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.