Category Archives: Back Garden

Carrots or Posion!

Well you live and learn. I was writing a post about how much I love the huge wild carrots in our garden, and that even tho Chris doesn’t doesn’t like them and wants them out, I love all sorts of things about them, and have even come to like their slightly strange smell! I looked up their slightly strange smell and then went down a bit of a wormhole it turns out that they are POSION HEMLOCK, not ridiculously healthy Queen Anne’s Lace after all! I should have worked it out because they are about 8 feet tall.

Apparently they must be immediately destroyed. I wonder how they got there. It is a shame because even though Chris says they look like triffids, I thought they looked pretty and are clearly attractive to lots of insects. I am quite robust about what we have in the garden, I’m not sure about something that induces slow muscle paralysis and eventual death. I’m not taking a socratic view of it….As soon as it stops raining, I will have to dig them up!

2025: Week 21:the week I love my garden so much I have to post about it

I think after Week 28 it just rained a lot and the glory of my spring garden was over. So I fizzled out. And I didn’t want to start up again this year because it’s almost exactly the same as it was last year! It’s a bit neater! I’ve got some wild carrots! But more or less, it’s the same. Interestingly even though it’s been hot lately, we are a couple of weeks behind last year – or maybe my flag irises are just late.

This week, it’s all about the roses (Sophie rose back in the bed I moved it out of last year with the Paul’s scarlet climber behind) and a king fox glove! This pic cannot begin to capture how nice it is.

Do NOTHING for Nature

I have loads of lady birds earlier than usual this year. And lots and lots of flying insects, bees; wasps; flies the works.

I think this is because I didn’t clear up in the Autumn/ Winter. It took a huge effort not to, especially in Feb etc, when it looked skanky and dead and almost ready to grow. But I didn’t and it just goes to show that the best thing you can do is nothing!

Good Wood?

My Nicotania seedlings have been fab this year. I have had about 50. I’ve planted and given away loads. The biggest and most successful ones – by many inches – are the ones I’ve grown in an old wooden drawer. Why?

They have benefitted from being in the greenhouse but they are about twice as big as the ones I”ve grown in pots. They also started small – I planted the best ones in pots and the smallest ones in here. My theory … FWIW which isn’t much – is that it’s the wood! Beneficial fungi in the wood were ready to start with all their special mycelium business and that’s what’s made them so strong…

March update

This is going quite well! I have learnt from last year. I prick my seedlings out early, in quite dry soil and move them on. I have a conveyor belt happening. So far I have got nicotiana (maybe too much), dill, greek basil, catch-fly and chilli from seed. This is my second set of dill because the mice got the first lot (and some coriander and some basil). They dug them up and ate them!

Growing, growing…
….gone

I’ve moved the nicotiana, some of the chilli and some nasturtiums which are cuttings (!) up to the balcony. I took the cuttings from the nasturtium in the window box on our window sill because it needed tidying up and then it seemed a shame to throw them away. They are doing well! It’s helped that it’s been so mild.

I am also growing sweet peas that are harvested from last year (why Harriet, why! let it go). And I’ve got some fox gloves in pots.

The cerinthe I planted last year in late autumn is now about 9 inches tall and about to flower – which is nice but not surely not seasonal. And the nemesis (from Wisley?? can it be those?) has self seeded and is also now flowering everywhere including in the cracks in the balcony.

I’ve put the angelica in a pot round Amie’s house and it was doing well but now it’s gone all droopy. And I’m going to go round her’s, give her a fuschia in a pot (from a cutting) and throw out the old golf-clubs…

Poominland Midwinter

I tidied up a bit this weekend – and immediately hit the gardening for wildlife conundrum. When is it okay to clear it up? What % is gardening and what % is wildlife? I couldn’t work it out so I did what I always do when I don’t know what to do and chopped some bits of the fuschia. I chopped some bits off the ivy too.

The garden feels a bit deserted and different – I haven’t been out there much for a long time. There’s a trod path to the cricket pitch and nothing else. It’s a bit like Moominland Midwinter, only instead of a wild landscape of its own with invisible shrews and Hemulens, it’s full of fox shit and fallen apples that have been half eaten by rodents.

I cut back the obvious things. I am pursuing the “leave stuff on the ground” attitude as much as possible but I wonder if I have reached peak stuff? How much of detritus can you have in a garden before it stops rotting it down? Especially as it has been so dry this year. We’ll see.

There are too many things flowering that shouldn’t be but here are 2 good things; toadflax (from Cawsand) growing out of a gap in the bricks by the pond and some VERY EXCITING fungi on on of the logs by the pond. If you try to move the stick, it is stuck in there.

January

I haven’t done any gardening for ages. It’s a combination of two things: the very mild winter, and leaving things to die down naturally.

I’m experimenting with things dying back/ rotting down naturally – and almost nothing is completely dead. Something things (like the marigolds & even the geraniums on Edie’s windowsill) are still flowering; and lots of plants are still growing. Very few things have died back – and even those that have – like the fern – still look quite soft, like there is still nutrient in the rotting leaves that might go back into the roots. Here is the rose and the salvia in flower and the bears’ breeches in the other garden are flowering too

I’ve seen bees and flies and even the odd butterfly. I think this is the weirdest season I’ve ever seen and I dread to think how the natural world can adapt to deal with it.

The only thing that’s really died (back) is my crab apple – and that’s because Luke hit his cricket ball into it and smashed the stem in half. Humph. Here’s what’s left and what came off, stuck round the front gate as a festive decoration.

A tale of 2 hotboxes

I still hate the hotbox. At the top it is all hot (100 degrees!)and rotty and it smells nice and 2 days after you put things in, it’s covered in mould and starting to break down. But at the bottom, it’s still wet, sticky, smelly, full of smushed cardboard and fluid and sticks. How hard can it be? I took a tiny bit out – I’m not taking any more for months now and it’s still smelly mulch at best. But maybe, just maybe there are a few a bits that look like proper compost – like the sponge at the bottom of a trifle..

Top
Bottom

So it begins…

Today I potted on some cerinthe that I got from seed from the cerinthe I grew from seed last year. They look pretty healthy already. I will leave them out unless it gets really cold and hope for the bets. I love these plants. I haven’t worked out how to keep them going from year to year but here’s hoping

I’ve also got about 6 foxgloves seedlings in pots that should be ready to do the business this summer.

I potted on some sage too. I grew this from cuttings, using the method Nemone at Core taught me – in a plastic bag and everything – and so far they are working. it feels like the circle of growing is starring again….

Bulbs

I’m not very good at planting bulbs – and they don’t seem to last. I thought you just put them in and they came up for ever but quite often I come across them and they’ve rotted. I do love tulips though – and who doesn’t like spring bulbs coming up. Today I planted a load of tulips I got from Sarah Raven and some mini daffs Amanda gave me

Sarah told me not to plant until late Oct/ Nov because this stops them getting diseases. Tho I don’t know whether that is “November” as in when it is actually cold or now, when it’s still what would be October weather. We’ll see.

To remember, I planted….

  • Prinses Irene – in the pot at the back and in the front pots too and some in a long green pot that might be for Edie, or might not.
  • Mini daffs in 2 round pots.

All the others are white or yellow because I bought the “Sherbet Lemon” collection. Why? These aren’t the colours I like – why did I buy these? Anyway there are…

  • Green Dance and Westpoint in the bed by the honey suckle.
  • And in the back bed and the pot by the back door, there are World Friendship, Golden Apeldoorn and praestans Shogun.

Amanda also gave me some red tulips and some Green star which are white with green markings which I’m going to plant at the Red Cross. See what I’m doing there.

Let’s see…

On FIRE!

It’s been too warm but it feels like Autumn is finally taking hold. The cotinus and the virginia creeper (up the soil stack) are looking pretty special. Last year, the cotinus just lost its leaves before they turned but this year, it looks lovely…

Me vs Fuschia, Fuschia vs Pond

One of the things about trying to garden in a different way, is that I sometimes don’t have anything to do. Not that my garden is finished – it’s still a mess – but that if I am trying to let nature do more, then I need to do less. For ex, usually this time of year, I would clear up and cut back, but I am trying to let things die and rot back into the soil.

Today everyone was driving me nuts and I wanted to do some soothing gardening. But I couldn’t find anything to do. Then I turned to the fuschia, as I often do, because you can hack great bits off it with impunity and really no result.

As previously discussed, the fuschia needs chopping because it’s too big and not actually a tree and always trying to be a bush. Ilove it when I cut it’s shape clearly. I’m going to go back and cut more later and I’m thinking about turning it into one of those pom-pom trees! I think I need to learn more about pruning.

  • Too many….
  • sticky out bits

Also as previously discussed, the fuschia is killing the pond. Today I took out a ton of old rotting leaves and disturbed a very cross looking frog. It seems a shame to have got the pond properly done with bricks and tadpoles into maturity and let the bushy tree kill it off.

Something out of nothing

We went to Cornwall for half term. It rained ALL the time. I was struck by/ love things the grow out of nothing – trees that hold onto cliffs, honeysuckle growing out of walls – things taking the smallest hold and holding on. Even dandelions growing from cracks in rocks on the beach (by Edgcumbe).

I think it’s partly because its so wet and mild down there. There was life all over the place. And all the colours very different to here (on the path to Penlee).

Next for the Fuschia…?

So as mentioned, I do love my fuschia. But it has now so big that by this time of year, it

  • turns the big sunny back bed into a shady bed
  • blocks all light to the pond and fills it with dead leaves and flowers (so it’s a bit smelly)

I don’t want this. I love the pond (more than the fuschia?). I want two sunny beds not the one which will be all I will have left. (Though maybe I don’t if it we’re in for some very hot summers?).

I am going to think about what to do about this over the winter. Here is a picture of what it looks like now – to remind me when I come to chop it in the Spring!

I think I should chop the top bits off – so it is always lower and thin it ruthlessly and regularly. Because it was never meant to be a tree – it is a bushy shrub – it will take a lot of persistent work to bring some sun and light back.

There is also a bit of it growing up the fence (it is a MONSTER) and into the sun by next door’s garden. I need to think about how could encourage this instead (it is never going to stop trying). But not until later in the year because I can’t get to the back of the garden right now because of all the spiders.….