Why has my gardening blog gone dry? Is there nothing happening in the garden in september?

The garden has been stolen from me...

Cold wind is blowing... the old walnut in the meadow has gone yellow. The branches look darker, almost black, by contrast.

How much of a garden life is in the present, day to day activity, and how much is in the expectation of a thousand tomorrows?

I will not be here, one year from now. The garden was stolen from me. We are not to be joined any more... I will be leaving... soon, so much sooner than I thought. The link was broken, and I am a leaf in the wind. All the plans, all the dreams have been crushed and made dust.

I will be leaving next June.

The garden that I dreamed will never be, and the garden that is here, now, does not feel mine any more... so I think, a garden does live in the tomorrow... it would be to painful now, going out, being there alive and whole now, and think... "A year from now... no more...". Better to cease that link now, while the cold wind blows...

If I have to leave my garden, I wish I could leave now... in this dying autumn day. Not in spring... not in summer, with the flower buds growing, and the life sap running. Oh my dear Garden.

The one thing I cherish, the one meagre consolation, now that the garden was cut lose from my heart is that for the first time in 15 years I can see the fierce beauty of a windstorm... without fear.

Oh my dear Garden...






Please keep in touch with me through my other blog...
http://theponyproject.blogspot.com/

The weather has turned cool and autumn is here. The kitchen garden has a devastated look about it, except for those beds that have already been cleaned and turned, and new things planted. Also the tomatoes are looking at their very best. Planted late, too late, they are in full production now - many green ones will not be ripe in time, obviously. Of the three varieties we have planted "Benaris" is a complete winner. A tall, vigourously growing cherry tomato, sweet as syrup. "Dasher" is insipid by comparison, which is a scandal,considering that being an F1 hybrid the price of the seeds is considerably superior. "Hoffman Rentita", a bush tomato, is neither here nor there. Clearly a very productive variety, but not as tasty as we could wish. May be the weather here is not hot enough to allow larger tomatoes to ripe properly.
The provencal pumpkins needed the provencal sun, clearly, and it is doubtful if they will manage to complete their job. They are large and beautiful, but stubbornly green. Powdery mildew has devasted the foliage, so their future is not bright.I had so lovingly planned a winter of pumkin pies, pumpkin soups, roasted pumpkins, pumpkin tortelli and ravioli... Alas, it was not meant to be. Next year I will humbly plant some local variety, and spray diligently with soap and bicarbonate. It is said to discourage powdery mildew. The zucchini went down in glory to the same disease, in glory, because they produced so much that I will be happy beyond words not to see another zucchino for at least 8 months. We still have a full basket of them to eat... help!

The runner beans have been good and steady, if not spectacular in taste. I will have to think if I want to plant the same again. They already gave me a nice pocket of seeds, and tomorrow their little patch will be cleaned and hoed. The beautiful Basella rubra, loftily named "The Spinach of Malabar" shared their wigwam, and is looking lovely now that some sun is actually reaching it. I lifted one of the four plants, tobring in for winter. It IS a perennial, in theory. I wonder if it is possible to keep small plants from one year to the other. I have as yet no fresh seeds from this year plants.

The chilly peppers did amazingly well, despite being smothered by the pumpkins. I have a whole basket of them to dry for the winter. The few leeks that I have planted in may are smallish but look very inviteng. Their inevitable doom will soon come,in the shape of a leeks-and-bacon pie.

The garden needs going over as well. Not planted for autumn, it is looking rather squalid right now, despite the hydrangeas late blooming and the steady performance of my lovely sunflowers. Too much is missing, but I could not plan and sow all the necessary things this year, with all that needed to be done. Next year, I will do better!

Some plants must be moved, some will be planted in the new spaces that I will dig in the next weeks. All sorts of things are growing on in their small pots, bulbs are coming in from the GC and from catalogue orders, seeds are accumulating on my desk from exchanges with other gardeners. Some will be sown now, some in autumn. The porch is being made ready to shelter seedlings and potted plants.

I fear the long winter to come and yet I rejoice in the tidying up and digging of the garden at the end of summer. There is a sense of cleanliness, a promising hint of things to come that is almost as exciting as the feeling of spring. I know the long sleep of winter is between us and the flowers of april, but the heart does not. The freshly dug earth is ready for the new beginning.

The sorting of the huge mikado pile came to an end. God be praised. Life can now resume its due course. Amen.

I am indeed looking forward to Pia Pera last book, "Contro il Giardino" (= against the garden). A blood curdling title, to be honest, but I have a feeling I will like it.

Third day on the meadow with hubby, trying to sort out the huge wood pile we inherited from the butchery of every single tree that provided a bit of wind shelter to the garden (I am calm, no I am really very calm, shredding twigs, cracking boughs and extracting long heavy chunks of tree out of the pile is a fantastic way to vent aggression). It is like trying to sort out a mikado 2 m high, 8 m long and 4 m wide, where every stick is crooked or forked, the ground is slippery with rotten bark and Fallopia baldschuanica has tied a final knot on the packet. Amazinly enough, it's fun, if a bit overwhelming. The shredded twigs are a wondefully nice tactile material, even better than shredded bark from the GC and the first lot, mixed with grass clippings, is already hot in the compost heap. It will be a great material to mix with greens in the compost. I am looking forward to the lovely smooth black stuff that will soon result. Three days of work, perhaps we managed one third of the pile. One cubic m of shredded bits, and a huge pile (not much smaller than the original one, for some reason) of larger branches to be dried and broken for firewood.

I really love my compost heaps. I love composting a lot, I cannot understand gardeners that do not compost at all. I even had a heap in the old miniature little garden.
I love the physical work involved, turning it over with the fork again and again, airing it, keeping it fluffy and sweet. I love the careful composition, somewhat close to cooking, greens and browns, wets and dryes, nitrogen, air, water. You can feel it live, and the ground with it, afterwards. I didn't always understand this quote in one of my favourite garden quotes books:
"I find that a real gardener is not a man who cultivates flowers; he is a man who cultivates the soil. He is a creature who digs himself into the earth and leaves the sight of what is on it to usgaping good-for-nothings. He lives buried in the ground. Hebuilds his monument in a heap of compost. If he came into theGarden of Eden, he would sniff excitedly and say: "Good Lord, what humus!"- Karel Capek, The Gardener's Year, 1931
I was too green (but not yet green fingered enough) to appreciate this truth. You need to make a garden on heavy clay before you get so obsessed with humus. I am now, but in a very pleasurable way. I delight in the process of improving the ground.
"L'orto di un perdigiorno" by Pia Pera is a wonderfully inspiring book in that sense. I am not saying the the book is more educative than other gardening books I have read. But it has a poesy, and a livelyness to it that put the heavy chores of gardening in a different perspective. It had a leavening power for me. It touched me, and my way to conceive the garden, and changed it. It is a great debt. I have met Pia Pera, twice and briefly, a very intriguing lady, naturally graceful, delightfully soft spoken. It came as a surprise to me when I searched for her books on Amazon and I stumbled on the scandal of "Lo's Diary", another of her book, quite a different story. I have known her in such a different light, but I rejoice in the surprise. I like lady gardeners with some intrigue in their history.

The weather has turned grey and rainy, definitely autumn is nearly - or already - upon us. May be this is why I started poring over autmn planted bulbs. Tulips, alliums, anemones, and all the rest. Snowdrops and daffodils I have in large numbers already, they cropped up by the hundres when digging the blue border and the exotic corner,and were moved to safer places. out of harms way (hopefully... but the with the garden in such a fluid state there are no real safe places).

I ended up ordering a collection of purple-black-mauve-white tulips for the purple border, and some alliums (Allium christoffii, and a. "Ivory Queen", all the real giants were too expensive) and came across a rather funny description in the Avon Bulbs catalogue:
Tulipa "Royal Virgin", fresh and white
Tulipa "Black Hero", tall dark and full bodied
That gave me a good laugh, it sounds like something from Barbara Cartland, and I just had to have them. I must plant them together and be ready for a thickening dramatic plot. May be "Romance" should be planted close by, along with her sisters "Emotion" and "Eternity", and I am sure there must be something out there named "Royal Wedding" (an oriental poppy perhaps?).

I am helpless when it comes to plant names. I know they are mostly only clever commercial strategies, and yet they get me every time. That must be why I so easily remember plant names. They charm me and they tell me stories, and I am costantly enraptured in their chatty magic.

There was a period where I listed plants for a "snow-garden", a garden where all plants had snowy and icy names. Vita Sackville-West made the idea of white garden fashionable, but there are so many white gardens, I wanted something with a further twist.
It is amazing how many things out there are called "Snow Queen" "Snow Bird" or "Snow White", but there are also some more unusual things, like "Snow Showers" (a wisteria) "April Snow" (a rhododendron), "Snow Flurry" "Snow Prince" and "Snow Wreath"(all azaleas) even a "Snow Thimble" (a foxglove). Nor was snow to be alone in this cold company. I was ready to include Lavatera "Ice Cool" and Brunnera "Jack Frost", rosa "Iceberg" and many many more. I had covered two whole pages of names. Of course choosing plants just for the name must be a bit daft, and the snow garden never came into being (but who knows), but I had much fun weaving it into my imagination.

So far apart from the Hydrangea quercifolia "Snowflake" and "Snowqueen" the snow garden is limited to one small and beautiful plant combination, Bergenia "Silberlicht" and Sedum "Frost Morn". Silver light on a frosty morning... a poem in the making. It would be worth planting them together just for the names.

I also liked the idea of a gothic garden, dark plants and dark names, Colocasia "Black Magic", anthriscus sylvestris "Ravenswing", tulip "Queen of Night", Iris "Superstition", Cotynus "Velvet Cloak", Aliceara "Dark Warrior", Canna "Black Knight"... and I could go on and on and on.
But some of these names are deceiving. Ceanothus "Snow flurries" is blue, and Zantedeschia "Black Magic" is yellow. Liars, liars! Even my beloved "Frost Morn" blooms pink, but there, the name refers to the variegation of the leaves.

Today, an old garden wish came true: I have a garden shredder, a wondrous machine that gulps down twigs and stems and turns them into little debris that the busy composter community can more easily and speedily process into nice dark matter. The offer was nice (99 €), the reviews for the product were incouraging and we gave it a try, so far to our satisfaction. Asgatec EH 2501 is a remarkably silent machine, diligently purring, whirring and crunching its way through twigs green and dry, tough erbaceous stems and fleshy roots. I am looking forward to the smoother compost that will be produced with this nice "predigested" material.

On Sunday a visit to another private garden, a very lovely little thing with countless herbs and a very engaging collection of handmade ceramic creatures and decorations scattered among pots and flowerbeds. The owner of the garden herself makes these, and they seem to really belong in the place, integrating with a vibrant grace that garden art very seldom achieves.

Some plants that really caught my attention are the beautiful, absolutely unforgettable, modest Tagetes tenuifolia "Orange Gem". Unforgettable and modest? Is that really a contraddiction? It shouldn't. More and more I come to appreciate "modest" plants in the border. Perhaps because I alway ignored them and I am now really seeing their importance. But "Orange Gem" is a brilliant little plant, in all senses. As a tagetes it should have a long flowering period, the flowers are very small, though, and simple, not the terrible overblown pompoms that beddding tagetes are mostly carrying nowadays. And they are numerous, a mantle of fire sparks over the fine, dark, thread like foliage. And the scent... of course all tagetes are scented, but it is a fact that most of them smell of old pharmacy. This one is lovely, spicy and citrusy, and while all tagestes are theoretically edible, this is the only one that ever made me consider tasting it at all (which I didn't, I behaved). Chiltern offers the seeds, and it comesin several colour strains, including "Lemon Gem" and "Tangerine Gem". Definitely in my next year list.

Another plant that stirred my curiosity is Tulbaghia violacea, or garlic plant, which may be remiscent of chives in general habit, use and colouring, but is definitely more fetching in appearance.

Finally another very interesting herb is Stevia rebaudiana, or Sweet leaf, a herb considerably sweeter than sugar, and theoretically of real interest for diabetic people. It is not available in Europe for food use, and only allowed for garden decoration (for which purpose it is actually rather unspectacular) . Modern studies denies the old bad rumours about the secondary health effects brought about by the use of the plant, and it would seem that the opposition to its introduction is of merely commercial origin. A pity. For my part, I will suggest to my diabetic mother to look it up, and give it some thought. The fresh leaf is astonishingly sweet, with a very thin aftertaste of liquorice, that may or may not be disturbing in the kitchen depending on the use. Wikipedia has a fine entry about the plant.

The ground for the future blue border is now done and ready for improving and planting. It was horrid, full of stones of all sizes, two tree stumps buried under the grass but far from rotten, and the usual rubbish. Some people grow flowers in their gardens, my landlady's family grew rubbish. To each his own! I removed various old beer bottles, some whole, some broken. I fear by now they will not germinate any more, and the beer tree will remain a dream.
Well, I piled all the smaller stones in one heap, and by the end of it I had so many that I thought I could as well "gravel" the new path and steps with them. I scraped off all the topsoil from the path then scattered the stones on it and "set them" with some of the horrid yellow clay of the subsoil.It ain't pretty but it will serve, for the time being. At least I can walk on it withoud getting all muddy. In autumn I will transplant two plants that are in the ways on top and finish the path there. I am not sure what to do with the steeper part of the bank, may be I will cover it all with thick black plastic sheets, and plant something evergreen in holes. Something like cotoneaster, though, thickly covering and undemanding. A few gardens away there is a whole bank covered with it, but full of weeds, therefore the plastic idea. Weeding in there could become terribly difficult once it is planted all around.

The ground has been fattened with compost, and seing the results of other gardeners, I also burie all our old newspapers in it. I was never one for using paper in the garden, I thought I should give it a try. Prejudice never did any good to anyone. Now it all sits under a thick mulch of grass clippings. This border is in full sun until 1 pm, and dappled shadow until 5 pm, then full shadow. It is very sheltered from the wind, and I am wondering if the oakleaf hydrangea should be moved down here. It surely suffers from the rough exposure ofits current place. I think I will give it one more season to adapt, and see how it does. It han been pruned back now, all its beautiful flowers battered from the wind and faded before time.

The brugmansias are growing at an amazing rate and three of them have already been repotted.

Keeping the seeds from "Moulin Rouge" is proving a race against the greedy birds. I arrived too late at the first seedheads and found only a heap of empty shells on the ground. I am more wary now, I just hope that cutting the flower heads earlier does not compromise the seeds future.

When I planted the squash seedlings in late may, I had two left over that I did not feel like killing. They were planted near the fence, in a part of the garden still quite messy, in somewhat poor ground. I did not expect a crop of Jack o' Lanterns from them, just a bit of greenery. The whole fence length is full of nettles invading from the other side, the pumpkins would sure look better. They did very well, even if they are not as huge as those in the kitchen garden, and they smothered the nettles for a good length of the fence. They proved invaluable, because when the female flowers started opening on the "official" plants, there was not a single male flower available to pollinate them: luckily there were a couple already in the fence plants and I was able to hand pollinate with a small brush. It is a curious feeling to know that I have been the mean of conception of my 7 nicely growing squashes. I hope they will refrain from calling me Daddy. Now the fence plants have counterattacked the nettles on the other side (a wild meadow) and there are long vines weaving here and there... and two nice Jack o' Lantern are growing amid the wilderness.

"White Wave" is a relatively dainty H. macrophylla with crisp, clean lacecaps in dazzling pure white. It´s a very old variety, a french hybrid from V. Lemoine, 1904. The original name was "Mariesii Grandiflora", and like its sister breed "Blue Wave" (formerly "Lilacina"), was born from an open pollinated seed. The ray florets are beautifully designed, flat and simple, not overlapping, like a heraldic flower, and their pure white takes a sort of mother of pearl shade in combination with the pik/mauve/lilac/blue of the fertile florets in the middle. It is listed as a 1,5-2 m plants in some books, but mine does not seem to make any headway in size, despite being very healthy and blooming generously. It is considered a reliable plant, cold and disease resistant.

"Mme Emile Mouillière" a direct descendant of "White Wave", shares the same attibutes of antiquity and well proved resistance. The other parent was H. serrata "Rosea", one of the very first varieties imported to Europe (in 1880), and one of the oldest known mopheads. "Mme Emile Mouillière" was presented in 1909 by E. Mouillière and is generally considered the best (white) mophead hydrangeas for the garden. It is very hardy. It has the realtively rare ability (for macrophillas) to bloom on new wood, so that even after the worst spring it is seldom without flowers, and it does just as well in shade or half shade, with vigourous growth and very dark healthy leaves. The flowers are pure white, initially, then assume a pinkish shade, the central eye of each floret pink or blue. The flowers last very well into autumn assuming green and crimson shades as they age. If it has a defect, this is, in my opinion, in the somewhat irregular and lumpy shape of some of the largest flower heads, I guess there is nothing perfect in this world. It is still a very good plant.

A real massacre of a day, digging a huge hole under the sun to plant my tall Hydrangea villosa subsp. sargentiana. She is in full bloom, not the best moment for planting perhaps, but she was even worse off in her pot, she has grown so tall all of a sudden. She toppled over with every wind storm, it´s a miracle she still looks so good, albeit a bit tattered. I think she will like the spot I picked for her, morning sun and the best wind shelter I could give her.

This will become the blue border over time. It is the area around the new steps, that will be flanked by lavender hedges, when I have the plants. I will move here the delphiniums, and I will sow blue columbines. There is a splendid Echinops pungens in another place of the garden, it would make a lovely feature. I will either transplant it or collect seeds. I need to plant things that will keep the colour theme consistent through the summer though.

I find, looking at other gardens, that I tend to neglect the planting of those small, fuzzy, unspectacular but faithful flowers that carry the garden through the successive blooming of various stunners. It is a flaw I need to correct.
I am consuming eyes and brain through flower catalogues jotting down seed lists for the future. It would have been nice to start this summer already, but it was impossible without knowing where and what I wanted. I have clearer ideas now. All of the rose ridden front garden will be pink-white-warm purple. The lower part of the bank will be blue and indigo, and violets, and whites of course. The west side all hot yellows, orange, lusty maroon-crimsons.

I will also move the oakleaf hydrangea. Sun and wint turned it to tatters, while the "Domotoi" by her side is thriving. The mysteries of gardening.

I have dug and spruced up the ground in the potato patch, ready for whatever come next or a good grass mulch.

A delicious dish, much of which came from the garden.

2 handfuls of small potatoes, boiled tender, peeled and crushed (not mashed, not cut, crushed)
2 onions, cut into rings
2 medium zucchini, diced
2 bell peppers, cut into small pieces
1 or 2 cloves of garlick, finely chopped
a fresh leek or a couple of spring onions, cut into rings
a red chilli, cut into fine rings
Four or five medium sized tomatoes, chopped
200 g of feta cheese, crumbled
Olive oil, balsamic vineagre, seasoning to taste

Toss the crushed tatoes in a large pan with the onion ringsand a bit of oil, until lightly brown on the corners. Set aside. Add a spoon or two of oil to the pan and lightly fry the peppers for five minutes, add the zucchini and fry for 5 more minutes. Put the potatoes back into the pan to warm them up. Mix in the garlic and chili. Take from the fire and season with good olive oil, 3 spoons of balsamic vineagre, salt and pepper to taste. Add the fresh leek, tomatoes and feta, mix and serve while still hot.

Three buckets of potatoes from my tiny potato patch!!

Now this isn´t bad at all, if I consider that I only dug that patch becuse it was full of nettles, and when I was done digging the nettles there was so much dug earth that I thought I could as well finish it and plant something. I did very little to improve the ground there, and it is a bit too shady for veggies, so all in all I think the tatties did remarkably well´. Next year they will have a nice sunny patch, and here I will plant flowers for cutting.

A day at the large garden show in Bingen.

This is not a garden show in the usual sense, but rather, a garden for show. Three km of formerly derelict and abandoned river front reclaimed to life and beauty and planted with countless colourful flower borders. The show started in spring and lasts until october, and the area will then be integrated in the new town development. It is a very fine concept, and I can´t imagine a better way to begin the restoration of the riverfront, but I still think that the 14 € tickets are outrageously expensive. Admittedly, the borders are lavishly planted, and can boast an excellent maintenance, and such high standards only come at a price, but since they are somewhat repetitive, the public could have the same show on half the ground and for half the price.

Since my tickets came gratis, however, I can hardly complain, and I have to say it was a nice and inspiring show. The borders are spectacular, packed with tousands of very good plants, mostly sorted in good colour schemes, and grouped in bold masses. Many themed gardens are dotted around, desert garden, topiary garden, the Hildegarten (a herb garden that should be a homage to the local celebrity, Saint Hildegard, but is unfortunately rather shabby, even for a herb garden), a beautiful rose garden, the grass collection even a small cemetery, a bit morbid if you ask me, but I am sure that the local public must appreciate it, since every second shop around here sells tombstones. There is also a very long shady border under the trees less showy and less manicured, but still rather interesting. The low point of the show, is the Blumenhalle, an inexplicable sad collection of "pretty" plants and flower arrangement swathed in satin ribbons and organza. I can only say, they had this long good shed, and they had to fill it, and that they did. What a wasted opportunity. So many better things could have been done with half the money.


It is very interesting to get to see so many good "bedding" plants at the height of their beauty in late summer, a period that is usually critical for so many gardens. It is the proof that there is colour enough and to spare to be had at this time of year.


I am slowly overcoming my pejudice against dahlias for example. They are clearly a great genus but I was shocked as a child by my Granny's dahlias, and thought I would never recover. My Granny can grow anything and bring it to bloom, but from the way she plants, prunes and especially stakes her plants you´d think they are intended for the barbecue, rather than for the garden. She is a kind lady, with a great heart, and voted for the communist party all her life, but still, being brought up during the Fascist period must have left a mark. Plants are marched around in lines, presenting arms and flowers on top of broom handle straight stems, staked with strings and sticks like olives in a cocktail, and never allowed to stray out of their allotted space with a single leaf or tendril. No Fuss is the password, and the punishment for unruly subjects is terminal. Dahlias dominated over this scenario, like blowsy, brashly coloured lollipops on top of their leafless scrawny sticks. They looked artificial, absurdly proud of themselves, offensively ignorant of their state of captivity. They had no idea of what a free flower could look like, and they didn´t care. They were big and colourful and well fed, and that was all they cared for. I always hated dahlias ever since.


I only started to relent in the recent past, when finally it was brough home to me that dahlias, like chrisantemums, come in all size and shapes, and the big blowsy fellows of my childhood should never have entered a garden, their only proper place being the show bench.

Anyway, there ARE indeed dahlias with smaller flowers in gourgeous colours, and a leafy natural habit, that would look good in any garden.

Two varieties that have impressed me today are "Bishop of York" and "Bishop of Oxford". As the names suggest they are close relatives. The first has deligtful, simple, daisy like flowers of pale yellew smudged in rose and orange, a peach of a flower. The second is a very difficult colour to describe, amber tea stirred with coral perhaps, and the flowers are double. Both colours are set off by dark foliage, tinged with deep purple, that is a treat all by itself. There is also another bishop, the "Bishop of Llandaff", but the red flower does not appeal to me as much as the muted and yet warm colours of the other two. Finally, I would mention the tiny Dahlia "Happy Single First Love", that looks like a diminutive relative of "Bishop of Oxford", but with simple flowers instead of double.


Another plant that never really caught my attention but that impressed me today is the Aster. I always found them downright uninteresting, but today I was really struck by Aster pyreneus "Lutetia", a scatter of mauve sparks over a deep green mist. Very cool, very ethereal. The flowers are larger than most asters I have ever seen, but still extremely light and slender.

Finally, I need to write about Anemone hupehensis. As strange as it may sound, I had never seen a plant before today except in pictures, and I had formed in my mind the idea of a graceful plant, ethereal to the point of swooning, but it is completely wrong. There is nothing wimpish in this plant. With their simple heraldic shape and their crown of golden stamens, the flowers are reminiscent, at a distance, of dog rose blooms, but close up the consistence is all different; like a flower imitation in pressed suede they feel firm and velvety, the texture of the veins in the petals deeply grooved, ripppling in the sun. The foliage is bold, thick, deeply serrated, and with a plush, quilted look. The stems are wiry strong. The unopen flowers are round and softly velvety, looking downwards like bells in a fool hat. It is an entirely adorable plant. "September Charm", a tall variety in the rose garden, looked especially good. I got myself a plant in the tiny shop of the show. It is not named but the mauve flowers, tinged with deep warm purple on the outside, are very good.

It is a pity that this horribly expensive shop at the show should sell mostly utterly useless commercial house plants instead of offering some of the really good garden varieties shown in the garden, and an assortment of somewhat less than ordinary seeds. A missed opportunity, for both the show and the public, I think.

I have seldom seen such a viciously strong willed, rambunctious, heedless plant as the ornamental gourd that is invading my front border in these days. It was never supposed to be there of course. It just decided, all by itself, to take residence.
I had sown 12 seeds in jiffy pots in april, hoping to ger something colourful and fast growing to populate some shabby corners of the garden with a temporary splash of subtropical luxuriance. Not one ever germinated, and after more than two months of fruitless waiting, both peat and soil were tipped under the roses at the back of the border. I always throw used compost in the borders to improve the structure of the ground. This seed must have decided that he liked it there and popped up one day in exactly the right place. I desperatly needed something to hide the bare woody legs of the hideous tea roses, and there he was. I had no heart to pull it. Gardenenrs can be weak, or merciful, or inspired, like this. If I had tried to plant something there, an annual of the right size from the GC, it would have shrivelled in the heat and died. It would have never worked. But the volunteer gourd has rapidly grown into a beautiful plant that really completes the picture. Of course it is also trying to smother everything else in his path. It is a hard task to referee the border this days, trying to keep the gourd out of things without curbing its tumbling splendour. I weave it here and there, where the recent planting has left bare patches, where other plants have already gone off, or where the roses are most leggy. I prune where it´s too much, and pull the leaves that try to cover shrubs and delfiniums and petunias.

Next year I will concentrate all yellows and orange and red-maroons on the west side of the house, if the works there are finished (which is not sure). The "Moulin Rouge" will be a lot more visible on the background of the pale walls, and the large shrubs will isolate this "hot" coloured border from the pink and purple of the front. This is also the sunniest place in the garden, and the hottest. I think sunflowers, marigolds, californian poppies, gourds and nasturtiums will provide a wonderful low maitanance, long blooming corner here, despite the rather poor ground.

Transplanted the first seedling of variegated hybiscus (the foliage is variegated, the flower should be triple and purple... an exotic creature indeed). My exotic seedlings are doing well, the mango especially, and the Rhodochiton also. My one surviving papaya is slowly slowly recovering from what I thought was a fatal crisis. Whatever hit my little papayas is a mystery, but one by one they all petered out and died except this one. Still no news with Musa nagensium, but the seeds look clean and healthy, no fungal growth or anything. They say they can take up to six months to germinate, so I will wait patiently. I seem to have found a plant of tetrapanax, on the other hand, I will have it delivered in september or so, when it will not risk cooking in the back of the postman van. The brugmansias are doing very well, growing by the minute. The picture above is a few days old, but they have tripled in size since.

We are drowning in zucchini, zucchini, zucchini. I give away bags but there are still too many. I did not realize four plants would produce such an avalanche. May be one or two plants will suffice in the future.

A very good recipe we tried for them is a soup.

2 onions, chopped

2 potatoes, diced

3 medium-large zucchini roughly diced

1 medium zucchini, finely diced

2-3 cloves of garlic, chopped

2 teaspoons of fresh, chopped rosemary

3-4 spoons of finely chopped chives

1 lemon (juice)

salt, pepper, a pinch of chili

4 - 5 cups of chicken stock

oil, a piece of butter (or a bit of fresh cream)

Lightly fry the onions and garlic until transparent, add rosemary, potatoes and stock and simmer for 10 minutes. Add the three roughly chopped zucchini and simmer for 20 more minutes, add the lemon juice. Blend smooth. Season to taste, and melt in the butter or cream. Boil the remaining zucchini dice for just a moment (30 seconds, a minute no more) in salt water. Ladle the soup in bowls and scatter with zucchini dices and chives. Serve with croutons and white wine.

Serve 4 or 6 depending if polite or hungry.

A day of disasters. Crawly caterpillars ate half of my ornamental cabbages overnight and my matthiolas as well, hard rain bent "Ayesha" to the ground, its spoon like sepals collecting so much water, The wind flattened the H. quercifolia, a tray of foxglove seedlings was overturned, sending 25 baby plants all ahoo, one of my three plants of sweetpea was pulled by mistake while weeding, and one of my growing pumkins was misteriously slashed and pierced, ina Zorro like vindictive style. No idea how THAT happened.
In days like this one should probably only crawl back in bed to be spared further troubles.

Yesterday I took a number of boxwood cuttings, and I believe I will take even more in the next days. I dug steps into the steep bank dividing the garden proper from the kitchen garden and I intend to flank it with a low hedge of box and lavender. I hope that if I can impose some structure and order in the layout of the garden the flaws of the former planting can be obscured a bit. They cannot of course be obliterated bet perhaps they can be made to fade in the background.

Flooded with food from the garden we cannot eat enough, despite giving away bags of zucchini and salad. I am sure there are worse problems, but I swear I have had nighmares of invading hordes of marrows. I begin to see what C. Lloyd meant when he wrote that he didn´t like to feel hounded by his vegetables.
Baking the largest apple pie I have ever seen, to relieve our overloaded trees of some of their burden. The apples are not really, completely ripe yet, but for a pie they will do nicely.I had to throw four buckets of small apples in the composter, they have fallen with the wind of the last storms all over the place. Even so the branches of the poor trees are touching the ground. Are unripe apples any good for horses? There are so many around here, may be they would have liked the treat?

Yesterday a visit to a private garden in Benzweiler, open to the public for one day. The pubblicity was in the Hunsrück-Mittelrhein GartenRoute booklet from the tourist office, a booklet that had been lost in the pocket of a jacket until a few days ago. Pity, there are lots of private gardens in the region occasionally open for visiting, and I wish I had seen more of them. Next year... The Country Garden I saw yesterday is not as such memorable (a bit too wild for my taste, even for a country garden) but it´s full of inspiring little ideas, and it includes a tiny shop and green house selling garden plants, bedding annuals and herbs. Some of the perennials for sale are definitely more unusual and interesting than the average GC choice. The really funny thing is that I - unexpectedly, I never win anything - won the first prize of the raffle organized by the owners, and got myself two tickets for the big garden show in Bingen... the hubby is not happy, but such are the dangers of indulging a gardening wife for half an afternoon.

I bought myself a Cosmos atrosanguineum, the famous chocolate cosmos. Such a splendid colour, and the scent is enticing. This morning I found a bee asleep in the flower, voluptously curled around the central tassel of stamens. It flew away in confusion when nuzzled, with a visible list to starboard and a somewhat drunk sway.

Today yet more cuttings, Hydrangea quercifolia "Snowflake", Hoya imperialis, various macrophyllas that I promised to a british friend.

Propagating day. Cuttings of Pieris Japonica, of lavender, of Prunus laurocerasus "Otto Luykien", more hydrangea cuttings. The yew cuttings are finally starting to show new shoots and I have some cuttings from a hedge nearby of a prettily berried plant yet to identify.

The single little "Otto Luykien" came from a garden centre where I hoped to find some decent cannas, but alas they all looked suspicious. I am resolved to grow mine from seed now, even if it will probably mean postponing the planting of the exoctic corner yet another year. The ground there is improving visibly, a nice brown sponge. Worms are finally working their way into it. 940 liters of organic matter added so far. The two compost heaps started in april are coming along very nicely.

In the kitchen garden everything has spilled over the boundaries I had set, and the whole place looks luxuriant, actually scarily so. We have more zucchini than we can eat, and all the rest is slowly ripening as well. The first pumpkins are showing and the chillies are already deep red and dangerous. We have tiny potatoes too.

Hydrangea arborescens "Hayes´Starburst" is the most spectacular arborescens I have seen so far. It is a flimsier plant than "Annabelle", with narrow leaves and an ever more pronounced adversion to hot dry afternoons. But the flowers are a wonder. They open like light weight lacecaps, but the florets in the center after a period of apparent indecision begin to frot and mount and suddenly one day the whole flower heads is indeed an explosion of multiple starry florets shading from pale green to the purest white. It is very beautiful, impressive without being heavy. This plant was a selfsown seedling discovered by Mr Hayes Jackson in his own garden of Anniston, Alabama. He shared the plant with friends, which was lucky because his own died.

Alas my canna "Wyoming" of which I had bought some roots in spring turned out to be diseased by the all-world common canna virus, and after some days of indecision, with much heart ache and some sniffeling I decided to throw them away. It is very sad to rip them off now that they were finally starting to grow, but the leaves were already striped and mottled rather visibly. Will have to get some fully grown cannas, or seeds. Canna glauca, C. paniculata and C. speciosa are all very desirable, and available from Chiltern. Canna musifolia would be a lovely addition too, and could very well replace bananas in my tiny exotic corner, but I haveno idea where to get one, or seeds. Seeds are supposedly immune from the virus, and if the garden is clean from it to start with, I should be safe. I had hoped that by now the canna tubers for sale would be reasonably clean. Wishful thinking, apparently.

Colocasia tubers arrived in mass from two different sources now, India and Portugal. If half of them sprout I have more colocasias than I will ever need. No "Black Magic" though.

Still no signs of life from Musa and Tetrapanax. I wonder if they have chilled and shiveredtoo long before getting into the propagator. Poor cold hotties.

"Annabelle" is an extremely popular hydrangea and deservedly so. Her mophead look is deceiving. She is not a macrophilla but a much tougher, bone hardy and reliable subject. Hydrangea arborescens "Annabelle", like all of her kindred, blooms on new wood and no late frosts worry her. Under a thinck mulch her roots can come through any winter. For all her hardiness she is still a luxuriant, flamboyant subject. Her flowerheads are large (too large, say some) and held high over the foliage (except in rainy weather, when the all plant splays outward, weeping). The colour changes from the initial pale green to pure white to a wonderful shade of chartreuse, that lasts trough the winter in dried flowers arrangements. For this purpose "Annabelle" provides some of the loveliest flowerheads, domed and regular, made up of tiny florets, individaully designed like the most iconic of origami flowers. H. arborescens is not a japanese flower hower. Like H. quercifolia it was discovered in the damp shady woodlands of the (future) United States. John Bartram found and described this plant in its wild form in the thirties of the 18th century, making H. arborescens the first known hydrangea. The original "Annabelle" was discovered in 1910 near Anna, Illinois. Attempts are being made to breed a pink flowered version.

All the "Moulin Rouge" sunflowers are now blooming: they come in several different shades. Some a sombre chocolate maroon, some orange.brown flamed with yellow, some, the best, in a very dark very rich crimson, shading to real black at the centre of the flower. They make no real show in the garden, their dark colour fading in the background, but what a wondrous surprise they provide when one comes close to them and their subtle presence suddenly resolves in front of one´s nose. It is the first time in my life I call a sunflower subtle. It is indeed a rare creature.

Over the last two days cuttings of 14 different hydrangeas were taken, potted and labeled. It is unfortunately too late for the paniculatas, and probably also for arborescens, heteromalla and aspera. All of these will have to be propagated next spring by hardwood cuttings, or next summer, early.

A beautiful Sambucus "Black Beauty" has been purchased recently, and cuttings taken from that too. The cuttings of the common elder I took from the fields seem to be doing well, as those of honeysuckle. No signs of headway from the yew yet. But yew is slow. There is a number of box seedlings in the garden tha I must collect and put to good use. More peonies were dug up and potted. I think I am the first known gardener to struggle with peony as a weed.

A lucky exchange brought me a packet of seeds of Meconopsis cambrica. This is definitely considered a weed by british gardenens and yet it is an unknown rarity to me. "One person´s favourite garden plant is another´s bane; life is great." M. Dirr

It is funny (or not at all) how one becomes defensive when talking about hydrangeas. The truth is that most of the gardening world is still stuck with the picture of the old (and, alas, new) big mopheads and is utterly unable to perceive the vast difference that exhists among the various different species, subspecies and especially, among the breeding styles, european and japanese, of hydrangeas nowadays. This bottomless reservoir of abysmal ignorance creates an hostility towards hydrangeas that may have been understandable twenty years ago, but has no justification nowadays. Of course the vast majority of commercial hydrangeas IS boring, the vast majority of commercial ANYTHING is boring, but there is a whole world of magnificient, sophisticated varieties, even of macrophylla, out there, whose apparently fragile beauty is made to capture the heart of fairy queens. Will the western world ever see that? Never. So I rant, and simmer, and get utterly disgusted.

"Izu no Hana" is an extremely elegant japanese macrophylla whose name means the flower of Izu.
Izu is the place where the plant was discovered some 30 years ago. She is not a showy "offensively sumptuous" plant but a charming creature with all the sophisticated simplicity of many Japanese hydrangeas.

"Shinonome" is a true serrata, a dainty plant, with small flower heads and leaves, completely different from hydrangea macrophylla. I think it may easily be the most sophisticated looking hydrangea that I ever saw. My original plant died on me, one of the few hydrangeas I ever lost, but I had taken several cuttings, two of which are now respectable little plants. Propagate propagate propagate!

Which brings me to a long time dream that came true today: I have a propagator! It was immediately put to use for my Musa nagensium and Tetrapanax papyrifera, new shinonome cuttings, and for some seeds of hibiscus that a friend sent from England. I hope the heat wakes the Musa and Tetrapanax. So far nothing is showing.

The brugmansias whose seeds I had from the same source are doing very well on the other hand. Four seedling are 5 cm tall, and more seeds are germinating.

"Otaksa" is a very old mophead variety introduced to Europe by Philip Franz Von Siebold in the early half of the 19th century. I am not, as a rule, fond of the traditional mopheads, but Otaksa is a darling. She turns blue very readily, and has a romantic story. Von Siebold named her after a woman he had known in Japan (some say she was his lover), O Taki San. All of Von Siebold´s adventurous realation with japan has a touch (and more) of drama to it, and I am happy to have a plant that he brought to the gardens of the western world. She is supposedly a rather tender variety, but mine was one of the few macrophyllas to come unscathed trough this spring´s frosts. The dryed flowers are a beautiful shade of pale green.


"Preziosa" is definitely hardy, on the other hand. She has serrata sap in her parentage, and it shows. Hydrangea serrata is called "mountain hydrangea" in Japan, and that´s what she is, a comparatively small woodland plant, which flushes later than the coastal macrophyllas. Preziosa is definitely daintier than most garden hydrangeas, but not as much as a true serrata. She has beautiful red stems and a dusky foliage. The flowers are really spectaculare, they are small mopheads, opening green and then turning white and pink, and finally deep red, almost regardless of the soil acidity. Sometimes the colours all mix in a very curious variegated pattern.The mature florets turn downwards, like in lacecap hydrangeas.

"Moulin Rouge" may easily be my 2008 great discovery. I have two groups in the garden, one is in a sunny spot with rather poor soil, and the other in the slightly shadier but much richer ground of the kitchen garden. The first are not very big, "only" reaching to my shoulder or so, but they are more wind resistant than the giants in the kitchen garden. The ones more in the sun are blooming first, even if they were planted quite a while later. I wonder how they would look coupled with "Italian White"?

Hydrangea quercifolia is a monster of a plant which grew from a tiny potted specimen to a 1,50 m plant in two years. It is stunning in a garden, but seen up close it does not hold a candle to its cultivar "Snowflake":



It's not only that the single florets are double, and more than double, suffused with lime green and maturing to rosy purple. These florets last a long time, as do the autumn colouring of the leaves, while the species quercifolia tends to drop its fiery autumn plumage rather fast. They are both worth growing though, and more than worth, as is "Snow Queen", that has single florets but very elongated and upright panicles.

The sunflowers "Moulin Rouge" are blooming What a glorious colour! The richest shade of dark red, bordering on maroon and even black, but with a warmth and a depth to it such I have rarely seen. It is incredible to find such a dark, deep, gory sahde in a sunflower, which is generally associated with the most solar shades of yellow and orange. A black sun burst... what a subject for a gothic garden.

Finally the days of hydrangeas have come. Even some of the most frost damaged are trying to contribute a few blooms to the show, it is really a great relief.

I wonder if they can be "trained" to flush a bit later in future years, or if like M. Dirr says after a given number of chilly days they will get into vegetative frenzy whatever the weather. We shall see.

A great show is definitely coming from Ayesha, which is curious, since it is in theory one of the less hardy macrophyllas. But she clearly did not read the books because she is covered with blooms.

"Ayesha" is an almost unique hydrangea, with spoon shaped sepals remembering lilac flowers. It is of Japanese origin, and it is not sure when exactly it was imported to Europe. For a great long while it was one of the very few unmistakable macrophillas around. Recently a somewhat similar cultivar was introduced, the Hovaria Hopcorn, but this is smaller and has much deeper colours. Ayesha is beautifully pale, shell pink or soft blue, or everythingin between. Like "Otaksa", "Joseph Banks" and "Sea Foam", all of them close relatives, it is supposedly not very frost hardy, but extremely resistant to wind and sea spray.

This beautiful macrophylla came without a label, but it is very probably "Selma". The foliage is a dark dark wonder, flushed with the deepest crimson. The inflorescece will alas develope in a rather boring deep pink mophead, but at this early stage it is wonderfully 'different'.

"Romance" is a surprise. It opens like the daintiest lacecap, similar to "Hanabi" (but smaller and more compact, and obviously not white) but in the course of the season the froth of small green flowers in the middle keep opening and developing, and it ends up in a truly majestic mop head. The pointy double flowers keep it from becoming boring though. It is a real beauty. It belongs to a recent series together with "Emotion", of which I had a cutting, that I have lost.

While my future exotic garden sits moist and warm under a thinck mulch of grass clippings (720 litres of OM so far) the rest of the garden has become a dazzling explosion of colour. Most of my annuals are rioting in the beds in a sort of crazed rainbow race. Way too colourful for my taste, but strangely, having kept the colours divided in blocks it still works. Very much on the edge, mind, but it works. There is an orange-yellow block with Calendula, Californian poppies, "peach Melba" nasturtiums and sunflowers (these are not blooming yet), there is magenta-purple block with anemones (St. Brigid, blooming late), ornamental cabbage and Matthiola, and then there is a deep blue clump of delphiniums and then all my white-pastel-deep-crimson collection.Hydrangeas begin to bloom now. Very prominent are quercifolias and arborescens, and "Preziosa", "O'Amacha", "Nigra". "Otaksa" and "Romance", all those that were not damaged by the march-april frost. Penstemon digitalis "Husker's Red" is especially beautiful this year, despite the move and the loss of some plants. And Lilium regale opened the first flower today. It is indeed lovely, and heavily scented. To think that I saved these bulbs from a heap of rubbish! All this dangerously juggled colour scheme is tipped off balance by the overwelming amount of pink roses that were already here. They were not blooming when I planted the rest and I dared hope that at least SOME of themmay be white, or yellow... naif, I know. Next year, with larger border and larger perennials andbiennials, the roses will not beso dominant, or so I hope.

Today a surprise in the mail! The roots of Heliconia angusta that I snatched on e-bay merely days ago arrived. All the way from Malaysia, to my door in a few days. Moist plump roots with healthy dark green shoots. The tropics are knocking at the doors of Macken.

Let it all begin.

Carried 60 liters of manure to the Exotic corner. A bit at a time it will rise... and hopefully shine. 540 liters of organic matter so far.

I ordered six bulbs (? I am sure they are not bulbs) of Colocasia esculenta. A bit late in the year of course, but it was such a good occasion. I hope to grow them on and overwinter them as kindly as possible, so they get a better start next year: roots that have been harvested and dried for mail delivery tend to take a long while to get into stride again.

And I received the promised Brugmansia seeds, with complete germination instruction, plus some of hybiscus (a surprise). The world of gardening is indeed "red in tooth and claw" (at least where snails and slugs and grubs and bugs are concerned, not to mention weeds and hail and mildew and late frosts) but it is also full of unexpected and heart warming generosity.

Today I transplanted my tiny "Pam's Choice" foxgloves into single 200 ml pots.

Yesterday I had a long walk in the woods that surround our tiny village, all the way to the romantic ruins ofthe Waldeck castle. The woods (and the ruins) are full of interesting plants: honesty, solomon's seal, hart's tongue, sweet woodruff, imposing male ferns, and beautiful blue campanulas... but it's the wild foxgloves that stole my heart.

Some are scrawny objects, half starved and little more than worthless weeds, but many are tall majestic plants, blooming almost all the way around the stem. They like woodland but are more happy in a sunny clearing. A plant for halfshade, no more. There are pink-mauve ones, intense magenta ones, some almost purple, and even one pure white, with the faintest blond markings in the throat. Some have purplish flowers on the lower part of the stem, but the upper, newer flowers are creamy greenish. I marked the white one. I hope to find it again and collect the seeds.

The stinking hellebores, Helleborus foetidus, that made such a lovely show in the woods in february and march, when all was dreary brown, are in seed now. I picked a handful of seed heads; I always liked hellebores, and this one is, I think, one of the most interesting. I love green flowers, but this species also has a beautiful foliage, very dark green, narrow, finely serrated, enourmously more elegant than any of the common garden hellebores. This is very fortunate, since three or more years may pass before the seedlings can bloom.

This is the Former Mess, now upgraded to Future Exotic Corner. Shame I don't have a picture of the "before", but when I got round to sort it out, it was not really planned, and I never thought to get a camera.

It is really nice to have a whole year to improve the ground and go through lists of plants. In autumn I will dig up the upper half of the hypericum colony and plant it somewhere else, to get more space for the "hotties".

Now that a place is set out for the tropical corner it is really nice to dream and plan of the plants that will go in there. I only want things I can grow by myself from seed or root, but even like that there is plenty to choose from. Ricinus "Carmencita", for sure, and a colocasia, possibly "Black Magic" if I can get my hands on it,but in truth any colocasia will do. A banana, if my poor shivering seeds manage to get going. I was offered seeds of Brugmansia, this would be a grand centerpiece! Those huge nodding pale flowers would look stunning on the background of waving dark leaves. My zantedeschias will sure enjoy summer holidays in open ground, and nasturtiums "Black velvet" in the undergrowth. Cannas, of course, "Wyoming" I have already. If I cannot get the bananas going I must find Canna musifolia. Easier to overwinter too. I am not sure about dhalias, honestly. I could love Zea mays in some variegated form, if I can find the seeds. Creepers twining their way through things. Rhodochiton atrosanguineum, for sure, and something lighter, may be white... an ipomea perhaps, a passiflora? Cobaea scandens "Alba"? A jasmine? Would Hydrangea "Sargentiana" be out of place? Will my papayas grow enough to make a show? And why not creeping gourds? White cosmos to light up the big leaves, and some true stunner, strelizias, heliconias? A bengal tiger?

More and more work in the former Mess. The place begins to look really civilized now. With the hazelnut gone (and Iwill see to it that it remains gone, so that the remaining trees and shrubs form an open arena) the place has gained a whole new look. Plenty of light streaming in all morning until 1 pm, and dappled shade afterwards. It's sheltered from the wind in three directions, north, east and west, and it's visually isolated from the rest of the garden by evergreen shrubs. There is no chance to make an exotic garden as in Great Dixter here, but I think I could at least carve a little tropical corner. I really need to improve the soil before that though, nothing can be planted there until next year.


I have spent the morning hoeing out a barrow load of neettle roots, and an amazing number of stones. I can only imagine that the place under the boulder has been used as a dump for the stones from all the rest of the garden. When I finished with the hoe the soil looked absolutely appalling. Dry, crumbly, spent. I don't know what all the weeds and brambles were living of: there is absolutely nothing in this dust. And not a single worm. I can only imagine that the plants were gnawing on each other like overcrowded tadpoles.

I carried close on 500 liters of compost and leaf mould to the place. Some of the stuff is not fully composted yet, but since I don't plan on planting anything soon it hardly matters. More important of all the leaf mould is teeming with nice fat earthworms. I have some ten cm of organic matter on top of the soil now, but I aim to at least triple that before this time next year. I will beg for manure from the farmers, bury troublesome neighbours, and mulch with a mountain of leaves... but next summer I will plant the tropics in Macken.

Today I took in hand a corner of the new garden that we had not touched yet. It's the less visible from the house, but the first thing visitors see, so it had to be done soon or late. That corner is my despair; in a patch of ground the size of an average dining room there are: a grown walnut, a lilac, a forsythia, a large yew, two huge boxwood bushes, a leylandyi, a hazelnut and a large boulder. Everyone was growing on the head of its neighbours and brambles covered all. Under the brambles there were apparently also some kind of hypericum, and a lovely but slowly drowning clump of Lysimachia punctata, plus an ungodly amount of nettles and a kind of weed of the umbelliferae family that I have not identified, but that had set out for world domination long before I came here.

The hypericums are what made it so difficult to tackle. Weeding under large shrubs is a joke, one cuts everything to the ground until the place is tamed and that's it. But weeding among smaller plants is another thing entirely. You must do it selectively. So it was postponed again and again until it turned into a tangle that nothing short of napalm could sort out.

Today I was shyly nibbling at the edges of The Mess with my shears, just over the narrow line of short grass that we have carved around it, thinking I would just pull or cut some of the tallest things before they run to seed, when nibble after nibble, without really knowing how or when, I found myself crawling on all four among nettles and brambles, cutting, slashing and pulling right and left like a woman possesed, and in an hour or so of steady, sweaty, prickly work I cleared enough or the brambles and nettles to actually be able to tell friends from foes in the lower layers. In another hour the hypericum and the lysimachia saw the light of day for the first time this spring.
When I stepped back to contemplate the results of my efforts I realized that the shrubs looked amazingly shabby in this cleaned up context. The straggly hazelnut was downright squalid. I cannot remove it without the landlady permission but I can prune it, and prune it I did. I left only three green shoots waist high, the farthest away from the forsythia. Tis forsythia had ben butchered earlier in the year by a someone not me, in that ingenious cutting back tecnique aimed to turn a relatively graceful plant into a bright yellow lollipop. I cleared out some of the older, stiff branches and let only the straight young shoots. I want it to grow tall and bend over, like the fountain of gold that forsythias were meant to be before man invented shears and lollipops. I also trimmed the yew a bit on this side, and shortened the stemmy hypericum to encourage it to flesh out. We finally can see light!
Of the yew pruning I made cutlings (propagate propagate propagate!!), and I even discovered some straggling sprigs of variegated ivy buried deep in the tangle. These I digged up and removed to a pot, to grow on for winter display. I discovered a clump of Sedum spectabile as well, which was moved to one of the borders (it was either that or the lawn mower for him). I concluded the day breaking the ground with a hoe all around and in between the hypericum and giving some fertilizer.

This is not the time of year to do all this pruning and moving, but in such a tangled garden it must be done, and now is better than never.

When we moved in the new garden there was a pond in front of the house. I always dreamed of a pond but this thing was the size of a small bathing tub and under a horse chestnut tree and it was a sore mess. Nothing that small has a chance of being even remotely self sufficient and out it went. This makes it sound like an easy task, which it was not. It was a foul, muddy, rooty mess. Anyway, in the process of filling up the pond and levelling the ground I came across a large fleshy root stock that,in the mess, was crushed, scattered and buried. Now I have small peony shoots coming up everywhere in the radius of half a meter from the spot, among the new plants. It is unnerving, because they cannot stay there, but it is also avery nice surprise. I am sorry for having destroyed what must have been a very old clump, but I have dug up every single shoot, with its piece of the old root, and they are doing fine in pots. In autumn I will replant them in a new place.

Plants have a way of surprising you like this sometimes. The same thing happened to me years ago with some roots of Dicentra spectabilis. I had planted some cheap dry roots of it in a corner of the garden, and left the place alone for a year. Nothing ever showed up. I finally dug everything up and planted something else, and in a matter of weeks I had little dicentras growing all over the place.

I have a feeling that this succesful, if unortodox, way of propagating things works only because at the time I did not care about these plants. It is all part of the maddening perversity of life. Take my forsythia cutlings for example. I took them this spring when pruning, at what I would considered the wrong time of the year, and just stuck them in a corner of the kitchen garden. Every single one (of seven) rooted. If I had cared about them, and fussed, and carefully looked after them, they would have all dried, rotted or otherwise dwindled, but since I really don't like forsythias and just took cutlings in a sort of automatic reflex (propagate propagate propagate!!)they are doing fine. Well, I am building up stock for the great hedge I will plant on the west border. I also took cutlings of Sambucus nigra from the fields, and white flowered lilac. I took these cuttings, with science and care. Will they strike? Wanna bet?

The seeds of hollyhocks and of "Pam's Choice" foxgloves are already germinating. That makes it less than a week from sowing, busy little fellows.

Once one overcomes the shyness of growing things from seed (it does take some optimistic inclination, especially at the beginning) this becomes addictive. It's a serious warning.
One should have a greenhouse for this, not because a greenhouse is especially necessary for the seeds but because else your own house will inevitably become bestrewn with pots and pans of "empty" ground much to the chagrin of those members of the family that are NOT into gardening. Failing a green house you can only try to keep your seed pots neat and orderly, and point out that it is the cheapest way to grow rare plants. This simple (and true, if you can get the things to grow at all) statement works miracles on rueful husbands.

I think my first deliberate seed sowing must have been nasturtiums. They are so lovely and so easy that they cannot possibly disappoint, even the very beginner. They germinate, they grow, they bloom and they will happily take over the whole garden if they get a chance. It was a discovery, an illumination. Seeds work!

I still sow nasturtiums every year. They come in very nice colours, but not always true. Like love-in-a-mist, marigolds (Calendula) and californian poppies, nasturtiums can be sown directly outside and never fail to do their job. All other things I sow in pots and pans and transplant. Sparrows and snails are way to greedy, and weeds are too much concurrence for tiny plantlets. I love to transplant and pot on. If done with care you never need to lose a seedling.

The seeds of papaya, Tetrapanax papyrifera and Musa nagensium are the result of the "tropical virus" that I got from reading "Exotic plantings for adventurous gardeneners" by Christopher Lloyd. What a voluptous and cheerful source of inspiration! It woke - perhaps in conjuction with my moving into a freezing and windswept, wintry german garden - a burning lust for sun, bold colours and vast, waving, dew spattered tropical leaves.
I ordered the seeds from Chiltern Seeds. It is very curious that the tropics may come to us in an envelope from the damp and misty Cumbria (at least, I can't help imagining Cumbria as a damp and misty place, but I may be wrong). You can travel the world on very green imaginary roads leafing through Chiltern's catalogue. I am fascinated by this activity - the distribution of seeds. I harbour a sentimental, perhaps, but real affection for these precise and meticulous Britons, nimbly sorting millions and millions of frail suspended lives in minuscle paper bags, dispatching them with unthinkable (for an Italian) punctuality and celerity to the addresses of complete strangers, allowing the recipients to achieve their dreams of tropical jungles, tasty vegetables, pastel coloured borders, white lilies, green columbines, brown foxgloves, meadows and rockeries. "He who sows a garden sows happiness", states the old chinese proverb (there is always an old chinese proverb), and certainly Mr Chiltern (not to mention Mr Thompson and Morgan and Mr Sutton) must have handled a lot of labeled happiness over the decades (and also many disappointments... nothing is sure in gardening, except snails and naturtiums).

Sowing has two obvious main advantages: it allows a gardener to grow unusual plants without difficult and expensive trips to out of the way nurseries, and it, with some practice and organization, allows one to grow large numbers of plants with little expense, and you get real plants, not the dwarfish flower blobs sold in garden centers as bedding material.

Seeds must not necessarily arrive by airmail from the other side of the world. Collecting seeds by ones own garden is a source of great satisfaction, expectations and surprises. Columbines hybridize easily among themselves ("their morals leave something to be desired") and it is always a bit of a mystery what will come of their seeds. Alessandra Orsi of the lovely omonymous nursery told me the Aquilegia viridiflora fathers the loveliest, most sophisticated hybrids. The first generation of "after viridiflora" columbines of my garden is just sprouting up now... we shall see.

I am not against pink flowers as a principle. It is crude pinks that make me grimace. Soft pastel pinks complements well with the green of the garden (any colour scheme in the garden should take the predominance of green into account,I think... but most of the times this does not happen).
I could not resist the David Austin rose "William Morris"; of course I blame the name for this (names means a lot, after all), but I am a bit ashamend to admit the the colour pleases me very much. It lifts a white flower scheme during the the hours of high sun. I love white flowers but they do look flat at midday. Also, it is a warm pink with no blue in it, blue spoils so many pinks, and it complements well with the dark maroon-purples that I tend to favour as accent colours.
The defect of "William Morris" is that while the open bloom is all soft peach and cream, the bud appears definitely magenta. The world is not a perfect place.

The new garden is an improvement over the old one in size, shape and - from a certain point of view - even in climate. If one hears "Italy" one thinks of mediterranean shores shaded by the waving fronds of palms and mimosas, but that is wishful thinking, at best. We, in the north, got choking hot, droughty, and sultry summers, true, but also wickedly freezing winters: even the global warming did not make our winters mediterranean.
We still have freezing winters in the new garden, that we already ascertained, and howling north west storms all the way from the Atlantic ocean, but we can hope in somewhat more merciful summers.

The draw backs of the new garden are the tea roses left by the landlady and the haphazard approach to tree planting that all of her family must have inherited as a genetic trait from some ancient forefather related to triassic squirrels. There is no other explanation.

The tea roses are for the most part pink and magenta - light magenta, dark magenta, medium magenta. They make my teeth ache, but I cannot remove them. I will have to be stoic. I know I can. Or so I think.

In late april we finally got an internet connection, and I could order seeds of something choicer than the bedding annuals that seem to be only plants available in this region. I have now sown some tropical beauties (Musa nagensium and Tetrapanax papyrifera, and, more for chance than choice, Carica papaya) and several biennials that will grace the borders (hopefully) next year: foxgloves (parviflora, lanata, purpurea "Pam's Choice") , hollihocks (black), Rhodochiton atrosanguineum, and Campanula pyramidalis "Alba".

We also inherited peonies, wild roses, and a dicentra, also pink.

I have sown seeds of my own old columbines all over the place, white, indigo, mauve and cream, black, green and chocolate. The local columbines, stray seedlings that I tenderly saved from the lawn mower all over the garden are, predictably, pink. It is not their fault but I cannot help thinking of them as of ungrateful creatures. It is amazing that SOME flowers here are actually NOT pink: forsythias, daffodils and crown imperials and a vast number of snowdrops. The only reason I can find for this is that these flowers just don't come in pink.

In 4 months we made ourselves at home, the plants and me. This involved much digging, much sweat, hand blisters, and some fortitude (the hand blisters were mine, the fortitude mostly of the plants). We came from a comparatively mild Italian winter to a freezing German spring, several weeks of snow and icy winds. Still we all came through in one piece. Several hydrangeas lost the flower buds, but are recovering.

Some plants did astonishingly well after the move. Geranium machroryzzum and Bergenia "Silberlicht" doubled in size in a matter of two months or so. I think they like lifting and dividing a lot more than books and nurserymen let out. Others are sulking, but not dramatically. My magnolia x "Soulangeana" produced a single bloom of astonishing splendour that did however look quite ridicoulous all alone on the plant. Like it had gotten there by mistake. I lost my beautiful Hydrangea serrata "Shinonome" to the last bitter cold spell, but luckily I had cutlings, some of which survived.
The mexican Hydrangea seemannii also came through, surprisingly.

Most of the digging was made to make the kitchen garden. It was started late (end of march), and I only planted out my tomatoes yesterday, but it's there, which I did not think possible: I thought I wd have to leave it until next year.

Me and my plants moved in the new garden in early february. Many of them traveled with me in the Micra. I chucked out the back seats, and put all the dormant perennials in pots on the floor of the car. Then I laid flat boards on top, and loaded the smaller shrubs. So I had two layers of plants, and a large Hydrangea paniculata "Pinky Winky" on the passenger seat. I also had small alpine pans under the seats and box ball in front of the passenger seat. The bigger shrubs traveled in the truck. It was so crowded in there that the lighter packets were stuck between the branches of the larger plants. I could not possibly leave anyone behind! It was a bit scary to drive 1000 km with my car full to the ceiling of watching plants, they do not trust my driving (can't blame them there), but as a matter of fact we all arrived intact, even the cacti and agaves packed into the old file cabinet. We made it. Yeah!

"This is a fertile land... we will call it... This Land..."