung and someone has pulled a lever and switched all the Forsythia and Magnolias on. They look quite spectacular – a grudging admission in relation to Forsythia, which is a plant I could happily live without seeing ever again. The Magnolias on the other hand I adore.

I often wonder whether a Magnolia would be happy in the basement area that passes for our front garden. At the moment it looks like a junk yard: a heap of old bikes and a tragic-looking rabbit hutch (vast black and white rabbit long gone). But I have plans.

getting to grips with the garden

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I spent a couple of  hours on Saturday morning weeding, tweaking, cutting back, digging up, dividing, and generally getting to grips with the plants that looked in need of attention. I love unplanned gardening sessions like this, ones that happen because the sun is shining and for once, nothing else is demanding my attention.

This sort of  slightly unfocused pottering is exactly what I need in order to reconnect with the garden when I’ve been feeling a little gloomy about it. As I work, I invariably spot things I’ve forgotten about, such as the little clump of violets above. Someone tied several bags of them to their railings last spring, with a note saying “take me”, so I took some and stuffed them in the corner of a bed without really thinking – I don’t even think I knew what colour they would be.

And I also find myself delighted by the sight of new shoots on plants I feel sure I’ve butchered or neglected – Clematis ‘Madame Julia Correvon‘, pruned to within an inch of her life, or so it seemed, just a month ago, is already on her way up the back fence. And C. Texensis Buckland Beauty, is showing signs of life too. Above is how it looked in July last year, climbing up through the Macleaya. I moved it at the weekend, so this year it will ramble through R. Veilchenblau instead.

Working in this way seems to free the mind and, more often than not, I find that by the end of the morning I have had at least one eureka moment regarding some aspect of the garden. And so it was on Saturday. Halfway through what was meant to be just a two hour session, a rather hazy idea that I’d been kicking about for some time now, came sharply into focus: wouldn’t it look wonderful, I thought, if I planted a row of Amelanchiers in front of the top level of the terracing.

Two hours later I was at Brackenwood Plant Centre wrestling four seven foot trees into the back of the car, along with a tray of fabulous Hellebores which had called out to me as queued to pay. You know how it is with garden centres. I dithered for a moment, winced at the price tag and then I had another eureka moment (aka clever bit of justification for overspend): if I planted them in and around my tulips, the razor-edged leaves of these big, well-established plants, would keep Sybil at bay.

It’s hard to take an interesting or informative photograph of a tree that is still pretty much only one step on from being a twig. But there are lots of buds, so photos of blossomy loveliness will follow soon. Hellebore photos even sooner.

crocus carpet

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The crocuses in the park started to appear in January. Now they are reaching their peak. They are like mushrooms in the way they seem to pop up over night – one morning this bank was just a slope of dewey grass, the next it was carpeted with purple, yellow and white goblet-shaped flowers. On slightly misty mornings, when there is a hint of sunshine and the promise of mild weather, they can convince me that spring is here and summer is just around the corner. But it’s only March so I mustn’t get too excited.

I’ve never grown crocuses (though I have been tempted), because I think they look their best growing in grass, particularly under trees and when they are allowed to encroach gently along the edges of large areas of lawn. Our current garden has just one tree and no grass at all, so I get my crocus fix in St Andrew’s Park when I walk the dog.

signs of life

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The garden is coming to life, and although there is still far too much bare earth for my liking, I can comfort myself with the knowledge that a transformation is underway.

The new Clematis armandii is in flower and, although quite small (and rather early), what little perfume it offers is a treat. Two years ago we had to remove its enormous predecessor and, although essential building work left no alternative, it felt criminal to be cutting down such a fabulous plant. Each year in late March or early April its scent would waft through the windows on every floor of the house. Last year, although in the throws of reinvigorating our garden, I felt as though I had completely messed up – first because we had to cut down the armandii and second, because I managed to kill a lilac. Both were plants I valued for their flowers, their perfume and their role as seasonal heralds. So it’s good to see the armandii back, now I need to replace the lilac.

Every morning I spot more bulbs emerging. Some, such as Iris ‘Katherine Hodgkin’, below, I’ve been awaiting eagerly, checking progress daily and photographing obsessively.

Others I can’t even remember planting…

These mystery bulbs, peeping out from a tangle of old Paperwhite leaves, look a lot like tulips, with a few alliums thrown in for good measure. But when did I put them in this pot, carefully layered beneath the Paperwhites? I’m impressed that I did it – because it’s clear that it was me, it couldn’t have been anyone else – but I have absolutely no recollection of having been so organised. It will be interesting to see what comes up.

These irises – Iris reticulata ‘Cantab’- have been popping up in various places around the garden, and now that they have appeared I can see better where I should have planted them. I can also see that I really need to think about more ground cover.

I was looking enviously at a mass of snowdrops in a local front garden this morning, trying to work out why they looked so lovely (aside from the obvious fact that snowdrops are lovely). Gradually it dawned on me that it was because they were emerging from a carpet of dull bronze leaf litter, rather than dull, in the boring sense, bare earth. Below are the lovely Iris reticulata Springtime which are also in the wrong place.

Elsewhere in the garden I can see that my tulips are pushing up through the soil, and some show signs of having been damaged by Sybil during her high speed nocturnal circuits. I have started erecting temporary barriers fashioned from bamboo canes and lengths of netting, chicken wire and green mesh. They look ridiculous and really unsightly, but I can’t think of any other way to ensure that my precious tulips aren’t trampled. Once the   leaves are up a good few inches, I think I’ll be able to take the barriers down. At least I hope so. If not, my garden will look like a weird zoo for plants. Not the plan at all.

And last, but by no means least, Joe has managed a temporary fix for the computer.

frustration

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Over the last week or so I have been wrestling with a storage crisis. Not, for once, a crisis involving the children and their reluctance to use anything other than the floor for storing their clothes and all their possessions – that one continues, of course, but I’ve downgraded its status to merely chronic because I just can’t cope with the level of engagement that a crisis requires. (I must add in my defence, this downgrade led to a distinct improvement in general levels of happiness over half term which, I am pleased to report, was one of the nicest we have had even though we did nothing much at all.)

The storage issue I’m currently battling with is right here, in front of me: it’s my computer’s refusal to add to the 13,000-odd photographs I’ve stuffed onto it. It seems that all the photographs I’ve taken with my new camera are too large. Last week I finally changed the setting, but it was too little too late, and these re-sized photographs have nowhere to go. The most frustrating thing of all is that I’ve been here before: last year iPhoto went  bonkers and at one point we thought all our photographs had been corrupted. It took weeks to sort out. Joe installed an external hard drive – the computing equivalent of a nifty Ikea shelving unit – only now I’ve filled that up too.

The fact is the computer can take no more. It is, in Mac terms, pretty ancient
and its operating system is not compatible with any of the brilliant online album and book-making packages, any one of  which would deal with the problem rather neatly.
So for the last few days I’ve been sorting through photographs dating back ten years or so, again, editing ruthlessly, again, trying to create more space, but progress is slow.

I hope to have the problem sorted soon, but for now here is half of half term. The half in which the girls painted and I watched the latest wave of bulbs.

The other half of half term – the lovely circular walk from Bibury, the amble around Ashton Court and all the other bulbs will have to wait until I’ve made room for them.

impatient

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I can never resist the allure of the supermarket tulip. It seems that although the house is filled with the scent and colour of hyacinth and narcissus, it’s just not enough. I still need my tulip fix. Of course the garden is filled with them, but the thought of waiting patiently through the next two months before they come up and I can have tulips in the house is just too depressing. I am, and always will be, an impatient gardener. Greedy too.

Last week it was Joe’s birthday and we had some friends over for the evening – the perfect excuse to indulge myself. The tulips are now a week old, but still going strong.

I’ve changed the water and cut the stems several times, which seems to have kept them looking good. I imagine that the final, flamboyant collapse, which I love as much as the initial opening of the flowers, will occur some time next week. Not bad at £2 a bunch.

Although I’ve managed to extract a little bit of homegrown something from the garden  throughout the last couple of months, the pleasure of lone blooms, artfully arranged twigs and bunches of ivy snaffled from various derelict plots in the neighbourhood is wearing thin. This need for a colour-fix and some substantial cut stems is proof to me, if it were needed, that our garden is sorely lacking at this time of year. Naomi’s excellent post relating to scent as well as colour in the garden throughout the year has got me thinking about how I might rectify the situation for next year. Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’is on my list – my sister has it in her garden, and she and I cut some branches back in January which not only looked wonderful but filled her house with delicious perfume.

In the meantime, I’m grateful for the supermarket and street market bunches.

gardening in january part II

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Although nothing much is happening in the garden, the plants in the house are blooming. Our bathroom is filled with the heady, heavenly perfume of Hyacinth L’innocence.

The scent of Hyacinth is difficult to pin down: the green, sappy aroma of cut grass one minute, slightly earthy the next, and in the background, a constant sweetness. As always I am kicking myself for not having ordered more – though I was clever enough to stagger their planting, so there is another batch still waiting in the wings.

In the study I have been distracted by the flamboyant performance of this unnamed Hippeastrum. It made me think of a fan dance, as one by one the flowers unfurled. It has been quite extraordinary to watch and I don’t know why I haven’t bothered with them before. This one was saved from the basement of our local Ikea, which is why I have no idea about its true identity, though I must add that the label said Amaryllis, as do all the ones in the supermarkets, and I guess it’s a bit like the whole geranium/pelargonium thing. Next year there will be more. I want a forest of them on the mantelpiece.

On the kitchen window sill I have more Hyacinths, and several pots of Narcissus Tete a Tete all about to work their magic. I can almost be persuaded that there is no need to go outside at all. Except that we live in a house with an amazing view across the city, so I am always drawn to the windows, which makes the mud-fest, that at other times of the year passes for a garden, difficult to ignore. Below is the photograph of the garden as it is now.

And I have to say, it makes my heart sink. The pots, though filled with bulbs, look awful. The  stone terrace is bleak and the paths a total mess. The thing that strikes me most forcefully about the garden at the moment is the way that the bare boundary fences and trellis are forced to take centre stage. Part of this is simply that new trellis went up in the autumn and plants have yet to colonise it. But it’s also because  there is nothing else out there to draw the eye – most of last year’s planting consisted of herbaceous perennials which have died back for the winter. I can see a few of my new, self-seeded Euphorbias bulking up nicely, so I know that by this time next year it will look very different. I also have plans for more evergreen and semi-evergreen climbers such as aSolanum jasminoides ‘Album’ and Akebia quinata, both of which I grew in my garden in Peckham, and proved invaluable.

The other problem is that the design of the garden, as far as it goes, is really not much more than a path through wide’ish beds leading to the bottom of the garden. And at the moment, the bottom of the garden is not a place I particularly want to visit. I didn’t bother planting any shrubs there as I know that more landscaping is required – it seemed pointless to spend money on shrubs which might need moving so soon after planting. But in the autumn I stuffed the beds with spring bulbs, so although they appear empty now, things should start to improve in a month or two. I am aware that my tone might seem a little gloomy, but really I’m fine about it – gardens are never finished, they remain works in progress, they have their peaks and troughs. My garden is simply in a trough, and better to have the trough now – outside it is currently sleeting – than in July.

park life

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The first time I visited St Andrew’s Park, five years ago, it was as a parent rather than a dog walker. I thought it was rather gloomy despite the well-equipped playground and charming cafe (run from a van around which tables covered with polka dot oil cloths are set up), and vowed to visit only if I really, really had to. How things change.

Several years on, and now a dog owner, I find that I am in the same slightly gloomy park on an almost daily basis (I must add here that Sybil does get walked elsewhere, but time is limited at the moment, and a local walk is all we can manage). Given my initial feelings about the park, you’d think this would be a recipe for utter misery and boredom on my part, but curiously, for such a small place, there is always something new to see.

Over the last two weeks snowdrops have been emerging, first one small cluster and now great clumps light up an otherwise dull corner. The crocuses have also started popping up: brilliant flashes of electric yellow and purple along the muddy banks. And although the trees are still leafless and skeletal, there have been some interesting additions: this kite, lit up by the sun, caught my eye the other day.

And at the weekend I could hardly fail to spot this spectacular bit of yarn-bombing.

Recently, I came across a whole group of photos that I took last July when the trees were covered with ribbons in advance of an annual arts festival. Sadly, we weren’t around for the actual festival and I guess that’s why I never got round to posting these photos.

 As I’ve said, St Andrew’s park is not particularly large, or even especially pretty, but I love it more and more, and clearly I am not alone.