ruminate vb. to chew (the cud)
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…
That's both the summer solstice and the calendar midpoint passed. Half way through Wimbledon too and the Brits are dropping like flies. Blight in some of my potatoes too. A very ordinary summer. Picking six things in the garden at this time of the year is about choosing what to put in, what to leave…
I have a garden full of plants and I’m forever taking pictures of them. They get dumped onto the computer in folders with the date of their dumping to identify them. Eventually I go through them and delete the ones I don’t want.Looking back through photos I took a year ago I don’t always know…
Seeking inspiration, I looked back at what I'd posted as sixes in Januaries past. No help there. Walking round the garden didn't help much either. It's cold and wet and dull. Next door have a mini digger in and are starting to do something, so we have a grandstand seat to watch and tut. Anyhow,…
