gardens visible from queues

When  I get bored of my own back garden, I can (as long as I'm shopping for necessities) go and spot out gardens from socially distanced queues. Here's one I found queuing for the Farmer's Market:


That little flash of green up there on the roof of Tesco's backside delivery port represents a tree seed of some kind (maybe Bog Myrtle?) that has found enough of a slurry of dirt and road dust in that loading canopy to put down a fat root or two. As you can see, whatever's going on up top hasn't impacted on the electrics yet. I suspect there may be more greenery in that elevated planter, but there's nowhere public you could look down into that.

Here's a Tesco's of a different colour:



  

The Megatescos up by the ring road has significant planting; low shrubs, car-park trees and wild edges, where there are narrow dirty creeks and semi-wildflowers, like these spanglish bluebells. The slight hollow in the woodchips is almost reminiscent of a nest, though what bird would drop itself here? The long queue snakes up the edge of the car-park, past recruitment and warning signs, guided by crash barriers.

  


Looking the other way from the bread queue, smart modern gated student accommodation boasts a little spiky defensive planting,some organic-looking decorations and a basic green roof on the bike shed, covered with sparse sedum red with stress. This was as good a view as I could get, tethered to my place in the queue, arms outstretched above me, try to see a roof too high and out of view. Narrow view points, bare glimpses of green. 

fresh tulips from holland

Normally April would be tulip festival time in Holland. But right now, across the country, gardens and displays and the eerie, colour-swatch fields are all empty. I've never been. It's a bit of a silver holidaymaker thing to do; coaches and people with microphones. With the intention of putting a crease in my mind for next year, or the year after if things go very badly wrong, here's a little in the way of trippy trips through tulips from Holland.

This view of the famous Keukenhof garden unfortunately has an audio-backdrop of copyright free loops; these can and should be safely muted. I matched it with Lemon Jelly's Elements instead, for best results start a little before the Keukenhof video.

This dawn drone fly-through and over of the same garden has some proper gasp-out loud moments, and although the colours are muted by the digital eye in the sky's auto-adjustments and the gentle dawn light, this actually adds to the ethereality of the view. The audio-backdrop is not as bad, but anyone who wants to skip the auto-drama-classical and elfy oooing can instead safely substitute Tiny Foldable Cities by Orbital (and if you want a brief urban break from the tulips, that video is ideal).

Finally, a view of the incredible tulip fields, and again I would pull a music substitution - Four Tet's Two Thousand and Seventeen mixes well with this dreamy slice of floral agri-tech. Some lovely views of the little stand-on tulip cutters they use to harvest the blooms in this one, alongside the obligatory windmill action, along with breathtaking close-ups of the blooms in single-variety blocks, fascinating in their absolute perfect sameness.

disappointments and triumphs

April is the cruellest month. It's been a lot colder this week, and I ended up going up to the allotment before I took my seedlings in and these became this:

It would be the Black Krims, of course. All other tomatoes not altogether happy but also not dead as yet. In rather brighter news I found my black gold, and then Tim found me some more, and then all the tulips started going off like fireworks:

Up at the allotment the whole I-have-too-many-bulbs thing had worked out. I cut them and brought them down to the house as cut flowers - my own cut flowers. But there's a massive Alkanet problem in the back bed and the front bed and everywhere else really. The bees keep visiting the flowers so I don't feel up to weeding them out. They are a lovely shade of blue.

Finally, I made an art for the back garden, inspired by Takis whose show I saw at the Tate last year. A retrospective. He will make no more art and I cannot go to any galleries. When there's nothing you can go and see, make your own art. L-R Stop/Go in construction and situ and below, Small blue light. They don't light up, for the sake of robustness in a garden context.

the joy of allotment tulips

The intention was to use them for cutting, for a vase at home but honestly I haven't the heart to do that, and in the case of the daffodil that looks like a moulting turkey, wouldn't want to.

allotment upcatch; bees, beans and tulips

I'm allowed to spend my daily exercise up at the allotment, but in practice that's not something I'm doing very often. With just one excursion per day, it's not often going to be spent on the allotment. That said, I got up this week to struggle my potatoes into the ground (and have nearly done so -- not quite all, the main crop still need to go in) so here's a little allotment progress in pictures:



   

I stood right up in the rough to take the overview photo, to fit in the fox's compost bin and the tube I use for couch grass "disposal". My Broad Beans are short (not enough water, soil thin and mean) but very floribundent. Filing some extra tulips up on the allotment has worked out well.



   

My pea plants are still very small. I gave them a weedaround. Might help, or might just turn them into salad beacons for pigeons. The bed behind the bean sticks has Jerusalem artichokes in it, and below that's the couch grass I pulled out of the second earlies potato bed, left bottom. The winter mustard has bolted, and the hover flies seemed to be liking the flowers, so I left them to it. No sense in clearing anything you're not using.

Speaking of things being used, the bees are still very much present. I managed to weed a bee into a huddle of yellow ants that promptly swarmed it. It shook off most of them but two hung on, onto each wing, keeping it pinioned and stopping it from flying off. I'd never seen anything like it. The amazing photo below shows it shaking its wings to try and dislodge the ants. This didn't work, and I last saw it crawling off into a dense tussock of grass, scraping its wings on everything to try and dislodge the ants. That also didn't seem to be working. The little fuzzball with the pollen-caked legs also came up in a trowelfull of earth; presumably it had been down there laying its eggs. Sorry bee!

   

Finally, the daffs and tulips that I hadn't reckoned I'd like the look of in the garden all came up. Looking good, everyone! Right decision there I think.

notable successes of spring (yellow)

Very pleased with a few things in the garden right now:



The Black Celandine has successfully adapted to my garden by getting bigger, glossier and even more gorgeous, were that possible! Its proper name is Ficaria verna 'Brazen Hussy' (Bronze Celandine) and that right there is a link to an online seller still taking orders, if you want to get your own. It's a plant that gives a lot for very little care; highly recommended.




I bought an Epimedium with some trepidation - it looked too delicate for the roughness and high competition of my garden. I think this one is Fairy Wings but it's a good call to buy these in person so you can pick a form, shade and leaf colour you really love (that's a garden centre link). I picked mine up at a show, but it's gone native in a shady corner, and gave me fabulous flower spikes this year.



Then there were the Farmer Gracy Tulips, which you won't be able to get at this time of year, but is a bookmark-for-next-year job. I'm not a fussy tulip grower -- I'm happy to grow brassy basics and beautiful bargain rail items. But the Gracy bulbs were a cut above, and then a cut above that. Delicate colours, elegant forms, interesting markings. My garden is cool and shaded, so I'll have tulips into June -- these were just the very earliest.



Finally, the Forsythia. This was the first year the Forsythia had a bird feeder nestled into it, and the combination of yellow flowers and cheerful sparrows proved completely unphotographable (my sparrows are sensibly skittish) but very spring-is-here. I boosted the underplanting (currently Rip Van Winkle) with some more cheerful yellows (Hoop Petticoat and Jonquil) and that worked.

garden inspiration : Kinzua Bridge

A look for 2020 that I'm really feeling has found its moment is Disaster Gardens. These are the accidental gardens that spring up (or are sometimes gently encouraged to spring up) in the wake of disasters. This came from Abandoned Engineering, specifically a spot on Kinzua Bridge.

Here are a couple of pictures (not by me) that really show the grandeur and beauty of  the collapsed viaduct bridge. Look at how the rust construction contrasts with the bright seasonal flowers, the green shrubs!



The soft planting, contrasting with the sharp angled metal twisted into organic shapes by unimaginably powerful forces, are simultaneously a reminder of the raw, violent, unstoppable power of nature; and it's ability to renew, recover and reclaim.



Here's a little video wander around the Bridge. You don't need audio on and you might want to skip the herd of Elk at the end, but it captures beautifully the three-dimensional sweep of the girder garden (and its slightly minecraftish viewing skywalk).

Obviously you can't work at this scale in a back garden (or even a show garden) but there's inspiration to be had here, in the tortured steel, the concrete piles, the massive rivets drowning slowly in moss and overgrowth.

If you're interested in what happened to Kinzua Bridge, including the details of how it got shredded, here's the original spot from Abandoned Engineering that reeled me in:

the joy of tattered flowers

A lot of my flowers are looking a bit battered, tattered and chewed, but I've found that I kind of like that. Makes the garden loo klived -in.


 
 

In the centre panel is my "hanging basket" (an old repurposed orange kettle) which contains a cheerful bunch of yellow pansies that have lasted the entire spring. They nearly died in the first week or so of lock-down, but then I remembered to water them, and after a few day's soak discovered that the petunia is also not as dead as one might expect.

Here's to the volunteers and returners, the slug-nibbled and pigeon-chomped. Keep on flowering!