Extracts

MELLOW WEEDLESSNESS 

 The party is almost over. One of the best autumns for many years is coming to an end, the leaves finally seared off the trees by stormy weather. Even people who do not generally notice these things, have been moved to comment on the richness and variety of the colours of trees and shrubs, in woodland, parks and gardens and along bypass embankments. Not only have the reliable beeches, field maples, bird cherries, and birches been magnificent, but many trees which do not colour vividly every year, such as poplar, willow and hornbeam, have also turned well. My fruit trees, in particular apricot and mulberry, but also pears and apples, have taken on deep yellow hues.

 This flare-up has come about through a happy concatenation of circumstances: heavy rainfall in summer meant that there was still some moisture in the ground so that leaves did not drop prematurely, while sunny days in September and October boosted sugars in the leaves, and a lack of harsh frosts prevented a precipitate fall.

 The weather has often been balmy and sunny, so that we gardeners have felt a strong impulsion to be outside. ‘Hurry in autumn, tarry in spring’ is the old saying, but many people must wonder what precisely they should be hurrying out of doors to do. Attentive readers over the years will know that I rarely offer practical advice, since that sort of thing may be found elsewhere; nevertheless, I feel the urge to tell you how I spend time in the garden in autumn, just in case you are in a quandary about it.

 I do not cut down the stems of every herbaceous perennial in autumn, as gardeners were wont to do years ago, preferring to leave those which have seedheads for scavenging birds, and to give myself something attractive to look at on sunny, frosty days in winter. But that does not mean that that I think borders need no attention at all; far from it. Late autumn seems to me the best moment of all to deal, without chemicals, with perennial weeds, which are, let us face it, the bane of every gardener’s life. By these I mean couch grass, perennial nettle, creeping buttercup and, most particularly, bindweed. So I remove those perennials which won’t provide much sustenance or shelter for wildlife in winter, or which badly get in my way, and then set about digging up the roots of weeds that surround them.

 I am a connoisseur of roots. I can instantly tell nettle from buttercup, bindweed from ground elder, couch from Yorkshire fog. Anyone can do it with a little practice, and the knowledge is priceless. My garden bete noire is bindweed, whose oval leaves and searching, spiralling shoots are so deleterious to the look of a border in late summer. At this time of year, however, I have a grudging respect for those fat, white, bendy roots as they emerge at the end of my fork tines, still attached to thread-fine lianes of dried stem, which led me to them in the first place. These roots are not for the compost heap. Even small pieces can grow again so they must be burned, if you are allowed to light a bonfire or, if not, secreted in the dustbin. Those who don’t care to do that, can lay them out on paving for a week to dry  up completely and then put them in the compost bin.

 Each garden has its own particular weed flora, depending on the acidity and constitution of the soil, as well as the locality. I have bindweed, perennial nettle, creeping buttercup, couch grass and even cow parsnip (hogweed) because I have a country garden, as well as a number of unusual weeds like wood avens. On the other hand, I need not battle with ground elder, for some reason and, not having an acid soil, I am saved from both sheep’s and common sorrel.

 You may say that digging the soil disrupts valuable mycorrhizal activity, as well as bringing annual weed seeds to the surface to germinate, and you would be right on both counts. But, on balance, it is more important to banish perennial weeds and, at the same time, aerate the soil, which gets stamped down in the course of a season. You may also say that this is damn dull work, and I would not demur, although the vision of a cleaner (though never clean, of course) garden next season has the power to keep me going. For what was the iPod invented, if not to sweeten dull but necessary hours in the garden? In any event, the days are short now, so no task need be done for very long, and the frosts will come, d.v., and we can turn our thoughts towards Christmas. A successful, exhilarating party is almost over, and soon we can subside into armchairs, tired but happy.

THE SPECTATOR, 17 NOVEMBER 2007 

 When I was young, grown-ups put a great deal of emphasis on the importance of gratitude. At primary school, we said grace before and after lunch, in which being thankful figured prominently, and we were exhorted at every turn to count our blessings. ‘Blessings’ could be anything, apparently, in adult eyes, from a new brother or sister to the cutlery that was left unused at meal times and so could be put away unwashed. The habits we form early have a way of staying with us, so I often find myself counting my blessings in the garden. Having just finished planting up my pots and containers to provide colour in winter and early spring, I find violas come pretty high on my list of plants to be thankful for.

 For a start, you don’t have to get hung up on botany. Bedding pansies and violas are the result of such complex breeding programmes that you cannot possibly call them by a Latin name, although occasionally people try it with Viola x wittrockiana. Violas have smaller heads than pansies, and tend to flower more reliably and consistently through the average, admittedly not very cold, modern winter. That is all you need to know. Moreover, so amenable are these short-lived perennials that, if you sow them in spring, they flower in summer but, if you sow them in summer, they flower in autumn, winter and spring. They are, in the jargon, ‘daylength neutral’.

 Each summer, I decide what colour combinations I want to experiment with in my containers, and order the crocuses, narcissi and small tulips for autumn delivery. When these arrive in October, I tootle off to the best garden centre in the area and buy inexpensive modular trays containing single- or bi-colour violas, already in full flower, which I know will associate well with the bulbs that I have ordered. These violas may have a name – ‘Sorbet Blueberry and Cream’, ‘Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow’, ‘Rocky’, or ‘Angel’, perhaps, or the label may simply read ‘Orange’ or ‘Purple’. Sometimes it just reads ‘Viola’, which is a statement of the reasonably obvious, but I frankly couldn’t care less. All I want is to pick the right colour to blend with other flowers, for I shall compost them in late spring in any event.

 It may seem a little perverse to concentrate on violas rather than the more famous and widely available ‘Universal’ and other strains of winter-flowering pansies, which are larger and therefore, in theory at least, make more impact. However, the containers I plant sit by the back door and on the terrace outside the kitchen window so I can see them quite well enough, and I think violas are more elegant because they are not prone to lolling, as the more top-heavy pansies will do in squally rain in winter.

 One of the great virtues of these violas is that, if planted in a container compost, they suffer no check at all. They just keep on flowering, especially if I occasionally deadhead them, so providing cheering colour for the next four months, before the crocuses and early narcissi open their buds in February. I really cannot think of any other plants prepared to do that with such freshness and panache. For what I have just, and will continue to, receive …

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, 3RD NOVEMBER, 2007

YELLOW PERIL

 I have a Robinia ‘Frisia’ in my garden. Viewed dispassionately, it is a handsome, medium-sized tree with feathery, yellow-green which turn butter-coloured in autumn, and a tendency to drop small branches from time to time. I do not view it dispassionately, however. On the contrary, so much do I dislike what it does to the look of my locality, I want to cut it down.

 This tree affects me like a piece of grit in the eye, because it is emblematic of what is happening to many gardens in this country. They are becoming yellow and dead-purple confections - restless, busy, dissonant places. Think, for example, of the myriad, yellow-foliaged ‘Castlewellan’ Leyland cypresses in your area (like rats, you are never more than six feet from a ‘Castlewellan’ hedge, it seems), not to mention golden eruptions of Spiraea ‘Gold Mound’, Choisya ‘Sundance’, Philadelphus ‘Aureus’, Hedera ‘Goldheart’ and Jasminum ‘Fiona Sunrise’. Wherever these are planted in a garden, they draw the eye inexorably, forcing themselves on our attention. One or two yellow foliage plants are fine in a garden, and an isolated ‘yellow border’ often works well, but a great many gardens have dozens of these yellow-leaved plants dotted about, which cumulatively produce a negative impact on the sensitive observer.

 I realise that this view will be unpopular in some quarters, especially since we all feel we can do what we like with our gardens. Indeed, that is part of their charm for us. But this is about a sensitivity to context, not an argument about taste. Trees have an impact on other people, because of their height; they cannot be hidden behind fences or hedges. The planting of ‘Frisia’ is most problematic in rural areas, where context matters so much. My heart sinks every time I pass a house on a country road or the edge of a village with Robinia ‘Frisia’ new planted in a prominent position in the garden. What is acceptable in a suburb or town (which are highly artificial environments, after all) can look out of place in the countryside. Sure, our landscape is largely man-made, but native trees and shrubs have, without exception, leaves of varying shades of green. They have a subtle beauty quite spoiled by the interpolation of yellow or purple.

 You may wonder where all these yellow-leaved plants come from. Plants have a propensity to mutate, or ‘sport’, into another colour of leaf, and this ‘sport’ can be vegetatively propagated and perpetuated. Nurseries and garden centres are, naturally enough, always looking out for striking novelties, with which to beguile the gardening public. Yellow-leaved plants stand out brilliantly in the garden centre, where context is simply not an issue. I don’t blame people for being beguiled, but I do question how carefully they consider the siting of these plants when they get home.

 The ‘Frisia’ in my garden was planted by my predecessors more than twenty years ago, when this tree was still comparatively uncommon and did not look set to take over the entire country. I could not possibly criticise them. However, now that ‘Frisia’ is so commonplace, surely each of us must carefully consider the collective effect of our individual choices. No garden is an island, after all.

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH, 18 AUGUST, 2007