Report: The Garden

I did promise you in the beginning I would let you know how my foray into gardening would progress. Being a self-confessed terrible gardener, I am currently bursting with unexplained pride (or half a bottle of good Spanish red). In the last several months I have learned several things: 1) only put in plants that you know what the leaves look like; 2) nothing beats good compost and lots of work with a fork; 3) weeds always spring up after rain.

For some of you this is a "duh!" set of realisations. However, for me this is a revelation.

I was cruel in the winter/spring and ripped out every known and possibly unknown plant in my various beds. My neighbour who really should be at Chelsea (the major garden show in the UK and possibly the world) has patiently sighed and groaned over my confusion between a clematis and a convolvulus. Many a fine clematis has died unnecessarily. Using much hard labour and an extreme number of green garden bags, I finally found the bare Earth. Starting at ground level has meant that I can spend lots of time with garden books and my neighbour Sarah discussing what is going in, what type of soil it needed (this also came as a shock to me -- seems there are lots of different types!), when it would bloom and, most importantly, WHAT THE BLOODY LEAVES LOOK LIKE. I now know when I am killing a convolvulus, I am killing a convolvulus!

Having access to horses makes the whole fertilizer problem much easier. The problem is bringing it home. I, no matter what people say, do not live at the stables. In fact, they are 8 miles away. This means taking the ubiquitous green bags with me and filling them with Mikey's little gifts to the garden and bringing them home. Even well rotted, these bags contain something that has more than a gentle perfume. And when placed upon the bare soil of my garden beds, my dear neighbour begged me to get it worked in as soon as possible because she could not open her windows. Sarah does not really like horses in any form. More work with the garden fork and my hard packed earth now is looking crumbly (like the books say it should) and I am finding that I can remove things like convolvulus roots and nettle roots (second most hated thing in garden because they sting!) with ease. Things are looking up.

So I carefully planned what I wanted to buy, took Sarah with me to the various garden centres (I'm learning only a fool ignores an expert), purchased the pots needed for the different soils, purchased the different soils, several pairs of gloves and spent enough money on plants to have paid for a trip to Ibiza. I planted it all up about 8 weeks ago and have sat waiting for things to die.

So far nothing has died even in the torrential rains we have had the last week. In fact every single thing looks great! I have fox gloves and lupines and red hot pokers shooting up and blooming. I have poppies about to pop. I have sun flowers that are nearly half a metre tall. I have rhododendrons and magnolias and camellias blooming. AND I have weeds. All my ground preparation did nothing to stop these little buggers. Rain and Mikey's digestive system seemed to have helped them considerably! But now that I know what my leaves look like and the beds are filled with soft crumbly earth, it took me about 2 hours to weed my beds. And they do look great.

Have I become a gardener? I would not go that far yet, but at least I have learned a thing or 3 about how I needed to do it. I am proud of what I have accomplished and it does look nice. The real test will be whether I can keep this up over the course of the summer. Will I remember to water and feed the "babies"? Will I end up like Prince Charles and talk to them??

Watch this spot......