zebra gardens and chicken scrapes

I was tracing back through my notes from when I was ill and found the story about how zebras give life to the deserts they roll in. This is proper megafauna as environmental shaper stuff. If this is something you are unfamiliar with, it's the idea that megafauna manage the environment they live in for their own benefit. If that all sounds a bit gaia-suspicious, no need to worry. It can be a co-evolved emergent behaviour, with a little light evolutionary shaping. 

Rolling pits to chicken scrapes

So, the zebras have their rolling pits, and these have  their own distinct biome of zebra-tolerant plants. They also act as water reservoirs, bringing a tiny flush of rich green, fertilised by zebra scurf and soil. How did they find this out? They flew drones over the desert and saw these curious round green patches after rain. Zebra gardens.

Chickens, as any back-garden bird-keeper knows, also do a lot of scraping. I can't find any papers on their contribution to back-garden biodiversity, though. They have a tendency to see laws as to-scrape lists and scoop out dust baths in the dry shady soil under shrubs. 

This can lead to chicken fatigue.

But, in all likelihood, their scrapes do have an impact, not necessarily negative. Rich fertilisation from chickenshit deposits, foliage stripping from busy beaks. Water retention reduced as vegetation cover decreases. Chicken runs need to be moved around, of course. But the grass comes greener, as grass wants over-fertile soil.

Getting it past the ethics committee might present challenge, but a drone study of the impact of back garden chicken keeping (or animal keeping in general) on soil fertility, cover and diversity might hold revelations.

no pips in my apples?

Seedless fruits happen through a biological process called parthenocarpy - development of fruit without fertilisation. 

How this happens:

1. Sport (naturally occurring mutant) is spotted by humans and propagated through cuttings.
2. Fruit farmers make lots of crossings trying to produce more fruit and less seed .
3. Plants are kept away from pollinators and/or pollinator partners (if they need them).
4. No or low-seed branches are grafted onto rootstock.
5. Some other ways.

This post (abandoned at note stage) I barely remember. Nothing remains but the notes. I can't remember if I had an apple crop. Maybe it was the years all the apples disappeared, and we suspected our foxes?

I was very ill at the time. 

strange dreams of caffeinated bees

I was sure I had imagined and/or dreamt the story of training lazy bees with caffeine to target strawberry scented robot flowers to promote more efficient pollination. But it turns out that, although more conservatively titled online, this is clearly a story about pollinator training experiments published in the Guardian. Aspects had exaggerated, but the basics are there

These experiments, and others like them, fill me with a kind of queasiness. I see myself reflected in the lazy bee, that might pollinate the commercial strawberry crop, or might find itself drawn back into a hedgerow for a bit of forage, a bit of variety. I also feel a touch of myself in that idea of a sentient part in a machine, the more efficient because it can self-govern, but the higher risk because it might decide not to do the target task. 

A garden is a mass of variables, change, expression of plants, insects, growth. The gardener controls, to a greater or lesser extent, their expression, their position, what thrives, what dies. In the months after my stroke, there were physical considerations; exhaustion, light sensitivity, confusion. But there was also a sense of deep-seated self-mistrust.

If I were a plant, would I be out of place? Not thriving? In the green bag, the brown bin? Would I weed myself?

So, things got away from me rather. I now have a properly overgrown garden. Some things have certainly died, outcompeted by bindweed and other thugs. A few of the fences may now be rather troubled. I'll backfill the story of how I lost my allotment later.

But weeds have their own value, their own importance. Your weeds tell you what your garden wants, and what it needs, what the insects expect to find there, and what will call in the beasts and birds. Enchanters Nightshade tells me I sit at a woodland border shaded, neglected. Huge spreading clumps of Green Alkanet speak of shady, undisturbed soil, rich in parts. Hedge Woundwort, with its armpit stink and scrambling stems, murmurs about hard clay, inconsistent water availability for shallower roots. I chop, I cut, I weed, I learn.

Clearing back, taking the lessons as I go, making it better.

urban cliff hypothesis

Back in 2021, sick from blood loss and illness, and mired in the sticky silence of lockdown, I read about the urban cliff hypothesis in a column by Alys Fowler (this is another infill post, written in February 2023 from the barely-there notes I took at the time).

"the urban cliff hypothesis that suggests our cities are surprisingly similar habitats to rock faces, that our homes still resemble caves, and that the plants and animals that thrive in our harsh cityscapes evolved from those natural places: species such as rock doves (pigeons), goat willows, buddleia and red valerian."

Links are from the original column, which was mostly about gardening when your garden is a small patch of concrete, or a windowsill. 

Barren Rock Ecosystems. Urban Cliff Hypothesis. Three word agglomerations. Trendy apartment buzzwords. But also; it is my biome.

My garden is a freshwater cliff and stone pavement environment. It doesn't have a visible stream, but both our position on a slope down to a confined waterway and the column of midges that gathers at the front corner of my back patio is suggestive of something part spring-line, part ancient water-pipes. The pebble dash is skittered over by squirrels and perched on by sparrows. Doves and pigeons coo in the chimneys. Oregano and Thyme do well, as you'd expect, but Thrift hates it - not quite bright enough to go coastal. Though the odd shade-loving exotic does well, and brings a pleasing sort of rock-jungle-stream vibe. 

With her usual tendency to find something bizarre and left-field, Alys includes a name-check for Geranium robertianum 'Celtic White' which is a sport of the pink weed that grows everywhere and kills whatever it's growing with. No word if the white one is as murdery, but although colour sports are sometimes less vigorous, I'm disinclined to make the experiment, not least because they smell of armpits.

I'm going to stick with my junglicious brights looming out of my shady, tree-buried space, as the animals flicker and skitter over the rocks, the trees, and kites quarter the upsky, looking for the abandoned kills of domestic cats.

shuttered concrete fantasies

 This beautiful arrangement from London Flower School popped up in my instagram feed.

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Thought the flowers are lovely, it was really the concrete containers that caught my eye. Click through to the post and you'll see people asking about them. Supplied by the wholesaler florist who supplies their flowers, apparently. Eye catching and attractive. At least in the pictures. As s a recent run-in with a provider of innovative plant pots from a popular online re-seller has taught me, the online picture is an approximation: the real item may disappoint. I wouldn't mind some shuttered concrete planters, though they look like they may fight with all but the smoothest of ground surfaces.

This is their last post but one; the look of concrete and not its reality: maybe an easier proposition.

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This year, it's time for a pot audit. As ever, a bunch of items shuffled off during the winter/spring -10 ° cold snap. Including my pound-shop camellia, sadly. Some pots broke apart in it, too. But honestly the main reason is: I need the patio space. I need space for bubble parties, projections, socially distanced visitors, rehearsals.

Time to get the plants out of the pots and into the ground. Where possible, of course. I have suspicion also that some of them (a Phygelius sucker smuggled home in a coat pocket, a fig in a tough metal trough that is nevertheless looking suspiciously happy) have punched through the bottom of their containers, and the patio too.

The beds are also full, of course, but I'm sure I can squeeze a few more in, if I try.

light that grows plants in the night

 This light installation is very pretty, isn't it? Be aware that its author is a utopian artist and a company called Biolumic who are developing the light delivery technology.

Of course, supplementary lighting has been a commonplace of glasshouse growing for many years. Here is Agriculture Canada in a delightfully utopian period piece uploaded years ago.

What is (not particularly) new here is the idea that you can boost productivity, increase pest resistance, boost growth etc. through "light recipes". LEDs, as anyone who has ever tried to match four bulbs after one has died knows all too well, come in all of the colours. White from warm to cold, and everything else as well. These purplish colours seem popular. I remember them at The IKEA Future garden at Chelsea 2019:

You can buy IKEA grow lights, as well as many cheaper solutions of course. Many are purplish. 

I don't have anything beyond a bright tube light in my verandah (the main indoor plant space). Maybe I should get them some supplementary lighting? Bet the tomatoes would appreciate it.

robots that plant trees

Like many people, I've planted a few trees in my life. A sycamore, when I was a child, on the farm, in a place we needed a bit of water draw and shelter. A Spire Cherry and a Magnolia in a corner house that needed a bit of wow factor. Some hedgeable British natives (Elder, Hawthorn, Hazel, Holly, Field Maple etc.) in gardens that needed wildlife-friendly sheltering boundaries. 

I'm hardly unique in this, lots of people enjoy planting trees, which is why I was a bit puzzled by the robot that plants trees. But then I started thinking about wildlife disturbance, about how often planted trees fail, about how volunteer humans might somewhat maximise the disadvantages of human-planted forests in terms of disturbance and inefficiency. Might there be a better and less disruptive way?

You'll want a slightly expanded view of the product at this point, and Interesting Engineering have a brief overview of the tree planting robot and its brush cutting chum. (Anyone thinking "ooh that sounds a great way to clear established native scrub and replace it with fast growing commercial wood product" quell your cynicism briefly please.)

There's also a video (yes that's a Facebook link) which you can leave running in the background as there's not much look at - just talking heads. But I am put in mind of a few things. 

Firstly: a tale of two hedges I heard somewhere. The first was planted carefully by foresters, to give a good and careful mix of appropriate plants for the area, protected from deer and rabbits, fed through lean times and watered through dry patches and it grew into a fine and beautiful hedge. The second was created by a busy farmer. He hung a washing line between two trees, near to where there were some old trees growing; a scrappy hawthorn, an elder tree that had sprung up from somewhere, a rough old bird cherry and a hazel, where the squirrels would pick up their nuts for winter. All winter the birds that fed in the trees sat on the line as they flew from tree to tree, picking up nuts and berries. They sat and shat. The seeds rained down, each fertilised tidily on the way down. And as time went by, seedlings sprouted up under the line, and the squirrels started to use is as a run-along, and then the mice and you know what? To cut a long story short, both the hedges did just fine.

Secondly: the way woody weeds sprout from every corner of my garden. Squirrel planted hazels, pigeon planted cherry laurel, starling squirted elder trees.

Let me whisper it quietly: you don't even need the line. Trees will grow if you don't cut them down. Thickets and scrub will skin over the soil. You might need to limit the access a little bit for rabbits and deer - or you could just let brambles or anything else thorny grow to take care of that. Leave the space. The forest will grow.

And if it's not growing, it's likely something else needs fixing other than planting trees.

cold weather gardening

There's not much to do when the weather is like this. But I still have a brown bin to fill so I cut my vine. Since the stroke I'm banned from ladders as the drugs I'm on = low blood pressure = risk of fainting, but fortunately I had a pole lopper lurking in the shed, so snip snip, down it came. 

Last year's brutal combination of snaps (cold, wet, dry, etc.) had left me unripe grapes rotting on the branches, so I'd ignored them in the hope that they'd at least be decent fodder for some overwintering animal or bird. Nothing wild had so much as touched them (bar the moulds - they had had fun) so into the brown bin they went with the rest of the branches. 

I filled my brown bin, which was enough to lose all my body heat. I feel the cold a lot more now than I used to before the stroke. I trimmed off the top of the tallest rose. But I baulked at clearing away the rough overgrowth of perennial weeds (bindweed, willowherb, long purples, etc.) from the big bed. Under the brown were hellebores coming through the angle, and the dead and desiccated overgrowth of weeds was giving them a modicum of protection from the bleak midwinter.

I'm glad I left it. This week was the hard frost week, the proper winter week, the week where I knock out a perfect disc of rock-solid ice every morning from the bird bath and through the week they accumulate, mysterious disks on my sere winter front bed. But still the hellebores persist, in muted colours, heads dropped modestly and safely down, so that frost and snow won't foul their delicate parts. 

Hellebore breeding has been quite wild in recent years, but though I have few of the fluttering, ruffled types (I bought a nursery six-pack from an impulse display one year, and they are establishing, slowly, alongside the older varieties shown here) I favour the classic plant, an open face, a flower almost dropped back to the greys, browns and muted greens of winter, that soft February palette that is waiting for the bright brushstrokes of spring proper.

The whisper, where others shout. But they still say: spring is coming.

air plants

Some xmas money finally got spent - on air plants. Craftyplants - a favourite since I found their stall in a marquee at a garden show, fondness consolidated when I saw them appear on Gardener's World - have delivered me some new plants to fill some new containment devices. 

This Tillandsdia Albida has a lovely silvery shimmer. Flower spikes are cream and red, which sounds amazing, but I'm unlikely to be provoking flowering for a bit. It's a fast grower, and I fancy waiting till it's a bit more chonky.

There's actually a variety of this Tillandsia Albertiana called "Mystic Trumpet" but that was out of stock! Never mind, I rather like this soft little mass of fronds, which was already enthusiastically dividing itself in two, having presumably decided to put on a growth spurt in transit.

Now for the fancy one - Tillandsia Tricholepis. It's a small variety, so unlike the other two, will remain delicate, although apparently it's madly promiscuous, pupping all around the place, which sounds fun.Yellow flower on this one, if it gets happy.

Of course then the heating promptly broke, the temperature plummeted, and it started snowing, but hopefully they'll get through that. Nice soak in water (I use water from my electric dehumidifier at this time of year, which is clean and soft) and then off to get settled in.

Happy 2021, air plant family!

an act of faith in the summer to come

Sweet peas can famously be planted any time from October to May, and though you might want to go early or late for best results, I find the act of planting in deep midwinter irresistible. There's so little going on elsewhere in the garden. Doing almost anything involving soil will churn mud monstrously. You can hack and chop, certainly - but there are invertebrates sheltering everywhere.

So, the sweet peas:

Nicky's Nursery still have a good choice available if you want to do some midwinter planting (or spring planting) of your own. I got Velvet Crush - not a variety, but a very sweet mix - a lovely looking lavender blue called Bristol, and a favourite of mine called Blue Shift which is pretty much a candyshift of pink and purple. They're going into a root trainer, you can see it under the packets. 

Next up: the propagator, for the chilli seeds (that's probably what the fourth packet is, in case you're wondering).

blooms in the house

 It feels unspeakably mean to bring in any flowers from the garden at the moment (on the last count: Winter Jasmine, the odd daisy and, improbably, Hoop Petticoat Daffodils) so I'm picking them up, at great speed, on the weekly shop. Just basic bitch supermarket flowers: daffs and-and -another like basic tulips or carnations. I have a very soft spot for them though; they have an irrepressible cheerfulness. 

Last week's tulips have, as they always do, died beautifully. Even the daffs have withered tidily with them, as if caught up in the tulips' love of the glamour of decay. Dying daffs are more often a spludge of gunky yellow; these have kept their form.

One more day and they will be over, but for today it's beautiful.

when next year comes : abergelasney

Maybe it's too early to making solid plans, maybe it's not. I've had a rough week, health-wise. But thinking about where I might go, when it becomes possible, that's a thing, surely?

So I found myself reading about Aberglasney and its extraordinary Ninfarium. Here's a little view of the gardens: 

They're not far - in South Wales, and therefore both accessible as a fairly epic day trip, and as a practical, modern stately home - they also (ooh!) have rentable holiday space. 

Our 1920s quarti is the end terrace of a four house block. Along the back of the houses runs a basic brick and beam columned colonnade, roofed in the same curvy red tiles as the rest of the house. Originally housing an outdoor toilet and providing clothes and firewood drying space, lots of them (ours included) got enclosed in the 70s-80s-90s-00s. This leaves the space more indoor than outdoor - warm enough for exotic plants, for example. But the exterior nature persists in a crittal window looking into the kitchen, a pebbledash back wall, a primitive raised floor, a certain improvisational feel. Often in Oxford these spaces - neither in nor outdoors - are called "garden rooms" and I've filled it with a lot of plants.

Not so many that they menace the cats and the drying washing - all spaces must fulfil multiple designations - so I will never be able to approach the plants-first brio of Aberglasney's exterior/interior spaces. But I'd like to see them; there's often interesting ideas about how things may grow more happily in limited spaces, vertically, together, luxuriantly, beautifully. 

poisonous cucurbits

Last year I grew cucumbers successfully for the very first time. It wasn't intentional. I'd bought a courgette plant from Aldi on impulse, and when I got it home I noted in passing that it didn't actually have anything other than "plant" written on its label, but thought nothing more of it, as I stowed it cheerfully into a pandemic-friendly individual shopping basket that had turned out to be very much hand-unfriendly.

The courgette grew wonderfully, but was also a cucumber, and that was great, as I like cucumber very much. But the last of the cucumbers was not great. It was a little shrunken, and had that bitter tang, almost a touch soapy, that I associate with plants that I'd better not.

Cucurbitacins made the news last year, along with slightly sniggering headlines about "improperly grown zucchini" along with first hand accounts and tabloid exposés. Hair falling out and dying are mentioned, though most of those affected seem to have just had the dicky tummy warned about by the RHS.

I didn't eat the cuke, I tend not to eat things that seem a bit iffy, not since the incident with some red quinoa from a health food shop that hadn't been properly washed to remove the saponins. Bitter lemon yes - bitter cucumbers, no. 

That said, I do rather fancy growing them again this year. They seemed to like the warmth of the patio and cheerfully tumbled leaves and tendrils all over the place. I would like some actual courgettes, though, too this time. Maybe I should try buying an Aldi cucumber plant - win either way. 

I quite fancy a Golden Globe or similar. These look good.

some things I found at Kew

Back when we could, before lockdown locked down, there was a brief moment when outside socialising was permitted and the weather wasn't too terrible and my sister and I both had an afternoon. We went to beautiful Kew Gardens. Not for the winter lights, just for an afternoon bimble. 

I was with my niece who wanted to visit a glasshouse. Surely not, I thought. But the glasshouses at Kew are huge and distanced visiting was possible. Inside the glasshouse I found this:

Earthstar, Cryptanthus - it's freely available as a pot plant, and I rather like it. Different varieties have rather lovely names - Rubin Star, Pink Sarlight, Ruby Red. Of course the thing I get won't turn green and make flowers, eh, probably ever? That's a very mature plant. But the plants themselves are rather lovely, even when tiny.

I'm also finding myself increasingly drawn to variegated leaves. My garden, surrounded by neighbours' trees, tends toward darkness. Variegation brings a little sparkle. Mail order variegation is an unreliable beast, however; you never quite know the mutant you'll get.

Meanwhile, out in the gardens, the bushes were watching and advancing....

But there were some more surprising things outside, too. Observe the hardy cactus and succulents! Growing in the cold and not caring less.Just last year, I started moving some of my cacti and succulents outside in the summer, for more light and space. But looking at these, outside in December, I can take all that much further. It is time to start seriously investigating Hardy Cacti?

I don't really have enough ground to worry about ground cover, but my large number of deciduous shrubs and trees mean that I do need to consider what looks good with fallen leaves. Fine fernlets of some type and a creeping variegated deadnettle or similar are looking very good with the fallen leaves. I brought home a couple of  Yellow Archangel stems last year which might give a similar look. They're also tough enough to take on my terrible perennial weed-load.

I also took this picture, for reference. It's an artichoke plant, taller than me. I brought two of these home from the allotment. Will I regret this? I don't know.

dawn from the garden bench

We got a cheap bench from IKEA last year. The design suggested that it had been fairly hastily improvised from a bedstead; the perfect small seat for a socially distanced visit.

For us, it was replacing last year's cheap bench (a Wilko special) which had cracked under the weight of being used as a cat trampoline. It had a comfortable woven seat with enough bounce to make it a fun jump for our kitties up into the jungle gym of trees that backs the garden.

In full midwinter the light never hits the bench. The garden sinks into full shadow. But just occasionally, now, when there is a fine morning, I get to sit in the sun with my morning tea, considering the chaos that it is; a garden belonging to someone who has been convalescent for six months and locked down (on and off) since last March. Fair to say there's quite a bit that needs doing.

But just for now, I'll have my morning tea in the January sunshine, while the Red Kites warm their wings and the sparrows scuffle in the trees.

object of desire 2021 #1 - Coronilla Glauca

There is a house I used to walk by, back when walking that route wasn't a risk to the health of myself and others, which had a beautiful blue door and a front garden dominated by a big, stunningly beautfiul Coronilla Glauca Variegata. It's been on my kidnap-a-twig list for years, but I've never had a cutting take (the twigs have come from a rather scruffier and closer to home specimen!)

Variegated plants add a little sparkle to a dark garden, but I recently met the species variety in a Botanic Garden and it is, honestly, just as good:

putting a seed in the soil of 2021

So, in the space between me crashing out of work with a suspected second stroke (false alarm! Now on adjusted medication and feeling a lot better) and waking up to a second desperate scuttle into my workplace for a few last key tasks before second lockdown, a couple of gardening catalogues came through my door. 

During the time I was so uncertain about my recovery, I couldn't face the thought of the garden. It felt like a jinx to plan into the future that way. Gardens, after all, are faith in a future. It might be yours, shared or someone else's. But you've put your hand on the steering wheel of continuity. Whether it's alkanet or roses, nettles or hellebore, you can look out on it and whisper, "I made that".

So, to the catalogues. That pile of glossy promises, full of hints of an April, a June, even a September. Will we be out of our homes by then? Or should I budget for a lot of being in the garden? One day I found myself marking items in the catalogues; another putting in an order of seeds. The hands have voted for a future, in the garden, with fruit and flowers. And who am I to argue?

So, what's in the garden for 2021?

Somewhere in the postal system:

• Sweet Pea. Blue Shift, Bristol, Prince of Orange and Velvet Crush.
• Tomato Orange Queen, Orange Wellington, Ailsa Craig, Bloody Butcher, Brown Berry and Carbon 
• Chilli Black Cobra, Cayennetta, Chenzo, Little Bomb and Orange Tyger

Other marked up in the seed catalogues include a climbing/hanging basket strawberry (I left my strawbs up at the allotment), those weird blue potatoes (actually a shade of purple), Courgette summer ball and those sparse sprouting broccoli like Red Fire. There's also a lovely white Kale (Emerald Ice - also available, Midnight Sun) and a cartoonish bean called Selma Zebra. I want some crimson flowered broad beans too though I'm also intrigued by Masterpiece Green Longpod - a new variety to me.

Yes, yes, I know. I don't have an allotment any more.... 

the wet world of winter

Today the sun never shone. We went for a walk and it was fun; there were new year swimmers in the icy lake. Just a few, but some were in bikinis! The vigour of youth... Kids were breaking the ice so they could run their Christmas RC Boats, tow paths were closed but no roads were flooded. It was a walk we know well - we're sticking to regular routes for our health walks, just a few. This one would normally take us up the tow path, but it is flooded in the low parts. As it was, we walked past the allotments which I stared at with speculative eyes. I'm already thinking about my next allotment, even though it's too early for that sort of thing yet - I'm very much still recovering.

But, things which might be happening this year:

• I have a geodesic dome kit in my shed: I'm waiting for the neighbour to finish on the willow tree, then back-garden shelter, of a somewhat festivalish variety, will arrive.
• Reconfiguring the main bed: we have a big bindweed problem. Plus Alkanet, Enchanter's Nightshade, Red Valerian, etc. as if the garden is trying to collect the full perennial weedset. Which means I may have to dig. Or go up, using bricks to raise a bed (I have a lot of bricks as a result of a kitchen wall that went).
• Turning the compost: my compost bin is full. There's a great ants nest in it, but it's not moving fast enough to keep up with winter waste. That means work must be done.
• Vegetable planters: after last year's success with the cucumbers I want to try again - how much fruit and veg can I grow actually in my own garden.
• Something ate my apples last year: who was the culprit? Post-Christmas, I am the happy owner of a rugged trail cam. This year, we investigate our wildlife.

That's enough. I don't honestly know how ill I'm going to be, or how long I'm likely to take recovering. The new medication mix is making me feel better but I don't know if I'll be able to stick with it. It's all rare enough that the data is just case studies.Some people are just fine after. Maybe I can get there. Consider it an overarching resolution.