ruminate vb. to chew (the cud)
I don't seem to be spending much time in the garden at the moment, I'm very much in a phase of planning changes then making the excuse that I want to think about it before committing. I have pages of notes, a lot of them contradictory, where I've changed my mind, or duplicated, where I've…
The rain gauge yesterday morning had accumulated 52.5mm in the prior 24hrs and it was a very soggy garden that I wandered round, looking for survivors to include here. There was more than I expected; the usual mix at this time of year of late performers and earlier performers just hanging in with a last…
The rain and wind on Wednesday night laid to rest any lingering thoughts of summer. I was out in it on Wednesday evening and it was truly vile. By Thursday morning the rain had blown through but the roads were strewn with leaves and twigs. The garden looked like it had taken something of a…
Cornwall Hardy Plant Society had Fergus Garrett as their speaker on Wednesday and three days later my head is still buzzing. He talked fast and he packed in so much content, all about what he calls layering, the business of building communities of plants growing together such that a piece of ground has something interesting…
If you're reading this it's because I've managed to post it on some mobile device while away from home. Routine for many of you no doubt, but not for me. Which is not to say I created it on a mobile device, it was done a few days ago when I was still at home.…
Having finished our garden openings for this summer, I went out with my phone and took a lot of clips of things I thought looked OK, then tried to cobble it together into a video. As with taking photos using film, digital changes everything. You can take hours of appalling footage without it costing you…
With every week that passes there is a sense of the spring slowly winding down. It's a chilly 12°C here this morning but the weather has been benign and most things are holding up quite well but a day or two of wind and rain will quickly change that. I'm not talking Ida wind and…
Our first season of opening under the NGS finishes tomorrow, not a moment too soon both from the angle that the garden is slowly starting to collapse under its own weight and that we have had enough now and want our garden back. If we do it again next year we will open less often.It…
While there are still lots of plants to choose from for inclusion in a saturday six, the garden as a whole is beginning to look a bit ragged around the edges. When things have finished for the season, they either sit there looking finished or get cut down leaving a gap. It's getting late for…
We went midweek to visit Wildside garden at Buckland Monochorum. This garden, created by Keith Wiley with a great deal of inspiration from his late wife Ros, is as close as any garden I know to my idea of a perfect garden. It is packed full of good plants, all planted in a naturalistic way…
garden ruminations 