Somewhere along the line the botanical purist meets the gardening hedonist and the ambivalent fundamentalist emerges. In the garden there is not too much of a conflict of interest as I am quite content to grow pure species, subspecies, hybrids, geographical and horticultural varieties, plants of doubtful parentage or even clones. The growing conditions in
Gardening Dilemmas
Right plant in the right place
Anyone who gardens on the coast or on a wind swept hillside will understand the shelter belt catch-22 – how can I establish a shelter belt when the plants need a shelter belt to get established? The obvious answer is to protect the plants with a physical wind break, which is feasible if the prevailing
Gardening Dilemmas 3
Do I rest on my laurels? With a little help from an errant jet stream the cottage garden now looks like a cottage garden and not a bare batch of ground with some scrubby grass/weeds imitating a lawn. At last “nice, wall, terrific view shame about the garden” has been replaced by “what an interesting
Brown and crispy round the edges
This is not a description of my garden not my home-made biscuits. So I am going to whisper this we’ve hardly had any rain for almost 3 months. I’m not sure what constitutes a drought, but my garden and the surrounding machair are parched. Now I know people on the big island have a surfeit
Gardening Dilemmas 2
The Time and Space Conundrum I am sure that it is possible to devise a mathematical formula to resolve my problem, however just thinking about it makes me want to lie down in a darkened room. So this post is about juggling and not mathematics.At 57°N the growing season is very short and relatively cool,