Time to get a move on.

Crocus 'Prins Claus' in the Courtyard Garden

More and more bulbs are brightening up our lives as we rapidly slide towards the most hectic part of the year. My new compost has arrived, so have all my seeds and next week I shall be seed sowing in earnest.

So far I have sown the sweet peas, and a few odds and ends such as Cerinthe major 'Purpurascens', saved in paper bags from last year. I have also used up a few packets which were opened last year - they may work or they may be dead, in which case I will still have plenty of time to grow alternatives.

I have to resist the temptation to sow too many seeds early or I will run out of space in the greenhouse and polytunnel when the weather is still too cold to harden young plants off. But those pristine new packets do look exciting!

My glamorous assistant

As the season gathers momentum I start asking for more help. I am allowed to have Barbara (Miss Babs) once a week now. If you have been here you may have met her because she also decorates pots, helps customers, knows where everything is and stops the staff room from turning into a pigsty. She is so omnipresent you might think she is one of identical triplets. Babs is a very big help, she works so hard and doesn't moan when I give her mucky, repetitive jobs either. Most importantly she has green fingers and she makes me laugh a lot.

Miss Babs potting up lilies.

This week Miss Babs hurtled about sorting out the lilies. We have about a dozen pots left over from last year; normally I would completely repot these during the dormant period. This year, however, I am gambling with just replacing the compost above the bulbs and adding some slow release fertiliser. We'll see. It saves on labour time and compost but it may mean that some of the bulbs don't re-flower so well and we may get more lily beetle and vine weevil. She also planted about 10 pots of fresh lilies using bulbs from December's mail order offer: El Grado is a deep reddish pink about 15" tall and Mona Lisa is a scented beauty 24" tall with pink speckled flowers, each petal having a darker pink central stripe.

Ideal homes for lilies.
We make a lot of Lily pots here. If you look at the range you will see that they are relatively tall, narrow pots. This is partly for aesthetic reasons - a plant which naturally is tall and flowers at the top looks more in proportion in a tall pot. A narrow pot which does not flare too much at the top also means that there is little bare compost around the stems.

L. 'Fire King' in a Floral Tom last summer.

There are more important reasons for choosing a tallish pot: lily bulbs like to have about 3 or 4 inches of compost above them and they need at least 3 or 4 inches below them to give their roots room to spread and feed. Many produce roots from their stems too, so deep planting helps them to anchor themselves.

Horticulture in the bath
The weirdest reason for choosing a tall, narrow pot is that the drainage is sharper than in a short, fat one. I am still looking for a physicist who can explain this to me in layman's terms but I would urge you to play in the bath with a rectangular sponge and you'll see what I mean. Anyway, lilies hate to sit in winter wet, so any Whichford pot is good, but a tall, narrow one is best.

Going anywhere nice for your holidays?
This week Tom Negus the tree surgeon came to do some work for us. We have a lot of trees and some were beginning to take more than their fair share of the light and crowd some of the buildings. Tom's been very busy since the awful winter but luckily we managed to get him in before the birds start nesting. He has crown-lifted the oaks near the greenhouse and thinned the large field maples which punctuate the hedges. Like any good hair cut the change in shape and weight has an instantly rejuvenating effect.



Tom and one of the field maples.


Finding it just a little nerve-wracking watching Tom remove large branches above my tatty but beloved greenhouse I wander off to look at the plantings. Every time I time I turn my back on them a few more crocuses pop up. The fat shoots of Fritillaria persica are emerging now... it's all very exciting but I have to stop wallowing in anticipation and go and do some real work!

Shoots, snouts, spots, stripes and pots.



March 2010. This year Iris 'Harmony' has nearly finished flowering in late February.

That's odd. I've just been looking at last year's photographs and it seems that we are about two weeks ahead in terms of things popping out of the soil.  Bulbs in plantings more than a year old often emerge faster than in this season's plantings but is this global warming? I had assumed that the cold this winter was so drastic the plants would keep their heads down but I suppose last year's cold snap was later, so the plants hung on in their bunkers for a bit longer in 2010. 2008 was comparable to this year I think, but my photographic record shows that there was a hard frost in early March, so we can't get too excited yet.

Not sprung yet?

Oh but doesn't it make you skip about and gleefully rub your hands when you see all those big fat shoots coming up? As soon as I see the snouts of the tulips emerge I know that spring is not far off.

There is a surprising amount of colour in tulip shoots, some are tinged with russet, some glaucous green, others edged with pink or marbled with maroon.

It is worth considering the leaf colour as well as the flowers of tulips when planting - if you can echo these colours in the evergreen plants that are with them then the end of winter can provide some satisfying combinations. Sometimes it happens all by itself, serendipity is a big factor in successful gardening. The trick is to observe it and repeat the effect another year.

Putting on my anorak

Am I getting a bit geeky? At this time of year I can be seen pottering around the garden apparently peering at nothing - some people might assume I'm looking for pixies but really I am looking at details. Fine details drive the galanthophiles to wear out the knees on their trousers looking at the different green markings on snowdrops and the hellebore enthusiasts to slip discs as they peer into the latest picotee.

I. 'Katherine Hodgkin'

We are all hungry for visual entertainment after the greyness of a British winter. In pots and containers the little details such as the markings on Iris 'Katherine Hodgkin' and the flushes of colour on emerging foliage are so important at this time of year: they are easier to see than in the chaos of summer, they feed our appetite for colour and if we take time to look at least every few days we can see that they are changing really rapidly, a sure sign that we are not going to be stuck in winter gloom forever.

Pile 'em high

Once again this is where pots come to the rescue. It is so easy to forget that pots can be moved! As soon as little bulbs and iris are out you don't have to leave them on the ground, you can pick them up and put them on your windowsill or on a wall so that you can study them more closely or give them a sniff.



This one I did plan.

Don't be afraid to put pots on pots; it works best if you set the small pot in the big pot when you do the original planting, a small, narrow pot can be sunk into the compost for extra stability and moisture retention, when filled with similar plants to the main planting it gives extra height and impact. I planted the one pictured right during the talk I did in November and it's looking promising. 

You can, however, use small or medium-sized pots to fill the gaps left in big pots by shrubs that didn't survive the snow.This week I gave up on a bald Pittosporum garnettii and cut it flush with the surface of the compost (digging it out would risk damaging the bulbs coming up around it). Then I filled a narrow-based pot with spare Helleborus foetidus, which I had previously weeded out of the gravel, and set it in the gap, making sure that it was well wedged in and unable to fall down. It looks almost like I planned it that way...



A cheapo planting amid the green shoots of recovery

Here Come the Girls

Spring is coming! If you listen closely you can hear it rumbling. Bulbs are popping up everywhere: Iris 'Harmony' is first out in the pots this year, I. 'Katherine Hodgkin' is hot on her heels, Crocus 'Gypsy Girl' is beginning to unfurl,  C. 'Blue Pearl' and 'Cream Beauty' are still getting dressed but will be out soon.

Iris 'Harmony'

It always seems a shame to leave things flowering in the depths of a wintry garden, you may only see them once a week. If you have spares of any little bulbs it may be worth experimenting with hoicking a few out and putting them in a pot by the door.
Snowdrops are ideal for this - if planted as dormant bulbs in the autumn they struggle to establish as they don't like to be dried out; they are happier being moved 'in the green', ie while the leaves are up. Normal procedure is to move snowdrops after they have flowered but I find they don't mind being moved in flower or bud. A few may get damaged and flop over, but if you dig up a small clump carefully and treat it as a single plant they should be fine.

Snowdropping hints

He won't notice...

If you are not lucky enough to have spare clumps of snowdrops it is worth inviting yourself round to a friend's house for coffee (try taking a cake) and admiring his or her snowdrops wistfully. If they don't take the hint just go right ahead and ask for a clump - genuine gardeners are usually happy to share plants. But don't even think about taking them from the wild or without the landowner's permission. Thursday's mild but slightly rainy weather provided the perfect conditions for moving plants about, so I decided to make a group of plantings using snowdrops pilfered from Jim's garden. Yes, all right, I know what I just said about permission.

I told you they'd come in handy one day

I decided to do  a vaguely naturalistic planting reminiscent of woodland margins. Does that sound pretentious enough? Actually I just thought I could do something quite pretty without spending ANY money on plants. This is possible because I belong to the Untidy Hoarder school of gardening and always pot up little seedlings and odds and ends and leave them cluttering up the area by the polytunnel.

So here's the recipe for a snowdrop arrangement for a shady doorway:

1280 Geranium Pot: Hazel seedling or similar little deciduous tree, 2 clumps snowdrops, Sarcoccoca confusa, Helleborus niger, Vinca minor, Corydalis cheilanthifolia.

Marigold Pot: Ribes sanguineum, 2 Corydalis cheilanthifolia, Helleborus niger, 1 clump snowdrops, small Hart's tongue fern (Asplenium scolopendrium)

1205 Small plain pot: 1 clump snowdrops, 3 little fern seedlings (Athyrium filix-femina? I'm not good at naming ferns)

Waste not, want not
The hazel, hellebore, ferns and corydalis were all stray seedlings. The corydalis will produce little pale yellow flowers from now until May and the ferny foliage will puff up to make a nice dome. My sarcococca is a bit yellow and straggly because it has been stuck in a little plastic pot for too long but it'll soon recover - this evergreen shrub (also known as Christmas Box) has little white flowers in Jan/Feb with a lovely fragrance followed by berries which turn red then black. The vinca was living in a pot with the hellebore - I think it's a white one. The Ribes is a white form struck from cuttings, it will get too big for this pot but will be easy to transplant when it does. The snowdrops and ferns from the smallest pot should be transplanted or potted on after the snowdrops have flowered next year.

All of these plants enjoy a relatively shady location. They will be fine in the largest two pots for at least one year, probably for two or three years. If they start to get overcrowded (the vinca will root about and the corydalis will have babies) just take something out and fill the gaps with fresh compost. I added some slow release fertiliser to the compost - a little more can be added each year. Eventually the plants can be recycled into other plantings, released into the garden or potted up into a bigger pot.

Adding some moss

The natural look

To make the plantings look more natural and established I added some moss which I scraped off some old planks near the compost heap - another good reason not to tidy up too much! Like other plants, moss should not be collected from the wild. At home I find that the blackbirds knock plenty off my roof in early spring and I add it to many semi-permanent plantings because I prefer it to bare compost.

Normally I would plant the pots in their final location to avoid lifting them when full but as it was raining I stayed in the polytunnel then wheeled them to the doorway of the staff room and watered everything in. The backdrop (messy ivy) isn't ideal but hopefully as the leaves expand and white and yellow flowers wax and wane, the seasonal variety will provide interest to people passing through the door. I chose fairly plain and simple pots of similar shapes so that there was not too much distraction from the detail of the plantings. In summer the plantings will be very quiet and green - but this is no bad thing amongst the riotous colours

Jeanette's birthday - cake and snowdrops in the staff room

Small pots of snowdrops can be brought indoors for a while - they have a surprisingly strong honey fragrance. The bulbs can  be planted out after flowering. At break time I came in out of the rain with one clump and gave it a temporary home on the tea table to help celebrate Jeanette's birthday - if you ask me all good days should include cake!

A bad start followed by renewed inspiration

Expletive deleted
Don't you just love Monday mornings? This week I staggered out of the car into the iciness of the pottery car park, gathering up my baggage (extra fleeces, lunch box, bag of notebooks and seed catalogues, camera bag) and what did I drop on the rock-hard ground? My camera, of course. As I had stopped on the way to work to take interesting misty frost pictures of the valley it had its big lens attached and the fall wrenched the connecting ring off the body of the camera. So no fresh pictures this week, I'm afraid, but I do have a good archive.

Succulents safe from frost in the greenhouse last week

Could you just...

I was very glum about my camera, and the continuation of the freezing weather really didn't help my mood but at the pottery there is always someone who can make you laugh. I am lucky that if I need company I can pop indoors. There have been plenty of excuses for this recently: Annabelle, Emma and Sue have been working hard on the new catalogue and they occasionally ask me for a bit of verbiage about ways to use the pots. Jim has been working on the catalogue and on plans for a show garden in Japan - so when he came into the office we had a lively discussion about his colour ideas for the planting of it and somehow I ended up agreeing to give him a list of possible plants. He is maddeningly good at getting you to agree to things without seeming to ask. To his credit, however, he does put up with a lot of 'healthy disrespect' from his staff - and gives as good as he gets of course.

Thinking ahead 



Happy succulents outside last summer

I think I have just about planned the summer displays. First I go into a sort of trance and think about how it looked last year, then I visualize colours and shapes which will hopefully give different effects in the various areas this year. It may look to the untutored eye like I am just sitting around drinking coffee but in reality the little cogs are going whir-whir. I will be re-using a lot of plants, such as my rather magnificent collection of succulents and other tender perennials which I keep from year to year (Ice Age permitting). The challenge therefore is to make the same place look different from year to year by changing the pot combinations, using old plants in different ways and places but keeping them happy by putting sun lovers facing south and west and keeping the shade lovers close to the northern side of the pottery.

 A sucker for a pretty picture

Ricinus 'NZ Purple' towers in the foreground

The seed catalogues are my secret weapon. Gaudy pictures of novelties catch my eye, and I have to include some of them, especially if I think they may annoy Jim (he has a thing about Busy Lizzies...).  But I'll try anything from humble nasturtiums and marigolds to exciting exotics like Solanum quitoense and Leonotis nepetifolia; some of the experimental choices become regulars and I'll order them year after year.

L. 'Riviera Sky Blue' with Felicia and pelargoniums

Lobelia 'Riviera Sky Blue' is a case in point because it has such a lovely clear colour - I just have to think of something else to combine it with. Another regular, Hordeum jubatum, adds some elegant flowing lines in late summer, best backlit by morning or evening sun; Ricinus 'New Zealand Purple' is spectacular in any large pot and a great foil for orange, red, blue, pink... There are so many great plants that are easy to grow from seed.

Hordeum jubatum in the foreground

Three go mad in Hampshire
On Wednesday Richard, Maggie and I visited Hillier's Nursery near Winchester. We have started selling Hillier plants at the pottery and were invited to an open day to see exciting new collections of plants for spring. The site is enormous (about 50 acres I think), huge amounts of glass, tunnels and open areas for a wide range of plants. It was fascinating to see  plant production on such a scale, although Richard was disappointed not to see the Edward Scissorhands pruning machine in action. MD Andy McIndoe and director Kevin Hobbs showed us the new plants with pride and enthusiasm - it was good to see that the people in charge still obviously know and love the plants they are dealing with at the same time as having an eye for their commercial value. I'll have to place an order soon, so that there will be plenty of stock for when our customers start to come out of hibernation and visit the pottery in greater numbers - more tricky decisions!

Hillier Hellebore Hybridising
Kevin kindly took us to see other parts of the Hillier site and my favourite stop was at an out-of-the-way polytunnel which houses Alan Postill and his hellebores. Alan has been propagating plants since he was a teenager and still obviously loves what he does: flitting from row to row, tilting the chin of an anemone-flowered break here, caressing a fine yellow there, he showed us promising new strains with flowers carefully hand-pollinated, labelled and covered with little muslin bags. Odd corners held motley collections of plants from far-flung parts of the world brought back by Roy Lancaster and John Hillier for propagation by Alan, as Kevin said, "Give him a pencil and he'll get it to root". There's an article about Alan and his work in this month's edition of Gardens Illustrated (I really wished I had my camera with me but this article has some lovely photos). That is one of the things I love best about horticulture: every now and then you get to meet the unassuming proper enthusiasts who form the backbone of the trade and are generous in sharing their enthusiasm.

Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!

Still too blooming cold

Gardening in my sleep.
On Tuesday morning I woke up worrying about the plants in the polytunnel. As my memory and organisational skills have deteriorated frighteningly this seems as good a way as any of deciding what to do on a particular day - letting my unconscious mind sort out the priorities. I hadn't been in there for a couple of weeks and I hadn't looked under the fleece for almost two months so my heart was in my mouth when I ventured in. It didn't look promising. I could see shoots covered in fuzzy grey mould peeping out all over the place. 

The Polytunnel of Doom
First I checked the max/min thermometer. So even in the last fortnight the temperature in the polytunnel has sunk to -7C. Hmmm. Not surprising then that after this and the Christmas Ice Age the few 'spare' pelargoniums I had left there were well and truly dead. A few large cannas and hedychiums that I couldn't fit into the greenhouse had dead foliage but their roots still felt quite firm, so they may live to fight another day. A large Salvia leucantha (one of the most tender salvias I keep) was definitely dead but others such as S.'Indigo Spires' were still showing signs of life. Cordylines fine, Echium pininana OK (hurray), Ensete ventricosum dead (boo), Agapanthus and Nerines seem fine too. Phew. But the damp atmosphere under the fleece coverings had really encouraged rampant grey mould so I decided to risk leaving them off until really low temperatures are forecast.

As it was quite mild that day I kept the door open and removed every bit of mouldy foliage, threw out the corpses, tidied the rows and swept the floor, clearing out the far corner where field mice had had a field day eating field maple seeds. The heap of seed wings was so big I had visions of gigantic roly-poly mice staggering around the polytunnel giggling. Or was that the effect of breathing in too many mould spores?

Wrong plant, wrong place. Fail.

Fail and Epic Fail
I know that in a previous episode I have boasted about the high survival rate in the outdoor pots. This is still true but I did gamble with a few things this year: The phormium in the big pot on top of the well was very exposed to the elements and is looking moribund. I now regret using such a large specimen (which had been ripped from another pot in the summer of 2010) of dubious health and hardiness in such a prominent position. To borrow the terminology of my sons and their friends this is a 'fail'.

Epic Fail

By the same token the large Wisley Gardener's Pot containing an Astelia chathamica 'Silver Spear' by the office door really should have been brought indoors. This is an 'Epic Fail'. Even though I am pretty sure it is dead and it looks absolutely awful I'm going to wait a bit longer before I remove the dead leaves and dig up the plant because You Never Know. January and February for certain plants is when life hangs by a thread and you can save a plant by resisting the temptation to poke about in its innards. Equally you can finish a struggling plant off by pruning off the dead-looking bits, thus leaving the inner bits, which were just about surviving, without any protection - Hebe and Pittosporum are both in the "Don't touch until you're absolutely sure it's dead" category.

Pittosporum - may still be OK...

But I'm not dead yet!
If you really want to know if a shrub is dead you can try gently scraping the bark with a fingernail - if there is a green layer under the brown it is still alive. Even if you see no green some shrubs are good at sprouting from very low down so my advice to concerned gardeners is if in doubt leave it alone for a bit. I find it hard to follow my own advice because I hate to see a sad plant on display at work. Sometimes I lose patience and hoick it out - I did that this week with the rosemary hedge behind the garden bench. It always had annoying gaps in it because the plants in the flowerbed behind lean on it in the summer and it was looking bruised after the snow so I had fun digging it out and then asking my colleagues if they could spot the difference - well you have to make your own entertainment sometimes...

Even if horticultural death and destruction surround you just look at the brave little bulb shoots and take heart. Narcissi are beginning to show themselves now, Rene (our bulb expert from the Netherlands) gave us a collection of historical Narcissi and I'm really looking forward to seeing them in flower. I put small pebbles over them to keep those fat mice out and it seems to have worked. Spring is on its way!

Here they come

Brightening up considerably.

A little ray of sunshine.

Viola 'Jester Mix' under box

Sunshine! Not warm sunshine, but sunshine nevertheless. When I got home on Tuesday my face was tingling from the UV. It made the small amounts of colour on show in the displays sing out but sadly it didn't help my chilblains.
I got some rose pruning done during the short mild spell because when you are standing still, snipping away and tying stems in with ungloved fingers you can get deeply cold.

On Tuesday, when the clear skies made the temperature drop sharply I was foolishly still up my ladder and beginning to lose the will to live (or certainly to garden) when Lynne came to my rescue with a cup of coffee which thawed me enough to finish tying in Climbing Lady Hillingdon around the staff room door. Little acts of kindness like that can make your day.

Relaxed working conditions

One advantage of working by myself most of the time is that I can change my activities at the last minute to suit the weather. If it is raining I try to work in the greenhouse at least for the morning so that I'm not soggy all day, if it is freezing I can also retreat to a certain extent. I still haven't finished my seed orders so if there is no thaw today I shall go into the pottery where the kilns and the chat will warm me up. Visitors to the pottery often remark on the friendly atmosphere here - I think this is mainly due to the humorous, easy-going collection of people we have. As in any work place there are grumbles here and there but generally we get along pretty well and I think it shows - especially when the windows are open in the summer and Hilary's infectious laugh drifts for miles across the countryside.



Carex and pansies in a small Salamander pot



At breaktime even in freezing weather the makers are to be found clustered like hibernating ladybirds in these patches of sun - it is a bit dark in the pottery, partly because of the clay spattered on the windows, so they have to keep their vitamin D levels up somehow.

Detailed analysis

Detail on a Jim's Tom





As soon as the low winter sunshine hits the garden you begin to appreciate the small details both in plant material and on the pots. Intricate veining and cold-induced red flushes on leaves suddenly become more noticeable, as do the decorative details on the pots. The courtyard garden is on the northern side of the main pottery building, so in the depths of winter a direct ray of sunshine is a rare treat but now the days are lengthening and the sun getting higher in the sky new things are being illuminated every day.

Scratting about in the garden

Pushing her luck

The birds appreciate it too: Dominique's hens have been venturing out to help me when I'm "scratting about" (as Babs puts it). I won't be quite so welcoming to the hens once there are fragile flowers about. Luckily these birds are easy to catch and remove; we used to have a cockerel which would devastate  the garden given half a chance and ran about hysterically when he saw me coming to take him away. He fattened a fox a while ago and I bet he didn't go quietly.



Mrs B shadowing me on Tuesday



Mrs B is fine and has also been taking part in the scratting. I'm grateful for this help because I'm sure the bird life is instrumental in keeping the vine weevil population down.



Lonicera fragrantissima

Quel est cet odeur ...

So as I move round the garden I follow the sun as much as possible, glad of the little warmth it gives. That warmth is enough to release the fragrance of the large Lonicera fragrantissima in the corner and after Jim takes a sprig of it into his studio I am asked by several people where the lovely smell comes from - hard to believe it is that large, ungainly shrub but that gorgeous perfume is the only reason I tolerate its sprawling, untidy presence in the border. A little untidiness isn't a bad thing in a garden - that's my excuse anyway.

Riding one of my hobby horses AND SHOUTING A LOT.

 

Every year I am surprised by how the plantings stand up to the weather. This winter they have been frozen, covered in snow for weeks and now they are being steadily rained on.  Now I have cleared the dead foliage away from the displays I can see that very few plants (except for a few I knew were not exactly hardy) have given up the ghost so far. The answer is good drainage.

Plantings outside the Octagon this week

Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?
Do you ever get that thing when you say something in a group conversation and no-one seems to hear you, then a couple of minutes later someone says exactly the same thing and everyone says "Oh yes, good point, how clever!"? Is it just me? For about ten years I have been telling everyone who'll listen that you don't need to put a thick layer of crocks at the bottom of the pot you are planting. I have been tempted to stop people in garden centres and lecture them. Perhaps I should get a sandwich board and walk up and down Main Avenue at Chelsea: "DON'T BOTHER WITH A LAYER OF CROCKS, IT DOESN'T IMPROVE DRAINAGE AND WHEN YOU REPOT IT WRECKS THE ROOTS OF YOUR PLANTS AND MAKES AN ALMIGHTY MESS! By the way, the end of the world is nigh."

Well last weekend The Guardian printed an article, "Slugs, Snails and Old Wives' Tales", first printed in Gardening Which? One of the revelations was that a layer of crocks not only "reduces the volume of soil available to plant roots", but "research by soil scientists shows that water doesn't flow freely from fine-textured materials into coarser ones." Hooray! I told you so! A layer of crocks is not just useless but positively harmful, having no beneficial effect on drainage it creates air spaces which impede drainage and root growth, provides a cosy home for slugs, and falls out at re-potting time, ripping fragile roots.

So ignore all those pesky old wives.

What you do need to do is 1) select a pot that has a decent drainage hole or holes (Whichford ones all do) so that when water percolates down it can get out easily. 2) Cover that hole with a crock or two or a piece of polystyrene to stop the compost from falling out. 3)Use a decent compost with plenty of grit that doesn't have a sticky, claggy texture. 4) Be assured that Bob is your avuncular relative.

It seems that much horticultural advice in the printed and broadcast media is merely people repeating things they have heard but never actually tested or observed for themselves.  In my opinion Gardening Which? magazine is the best at taking nothing as read - they routinely test methods, plants and equipment.

And another thing...

The other issue that gets my goat is pot feet. Magazines, books and television programmes all assure you that it is necessary to raise your pots on pot feet during the winter. WRONG! If you use a good terracotta pot (preferably from Whichford...) and place it on the ground - concrete, gravel, or bricks but preferably not soggy grass - the water will seep nicely through the small gaps between the slightly rough terracotta and the slightly uneven ground. Think of your bath sponge: when you dunk it and raise it in the air it drips a little, but as soon as it makes contact with your hand the water pours out. I'm no scientist but I think it has something to do with capillary action, the water moving more easily through a small gap than through thin air. All you have to do is make sure that the gaps under your pot don't get sealed by algae - just shift the pot a little occasionally.

I have to admit that we do make and sell pot feet because people ask for them. Of course ours are decorative and they can keep your plantings out of puddles, on the other hand they can make your pot wobbly and easier to knock over, they provide a lovely roosting space for snails and they let the frost in to the base of the pot so that the whole thing can freeze solid much more quickly. You will often see pots in displays here raised on brick plinths, this is not for drainage reasons but simply to raise the pots so that a bigger display can be installed in a smaller space; the base of each pot has good contact with a layer of bricks and large gaps are kept to a minimum.

My friend shouting on Thursday morning

Right, I will now dismount and go back to enjoying the robin's song and hoping that we have more of the mild weather. Feel free to share any of your own horticultural hobby horses with us - oh and if any physicists can give me a digestible explanation of why tall, thin pots drain better than short, wide ones I will be very grateful...

New Year, Old Leaf.

After a longer than expected holiday we're all back and only some of us are on a diet of worms.

To think that I thought the weather in early December was extreme! By New Year's Day my fingernails were long, unchipped and strangely clean - gardening was almost impossible for a fortnight. I don't live far from  Whichford but couldn't get there from the 17th December to the 28th and that visit was just to check the greenhouse plants over. We had 14 inches of snow and the freezing temperatures (-8C recorded INSIDE the polytunnel!) meant that our lovely, picturesque roads stayed treacherous for a long time. The snowy picture of the courtyard garden here was taken by Lynda, who makes the hand-pressed ware, lives in the village and is a dab hand with a digital SLR.



Snow just before Christmas





Now we are all back at work, and pleased to see each other too. The outdoors department does look a bit sorry for itself, though: we hadn't finished clearing the autumn leaves before the big freeze clamped them down, in fact the frozen oak leaves were still on the trees at Christmas. Now there is a slimy brown layer in and around pots and the only way to tackle it is by hand, the leaf-blower is useless and rakes and brooms provide only limited help. Jim did find a chap to do some casual leaf-clearing in November and he worked for about half a day at which point the weather got all British, he put down his rake to announce "I don't work in the rain," and we never saw him again.



Can spring be far away?



Frosty oak leaves , late December



There is hope among the slime, however. It is amazing that so few plants have given up the ghost and relatively balmy weather (well, 3C) combined with slowly lengthening days means that previously flat violas are bravely flowering and shoots of crocus, iris and scilla are poking their noses above the rims of the pots. The birds are tweedling and flittering about: dunnocks like furtive mice among the packing straw and tinkling chains of long-tailed tits like pink and black teaspoons moving from tree to tree.




Mrs B enjoying an apple, spring 2010










Mrs B the one-footed blackbird who raises several broods a year in the garden has become so tame that I am a bit worried about her. I literally bumped into her as she flew up from her feeding station on the barrel by the staff room a few days ago and I wonder if her sluggishness might be due to weakness; I hope not, as we always enjoy watching her feeding the nestlings in the honeysuckle behind the bench.

Still chirpy.



Best news of all this week is that my robin is back! Well, I think it's my robin. I hope it's my robin. Last year he (or she, how do you tell?) got so tame that he would take small worms from my hand and follow me even into the greenhouse but I didn't see him after midsummer. Now I have a little khaki and orange shadow in the garden again, with a peremptory "Tick, tick!" announcing his presence in the hedge.

I'd better stop being distracted by feathered friends and carry on with the clear-up, picking off dead flowers and blackened foliage, sweeping and scraping. Not glamorous work but satisfying nonetheless as the displays are immediately brightened and with a bit of luck the housekeeping will keep plants healthy, ready for the spring surge. But if it snows again I may have to emigrate.