Green fuzzy spring thoughts

 

I've been hiding from this blog for a few weeks, like I've been hiding from the grey cold of January dormancy. But I'm pleased to announce that it is definitely all starting up again - in the garden at least. My first Iris reticulata has put in an appearance. All the while I've been obsessively checking the progress of my crocuses and snowdrops I'd completely forgotten about these little darlings, so I was surprised and delighted to find two seem to have emerged from nowhere.

On Saturday I headed out of town to West Dean. I drove through country lanes that had just the slightest fuzz of catkin green about them, rather like the nascent shadow of facial hair on a teenage boy's chin, only a lot more promising.

West Dean is gorgeous, even in February, with arguably the most perfect Victorian Kitchen gardens in the country. It fuels many horticultural fantasies of one day moving to a big country garden. So, usually, a visit leaves me feeling full of admiration for Jim and Sarah the head gardeners, and quite disappointed about my own back yard. But yesterday, I couldn't wait to get home. I was completely fired up about gardening in cities and the amazing potential that's just waiting to be unleashed.

I went to hear the brilliant Nigel Dunnett from Sheffield University's Landscape Department, talk about Rain Gardens. Cynics who have only just got over the fact that we might not need to plant drout gardens, might dismiss this as just another fad. But the science of why we environmentally need to green our cities (better flood drainage, cooling temperatures, and more transpiration etc), is undeniably clear, and now the aesthetics are looking incredibly exciting too. Imagine if we drove past colourful meadows instead of grass verges that require endless and pointless mowing? What if our roofs were green and living instead of brown?What if supermarket carparks had imaginative planting, cleverly irrigated by rainwater collected from the runoff. And why don't we plant our street trees above storm drains, and underplant with other shrubs and perennials so they can make use of the water.

Othe countries are leading the way, in Portland, Oregon city councils seem to be a bit further ahead in thinking about how thoughtful landscaping needs to be integrated into town planning. And in Germany developers are taxed on the basis of how much green space they include in their design: greener=less tax. Sounds simple? Here in the UK meanwhile, this thoughtful government is axing CABE, the body that tried to push public landscaping further up the agenda.

I could despair, but refuse to, and think that maybe this is a policy that literally can happen from the ground up; maybe the next phase of guerilla gardening?  I for one, will be ordering my Pictorial Meadows seeds and trying to create a few more colourful spaces and I will set up a group to do more than bulb planting in the graveyard at the end of my road, so we can apply for funding and plant more suitable plants. It's just the beginning.

The scent of Christmas present

There's a lot of fuss about mistletoe, ivy, holly berries and pine trees at this time of year. Of course there are lots of other things like Christmas box and Viburnum bodnantense 'Dawn' that don't get as much press as they should. But for all the plants we bring indoors, I want to shout about the more exotic Narcissus 'Paper white' and the divine amaryllis in its many hues. It's simply a gorgeous thing to invite the first taste of spring inside in deepest midwinter.  

Last year, my early narcissus bulbs were a bit of a flop. The understairs cupboard simply wasn't cold enough for the first phase of forcing. So this year, sometime in November, in lieu of a shed or greenhouse, I put the pots in a galavanised steel bin that doubles as outside storage by the back door. It was just before the first snowfall, so they had a seriously dark, chilling start. I nearly forgot about them altogether, but when I was looking for something a few weeks back, I discovered my two pots of bulbs and they have been sitting on the kitchen windowsill since then.

The stint in the bin seemed to do the trick. I came home from Christmas lunch at the inlaws to find the first flower open. Now, a week later, they have all emerged, sweet and white and, as 2011 approaches, the house is filled with a lovely mixture of the scent of Christmas tree and narcissus: winter meets spring.

And although I confess that I bought cut stems of amaryllis, their intense colour has been better than any Christmas bauble. I feel like I've got the hang of this forcing now so I'll be growing them next time for sure - another thing to add to that list of resolutions. Happy new year!