The pandemic continues to exert its iron grip on international travel, so for the first time I am seeing a spring through here, from those early sprigs of green in February to the roulette of frost and thaw over the last month. At this time of year, everything is happening at once. However organised you feel, there comes a point in April when the hours in the day seem insufficient for the lengthening task list, and in my case, the task list is forever extending as I see plants come up and decide that they would look much better somewhere else, or discover another specimen that needs to be moved before the contractors move in next month. The terrace beds, completed late in 2020 because of lockdown, were planted specifically to look good in late summer, with all the fire and drama of the dahlias, heleniums, rudbeckias and so on. The shrubs and trees I planted there are still young, and now without the supporting summer height of verbena and grasses, the area looks very low-key. Times like this you either have to be patient or spend a lot of money; the former will see those shrubs and trees grow and fill out, the latter will leapfrog you forward maybe a couple of years, but even then you will have the concerns of getting a semi-mature tree established - more of a gamble than having a youngster developing a strong root system in situ. No garden is static: even the most formal evolve and change as planting matures and horticultural fashion evolves, but one year in to a project of this scale and I begin to understand how much you need to flex to the demands of soil and weather.
I am nursemaid for a fair portion of each day currently, with the conservatory co-opted as nursery. There are forty dahlia tubers potted up, starting to sprout and sensitive to frost; courgettes whose exuberance in the warmth belies their cold-sensitive Mediterranean constitution; and a traffic of seed trays. Even a fairly traditional selection of flowering plants can require different conditions in order to germinate from seed: watered only from below; lightly misted from above; covered with soil to a specific depth; barely covered; light excluded or full sunlight; constant temperature, or chilled then warmed.
This variety of process offers immense satisfaction when you spot that first uncurling hint of growth, but the concomitant emotional investment can be hard: putting your precious seedlings outside for the first time after a month or more of cosseting and returning to find them shredded by pigeons is annoying. There is a good selection of flowering annuals which can be sown directly into the ground, thereby avoiding all the faff of germination, potting on, playing spot-the-frost forecasts and so on, but around here direct sowing before May can leave you with sulking seeds in ground that is still too cold. Every morning last week the beds and lawns were crisped white; it did not hold for long, and daytime temperatures were up to 12-14 degrees, but it has been enough to put the brakes on the really rapid bursts of growth that we saw earlier in the year, with the fruit trees making very cautious progress.
Some young plants need support either to climb, or because they grow so tall/broad that high winds would topple them. Structures for climbers can be anything from a single spiral pole to steel ‘teepees’ to a bundle of bamboo canes lashed together. With a large number of sweet pea seedlings to plant out, and only two fixed obelisks next to the terrace, plus the issue of lacking height mentioned above, I decided to take the inventive, foraged route suggested by the brilliant @jennybarnes in Gardens Illustrated magazine, and make some wigwams. This turned out to be one of those things where once started, you kick yourself for never having attempted before. Allowing for the fact that you need access to young-ish hazel trees, and preferably ones that have been coppiced 5-10 years previously, you then select 4-6 straight poles, push them into the ground (or make holes first if your ground is hard/stony)and then bend them over to interlace with the opposing pole. The top half of the rods is sufficiently pliable to twist and bend without breaking, and their elasticity then braces against the opposite number. The little twiggy tips create perfect starter supports for small tendrils trying to get a grip. Excellent for climbing beans too, very simple to make and deeply satisfying - though yet to be tested with Herefordshire westerlies.
Yet to be tested either with the native wildlife, so for the two wigwams I made for the demi-lune beds, always subject to the most sustained rabbit damage, I did take the precaution of circling the base with holly shoots. I may owe the bunnies an apology - waking early this morning, I looked down the garden for the usual weather assessment, only to see a young roe deer scratching in the soil near the bonfire. Roe, along with red deer are Britain’s only native deer, fallow having been introduced by the Normans, and sika, muntjac and water deer all having set up camp here following escapes from captivity. We have not seen roe often around here, and although the signs of muntjac activity are plentiful in the wood, where they browse low down and tusk the trees to mark territory, they are elusive. Muntjac, more pertinently for me, are also too small to reach the young buds on apple and quince trees, so while it was a joy to watch the sizeable roe in the dawn light, the imprints I then found all over the outer beds did prompt a further holly garland which now, very unseasonally, bedecks my baby quince tree.
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