Hoping for the best, preparing for the worst...

Last year was the wettest year in the history of the universe. Or the world. Or since records began a few decades ago. Anyway, it was bloody wet, and cold, and windy.

I hate the wind. I hate it more than any other kind of weather. From the days when I used to report for ITV Central News, I have hated it. Any other weather is cope-able with - not always pleasant, but you muddle through. Travelling back from the Namib-desert like conditions at Silverstone racetrack in 100 degrees, with a sulky work experience student, in an car blessed with no air con -  hey, no sweat. Standing for hours in the rain at Kemble airfield while your shoes take on the all the absorbent qualities of blotting paper and your legs develop rising damp - hey, all in a day's work... Trying to pronounce the words of your carefully honed piece to camera in temperatures so low that your lips start feeling as though they have had several injections of pethedine - hey, all part of the service. But the wind - it messes with your head. Literally. And a messed up head is not what you want when you're about to go live from outside court on the lead story into the evening programme.

I have moved away from the rigours of live reporting,  but I still hate the wind. It's the meteorological equivalent of an annoying toddler (I know what they are like - I've had two), poking you for attention every few seconds. It scorches and dries and causes things to collapse including my new found springtime get up and go.

What's it actually for, anyway? Apart from Ben Ainslie, who needs wind? It's so...spiteful. And irritating. And boring, day after day, with its coterie of companions - usually in the form of clouds like bad tempered candy floss and hail stones the size of marbles.

Oh, to live in a country where the climate is reasonably predictable, calm and pleasant for at least 5 months of the year. But no, the doomsday scenario that this 'summer' could be *whispers* as bad as last  year's is starting to loom. The Met office people have been on the news, weakly assuring us that it's 'too early to write off summer yet. YET! It's almost enough to turn one into a Daily Express reader.

Last year my only consolation was that a. Glastonbury wasn't on and b. it was gloriously, miraculously, wonderful for the Olympics and Paralympics. Meanwhile the garden got on with itself, some things suffered, some things rotted, and whether or not it's the weather's fault or not, two of my three new apple trees have no blossom on them at all this year. Not a jot. So what to do? My hunch is that this is pretty much what English summers used to be like when I was a kid. Generally disappointing, with the odd fabulous two or three days which occasionally happened over a weekend, if you were really lucky. And then we got suckered into thinking things were better than that thanks to a run of hot summers in the nineties and noughties - with endless stories on the news about droughts, struggling farmers and soaring ice-cream sales.

So I have decided it's time to change my attitude. The weather is what it is, it's getting less predictable and more extreme, and we're all going to have to get used to it. So, my mission is to learn to love the wind, to embrace it, to take on the mantra that there is no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing. Anyone up for a spot of kite flying?

Old friends and a new discovery

I wanted to share some pictures with you today from Waterperry Gardens. 

I spent a summer working as a seasonal gardener at Waterperry having been a regular visitor for years, and going back there is always a treat. The plants feel like old friends and I now grow many of them at home.

The recent warm sunshine has turbo-charged the emerging perennials in the famous Herbaceous Border, and whilst still virtually all green, it’s growing and changing virtually by the hour. It’s only a matter of days before the flowers start to bloom in earnest: the Aconitum first, followed by geraniums, achillea, climbing roses and of course, the wonderful delphiniums, which will tower 6 or 7 feet high, dwarfing even the huge Crambe which explodes with a fountain of confetti like flowers in mid summer. 

Skirting the front of the border is one of my favourite plants: Alchemilla Mollis. It spreads like anything and is covered with foamy pale yellow flowers in mid summer, but it's the leaves I love: rosette shaped and grey-ish green, they collect raindrops like diamonds and, unlike many plants, are at their most beautiful during inclement weather.

Alchemilla Mollis

All this is to come. For now though, it's enough simply to admire the structure and form of the plants, the brilliance of the design, and Garden Manager Pat Havers' fabulous hazel staking which will form an essential and invisible backbone of support to the thousands of flowers.

The herbaceous border

The formal garden 

In the formal garden the box knot hedges are looking all first-day-of-term clipped and precise and the wisteria walk is pregnant with buds - once opened the perfume from the plants is heady and full of the promise of summer.

Wisteria in the formal garden - in a a few weeks time this will be draped with flowers

Tulipa 'Maureen

It's still early and tulips are enjoying their moment of glory, from the serene “Maureen” in the formal garden to the more flamboyant examples in the colour border. 

One of my favourite bits of the garden - the Virgin’s Walk - is alive with bluebells, omphalodes, comfrey, and unfurling ferns which are the greenest of green. Virgin's Walk proves that shade is no obstacle to being able to enjoy a variety of wonderful plants throughout the year with plenty of colour and structure.

Omphalodes Cherry Ingram

As I was walking back through the garden, I discovered a new thing: the wonderful Trillium chloropetalum, hiding its light under a bushel in the island beds. 

Trillium chloropetalum

I have Trillium grandiflora in my garden having fallen in love with it at a visit to Wisley, but this one beats even that - all silky white-and-purple-blushed petals, like a bowl of black-cherry and vanilla ice cream. Delicious.

What's looking lovely in your garden at the moment?









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All pictures are © Clare Holt

 

A kind of blue

This time of year is all about blossom and bluebells. 

Seed Planting Time!

I love seed planting time. I’m like a child in a sweet shop with too much choice and no ability to say no. I have probably spent hundreds of pounds over the years on seeds and I am ashamed to say many went unplanted and ended up in mouldering packets only to be guiltily consigned to the bin the following spring. I’m getting better though, and last year managed to not only plant the few seeds I decided to buy or collect, but some of them even flowered! I know, for seasoned gardeners among you this may seem trivial, but for me it was a big deal. 

Perhaps my favourite of last year’s home grown efforts was my Cerinthe (Honeywort). It's such an unusual plant, with grey green foliage and dark purple bunch-of-grape-like flowers which the bees adore, and which look fantastic in the front of a mixed or herbaceous border. They last for weeks too. 

Cerinthe (Honeywort)         © Clare Holt

I also managed to grow another wonderful and unsung plant which I discovered during a summer working part time at Waterperry Gardens near Thame - the Shoo-Fly plant, (Nicandra Physolades), which Waterperry had growing in their Rose Garden and never failed to prompt questions and exclamations of delight from visitors.

I think this plant has everything - great structure, graceful arching stems, with a succession of large morning-glory like flowers which emerge from dark purple green buds and go on to produce wonderful seedheads which look a bit like chinese gooseberries. 

I tried for two years in a row to get my collected Nicandra seeds to germinate, and last year they worked a treat. They can be grown as half hardy perennials or annuals and apparently self seed so I am keeping a close eye out to see if any pop up over the next few weeks.

Things have finally started to grow!

Things have finally started trying to grow!

Hacquetia

It's been such a long, cold winter - the third really cold one in a row. This year though, the temperatures have stayed low for much longer - unlike 2012, when things all started growing like mad in March and were then clobbered by the cold and lack of sunshine for the rest of the summer.

Anemone Blanda

That said, there really is no such thing as a 'normal' year, and maybe this is just more typical British weather than what we've been used to of late. Thankfully the last couple of weeks has seen temperatures rising a bit, and even the odd few hours of sunshine! 





In my garden things are finally starting to come up, thank goodness. I have a lot of herbaceous stuff which disappears underground in the summer so it's been looking, well, brown and muddy for months now! But every day I can see more tantalising glimpses of things bravely poking their heads up: species geraniums, achillea, alchemilla mollis, rudbeckia Goldsturm and lysimachia punctata, with its tiny cabbage-like shoots sprouting like a mini allotment patch.

Lysimachia punctata

A lot of these were planted as small '3 for a tenner' plants last spring so it's exciting to see how they will do in their second year. 




Perhaps my favourite is a fabulous catmint: Nepeta nervosa 'Blue Moon' - a great favourite with the bees, and the most intense deep blue flowers. Having failed several times to get lavender to thrive in my chilly garden I think I may give up and plant Blue Moon in its place this year.

Nepeta Nervosa Blue Moon, and happy bee.                                       Copyright Clare Holt

In the new white border (it's probably a bit grandiose to give it that title, but that's what it's going to be!) the tulips I planted last autumn have all come up - - the ones that I didn’t manage to get in, beaten back by the dark and cold of pre Christmas, I have put in the other side in the ‘new’ bed. As I write (mid April) the late-planted tulips are starting to venture out of the earth perhaps encouraged by the slight warming up of the last couple of weeks. I have no idea if they will flower or not - but I take the attitude, perhaps naiively, that plants want to do what they do and given half a chance they'll pretty much get on with it. 

Although the white border is still a thing that exists in my imagination as much as anything else, I have taken advantage of the kindness of my wonderful gardening friend Sue and planted some passed on snowdrops among the anemones, cyclamen and erythronium. Now it's just a case of waiting another year to see how it all looks. Patience, as ever with gardening, is not just a virtue, but a necessity!