Winter Solstice 2022

 Today is the Winter Solstice, and I marked it by returning outside to a sunny and mercifully ice-free back garden.  Yesterday I turned my attention to our apple trees and today I was pruning our blackcurrants, gooseberries and blueberry bush.  These are times when, engaged in gardening, there is room in my thoughts for only the immediate task, interspersed with happy memories of the times when we gardened for a living.

This is not a technical piece - I still consult our two organic gardening reference books, but will not repeat the guidance here.  So I will only add that at lunchtime we ate the last stored apple from our 'Scotch Bridget' tree which has had a bumper crop.  Light pruning was the order of the day, appropriate feeding will follow in the spring.  Both trees grow taller and more fruitful year by alternate year.

By stages to the Paradise Gardens

We decided to celebrate a recent birthday by using our bus passes for a trip to RHS Bridgewater.  In theory this journey seemed feasible by taking a bus to Bolton, changing to a bus to Walkden and then walking from Walkden to the gardens.  We packed the Greater Manchester map and a picnic, with plenty of water.

Unfortunately, by the time we got to Chorley over an hour had elapsed.  The first stage of the journey to Bolton was taking longer than anticipated.  We bailed out and found ourselves at a stop we had never seen before opposite Myles Standish Way.

I now realise that I had confused Chorley's Astley Park, which is accessible from the town centre, with the Yarrow Valley Country Park, which was signposted for cyclists and pedestrians from our point on the A6.  We walked up Myles Standish Way past modern 'executive' housing developments but with no indication of the country park.

It was our good fortune to meet an older chap pushing his grandson in a buggy.  He was helpful as was his friend who gave us directions to Birkacre.  He hoped we were good walkers.  We assured him that we were and set off along a dusty track past the site of the ancestral grounds of the landowning Kelletts.

Much to my relief all the landmarks the 'Chorley chaps' had listed came into view and we swiftly saw ahead of us the welcome sign of the Yarrow Valley Visitor Centre with its cafe (and free toilets).

We ate our lunch sitting by a fishing pond watching the ducks.

I pulled out the Greater Manchester map and found we were on the only page in Greater Manchester where Coppull meets Chorley.  There was the Visitor Centre and the lane we had been advised to take to the main road where buses ran back to town.

We found the stop and stood at it.  Another kind stranger told us that the bus company had been on strike for nearly four weeks.  We thanked her and set off to walk into town.  It was not as far as it looked - we could see a tall church spire - and as we are interested in townscapes there was plenty to see among the small shops, chippies and terraced houses.

We located the bus station (and free toilets) and it was time to go home.

I consoled myself in the following ways.  We had a good circular walk (nearly 10 km) and a pleasant picnic.  We saw parts of Chorley on foot that we would never have seen by car.   Three complete strangers gave us accurate and helpful directions.  We had plenty of food and water, and finally, and most importantly for me, despite my forebodings we were never off the map.

We still aim to visit the Paradise Gardens at Bridgewater, but will take a different route.

Pedestal Plant Stand

A family visit at the weekend led to us acquiring various useful 'bits and bobs' including two large sheets of glasses from a couple of redundant desks.

This was a challenge but my husband rose to it.  Very carefully we manoeuvred one sheet from the garage where he had safely stored it, round the corner, past the back door to its final destination in the patio area behind our French windows.

It now rests on rectangular tea chests given by S our neighbour that have been waterproofed with outdoor fence paint in a nice shade of oak.

Positioned on and around the the stand are our houseplants enjoying their annual summer holiday and pots of sweet peas interplanted with cornflowers - both yet to flower.

As I sit inside and look out on what has become a courtyard garden I am reminded of the period I spent in Holborn in the 1980s and early '90s in an extensive high-ceilinged town house, the home of what purported to be an upmarket management consultancy.  The desks were the self-same shade of oak and covered with tooled gilded leather.  Image was all.  Now imagination is all as here in our garden we repurpose, repaint and reconfigure to our hearts content.

Hawk and Hawkweed

Our 'patio party' celebration of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee at the beginning of June was a great success as friends and neighbours met, chatted, snacked and purchased plants (by donation) from our charity fundraising table for the DEC (Disasters Emergency Committee).  We contributed tomato plants and herbs; a friend brought houseplants and more herbs such as comfrey and lemon balm.  

Among these were some plants that she had dug up from her garden because she loved their bright colour.  We duly re-potted these in good compost and later planted them in an empty spot in the front border under the hedge.  They looked as if they would thrive.  

Unfortunately our anonymous flower has a name - it is Orange-flowered Hawkweed (Hieracium aurantiacum) and it is a weed or a wild flower depending on your perspective.  We were enlightened whilst taking a cup of tea with a friend.  We went outside to inspect.  Hawkweed had rooted into the mortar all over her back patio, looked pretty but was hard to eradicate.  She demonstrated.  My husband only needed one look -  he could visualise it proliferating on ours.

We came home and the carefully tended, newly planted hawkweed went straight into our garden waste recycling bin.

The following day a juvenile Sparrowhawk with a speckled breast landed on our front hedge.  I caught sight of it through the window, hailed it as a thrush until I saw the curved beak and the shape of its tail and wings.  I looked it up.  It 'hedge-hopped' exactly in the manner described in the bird book and then flew away.  

We need experienced friends, exact observation and reliable references.

Dutch Iris

 J, who usually brings us cheese, brought us some Dutch Iris on her visit before last.  They were a superstore deal and some had already started to sprout.  So I took a perambulation around the garden - front and back - finding sufficiently warm and fertile spots and planting them at the correct depth (never one of my strong points).  After that there was the usual barricade with small twigs and lengths of bamboo to prevent our resident blackbirds pecking around the newly disturbed soil.

I wonder, as I have posted before, if enjoying irises is a sign of increasing years.  When we first arrived L gave us some delightful iris reticulata as a housewarming present.  They used to grow on the plot under the apple trees and I still cherish a shot of them stored on my mobile. But alas in our soggy clay soil they failed to thrive. 

Better suited are the big irises from my family, and some additional Dutch Iris from R who lives south of the river in a slightly warmer spot.  These she propagated herself and they were fine last year.  I regularly inspect J's gift and so far they have survived the cold and the birds, though they may take some time to acclimatise.

Next time J arrived I took her on a tour of my recent plantings.  She arrived with cheese.

'Plant a tree in a pot'

These are the encouraging words for people in temporary accommodation who wish to do their bit for the environment.  A list features in the March 2022 RHS magazine and we have inherited one of them: slow growing star magnolia (Magnolia stellata).

Our tree came from V, who, while waiting to relocate, passed on to us several of her plants in pots.  Her rose, a lovely scented old-fashioned type went straight into the ground and bloomed twice. My husband has just given it a first spring feed and prune.  (It does look a little drastic but will repay the attention).

V's Christmas tree, repotted, lasted for two seasons, but this year the needles began to drop and it was beginning to look rather ragged and worn.  We considered insinuating it into our wildlife boundary but then did what we very rarely do with any plant; chopped it up and consigned it to the brown garden waste recycling bin.

The lilac Syringa microphylla is going with V.  So while we are 'caretaking' we have pruned out 'dead, damaged or diseased' twigs and fed and top dressed it.  It should bear some pretty little clusters of pink flowers.  

To conclude with Magnolia stellata.  This lives on our back patio, situated a little on the shady side but we are running out of space.  It went straight away to a larger pot size with more well rotted compost.  We underplanted as suggested, in this case with winter pansies.  V praises its fragrant flowers and we will soon see them for ourselves.

Covering the ground with Pulmonarias

The March 2022 issue of the RHS magazine includes an article on colourful ground cover plants celebrating, among others, pulmonarias.

I consulted my garden diary to see if I could find when we bought ours but I found no record.  It's strange when I noted the purchase of a Phlox reticulata and a fuchsia in July 2020; the reordering of various borders in summer 2020, autumn 2020's bargain supermarket tulip bulbs and my winter display tub planted up in October 2020 which is still looking well.

The RHS article describes pulmonarias as 'low-growing' and 'low maintenance' which could be why they were overlooked.  All I can remember is that the pink and blue one was in flower when we bought it and the 'electric blue' ones were cuttings that had been struck by our local nursery.  They did not look very strong.  As advised, they stayed in their pots for some months before being planted in damp spots in or near the patio border bed.  At one stage all their existing leaves withered - at that point I feared that it was 'touch and go' - but my husband assured me that they were robust and they now have clusters of new leaves around the base of their flower stalks, with more to come.  

He associates the spreading habit of pulmonarias with older customers of traditional taste.  I too may be turning into a lower maintenance perennial alongside the primulas, snowdrops, anemones, daffodils and the fritillaries that we discovered under our raspberry bushes.  I have traditional iris and Dutch iris, and am watching to see the first signs of growth from the latter.  The delphiniums are reappearing, and later will come the Nepeta, the mint and the Astrantia.  Back they go to their roots, corms or bulbs and every season they are refreshed and spring up again.