Snowdrops, Galanthophiles, and Dinner Parties

Well, the weather has turned colder here in the Cotswolds,  and flurries of snow have been witnessed yet again, so I regret to report that I have still not been out in the garden to do all those jobs that I know I should have completed ages ago. So in view of that it seemed a good idea to discuss what I might be doing in a week or two if I ever get round to it.
And that is splitting snowdrops.

Snowdrops, unlike me, are completely undeterred by bad weather, and are in full flower both in my garden and all around the village. They don't seem to mind about situation, climate, or anything else, and will happily grow under trees where summer subjects would languish and fade away. This is  because, obviously, they do pretty well all their growing before the tree canopy has appeared and blocked out the sunlight. And unlike most bulbs, they are best increased "in the green" as it is called, rather than by planting as dry bulbs in the autumn, when we would generally think about planting for a spring display.

So if you have a few clumps and would like to increase your display to a vast carpet, like the one at Colesbourne Park in Gloucestershire, all you have to do is wait until the flowers start to fade, then dig up the clump, break it into groups of say, half a dozen or so bulbs, and replant in little groups all over your designated area. In a couple of years you will have twenty ot thirty clumps where you had just one. And remember that there are different varieties besides the wild Galanthus Nivalis native one, lovely though that is. In my own garden I have a number of different sorts, some early and some late, Galanthus Elwesii, the so called giant snowdrop, and a double flowered one, Flore Plena which I think is a bit weird. I always intend to identify all of the different varieties that I have but never get round to it, - in fact there are loads of  different varieties, and there is even a special name for afficionados of snowdrops,- Galanthophiles - people who collect and appreciate the many different varieties of this lovely harbinger of spring and who are said to gather together in smoke filled rooms to exchange seed of rare varieties in dark corners. Just the kind of thing to captivate people at dinner parties - I can see it at the next village Wine Evening, "Camilla, have you met Charles, he's a galanthophile you know...but don't worry he's having therapy."

Colesbourne Park, the ancestral home of Henry Elwes, after whom the large form was named, is quite close to here and well worth a visit at this time of year.

Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 1

It never ceases to amaze me how soon new growth in the spring, like these lovely little snowdrops, can push through even when the ground is covered with six inches of snow, as it has been here for some two weeks.  I took this on the day the snow finally cleared, and it's la lovely reminder that even in the dark days of January, Spring will soon be on the way.

I also found this single little primrose shoot poking through the chilly undergrowth.

Order, Order

Someone once said to me on discovering my interest in gardening, that they didn't think that I would have been "that much of a control freak". Now no one, of course, likes to think of themselves as any kind of control freak, but I can kind of see where he was going. A certain amount of interfering with and organizing of, Mother Nature's bounty is what it's all about. Leaving it entirely to nature only really works if you live in the Amazon Basin; if I left my greenhouse to nature for a couple of weeks it would in fact resemble the Amazon Basin, and I wouldn't be able to get in the door. Indeed I often can't. So there has to be a certain amount of "ordering nature" going on in all gardening to make it work. Or as a cleaning lady I once had, used to put it "Making order out of chaos dear", (what could she have meant?).

Certainly serried ranks of tulips have faded from fashion in suburban gardens, and with council bedding schemes becoming as rare as hens teeth, cheaper and more natural looking prairie style planting is springing up on roundabouts the length of the country. There's been quite a fashion for gardening "au naturel" in recent years, and I don't just mean that naturist couple who garden in Malmesbury in the altogether. Of course, gardeners have always looked to acheive a "natural" appearance in their schemes - hiding supports under the flowers and foliage and so on. But we all know really that it's complete nonsense, and that looking natural has nothing at all to do with how the garden would look if you really did leave it to nature. But wildflower meadows, ornamental grasses, natural ponds are the effects for which we all must now strive if we are to keep pace with modern horticultural trends.

I I have to confess I can't seem to get to grips with ornamental grasses very much really, I think they know I don't like them much, and so they don't do well for me, - you can only grow what you like the look of, as indeed you can only successfully cook what you enjoy eating, but I have made a small experiment with a wildflower patch, and it has been sufficiently successful to encourage me to expand the idea for next year.

I used a packet of wildflower seed, although most of what came up was the pretty yellow Corn Marigold, which used to be a ubiquitous weed of cornfields before industrial farming did for it (and many other once common but now rare and endangered wild flowers).

Anyway it has spread its grey-green foliage and bright yellow flowers around enthusiastically, almost as though it can't quite believe no one has come along in a tractor and sprayed it from a great height with Glyphosate, and in company with some red field poppies, the odd bright blue cornflower and a bit of white chamomile has made a tiny "natural" patchwork of the kind you would never ordinarily plant in your border, but which has a charm all of its own. It's also good for the bees, which is always a consideration in my garden. So I've been collecting the seed from the very many seedheads, and am hoping to expand the planting area next summer into a Monet-esque cornfield ( what do you mean ambitious..?) but without the corn of course. Come to think of it, the corn might actually come in handy for the chickens...Hmm.. Anyway it's a sloping area under trees which currently supports a good display of daffodils in the spring, but not much else, so I'm hoping this plan will fit in with the early bulbs and provide a continuity of flowers through the summer and autumn.

Seeing the wood for the trees

I'm lucky enough to have quite a large garden here in Wiltshire. We've been here ten years, so it should by rights be looking how we want it to look by now. But gardeners never get to be satisfied with their garden - for a start it's always growing. And there's only one thing worse than things growing, it's things not growing, and naturally the ones that grow are always the ones you want to slow down a bit, or indeed stop altogether, and the ones that don't grow are the ones you really really want to get on with the job. Why is that? I expect it's Nature, or Karma or something, but anyway, it's really annoying. Especially when it comes to trees. Of which we have far too many, far too big. Some kind of control is going to have to be exerted, or we will have to start leaving trails of breadcrumbs to find our way from the back door to the gate.

Now don't get me wrong, I like a tree as much as the next woman, in fact I am a Tree Warden appointed by the Tree Council, no less, and I have a badge to prove it (I don't really) but whereas you can keep a rose bush or a shrub in tip top condition by judicious wielding of the secateurs and hedge cutters, and you can weed and thin and fertilize your herbaceous border, when it comes to a tree that's too big and casts shade over half the garden, it has to be dealt with by a professional, ie you have to "get a man in". Enter said man, the lovely James the Tree Man, who has just been round the garden with us and is going to spend a couple of days next month thinning out our forest of overcrowded trees, removing dead trees, and generally sorting out the problem for us. I doubt whether we will use all the logs in our log burner should the climate turn Sub Arctic and we live as long as Henry Allingham!

Anyway, even after the Lovely James and his merry men have done their professional best, we will still have a large number of large trees, casting a large amount of shade. So things have to be planted that will thrive in such conditions. If you don't plant things that will thrive, they will plant themselves, according to what Nature prefers to grow in your particular neck of the woods. In ours, it's mostly cow parsley. Cow parsley is lovely in the hedgerows, a delight in late Spring with its froth of creamy white flowers along the roadsides, but it's not what you want in your garden, so I have tried to replace most of it with slightly more suitable subjects. Top of our list is Pulmonaria, or lungwort which seems to do really well in dry shady conditions, and as an additional benefit is an excellent bee plant. Its pinky lilac flowers come early in the season, and when it's finished you can just get your husband to run the hedge trimmer across the foliage, which gets rid of the fading often mildewy leaves and it goes on to renew itself for later in the season. I must admit to getting a bit bored with having it all over the place and have recently tried a few different cultivars in particular "Blue Ensign" which has much brighter blue flowers, so I will see whether they do as well as our common type. I also have a large patch of Epimedium, which is on my to-do list to spread around under the trees as it does quite well there.Again the delicate yellow flowers come quite early on, but the leathery leaves remain and will see you weed-free through the rest of the year. I get my plants from all over the place, but I do recommend Peter at Just Perennial Plants on Ebay as a very good and knowledgeable supplier of well grown plants at reasonable prices.

The other usual culprits are variegated ivy, and the little periwinkle, Vinca minor. These two together make a thick carpet under the dense cover of the Cotoneaster tree and its neighbour a huge Euclyptus Gunii. A brief word of warning on this latter which grows quite close to the house, and was, I suspect, originally planted as a shrub, as the juvenile foliage is different from the mature leaves, and is much loved by flower arrangers. But be warned, if you fail to prune, and leave it for a year or two it will head for the sky, and you'll end up having to phone the Lovely James to come and rescue you from the 60 foot monster.

True Blues

When my mother describes someone as "a bit above themself"she means someone is pretending to be something that they're not. Similarly while the blue rose, the blue tulip, and the blue daffodil have something of the Hyacinth Bouquet about them, the blue poppy is an entirely different kettle of fish. The blue is the colour of a clear blue sky, not unlike the Heavenly Blue of the Morning Glory vine, of which I have a few coming along in the greenhouse for later in the summer. Its true blue colour is probably related to the fact that it's not actually a poppy at all, and so is not a red flower trying on an unsuitable blue frock, ie it's not a member of the Papaver family, but is a Meconopsis.

The picture is of one of my Blue Poppies, which are quite

special to us, as our business is called Blue Poppy Art, (although if we'd known how pernickety they are to grow we might have chosen something easier, Dandelion Art though, doesn't have quite the same ring... )

Anyway, there are two well known members of the meconopsis family , our own Blue Poppy -Meconopsis Betonicifolia,and the little yellow welsh poppy Meconopsis Cambrica, which turns up in the oddest of places, seeding itself about, much like a proper poppy in fact. The Blue Poppy although lovely in flower, like many poppies it grows on a less than lovely plant, - mine look like rather hairy grey-green stalks with a series of flower buds at the top which open in succession. They have a deserved reputation for being short lived, even though they are perennial, and the trick I think, is to ensure that you don't let the plant set seed. If it does, it seems to think its allotted time is up and promptly turns up its toes. So just enjoy the flowers and nip them off as they fade. And since I saw plants for sale at Dobbies the other day for £10 each it certainly seems worth trying to extend their earthly spell for as long as possible.