Something for Nothing
Yesterday I had the immensely satisfying experience of planting up a new ‘bed’ for free. I wasn’t even using plants that I had grown specially for the area, I just wizzed it together out of what I already had, borrowing from all sorts of corners of the garden. Admittedly I would have found it even more satisfying to go to the garden centre and splurge on new plants. I am a dreadful plantaholic and a bit of garden retail therapy is my greatest pleasure, but it’s a guilty one. After every lapse I tiptoe into the house while Toby works upstairs and then silently relay plants from the car and hide them from him. I’ve taken to hiding them around the garden in their pots so that they’re well camouflaged rather than arraying a decadent cat walk of my purchases across our patio. It’s not that Toby would ever tell me off, or say anything, but he doesn’t need to. He comes down the stairs to find me clutching a Hellebore (notoriously expensive) and a moment passes where I know I’ve been caught red handed and that I didn’t really need it, and that’s enough. Planting up a whole patch of the garden for free is, to me, the equivalent of preparing and eating a large and healthy salad: it feels good to know I can do it even if I’ll be running for the biscuit jar again by next spring.
Anyway! I’ve already written about the fact that I don’t enjoy the gardening jobs of late summer. To me harvesting and dead heading are at best dull and at worst feel like holding a plant’s hand towards it’s grave, so after the weary hot months it feels good to have damp soil and to be planting and planning again. October feels like such a busy time in the garden and I love it, especially because it’s when the garden is full of opportunities to expand. Self seeders are ready to be moved and big clumps of plants can be divided.
The area I was planting was a strip beside our compost heap which previously housed a turf stack and our resident frog, but which had begun to look pretty shabby. I left a small wild patch in the corner for Henrietta but levelled the rest and got planting. I shifted Acquilegia, fox gloves, Hesperis, forget-me-nots, and (with a little more difficulty) Lunaria annua or honesty which is one of my favourite spring flowers.
Beautiful Lunaria annua
A whole miniature world of self seeders
I find my faith in the garden is put to the test by self-seeders every Summer as I cast around panicking that none of the seedlings have materialised. Then, after a few weeks of damp weather, the garden is covered in a rash of these wild offspring ready for me to move them about the garden as I wish. I find this particularly helpful in planting up the blighted area under my walnut tree where nothing will really grow, let alone self-seed, and I march foxgloves up there each year from areas that are a bit less hostile.
Euphorbia spreading rapidly and ready to be replanted
After the self seeders I busily borrowed from what clumps I have in the garden. Japanese anemones always seem to be multiplying, as does Euphorbia amygdaloides var robbiae which is a little invasive but the only plant I like that thrives under my walnut. Most satisfying of all is my Geranium macrorrhizum which seems to be able to predict exactly how much more I will want of it each year and sends out its’ runners to form new plants which are immensely satisfying to dig up and break off. Pulmonaria have increased gradually and my Geums were ready to split as well. I’ve even been gifted a chunk of Iris sibirica which was destined for a compost heap and which I have chopped up and potted up ready for next year.
Nothing feels so satisfying as propagating plants for free and it’s reassuring that you can do this just as well in a small garden as in a large one. As a way of filling a space cheaply it’s brilliant and the percentage of the garden filled with plants I’ve sown has gradually reduced as the garden has matured and begun to spread itself about without me.
I’m so grateful for this late summer rain, and so grateful to be back in the garden again and planning for the year ahead. Planting up a bed that will take off from next April, it almost feels like I have skipped the long and miserable winter that lies ahead of us. No matter what happens with lockdown and corona this winter, the garden will be full of foxgloves by the time we emerge into early summer.
