Garden Journal: 26.03.2025
Life in 2x
[ Post too long for email - click through for the full post ]
A lot has happened.
A lot is happening.
A lot.
[ Tulips, 26 March 2025 ]
I’ve half-drafted about four posts in the last few days. This one - I promise - I will see through to the end.
First, a week ago I met Rukmini Iyer. All thanks to Substack. How incredible is that? I didn’t sleep for two days before the big day. I spent hours doing hair and make up. I was over an hour early. All sure-fire signs that I was highly anxious-excited.
Mini was gracious enough to invite me into her home and to cook me the most incredible lunch. But even better than that (and as you can imagine, that lunch was one of the best I’ve ever had) we ended up chatting for hours. Part of that chat was recorded, because we met in order to make a podcast episode! Yes! Soon you’ll get to hear audio of me garbling away about gardening - an extra special treat!
[ Tulips, 26 March 2025 ]
In addition to meeting Mini, I got to meet Pepper, her collie. Pepper is the most sweet, beautiful dog, and - as Mini said when I arrived - was desperate for a job. I threw the ball, she brought it back. I threw the ball, she brought it back. This went on for the whole approx 4 hours that I was with Mini (yes, I massively overstayed my welcome but I didn’t want to leave). My dogs are deeply lazy, and Pepper’s impressive (and insistent) work ethic was new to me. I have a new respect for owners of collies. They must constantly get tennis elbow.
Mini and I nattered like old friends which I hope is exactly what we will become.
While I was there, paying not attention at all to my phone, I was emailed the tenancy agreement for Daisy Barn.
YUP, IT’S HAPPENING.
[ Euphorbia ‘Miners Merlot’ coming into flower, 26 March 2025 ]
Well, ok, there is not yet an absolutely completed document but we’re very, very close. I pondered on whether to tell you because, honestly, everything could still fall apart. But I’m as sure as I can be that in FIVE DAYS TIME I will have the keys to my little country cottage. ON APRIL FOOLS’ DAY…
For two days after receiving the tenancy agreement, I sat in my dark living room, hiding from the world, in a state of near-crippling panic. For the first time since my teens, I had a long, slow panic attack. This was a wild overreaction to receiving an email, obviously. And after chatting it through with a couple of friends (thank you Emily, thank you Andrew, thank you Katy, Anna and Hannah) the panic gave way to absolute, sheer excitement.
Ok, so the line between panic and excitement is as fine as cheap loo roll, and twice as chafing. I think the word ‘hysteria’ describes well the cha-cha I am dancing along that line.
[ Tulips, 26 March 2025 ]
The reason this is a complete overreaction (and in answer to a question raised by a reader on a previous post) is because I’m not actually fully leaving London, nor my little fruit salad garden. I will be renting out a room at my home in Battersea, but will be keeping a room so that the dogs and I can be here and there as the mood takes us (well, me, they don’t really get a say).
I know. How unbelievably privileged and spoiled am I to be able to experience the best of both worlds? If in a few months the financial strain is too great then I will let out Battersea and move wholesale to Daisy Barn, but I hope for the summer at least I will still be able to bring you news from the burgeoning Battersea garden.
[ Prunus ‘Autumnalis Rosea’, 26 March 2025 ]
Speaking of which, my goodness things are really kicking off out there. It feels like a game of grandmother’s footsteps that has suddenly slammed into high gear. I take one step, whip ‘round, and - BAM! - more blooms, more growth, more more more. Everything is going at 2x speed (how do people watch/listen to things in 2x? It makes my head spin).
We have reached the point in the year where all I want to do is sit outside and look. It is as close to heaven as I have experienced on earth. All around plants appear, planted in hope more than expectation. Because it still blows my mind that nature works. I plant a bulb and it grows into a tulip. While I understand the science, I will always believe that this process is a sort of magic. A gift from the universe - this special alchemy of soil, water, and light.
[ Unforeseen tulip, 26 March 2025 ]
The evidence of my folly re the 1,000 tulips is now irrefutable, and is all around. There are… so many of them. Only a couple have flowered so far, but there are accusatory heads appearing everywhere. Gaggles of budding tulips nodding away at the ridiculous, extravagant, obsessive, massively over the top planting of 1,000 tulip bulbs. Sitting amongst them I feel both overwhelmed and outnumbered.
To my very slight disappointment, the first tulip to bloom was a variety I had not planted. I mean, no, no, I mean I had planted the bulb, but the packet said it was one thing and the reality of the tulip is another. The unforeseen tulip is beautiful. It is a cream/yellow double and is quite the most stunning stowaway.
I picked the first two that bloomed, and a few daffs from outside my front door, and took them to a friend whose divine 3-week-old baby boy I met for the first time yesterday. It was a gift very begrudgingly given. The first flowers of the year. But I also believe in being a generous gardener. And I adore my sweet friend, and her two beautiful children. So… There.
[ Magnolia ‘Genie’, 26 March 2025 ]
Anyway, as above, the extent and consequences of succumbing to tulipmania between September and December last year is now clear, and so there will be plenty of tulips to go around.
Hang on in there because there’s more.
I have also done some seed sowing this week.
I’ve “direct sown” a bunch of seeds. I’ve never successfully direct sown anything before. It is both exhilarating and terrifying.
Last year, I tried to direct sow some zinnias. Ok, not “some zinnias” - hundreds of zinnias. Way too many zinnias. I emptied (I know) several packets of seeds (I know) into my big bath planter, and then didn’t thin them out (I know) and didn’t pinch them out (I know) and (I know, surprise, surprise) they all grew up very sad and sickly and (duh, obviously) died without flowering.
[ Euphorbia ‘Miners Merlot’ coming into flower, 26 March 2025 ]
Seed sowing is one of those things that you have to do wrong once (I hope only once) in order to know what you’re doing. I watched hours of videos, read guides, and sent frantic texts to our family’s gardening WhatsApp group, but until I had seen my seeds become seedlings (or die) and my seedlings become plants (or die) and my plants thrive… or die, I didn’t really understand what it all meant. Pinching, pricking, thinning… It makes a lot more sense once you’ve tried it out. And fucked it up.
Last year, in my usual way, I went way, way overboard on my first seed sowing. I sowed - among many, many other things - twenty-seven varieties of cosmos. My kitchen was a potting shed for four full months. I bought shelves from IKEA to store my trays and trays of seedlings. I learnt the pang of grief on coming downstairs in the morning to find a seedling hadn’t survived the night.
[ Magnolia × loebneri 'Encore', 26 March 2025 ]
For example, this year I know that poppies really do want to be sown direct. Last year I sowed them into fibre pots and then tried to plant them out - I would say it was maybe… 30% successful. Which is to say that overall it was pretty unsuccessful. So this week I went outside and cast around poppy seeds with gay abandon like the Papaver Fairy, sprinkling around my magical fairy dust that will turn (hopefully) into vibrant flowers. I have sown:
Almost all of the seeds were left over from my massive seed ordering binge last year, so I might be being too optimistic in hoping they will grow. Aside from one terrible night last summer when I left them all in a boiling hot boot, they live in the salad drawer of my fridge, which I hope will have preserved them.
I tried to sprinkle just in the middle of the beds, between the roses, so that they will fill in some gaps. But of course the seed is like dust particles, and also Leo immediately jumped up onto the raised beds and leapt around, shouting at a passing cat, likely moving the freshly sprinkled seeds around a good deal…
[ Magnolia × loebneri 'Encore', 26 March 2025 ]
I also planted lots of Nasturtium seeds, right along the front of the raised beds. Giverny eat your heart out. I think perhaps I’ve planted way too many. I’ve sown:
And as I make that list I realise that yes, yes that is obviously far too many. But then some of the seeds won’t germinate, and some seedlings will die, so maybe it’ll work out to be the right amount in the end… maybe? That’s probably being too optimistic.
[ Viburnum carlesii 'Aurora' in bud, 26 March 2025 ]
In January I sowed sweet peas, despite deciding months earlier that I wouldn’t sow any sweet peas this year. I’ve got good-looking seedlings of ‘Watermelon’, ‘Princess Elizabeth’ and ‘Piggy Sue’. They’re out in the cold frame looking pretty robust. I have been pinching them out religiously having learned my lesson last year. Whether they will survive the slugs once planted out is another question. There is already ample proof of their presence in the large holes chomped into my young foxgloves.
Inside at my Propagation Station I have successfully germinated a couple of favourites from last year - cornflower ‘Witching Hour’ and scabious ‘Black Knight’ - and am trying out phlox ‘Creme Brulee’. I need to sow some ‘Cherry Caramel’ and ‘Isabellina’, too. The latter I grew last year, but too late in the season, and didn’t pinch it out nearly enough. It was, nonetheless, very, very pretty and the scent might be my favourite of all smells. Seeing ‘Creme Brulee’ and ‘Cherry Caramel’ together at Castle Drogo and - separately - in a stunning cut flower arrangement in Devon last summer they were absolutely at the top of my ‘must sow’ list for this year. Perhaps I should just have focused on one - ‘Cherry Caramel’ is, after all, a very good match to the rest of the mad, fruity scheme.
[ Tulips, 26 March 2025 ]
I’ve also got a tray of nicotiana langsdorffii babies that look like they couldn’t possibly make it to 5cm tall, let alone the 5 foot tall they allegedly could reach. Speaking of things that may become overwhelmingly tall, I also direct sowed some ammi majus and daucus carota ‘Purple Kiss’ mix at the back of the borders. SO.
Yes, I do know that many (if not most) of the above are aggressive self-seeders. When I decided to completely re-plant my borders I knew it would be a couple of years before everything looked wonderful, and the same (I hope) will be true of the annuals. I absolutely intend for them to lasciviously put themselves about for next summer and on and on. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if I could just… do nothing, and have the garden grow back better and better every year? That said, in writing this post I realise that I have probably overdone it to such an extent that the whole thing will be a terrible, terrible mess…
[ Tulips, 26 March 2025 ]
While sorting out seeds in Battersea, I have of course been musing on how on earth to start a garden entirely from scratch at Daisy Barn when I’ll be stretched to my absolute limit financially. Seeds seems the obvious answer, at least in the first few months being there.
A while ago I somewhat prematurely ordered a few bare root roses to take to Daisy Barn because I wanted to grab them while they’re cheap (for the uninitiated, from about Oct to March rose suppliers will provide bare roots for a lower cost while the plants are dormant, and from April to Oct roses are sent out already potted up and in active growth). They are parked in pots in Battersea which is absolutely groaning at the seams. But at least I will have saved a few quid… hypothetically. I mean I did have to buy pots and compost to keep them in… Anyway, the bare roots are:
Crème de la Crème
Champagne Moment
Maxima Romantica
Aphrodite
Duchess of Cornwall
Princess Charlene de Monaco
Mme Alfred Carrière
Paul’s Himalayan Musk
[ Magnolia × loebneri 'Encore', 26 March 2025 ]
Luckily I was able to buy each for around £10-£14 thanks to my list of rose suppliers, where you will find several alternatives to the more mainstream and expensive rose sellers. There are, of course, David Austen roses that I long to buy, but each is £23 as a bare root, or £33 in a pot, and at the moment such an outlay seems unwise.
Speaking of roses, the roses in Battersea are all putting on serious growth now, so much so that I wondered if I could see a bud forming on one this morning. The martagon lilies and irises are all appearing above ground at a rapid clip, and all of my spring flowering shrubs are ready to enter stage left - Euphorbia ‘Miners Merlot’, Viburnum ‘Aurora’, Spirea ‘Snowmound’, Philadelphus 'Virginal’ and ‘Snowbelle’, Viburnum ‘Rosea’.
[ Tulips, 26 March 2025 ]
To my delight, a thalictrum has appeared and shot up to 30cm tall almost without me noticing. I planted some bare root thalictrum from Farmer Gracy last year but - like the many echinacea bare roots I also bought from Farmer Gracy - nothing appeared. It is a welcome surprise, of course. Though I don’t know what it will look like, and whether it will ‘go’ with the new aesthetic. We shall see.
The highlights in the garden at the moment are - of course - the magnolias. ‘Genie’ is going over now, but ‘Encore’ has just started booming out blooms, each an exquisite, languid, melting star.
[ Euphorbia ‘Miners Merlot’ coming into flower, 26 March 2025 ]
I think this must be my longest post to date, and I still feel there are many things I’ve left out. I haven’t even told you about the overwhelming, divine scent of my tiny garden today, nor about the impressive progress of the little alc mol seedlings. But I am easily overwhelmed by logistics (#adhd) and have a lot of packing and sorting and arranging to do (all of which I will avoid until the last moment #adhd) so forgive me if the next chapter of this story begins after I have done the initial moving and sorting at Daisy Barn, after the clocks change, and the spiral into spring begins to spin faster. Happy chaos.
[ First cut flowers from the garden, 25 March 2025 ]
[ Very messy garden, 25 March 2025 ]
Corrrr, I have been very much looking forward to seeing those Tulips!
Worth the wait👌
💃🏻so exciting! 🌷