Potting Up...

Smiling crocus, scouting bees, and how to rustle up rustic willow obelisks

2012-02-27T15:16:00.004-08:00

Last week gave us an early taste of spring: on Thursday larks sang all day over the fields surrounding the pottery and one of the local buzzards could be heard gliding overhead, shouting "Wheeee!"

Crocus tommasinianus var. roseus

Crocus 'Whitewell Purple' and bee
in an Olive Pot

Woggle Dance

Crocuses have been jumping up and stretching their arms out wide in the sun to welcome grateful emergent bees. There is a row of hives in a field above Whichford, I suspect their bee scout brigade (motto "Bee Prepared") has identified us as a good source of pollen and nectar. They have been visiting us since January in mild spells and last summer the place was knee-deep in them, plus assorted bumblebees.

Crocus sieberi subsp. sublimis 'Tricolor'
plus bee

Nowadays, when I wheel a barrowful to the bonfire or the compost heap I am greeted by inquisitive lambs, who tiptoe towards me and then boing away. What could be more springy than that?

Lambs at Whichford Pottery

Lathyrus 'Goldmine' emerging last week

Sowing for summits

Of course the biggest treat for gardeners at this time of year is the orgy of seed sowing. I like to sow plenty of climbers, and tend to do most of these relatively early so that they are well-developed before planting out. In addition to the obligatory sweet peas I have Asarina 'Blue Yonder' emerging, Cobaea scandens should be next, and there will be more after that.

Luckily I have recently finished giving the willow arbour its yearly haircut and I now have three good heaps of willow prunings of various calibres.

The freshly pruned willow arbour at Whichford Pottery

Obelisks and Asterisks

It makes sense, then, to cobble together a few obelisks for all these climbers while the withies are still relatively bendy. This is a vigorous willow more suited to large structures than to small-scale weaving, so my creations are never neat and tidy but they look pleasantly rustic, they serve a purpose, and they are free!

Here is a step-by-step guide to willow obelisks, Harriet-style:

1*To fit a pot approx 18 to 22" in diameter, select six sturdy uprights. I have used a pot within a pot to hold them steady, but you could just insert them into a pot that is full of compost.

Insert them, as evenly spaced as possible, and tie them together at the desired height (mine will have a finished height of about 6 feet/2m).

2* Take two smaller withies and, with one either side of the base of one of the uprights, hold them near the fatter end and twist them around each other a couple of times. You will find that once twisted together it is easy to make them grip the base of the next upright. I'm sorry this is hard to describe without diagrams or videos, but you'll just have to experiment!

*@! There may be some swearing at this point.

3* Working from the fat end towards the thin end, twist the pair of withies together and work upwards in a gentle spiral, twisting them around two or three times between each pair of uprights and incorporating the uprights as you go.

You may need to push and pull a bit to make them curve (depending how flexible your willow supply is) and you may need to pull uprights back or forth to keep them relatively evenly spaced.

4* If a withy snaps half way, you can just start another pair of withies immediately above it and wind the ends of the first pair around the second pair.

The same goes for when you are getting towards the thinnest end of the first pair, just start another pair right on top of it and wind the thin ends of the lower pair around the upper pair. From a distance you'll hardly see the join because later on you will trim off any untidy bits that stick out.

5* Every time you select a new pair of withies try to get a pair that matches in thickness and length otherwise you will get a twist that looks like this:

...This is much stronger and looks neater:

6* Stand back every now and then to check that the spiral is progressing smoothly. On an obelisk this size I try to keep the layers about 4-6" (10-15cm) apart. Making them closer together is not necessary for strength and will cut out a lot of light to the young plants.

Select thinner, more pliant withies as you reach the narrow top, you may find at this point that it is not possible to incorporate every upright. This is fine, because by now the structure is strong and rigid.

7* Now trim the whippy ends off the top of the obelisk

I usually wrap a small withy vertically around the join at the top, it helps to keep the uprights spaced. You can add several and make a wicker ball at the top.

8* Tuck in any thin ends that are loose and trim off any ends that stick out of the obelisk. Don't cut them too close to the obelisk in case they come loose as the structure dries and shrinks slightly.

9* Admire your handiwork then extract the obelisk from the pot (if you are using the 'empty pot method') and trim the bases of the uprights at an angle so that they are all the same length and nice and sharp for easy insertion in compost.

Right, now go and sow some more seeds!

On the move again - some succulent signs of spring

2012-02-17T11:04:00.000-08:00

I can see spring peeping over the horizon.

Pansy 'Aquarelle' and the shoots of Crocus 'Blue Pearl' peep out of a
straight-sided Basket Pot at Whichford Pottery

Iris 'Harmony'

On Monday the compost in the pots was still frozen solid and I began to worry about plants drying out as there was a brisk breeze, but by Tuesday it had almost completely defrosted and the plants quickly began to perk up.

Iris 'Harmony' has been living in a Highgrove pot at the foot of a cloud-pruned Osmanthus delavayi for a few years now and is usually one of the first to show its face.

Iris 'J.S.Dijt' has also been unfurling this week, combining rich purple with a cheeky flash of orange on its falls.

Iris 'JS Dijt' unfurling

Tulipa 'Princesse Charmante' breaching.

Whale watching

The first tulip shoots are beginning to appear. They always remind me of lunge-feeding humpback whales. You'll see what I mean if you click here. The tulip emerging in the picture on the right is 'Princesse Charmante', which is a greigii tulip, these are early flowerers and have beautiful bluish leaves with maroon markings.

Even though it was still pretty cold on Valentine's Day we were all warmed at lunchtime by Kazuya's cooking. Kazuya is from Bizen in Japan, which is famous for its distinctive ceramics, and he is at Whichford for a while as part of a visit to study British ceramics. He is already a skilled potter, but very keen to learn more about his craft - and his english is improving rapidly, especially as Chris, who usually works in the same room has been trying to teach him plenty of rude words!

Gohan! Kazu cooks rice in the staff room

Feel the love

We all admire his beautifully prepared lunches of noodles or rice with meat and vegetables every day - so much more exciting than a cheese sandwich and a packet of crisps, and much more healthy. So we were delighted when he bravely offered to cook for us all. Everybody piled into the staff room and made short work of the delicious stew and curry he produced. Thank you Kazu!

The Chippy Yarnbomber spreads the love

While on the subject of Valentine's I just have to throw in this picture of the latest offering by the Yarnbombers in nearby Chipping Norton, they have decorated practically every signpost and tree in the centre of town with their crocheted craziness and I love them for it.

Succulent love

Back to gardening: the milder, brighter weather is making a difference in the greenhouse too. Lots of my succulents are beginning to yawn, stretch, and reach for the glass of water on their bedside table. During the winter I keep them almost completely dry until I can see either that they are shrivelling badly or that they are trying to grow. I have now watered the entire collection - this takes a long time as it involves taking each pot and standing it in a few inches of water for up to an hour. This way the fine roots can take up water without the risk of water splash causing rots in these xerophytes.

The aeoniums are usually among the first to show signs of distress. Here are three of mine looking happier after a drink:

Aeonium arboreum 'Zwartkop'

Aeonium arboreum 'Zwartkop' doesn't look as black as during the summer, the lower light levels of winter in a dirty greenhouse make it go a bit green about the gills but it'll soon recover.

Aeonium tabuliforme (below) is one of my favourites but I have failed to propagate it so far. This rosette is currently about 40cm in diameter and likely to get bigger. If it flowers it'll die so I really need to try harder with the leaf cuttings.

Aeonium tabuliforme

Aeonium decorum 'Sunburst' is always a cheery sight and much admired by our customers when it has its summer holidays in the courtyard garden.

Aeonium decorum 'Sunburst'

Echeveria decora

My many and various Echeveria have also perked up after their first proper drink of the year and many of them are starting to flower. Echeveria decora and Echeveria agavoides both have plenty of colour in their foliage but the delicately unfurling spikes of flowers are an extra late-winter treat for me in the greenhouse.

Echeveria agavoides

Seeds of summer

Right, I must stop gawping at the flowers and get on with the seed sowing. This week I have been sowing lots of sweet peas from Pennards, I'm looking forward to 'Leominster Boy', 'Painted Lady', 'America', 'Cupani', and, in this patriotic year, 'William and Catherine'.

From now on I'll be keeping my propagator full and loving the stealthy arrival of spring!

Unsung heroes - I abandon the garden to visit our clay room

2012-02-10T12:59:00.000-08:00

Shrammed! This is the word my mother uses to describe how you feel in this weather. Not unreasonably I have taken refuge in the greenhouse most of this week as the temperature has failed to exceed 0C. It is now looking unusually tidy: all the plants have been picked over, turned, pinched out where necessary, and watered if they really need it, the propagating bench has been cleaned out and the floor is well swept.

Pelargonium sidoides 'Sloe Gin Fizz' in the greenhouse at Whichford Pottery

Wait for it

Aeonium arboreum 'Zwartkop' flowering
in the greenhouse this week

There is some colour in the greenhouse; stray flowers and the steady arrival of packets of seed have kept me happy but I have delayed sowing until the weather is less extreme, so that I can ensure comfy growing conditions for the seedlings.

Everything outdoors is frozen solid, so I have resisted the urge to pick shrivelled heads off pansies as the more you fiddle with frozen plants the more damage they are likely to sustain. For the same reason I have postponed the willow pruning.

Lines of desire in the courtyard garden

Lines of Desire

A thin layer of snow can be useful for reviewing the layout of a garden as lines of desire created by various users are clearly visible. In this case (see left) Puss-Puss and the blackbirds obviously have different priorities. Musing on this was not enough to keep me occupied, however, so I went to pay a visit to Richard and Brian in the clay room.

These two are the unsung heroes of the pottery: it is their job to ensure that the makers are provided with an unbroken supply (about five tons a week) of high quality clay, it's a mucky job with no creature comforts and if the consistency of the clay isn't to all the throwers' liking they soon hear about it!

The bat cave

Brian. Extra hairy version.

The clay room is almost as cold as the garden at this time of year, and the constant dark and damp can make it like Gollum's cave (in fact bats occasionally roost there). It's a tough place to work, and noisy too, full of large, ancient machinery, everything covered with clay. No wonder Brian has developed extravagant winter plumage in an effort to keep warm.

Brian and Richard manage to stay remarkably cheerful, they are often to be heard bickering like an old married couple but they work well together. They are always happy to come and help move pots or solve a practical problem elsewhere in the pottery - I suspect they like the change of scenery.

Clay story
The clay that we use at Whichford has been developed carefully over the years. Three different british clays, each a different colour, are blended so that we are left with a clay that is tough, malleable and, after firing, frostproof. I can plant pots and leave them outside with no extra protection for winter after winter; even after years of use and abuse lamination in the frost is extremely rare, so we can with confidence offer a 10 year guarantee against frost damage.

The frozen clay piles

The clay is stored outdoors as natural weathering is an important part of the process. Brian then uses the growly Bobcat to scoop up the required proportions of the clay.

Brian in the Bobcat

This raw clay and lots of water is put in the blunger, a thing a bit like a giant food processor. Here the clay is mixed thoroughly into a creamy slip. It's at this point that the stones, fossils and so-on settle out and are left behind.

Raw clays mixing with water in the blunger

The slip is then pumped through a pipe across the ceiling of the clay room to a sieving machine, where the last impurities are removed. The liquid clay then pours into a large, lidded vat, known as the 'ark'.

Richard with the 'ark'

Once enough slip has been sieved the liquid is then pumped into the filter press, which takes a few hours to squeeze out excess water. For flowerpot throwing a moisture content of about 25% is required, so a sample is taken from the vat and weighed so that the amount of water to be removed can be calculated. A float switch stops the press when enough water has poured out into a tank.

The filter press

The heavy slabs of clay (two tons per press) are released and dropped onto a trolley, then moved to the first pugmill. This contraption is a bit like a giant corkscrew inside a cannon. The clay is fed in, mixed with grog; the pugmill chops and mixes it. Grog is fired clay ground into a fine grit, it's an important ingredient which helps to keep the body of the finished clay open, enabling large pots to dry evenly, more quickly and with minimal shrinkage, and to resist thermal shock in the firing process. The grog content is another element which contributes towards the frostproof nature of our pots, as the correct porosity is vital.

Lively discussion as Richard and Brian load clay and grog into the pugmill

Chunks of this clay, dusted with grog to stop them from sticking together are stacked on pallets, wrapped in plastic and then left to rest for a few weeks. This is a bit like leaving your pastry to rest, the result is more plastic and less short, so that it can be thrown without tearing and splitting. These chunks of clay are then pugged again before being loaded onto small trolleys to go to the makers.

Richard's beloved dog Willow comfy on a pallet of maturing clay
You can see the second pugmill on the left

The throwers then take the big chunks of clay and cut them into pieces, weighing the pieces carefully as a set amount of clay is required for each style of pot.

Simon weighs out his clay balls for the next batch of pots

The clay is slapped about a bit to remove air bubbles but not too much 'knocking up' is needed as the second pugging takes most of the air out. Air bubbles would cause the pot to crack in the kiln. The clay is then centred and throwing begins...

Simon starts throwing

Come in!

Everyone enjoys seeing the making at the pottery, but if you visit us do please go and see Richard and Brian in the clay room as well, don't be intimidated by the loud rumblings and chuggings of the machinery! They enjoy having visitors and explaining the processes - and it is genuinely one of the most interesting and overlooked parts of the pottery.

The pots are frostproof but not all my plants are...

2012-02-03T11:27:00.000-08:00

Pots by the entrance arch at Whichford Pottery this week

The weather this week has been crisp and beautiful, which is ideal for showing off the warm colour, decorative detail and frostproofness of our pots.
Not so ideal, however for gardeners, especially those who, like me, have a weakness for tender plants. The fact that my greenhouse heater seems to be on its last legs is making me jittery and I dread to think what's going on in the polytunnel.

Icy grip
As each clear night sends the temperature plummeting still further I arrive in the mornings to see compost clenched ever more tightly around the emerging bulb shoots. With a bit of luck they'll shrug off this tight embrace and emerge unharmed.

Iris Halkis has carried on regardless. I love the detail on the backs of the falls (outer/lower petals).

Iris 'Halkis'

Incompetent stalking
Most of the plant life shrinks and flattens in the cold, which makes it easy to spot birds. I tried to sneak up on a green woodpecker but my footsteps crunched in the frost and it was gone in a trice. Even the long-tailed tits weren't very co-operative. They turned their backs on me and flew off, muttering to each other as they went.

Long-tailed tit at Whichford Pottery

Lonicera fragrantissima with pollen-spattered
bumble bee this week

The Lonicera fragrantissima on the sunnier side of the courtyard garden was attracting early bumble bees on Monday but by Thursday the garden was stony quiet, even the voices of our hardy customers were muffled by woolly scarves.

A pattern of growth
Frost ferns grew on the inside of the polytunnel...

Frost patterns in the polytunnel

...reminding me of the frost on this little conifer in one of the pots in the stockyard:

Frosted conifer in the stockyard

I'm terrible at identifying conifers - I suppose it's a prostrate Chamaecyparis of some sort but I'd be glad if someone could identify it for me, it has been re-used so many times it has long since been separated from its label.

Many of the evergreens I use in the pots actually look better in the frost, a smattering of ice crystals seems to highlight colour such as the reds and yellows in this Leucothoe fontanesiana, and of course in pots the plants are raised up so such details are all the more noticeable. That's if you can bear to stand still long enough to study them.

Leucothoe fontanesiana with a light dusting of frost

Know when you're beaten

Puss-Puss waiting for me to finish pruning
the willow arbour

It's best to keep moving in weather like this and on Monday and Tuesday I spent some time pruning the willow arbour (helped by Puss-Puss as usual) but even with six layers of clothing this was only really possible while the sun reached it. I'll finish it next week.

I retreated to the staff tea-room and finished my seed orders; I have ordered a combination of old favourites and new varieties and am determined to plant more edible plants this year. With limited space available they will all have to earn their keep ornamentally.

Edible pots
Our friends at Pennard Plants have a great range of unusual and heirloom veg, so I have ordered plenty from them. We sell some of their seeds in the Octagon at the pottery and I love the quirky packaging.

Seeds for Whichford from Pennards

Mrs Peabody, a black Maran who gave her name to
the salad mix 'Mrs Peabody's Piece of Provence'
Photo courtesy of Chris Smith at Pennard

Pennard have put together a collection of sweet pea seeds and a collection of cut and come again salads for us at Whichford, these are already available from the Octagon and I shall be sowing some next week. The packets are full of interesting factoids and some varieties are even endorsed by Chris and Mike's hens!

Kale and farewell
Ordering the seeds allows me to dream of summer. I was doing this and tidying the greenhouse when I came across a bag of Allium sphaerocephalon that I had missed, as I potted them up (worth a try) I remembered a particularly satisfying combination of these with Kale 'Nero di Toscana' in large pots in the stockyard from 2010.
Blurring the boundaries between more edibles and ornamentals this year is going to be fun!

Allium sphaerocephalon and Kale 'Nero di Toscana' in the Whichford stockyard, summer 2010

A Golden Crocus and a Golden Cypress

2012-01-27T06:37:00.000-08:00

This week I have been working at home a lot, trying to catch up with paperwork: a backlog of orders for seeds and summer bulbs, this blog, and plant lists and picture collections for talks. Boring, but it has to be done.
I am, however, very excited to have been asked to speak at The International Specialist Nursery Days at Bingerden in the Netherlands this June - it's an event I have wanted to attend for years, and now I have my chance! I really hope that I will meet some of my readers from continental Europe there.
There are plenty of other events before that, so in order to avoid panic I have remained chained to my laptop for most of the week, while there is nothing requiring urgent attention in the garden.

Snowdrops, Vinca minor, Sarcococca confusa and Helleborus niger,
a semi-permanent planting in a Geranium Pot

Helleborus niger and snowdrops
in a Marigold Pot

Old friends
I was at Whichford on Monday, however, and happy to see that the snowdrops (ordinary Galanthus nivalis) and Helleborus niger in the pots I planted a year ago are doing well. You can see that I have pulled out the weeds and top-dressed the pots with some fresh compost and a little slow-release fertiliser.

Crikey! I have just looked at the post I wrote about planting these pots and it is dated 14th February. Let's hope these early flowerers know what they are doing.

Rinkeni rakli
Last week saw our first iris open, and this year's earliest crocus flower is 'Gypsy Girl', just beginning to open this week. She is a gorgeous, golden yellow with strong, clear, rich reddish-brown stripes on the outside of her petals.

Crocus 'Gypsy Girl', first crocus to flower
at Whichford Pottery this year

So it would seem that spring is ready to pounce on us innocent gardeners and roll us about like a big invisible Tigger landing on Winnie the Pooh. Brace yourselves.

Keeping my promise
I did say a couple of weeks ago that I would show you more about Jim's Golden Cypress. He likes to tackle improbable projects and this one caused a real stir. The first Golden Cypress was made for an Impressionist-themed show garden in Japan, and is part of a series of sculptures.

The Golden Cypress at home at Whichford Pottery

Here's Jim talking about the inspiration for this work: "When I was four I suffered from a serious illness and for two months lay in a bed looking at van Gogh's painting of Wheat field with Cypresses, with all their writhing energies. When I was finally well enough to go outside to play I made a house for myself inside a venerable golden cypress tree. It remained my hideout all my childhood."

Aliens expected for tea?
Before we had heard this explanation all we saw at the pottery was Jim obsessively making flame-shaped sketches and clay maquettes, rather like an eccentric English version of Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

Jim Keeling dwarfed by his own sculpture

We are used to odd behaviour at the pottery, but when he started work on a version 3.15 metres tall some of us thought he really had cracked this time. Bear in mind that the picture on the left was taken UPSTAIRS in the pottery. The kilns are downstairs.

Riv and Joe loading one of the kilns,
note the tight fit!

Well he just cut it into pieces, of course he did. It takes a special kind of confidence to spend days and days sculpting something huge and complex, only to saw it into segments and shove it in an oven.

Gold-standard teamwork

After emerging from the kiln the pieces were all then sprayed with a yellow ground by Chris and hand-gilded with 23.5 carat extra-thick gold leaf by Hilary and Lynda. You can imagine what an enormous surface area an object like this has!

All hands were then required to move the heavy pieces outside on a trolley and through the courtyard garden to the packing area. Placing the bottom segment on the sculpture's metal base was only possible with Dave's fork-lift skills and John and Brian's combination of teamwork, lateral thinking and brute strength.

Tricky business. From left to right, Dave, John, Brian and Jim.

Diving in. We were tempted to leave him there.

Jim is very lucky to have a team with so many practical and flexible skills between them. We tend to co-operate with him partly because we know he's quite clever really, but mainly because it can be funny...

On tenterhooks
More teamwork had the pieces fitted together. I watched with my heart in my mouth and my camera in my hand, ready to record the disastrous breakage - which never occurred. Once again he had pulled off a ridiculously improbable feat.

Go west, young man. Chris, Joe, Brian and Riv
help Jim to assemble the sculpture

After successful assembly, Jim sealed gaps and Hilary and Lynda carefully patched up any gilding which had been dislodged by all the manhandling.

Hilary and Lynda add the finishing touches

The first cypress to be made was sent to Japan, the second was sent up to Chelsea on a trailer to burn brightly on the Hillier stand (see my post about Chelsea 2011). Heaven knows what the motorists on the M40 made of it!

Cypress off to Chelsea

The Chelsea one has returned to Warwickshire and can still be seen at the pottery, it really is a fascinating focal point, looking different every day as the light changes.

Ta-dah! Jim with the Golden Cypress
on the Hillier stand, Chelsea Flower Show 2011

Preoccupations with ice and water

2012-01-17T09:13:00.000-08:00

The days are getting longer, bulb shoots are popping up all over the place, but still I have been feeling uneasy.

Crocus 'Blue Pearl' emerging

Shadows on a Pearl Pot last week

What's wrong?
The sun has been shining, warming my back and casting crisp shadows on the pots but still I have cold shivers down my spine.

Spring has been galloping towards us, trailing flowers and green shoots, tempting honey bees to emerge and causing the birds to jostle for position and fly purposefully about with bits of twig in their beaks. The dunnocks have been chiming loudly and irritatingly in the hedge and the robin has been yelling above the noise of delivery vans going back and forth to the packing shed.

In spite of this something just was not right. Something was missing.

Our latest and loudest robin

Crunchy cure
Frost! Until last Thursday night we had not had a single hard frost, but then the skies cleared and cold air drifted over from Siberia. By Monday everything was frozen solid, the roads were slippery, there were chilblains on my toes, the end of my nose was as damp as a healthy dog's and I was wearing so many clothes it was hard to move at all. But I felt better.

Whichford looking cold but beautiful in the frost

My drive to work is always more picturesque than the average commute, but a sunny, frosty morning with a hint of mist is guaranteed to make me stop the car to take pictures. The photograph above shows the view as I come down into Whichford. You can see the distinctive pointed roof of the Octagon just below the two flying birds in the centre of the background.

Welcome to Whichford! Frost puts Puss-Puss in a good mood.

The cold seemed to make Puss-Puss extra friendly; it was impossible to focus my camera on him because he would not stop trotting towards me until he had had a really good stroking session.

Clean cold
Winter isn't winter without a bit of frost; I think that as a gardener I feel soothed by it because the frost makes everything seem cleaner. In a way this is true, I have much less trouble from aphids and from fungal leaf spot on pansies if there have been a few good, hard frosts.

Monday morning: foliage and flowers slumped in despair

Pump up the volume
Hard frost makes plants seem to collapse, but on such a gorgeous, crisp day you can watch them pump up again as the sun gets round to them. As long as the frost isn't too sudden many hardy plants can survive it by pumping water out of their cells and into the spaces between the cells. Thus the cells are less turgid (leading to wilting of soft stems and leaves), their contents now have a higher concentration of sugars and solutes and are less susceptible to freezing and rupturing. When the temperatures rise again the water can re-enter the cells by osmosis.
I hope that is a satisfactory explanation - I am open to correction/clarification by people who really know their scientific onions... With all that delicate cellular hydraulic action it makes sense to keep your hands off the plants when temperatures are plunging.

Monday afternoon: all is perkiness again as the temperature rises a few degrees

Forget puritanical plainness!
I also love the way the frost shows off the decorative detail of the pots. For my own garden I always used to select quite plain pots, partly because if I'm honest I have the remnants of an instinctive mistrust of ornamentation (I think this is a rather English trait), and partly because plain pots are cheaper. Nowadays, however, I know that even a little ornament can be hugely valuable, especially in the dead of winter; I particularly like these vine pots, and the basket pots are a classic which combines well with anything.

Frosty Vine Pots and Basket Pots in the stockyard at Whichford Pottery

Even without plant-based visual entertainment the sparkle added by frost to the detail of an empty Sassanian Jar makes a proper bit of winter worth while.

Frost sparkles on the shoulder of a Whichford Sassanian Jar

Iris 'Halkis'

Stop Press! You may need to water your bulbs. For us this has been a very dry winter, and I have already had to water some of the pots a couple of times, especially during windy weather and if the pots are close to buildings. If you have planted bulbs, particularly narcissi and tulips, in your pots please make sure that, when they are not frozen, you check to see that they are not too dry. Our bulb expert from Holland, René, reminded me recently to remind everyone to water their bulbs. I have done this on Twitter and I'm saying it again here because lack of water in Jan/Feb can cause your bulbs to abort their flowers.
So when the compost has defrosted please stick a finger right into your pots and if it doesn't feel nice and damp then get your watering can out. If your pots are from Whichford the drainage will be good and you don't need to be afraid of giving the plants too much water.

I must admit that I am aching for flowers, and I was delighted to see a lone Iris 'Halkis', a brave little pioneer which opened over the weekend - there is so much more to come!

May I introduce you to Our Great Leader?

2012-01-09T03:10:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! Here we all are with our noses pressed firmly against the grindstone once more.

Jim trying to decipher my handwriting

The Big Cheese
I have decided to do an occasional series introducing you to some of the people and processes at Whichford Pottery and it seems logical to start with Jim Keeling - the man with whom the buck stops. He is the founder of and, after 35 years, still the main creative force behind Whichford Pottery. This is not a comprehensive, balanced view, it is Jim as I see him!

I took the photo on the right when we were working on the planting plan for a show garden. He likes to say that he taught me everything I know about gardening - but I don't rise to that one any more, I know that he still needs me to remember the plant names, their colours and where they like to live. Best of all he just lets me get on with the gardening and doesn't interfere. Well, not much anyway.

We argue about colours, pruning, compost making... This is a part of his 'management' style - friendly argument amidst creative chaos. It usually works.
His employees find him both infuriating and entertaining and we treat him with a healthy disrespect which he seems to tolerate, even to encourage.

The Keelings' garden at Whichford

Jim and his wife Dominique have a beautiful, rambling, family garden at their house next door to the pottery. It is open once a year under the NGS scheme and occasionally for special Whichford Pottery events.

Jim enjoys gardening, he is fast and messy and has enormous flair. When I came to work for the pottery he taught me how to plant flowerbeds randomly and encouraged me to plant pots extravagantly, once telling me what I had done was "prissy". That still rankles, to be honest.

Big is Beautiful
Most of all, of course, Jim is a potter. He has written elsewhere about his early inspiration and training so I'll just tell you a little about what he does at the moment.
Over the last few years he has refined his methods of making truly enormous flowerpots, more details of which you can find here: http://www.whichfordbespoke.com/super-large/
I am talking pots you can fit a whole family in (or, if you are being sensible, a large tree).

Huge Karatsu Pot
There are other names for it.

In the photo below he is preparing the clay for throwing one piece of a three-piece pot .

Massive pots are thrown on the wheel like the other pots but in sections which are joined together, one on top of the other. This requires a lot of strength and extremely accurate throwing skills. Then the pot has to dry (without cracking) before being moved downstairs and fired in the kiln (without cracking). I still find it completely astonishing that the Whichford team can now produce these consistently well.

Jim dabbling in slips and glazes in his studio

Jim still enjoys making smaller things; he and Dominique are well known for their sgraffito ware, which Jim throws and Dominique decorates. Jim also likes to experiment with wood-fired kilns (leave him unsupervised for five minutes and he'll build another one) and different techniques and styles, many inspired by visits to Japan.

Big in Japan
Ah yes, Japan. We sell many flowerpots in Japan and have wonderful, faithful customers there. This gives Jim the opportunity to go there regularly, which he loves. I have been twice and I love it too, but Jim really throws himself into it. He enjoys the culture, the great ceramic traditions and the love of craftsmanship.

Admiring a collection of tea bowls in a private house in Kyoto

Oishii desu ne!

He also takes full advantage of the hospitality. I thought I was doing pretty well, eating (and enjoying) unfamiliar japanese foods but my revered boss munched his way through everything and anything, jet lag or no jet lag. He even seemed to love the mamushi sake he was served in one bar, which had a snake in the bottom of the bottle. I had a sip - tasted vaguely fishy, not a taste I enjoy in an alcoholic beverage.

It wasn't designed for ladies anyway, the bar owner explained: it is supposed to increase virility.

Mr Big
Back in Britain, sculpture is another string to Our Great Leader's bow. He recently made an enormous statue of Humphry Repton for Alan Titchmarsh and has created quite a few other figures, some of whom lurk at the pottery and on murky evenings make me jump. Again, see http://www.whichfordbespoke.com/figurative-sculpture/

Is the resemblance between Jim and Humphry Repton coincidental?

The Big Idea
Jim also makes more abstract sculpture, some of which I don't understand, some I find absolutely stunning. I'll save the Golden Cypress Tree for another post because I have so many good pictures of the creation process, too many to squeeze in here. Let me just say that it was yet another occasion when we all scoffed and said,"It'll never work" and of course he managed it. Here's a scaled-down version of it in Jim's garden:

If you are looking for him at this time of year just follow the sound of choral music to his studio, which is tucked behind the kilns. This room, littered with sketches, postcards, shards of Roman pottery, Japanese sake cups and home-made tools all covered with a fine layer of clay dust, is where he's working on the latest range of pot designs. Here's a little video to give you a small glimpse, my apologies for the lousy camerawork, it was my first go with the pottery's camera!

Snow, Angels and Stocking Fillers

2011-12-20T10:47:00.000-08:00

Vile sploshy sleety chilly weather.

I retreated to the pottery to take this photo of
the stock yard on Tuesday

I try to avoid getting soaked in the morning so that I don't have to be chilled all day, so before break I lurk in the greenhouse checking on my cuttings, picking over the bigger plants and watering sparingly.

The entrance arch at the Pottery this week

Potting on and on and on...
Like the little lady on my Austrian weather house I pop out when the showers ease up and grab a few small pots to plant in the relative warmth of the greenhouse. Yes I am still planting.

This winter's planting in the Great Warwick Pot
Tulip 'Princesse Charmante' lurks beneath.

Almost all of the bulbs have found homes now. All the big plantings have been finished and are out there fending for themselves.

Nevertheless on rainy days I have been adding small potfuls to the collection. Not all of my plantings are crammed with bedding and perennials. I like to do a few simple things too. Pots are great for focusing on small, unusual plants - those plants are also less likely to get lost in a busy garden.

True grit
For example the little rose bowl in the picture below just has Muscari 'Pink Surprise' (a present from René) in it; the grit dressing keeps it looking neat, stops the compost from getting compacted by the rain, keeps the drainage sharp around the emerging shoots, wards off slugs, mice and squirrels, and generally fosters a sense of satisfaction in the gardener. I never seem to have enough grit and gravel. I hope Father Christmas isn't listening - I draw the line at getting grit in my Christmas stocking.

Small Rose Bowl simply planted with Muscari 'Pink Surprise'

Small Ali Baba jar planted with Allium karataviense 'Ivory Queen'

Fat and full
When I picked up this dear little fat ali baba jar I really wanted to do something clean and simple in it. The layer of pebbles looks nice enough by itself for the moment. Next spring should see the emergence of Allium karataviense 'Ivory Queen', with smooth, sculptural leaves and buds, followed by white tennis-ball flowers. I am hoping that their clean lines will complement the jar.

Allium karataviense in bud
last spring

Pots in pots
Ali-baba jars are tricky to plant - you have to avoid planting these with vigorous-rooted plants or plants which hate root disturbance because it will be difficult/impossible to extract them when they need moving on. You either need to half-fill the jar with polystyrene and then plant something which can be taken out easily (disposable bedding or dormant bulbs) OR you can place another pot in the top of the jar and plant that. This insert method works very well in the large jars because they have plenty of room for a decent-sized pot.

The picture below shows part of this winter's courtyard display - the Giant Jar has another pot in the top, so that it can be planted, but it would look just as good empty or with some spectacular branches or seedheads arranged in the top.

The pot in the top of the Giant Jar contains Calamagrostis 'Overdam', a Euphorbia seedling and
2 x Vinca minor 'Argenteovariegata', plus Tulipa 'Picture', Narcissus 'Rip van Winkle',
Crocus tommasinianus 'Roseus' and Pansy 'Can-Can'

I really shouldn't say this but at this time of year I think the pots look just as good empty - the low sunshine (when we get it) shows off the details beautifully and makes the terracotta glow.

Shallow basket pots in the stockyard at Whichford Pottery

The Birds

On Thursday the weather had calmed and as a result there were birds everywhere, stuffing their faces as fast as they could before the next bout of sleet. I wandered about with my camera for twenty minutes and in that time I saw redwings, fieldfares, bluetits, great tits, robins, coal tits, long-tailed tits, a green woodpecker, pigeons, rooks, a buzzard, blackbirds, a bullfinch, a linnet and I could hear pheasants and a mistle thrush. Not bad.

We have a little patch of mixed woodland planted about 15 years ago behind the pottery, it has been left fairly dense, with some paths cut through it and is a great place to go for a moment of peace and quiet. This is where I saw most of the smaller birds, including my very first linnet, looking exotic with his pretty pink chest.

My first linnet

Noisy boys

I am rather fond of the fieldfares, with their smart plumage, noisy chatter and boisterous behaviour. They are the naughty but charming boys at the back of the class. I saw this fieldfare and his mates from the top of the steps above the clay pile.

Fieldfare perch

My perch

I was lucky to catch this picture as it jumped to reach some berries - looking positively angelic:

Fieldfare angel

Vintage ladybirds

And finally: John (our driver/packing expert) after much hinting and smirking (very worrying considering his usual sense of humour) produced this little heap of delights:

Santa/John brought vintage Ladybird Books

People my age will have fond memories of Ladybird Books. I think this is mainly for the vivid illustrations; my husband and I both remember 'Garden Birds' but 'Trees' and 'Garden Flowers' are both new to me. I like the pleasant clarity of the pictures and the brief, unpatronising text where no effort is made to make the facts either cool or amusing. I shall be studying them more closely but have already learned that the Horse Chestnut gets its name from the fact that it is a 'coarse' or 'inferior' type of chestnut and that pelargoniums "can only be grown in pots". Well, there you have it.

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Signs of spring, fruits of autumn, chills of winter

2011-12-09T16:33:00.000-08:00

Here come the crocus shoots!

Crocus shoots are up already

Solanum not yum
I have carried on stuffing the greenhouse and polytunnel with tender and tenderish plants, the mild weather has allowed us to save even more plants than usual, touch wood. Solanum laciniatum has managed to ripen a few fruits (see my post of 12 Sept) which turn out to be orange. I'm pretty sure they are poisonous, so I won't be reporting on their taste.

The fruit of Solanum laciniatum - not for human consumption

The polytunnel is fairly full now, but I'm trying not to overcrowd it so that air can circulate, I have cut most foliage back by at least half for the same reason. Last year I didn't get the chance before the Big Freeze and we had galloping grey mould as a result.

Still room to circulate in the polytunnel

Clustering bugs

Plants aren't the only things to take refuge in here:

Ladybirds on Solanum quitoense inside the polytunnel

I hope our 'traditional' ladybirds are going to overwinter successfully - they may have tricky times ahead because Harmonia axyridis or the Harlequin ladybird is definitely here and it remains to be seen whether the invader will, as is rumoured, outcompete our native ladybirds.

One of the Harlequin ladybirds I found this summer

Lily potting
On Monday I thought I'd give Donna a break from digging up dahlias and got her to pot up some lilies. We have a wide range of lily pots and at the moment we have a special mail-order offer featuring Lilium 'El Grado' and Lilium 'Mona Lisa', so we have a plentiful supply of nice fat bulbs.

Nice fat lily bulb

Pots of lilies are really useful for providing splashes of colour just before the tender bedding and perennials go completely berserk. 'El Grado' (see post of 23 July) is a deep, rich reddish pink, whereas 'Mona Lisa' (see post of 8 August) is white, blushing to pink, with a deep pink stripe in the centre of each petal and attractive pink freckles and exuding a fabulous fragrance.
A lily pot and lily bulbs makes a great Christmas present, by the way!

Five bulbs fit neatly in a lily pot

I plant lilies a good five or six inches deep, using the same multipurpose peat/loam/grit mix I use for everything, with an extra sprinkle of slow-release fertiliser. The tall, narrow pots give excellent drainage, but you must be careful not to put the pot somewhere where drips from a tree or a roof will keep it constantly wet. They can stay outside all winter (even last winter), they just don't want to be soggy.

Donna shakes the compost down

We then top up the compost to about an inch below the rim of the pot, give it several good hard taps on the ground (don't put your hands in and squash the compost down, you'll ruin its structure and impede drainage and aeration), and water in. An inch of grit as a mulch will help to stop the surface of the compost from forming a water-resistant cap and will make the pot look neat.

You can plant lilies under other plants but I usually keep mine separate just because it is easier to remember where they are. It is also an idea to repot them every winter in order to keep the number of overwintering lily beetles down. See my post of 21 April for pictures of those pesky red critters.

Dried fish with your coffee?
In other news, Jim is back from a visit to Japan. He traditionally brings back a selection of Japanese snacks, some of which are more popular than others. The wasabi-flavoured KitKat definitely went down better than the dried fish this time. It might help if any of us could read Japanese.

Japanese snacks at staff tea-break. The fish was fragrant...

Midwinter blog dog
The weather has at last started to feel wintry. This makes me and Hooley miserable. Hooley is Joe's dog, a labrador/staffy cross, she has a melancholic disposition and she feels the cold. Luckily Joe has an assortment of small children as well as a dog, so this week Hooley arrived looking much happier in a shirt and jumper. She didn't mind us laughing at her.

Hooley looking almost cheerful now she is appropriately dressed

A festive feast of inspiration for garden and home, no less.

2011-11-25T07:26:00.000-08:00

The Whichford Pottery Christmas Sale got off to a great start last weekend, not only were there plenty of bargains (and cake) to be had but we had the bonus of two really good speakers upstairs in the main making room to give us inspiration for our gardens and our homes.

Discounts available on all our pots until Sunday 4th December

Garden design for real people
Saturday kicked off with Bunny Guinness on 'Transforming Your Garden'. I always prefer to listen to garden designers who still get their hands dirty on a regular basis and Bunny is one of those, still working in her own substantial garden one day a week. She is full of really practical ideas which can be scaled down to 'normal' gardens, from paint effects (instead of expensive cladding) to nifty ways to hide eyesores and divide spaces.

Some designers seem to focus exclusively on aesthetics but Bunny keeps in mind the way you actually want to use your garden: she is well-known for her great child-friendly ideas (sunken trampolines, treehouses, smart sandpits, drainable paddling pools...) but also thinks more long-term about the way a garden evolves from playground to something a bit more sophisticated. I particularly liked her thoughts about the approach to your house, using containers, plants and paving to guide visitors and encourage vehicles to park out of sight while still allowing you to drive right up to your door and unload your shopping if necessary.

We also learned that Radio Four's Gardener's Question Time potting shed actually exists!

Bunny Guinness signing her latest book after one of her two talks at Whichford Pottery

Everybody needs good neighbours
I returned to work on Sunday morning so that I could watch floral artist Fiona Perry's talk and demonstration which provided a veritable feast of ideas for alternative Christmas decorations and Christmas trees. I know Fiona well because she lives near me, and I am always impressed by her enthusiasm and her ability to generate an endless supply of ideas for interesting and beautiful things to do with plant material.

She started with a classic but delightful oasis-based treelet in a tiny Jekyll pot.

Here's one I prepared earlier. Fiona reveals her first tree idea, while her glamorous assistant, Sally, looks on.

Mulled wine tree in a glazed Buxus Pot

Tasty ideas
My favourite tree was the Mulled Wine Tree, using dried orange slices, cinnamon sticks, clementine pomanders, berries and crab-apples on a small bay cone.

I must remember to find my glue gun as I really want to try some of these ideas.

Fiona also did some deceptively artless things with florists' wire, examples were passed around the audience, provoking much appreciative murmuring.

We have a few useful floristry items for sale at the pottery but if you are local BHGS near Evesham stock a wide range of floral sundries (as well as useful horticultural things - must remember to go there soon and get new boots!) they also sell online. Fiona also suggested Easy Florist Supplies as an online source.

Florists' wire and crab apple

Skeleton leaf plus buttons and beads

Pallet tree star

Don't chuck out old sticks
Fiona's wildest and wackiest idea was the Pallet Christmas Tree. She's a bit like me in that she tends to keep apparently useless items because they might become useful. In this case she had kept the dead trunk of a standard bay tree, even I would have junked that. But no, she also cadged an old pallet from Whichford, chopped it up, drilled holes in the pieces, painted everything white and slotted them onto the dead trunk. Hey presto! A vaguely Scandinavian tree with ecofriendly credentials.

This is the kind of thing you can use outside - Fiona's will probably end up in her front garden. Willow is a useful alternative for outdoor structures which can hold lights or other decorations.

Two speakers giving generously of great ideas in one weekend. The best thing of all is that so many of them are actually achievable!

Christmas tree made from an old wooden pallet. Eat your heart out, Ikea!

I can see clearly now the pane is on.
In other news - the marvelous John and Dave have replaced the broken panes in the roof of my greenhouse, a job I dreaded tackling. They were broken by acorns, yes acorns! Who else has a greenhouse with two oak trees planted three feet away? Is it just me? I'm waiting for the rest of the leaves to fall before I clear out the gutters and clean the glass - you can see how filthy it is.

John and Dave earning my undying gratitude

Meanwhile I have plodded on, planting pots and digging up dahlias. The days are shorter and shorter but dusk at the pottery can be magical, with low light and silhouettes made more atmospheric by the shrieks of pheasants, hooting of owls and chinking of blackbirds echoing across the misty valley.

Dusk in the back-up stock area at Whichford Pottery. Just add owls.

Jack Frost holds the sword of Damocles and the handbag of Mrs Christmas

2011-11-18T07:38:00.000-08:00

Winter planting at the entrance to Whichford's stockyard

Winter plantings are settling in well but this gardener is unsettled and uneasy because of the lack of frost. This time last year everything was frozen solid and didn't really thaw out until January so I am braced for unpleasantness.

I have even found myself picking the leaves off deciduous shrubs which refuse to admit that winter is nearly here. There are better ways to spend your time.

Planting in the gloaming
I am still planting madly, sometimes in the dark - so if you visit and find messy patches around my plantings or wonky plants either Dominique's chickens or the lack of carotene in my diet are to blame.

There is still a lot of sorting out to do in the greenhouse and polytunnel so that the maximum number of plants are safe over the winter but my priority at the moment is the public garden because we will have a lot of visitors for our Christmas Sale, which starts today (Friday 18th Nov).

I'm looking forward to Bunny Guinness and Fiona Perry's talks over the weekend - we are lucky that we always seem to manage to get hold of very interesting speakers for our events.

Conifer doesn't cut the mustard when backed
by rosemary

New life for our logo
Although I normally still have a few plantings to do at this time of year I was determined to get the Ham House Urn done, the pot which greets people at the entrance to the garden. We use this urn as our logo so it would be a shame to leave it full of half-dead petunias and Fuchsia boliviana. I emptied it and brought some new plants out.

I thought this conifer (left) would be ideal until I plonked it in the urn for a coat of looking at.

I had committed the schoolgirl error of not thinking about the background and saw that what I thought was a strongly-shaped plant completely blended in with the rosemary behind.

Leymus arenarius works better

Doh! Try again.
So I tried again with a Leymus arenarius.
This worked much better because, even though the colour is similar, the form contrasts well with the background and is reinforced by the fact that Leymus arenarius has also been planted in the giant Orange Pot on the well.

This is quite a windy site because of the adjacent gateway to the stockyard so it may be that by spring all the grass is pointing to the left. We'll see.

Re-use, recycle.
I was glad not to have to go and buy another plant for this pot, I buy very few plants except for bedding plug-plants, re-using shrubs and perennials partly to save money and partly to reduce waste. I also reckon that this is how most 'normal' home gardeners function. Don't get me wrong, I like a bit of retail therapy as much as anyone and it would be easier just to go and buy a batch of smart new plants, but I don't want to be like those chefs who produce appetising recipes with appallingly expensive ingredients.

Decision made, urn planted.
Bulbs will pop up in the spring.

Here's the finished article: the Leymus is flanked by two Festuca glauca, and a Heuchera 'Plum Royale' and four Pansy 'Can-Can' sit on top of some Tulip 'Negrita', Narcissus 'Bath's Flame' and Iris 'Lady Beatrix Stanley'. These are all colours and plants repeated in other plantings in the garden and on the entrance path, I am hoping that the eye will travel comfortably from one to the other so that visitors are drawn into the garden. That's the theory anyway.

Pearls and pink phormiums
The pot featured below is just across the walkway from the urn. it is a Pearl Pot, designed for the Pottery's 30th anniversary, five years ago. Its clean lines make a change from some of the more elaborate designs that we produce.

I'm risking phormiums again this year (this is P.'Pink Stripe') even though I lost so many last winter. You can't really beat them for strong, clean verticals with a bit of colour. I have also stuffed in an artichoke seedling which may or may not survive, but its grey leaves are interesting for a while at least.

Phormium 'Pink Stripe in Pearl Pot

Tidy-up time
This week I selflessly (it's a job I rather like) gave Donna, my work experience helper, the job of starting the autumn tidy-up of the flowerbeds. She was tentative at first but I did my best to reassure her that she was unlikely to kill anything precious and she did a nice, thorough job of cutting back herbaceous perennials and pulling out weed seedlings in several beds. It looked very neat after she had finished. Little does she know that Dominique's chickens have been back and scattered soil into the paths she swept so carefully...

Nice and tidy, for now...

Playtime
John and Dave have also been very helpful with sweeping and leaf-clearing this week. I suspect that John rather likes the chance to play with the leaf-blower, ah these boys and their toys!

John - happy to get the leaf-blower out.

'Tis the season to go shopping
Right, I'm going to leave you now with a few pictures of my favourite goodies in the Octagon, which has been stocked up for Christmas (note to self: get husband to look at this page). I try not to go inside it too often in case I am tempted to buy something, also my boots are always filthy - but this week I used my camera and this blog as an excuse for a mooch. Never mind the footprints.

Teapot and mugs by Jim and Dominique Keeling, Whichford Pottery

Beautiful and unusual lamps

Restored antique tools from Garden and Wood - all eminently usable

Dinky Whichford glazed pots filled with gorgeously scented candles from St Eval

Still busy planting pots for winter/spring

2011-11-12T08:09:00.000-08:00

It's oddly mild for November and the bees are still busy in the last of the summer plants, as good a reason as any for leaving the tender plants I don't need to save out for as long as possible:

Bees are still slaving away in the Salvia leucantha

Still looking a little sparse, but little purple patches from Pansy 'Can-Can' and
Callicarpa bodinieri var.giraldii 'Profusion' provide interest.

Our (Pre-) Christmas Sale starts next weekend, however, and (especially as the first weekend includes talks from Bunny Guinness and Fiona Perry) I will try to finish the winter plantings before then. The new plantings look a bit stringy but already the way I look at things is changing. Instead of revelling in lushness my eye homes in on small spots of repeated colour and detail in plants.

Pansy Potter
I use a large number of violas and pansies in the winter/spring plantings. Yes they are as common as muck but you can't really beat them for a reliable trickle of colour through the winter followed by a burst of enthusiasm in spring to underpin the daffs and tulips.

Some pansies sulk in winter cold and wet and some are prone to leaf spot infections but I find that thorough dead-heading and the picking off of yellow/spotty leaves usually keeps them going.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: dead-heading is vital. Do it really thoroughly once a week and your displays will look brighter and last longer.

Cyclamen hederifolium and Pansy 'Can-Can'

I often use Pansy 'Can-Can', a mixture which, despite its flouncy appearance, usually sails through the winter. Plainer pansies such as Moonlight Mix (shades of blue and white) are valuable too - this one did brilliantly for us last year.

Et Viola!

Viola 'Sorbet White' and Leucothoe
'Scarletta in a Vine Pot

Violas, with their smaller flowers and generally more spreading habit, are often even tougher; by spring they should be overflowing from the pots and you will be heartily sick of dead-heading them.

To the right is Viola 'Sorbet White' planted with Leucothoe 'Scarletta' in a Vine Pot at the end of September. Below you can see the same viola as it looked last spring (19 May) in a Swag and Acanthus pot on the entrance path. By May the dead-heading is driving me round the twist and I can't wait to rip them out and plant the summer displays.

Viola 'Sorbet White' in a
Swag and Acanthus Pot last May

A 'Jester' Viola in one of our tiny pots last spring

Jester minute

Viola 'Jester Mix' is another favourite for its interesting colour blend and endless supply of cheeky little faces. Single plants in a variety of little pots look great dotted here and there, perfect for windowsills or tea tables, I also enjoy it massed and mixed with bulbs - practically anything, from alliums to fritillaries, looks good, this year it will be supporting Tulip 'Negrita' and quite a few others.

Cheery Viola 'Jester Mix' in Whichford's courtyard garden last April

One of the new (to me) varieties I am trying this year is Viola 'Tiger Eyes' - I have to say it looks promising. I have used it in the giant Orange Pots at the entrance, with Tulip 'Black Jewel' beneath it and some Scilla siberica to give a few little highlights of blue. We'll see.

Viola 'Tiger Eyes'

Do what I do or do what I say?

Here's a quick step-by-step series of pictures of a Parrot Tulip Pot I planted this week (one of a pair by the entrance path). I know that it is getting a bit late to be planting Narcissus and Iris bulbs but if they are still firm and not mouldy it is worth giving them a go in the hopes that the freezing weather will hold off long enough to allow them to establish. I end up having to take these risks every year simply because I can't plant 200 pots before November when I only work at the Pottery three days a week! Usually it works...

1. Pot filled to tulip planting-level with compost. The "underplanting" (surface plants) all have rootballs small enough to fit above the tulips so I can spread the tulip bulbs (16) evenly through the planting. This one is T. 'Yellow Spring Green'. A little compost then added to cushion the bulbs before more plants added.

2. Carex 'Curly Whirly' and Salvia officinalis 'Icterina' added, plus another dose of compost to support them. Then two clumps of five Narcissus 'Little Witch' are nestled into the spaces, just above the tulips.

3. The pot is filled to an inch below the rim with compost and then small plants are added. Here we have Lamium maculatum 'Anne Greenway' and six Pansy 'Midnight Glow'. Then I make planting holes (a couple of inches deep) between these plants with a forefinger and gently push in bulbs of Iris 'Lady Beatrix Stanley'. Her Ladyship is only a few inches tall, so the bulbs are near the edge of the pot so that the flowers should not be hidden by other plants.

I wear surgical gloves because at this stage in the season my nails start to get sore from being full of compost! Latex gloves allow you to feel what you are doing so that there is less risk of damaging delicate bulbs or plant roots.

4. I give the pot a good shake and bang its bottom on the ground to settle the compost among the plants. Then more compost is added, making sure to fill between all the plants and top up evenly over the bulbs. Pot is given another shake. The compost now reaches to about 1cm/half an inch below the rim but will settle down when watered in so that the surface of the entire planting lies about 2cm/1inch below the rim. This leaves room for watering/rain to soak in without washing any compost out of the pot.

Now water in gently and evenly with a hose spray or a watering can with a rose fitted on the spout. Inspect the planting again to make sure the compost doesn't need topping up a bit more - you don't want to leave any root-balls or bulbs at all exposed.

Enjoy watching your winter plantings develop and don't forget to dead-head your violas!

Pumpkins, plump plants, pubescence and passive pests

2011-11-04T07:46:00.000-07:00

Hallowe'en pumpkin

This week started with Hallowe'en, of course. Let's hope Jim and Dominique's carved pumpkin (grown on our compost heap) has kept evil spirits away from the pottery. I feel a bit sorry for the terracotta version underneath it.

Popular plants

The prize for most asked-about plant this week goes to Ornithogalum saundersii.

Ornithogalum saundersii

It is a bulb I have grown before and lost, so I was delighted when Rene sent us these bulbs along with our dahlia order last spring. They started flowering at the very end of the summer and remind me of the studs on my son's dress shirt. I'm not sure whether the bulbs would survive the winter in the polytunnel so I shall take the whole pot into the greenhouse and keep it dry under the bench when sharp frosts finally arrive.

I have to slip in another picture of Salvia leucantha 'Purple Velvet' too, because it has been wowing our visitors - most of whom think it is a buddleia. I can relax a little now as the small plants in the greenhouse are flowering and I can be sure that I have spares of both this one and its white-flowered sister so I can leave this right up until the frosts arrive.

Mild autumn, plump plants
I have been planting like mad and the mild weather has allowed plantings done in the last two or three weeks to knit together more quickly than usual. I cram a lot of plants into winter plantings but it is necessary to leave some space for plants to develop and bulbs to flower, so in a cold autumn/winter the pots can look a bit sparse until early spring.

The pot pictured below is a Pastry Pot I planted at Hanney Garden Club a month ago. Tulips 'Queen of Night' and 'Backpacker', Narcissus 'Jenny' and Iris 'JS Dijt' lurk beneath Juniperus squamata 'Blue Star', Erysimum 'Bowles's Mauve', a cabbage, a purple Heuchera and a few Pansy 'Can-Can'.

Juniperus squamata and Erysimum 'Bowles's mauve' form the
backbone of this planting

It is coming along nicely and the pebbles I used to dress the space between the plants are hardly necessary any more.

Pansy prejudice
The large Italianate pots by the entrance arch, which I replanted a couple of weeks ago are also looking happy. I am quite pleased with the tinge of warmth in Euphorbia 'Ascot Rainbow' and Tellima grandiflora Rubra Group against the acidic Pansy 'Frizzle Sizzle Twizzle'. I nearly didn't buy this pansy because of the silly name but I'm glad I overcame my prejudice.

It remains to be seen whether the Tulip 'Avignon' and Narcissus 'Little Witch' will complement these colours when they emerge. I am hoping it will be a fruit bonbon kind of combination - there I go tasting colours again, I hope you know what I mean.

Tellima grandiflora, Euphorbia 'Ascot Rainbow' and Pansy 'Frizzle Sizzle Twizzle' looking tasty

Here's another Bulb FAQ : Should I use bulb fibre in my winter/spring plantings?

Bulb fibre contains charcoal and sometimes oyster shell to help keep it sweet - and this may be useful in an indoor container with no drainage holes. To be frank, I never bother with it: I always use pots with drainage holes (placed on saucers) for indoor bulbs and use the same multi-purpose compost I use for everything.
Bulb fibre is more expensive than ordinary compost and I don't think it has as many nutrients as multi-purpose because it is intended for bulbs alone rather than mixed plantings. It is therefore completely unnecessary, expensive and possibly harmful to a mixed planting of hardy bulbs and plants for outdoors. Just use a good-quality, well-drained multi-purpose compost. I usually mix in a sprinkle of slow-release fertiliser so that the plants can keep going well through the spring.

Fresh talent
This week I planted up some of the pots featured in our current mail order offer.

Some of the new pots included in this year's mail order offer

The pot in the foreground was designed by Andy, who has been at the pottery from the very beginning, I think this is likely to become one of my favourites to plant as it has a large surface area, an elegant flaring shape and is not too heavy to lift easily.

Adam Keeling at work on one of his 'one-off' pieces.

The pots with contrasting decoration are a new range designed by Jim's eldest son Adam, a pale slip is applied freehand before firing. This technique is a good way to tone down the orangeness (not always popular) of the new terracotta without having to wait for weathering to occur. I like the contemporary look of these; I think they will probably invite more simple plantings than my usual overflowing style.

I can not emphasise enough how much talent there is here at Whichford - I think the Pottery is unique in this country as an employer of talented makers and in making everything by hand. The pots have life, personality even, and work not just as containers but as garden sculpture. I really do recommend a visit so that you can see the making and the enormous amount of skill and experience which goes into each pot. And I am not just saying that because I work here!

What was I doing?
Anyway, back to horticulture: here is the display at the plant-positioning stage:

Some of the mail-order range being planted up. The colours will be based around Pansy 'Aquarelle'

I'll put up some pictures of the finished article soon, when I have planted the whole range. I will soon have lily bulbs from Rene and bare-root hostas from multi-Chelsea-Gold-winner Bowden's (all featured in the mail order offer) to play with as well. More details on the plants next week.

PoMoBro
One little diversion on Tuesday November 1st was the planting of this pot face. You may not be able to see it but he has the beginnings of a moustache made of Leptinella squalida 'Platt's Black'. This bit of silliness is in support of the team of horticultural chaps (and some inventive ladies), or MoBros, at Bristling Garden. They are growing moustaches this month (Movember)in aid of Prostate Cancer Research. The results are already hilarious. Please support them if you can and drive them to further facial feats. If you are a tweep you can also find them, and indeed me, on Twitter. Simon (one of our throwers) grew a fine moustache for the same cause last year, so we are familiar with Movember and it has our full support.

A PoMoBro for Movember

I hope the moustache develops well; if the weather turns cold I may have to cheat and bring him into the polytunnel. Any suggestions for a name??

Feeling waspish

Sleepy wasp emerges from my sleeve

When it started to rain yesterday I grabbed my coat from the greenhouse and was about to put it on when a wasp fell out. Then another. I had to eject seven more before I could put my coat on. I instinctively recoil from wasps so I have to remind myself that they are an important part of the ecosystem and prey on other annoying insects.

Wasp roulette

But I would prefer them to stay out of my toast and marmalade and out of my clothing. I shall be a bit nervous of sleeves for a while.

Dancing with Hens

2011-10-26T06:21:00.000-07:00

Brugmansia sanguinea

The late season sunshine has meant that my Brugmansia sanguinea has had its moment of glory in the nick of time.

Season of fog and ambiguity
There are still quite a few potfuls of summer goodies on display so the season seems to vary depending on which way you look. In the centre of the courtyard garden there are still some dahlias, the Brugmansia and a large pot of Ornithogalum saundersii, all redolent of late summer.

Brugmansia sanguinea, Pelargonium 'Paul Crampel', Ornithogalum saundersii,
and Dahlia 'Black Jack' in Whichford Pottery's courtyard garden

Whereas around the corner in the stockyard the first batch of winter plantings, which I did a few weeks ago, has established nicely and is beginning to fill out.

Ready for winter: Parahebe catarractae, Viola 'Sorbet White', Leucothoe 'Scarletta'.
Beneath these lie Tulipa 'Jan Reus', T. 'White Parrot' and Muscari latifolium

Recent warm, windy weather and cool nights have made it difficult to get the irrigation right and some of the big leafy plants are really beginning to look battered, so Babs (my Tuesday glamorous assistant) and I have dismantled many of them.

Putting it down to experience

This Monday I had more help in the form of my very first work experience person. The pottery regularly takes work experience youngsters from local schools and colleges but most of them are art students wanting experience in ceramics. Donna is studying horticulture at college and will be coming here on Mondays for a few weeks to help broaden her practical experience.

Donna pots up a Heliotropium arborescens 'Marine' (one for the ident notebook!)

I hope the experience will be useful to her - I did carefully tell her that I don't always do things the 'approved' way - but she will at least encounter a wide variety of plants here. I think it will be a very useful exercise for me too, because I have to think harder about why I do certain things so that I can explain them to her. It will probably help me to identify inefficiencies in the way I work, although whether I act on that knowledge or not is another matter!

Clearing away another summer display with the help of Henny-Penny

Andy and the performing hen. Soon to be seen
on Britain's Got Talent.

Helpful hens

This week we dismantled the display inside the entrance to the courtyard garden, much to the delight of Jim and Dominique's hens. The hens have been very free range for a few weeks, their scratching about makes an awful mess and they have marmalised a clump of pinks, but I am tolerating it for the moment because they are doing a good job of gobbling up earwigs, woodlice and vine weevils, all of which have thrived in this dry summer.

This hen is ridiculously tame and has learned to turn up at lunch time, keeping a beady eye on our sandwiches and doing tricks in return for a crumb or two. I'm getting rather fond of her, so the fox is bound to get her soon.

Field maple praying for rain

This way please!

Rain has threatened several times in the past few days, and pregnant black clouds have formed a fine backdrop to the field maples but the showers have been passing us by. I have been feeling more and more desperate and did consider performing a rain dance...

No need! As soon as I had embarked on planting up the new display in the courtyard fat drops began to fall and soon my hair was plastered to my head and a layer of compost was adhering to every inch of my clothing.

Fully committed to planting up and here's the rain at last

Look on the bright side

Although this was particularly wet rain I didn't mind at all because it has been such a long time since we had proper rain; I could hear the plants sighing with relief.

It did remind me that I need new boots though.

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

And when I went into the Octagon to record the plantings in my notebook the contrast between my soggy state and the smugly fluffed-out Puss-puss was painful:

Puss-Puss. Warm, dry and fluffy in The Octagon

Salvia confertiflora enjoying the rain

I did stop planting to run about with my camera for a bit and celebrate the rain: when bright skies mix with heavy showers colours glow beautifully and the paving and pots gleam.

Wahay!

I felt like I did when I was small and thundery showers arrived after a dry spell - I used to make my mother laugh by dancing around in the garden, getting drenched and letting the soggy grass squidge between my toes. No dancing now, especially in steel toed boots, but I still felt elated.

The novelty will soon wear off!

Last call for plants wishing to take shelter

2011-10-19T04:21:00.000-07:00

I am forcing myself to sit down and write even though it is pretty certain that tonight will be frosty and I should be scampering about rescuing all the tender plants in my own garden. One of my favourites is still out at home and at Whichford because it is looking so delicately appealing:

Lotus jacobaeus

What goes around comes around

The original plant of Lotus jacobaeus was given to me by a head gardener of whom I am in awe. She and her partner have been very generous to me with advice and plants. It is a tricky plant to propagate because as soon as it is growing fast enough to take cuttings it is also producing flowers on every shoot, but I love it enough to persevere. A couple of springs later it turned out that the giver's crop of cuttings had failed so I had the enormous satisfaction of being able to repay her a little with a couple of my scrawny plants. It just goes to show that generosity with plants insures against future loss as well as sealing a friendship.

Brugmansia sanguinea - lots of flowers, but too late?

I realised in the middle of last night that I probably don't have cuttings of the Brugmansia sanguinea which is struggling manfully to flower before the frost. I really hope that the first frost will only knock it back rather than killing it so that I can rescue the mature plants and take cuttings in spring.

Fully insured?
While it was still unseasonably warm and the plants still growing at the end of last week I spent most of a day taking insurance cuttings, so I hope that even if a sharp early frost kills many of my mature plants I will have enough small plants to build up my stocks again.

I know that there are bound to be a few varieties which somehow get lost and to quell the rising sense of panic this brings I have to tell myself that a lost plant is an opportunity to try something new. And very few are irreplaceable anyway. I realised some years ago that worrying about killing plants was cramping my style, so now I repress that fear and feel freer to experiment.

Manic propagation does make me sleep better at night, however.

Insurance cuttings inside the Heath-Robinson propagator

Succulent sardines
I have been carting all my precious succulents back to the greenhouse where they will sit cheek by jowl for the winter. I can't just bring them in, I have to strip off dead leaves, eject stowaway earwigs and snails and inspect for signs of vine-weevil infestation (chewed leaves, loose roots). Infested compost is chucked out for the birds to pick through, infested stems are cut off and used as cuttings.

Not many people see them once they are in the greenhouse, but I think they look lovely banked together.

Succulents crammed in on the greenhouse bench

More propagation potential
As I heave the pots about leaves and stems get snapped off the plants. These are not disasters but cuttings. I dump them on the bench until I have time to deal with them. The resulting pile does look like a small compost heap, but most succulents will start to produce roots from stems or leaf bases like this and will establish more happily once planted than if they had been inserted in compost before the cut ends had had time to dry and form a callus.

Sloppy gardening or propagation opportunities?

Violas and pansies waiting to be planted

Out!
The violas and pansies which arrived as tiny plug plants a few weeks ago are now beginning to fill their 9cm pots and are hardening off sheltered in the gap between the greenhouse and the polytunnel.

In!
I wheel pots into the polytunnel with the 'sack-truck', here they can be sheltered from the first frosts until we have time to dismantle them and take individual plants into the greenhouse.

As the polytunnel is not heated I keep the not-quite-hardies in there - Agapanthus, Cordyline, Melianthus major etc. I also experiment with spares of plants of uncertain (to me) hardiness in here. I have brought in a couple of plants of Solanum laciniatum which are far too big to go in the greenhouse because I would like to see if their seed-pods will ripen in there. The plants may even survive the winter if temperatures stay above about -5C. I think I may try taking cuttings too, it looks like it would root pretty easily.

Plants coming and going in the polytunnel

Anagallis monelli 'Skylover'

I can leave annuals such as the Anagallis monelli 'Skylover' which the customers have asked about so much to be hit by the frost because best results are achieved by getting fresh seed or plug-plants in the spring.

Last embers of summer

There is still plenty of colour for the customers to look at. I have left Begonia 'Glowing Embers' outside too, because last year it survived having its topgrowth killed by frost.

Next week the chucking out accelerates and so do the winter plantings.

Now I'm off to rescue my own plants!

Begonia 'Glowing Embers' still warming in
Whichford basket pots

Succulence in a dry autumn

2011-10-12T02:35:00.000-07:00

We are still waiting for a decent helping of rain and I am glad that I planted out so many succulents.

Succulents in Ham House Urns along the drive at Whichford Pottery

Jim's ruin with succulents in the font

I shall do my best to overwinter as many as possible because they are so useful - I haven't watered any of the succulent plantings at all since I first put them together. The little rain we have had has been enough. And this is why all the pots in the drive are full of succulents, so that I don't have to traipse out there with watering cans.

Flourishing in ruins
I have even put them in Jim's 'ruin', where they have thrived. The original ruin was made for a flower show in Japan but Jim has also built one here. The terracotta pieces fit together a bit like Lego and are cemented together. It's amazing what you can do with clay!

Aeoniums, Echeveria, Kalanchoe and other
crassulaceae in the Kew Collection

Saving treasures
The succulents in Kew pots have filled out nicely. These pots are small enough to grab and run into the greenhouse with when frost is imminent but bigger potfuls will take longer to dismantle. I will leave most of the latter out a little longer as they are looking so good but I am beginning to stow away many of my little treasures; if I have to walk to the greenhouse I make sure that I am carrying a couple of them. I would rather lose a few big plants than have all the little oddities turn to mush.

Haycorns, Pooh!
Despite the warmth Autumn is definitely here. Acorns have been raining down from the young oak trees, which were inexplicably planted between the packing shed and the greenhouse, making alarming bangs on the glass. They are beautiful things and most of us have fond childhood memories of snapping them out of their little cups and fitting them back in again or of making little Oakie Dokes (acorn people).

Beautiful acorns have been raining down

Witches' garage
I have never seen so many fruits on the spindle tree (Euonymus europaeus) in the hedge near the compost heaps. Again, this has been a favourite for me ever since I was a child, partly for the preposterous pink/orange colour combination and partly because one of my favourite books was The Midnight Folk, by John Masefield. In this I found the useful information that witches tether their brooms to spindle to stop them from flying away by themselves. I haven't read the book for a long time of course and really hope that I am remembering this correctly and didn't just dream it.

Reserved parking. Euonymus europaeus or Spindle at Whichford

No gin for me
There are sloes in the hedge by the Octagon but I won't be making sloe gin because thirsty blackbirds are gobbling them up. From her lack of fear I guess that this scruffy creature is Mrs B moulting - she did look a bit like she had gone down the chippy with her curlers in.

"What are you looking at?" Mrs B gobbling sloes

Crocus speciosus in a Wisley Seed Pan

Splendid crocus
We had a few Crocus speciosus bulbs at the sale in September. I really wish we had ordered more as they were popular so I only kept a few to plant. They are absolutely gorgeous.
I haven't grown this autumn-flowering crocus before but I should have taken more notice of the name, speciosus means showy, handsome, beautiful, splendid...

Hedychium gardnerianum has also been flowering over the last 10 days or so in the courtyard. I love the exotic look of it and the sweet scent. We are lucky that plants like this are kept in check by our frosts - in some countries this has become an invasive weed but here it must be taken under cover for the winter.

Hedychium gardnerianum

Before I forget - here's another Spring Bulb FAQ: How close together do you plant tulips?
It depends on the effect I want and whether the flowers open wide (like a parrot tulip) or stay neat (like Darwin hybrids). If the flowers are neat and I want a solid block of colour or a clump then I plant very close together - but don't let the bulbs touch each other so that fungal infections can't spread too easily. If the flowers are bigger or if other plants and/or bulbs will be planted above them then I usually plant them about 2-3 inches apart. you can space them more widely if you want a less full effect, or plant in clumps with a few spaced more randomly for a "natural" effect.

This pot will have a fairly dense mass of Tulip 'Rococo'

Tulip 'Rococo', Spring 2011

This is a planting I did today in a giant Sissinghurst pot (about 3 feet in diameter). The tulip is 'Rococo', a medium-sized flower which curls and opens fairly wide. The cracked upside-down pot is a second which I am using to support a pot containing a large Photinia x fraseri 'Red Robin'.

Above this layer of tulips I have planted two Leucothoe fontanesiana 'Rainbow' and two Helleborus niger, plus 'Moonlight Mix' pansies, Narcissus 'Jenny', Muscari latifolium and Crocus 'Jeanne d'Arc'. The tulips will fight their way through it all, never fear.

Photographic fun in the garden

And finally - last weekend there was another of Liz Eddison's garden photography days. I know a good time was had by all because the participants included my oldest friend - and these two suspicious characters hiding behind cameras turned out to be Andy, a senior thrower who has been making pots with Jim since the very beginning 35 years ago, and Lynda, who crafts all the amazing hand-pressed ware, including the elephants.

Lynda and Andy hide behind their cameras

Keep an eye on the Whichford website for new dates for this popular garden photography course - much learning and laughter guaranteed!

Pinging, bonging, planting, ripping, tearing, jabbing and chopping

2011-10-05T13:24:00.000-07:00

I have finished planting the display I started last week - here's the finished article just after watering in, not very exciting compared to the blowsiness of the summer plantings but it will start to look interesting after it has settled in.

One display group down, ten more to go

In a few weeks time we will be grateful for the little highlights of red provided by the Cornus stems and the Leucothoe leaves.

To deepest Oxfordshire
The glorious warm sun this week has made it quite difficult to think about autumn plantings but on Monday I went (slightly reluctantly) to give a talk/demonstration to Hanney Garden Club in Oxfordshire on 'Planting Pots for Winter Interest and Spring Joy'. This was a friendly and well-organised club, however, and I began to regain my enthusiasm as I talked. They listened carefully and asked sensible questions but I am always left with the same feeling after a talk as after an exam, along the lines of "Oh I should have said this, and I forgot to say that, and I can't believe I said the other".

Tulips finding their way through perennials,
shrubs, bedding and other bulbs.
Early April this year

Bulb FAQ
I was asked a question which had also come up at the bulb sale. Because I usually recommend planting other plants above bulbs I was asked if there are any plants I would not use above bulbs. The answer is not simple because it depends on the depth the bulbs need planting at, their eventual flowering height and the eventual height of the plant you are using. But for now let's just consider the larger tulips, which need planting about 6-8" deep: a wide range of bedding, perennials and shrubs are fine for planting over tulips as there is plenty of room for a one or two-litre rootball above them. Tulips will find their way through or around most plants but I would avoid putting them directly below really dense rootballs such as those of ferns, phormiums or pot-bound shrubs - you can put them really close to them, however.

That'll teach you to jab me in the eye

Favouite Sneerboer tool

The weathered pot I wanted to use for the talk had a rather overgrown Leymus arenarius filling it so I spent a while levering it out. Luckily the larger sizes of our pots have drainage holes big enough to push your hand through when evicting plants, even so I managed to get a painful poke in the eye while wrestling with it. I got my revenge by chopping this vigorous blue grass into pieces with my favourite Sneerboer tool, so that it can be recycled into various winter plantings. We sell Sneeboer tools at the Pottery; this little spade (I think they call it a Perennial Spade) is intended for splitting plants and does the job magnificently because it has a very sharp, straight blade. It also has a short handle so is perfect for using in pots.

Cutting it fine
The greenhouse and polytunnel are filling up rapidly even though Babs and I have not dismantled many of the summer plantings yet. The weather has just been too good.

Brace yourself.
Miss Babs harvests walnuts

At the end of last week I heard strange rustling, dinging and clattering noises coming from the field where the seconds are kept. I grabbed my camera thinking we were being raided by giant musical squirrels - but no, it was just Miss Babs harvesting walnuts.

Walnuts keep falling on my head
As she shook the branches the walnuts pinged and clanged merrily off the pots. I have often thought to myself that we should get the cast of 'Stomp' here to play the pots as they make such a wide range of bell-like noises when hit.

I once gave a talk to a roomful of 100 ladies who had just had a lovely lunch and would NOT stop talking so that their somewhat diffident organiser could introduce me. After a few minutes of her futile cries I grabbed a crock and banged it on the large, empty terracotta pot in front of me, BONG, BONG! You could have heard a pin drop.

Beautiful walnuts at Whichford Pottery

Salvaging Salvias
We hardened our hearts this week and I asked Babs to dig out two of the big pots at the front of the stockyard even though the statuesque Salvia 'Indigo Spires' they contained were still looking spectacular. It seemed a shame to uproot them, cut all those intense blue flowers off, shove them in plastic and squeeze them into the greenhouse but I have to salvage as much as possible before the frosts come.

Salvia 'Indigo Spires' doing exactly what it says on the tin

Salvia leucantha 'Purple Velvet' on the left and Salvia leucantha on the right

The salvia behind them, Salvia leucantha, and its sister Salvia leucantha 'Purple Velvet' are looking so fantastic now I couldn't possibly dig them up. I have plenty of young plants of S. leucantha already under cover but when I took the cuttings in spring the plants weren't flowering (and I hadn't labelled them accurately of course) and I failed to take any 'Purple Velvet'. I will have to try taking some cuttings now even though it will be tricky as every shoot is flowering. but this plant is so massive I know I won't be able to overwinter it even if I dig it up in time.

Bodice ripper
My favourite salvia (at the moment) is Salvia confertiflora. I already have spares of this under cover too, so I can leave the large plants out until after the frosts if necessary. It glows so nicely in low sunshine and even in bud you can appreciate its rich purple and orange velvets. A sumptuous salvia for the Tudor court, this one. Oh dear, you can tell I've been reading historical novels recently.

Salvia confertiflora, beautiful in bud as well as in flower

Solanum quitoense brooks no opposition

Another plant Henry VIII might have identified with is Solanum quitoense. Its massive violet-veined green leaves backed with more purple velvet have a rigid, regal bearing and if you aren't careful will completely overshadow, if not crush, neighbouring plants. It is one of the most asked-about plants at the pottery. I am determined to succeed in overwintering it this year, having grown it from seed three years in a row only to lose it. This time I have only planted out three and kept about half a dozen in the greenhouse so that they do not have to be transplanted just before the temperature drops.

You are going to put them away again, aren't you!
The picture below is the rear view of the obstruction that greeted visitors to the pottery last Friday. Jim was creating another photoshoot (you can see his tripod just beyond the arch), this time for the winter mail order offer leaflet. The result is a really attractive picture, but you'll have to get yourself on to our mailing list to receive a copy!

Entrance path looking a picture at Whichford Pottery

Time to start the excavations

2011-09-28T14:01:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure whether this beautiful indian summer is going to make the arrival of autumn proper more or less bearable. There's no denying the gorgeousness of it though.

The garden at Whichford Pottery on Tuesday.
All plants except the rosemary and the trees in the background are growing in pots.

Brugmansia sanguinea forming more buds at last

I can see that the Brugmansia sanguinea is forming more flower buds, so I'm really hoping that there will be a last hurrah before I have to dig out all the tender plants and cram them into the greenhouse and polytunnel.

Choose your weapons
The thing is, I have to start now. There are about 300 pots to change over so if I leave it too long I will still be planting bulbs in January. I love to see the summer plantings lasting so well but I have to steel myself to start destroying them.

So this week I decided that the display by the arch into the stockyard was looking the worst, fetched my trusty Sneerboer sharp mini pointy spade thing and started to slice through root balls.

Save or chuck?
Annuals such as the remains of the sunflowers, the petunias, Nicotiana glauca and Ipomoea 'Grandpa Ott' go straight to the compost heap. I keep up to about half a dozen of each tender perennial for overwintering, so from this display I harvested some Agastache foeniculum 'Licorice Blue', some purple salvia (name long lost) and a couple of Abutilon 'Canary Bird'.

The entrance to the stock yard at the beginning of August

The Agapanthus have already gone to the polytunnel in their pots. I dug up the huge clump of Dahlia 'Moore Place' (just visible to the left rear of the picture above) and heeled it in in a large plastic tub to die back naturally. I also saved a couple of tubers of the Dicentra scandens which knitted this display together. This is a hardy plant in the ground but as I am going to try to keep it in small plastic pots over winter I shall keep them in the polytunnel and see what happens - this plant is easy to grow from seed so I can always start again next year.

The bones of the display: the terracotta pots are all positioned before planting.
The large pot containing a climbing rose lives there permanently

Fresh start
Once the plants had been removed I changed a few of the pots - choosing some with tulip decoration or Christmassy wreaths for winter. I will keep the chunky garland ovals where they are because they are handy on this corner as they don't stick out as much as round pots would. This wall is directly opposite the doors to the pottery and large trolleys bearing freshly-fired pots from the kilns have to be manoeuvred round the corner - if I take up too much space with plantings I get complaints from Joe, Riv and Chris! The vine pot on the far right probably sticks out a little too much but I have deliberately used a small pot there so that it can be moved easily if necessary.

Hardy perennials and shrubs propped up in position before planting commences

Give it a coat of looking at
Having faffed about for a while arranging empty pots I then half-filled them with compost and brought out some hardy perennials and shrubs, violas and a selection of bulbs. I positioned all the biggest plants (still in their plastic pots) so that I could get an idea of the balance and shape of the display.

Tulip 'Heart's Delight' will feature
in this area

This area will contain red and white tulips and reddish foliage and stems, mid-green foliage (which I think of as neutral), Viola 'Sorbet White' and a few shots of blue from bulbs such as Iris 'Halkis', Allium caeruleum and Camassia leichtlinii 'Caerulea'.

Rule Britannia
From this you may have gathered that the stockyard will be dominated by red,white and blue next spring. I thought I'd have a go at patriotic colour combinations in honour of the Olympics and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee next year.

At the time of writing (Wednesday) I am half-way through planting this area and will put up a photo of the finished article next week. The planting is slow because it is complex and because I write all the bulbs and plants for each pot in a notebook so that I know what should be popping up in a few months' time. I get faster as my head gets into autumn mode and start being able to imagine the spring results more easily.

A colourful greeting still - the entrance path to Whichford Pottery

Oh get on with it
I'm really going to hate dismantling the displays along the entrance path, I have enjoyed watching them develop. I can't leave them too late because this is a cold, windswept area in the winter, so I want the plantings to be establishing before the hardest weather.

This picture was taken at the end of last week - you can just see Jim rushing around getting ready for the big Japanese weekend.

I managed to avoid helping with this and took myself to Oxford on Friday with my camera

Fair Oxenforde
I had a quick look round Oxford Botanic Garden; they have some fabulous trees which are just asking to be hugged and their borders were in fine fettle.
Whichford pops up in various guises around this garden and in the many glasshouses, here is one of our rhubarb forcers (they have our seakale forcers too).

Whichford Rhubarb Forcer in Oxford Botanic Garden

Alma mater

Then I dropped in on Brasenose, my old college. They have some pots which we made for their recent quincentenary, featuring the door knocker the college may be named after. BNC doesn't have a garden as such, it has two quads, Old and New, linked by a small space called The Deer Park. This is either a wry reference to the much grander Magdalen's real deer park or there is a story of a stag being hunted all the way from Blenheim to Oxford, only to meet its grisly end at Brasenose. Not so much a garden as a gap.

Whichford pots in Old Quad, Brasenose College

But I digress - BNC is a good example of pots being used to supplement limited growing room - they can be moved when the space is needed for something else, they frame doorways nicely and provide some softness and colour against all that lovely golden stone.

Pots in the stockyard this week

Stridulating until winter comes

Back on home ground I am still torn between two seasons - loving the warm autumn, missing the long days of summer - and dreading winter. I must remember to stay in the moment and enjoy the way things are now.

Just like my small green friend pictured below does.

Speckled Bush Cricket in the courtyard garden

Flourishing, declining and falling gracefully

2011-09-20T14:03:00.000-07:00

Salvias, dahlias and fuchsias are flourishing still, despite cold nights. I often chunter on about fuchsias as part of my campaign against plant-related snobbery. For too long now, fuchsias have not only been mis-spelled but have also been dismissed as "suburban" or "blowsy", the implication being that no-one should therefore countenance them. Unless they are species rather than cultivars, in which case they are just about acceptable as long as their flowers are small and preferably whiteish.

Fuchsia tense
Now, let me get a little rant off my chest: there is nothing wrong with big flowers, blowsy flowers, blobby flowers, double flowers, stripy flowers, bright flowers, cheap flowers or common flowers. They are JUST FLOWERS! If you like them, have them. There are ways of using them which suit different tastes and different situations but THERE IS NOTHING INHERENTLY WRONG WITH ANY FLOWERS.

Except for dried flowers and dyed flowers.

What's not to like? Fuchsia 'Lady Boothby'

Fuchsia 'Lady Boothby' still going strong despite
being associated with frightfully common petunias

A promising fuchsia
I like to use fuchsias in mixed plantings, this probably horrifies fuchsia purists but I say in my defence that I don't need them to be big, beefy specimens, I need them to be threading their dangly earrings through other plants to provide reliable late summer colour whether in sun or shade. This they do admirably.

F. 'Lady Boothby' has won the battle with Ipomoea 'Grandpa Ott' (see 6 July). Her Ladyship is still going strong (these pictures were taken this week) but Grandpa couldn't take the chilly nights and has gone to seed.

Fuchsia 'Thamar'

Investing for the fuchsia
Last year we had a fuchsia event, which I christened, inevitably, "Back to the Fuchsia". CS Lockyer brought a large selection of their vast collection of fuchsia varieties for sale and of course I had to have some. 'Thamar' in the picture on the left is one of my favourites. The colours are sugary but the outward-facing flowers with their sprays of stamens bristle cheekily. It is a plant which makes me smile whenever I see it.

Fuchsia 'Bornemann's Beste' in my garden

Another favourite is 'Borneman's Beste', this is a colour which I can taste (sherbet lemon, since you ask, don't ask me why). I know this one is tender but I have great difficulty remembering which ones are supposedly hardy, so I try to keep at least one plant of each in the greenhouse over winter. This way I can get them growing nice and early and take softwood cuttings from the new growth so that I have plenty of small plants for inserting in the summer plantings.

Pink pendants of Fuchsia 'Shrimp Cocktail' blending
with Hordeum jubatum and minty pelargonium

Potted shrimps
A little bit of F.'Shrimp Cocktail' peeps out of one of the Swag and Acanthus pots by the path in the picture to the left - this is a small plant rather swamped in an overcrowded planting but as it was from a batch of spring cuttings and cost me virtually nothing I don't mind it being part of the chorus instead of playing a starring role.

Some of the annuals are beginning to lose the will to live, we have had quite a few cold nights now and the petunias and didiscus are really slowing down. Over the last week Kochia trichophylla has done its autumn colour change trick and will soon be dead.

Kochia trichophylla in July

Kochia trichophylla blushing this week

Ping Pong surprisingly strong
One of the new annuals I tried this year was Scabiosa stellata 'Ping Pong'. Apart from the fact that I thought it was going to be shorter so planted it in rather small pots, it has been really interesting. The young leaves were glaucous and pretty but the flowering heads shot up to two feet and promptly fell over. I left most of them as they were because the flowers were delicately pretty:

Scabiosa stellata 'Ping Pong'

In the last couple of weeks, however, it has become apparent that the seedheads are even better:

Seedhead of Scabiosa stellata 'Ping Pong'

I can see that my flower-arranging friends are going to love this. I know what I said about dried flowers - this is a seedhead, so I am allowed to like it.

Just look where you're going...
Talking of falling over - I arrived at work on Monday, picked up a small glazed pot of coleus, carried it out of the greenhouse and tripped over. I went down like I had been felled by a tiny lumberjack and lay on the path wondering if I had broken any bones. I hadn't even broken the pot and apart from a few bruises and dented dignity I was fine. John helped me gather my spilt plants and my wits and sensibly made me sit down for a bit in case I decided to do an action replay. How kind, I thought.
It didn't last, he was soon calling "Again, again!" like the Teletubbies, followed by various other little witticisms. And this Picasso-style scene of crime appeared while I was re-stocking my compost bucket:

An uncanny likeness

Any minute now (as long as I can manage to stay upright) I will start planting the spring bulbs. I have already potted up some Crocus speciosus (autumn crocus) and a Hippeastrum 'Red Lion', but they don't really count.

Spring bulb FAQ

One of the most frequently asked frequently asked questions at the bulb sale was Do I plant them now?

My answer is almost always Yes. The longer you hang on to bulbs, the more likely they are to shrivel up or rot. For maximum viability plant as soon as possible. If you can't plant immediately keep those bulbs cool, dry, frost-free and mouse-free for as little time as possible. Don't keep them in plastic bags as they may get a bit sweaty.

I know all the books tell you to leave tulip planting until late autumn/early winter but I plant about 200-250 pots and can't wait until then. I plant the tulips 6-8 inches deep and (touch wood) have had no problems with blight, I find the bulbs are much more likely to be affected by mould if you try to store them for too long.
Early-flowering bulbs such as crocus, iris and early narcissi benefit from early planting so that they can get their roots established hopefully before really hard frosts arrive.
Fritillary bulbs don't have a papery covering so are very prone to mould - get them in as quickly possible!

Jim Keeling with one of his Japanese-inspired vases (left)
and a vase from Bizen (right)

Turning Japanese

And finally, we have had the most extraordinary range of Japanese ceramics arrive for the new selling exhibition at the Octagon.

Here's Jim lurking in the garden with one of his own Japanese-style creations in one hand and a vase from the famous Bizen potteries in the other. An exhibition like this is a rare event - so if you like ceramics I advise you to visit soon.

Delicious dahlias and a case of wind

2011-09-12T02:21:00.000-07:00

Lots of customers, regular and new, have been to the pottery in the last few days and many of them have been very excited by the dahlias. It seems to me that not only are dahlias permissible now but fewer people are afraid of orange and many are embracing red and yellow. I have noticed that "Of course I don't have orange and yellow in my garden" is a less frequent announcement. And I am glad.

Flashes of red and yellow from (top to bottom)
Pelargonium ardens, Dahlia 'Bishop of York', D. 'Bishop of Llandaff',
D. 'Red Riding Hood' and D. 'Swan Lake'

The picture above is a bit blurry thanks to the fringes of Hurricane Katia but it gives a flavour of the courtyard garden at the moment.The wind has been whipping everything about but I have inserted many willow hoops to limit the damage and only a few stems have broken - so far.

Dahlia 'Bishop of Auckland'

Eye candy
Let me show you a few more of these autumnal eye-catchers. I'm wondering whether we should have a Dahlia sale next year, so before I start lobbying the pottery I'd love it if any of our customers who are interested in buying dahlias would let me know if they like the idea and/or suggest varieties that might be worth trying.

Dahlia Melody 'Swing'

Ear-worm
The neat pom-poms below are Dahlia 'Small World'. I'm very fond of this floriferous dahlia but I have to avert my eyes from it because I have been to the scary alternative world that is EuroDisney (nearly 10 years ago) and EVERY time I look at this plant the tune from the Small World ride starts again in my head and doesn't wear off for hours. In fact I know I will pay the price even for looking at this picture as the incredibly irritatingly catchy jingle goes around and around in my head. Google it if you dare, you'll soon see what I mean.

Dahlia 'Small World' - it's a small world after all...

Earwigs
It is quite surprising that the dahlias have done so well when you consider that this is the Year of the Earwig. They are everywhere - in my hair, in the pots, in Babs's mixed fruit and nuts. Admittedly they have marmalised Dahlia Gallery 'Bellini' and munched their way round the edges of Dahlia Gallery 'Pablo' and I wonder whether this is because the Gallery hybrids are particularly delicious or because they happen to be near popular earwiggy hideouts.

Dahlia 'Ragged Robin' in a Bicentenary Urn

Dahlia 'Ragged Robin', however, has escaped unscathed and continues to flower its little red socks off. It may be that its pleasantly untidy petals hide any damage. Single dahlias are less fequently damaged in fact, as earwigs like to be able to wriggle into the crevices of a complex flower - they like to have both back and front in contact with a surface.

A dry eye
The thing that really puts people off dahlias is the work. I dig all mine out and dry them for storage indoors but that is because I have excessive numbers of them and need to do different combinations each year.

With a smaller collection it is possible to bring the pots into a greenhouse, polytunnel or garage after the first frost has blackened them and let them dry off. This is slightly more risky as the tubers are more prone to rot like this but you can leave them until you have time to excavate them and store them.

This is a time of year when I could easily panic. The bulb sale is still going on and yet the postman keeps bringing me boxes of viola and pansy plug plants which desperately need potting up. Dead-heading takes about a day a week and I have to start planting bulbs and dismantling tired plantings. Oh and the greenhouse is a mess so I need to sort that out before bringing in all the tender plants...

To sea in a marquee, you see?
I spent most of the weekend in the marquee behind the Octagon talking to people about spring bulbs. It's a sturdy metal-framed marquee but it did feel like our moorings were loosening and we were about to sail off across Warwickshire.

Inside the marquee at the annual Whichford Pottery spring bulb sale

Miss Babs packing alliums

This year we have even more varieties than usual - 35 different tulips and 17 hardy narcissi for a start! Of course this means a lot of packing, as we bag them up ourselves. Miss Babs bears the brunt of this but Lynne, Dave and I plus anyone else we can pressgang pitch in too.

During this first weekend we sold out of five different tulips and 10 other bulbs but there are still plenty of goodies left at the moment. It was lovely to see so many happy repeat customers, many raving about the success they had last spring. Several impressively well-organised people arrived with the labels from the bulbs they bought last year so that they could find more of the same, or similar, this year.

I hear you
I have made a list of Frequently Asked Questions and will be tackling some of these in the next few weeks.

Solanum laciniatum drooping in the wind

Shut-eye
As I write the wind is still belting about, bouncing off the walls and testing the endurance of plants and people. It makes me very tense, I find it hard to sleep on a stormy night purely because I am fretting about my plants. It is the large-leafed jungly things which suffer quickly. I have been loving exotic-looking Solanum laciniatum, which I grew from seed this year, but it really doesn't like the wind, which is sucking moisture out of those big leaves faster than the plant can take it up even though I have done my best to keep the pots moist.
I am hoping that the distress won't be terminal, as I want to see what colour the seedpods which follow its purple flowers will be.

Solanum laciniatum looking quite happy

A weather eye
I find that is vital to observe the plants and notice the difference between stressed foliage and happy foliage - if you see signs of stress the likely cure is water but always check the compost with a finger before watering as a plant struggling to cope with snail or vine-weevil damage will not thank you for drowning it. Some plants wilt faster than others, so you can use them as a sort of early warning system which tells you when to drop everything except the hosepipe.

The watering gets tricky at this time of year as it is the wind speeding up transpiration rates rather than the heat and you don't want plantings to be unnecessarily soggy so that plants which are prone to rots and grey mould, such as zonal pelargoniums, keel over. It is worth watering in the mornings so that surfaces and foliage can drain before the cool nights.

Vigilance, everyone! We can keep those summer displays going a bit longer...

Yes, We Have Hippeastrums, We Have HippeastrumsToday-ay-ay.

2011-09-02T03:17:00.000-07:00

The bulbs are here! The bulbs are here! The lorry from Holland arrived at 8o'clock last night (hardly normal office hours, but never mind), and Jane, John and I have checked through the order and stowed the crates away. Last year we decided not to stock Hippeastrums, even though Rene always gets superb quality bulbs for us, because people are too used to buying piddly cheap ones in supermarkets. This year, however, we have been tempted back by H. 'Red Lion', which Rene The Bulbmaster promised us would be massive. He wasn't wrong.

Jane with Hippeastrum 'Red Lion'

The Whichford Pottery Bulb Sale
The sale starts on Friday 9th September and only lasts for a couple of weeks. We have about 30 different tulips, at least 15 narcissus varieties, fritillaries, crocus, alliums, camassia, chionodoxa, scilla, hyacinths, iris, anemones, nectaroscordum and muscari. I will be planting some of each this autumn, as I do every year: the prospect fills me with dread and pleasure in fluctuating proportions.

Big, plump tulip bulbs fresh from The Netherlands

I have a love/hate relationship with our annual bulb sale. I hate the extra non-gardening hours and the fact that it always seems to take up the last warm weekend of the year, but I love seeing and chatting to all our faithful customers. They have learned that it is worth coming in the first couple of days if possible as stocks are limited, especially of novelties and/or rarities. They are also a good source of ideas for new bulbs for future bulb sales - as always, the best way to choose a plant is to talk to someone who has actually grown it, so I shall be making notes as well as giving testimonials and advice about various bulbs.

And I do enjoy planning next spring's displays, somehow this is easier when you actually have those plump packages of potential in front of you.

Noooooooooooo!

Today, the radio cruelly reminded me, is the start of autumn. Well, if it carries on like this for a while I won't find it too upsetting, this has been a warm day bathed in a beautiful soft light and once again I left work late because I had to take yet more pictures.

The stock yard at Whichford Pottery.
All the plants you can see (except the trees at the far end) are growing in pots.
The arching pink spires are red orache, the blue flowers with it are Salvia 'Indigo Spires'

Red orache - Atriplex hortensis var. rubra

Oh stop being such a weed.
The red orache (Atriplex hortensis var. rubra) has finally stopped looking like a giant weed and now is decorative and pinkish. It was pretty as a seedling but tedious in middle age and I cut some of it down as it was making the plantings look drab. I'm glad now that I spared a few plants as it glows in the sunshine and is exactly the dusky pink I was hoping for.
I will pay for it next year in hours spent weeding little purple seedlings from the gravel.

Result!
The two big italianate pots by the entrance arch are looking sumptuous. All the biggest plants are annuals: Ricinus 'New Zealand Purple' and Nicotiana glauca are towering in spite of lousy, windy, cold weather and Cobaea scandens 'Alba' has been guided along the pot arch - I had to use string to stop it from leaping off into neighbouring plantings.

This is what it looked like soon after planting in June, no plants have been added or subtracted since then.

Small but perfectly formed

At the other end of the scale, today's soft but clear light was perfect for inspecting the details of the small succulents dotted about the garden in tiny pots. Our little pots are often literally overlooked because we make such spectacular big pots but a collection of them gives huge pleasure and scope for variation.

This succulent was a nameless cutting given as a gift - can anyone identify it?
The dear little pot is a mini Rose Bowl

Right then, I'm not going to talk too much now - I'll just squeeze in a few more warm pictures - something tells me that soon we are going to be huddling round them, clinging to the memory of summer.

Acalypha pendula in a glazed Buxus Pot

Acalypha pendula's odd little cat tails were glowing this evening against the deep green of a glazed Buxus Pot. I bought this plant a year or two ago as plug-plant bedding and take cuttings in spring as the older plants seem to run out of puff after a year.

Shield bugs cosy in Aeonium arboreum 'Zwartkop'

The Eclipse Pots overflowing with Aeonium arboreum 'Zwartkop', Pelargonium 'Voodoo',
Begonia Non-Stop Mocca and Hordeum jubatum.
The drunken angle is me, not the pots.

And finally - Riv's beloved Staffy, Patrick, has been crowned "Most Handsome Dog" at the Whichford Fete. He hasn't let it go to his head.

Riv and Patrick at break time in the Whichford garden

Bright, Brighter, Dazzling - challenges for garden photographers

2011-08-24T10:20:00.000-07:00

Monday brought warm sun (for about the third time this summer) and the return of Our Great Leader from France. No-one is allowed to travel without bringing back a treat for coffee break - Jim included - and the Pineau de Charentes plus cake went down very well.

Jim pours the Pineau, Adam supervises

Warmer, but not warm enough
The warming effects of sun and Pineau made working in the garden a pleasure and flowers were popping open all over the place. I couldn't help looking my gift horse in the mouth, though: if only we could have had a sunnier summer! The lack of warmth and sunshine has meant that the Brugmansia sanguinea which I grew from seed (last year) and planted in the massive Orange Pot on the well has had a mere three flowers this summer. Its leaves are impressive, and the bright red Pelargonium 'Paul Crampel' with it is working hard but I am disappointed with the lack of red and yellow trumpets.

Giant Orange Pot overflowing with Brugmansia sanguinea, Abutilon megapotamicum, Pelargonium 'Paul Crampel'
Lysimachia nummularia and Oreganum vulgare 'Aureum'

Brugmansia sanguinea flower
But I want more!

The Brugmansia produced those three flowers back in July and has remained stubbornly quiet ever since. I know that these are relatively young plants so I can't expect too much but I couldn't help getting excited when I saw the first buds.

Oops.
This planting still makes a good centrepiece for the courtyard, on Monday evening Jim and I included it in some photos for a possible magazine feature - we spent a long time moving pots around and getting shots set up only to find out later that Jim had had the wrong setting on his camera and all his pictures were BLUE! Ah there's nothing like wasting a rare warm evening to make you curse.

One of my Monday evening snaps. Here's a game for you: how many pots can you see?

Dahlia 'Geerling's Moonlight' aka 'Vlad'

Another flower I welcomed with enthusiasm this summer is Dahlia 'Geerling's Moonlight'. This is a preposterous colour, the high vis jacket of the flower world. As I am only a very basic photographer I find it an extremely difficult plant to photograph.

Call Buffy!

The picture on the right does it no justice; Liz Eddison, our garden photography guru, could probably tell me how to capture it, I'll have to ask her next time she is here for one of her garden photography day courses. I do have a sneaking feeling it is like Dracula, impossible to photograph, leaving a blank space where its crisp petals should be.

I did try sneaking up on it with some garlic for a close-up and the picture below is the best I could get. If you really want to know what it looks like look at the picture of Miss Babs in 8th June's post. Many people will find it unpleasant (the dahlia, not Miss Babs) but I love it for its unapologetic dazzlingness and was so pleased that one tuber survived last winter.

Dahlia 'Geerling's Moonlight'. Looks quite tasteful in this photo.

Ferns and burns
It is usually easy to get an interesting photograph of the Seraphim Pot, whatever the planting. This year I have a fern in it (please don't ask me which one, I'm very bad at ferns) plus seed-grown Cuphea ignea with its incandescent orange cigars, Begonia 'Glowing Embers' and Coleus (or Solenostemon) Giant Exhibition 'Limelight'. I am very smug about this planting, not just because it glows nicely against the dark wood of the pottery building but because of the fiery names. Silly really because most people will be oblivious to them but I must take these little moments of self-satisfaction when I can get them.

Seraphim Pot looking serene even with fiery contents

Cuphea ignea and Solenostemon (or Coleus) Giant Exhibition 'Limelight'

Let's cool things down a little with this detail from a well-weathered large Swag and Acanthus Pot, the leaves are from Pelargonium 'Lady Plymouth'.

Venerable Swag and Acanthus Pot

Bad news: summer is nearly over. Good news: it's nearly bulb time.

And finally - Jane and I have been slaving away checking the details of all the spring bulbs which will soon be arriving at the pottery for our Bulb Sale. In spite of my reluctance to think about the end of summer I do find myself daydreaming about next winter/spring's plant combinations...

April brightness at Whichford Pottery this year

Dingy Digits, Determined Dead-heading and Desirable Dahlias

2011-08-17T17:43:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I returned from a seaside holiday with lovely clean nails. I took a photo just to show that it is possible because for most of the year I have to keep my hands in my pockets at smart occasions.

Of course half an hour after our return they were back to their usual dismal state.

At home I have kind neighbours who don't mind watering my 200-odd pots and at Whichford I have the marvellous Miss Babs, so I don't have that awful sinking feeling on returning from a trip to find sad, wilting plants.

Overflowing just a little

Back to work
Although Miss Babs had also managed to do some dead-heading for me I could see that the plants had taken advantage of my absence to grow rampantly, so my first job was to work through all the pots doing a really thorough dead-head, prune,tidy and prop-up. It is also a good way to get re-acquainted with the garden after any absence.

In some groups the plants had spread so successfully the pots were almost invisible. I removed pots of spent lilies and agapanthus, which gave me a little more space to play with and so the group pictured right has been spread out a little but the large long tom containing Lophospermum erubescens remains invisible under a cascade of reddish-pink blooms.

Chop-chop
It is more important than ever to keep on top of the dead-heading so that all the extravagant late-flowerers don't exhaust themselves long before the cold weather arrives.

Dead-heading petunias

Petunias don't mind if you miss some of their dead-heads, but I find that pinching off as many as possible keeps the plants healthy and stops them from collapsing under their own weight as well as making them look brighter and tidier.

Taking yellowed leaves off Salvia leucantha

It's also worth taking off any yellowing leaves to maximise light and air flow in the hearts of the plants. In my capacity as plant referee I also lop off floppy leaves, sprawling shoots and clinging tendrils which threaten to overwhelm weaker or less shade-tolerant plants.

Dead-heading Dahlia 'Moor Place'. Cut right at the base of the pedicel.
When the new flower on the right has finished cut further back to
where new shoots are emerging

Keeping trim
Dahlias need really thorough dead-heading to keep looking good. I cut the flowers off pom-pom dahlias such as 'Moor Place' as they are fading; they produce lots of flowers and if you wait for the petals to fall the rising tide of new flowers and growth will mean that you can't find all the dead-heads and the plant will stop flowering.

Always cut right at the base of the pedicel (flower stem), back to where a new shoot or another live stem arises. If you leave a stump it will die in an unsightly, straw-like way.

Dahlias have their day
I love dahlias, they flower all summer, peaking just when the days are shortening depressingly. The fashion police are at last letting us enjoy their fabulous colours and varied shapes and sizes without having to excuse our weakness and lack of taste.

Dahlia 'Bishop of Llandaff' in the garden at Whichford pottery

Dahlia 'Candy Eyes' in a Trailing Leaf Pot

'Bishop of Llandaff' is an old favourite, but this year we are trying a few new ones too. 'Candy Eyes' is shorter but also has dark foliage, a great foil to the abundant pink-striped flowers. A really good doer in spite of its twee name.

Rene was right
Rene (our dutch bulbmaster) insisted that I should try Dahlia 'Black Jack' even though it was more expensive than most. I have only recently planted it out because I wanted to see the colour of its flowers first - they took ages to start emerging but ooh they were worth the wait: spiky, dark, dark maroon with a gorgeous bloom on the petals. This one promises to be a favourite, good sturdy stems too.

Dahlia 'Black Jack' - worth waiting for

Cobaea scandens 'Alba' rampaging upwards

So in spite of autumn looming on the horizon I can bury my head in the foliage and pretend that summer will carry on for ever while the plants rampage in every direction.

Lobelia 'Monsoon' ballooning outwards in Pastry pots

Mrs B update:
Her latest brood is out and about and still pestering her for food like gluttonous teenagers. I hope she's going to take a bit of time to recover from all the child-rearing before winter gets here.

Mrs B finds worms for her teenager while Bill (or is it Ben?) looks on

The English Garden

Oh crikey! I nearly forgot to tell you that some of this year's spring plantings feature in the September issue of The English Garden Magazine (on sale now...). There is an article on growing tulips in pots by Sarah Raven which is illustrated with Liz Eddison's photos of my plantings at Whichford, then there are a couple of pages written by me with some tips and recipes for some of the plantings featured. It's a really attractive magazine and we are delighted to feature so prominently - so please do have a look if you can.

Sunshine, seeds, birds and bees

2011-08-08T09:00:00.000-07:00

Proper summer this week! There was an air of exhaustion at the pottery as everyone had worked so hard to make the garden party a success, but the warmth of the sun helped us all to relax and lovely comments from our customers made us think the extra hours of toil worthwhile. We left the bunting up for a little while because it made the place look so jolly.

The entrance to Whichford Pottery's garden with added bunting

Convolvulus sabatius capturing filigree shadows

Sun spots in pots

The sun constantly makes me rediscover certain plants, whether in the crispness of shadow and clarity of colour it brings or in the effects of light filtered through foliage or through translucent petals.

Of course having plants in pots means that you can move them around to find exactly the right place for your lighting effects - and as the plants are raised up you can look closely at, or through, them.

The sun lights up Agrostis nebulosa

Anagallis monelli like stained glass in the evening.

Warm sun has already brought us crowds of butterflies and in the last few days the number of happy bees and hoverflies humming contentedly among the flowers has been really noticeable.

Happy honey bee on Helianthus 'Pacino'

Bumble bee (Bombus terrestris?) on Agastache. It was tempting to try stroking it!

Poisonous aliens
As we stagger into late summer deadheading becomes more and more important to keep the show going, but some plants produce seedheads that are decorative features in themselves. Notoriously poisonous, Ricinus produces spiky alien-looking seed capsules and the blue grey one which I grew from seed this year is looking particularly fine.

Ricinus forming its odd, spiny seed capsules, with the Octagon in the background

Seed collection commences
I allow some plants to go right ahead and form seeds. Cerinthe major 'Purpurascens' is ripening now and hot, dry days are the best for collecting its seed, which normally hangs on like grim death until your back is turned, at which point it falls out and you only notice it when it crunches underfoot.

Looking a bit tired now but producing lots of seed

Shake the seeds into a labelled paper bag .

I shake the ripe seedheads into a labelled paper bag; it is very important to add the year of collection so that you don't end up with a stockpile of seed of indeterminate age and waste time and compost sowing long-dead seed. Store them somewhere cool and dry. It not only saves me money but also gives me a sense of satisfaction and continuity.

Strictly for the birds
Some seeds are attractive to the birds - I didn't realise that Geranium phaeum was an example of this until I saw a male bullfinch early on Thursday morning hovering like a hummingbird in order to extract the seeds. The more it eats the better as far as I'm concerned because this plant can be a bit of a weed.
Sadly I wasn't quick enough to get a picture of the bullfinch but I did have my camera to hand when a chain of young long-tailed tits was flitting about in one of our field maples:

Young long-tailed tit in a field maple at Whichford Pottery

Lilium 'Mona Lisa' in evening sunshine

I'll leave you with a picture of Lilium 'Mona Lisa', which has been spreading its glamorous scent in the warm air this week. We had a staff barbecue on Wednesday night, a lovely warm, relaxing evening. The company, food and drink were delightful but I did have to take five minutes for a few evening garden pictures... We saw some shooting stars later but by that time I had abandoned my camera in order to pay my drink more attention!

Songs for summer

2011-07-29T16:23:00.000-07:00

Good Day Sunshine
We have at last had more than a couple of days of sunshine in one week and - Ta Dah! the sunflowers are out. This is Helianthus 'Pacino'. I think you can work out why it has that name.

Agastache foeniculum 'Liquorice Blue' and Helianthus 'Pacino' blooming in the Whichford stockyard

I am a very disobedient gardener for allowing the plants to hide the pots but I do love to see them thrive and I'm sure all the keen gardeners who visit the pottery feel the same. Regular readers will see from this picture that most of the Nemesia 'Masquerade' has finished flowering and been removed, but the other plants have done so well that there are no noticeable gaps.

Lynne's home-made bunting being put up

...so you'd better get this party started
It has been a very busy week at the pottery, with lots of visitors, including an unexpected coachload from Cologne (but we didn't mind because they were very enthusiastic and keen to shop as well as look!). We welcome coach trips but ask them to book in because we have such limited space. Luckily they didn't clash with any other groups but they had to put up with us all running about and sprucing the place up for the Garden Party this weekend - if you are reading this before the evening of Sunday 31st it isn't too late to join us.

There will be lots going on at the garden party and the flowers have been very co-operative about opening in time for it. If you arrive in the morning you will be greeted by the vivid blues of Commelina tuberosa and Anagallis monelli 'Skylover' but by the late afternoon these will have closed their flowers.

The bright blues of Anagallis monelli 'Skylover'
and Commelina tuberosa at the entrance to
Whichford Pottery's garden

Hordeum jubatum glowing in the Eclipse pots in
the courtyard garden

...and Hordeum jubatum glowing and swishing about on the entrance path to the pottery

The wind that shakes the barley
I try to position certain plants so that they will be backlit by the morning and/or late afternoon sunshine; Hordeum jubatum is a case in point: this decorative barley really glows in slanting light, it comes to life in a breeze and is looking its best at the moment. In the second picture it is in two of our medium sized Swag and Acanthus pots and brushes softly against you as you pass. I love it when the plants in a garden reach out to touch you as you walk along a path.

It has become a bit of a tradition to show you some of the smaller visitors to the pottery, so here's a little gallery:

Holly Blue butterfly on a petunia

I have just reported my latest butterfly count to the Big Butterfly Count, which has been extended to August 7th because of the cold and wet weather at the start of July. The air has been alive with peacock butterflies and their clattery (yes, honestly!) wings.

Just two of the peacock butterflies which make such a racket in the garden

Some day I'll fly away
My absolute favourites this week were the fledgling wrens hopping about in the hedges and then among the pots, I loved their shiny new feathers and their lack of caution. It was easy to follow them as they cheeped and flittered about, luckily Puss-Puss wasn't around.

Baby wren on Rose bowls this Thursday

Brand-new shiny plumage

Show me a garden that's bursting into life
I'll finish with one more picture of the abundance which is late summer in the Whichford Garden, here you can see (amongst others) white giant busy-lizzie Impatiens sodenii, pink Dahlia 'Art Nouveau', pink petunias and pastel mix Laurentia axillaris

Pinks and pastels in the stockyard, including Impatiens sodenii, Dahlia 'Art Nouveau' and Laurentia axillaris

Pottery and Poetry?

2011-07-23T16:14:00.000-07:00

A bit chilly this week, but lots of visitors. Many of them tell me what a lovely job I have - well yes... in the summer at any rate! I haven't finished planting out all the late-flowerers but the dahlias are definitely making their presence felt. My favourite at the moment is 'Swing' from the Melody series.

Dahlia Melody 'Swing' has swung into action. The bright foliage is Amaranthus 'Illumination'

Oi! I was saving that!
Mrs B is on at least her third brood - we can hear them chirping in the hedge. She comes to pick up crumbs at break and lunch time and I'm quite happy to share my lunch. We nearly had a falling-out, however, when I caught her in the act of swallowing the last ripe blueberry from the pot by the greenhouse door. Still, I suppose her need is greater than mine.

Got any more blueberries?

From bad to verse.
I woke up on Wednesday with rhyming couplets in my head, so grabbed a notebook and wrote this down to amuse the rest of the team at our staff meeting. I'm quite proud of it really, so I'll inflict it on you now. It is best read aloud at a brisk pace - but you may get some funny looks if you do so...

Whichford Pots - naturally the best!

Whichford Pottery - with love to the whole crazy, creative team.

Lily Pot with Lilium 'El Grado'

We make:

Big pots, small pots,

Tall pots and wall pots.

Pots for bulbs and pots for lilies,

Some are straight and some are frillies.

Pots with squirrels, pots with bees,

Pots for orchids and for trees,

Pots with swags italianate,

All stamped with our name and date.

Pots for Hidcote, pots for Kew -

We can make them just for you!

Pots adorned with basket weave,

More pots than you can believe.
Jars and barrels, bowls and urns,
Pots for hostas, lemons, ferns,
Square or oval, slim or squat,
Spinning Jenny, Pastry Pot;

Massive pots by Mr Keeling,

New designs we're just revealing.

Glazed pots for your indoor plants,
Inscribed pots for aged aunts,

Pots which mark a special date

Inscribed pot

Or pot games for your village fete.

Elephants and Green Man faces,

Pots for grand and modest places,

Big black pots with gilded crests -

Just the job to impress guests.

Strawberry pots and rhubarb forcers,

Cane tops, pot feet, snail traps, saucers...

Whether big or whether tiny,

Whether matt or whether shiny,

Each unique and all hand-made

In courtyard garden all displayed

At Whichford - such a pretty spot -

You will find your perfect pot!

It is the start of the silly season, after all.

The opening of the restored Plant Shelter at Hidcote Manor Garden last year,
with pots made specially by Whichford. You may have seen it on the television recently.

Part of our display at Chelsea Flower Show in 2008, showing off some of our ENORMOUS pots.
The gold is real gold leaf, applied by hand. Hilary has been trained to do this and the effect is stunning.

Two of Lynda's elephants, fresh from the kiln and ready to be packed by John and Dave
for delivery to their new home. Each one is different.

Tiny basket pot with handles and Echeveria.

See for yourselves
Don't worry, I'm not going to make a habit of blogging in verse, I just thought it was about time someone celebrated the diversity of the Whichford product. The range mentioned in this little ditty is only the tip of the iceberg - you really do have to visit to appreciate the creativity that goes on here - our makers are an amazingly skilled (and noisy) bunch. If you visit during the working week you can meet them and see them at work.
Some of the makers will also be working next weekend at our Summer Garden Party. I won't be there because I shall be at a 90th birthday party (no, not mine) but I shall endeavour to have the Pottery garden and stockyard stuffed to the gunnels with planting ideas for you.

Right, no more waxing lyrical, because I want my blog to be an inspiration, not an advert. Next week normal service will be resumed, meanwhile I leave you with moth of the week:

Silver Y moth on a Zinnia in the Whichford garden

Taking the rough with the smooth

2011-07-16T07:51:00.000-07:00

I have been waiting for rain, so that I don't have to waste productive gardening time writing the blog, but the phrase "Be careful what you wish for" springs to mind. As I write rain is hammering on the roof and my elder son is on his way to the Isle of Skye for his Duke of Edinburgh Gold expedition - with rain, rain and more rain forecast for north-west Scotland. Sorry lads!

I must look on the bright side - at least the outdoor plants probably won't need watering this weekend.

Hostas, ivy, hydrangeas and box - shades of green in a selection of Whichford pots

Ever vigilant
Rain can lull you into a false sense of security: pots close to buildings (such as those above, which are on the northern side of the Octagon) may not receive much water, so we will still have to check them carefully even if it carries on raining.

The last week or so has been mainly warm and quite sunny, so flowers and growth have been plentiful, the plantings are developing nicely. The alpines are fighting it out between themselves, growing far too lushly and crowdedly for a purist no doubt, but delightful nevertheless.

A happy jumble of alpines in a Whichford Orange Pot

Contentment in containers

Succulents in the Kew Gardens pots

The succulents I planted last week are already looking happier - they always respond surprisingly quickly to fresh compost and lighter conditions than those found in our rather grubby and shaded greenhouse.

Along the entrance path the flowers of salmon pink pelargoniums, blue lobelia, white begonia and bacopa are at last beginning to show in noticeable numbers.

One of a pair of Pastry Pots by the entrance path
planted with a box ball surrounded by zonal
pelargoniums, Lobelia 'Monsoon' and
Begonia 'Non-stop White'

By the entrance arch on the path I was glad to see that one of my all-time favourite flowers, Anagallis monelli 'Skylover' has begun to produce its intense blue blooms

Anagallis monelli 'Skylover' begins to flower by the entrance to Whichford Pottery

Inconsiderate parking

Agapanthus add impact

I have parked rich blue Agapanthus (happiest by themselves rather than in mixed plantings) in this group - there is only just room for them either side of the path but they look so gorgeous and enjoy the open position so much that even though they encroach on the walkway I am keen to keep them there while they flower. I'll replace them with pots of salvias, fuchsias and dahlias when they have finished.

Mixed plantings flourish in large Italianate pots, accompanied by
Agapanthus in Icicle Pots

Striving for effect

In our changeable and changing climate I try not to rely purely on fleeting flower colour for visual satisfaction. Foliage colour is much more long-lasting and reliable. In the large italianate pots which flank the entrance arch maroon Ricinus 'New Zealand Purple' and blue-grey Nicotiana glauca are sprouting upwards and contrasting dramatically with each other.

So consideration of colour, height and spread are all vital in plant choice.

Texture is also important. It's a funny thing, you aren't always conscious of it but if you analyse a plant combination that you find pleasing you will find that texture plays a major part.

Crinkly Salvia corrugata contrasts with smooth Nicotiana glauca

Crunchy vs fluffy vs smooth
I know I haven't photographed this brilliantly but if you bear with me and look closely at this photograph you will see that the creamy-smooth leaves of Nicotiana glauca and Salvia corrugata (there are clues in the names) have a similar colour but sharply contrasting texture. Salvia corrugata is a miserly producer of dark blue flowers and I grow it mainly for its crinkly foliage which has a tawny indumentum (covering of fine hairs) on the underside.

The textural effect can be in individual leaves or it can be the character of a whole plant. There are plants I think of as smooth (eg Nicotiana glauca), fluffy (Kochia trichophylla), crunchy (Pelargonium sidoides), furry (Cineraria maritima), shiny/metallic (Convolvulus cneorum) or spiky (Cordyline, Phormium).

It may seem eccentric to give these plants texture personalities - but it all helps in effective plant choice. That's my excuse anyway.

Fluffy Kochia trichophylla and Nemesia 'St George'
anchored by smooth Eucomis bicolor foliage
(with the added bonus of crunchy Eucomis flowers)

Hands on
The visual effect usually tallies with the tactile sensation, but not always so. Keen gardeners are often to be seen feeling the foliage like a dressmaker assessing fabric - something I encourage but with the proviso that you wash your hands afterwards! It is worth encouraging children to do the same with plants you know to be safe - and even then it is worth teaching them not to put their hands in their mouths afterwards and to develop the habit of washing hands after playing in the garden. A surprising number of common garden plants can cause allergic reactions, especially in strong sunshine.

Metallic Convolvulus cneorum with soft, furry
Cineraria maritima 'Cirrus'. Both feel soft and velvety.

Pelargonium sidoides - definitely a crunchy plant.

Many succulents have a distinctly rubbery look about them - this fat smoothness contrasts well with the roughness of terracotta, which is why succulents look so much better in real terracotta than in terracotta-coloured plastic.

Echeveria secunda var. glauca - shown off so much better in Whichford terracotta!

And finally, if the rain lets up I hope all my British readers are going to take part in The Big Butterfly Count, which starts today (July 16th) and carries on until the end of the month. Butterflies are an important indicator of the state of health of our ecosystems so the more data that can be compiled the better. What could be better than taking a few minutes sitting in the sunshine and watching the butterflies flutter by?

Male Gatekeeper basking on the long grass in the walnut field at Whichford Pottery on Monday this week

Don't panic, prioritise!

2011-07-06T14:49:00.000-07:00

New flowers are emerging all the time. Here is the chocolate-scented Cosmos atrosanguineus, its dark flowers are easily overlooked but so neat and beautiful when you do notice them - and such an odd fragrance!

Cosmos atrosanguineus - can you smell chocolate?

And here is Ipomoea purpurea 'Grandpa Ott'; he has taken a while to get going in this cool and generally dull summer but at last he is beginning to show his true colours, along with the good old petunias which aren't quite so pernickety.

Ipomoea purpurea Grandpa Ott with Petunia 'Easy Wave' and Fuchsia 'Climbing Lady Boothby'

Social Climbers

Time will tell whether I have been foolish to allow Grandpa to climb up Aeonium arboreum 'Zwartkop'. Fuchsia 'Climbing Lady Boothby' is in the same pot. She isn't flowering yet, I think she is spending all her energy competing for height with Grandpa. We'll soon see whether Grandpa and Her Ladyship manage to come to an amicable arrangement.

The picture on the right gives an idea of just how much the plantings in front of the Octagon are filling out - compare them to the posts on 8 June or even 1 June (planting in filthy weather). I shall be told off for letting the plants hide the pots, so there's another angle on the same collection below. The large pot is a relatively new design, the Shakespeare Planter. I have to say that this is a really useful pot, sturdy, capacious and with a chunky rim and banding which contrast nicely with frothy plants.

Shakespeare Planter in front of the Octagon

Circus skills

It's at this time of year that I really feel like I am spinning plates. I have planted or re-planted about 250-odd pots this summer and still I have more to go. But while I plant out the new stuff I have to maintain the recently planted, and at the moment just dead-heading the displays takes at least half a day a week, especially in sunny and showery weather. Meanwhile plants in the greenhouse, polytunnel and standing-out area are pleading with me to get their feet into new compost. I must keep calm and carry on! I really want the displays to be burgeoning by the time of the Summer Garden Party at the end of this month.

Fleshing out
Talking of looking succulent, yesterday I planted a whole display of succulents in the Kew Collection of pots. This eminently practical collection of mostly quite small pots shows off part of my extensive but for the most part unnamed collection of succulents rather well, I think.

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Collection, filled with succulents

These plants will take a LOT of neglect but they were looking a bit sad in last year's pots in the greenhouse so I was glad to have the chance to pot them on. They will soon start to flesh out, and until they do I have used pebbles and grit in toning or contrasting colours to dress the compost. This has the added advantage of keeping the drainage sharp around the necks of the succulents.

A mulch of pebbles complements Aeonium decorum 'Sunburst' and what I think is Sedum pachyphytum

Pest of the Week

No, I'm not talking about the pesky throwers who heckle me from the pottery windows when I'm gardening. This week the prize for most entertaining pest goes to the Large Rose Sawfly caterpillars. Babs spotted them on the rose by the pottery wall which I featured last week. They look like little formation dancers as they munch their way through the rose leaves. I was pruning that rose this week as it needs to be kept fairly tight against the wall so that the customers don't get spiked while selecting their pots, so most of the caterpillars have gone to the bonfire. I shall keep an eye on the survivors and remove more if the damage threatens to become extensive. I expect the birds will pick off most of them.

Large Rose Sawfly on Francis E Lester

By the way, a Japanese friend (and expert on many gardening matters) thinks the rose is 'Francis E. Lester' and after looking it up in several places I'm inclined to agree with her.

Feathered Friend
On Monday I pulled out a large patch of Phuopsis stylosa which was marching across the path, much to the delight of one of our resident dunnocks. This neat little brown and grey bird scuttled about in its usual mouse-like way, gathering up the tiny insects which had been exposed. I am very fond of our dunnocks: like the blackbirds and robins, they follow our activities very closely but much more discreetly, and are very happy when John gets a new delivery of straw for the packing shed. They usually nest somewhere in the garden, sometimes in the box topiary, and have a surprisingly sweet song.

Scuttling dunnock plus weeds - notice that some of them are cowslips, I scatter their seed deliberately every year.

In the stockyard this week - note the self-seeded Euphorbia.
The pot on the left is a Jekyll pot from the RHS Collection.

Tolerance - or knowing when you're beaten...

You will notice from this picture and others that we tolerate many weeds and self-seeders in the cracks of the path. This is partly because we would have to spray on a regular basis to keep the paths "clean" and I prefer to avoid using weedkillers and pesticides. It is also because we like the informal look of the greenery on the paths. I try to pull out as many dandelions, thistles and plantains as possible but even this is a losing battle as we are almost surrounded by fields and rough grassland and verges from which seed is brought by wind and feet. Besides, if you don't fuss too much about obliterating weeds you get the bonus of self-seeded scabious, Erigeron karvinskianus, Welsh poppies and many other delights.

I'm leaving you for now because I need a decent night's sleep before another day of planting (but not weeding). Back with more ramblings next week...