An update from my garden
Exciting Chelsea news, a micro meadow in the making, and the plants driving me potty right now
Hi, I’m Dan, and this is my alternative gardening newsletter, The Earthworm. Whether you’re a first-time reader or a long-time subscriber, thanks for being here. The Earthworm is a reader-supported publication. The two best ways you can support my work are to share this newsletter with a friend, and to consider upgrading to a paid subscription. And remember, the entire back catalogue of features, interviews, columns and more is freely available to all members of The Earthworm community. Why not take a scroll down memory lane?
Next week is going to be a big one. Yes, it’s Chelsea Flower Show week, and your favourite Earthworm is going to be there. (Come on, I’ve got to be in your Top 5 at least, surely. Top 10…?)
As I type, the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea are undergoing their annual face-lift. I’m not talking a bit of Botox, or a workaday nip-and-tuck – this is a full hammer-and-chisel job.
The site is teeming with steel-capped boots and high-vis vests and cranes and concrete and countless trolleys of specially-reared plants. It is an extreme transformation that will see some 23 acres of featureless lawns be turned into a living garden city, with thousands of visitors cooing over mature trees and elaborate water features that, dream-like, will then vanish, living on only as a fuzzy, formless memory. A sort of mass hallucination, with added flowers.
As per Chelseas past, the Gardeners’ World crew will be broadcasting live from the flower show all week, bringing you sunny, smiley, saccharine coverage from the comfort of their media village sofas. But why should Monty and his mates have all the fun?
And so, from Monday, The Earthworm will also be broadcasting (OK, emailing) not-quite-live1 and uncut from Chelsea Flower Show. Expect the unexpected! (But also expect flowers, gardens, interviews, that sort of thing, only Earthworm-style.)
In the meantime, it has been just over two months since I published the last update from my garden. Back then, the onset of Spring was still a vague promise, and I could list on one hand the number of plants in bloom in the garden – mainly daffodils and some early tulips. Today, it is a very different picture out there.
No Mow May and my micro meadow
You might remember a post from earlier this month where I spoke about No Mow May, a really worthwhile wildlife-minded campaign that encourages gardeners to let their lawns – however massive or modest – grow ragged and untamed, if only for a few weeks. An unmown lawn means an opportunity for wild flowers (aka weeds) to come into bloom, which means more beneficial bugs, which means a happy garden.
With 12 days still to go, my micro meadow is flecked with gold, as buttercups, dandelions and wood avens put on a picnic for passing pollinators. I’ve also identified the foliage of a couple of different varieties of clover, as well as at least one type of poppy, growing up through the grass – itself about a foot-high – and I look forward to seeing the current crop of delicate yellow flowers give way to a more diverse pallet of pinks and whites and ruby-red in the days to come.
Also, a confession: I did actually mow some lawn the other day, just not my own! I blame the curriculum on my current horticulture course, which demanded that the lawn-care module be concluded last Friday with a practical assessment, involving a patch of grass, an old petrol-powered mower, and a very grumpy Earthworm.
The Great Spring Pot Swap
Every year, I buy little tomato and chilli seedlings from the garden centre, and plop them onto the windowsill in the office. It’s the sunniest spot in the house, and gives them all the light and warmth and protection they need to get going.
And boy do they get going. The plants are now a couple of feet high, their leaves interlocking to form a tangled canopy. A little nightshade forest.2 Flowers have appeared on all but one of the plants, which means fruit will soon follow. They are far too big for their perch on the sill. I need these plants to be outside. The plants need the plants to be outside.
Problem: there is no space outside. The sunny corner of the patio, where these tomatoes and chillies should spend the summer, is currently full of pots. And the pots are full of plants. Specifically, spring bulbs. The daffodils and tulips have gone over and their bulbs could now be lifted and stored, to be replanted in the autumn. But the irises are just coming into their own. If I take them out now, I’m depriving the garden of their beauty. If I wait, the windowsill crops, which are in desperate need of potting on, will suffer and possibly even die.
I think I’m going to give the irises another week, and hope that I can keep the tomatoes and chillies content until then. The real question is: will I learn from this situation, and do things differently next year? But I think we all know the answer to that…
Rambling on
Earlier this week, I spoke to the fascinating Michael Marriott, one of the planet’s foremost rosarians (or rose expert, if you prefer). Look out for that interview in a post-Chelsea instalment of The Earthworm.
My conversation with Michael couldn’t have come at a better time. Not only because he has just published his new book, ‘RHS Roses: An Inspirational Guide to Choosing and Growing the Best Roses’, but also because these beautiful, fragrant and culturally fascinating plants are right this second living their best lives.
We have three roses in our garden, none of which we chose. One was a gift. A little shrub rose with a dainty white flower, growing surprisingly well in fairly deep shade. Another we inherited from our garden’s previous caretakers. It has a lurid pink flower and disease-ridden foliage, and I really should just dig it up and put it out of its misery. And finally the rambling wonder pictured above and below. It has no scent, is a pain in the backside to prune – a process which usually involves flailing at it with a pair of loppers whilst balancing precariously on a wobbly chair – but I love it nonetheless.
Are you doing No Mow May? If so, what flowers are gracing your lawn? What are the loveliest sights and/or greatest challenges in your own space right now? Leave a comment and let me know!
I may not necessarily attend the show every single day, but I will be bringing you daily stories, interviews, photos and offbeat observations, all harvested from my forays onto the showground.
Tomatoes and chillies are both members of the nightshade family of plants, or Solanaceae – a group which also includes bell peppers, aubergines, potatoes, and tobacco.
Oooh, I love the No Mow update! We went ahead with our plans to do it, despite our village drama -- I got two signs explaining it and have seen people stop to read them -- and thus far, all is well. (And it made our tiny local newspaper yesterday -- not our yard or us, but a short article about why people might be seeing a lack of mowing during May -- which feels like a win!)
We have dandelions galore -- we always do, because we don't use chemicals on our lawn, but they are out in force now that we're not mowing. Violets came (and went just as quickly). Normally we have a ton of white clover but it's nowhere to be seen -- makes me wonder if mowing actually aids or otherwise facilitates the growth of clover? We've had a terribly late season all around so maybe they are just behind.
All in all, it has been a great experiment, which isn't even over yet.
I hear you on the tomatoes. I'm currently paralysed with indecision around how to protect them once I put them outside (this is my first attempt at growing them)... How do people do it in cities with small gardens?? I find myself mentally configuring all kinds of constructions of bamboo and leftover polythene wrapping etc to protect them from rain/wind/blight. I suspect I should just put them out and cross my fingers...