Trisha’s Meanderings - March
March in the garden is a bit like coming to the end of a marathon - a great feeling of relief after keeping the garden going over summer …. in March, the slightly cooler shorter days mean many plants have a new wind and these blooms can be more beautiful than their blowsy spring ones….
The Education of a Gardener is one of the most famous landscape books, written by Russell Page - so well named, but as well as such books and friends visits and advice, some plants giving up the ghost and others keeping on keeping on - it is Mother Nature that I have learnt most from.
The most informative book I have is a large foolscap day to a page eternal diary where every now and then I will write in with the year and what’s happening in the garden - ostensibly so if a terrifying garden guru calls wanting to visit in the months ahead, I can quickly go to my diary and see what’s out then and get a feel for how the garden will be exactly on that date…
And so, I peruse March and there on 5 March 2003 - ‘SO dry - parched - no water for yonks in creek - no flowers - BUT - grapes delicious…even Buxus dying’.
And a few days later on 7th March in 2011: ‘SO green - garden and countryside superb. Crabapples, quinces, apples and pears dripping off trees - laden down. Snowberries SUPERB. Have been eating rest English mulberries every morning. Collecting Larkspur seeds and cutting back lavender, cardoons, salvias and lychnis.'
The same day the following year: ‘Unbelievably lush - best February ever’.
And so to 2014: ‘I smile as I read 7 March only such few short years ago ..how the tide turns…Have just returning from three weeks walking in Nepal to barren unbelievably arid but beautiful Bobundara!’ And so it goes on to snake (singular) and elm leaf beetles (thousands) to an acceptance of the reality of hotter drier summers and making sure I keep moulding the garden to adapt rather than fight climate….and ending up with the question: a garden or a life? And of course we all want both so we continue pushing barriers, optimistically hoping for good seasons and bounteous gardens. For what are we gardeners but dreamers and eternally full of hope…..…and what can be more hopeful than a gardener putting up a hammock knowing they will perhaps never lie in it!!!! Like beautiful garden seats - how few real gardeners really sit in them!
Thanks
Trish
