Here we are, already in November, and that panicky feeling of time running out snakes around me. The last month has been an odd disjointed period, in this the oddest of years, with family illness, unexpected travel, school and university increasingly locked in rather than locked down, while around us swirl nationally and internationally bitter divisions over responses to the pandemic. Fieldfares are squabbling in the fields nearby, and pheasants skulk along the hedge line, counting down the days until the shooting season ends and they can strut unafraid. Due to travel again soon, I embark on a furious round of tidying and planting, not entirely certain when I will be back again, and in any case conscious that horticultural deadlines are passing with each day and each drop in the thermometer outside. The hour has gone back, that seasonal shift originally intended to assist farmers around the world, meaning lighter mornings but reduced working time in the afternoons. It is generally sunny, so the light clings on but by 5 or 5.30pm you know you risk putting a spade straight through something precious rather than underneath it, so I reluctantly retire indoors. Thoughts immediately turn to lighting the fires: the sun dropping behind the manor wall brings a chill to outside work, and the old Aga becomes once more a friend to be hugged rather than avoided.
The walnuts have now dropped most of their leaves, and lime and the oak are yellowing by the day. Each day now brings more notches on the annual almanac; first frosts rime the alchemilla leaves, and the number of bees active on the ivy and the salvias has dropped significantly. While you might expect most queens to be hibernating, buff-tailed bumblebees are now being reported year round in the U.K., even when there is snow on the ground, so as I watch three or four jostle for position on salvia ‘Amistad’ and search in vain for the now snugly overwintering dahlias, I make a mental note to include the fragrant viburnum x bodnantense and winter honeysuckle in the next round of planting to ensure year-round food supplies for these apian Vikings. Already dithering about what to do with plants which may not make it through a Herefordshire winter at 200m above sea level, but from which I cannot take cuttings because I won’t be here to cosset them, the bees settle my indecision and I opt to cut back and mulch half the salvias, leaving half to the buff-tails and any consequent frost damage. Glowing with eco-virtue, I select one plant which had not done as well as the others and start pruning, only to discover that the rabbits had also enjoyed the dense planting and had got about half a metre down into my pride and joy new bed. You would be hard pushed to suggest the rabbit population was in any way threatened around us, but as eco-virtue smudged into eco-irritation, I had to laugh - feisty bunnies to select a des res a few feet from our conservatory door, and no apparent damage to plants nearby other than root disturbance to that one (now understandably) drooping salvia.
Bees and rabbits tended to, I can focus on the real task in hand, planting alliums and bulbs for next spring. Bulbs are not an option in the Gulf: in my other gardening life, you do see imports of Dutch bulbs in the main Dubai garden centre, but 5000kms and extreme temperature variations have not done them any favours. So here I am, again in that horticultural candy store, weighing up where to place the goodies that Neil’s birthday gift vouchers have brought me.
In the past, I have perhaps done a few pots of tulips, and this year I ended up housing pre-lockdown ordered alliums in an old bed, but now I have 400 of the little oniony beauties to plant. 400! Extraordinary - I still have to get used to the quantities required to fill these huge spaces. Planting anything 6 months in advance of when it will flower, in a new bed is always a strange occupation, and with bulbs especially, as you have to picture that bed without any of the autumn glories you are currently enjoying and then navigate those existing plants while still creating a design which will work next May and June. This kind of aesthetic deliberation can consume hours, so with a rough image in my head, I just get to it, twisting space after space with the bulb-planter, weaving in and out of the existing plants in the hot beds, and trying to remember to put little sticks of dried loosestrife to mark the bulbs’ positions. Chances of the little marker sticks surviving the winter, let alone next summer, are thin, and spade damage to all these newbies this time next year therefore high, but the combination of my amateur status and the size of this place means I had to commit to be being less paranoid about accidental plant death.
Half a day sees 300 allium hollandicum “Purple Sensation” around the terrace, plus 50 allium christophii (smaller and later flowering than Purple Sensation, and more silvery) and 50 of the small white allium cowanii in ribbons around the potager and in the demi-lune beds. Next to go in to the damper and more sheltered potting shed bed are the stunning white camassias, and then the lily bulbs. I could chill these until Christmas and plant them up then, but galvanised by my impending departure, I opt to take the gamble of direct planting into the bed with some, so last year’s fabulous crimsons and oranges go in near the rosemary, while this year’s order of scarlets and pinks get a safer nursery option in an empty raised bed, and 20 huge white lilies (lilium regale Album) have to go into pots as their permanent homes will only be created in phase two of the landscaping next February.
Last of all, I drop in 60 tulips around the edges of the hot beds: I do love their pure satin petals, and those are a fabulous mix of type and colour, but tulips planted out in a bed rather than in a pot make you pay for their beauty by taking a long time to die back down after flowering. Skip this die-back stage, and you rob the flower of its essential food supply; tolerate this stage and you have a good few weeks of large yellowing leaves disintegrating over your cherished planting plan. There are gardeners infinitely more organised than me who plant up tulips into pots and then drop the pots into their flower beds, thereby ensuring an easy airlift out for all unsightly foliage next June. For now, as the sky darkens and the rooks squabble and bicker their way home for the night, I sit on the bench with a cup of tea, reflecting on a good day’s work. I have read many articles about planting spring bulbs; many describe quantities running into the thousands, whether potted or naturalised into grass, but for me, in our English garden, this is still exciting.
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