Garden Journal: 14.03.2025

No country for ol'Luce

[ post too long for email, click through to read in full ]

There is still no word. It has been 10 days since I met the owners and viewed Daisy Barn (isn’t that a perfect name for a place to live?). We had discussed the tenancy beginning by the end of this month. Yes, end of March, still plenty of time to get a garden going, I thought.

A tenancy agreement is a pro forma document. I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know how many chasers I can send before the owners feel (a) harassed and (b) like I may not be the tenant they want. With my attention torn between that hypothetical garden and this real one, I don’t know what to do with myself. If this cottage doesn’t work out where on earth am I going to put my new, old chaise?

[ One day, tulips. One day. 14 March 2025 ]

I think part of why I’ve felt discombobulated of late is because this move feels like a new self is pending, rather than just a new address.

The Lucy who lives at Daisy Barn wafts around in shapeless, gingham, linen dresses, protected by a practical hessian apron, like a Toast ad. She drinks loose leaf, black tea with a slice of lemon, and writes sitting looking out onto fields of sheep.

The Lucy who lives in Battersea walks the same chilly walk to a local cafe for a £4 oat latte, passing boarded up houses and the same pile of shattered glass that has lain, undisturbed, for weeks, then returns home to ignore the laundry pile, the washing up pile, and the pile of seed packets to be sown.

[ A soon-to-be ranunculus, 14 March 2025 ]

I have had 18 addresses in my 36 years. The longest I’ve lived anywhere is four years, and it was a place I never wanted to live (the grotty part of Finsbury Park). Many of those moves were precipitated by unplanned, sad life events. Mum died, moved. Dad died, moved. Got divorced, moved. I moved back to South West London in no small part to be nearer my siblings, nieces, and other close friends who were sprogging up and, therefore, rooting down.

But this move (if it happens) is all me. I have wondered for years about leaving London. The wondering turned to planning after I left the Bar, and turned urgent after 12 months of gardening when it became clear that my 6m x 4m London garden could not possibly satiate my compulsion to grow things. Now that I also write about growing things this move feels less like indulging a whim and more of a commercial necessity. It is less convenient for everyone (including, let’s face it, me) and feels like gambling with my social life, but if not now, when?

Anyway. I haven’t heard anything. So.

[ Erysimum ‘Spring Breeze Sunset’ - I seriously have not edited these, can you believe these COLOURS? 14 March 2025 ]

Yesterday I saw the most exquisite, French butter yellow ranunculus on a flower stand in Chelsea. It took all my self control not to buy them. But I made this deal with myself a year ago: I can spend money on flowers for the garden, but only if I sacrifice buying cut flowers. My finances simply cannot stretch to both. Not to mention the deeply questionable practices of the cut flower industry. But those buttery ranuncs are all I’ve thought about basically for 24 hours.

While I’ve told you about the excessive tulip planting I did in the autumn, I haven’t yet come clean about the simultaneous, equally excessive ranunculus planting. I ordered about 60 corms, almost all of which sprouted. I have had to plant them wherever there is space, mostly around the edges of pots. They are tough as nails and have been fine outside through freezing temperatures, and in the darkness of winter. But. Only one (1!) is in bud. And it’s one that has regrown from a corm planted a year ago. The rest are miles off.

[ So much bare soil. There are lots of flowers under there, I swear. 14 March 2025 ]

And this really goes to the theme of this post: pending. I assume that I will be writing to you in three-or-so weeks about the overwhelming number of ranunculus and tulips there are and how I’m giving away armfuls of them to passing school children. But right now? Nothin’.

Nothing. I’m living in the ‘before’ picture and it’s boring. I have planted up my planting plan (save for the annuals, which I can’t believe I still haven’t sown) and it looks… nothing. Yes, there are tiny hints of irises peaking above the soil. There are even one or two tiny squeak of martagon lilies. But one really has to tax the imagination to picture a garden full of flowers in a couple of months time.

[ Many tulips, and at the very back of the garden Magnolia ‘Encore’ ]

This of course is the predictable issue arising out of a whole-garden overhaul. Lots and lots of bare earth. Lots of very vulnerable young plants. Lots of nothing.

It also is the predictable consequence of trying to do things on the cheap. Or, at least, buying more plants but in smaller pots which will take longer to grow and establish.

At Jo Thompson’s book launch on Tuesday I asked during the Q&A how garden designers think about time when they’re planning a scheme. Do they advise their clients that it’ll take three years for a scheme to really bed in? That heavenly romance that abounds in Jo’s gardens - roses dripping from walls, abundant borders - takes time. Being the idiot I am and not knowing how to hold a mic, Jo only heard some of my question, but said the key for the impatient gardener (which she assured me she is, too) is to look closer. Enjoy each sprout and seedling. And of course she is right.

On my morning rounds today, a very surprising new arrival. There appears to be a maple tree growing out there. Ok right now it’s just one tiny pair of leaves, but still. That’s how trees start, right? Where on earth did it come from? Should I leave it in there? Ho… I am… I don’t know. I have been so excited about self-seeders but this one is entirely unexpected.

[ Hello Mr Maple, what are YOU doing here? 14 March 2025 ]

There’s a tiny, self-seeded rudbeckia which makes sense (I grew some last year), along with the many (and seemingly increasing) self-seeded poppies. I’m keeping them all, at least for now. I scolded my neighbour, Alex (a professional gardener), when she tried to pluck a self-seeder out of my ‘cutting patch’ only to later realise that, yes, this was a chickweed. Sorry, Alex. You were right. Not all self-seeders are desirable self-seeders. But a maple tree? I don’t know. It has invited itself in, who am I to evict it?

[ Tiny, baby Rudbeckia, 14 March 2025 ]

Who was T. S. Eliot kidding about April being the cruellest month? April will be full of flowers, but March? Despite its name, it feels stagnant. At the same time, it has been summer, autumn, winter AND spring already today. During the brief sunny spell I ran out to take these photos, but icy rain was spitting on me while I snapped. For others perhaps this feeling is one of resurgence. After all, the Christian calendar puts us squarely in the reawakening, ‘resurrection pending’ period.

But more broadly, I think, the world is waiting. Waiting to see how economies, adversaries and allies react to America’s fickle new fiscal and foreign policies. If Kafka’s ‘The Trial’ and Orwell’s ‘Nineteen Eighty Four’ had a baby, it would be the first 50 days of the second Trump administration.

[ Blue shelf, 14 March 2025 ]

[ Muscari azureum, 14 March 2025 ]

All of that said, there is one part of the garden that is blooming: my blue shelf. Muscari azureum and hyacinth ‘Delft Blue’ looking fabulous, I must say. I adore muscari - so bubbly and vivid.

Also - the controversial wallflowers are incredible. Oh I adore them. Obviously they will look better when they’re not flowering in an otherwise bare-soiled vacuum, but the colours are incredible. The oranges have deepened to a marmalade, and the mauves alongside it are stunning. I wish I had planted twice as many. I have bought new plant supports for them because my stupid dogs jump on them in order to ‘protect me’ from the many, many cats that scuttle along the back wall. Really the whole garden needs to be protect from their trampling little paws. Alas.

My Christmas cornus - now happily upgraded to a larger pot - has sprouted zingy, new, lime green leaves. This is a new colour combination to me and wow. But in Battersea Park they have cut their cornuses (corni?) right down to just a few inches high in the last few days. I wonder if I should follow their lead.

[ Cornus ‘Baton Rouge’ - can you believe these colours together? 14 March 2025 ]

The alc-mol (thank you, Lindsay, you’re quite right to abbrev) have gone in. There was only one descenting voice in the comments on my post re: alc-mol (you are all a bunch of shameless enablers) - Rosemary, I’m sorry. I had already put in my order with Ballyrobert Gardens when you commented. I ordered five but honestly I need five more.

[ Magnolia ‘Genie’ taking her sweet time, 14 March 2025 ]

Also, in order to ‘justify the cost of shipping’ (a uniquely potent mixture of denial and delusion, that one) I ordered 3x hemerocallis (daylily) ‘Pink Damask’ which I’ve dotted around in the shady bed where I can’t imagine they will thrive. God, I love lilies. Last year I planted a double, oriental lily called ‘Lotus Beauty’. It was probably the most beautiful flower I’ve ever seen. I spent an entirely day taking its picture. Obsessive. I hope it comes back this year.

[ Lily ‘Lotus Beauty’, 6 August 2024 ]

Also this week I received my dahlia tubers. Ten of them. ‘Natalie G’, ‘Labyrinth’, ‘Great Silence’, ‘Daisy Duke’, ‘American Dawn’, ‘Perch Hill’, ‘Jowey Winnie’, ‘Molly Raven’, ‘Ellen Nauta’, and ‘Princess Nadine’. There is nowhere for them to go now bound - as they were - for a garden that is not yet mine. There is no way I can fit even one more pot into my already groaning garden. Fingers crossed I can hide them out of the way somewhere until some pots of tulips are vacated, or - perhaps - a tenancy agreement is signed.