#whatsinmywheelbarrow 28/11/2014 ~ Double Decker Dahlias ~ Winter storage

The Dahlias have done their thing so I have to prepare to properly store the tubers (sort of like a potato but with even prettier flowers in the summer) away until next Spring.

They could stay in the ground but a particularly cold or wet winter might finish them off. Storing them inside eliminates most rotting problems. Come the Spring I will get them out and help them back into growth so they can be the superstars of the herbaceous borders. They are particularly wonderful during the mid-summer slump - when there can be a dullness in the garden - the Spring/Early Summer beauties are spent and the late Summer stalwarts are yet to show their faces; so I treat these Dahlia tubers like royalty. 

⭐️ First of all, I cut all the foliage off and carefully dig up the tubers - then I stand them upside down and leave them alone for a couple of weeks in the potting shed (but any cool, dry, mouse-free shed or room will do) thus allowing any excess moisture in the stems to dissipate. 

⭐️ A couple of weeks later I carefully brush the soil off the tubers and I make sure that any named varieties are clearly labelled - every tuber should have a label with it's flower colour and whether it has a single or a double flower. I secure the label with a piece of string knotted around a bit of tuber and stem. 

Now, I whip out my secret magic ingredient - not so secret anymore - into which the Dahlia tubers will be stored. 

⭐️ Vermiculite - wonderful stuff (a natural mineral)

Vermiculite will keep the tubers warm and dry throughout the winter. 

I line a crate with newspaper or cardboard so the vermiculite won't leak out. I put a fine layer of magic vermiculite on the bottom of the crate onto which I place the tubers, close together but not too tightly packed. 

⭐️ Finally, I cover the tubers with more vermiculite. This year I am trialling a space saving scheme - in a couple of the crates I have placed a second layer of tubers and then repeated the vermiculite covering. Double decker Dahlias if you will.

I cannot see that I will have any rotting problems but I will report back. 

Lastly, I push the crates underneath the greenhouse staging and forget about them.......well, not entirely; every couple of weeks or so I will check that the tubers are nice and solid still, and that no rots have set in, by giving them a quick prod. I will also give the crates a sprinkling of water (definitely not a gert great soaking) so that the tubers don't completely dry out. 

Life as a Dahlia under my watch is pretty sweet. Slugs look out - early next summer when the Dahlias are in full leaf again.......don't even think about it because you will not win this fight. I will be armed and ready for you. 

 

Autumn ~ Never think that raking leaves is beneath you

I learnt a valuable lesson yesterday. I have been very spoilt in the garden belonging to my main client; I rarely have to undertake any basic garden tasks (mowing, strimming, raking, leaves, sweeping patios etc). I am left alone to prance around, like the flower fairy I am, doing all the nice jobs. That is, until the head of garden maintenance damaged his Achilles' tendon (or, according to the cleaners, his 'Ercules tendon- you've got to love the cleaners). 2nd in command of garden maintenance is not so keen on doing anything that doesn't involve noisy machinery and he would prefer not to break into a sweat, so I found myself reluctantly having to rake leaves.....and I jolly well loved it! 

Never think that you are too high up the horticultural food chain to rake leaves. Raking leaves if for everyone and it's great excercise too. 

Autumn is beautiful - it's my favourite season :-)

#whatsinmywheelbarrow 25/11/2014 ~ Homemade compost (beautiful stuff)

Today started off very cold and swiftly turned wet - not the most appealing weather for a day in the garden.

On an ideal day I would have carried on cutting back dead and dying herbaceous material and tidying borders - but the most unappealing days mean only one thing to me - composting!

You may well read a fair amount about composting on this blog in the future. I am #slightlyobsessed.

Ankle deep in the compost heap is the only place to be on a horrible day. Feet stay toasty from the heat that the composting (breaking down of microbes) action generates, plus the activity of manually turning the compost heap keeps muscles warm. 

The physicality of turning a compost heap certainly earns you your next meal (plus a pudding) and mentally it is calming and positively optimistic. Keeping a well tended compost heap is saying "The future will be good; the future is in the garden and the garden will be well nourished." I will add several happy emoticons to reinforce how passionately I feel about composting....😀😍😄😎👍👏🌸🌻🌱☀️(not entirely successful then).....why is there no composting emoticon? A shiny little spade sticking out of a pile of steaming brown stuff.....oh, maybe not. 

You can read up on composting to your heart's content - I am by no means the only compost obsessive out there. My own composting guru is Monty Don; he is evangelical on the subject. 

The science of composting can be a little technical: optimum temperatures, moisture content, key ingredients, do's and don't's - the main thing is, just do it!

I built a 3-bay compost heap with a baby strapped to my back using only seven palettes and a bag of cable ties. It is one of the cheapest and easiest ways to improve your garden (and your life).

Here are my top composting tips:

⭐️ Try not to put too much mown grass in the mix. 

⭐️ Add plenty of annual weeds (no nasty perennial weeds e.g. stingy nettles, dandelions, bindweed -    especially the roots.

⭐️ Add plenty of spent herbaceous material. 👇

⭐️ Add plenty of raw kitchen waste (vegetable peelings, overripe fruit - no cooked kitchen waste unless you want to share your heap with rats - shudder...)

⭐️ Turn the heap every few weeks to aid the breakdown of the raw material (get a pitch fork and work your way down the heap by making a new one alongside - this is where having more than one bay for compost comes in handy).

And before the season is out you will have started to make your own compost.

Your very own, homemade, fluffy, rich, crumbley, scrumptious compost (see? #slightlyobsessed !) can be used in a number of ways.

Today I used it as a mulch in the vegetable garden. This serves two purposes: 

1: Over the winter the cold winds can erode the soil leaving it thinner and more sparse. A later of mulch will protect the topsoil. 

2: You are adding extra nutrients and worms to help improve the soil ready for the next growing season, which will be with us before we know it......what a jolly good excuse to have another look at the seed catalogues. 

My design process

It's all wonderfully simple really. I specialise in planting plans. The service I provide appeals to people who love plants, flowers, textures and colour but may not have the time or precise expertise to select the right (and loveliest) plants for the right places.

I visit the space that requires redesigning. I talk to the client for a while in order to discern exactly what it is they want from the space; what it should look like (colours, smells, textures, structures, specific types of plants) and how they want to use that space (e.g. entertaining, relaxing, play space for children, vegetable production). 

I spend some time getting to know the space - any little quirks / microclimates / soil types and conditions that may not be immediately apparent and then I take a series of photographs and perhaps a little video with commentary. 

I suggest that the client make a Pinterest board for visual ideas that they are inspired by. They can also send me images of other spaces / concepts / art that they might like to incorporate as part of their redesigned space. Then I go away and get cracking on the design.

Now, here's the cool bit - I draw on the photographs (using only the finest cutting edge technology) showing the client exactly how their space can look - it's great!

For example, a client may have a beautiful but bare old Cotswold stone courtyard garden. We have a chat and I find out that the property it is attached to is predominately used as a holiday let, that the new planting would have to be fairly low maintenance, have a long season of interest (I.e. flower or foliage colour for as long as possible) and that they have a particular work of art (in this case, a movie still converted into a weatherproof lightbox) they want displayed.

I draw them a pretty picture:

They love the effect (fingers crossed!) so I let them know the names of all the plants in the picture. They then have the option to ask me to source the plants for them and plant the garden up to the highest possible standard - or they can leave it at that and carry out the work themselves (or employ their favourite, friendly, local landscape gardener) armed with the names of the best possible plants for their beautiful new space. 

So, what do you think? Fancy a new look for your garden or just a few fabulous plants to enhance what you already have? Email me or give me a call, I am much more reasonably priced than you may think. 

More #whatsinmywheelbarrow coming soon for all of you #whatsinmywheelbarrow fans. 

Dividing my time

24 hours per day is quite enough for me - working, child-rearing, blogging and tending my own home and garden is an awful lot of fun but sleeping is jolly tempting after 15 or so hours. 

It would, however, be much more useful if there were more than seven days per week.

With my extra days I would make sure that my garden always maintained its RHS Chelsea Gold Medal winning appearance (in my dreams) and that my home looked like an Anthropologie store (I was in the Bath branch today......swoooon). I would accept all work that came my way, thereby becoming very rich and very lean. I would be an exceptional mother because I would be available to my daughters at every waking moment. 

I do the best I can with the seven days available to all of us. I am the best Mummy I can be on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. When possible I steer activities towards the horticultural - it's healthy and plants are fundamental to all life on this planet, what's not to like about that?

On Tuesday's, Wednesdays and Thursdays every week I am in my main client's garden. It is a special garden in an incomparable situation with separate areas typical of the classic Cotswold garden - herbaceous borders, walled vegetable garden, formal rose garden, rock garden, exotic garden, fruit cage, productive and display glasshouse......phew, it's exhausting just listing it let alone developing and maintaining it to the high standards I expect of myself. I could do with an apprentice - any offers?

That leaves evenings, once the girls have gone to bed, for me to get on with my design work and, recently, blogging. I really am enjoying this blogging lark - bear with me, I might even get better if I keep at it!

Having a patient and understanding husband who actually loves to cook (bonkers) is the only reason this all works. Quite frequently I come to the conclusion that it isn't, in fact, working....but then I have a decent nights sleep and wake up to tackle one of those seven days afresh, thanking goodness that I have neither a commute of any significance nor an office job. I am jolly lucky. 

This blog entry was supposed to be more about my design process - oh well, mañana. 

Mentors and Gurus

Mentor. See Mentorship - a personal developmental relationship in which a more experienced or knowledgeable person helps to guide a less experienced or less knowledgable
person.

Guru - is a Sanskrit term for "teacher" or "master".

I have had a wonderful week in the garden. The November weather has been kind and I have been able to get well and truly stuck into cutting down the dead and dying herbaceous material, move a few scruffy roses to less prominent positions and dig up (what seemed like) thousands of cheeky, roving Michaelmas daisy plants and seedlings. I went about this task almost without any deep thought, whilst basking in the weak autumn sun. With hindsight I see that this happened because I felt confident with the task in hand. Experience helps, as do books but the most important learning device available to the novice horticulturalist is the mentor.

My mentors are three people (with whom I have personal relationships) who have taught me in my formative horticultural years and are still teaching me. My gurus (I like to use 'guru' in the 'master' sense) are a small handful of 'celebrity' gardeners who talk a whole heap of sense and inspire me with their enthusiasm. But, oh my goodness, please don't think that I think I know it all! Good golly, I am such a long way off! Half the fun of a horticultural life is knowing full well that we will never know it all, and knowing that every day will bring surprises. 

I would like to introduce my mentors and gurus - one today and more over the next few weeks. I would  like to think there are one or two more mentors and gurus waiting for me to find them - perhaps behind a large piece of topiary. 

This is Mr John Hillman. When I am older I want to be just like him.

John lives in the village where I grew up. We bought chicken eggs from him and I continue to go out of my way to buy eggs from him for two reasons :

1. Mr Hillman's eggs are the best around.

2. Mr Hillman, and his wife Marion, have created my favourite garden in the whole world ever.

It is the perfect cottage garden with a twist. Cottage gardening by definition combines a productive fruit and vegetable garden with flowering plants for cutting and for the pure pleasure of creating an attractive space. The difference between this garden and other cottage style gardens is experimentation. The Hillman's scour the seed and plant catalogues for new and interesting plants so every visit is an opportunity to say "ooh, what's that!?" I will always recall the time when I first saw their Sedum spectabile 'Brilliant' in all its fluffy lilac glory. I was quite young and impressionable and it was love at first sight. 

The awesome thing about this perfect cottage garden is that less than a stones throw away from the Sedum, honeysuckle, Clematis and all their funky Begonia foliosa var. Miniata will be rows of perfect brassicas and enough potatoes to keep the family fed all through the winter. John and Marion are virtually self sufficient and if that's not enough reason why they are my chief inspiration, well then I don't know what is. I intend to sit and record and proper interview type chat with John and Marion soon. Now that I have said that, I will have to jolly well get on and do it. I'll give them a call on Monday. 

#whatsinmywheelbarrow......

........is my enticingly named regular feature on Instagram. 

The fun thing with Instagram is that you can make almost (almost) any subject you care to aim the camera lens of your smartphone at look attractive - for example, the contents of a wheelbarrow. 

I have a notion - I think that I might be able to teach novice gardeners a little about what a gardener gets up to on a day-to-day basis by showing off (in colourful Instagram fashion) the contents of my wheelbarrow, hence - #whatsinmywheelbarrow 

During the winter months the colours and tones of the photographs tend to be more muted than those taken in the summer months - you may, however, find the occasional gem.

So please follow me on Instagram @nicolahopegardener to find out what I'm up to (usually up to my knees in mud - but that's another blog post - one that I imagine will be titled "Swamp Donkey")

So #whatsinmywheelbarrow today?

Today I spent a fine November day in a herbaceous border. As well as giving the border a post-summer tidy up I had several scruffy old roses to move. 

Moving roses is usually fairly simple as long as you reduce the stems by at least half, dig up as much of the roots as possible and replant them or pot them up immediately. Give the replanted rose plenty of water, and then loads more over the following weeks - especially if there is no significant rainfall. I always plant any rose with a liberal sprinkling of mycorrhizal fungi - there are loads of products widely available from garden centres and online - I use one that is also a multipurpose feed for roses, trees and shrubs. Wherever possible I like to kill several birds with one stone.

And here it is - my #whatsinmywheelbarrow Instagram entry for today - 19th of November 2014. Not particularly thrilling to look at but please hang in in there. Some pretty cool things end up in my wheelbarrow.

International Flying Topiary Artist......

.......is my dream job title.

Over the last fifteen years or so I have occasionally allowed my gardening daydreams to wander skywards. My professional life is pretty much great but everyone has dreams and my dream is to travel the gardening world with my shears. I would clip cloud hedges in Japan; I would snip the famous hunt scene at Ladew Gardens in the USA, then I might swoop South to Florida where I would tend to Mickey and Minnie at Disney World. I would spend some time in the formal gardens of France and Italy, immersing myself in the centuries old tradition of parterres. I would save the very best until last because the quirkiest, most eccentric topiary is right here in the UK. I would help the team of gardeners with the AMAZING and huuuuuge shapes at Levens Hall in Cumbria and then I would come back home to Brian the Snail.

It could happen. One day. I'm still dreaming!

Free plants are especially exciting

My Fritillaria imperialis 'William Rex' bulbs were finally delivered two months later than promised. Two months late!!!!! I was mildly unamused until I ripped open the box. Box ripping is common - plant deliveries are more thrilling than birthdays (when you happen to be thirty five and a half). It took me a few seconds to register that the nursery I had been cursing for their incompetence had sent me a packet of twelve tulip bulbs by way of an apology. Tulipa 'Ice Age'....it's white.....did you guess? 

Now this nursery is my new favourite. Easily pleased? Maybe. I don't even particularly like double flowered tulips, but these are free. They will go in the ground on Saturday and, who knows, next April they could be the best plants in the garden. But do I plant them in amongst my already planted tulip bulbs 'Cape Town' (tall, yellow with lipstick red edges) and 'Apeldoorn' (really tall with a huuuuge red flower) or do I put them elsewhere? It will probably be a last minute, instinctive decision. 

The Fritillaries were ordered way back in May at the RHS Malvern Spring Festival. They caught my eye and I felt myself uncontrollably parting with a fair chunk of my birthday money (I believe I was after clematis and succulents.....oops). I'm hoping they will look a lot like this:

(I spend most evenings with the giant RHS A~Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants on my lap.....doesn't everyone?) 

These are straight Fritillaria imperialis; F. imperialis 'William Rex' has slightly darker, bronze-red flowers. They are showy, brash, a little bit tricky and I am absolutely well and truly looking forward to them more than any other bulb next year......apart from Tulipa 'Apeldoorn'......and Tulipa 'Cape Town'......and Tulipa 'Ice Age' (well, they were free after all). Oh, and then there are the Watsonia corms that arrived via my father from Madiera......#slightlyobsessed. 

But surely you don't do much in the winter?

It would be extremely useful if I received £1 for every time I tell someone what I do and they say "but surely there's not much to do in the winter?" If they could only see the lists I make. 

Here is a current example:

And that's not even the half of it! 

Autumn and Winter garden tasks tend to be grander in scale than those in spring and summer but the difference is that we have more time. The pressure to water everything everyday (sometimes more often) has, for the most part, passed and with it passes the running from one end of the garden to the other.

Autumn and winter tasks are heavier. More shovelling, more carting things about in wheelbarrows, more sawing and chopping but if, like me, you're up for it then you will find the deepest pleasure in the weak winter warmth on your face.

More than anything it's the excitement of planning for the next growing season that I revel in. Not much beats the thrill of ripping open a box to reveal hundreds of bulbs, each one promising an unrivalled jewel-shot of spring colour. 

Maybe it's all about regaining some sort of perceived control over a garden that has been so gloriously and colourfully out of control for the summer months. 

Yep, it's a control thing!

So, to all those kindly people who worry that I might be twiddling my thumbs all off-season......please don't worry. My back is aching nicely, my pink cheeks are clashing with my red hair and my smile reaches from ear to ear.  

Meet a genuine Cotswold landmark

Brian the snail resides in the beautiful and bustling market town of Tetbury and I have the honour of attending to his twice yearly trims.

Topiary is one of my most favourite pastimes and I get to do it for a living!!!

Believe it or not but up until recently Brian was a squirrel. His transformation from squirrel to snail has not been an easy one but he is well on his way and I anticipate that he will be a fully fledged snail by late 2015. 

Brian is made up of Hawthorn (Crataegus) and Privet (Ligustrum). I usually work with Yew (Taxus) and Box (Buxus) so topiarising Brian the snail is a real treat.