The Ups and Downs of Gardening

Gardening is not always about the successes - in fact it is more often about the failures. But then that is life, isn’t it? It is from the failures that we grow in heart and spirit but it is also great to bask, from time to time, in the reflected glow of success, is it not?

And so, this evening, trapped inside all day by a bad head cold and bad weather, I finally stepped outside to ‘take the air’. It is never a good thing to spend all day indoors, and it was refreshing to breathe cool air, to fill the bird feeders for the first time in months and to tip my vegetable waste onto the compost heap. Ah, simple pleasures! I noted the piles of leaves which will need a rake at some point (good exercise) and how the garden has ‘gone over’ since before I went away in early October. There are just a few pink roses clinging on, a couple of cheerful dahlias, some deadly purple spikes of self-seeded monkshead lurking menacingly, a few rangy creamy-white heads of hydrangea, some jaunty yellow rudbeckia and some pinky-red Hawkshead fuchsia dangling as prettily as ever. But most of the rest is a done deal. No more dancing white anemones, lilac asters, spiky orange mombretia, sun-coloured heleniums, dark pink astrantias, white penstemons or other late-summer stalwarts. No, we have tipped into full autumn almost without me looking - but the clocks go back tonight signalling that, indeed, British Summer Time has now officially ended.

I wandered up to the vegetable garden to see what was going on there, though I knew I’d be disappointed. The apples, so abundant and perfectly formed last year, have returned to their normal selves - misshapen, sparse and scabby. How can this be? I am not well-versed enough in the nature of apples, despite my horticultural training. Perhaps I should have taken more notice during this aspect of the course? However, I have done nothing different this year to last - no extra feeding, pruning or cutting back grass from around the trunks. No, it is just the elements and their random arrangement these days of climate change, that are causing the problems I think. Too wet and windy at the wrong time, too dry at another time. These old trees, less tolerant with age, are as stressed by the wayward seasons, it seems, as we are. I gathered up the windfalls, all half-eaten by slugs or things with teeth (I saw the marks in the pale flesh!), planning to cut out the bad bits and use in my roast pork tonight, or a future chutney. The worst of them I will cut up and feed to my lovely Llama, Susan, who has a penchant for them it seems.

I then cast my eye around the rest of the sorry patch. I had worked so hard to produce an environment in these harsh hills where produce would thrive, protected by dry stone walls and raised in beds. But no. It is still too cold, too wet or too dry (my only water source is a spring which practically dries up in summer just when you need it and the patch is uphill, at the very top of the garden, far from a garden tap. And anyway, the water pressure here is not enough to get it up the hill. So, it is a question of watering cans - which is never very appealing, if I’m honest, and extremely time-consuming. For years I worked hard on improving the soil, adding fertiliser, lime, manure and all the other things you’re told to do. Yet it made little difference to the abundance and quality of my crops. The rain and winds and cold still came at the wrong time, the summer was never long enough - or too dry while I was away on holiday. Whatever time I left these shores, I would always be guaranteed to miss my only good crops - reducrrants, blackcurrants and raspberries. I think they’d just lie there, waiting, until they saw me pack my suitcases and then they’d suddenly all ripen overnight, leaving me no time to pick anything (or picking madly when I should have been driving to the airport and throwing things in the freezer while my family shouted at me!). 

My small successes beyond soft fruit remain runner beans (though I didn’t get round to planting any this year), potatoes in bags or buckets, broad beans, spring onions, garlic (very small) and, from time to time, peas. This year I can add chantenay carrots in tubs to the list - never successful before now - and the occasional courgette. I used to go to the trouble of planting by the moon phases, germinating in the potting shed with heat, adding all the right amounts of sand or vermiculite or all the other small procedures that go with growing from seed. I’ve also done the sow-direct methods if I think we are in a patch of good weather - and then the rains come again, the temperatures plummet and all is lost!

Yet all that said, I persevere. I will not give up, even in these challenging circumstances. Even if I collect just a handful of carrots, rocket, sage, blueberries, potatoes, beans or whatever has half succeeded in any given year, it is still satisfying to know that it has come straight from the soil in my own garden - no pesticides or other nasty chemicals and no carbon footprint. Even if I don’t manage more than a soup or one meal with my pickings, it is still satisfying and spurs me on ‘to do better next year’! What is life without hope? And what is life without a challenge? Gardening gives you all of this and more and, with that, I rest my case!

Meanwhile, I can also report that, inspired in part by Chelsea, but having intended for years to add much needed colour to my borders for late summer/early autumn, I have had fun at the garden centre since late September gathering together some reliable autumn plants. They are not yet all planted but they will be soon. I have also finally finished off a border which needed filling with a variety of scented and flowering evergreens around the front terrace - skimmias, hebes, viburnums and the like. So, some small successes to boast of amongst the failure!

Happy gardening everyone 💚

The garden this morning, on the penultimate day of October

The menacing Monkshead!

A late flush of roses

Pink and white hydrangeas

September’s selection from the garden centre!

A few last remnants of the late-planted colour

Still to go in!

The re-planted terrace border 

Bringing the outside in 🙂