My garden rocks...

I like gardening, I always have - I think it runs in my blood… maybe I even have green blood… no, that’s Vulcans, not gardeners - gardeners have green fingers.

I have very early pre-infant school memories of ‘doing the weeding’ and instinctively knowing what was weed and what was not - still do – although some might argue that a weed is just a plant in the wrong place.

Not my Lincolnshire grandfather and grandmother though. They won all of the flower and veg prizes at the Wragby Show for years. No weeds in their garden; and the mahogany sideboard in the sitting room seemed to almost buckle with the weight of the trophies, rosettes and certificates that were proudly displayed on its polished surface. The Wragby Show was a big deal when I was a child, weeks of preparation and all the tricks that go with showing - the polishing of marrows, tomato reddening, carrot lengthening, dahlia de-earwigging, petal reshaping – and of course the intrigue, gossip, lobbying, secrecy and sabotage that some might call ‘cheating’ and others ‘playing the game’.

My first summer holiday job was working as a child labourer in the gardens of a large ladies horticultural college - Waterperry in Oxfordshire. Four pounds a week for five days in the sunshine - with girls - not bad! I think I was about twelve. It was a glorious summer. I spent all day, every day, picking strawberries, pinching out tomatoes, training apple branches, and rotovating – until the rotovator ran away with me, ploughing its way through an immaculate grass separation path. The gardens were beautiful – it’s a garden centre now, open to the public.

My first Saturday job was as an under-gardener at a large Georgian house just down the road from Waterperry owned by a rich Irish investment banker named Barny Keegan. I cut grass, dug beds, weeded paths and generally kept the garden tidy. For a while I became head-gardener (only gardener) when old Marsh got knocked off his bike and killed on his way to work. He was a nice old chap in his seventies and he taught me a lot about double-digging, pruning, planting veg, propagation from cuttings, and air layering.

So, I can’t really remember a time when I didn’t garden at least a little.

Anyway, these days I mainly garden in Wales. My garden is an eclectic collection of pots and planters, some too-narrow side borders, a raised bed under a holly tree, a small fountain, and a long hedge. I love it all – apart from the hedge which takes far too long to cut.

At this time of year my enthusiasm for planting seeds and taking cuttings is boundless - up early to plant or water, still out late to ‘check’. But by mid-August, when things are past their best and the sun or rain has taken its toll, I begin to lose interest.

That’s why I love aquilegias – they are end-of-spring early-summer plants and ‘over’ before the ravages of first autumn arrives.

Amidst the planters and pieces of found-with-love, wave-washed, driftwood dotted around my garden, I keep some of my pebbles and stones. In an older post I mentioned my heart stone collection and the foot stone I found on the beach at Dinas Dinlle – so here they are… my garden rocks.

It really does - at least to me.

I’m entering a show this weekend. Not the Wragby Show though, the Nefyn show - and not with anything ‘gardeny’ either - I’m entering the craft section with a piece of my hand-painted glass. I’ll let you know how I get on.

Wish me luck.