Trees in the breeze

Despite the fact that I live in London, I've always lived in a house or flat where there are big trees nearby. This is easier than you might think. Sometimes the trees are supposed to be there, like the London planes (Platanus x hispanica) that line so many of the capital's streets.

Quite often they're not supposed to be there, like the self-seeded 50ft sycamore outside my sister's old flat in Camden, and the ash trees along my boundary fence, which, irritatingly, are the subject of conservation orders and cannot be pruned without permission from the council. And very often, they were planted as cute little foot-high things by misguided householders 30 years ago, like the massive Eucalyptus gunnii, or cider gum, in my neighbour's garden.

They say you're never more than a few feet away from a rat in London. I don't know about rodents, but I never seem to be more than a few feet away from a huge eucalyptus. There was one next door in my last house, and the house before that. They are the arboreal equivalent of litter louts, dropping leaves, twigs and bark all over the place, all year round, like those horrible people who chuck McDonalds wrappers out of the car window.

It's easy to forgive them, however (unlike the McDonalds people) because for their size, they are graceful trees, particularly in a breeze. As the wind swooshes through them, they make a kind of rushing noise, like the sea coming in.

Perhaps that's why I always think of galleons when I see trees in the breeze - they seem like ships, with the canopy moving in the wind like bellying sails and the creak of branches like the groan of straining timbers. Since sailing ships were made from trees, I suppose this isn't as fanciful an image as it may sound. Among the trees along the left-hand fence of my garden, there is even an oak, the traditional source of timber for English ships.

One of my favourite stories, when I was a child, was Jason and the Argonauts, who sailed to Colchis on the Black Sea (what is now Georgia) in search of the Golden Fleece. Their boat, the Argo, was said to speak with a human voice. When the writer and historian Tim Severin recreated the journey for his book, The Jason Voyage, he initially put this down to a bit of embroidering on the part of the story-teller.

To recreate a Bronze Age galley, he sought out a traditional Greek shipbuilder, and when the ship was ready to launch, they took it down to the sea. As it was eased onto the rollers that were to carry it across the sand, the wood let out a loud groan, just like a person. Perhaps it was yearning to be back on dry land with the wind in its leaves.

The view from my garden to the south. From left (ignoring the Montezuma pine), bamboo, self-seeded ash (chopped to the ground by my neighbour four years ago), overgrown cherry tree, self-seeded ash and behind that, the huge eucalyptus. Through the phormium leaves to the right of the pine you can see a grey blur, which is my snow gum (Eucalyptus debeuzevillei), a much smaller species.

My mother's garden: a before and after story

You may remember that I went to give my mother a hand with her garden a couple of weeks ago. Well, she's finally come up with the before and after pictures so I thought you might like to see them.

My mother moved to her current house two years ago this month, mainly because it was over the road from my younger sister, and was easier to manage than her previous home, which was much bigger both inside and out.
The new garden was very sunny and had a lovely aspect. Apart from glimpses of neighbours' gardens through a high trellis on either side, it looks onto trees and sky. At the end is a lovely magnolia and the flower beds overflow with roses and alstroemeria. However, the woman who lived there had a son who was a great koi carp enthusiast and the garden was dominated by a large pond.
Not only that, but it seemed as if the garden had been developed piecemeal, without much thought being given to an overall plan. So, there was a bit of decking outside the conservatory - just big enough to get two chairs on by the time you'd opened the doors. There was a small gravelled area. And there was a paved area outside the back door, which then turned into a concrete path down the garden. Stepping stones led through the lawn to a stone urn which sat on a stone plinth and looked rather funereal. (In fact, we nicknamed it the funeral urn.) Here's a picture of how it used to look.

And here's a picture from a different angle. (It doesn't make the pond look any smaller, though.)

For the first year, despite complaining loudly about the pond, my mother said she just wanted to live with the garden before coming to any great conclusions about it. Fair enough, although my sister and I had already drawn our own conclusions. The pond had to go! Luckily, my brother-in-law is a builder, so before you could say "makeover", he had knocked the thing down.

My mother was also having work done inside the house (a new kitchen and bathroom, plus a remodelling of the porch and entrance hall). The old door to the garden was quite narrow and impractical. A new glazed one gave a lovely view of the sunny border as you came in the front door and helped persuade my mother that it would be a good idea to pave right across the back of the house, with a wide step down from the back door and the conservatory door.

During all the remodelling work, the lawn had virtually disappeared beneath a layer of rubble and timber and concrete mixers and so on. My sister decided that all the smart new paving deserved a smart new lawn, so she dug out the scabby old grass and returfed it.

We chose a naturalistic limestone colour for the paving, which looks attractive even in the rain. (If you're choosing paving, try to see it wet as well as dry, as it can darken up considerably.)

As you can see, taking the paving across the width of the garden makes it look much bigger. 

I persuaded my mother to run the path right round the lawn, which avoided having any lawn edges to worry about (you just mow over it), and gave her paved access to every bit of the garden. My sister came up with the idea of having an edging to the beds.

As you can see (between the bench and the summerhouse), we even found a new home for the "funeral urn". The plinth was removed, turned upside down and reused as a planter outside the front door. The urn was planted up with hostas and placed at the back of the garden, where the pale stone stands out in front of the dark fence.

My mother is very good at lots of things, but she is not the best photographer in the world. She didn't even photograph all the replanting I did! But this picture gives you some idea of how the borders look. The aim is to have a kind of cottage-garden, billowy effect which contrasts nicely with the formal rectangular lawn and neat paving.

Of course, I can't take much of the credit for this makeover. My sister and her husband either did or supervised most of the hard work and I came along at the end and tweaked a few plants. My mum is thrilled with it, though - and that's what matters most.

Pot luck

Has anyone else noticed a huge lack of nice plant pots available? Of the inexpensive variety, I mean -not those Cretan things that cost hundreds of pounds, or designer pots like those from S&B Evans which I lust after, but can't afford. Maybe it's just the garden centres near where I live, but there seems to be less and less choice and what there is, I don't happen to like.
There seems to be a big fashion for a sort of dirty terracotta (it looks like terracotta mixed with mud). Then there's the trend for lurid glazes. (I love glazed pots, but I like earthy tones such as lichen or moss. Not lilac. Or bright orange.) And there is the fad for strange shapes, such as pots that are wider at the base than at the top, or elongated in some way.
The final frustration comes when you've finally decided that perhaps you're a bit behind the times and that you might do something rather brave and buy something you wouldn't have thought of, such as a tall, striking pot in yellow or lime green. The only trouble is, you want two - and guess what! There's only one...
Perhaps it's just me. Perhaps because I've got lots of pots already, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find containers that look good with what's there already. Whatever, it's making me very grumpy.

Summertime, and the living is bees-y

So, June, and I have some frightful fluey bug that is making me feel awful. It's such a shame because the weather is fantastic, I've just had a week's holiday and work has finally moved offices to gorgeous Kensington. I'm thrilled about all this in theory, but in practice I feel like sh-sh-sh-uffling off to bed.

There are lots of bugs in the garden too, but of the benign variety. Two of the cordylines are in flower - one for the first time ever - and the bees love them. You can just see a buff-tailed bumblebee (the black blob) in the top righthand of the picture below. We get a lot of bumblebees in the garden, and different varieties too, but I am useless at identifying them. I love them though, the bigger the better. They look like flying teddy bears. 

The bees quite like the libertia too, which is in full flower from the middle of May. I'm sure I've seen more bees this year, and more butterflies too. 

The one thing I haven't seen more of is damselflies. We usually get a lot on the pond in April and May, but this year I've only seen two. Sadly, I've also had a drowning - a newly fledged starling that I found floating in the water yesterday. I read somewhere that this is not uncommon - apparently young starlings are fatally attracted to ponds for some reason. It's sad because I've enjoyed watching the starling family and their antics - the adults line the young ones up along a branch where a bird feeder hangs and go backwards and forwards shoving food in their mouths. 

All this wildlife activity is making me feel tired. Time to sit down and take yet another Beechams.

A present from VP

I've been away for a couple of days, helping my mother with her garden. She'd fallen against a chair and cracked a rib, so I was more than happy to give her a hand planting up her newly landscaped garden (more about that if she ever sends me the before and after pictures).

My mother lives across the road from my younger sister, who had supervised the hard landscaping, so what with spending time with family, admiring the new paving, eating huge barbecues, enjoying the glorious weather and digging, I'm a bit behind with things in my own backyard, not to mention the blogging.

However, I thought you'd like to see the gorgeous zantedeschia that VP gave me when she came to stay. It might also give you a bit of an insight into the way my mind works - or rather, doesn't work - when I'm in the garden.

VP's present was Zantedeschia 'Picasso', a beautiful creamy-white variety of calla lily with a purple spathe and spotted leaves. It came in a lovely green pot with a mulch of purple slate, so it was a very elegant addition indeed. It would look lovely on the table...

It would look just as attractive next to my watering can...

It would look fabulous next to the frog pond...

Or indeed the big pond...

And wonderful on the step outside the patio doors, where I could look at it every day, rain or shine...

So where will I put it? Oh, good grief, I can't decide. But wasn't it clever of VP to give me something that would look so good anywhere in the garden?

 

Chelsea friends

To the Chelsea Flower Show on Saturday, but in a different guise this time. I was doing my volunteer stint for Plant Heritage, formerly the National Council for the Conservation of Plants and Gardens, who were running the cloakroom at the show. If you're going to Chelsea, the cloakroom is a very useful place to know. It's by the London Gate (at the Sloane Square end of the show) and it never seems to run out of space. If you've brought a bulky coat in the expectation of freezing rain, or the sort of garden ornaments that endanger the eyes of passers-by as you carry them around, head straight there. All the donations people give in return for leaving their coat/suitcase/picnic basket go to Plant Heritage and this year we raised £4,145. You can find out all about Plant Heritage and the work they do here.

I stopped to say hello to my Independent on Sunday colleague Lisa Markwell, whose daughter Terri was doing a wonderful job on their stand giving away posters for their Let Children Grow campaign, which aims to get schoolchildren cultivating and eating their own food. There was a lot of interest in the posters, which I'm sure was partly due to people being so enchanted by Terri. I loved the way she shouted: "Spread the word!"

I also stopped to say hello to my friend David Rhodes, but he'd gone for the day so I congratulated his partner John Rockcliffe on the gold medal they won this year for their begonia display. David, if you're reading this, congratulations too!

When I finally arrived at the cloakroom, I found we also had a younger helper: Helena, the daughter of one of the Plant Heritage volunteers. Chelsea is not incredibly child-friendly - pushchairs and children under five are banned because of the crush - but again, people just seemed to love the sight of a child helping to run things. I'm sure Helena's efforts helped raise the number of donations we were given.