cut flowers

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August, Perch Hill & Sissinghurst

Summer is already closing down. The hedgerows are ripe with berries and haws, autumn cyclamen have nudged their heads through, and I’ve just spent a fortune on new school uniform. August has been intensely busy; not always enjoyably so. There’s been a lot of (too much) work, which makes school holidays a challenge. Living in the moment is difficult when there are too many calls on your time and energy, and this is particularly hard at this time of year, knowing that the light, the heat, the colour, will soon fade away into winter. So I’m looking forward to September, in the hope of a quieter few weeks, getting some essential tasks finished in the garden and allotment, and hopefully an Indian summer after the endless rain of July and changeability of August.

This post is a visual scrapbook of my August, including notes from the veg patch, my biannual pilgrimage to Perch Hill and Sissinghurst for creative inspiration, and other bits of messing about.

Allotment life

In short, after a lousy start, we’ve done OK on the allotment this summer. July rain helped enormously, creating an abundance of French and runner beans, excellent soft fruit (in particular the raspberries) and a good number of courgette. No kale this year, due to all the slugs and that rubbish compost, though there’s still chance of a winter harvest.

Perennial cut flowers now a riot of colour
Climbing beans (runner, French, borlotti) have thrived in the wet summer

The dahlias, snap dragon and gladioli are particularly happy this year, meaning I’m getting regular car boot-fulls of cut flowers. The colour way is definitely on the pink/white spectrum, and next year I’d like more orangey-red-peachy shades plus some light, airy stems. Special note to the sweet peas, which have thrived in pots in the gloom, and are still flowering now even as we near September.

A regular boot full of blooms and berries
Dahlias nudging up against sweet peas
Hot magentas with whites

It should be noted that any modest success I have is put into proportion by my Mum and Dad, who could be market gardeners really. Every trip home I am given a veg box heaving with tomatoes, cucumbers, carrots, aubergine, lettuce, sweetcorn…

Every visit home leaves me with a veg box

Perch Hill, East Sussex

To Sussex, for the dahlia open day at Perch Hill (Sarah Raven’s cutting garden). It’s my fourth visit here, for this place is SO brilliant, so abundant, so creative in its planting combinations and colour, that it’s a joy to visit. Happily since learning that they have several full time gardeners (and pots of cash of course) I feel less bad about the comparison to my humble efforts.

Take aways for me this year are the coral/peach spectrum dahlias, which I would like more of, and the sheer number of pots with hot, vibrant shades of really quite common plants such as French marigold, achillea and fuchsia, which feels very achievable at home. The persicaria orientalis is amazing, towering over me with magenta colour.

The sensational dahlias beds
Ammi visnaga is as tall as me, crammed in with scabious and more dahlias in the cutting garden
Love the persicaria orientalis, a good eight feet tall and hot pink
Helpful plant ID stands are dotted around the garden
Enjoyed the clashing achillea crammed together into one bucket
The Oast garden is a jungle of hot-coloured abundance
Rich oranges and corals in the Dutch Garden

My stand out plant was actually not a flower at all, but this humble kale, called ‘dazzling blue’ – I presume it’s a cross between a cavolo nero and a blue kale, and planted next to orange marigolds looked amazing.

My star plant was actually this kale called Dazzling Blue – a beauty

Sissinghurst, Kent

On to Sissinghurst, the pinnacle of garden design – a place of romance, bohemia, artistry and of course serious hard graft for the people who keep it going. I wanted to soak up the beauty of the rose garden and see the newly planted dry garden (Delos) for the first time, but mainly my visit was to see what this place does at the end of summer, for Sissinghurst is famously a garden for June.

The answer is that the cottage garden is vibrant with jungle colour – oranges, reds, yellows, from more French marigolds, sunflowers, cannas and rudbeckias. Simply wonderful.

View to the rose garden from the tower
Looking over Delos, the newly recreated dry garden
Yellows and oranges in the cottage garden
Love this clash of red and orange

The other thing Sissinghurst does at this time of year is grow serious (I mean serious) amounts of fruit and veg. The kitchen garden is so vast and so productive that it’s kind of unreal; this isn’t your usual pretty-pretty National Trust veg patch, but a serious working market garden. That, and they coppice of course, a tradition that is rich in this part of Southern England but harder to find further north. As a family we are, naturally enough, extremely drawn to this sustainable method of wood production.

Sissinghurst hosts the veg patch of dreams! Beans, squash and lettuce in abundance.
Sissinghurst has acres of coppiced hazel
The tradition of coppicing is rich in Kent and Sussex

August living

Work, harvesting and gardens aside, there has been a bit of messing about. A weekend in the Peaks, a visit to London, a few days in a yurt…

On top of Thorpe Cloud in the Peaks
Yurt life! It’s our second visit to the yurt at Dogwood Camping near Rye. This time we got wise and brought the mini oven, meaning that baked pancakes and fish-finger curry were on the menu (not on the same plate obviously).
Spotting fish in the Sissinghurst lake. The wider woodland at Sissinghurst is a revelation, well worth an explore, and completely free of visitors.
Playing soldiers in Kent parkland (you can just see Harry’s legs)
Messing about on the beach at Bexhill
Picnic at Dungeness

Also not pictured: rain storms, tantrums (from both child and parents), mud, over-priced ice cream, emergency trip to Morrisons for aforementioned fish fingers, big fat CLOSED sign at Knole (ffs), traffic jams, horrendous numbers of work WhatsApp messages at evenings/weekends, guilt at not being more available for work, guilt over not being more available for family, slugs, weeds, washing piles, YouTube videos.

Also this month:

Harvesting: French beans (purple ones particularly productive this year), courgettes, raspberries, blueberries. Runner beans I am leaving to pod up, then harvest as we would borlotti. No greens/kales this year. Dahlias, cosmos, snapdragon, glads, self-seeded cornflowers, last sweet peas. Every trip home I am gifted tomatoes, excellent cucumbers, beans, aubergine, peppers, blueberries…the list goes on.

Allotment: Put down three green manures to compare their efficacy. Squash doing well. Hops and crysanthemums have both succumbed to some kind of insect/virus attached. Sunflowers nearly out, though one has died after having its stem stripped by enterprising wasps. Could do with more perennials…dahlias, oranges/red/coral shades, plus rudbeckia, helianthus, that kind of thing.

Cooking and eating: Camp food – fish-finger curry, chicken goujon tacos, baked plum pancakes, thermos of tea. Lots of plums. Prepping bags and bags of soft fruit, apples from Clives, roast tomatoes and beans, and sweet corn for the freezer. It takes hours but I’ll be grateful for it come February.

Also: Reading Sarah Raven’s book about the making of Sissinghurst. Went back to the Agatha Christie’s but after four Poirots in a row I need a break from all the murders. No time for telly. Wondering what happened to my creative brain, for it is now full of tasks, emails and deadlines.

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The tale of the stunted seedlings

During my RHS course, which has finished for now, we spent a lot of time hearing about horticulture is good for one’s mental and physical health. And everytime I heard this, I thought “well that may be true for some people, some of the time, but what about July on the allotment?” Because it’s now that the time, labour, sweat, blood and cash is meant to come together to one glorious harvest – and the heartache when it doesn’t is palpable.

Every year at this time, I bring to mind an anecdote about Vita Sackville West’s column in The Observer, in correspondence with a reader who opined that she was “an armchair, library fireside gardener”, to which she replied “May I assure him that for the last forty years of my life I have broken my back, my finger-nails and sometimes my heart in the practical pursuit of my favourite occupation?”.

Heartbreak is something not often discussed with allotments, but it’s there and it is real. A heartbreak fuelled by hopes and dreams born of a thousand seed catalogues, Instagram reels, glossy magazines and TV programmes. Our expectations are set high and so when reality doesn’t match up, disappointment lurks. I should remember the teachings of the Buddhists and the Stoics: desire is the root of all suffering.

To explain, let’s head back a few weeks.

Remember the seedlings, started off as usual in early April in plugs and pots, in virtuous peat-free compost (a coir and woodchip mix), in the sun room? Well they germinated OK but then just sat there, with baby seed leaves, not really doing anything. By the start of June I thought enough is enough and so out they came to be potted up and get some proper weather…well proper weather they got, with what we now now to be the hottest June on record. What they also got was a devouring from the world’s biggest population of slugs and snails. (What is it about Bearwood and our crazy slug/snail population?!. Every evening I’d head out to pick off the gastropods and there would easily be 20-30 in one tiny area).

Reader, my baby cut-flower and veg plants did not stand a chance.

The tale of the stunted seedlings: compost, cold, heat, slugs, drought, light levels….everything has been against them

I did my best to help the babies, moving them away from the main slug area, getting them out of the coir and into a different compost mix, and whilst some did perk up (scabious and redbor kale), others stayed weak and without much hope (cornflower, cosmos and cavolo nero). Others failed completely: there won’t be any phlox, cleome or strawflower this year. At least three trays worth of seedlings have completely vanished, done for by the slugs/snails and the weather.

Finally, this last fortnight, I have planted out what was salvageable – a good 4 to 6 weeks after I might normally expect to. A few lessons here:

  1. I left the seedlings in the coir for way too long, and they weren’t getting the nutrition they needed. If using coir, four weeks nutrition maximum is all it can offer. Peat-free is absolutely the way forward, but it isn’t easy.
  2. Really I attempt to grow way too much from seed without a greenhouse. I do this partly for pride and partly for interest, but it actually is a waste of money if all the plants are getting eaten by snails or whither from exposure. Better to buy a few plugs and attempt to pot them on.
  3. I haven’t used any slug pellets this year because of what they do to the ecosystem. That’s all well and good, but to have no slug protection on young plants is untenable; they simply can’t stand the nightly assaults. Next year I’ll need to try either raising plants up onto trestles, using wool pellets or gravel or something.
  4. June and July on the allotment is always stressful. Always has been, probably always will be.

So that’s the Tale of the Stunted Seedlings. There are other tales to tell to, of the brambles, grass, buttercup and fat hen that are endemic. I am tolerant of quite a lot of weeds now, as I understand them to be important habitat for insects, but there is a balancing act to be found and currently the weeds have the upper hand. Then there’s the Tale of the Soil That Could be Sand, so free-draining and so dry that many hungry veg will always struggle (peas, I’m looking at you). A few lorryloads of manure a year would sort it out, but of course that is far easier said than done. Let’s not even talk about the black bean aphid that got to the broad beans before I did.

At this time of year I simply do not have the hours in my day to keep on top of it all, what with work, family, RHS exams, house and garden to keep up as well.

Having said all that, it’s not all doom and gloom. The cornflowers that I put in in March have been magnificent, and the calendula and sweet William did OK too.

After my doubts, autumn-sown cornflower and calendula are romping away
A harvest for drying – allium, calendula, cornflower
Cut flowers are still thin on the ground but we do have sweet peas and cornflower, and a few sweet william

The climbing beans are actually growing for once (pigeon protection worked!) and I’ve had a little poke around the potatoes and am hopeful of a decent harvest in a fortnight or so.

First dig of Charlotte potatoes plus chard and some tiny peas
Beans on 8 June…
…and again on 1 July. Ignore the weeds. This image has pixelated for no obvious reason.

It’s the shrubs and perennials that earn their keep on the allotment. Dahlias and gladioli just get on with it; after removing some plastic sheeting that I’d put down for weed control that was inadvertently a perfect slug habitat, they are now thriving. The red and blackcurrants have not been productive this year, but they are probably 20+ years old now so I’ll let them off. Blueberries and raspberries are looking promising.

Dahlias and glads were in a battle against the slugs at the start of June
…but they perked up nicely once I removed the slug hiding places

As ever, it’s the nasturtium that are threatening to take over. I planted these once, about eight years ago, and now they seed themselves and have to be ripped out before they engulf what’s left of the cut flowers.

As ever it’s the nasturtiums that romp away

My notebook from last year reminds me that the bulk of our harvest comes later in the year, and that’s just how it is. A reminder of the Stoical approach.

Also this month:

Harvesting: First chard, first stick beans, first potatoes, broad beans (though black bean aphid got most of them before I did), a few strawberries, redcurrants (v poor harvest), red russian kale (veg trug). Last sweet William, last foxgloves, lots of sweetpeas, quaking grass, cornflower, calendula, roses (garden).

Sowing and planting: Trying again with fresh sowing of cavolo nero and chard for autumn/winter. Planted out the final lot of spring-sown cut flower and veg seedlings: scabious, cosmos, bunny tail grass, kohl rabi, cavolo nero, redbor kale, squash and courgette. Many seedlings went straight into the green bin. Moved a few slug-ravaged dahlias inside to see if they recover.

Also in the garden: The roses and summer drummer alliums are out and brilliant. My thoughts turn to late summer and what has perennality in our conditions whilst being slug proof. Sanguisorba, fennel, that kind of thing. We cut back the spring flowering shrubs but due to ongoing bin strikes have no way of getting rid of the massive pile of cuttings, so they sit at the back of the lawn, a new habitat for invertebrates.

Cooking and eating: It’s fruit season. Strawberries, blueberries, nectarines, apricots, plums, raspberries, all eaten fresh but I’m growing bored and want crumbles, cakes, patisserie. Creamy broad beans. Moussaka. Meringues. Oatmeal raisin cookies. Thomasina Miers’ vanilla milk ice.

Also: RHS exam ate up time and energy. Massive IT meltdown caused weeks of disruption and a very expensive new laptop. Visit to Highgrove for my birthday, and David Austin roses with Emma. So much to think about and manage for school holidays/clubs and work. Reading Seed to Dust by Marc Hamer, wonderful, and Mountains by Steve Backshall. Not had any telly in weeks.

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Stars of the season

August disappeared in the blink of an eye. For a few short weeks there was a flurry of family time, hot weather, ice creams and days by water.

Messing about on the River Wye
Eeking out the last of the summer at Kelmscott Manor

Then the rain came and with it a jolting change of mood. The start of a new school, which also marks the end of the baby years; a death and the anniversary of a birth. Eras ending and new beginnings, all in the space of three days.

First day of school
A moment in the nation’s story
And a moment in our own little story

The hot weather has brought on an early autumn, I think. Some of the summer flowers have gone over earlier than expected – or maybe it’s just my imagination, because summer came to a jolting end with the start of the school term. (For the record, I don’t think I will ever get used to the straight-jacket of term times.) Time to take stock of the stars of the summer.

On the veg front, the dwarf beans (Thomson and Morgan three colour mix) have been surprisingly brilliant this year, with a regular harvest over about 6 weeks that’s only now stopping. So too for the chard, which this year was the Seeds of Italy ‘Costa Bianca’. It did threaten to bolt in the hot weather but I cut off the flower stalk, and it’s still cropping just fine – perfect for creamy chard side dishes, stir fries and pasta. The kales are stalwarts, particularly the ‘cavolo nero’ and ‘redbor‘ varieties, as are the courgettes (take note that two plants is more than adequate).

A typical late summer veg drug – including the courgettes that got away

Not yet cropping, but doing well, are the squash and gourds – a Thompson and Morgan ornamental mix will be great for autumn decorations, and the ‘crown prince‘ should make good eating. These plants are fun, give great ground cover, and you can just leave them to get on with it. The borlotti beans are also doing well, and are of course beautiful.

One of the crazy gourds nearing ripeness

Other plants to mention: broad bean ‘crimson flowered’ and ‘super aquadulce’ gave a good length of harvest. The potatoes ‘charlotte’ gave a huge harvest that we’re still working through now. In the veg trug, the peas did fine but I think a mange tout might be a better use of the space. The soft fruit was all on the thin side, effected by lack of water, apart from the wild blackberries, which are magnificent.

The cut flowers have held up to the strange growing season admirably; there’s been something to pick every week since April, from the tulips through to the Sweet Williams, foxgloves and lupins, onto the high summer dahlias, cosmos and snap dragons. There are still promising numbers of chrysanthemums waiting in the wings.

A boot load of blooms

The high summer blooms have fallen into two categories this year – this by luck rather than forethought. First is the romantic, whimsical set, made of whites, pale pinks and the odd bit of hot pink, and spires offset with curves.

A romantic vase of whites and pinks

Star of this set is the white pompom dahlia (name unknown), the super huge white snapdragon Antirrhinum majus ‘White Giant’ F1, which I absolutely love, and of course the cosmos. This year I have a mixture of cosmos ‘purity’, ‘double click collection’, ‘dazzler’ and ‘candy stripe’. Also there was the odd bit of phlox ‘creme brûlée’, which I’ve never grown before, but has earned its place for delicate prettiness alone.

The phlox is a gangly plant but lovely in the vase
The cosmos is a stalwart of the august-september plot

Some plants that I thought I was growing for me actually quickly became colonised by nature. Insects love the scabious, the wild carrot ‘purple kisses’, ammi ‘visnaga’ and sunflowers, so much so that I haven’t got the heart yet to pick any of the latter.

Scabious and ammi are loved by bees
As is the wild carrot

On the other colour spectrum, this summer there’s been bright, carnival peacocks, in clashing shades of orange, hot pink, coral and purple. Most of this fun comes from the dahlias, but I’ll put a word in too for the gladioli, which I failed to take a single decent photo of, but who are the can-can dancers of the bulb world.

A typical bright summer vase

I planted, I think, about 8 new dahlias into the allotment this year, as a trial. Some have performed brilliantly, some less so. Dahlia ‘crazy legs’ and ‘ambition’ are the absolute cut flower winners, along with stalwart ‘labyrinth’. Others have been slower to establish, thwarted perhaps by the intense heat. Incidentally, the 10 or so tubers that got decimated by slugs both at home and on the allotment I rescued and potted up, and are now putting on heaps of new growth. Next year all the dahlias at home will be in pots, for slug protection. And on the allotment, I just want MORE – more oranges, more zing, more pizzaz.

The beginnings of the dahlia patch
‘Ambition’ at the front’, ‘Crazy legs’ at the back

I will make special mention of ‘bright eyes’, which is not a great cut flower but is a joy to have nevertheless. I first saw bright eyes in the Montessori garden at Chelsea Flower Show in 2019, so I always think of it as Harry’s flower.

Dahlia ‘bright eyes’, a favourite

Gypsophila was a pleasant surprise as a romantic white filler. Cerinthe has a certain Halloween quality to it. The sweet peas, in large tubs this year, did brilliantly – by the back door so easy for a daily water and pick.

The season is still far from finished of course, with chrysanthemums still to come and the borlotti, squash and kale still to harvest. But my mind is already flipping forward to the autumn jobs – overgrown tansy to remove, brambles to deal with, ground to cover. And in some ways, after the summer frenzy, it’s a bit of a relief.

Also this month:
Harvesting: Kales, courgette, French beans, lettuce, last of the tomatoes; raspberries, dahlias, cosmos, amaranth, millet, last of the snap dragon, last of all the umbellifers.

Other jobs: Saved seed from sweet peas, marigolds and sweet rocket. Started off autumn trays of marigolds, cornflower, ammi, spinach and rocket as an experiment. Ordered spring bulbs, not so many this year in an effort to save money. Wondering if it’s time yet to plant up amaryllis and paperwhites.

Cooking and eating: Slow roast salt marsh lamb from the Gower; creamed chard as a side dish for roast chicken and lamb; roast new potatoes and carrots; bowls and bowls of plums; pasta with fresh tomato sauce and basil; pasta with courgettes; roast five spice pork belly – the leftovers stir-fried with allotment veg and noodles; chocolate birthday cake with raspberries; Jean’s apple and raspberry sponge with custard.

Also: Building work on the house still ongoing; Our friends left to go live in Vietnam; Last day of nursery; A week in Hay on Wye and the Gower; Kelmscott Manor; First day of school; CBeebies Land and children’s parties; Confounded by the death of a monarch, which was universally a shock, regardless of how expected it was and irrespective of anyone’s view on the monarchy. In all – a busy few weeks.

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Sausage and (broad) beans on toast

It’s hard to believe that high summer is upon us already. As ever we’re trying to catch our breath, from several intense weeks of event management (me) and back-to-back fabrication projects (him)…but there is an end in sight. Which is well, because this time of year needs to be savoured, noticed, enjoyed. Harry and I disappeared to Sussex at the weekend to visit old friends, armed with bucket and spade. It’s so noticeably hotter and dryer down there, with golden fields ready for harvesting and sun-kissed calm seas.

We practically had the beach to ourselves

Back home, it’s time for a few remedial allotment jobs. The fruit cage, which never quite served its purpose, finally gave way to old age and was precariously close to collapse; it’s now been half taken down (because to take it apart properly would take too long and Matt’s always at work) so it sits haphazardly on its side, no longer a threat to Martin’s dahlias but at just the right height for me to whack my head on every time I take a look at the blueberries.

The fruit cage is no more

I’ve done a more thorough job of staking. My birthday present from Matt was my very own hammer, meaning I finally whollop the homemade oak stakes into the ground myself. Chrysanthemums, dahlias and sunflowers have now been supported with stakes and string – not the prettiest way of doing it, but it works.

Dahlias are supported with stakes and grids of string
The starburst chrysanthemums also need staking, as they can get to a good 5 feet tall

The week of hot weather has brought the harvest on. We have a sea of cerinthe, ammi and gypsophila, which is unexpected and joyous. Nestled amongst them are two courgette plants, which in the weekend I was away managed to give birth to two giant whoppers (marrows already!); I need to keep a closer eye on them. Behind them the climbing beans are finally starting to climb, and the sunflowers are shooting up. I like the mix of flowers and veg jostling for space; our allotment always takes an age to reach fruitfulness but when it does, it’s so satisfying.

The cerinthe, ammi and gypsophila have exploded, framed with beans and courgettes
Cornflower and calendula interspersed with self-seeded nasturtium

I’m now picking the last of the broad beans, plus the first of what I think as high summer flowers – the cornflowers, calendula, and this time for the first time, wine-coloured snapdragons.

Yesterday’s basket, with broad beans, chard, cornflowers, snapdragon and ammi

It’s the time of year when I have to make time for veg and fruit processing – as well as the broad beans I also had a trug-full of peas, which I had grown intending to eat as mange tout, but Harry was so in to eating peas from the pod, I left them in for a little longer. It look an hour to pod this lot, accompanied by Claire Balding walking the Sussex and Kent countryside on Radio 4’s Ramblings. Note the blueberries, coming fast now from my Mum’s bushes and also our own, plus the piddling handful of red gooseberries, the only ones to survive the pigeon attack.

Colanders of beans mean an hour’s podding
There’s potatoes too, a salad-drawer’s worth with more to come

On the flower front, I am not much of an arranger, but I do enjoy the contrast of the tall foxglove spire with the froth of ammi and gypsophila. There’s the odd dahlia now, plus jam jars full of English summer flowers – some garish, some tasteful, but always making a house feel more like a home.

Dahlia, foxglove, ammi, gypsophila
Garish: clashing colours of calendula, sweet peas, foxglove and cornflower
More tasteful: single shades of sweet pea alongside wine-coloured snapdragon

What to do with all the broad beans and peas? It’s a good question: both these vegetables have a tendency to glut, and given that Matt’s not home so much, there’s only really me who will eat them. I blanched the lot, to give them a few extra day’s life. Some will make their way to a creamy, herby, garlicky pasta dish, and others I’ll blitz with lemon and garlic to make a beany-hummousy-dip. And then there’s beans on toast, or even better, sausage and beans on toast. The sausage is actually a kind of do-it-yourself chorizo, made from minced pork, paprika, garlic and fennel. The beans are broad beans and peas. Hash them together in a frying pan, perhaps with a few sliced potatoes and a fried egg, or just a bit of feta, and you have an easy flavour-packed brunch, lunch or supper dish.

Sausage and beans on toast

Sausage and beans on toast
Recide serves 4 but if it’s just you, the ‘chorizo’ will store in the fridge for a few days, or can be frozen for another day. Inspired by River Cottage Reunion, though I’m not slavishly following their recipe

First, pod enough broad beans and/or peas for four people, or you could use frozen. Blanch them in boiling water for two to three minutes, then drain. If they’re really big, pinch the broad beans out of their skins.

Make your ‘sausage’. Take 250g pork mince and squish it together with 1 teaspoon fennel seeds, 1 teaspoon smoked hot paprika, 1 teaspoon sweet paprika, two chopped cloves of garlic and a good pinch of salt. Set aside for a few minutes to allow the flavours to come together.

To cook, heat a large frying pan and crumble in the sausage mixture – you may want to add a little oil to the pan to get things going. Brown the meat all over, then add one thinly sliced red onion and the beans/peas. Hash the meat and vegetables together, turning in the paprika-stained oil until it’s all cooked through. You could add a slosh of white wine to get a little steam going. Finally add some chopped parsley to finish.

Serve on toast with a fried egg, or perhaps a little feta cheese. Sliced cooked potatoes and courgettes are also a good addition to this.

Also this week:

Harvesting: Blueberries, a handful of gooseberries, cos lettuce, first chard, last broad beans, peas, first courgettes, mangetout, new potatoes, ammi, cornflowers, calendula, foxglove, gypsophila, dahlias, nasturtium. French beans, beetroot, courgette, raspberries, and blueberries from Mum’s garden. From the shops, excellent English cherries, proper tomatoes, early corn, watermelon and strawberries. Excellent Amalfi lemons from Cowdray farm shop.

Cooking and eating: I really need to start making an effort again. Blueberry, raspberry and gooseberry crumble cake. French bean and potato salad. Flapjacks. Sarah made two outstanding salads at the weekend: green beans with an orange dressing and toasted hazelnuts, and a freekeh salad with pomegranate, mint, parsley and finely diced red onion. Also a home-made fish finger sandwich at The Lobster Pot near Bognor. I find I have to have a coffee a day now in order to function, and there is always wine in the fridge.

Jobs: Staking flowers on allotment. Planted out dahlias and salivas in the garden, which is now in that straggly in-between stage that lies between early and late summer. Feeding pots once a week. Watering allotment. And WORK, all the time, obviously.

Also: Reading nothing, I am too tired. Watching very little, I don’t get time. Visited Chichester, Arundel and Denman’s garden in West Sussex, a dry gravel garden, very interesting, but Harry not happy so no time to linger.

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June in review

June is a month of two halves. We start still in spring – I didn’t get around to planting out most of my veg and cut flowers until the first weekend of the month – and finish it most definitely in summer. The allotment finally starts to get productive and the garden goes from politeness to an overgrown sprawl. The long, long days are bookmarked with short sleepless nights (at least they are if you’re a sleep-thief 4 year old), but thankfully we can take it. It’s a month of high energy before we get zapped by the heavy weather of July and August. It’s also the start of event season (I’m working or have worked on three outdoor arts events this month) and I find myself back in the familiar-yet-unfamiliar life of print deadlines, venue dressing and production plans.

I’m not cooking so much at the moment, so there’s real joy when someone else does. This cake table taken in Bushley for the jubilee is a case in point: joy, in cake form. Back home we did manage a little tea, with a little help from our corgi friends at M&S.

Few things are more enjoyable than a cake table in a village hall
Our humble jubilee tea

May ended at Chelsea Flower Show, which didn’t have the fireworks of previous years. The designs were markedly low impact (I don’t mean that in a bad way), naturalistic, loose, even a bit wild. It’s the kind of designs that look really easy to do but are of course nigh-on impossible to pull off. But I love the toned down shades, the purples, greens, deep dusky pinks, subtle yellows and whites.

Rewilding garden at Chelsea Flower Show
Loose planting of poppies and verbascum at Chelsea

A few weeks later I headed to Hidcote, possibly my favourite place on earth, to soak in the glory of an arts and crafts garden in midsummer. Harry came along and to explore this garden maze through his eyes is a fresh joy.

Slightly tighter, but still loose, and note the colour spectrum – midsummer at Hidcote
Love these 8 foot tall scabious
Pale yellow with bubblegum pink
A field of daisies never grows old

Down on the allotment, we started cropping lupins, alliums and sweet rocket back in late May. The allium christophii is both whopper and winner; some I’m cutting now for the vase and others I’ll dry ready for winter. The lupins are dropping now, but stepping into their place are the dahlias, the first of which are just opening now. There’s filler plants this year too, from cerinthe, ammi and a surprise crop of gypshopila, with its white elegance. It’s still too early for much veg, though we do have broad beans cropping now and the start of the soft fruit (strawberries, redcurrants, black currants). I’ll have a poke about the potatoes later this week…it’s always a surprise to me just how long one has to wait for a veg harvest.

Allotment on 4 June – self-sown poppies, lupins and the beans bedding in
Early June potatoes and still lots of bare earth
By 21 June, the broad beans are fat and the strawberries cropping, though it will still be some weeks before we reach full ‘fatness’
Of course, the healthiest thing is this thicket of flowering brambles
At home, the peas are threatening to creep into the sun room
Giant allium christophii, sweet william, foxglove and cerinthe
Cropping in June – sweet williams, sweet peas and sweet rocket

An hour down the road it’s a different story, and I come home from Worcestershire with a basket of raspberries and beetroot from my parents’ patch. Earlier this month I took my Dad foraging for elderflowers down lanes I never knew existed, and we now have three hefty bottles of cordial. (Store them in the freezer and there’s no risk of mould forming.)

Our strawberries, alongside Mum’s raspberries, broadbeans and beets
After an afternoon’s foraging on jubilee weekend we have bottles of cordial

It’s in July that things start to get serious: I’ve high hopes for the dahlias this year, having spent a small fortune on new plants, and that’s before we even get onto the chrysanthemums, gladioli, cornflower, courgette, squash, borlotti, French beans, kales, chard, peas… I can see the summer in sight.

Also this month:
Allotment: Planted out most plants first weekend of June, including dahlias and beans. Started off biennials. Tons of strimming and weeding and staking, at home AND allotment…
Harvesting: Strawberries, broad beans, oregano, sweet william, alliums, sweet peas, foxglove, cerinthe, first ammi, last lupins.
Cooking and eating: Fish finger tacos, meringues with homegrown strawberries, chocolate chip cookies, roast apricots, raspberries and blueberries with yoghurt, plenty of rose, bulgur wheat with broad beans and feta, birthday cake
Also: Chelsea Flower Show, Hidcote, Key to the City (Birmingham), Tappin’ In (Birmingham), What’s in Store (Bearwood), play dates and park visits.

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Finally, fireworks

Before we get to floral fireworks, take a moment to admire this menu from The Hazelmere Bakehouse in Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria. Revel in the mention of a beesting, sigh over a Yorkshire curd tart and then exhale to the glories of a Cumberland rum nicky. I live in a city that is awash with (American-influenced) cronuts and brownies, triple-chocolate snicker doodles and salted caramel cheesecake – and whilst of course there is a place for all that, let’s not forget the glory that is traditional British baking.

The glorious menu at the Hazelmere at Grange Over Sands

The only thing that could improve this menu for me, lover of baked goods as I am, is an acknowledgment that the 18th century imports of cheap sugar and spice that popularised English fruited cakes and tarts was made possible not just because of trade with the West Indies (which they mention) but also because of enslaved labour; it’s an unsavoury truth of our culinary history that shouldn’t be ignored. The threads of the past feed into the present.

The trip to Grange was part of a few days in the Lakes as a replacement summer holiday; there was a steam train, a boat, lots of cakes, and of course a fair bit of drizzle.

Harry loved the heritage railway at Haverthwaite

I’ve mentally moved away from summer now. That may seem an odd statement, in the final week of October, but the seasons are so wobbly and in any case I always seem to be a few months behind everyone else. Our roses are deep into their second bloom and the raspberries are still cropping, their fruits the deepest, darkest crimson imaginable. This weekend I pulled a few carrots and parsnips, along with three plump pumpkins grown from seed gifted to me from my school friend Hannah McNeil, the variety a mystery.

First parsnips, carrots and three mystery pumpkins

Calling time on summer, in allotment terms, means starting the great clear up. Out have come the spent sunflowers and cornflowers; gone are the rotting courgette and pumpkin leaves. I’ve been ruthless, actually, and ripped out the cosmos even though they had a few weeks of flowers left; the wind had blown them horizontal over the path, which is both a practical hindrance but also a very visible reminder of my failure to do things (i.e. stake) properly. The rampant nasturtiums have suffered a similar fate but really, they are bullies with their tendency to spread and romp. Left to their own devices, I would have a plot made fully of self-seeded nasturtiums, grass and buttercups. After an hour or two of clearing, what remains is the morning after the night before: bare soil, tons of uncovered weeds, and occasional squares of flowers and brassicas given the reprieve.

The chrysanthemum square remains, leaving a palimpset of weeds and soil where the summer annuals once lived
The nasturtiums have taken over a quarter of the veg patch, so out they come

I enjoy a good clear out; to remove the remnants of summer is to let go of the past and, as I manure and cover the ground over the next few weeks, make the soil good again for next year. The writer Laura Cummings talks about ‘the redemption of Monday morning’ – the idea that every working week has a fresh start, the chance to put the excesses of the weekend behind you. Yes, I think, yes. October on the allotment is a little like Monday morning. Let go of the disappointments and reset again for next year.

Except there are some things that I’m not ready to let go of just yet, as they are just coming into their own. I’m talking of course of chrysanthemums, once the mumsy also-rans of the cut flower scene, and now (at least, I think) super chic. The smell of chrysanthemums instantly takes me to the churchyard in Hanley Swan, where as a child I used to help my Mum tend to my Nan and Grandad’s grave. That might sound a little morbid but it shouldn’t; to me chrysanthemums are smell of security and the countryside. I also love that Matt’s Granny and Grampy were semi-professional chrysanthemum growers; he has stories of how they used to protect their blooms from the rain with paper bags. There’s some serious legacy there to live up to.

My firework chrysanthemums are just coming into bloom now, which is absurd given that they were labelled ‘early’ on the catalogue. I have the Woolmans Starburst collection, for which I paid £12 for 5 seedlings in those innocent pre-pandemic days of January 2020. After a feeble start in my garden last summer, Mum kindly took cuttings and I now have an excellent, if excessively tall, patch for cutting. As ever I staked them badly and they are all wonky but I don’t care: I love them.

A mix of lime yellow, russets and carmine, in firework form
First proper cutting of this year’s chrysanthemums, along with dahlia and a few strawflowers

Next year I need to get more of the more traditional, fuller blooms to sit alongside the firework-style. Something like the Jewel Collection from Sarah Raven. Incidentally she recommends moving your chysanths into the greenhouse, root-ball and all, to extend the season, which I would love to do if only I had one. But as long a the weather stays kind, I’ll be cropping these for several weeks yet.

Also this week:
Harvesting: Chrysanthemums, dahlias, last French beans, first carrots, first parsnips, last raspberries, two tiny strawflowers (crop failure).
Planting: Planted tulips and alliums on the allotment. Won’t be able to plant tulips at home for weeks yet as the garden is still too abundant, such warm weather.
Eating and cooking: Cumberland sausage, chips and beer in the pub; Vanilla slice in Grange over Sands; Westmoreland tea bread; Autumn cooking at home now: proper deep filled apple pie; cauliflower cheese; beef ribs with red wine, cinnamon and star anise.

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October is the new August

There is so much ‘stuff’ going on at the moment. My mind has been (still is) tormented by the outside world, by heinous crimes against women, by leaders who fail to lead, by the climate emergency, by the inequality I see all around me. This stuff is there all the time, of course, but usually it can be held at a distance. Sometimes however the walls come down; I can not be the only woman who cried in the last week for Sarah Everard, for Terri Harris and her children, for Sabina Nessa and their families. And I certainly hope that I am not the only one who has used their influence to write to their MP and other elected representatives to demand they listen to what women are telling them about domestic and sexual violence. If this issue speaks to you, you can do worse than pay attention to what the Women’s Equality Party are doing and saying: https://www.womensequality.org.uk

How can I think, let alone write, of flowers and vegetables at such a time? It turns out that I must, because this is where healing lies.

A basket of October: sunflowers, cosmos, dahlia, fennel, and you can’t see them but underneath the blooms are courgette, French beans and raspberries. Note the ripening pumpkin in the background.

October is the new August, or it least it is in 2021. After months and months of waiting, finally we have the annual courgette glut; we’ve had courgette with pasta, courgette with spicy tomato sauce, stir-fried courgette, roasted courgette, plus courgette that’s given away. I’m unusually grateful for the abundance of squash, for I thought it may never come. The varieties that I chose this year – Rugosa Fruilana and Genovese, both from Seeds of Italy – have been slow to turn to marrows and I particularly love the knobbly gourd-like appearance of the former.

Courgette are finally in glut territory…

Then there’s the raspberries. After a week away from the plot due to work, illness and childcare, I presumed that I’d missed the last of them – but not a bit of it. This is just one day’s picking and I think there’s STILL more to come.

…as are the autumn raspberries

The September and October cutting garden is a particular joy. It’s the time of the sunflowers, so majestic, but the smaller side-heads also do well in a posy-style arrangement with lime-green chrysanthemums and orange cactus dahlias. Yellow, orange, bronze, gold; it’s a table full of autumnal sunshine.

Orange, yellow and bronze dominate the colour spectrum now
The lime green chrysanthemum zap like fireworks

The cosmos plants got flattened in the late September storms, and so the flowers are now growing at an angle as they make their way up towards the sun. It makes for a floppy vase which actually I adore, the flowers twisting like snakes as they lobby each other for space.

Cosmos purity and dazzler with the last of the ammi visnaga

Fresh flowers are only half the story of course, for the sun room (aka the drying room) is now fill to bursting. Fennel stalks, with their starburst umbellifer flower heads, join the teasels, hops, hydrangeas, rose hips and cornflowers, waiting to fulfil their purpose in the winter days ahead.

The sun room is filled with drying flowers – hops, teasels, cornflowers, rose hip, agapanthus, fennel, hydrangea.

It’s harvest time but actually my head is already months ahead, thinking of next spring. An embarrassingly enormous box of bulbs was delivered this week, tulips, daffodils and crocus destined for the garden, for pots and for the allotment. There’s days of clearing and weeding to be done, and a pallet manure to collect and spread. It’s hard work but it’s good work; after the frustrations and urgency of summer, these tasks for autumn and winter allow for a more relaxed approach. We can celebrate success but also put away the failures, literally cover everything over, until we get another go, next time. Rest, renewal, redemption.

Also this week:
Harvesting: Courgette, raspberries, chard, French beans, cavolo nero, kale, last of the sunflowers, cosmos, dahlias, last ammi visnaga, fennel stems for drying. Also took home eggs from chickens at the house that Hannah is house-sitting for, including one still hot from the hen’s bottom.
Garden: Planted out back bed with narcissus actaea, ferns and alchemilla mollis. Potted up narcissi and crocus; will leave tulips for a few weeks more.
Cooking and eating: Speedy late night supper of courgette in spicy chipotle tomato sauce with eggs, smashed avocado and brown rice. Sticky sweet and sour sausages with plums. Pie and chips in Ludlow.
Also: Ludlow (sad to see that our favourite butcher has closed due to fire); Cheltenham Literature Festival (a joy after so long away from events); been ill again; work work work.

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Coming into abundance

In the three weeks or so since I last blogged, the allotment has filled into abundance. (Its own version of abundance, mind, let’s not get carried away…) A good month later than normal, I’m filling multiple vases from one morning’s flower cutting, the fridge has spare courgettes and the freezer is filling with raspberries. Squash plants threaten to over-run the place, and sunflowers reach up high in shades of cocoa, maroon and saffron. Finally, there is some satisfaction.

There’s also been a birthday. We’ve kept Harry alive for four whole years, marked as ever with a gigantic chocolate cake topped with more chocolate and edged with…chocolate. The last month has been challenging, with work and illness, forever feeling behind, making it even more important to mark special events when they occur.

I went big on the birthday cake this year

Let’s do an allotment tour. The cosmos is behaving very oddly this year, putting on inches and inches of lush green growth, but barely any flowers. I turned to Instagram for answers and was advised by @Arthurparkinson that the issue is the seed: sourced from hotter climates than our own, the plants have a much longer growing season, so they just put on greenery and frankly can’t be bothered to flower. He advises pinching them out hard to give them a shock. Cosmos Purity and Dazzler are apparently the worst offenders – just what I’m growing. The few stems that I do pick last well, far better than the smaller, crimped flowering stock from earlier in the year. They go into a romantic vase with cornflowers (still going strong, incredibly), ammi visnaga and a few white pompom dahlias.

Growing behind the cosmos are the chrysanthemums, which this year are tall, healthy and (surprise surprise) late. We won’t be picking them seriously for for a few weeks yet. The sunflowers have finally come into their own, in rich autumnal shades, and they tower over the squash, nasturtiums and marigolds. I’m pleased with it all.

Finally coming into fullness: nasturtium, calendula, sunflowers, squash, cosmos, cornflower. Chrysanths are there too, tucked behind the cosmos.

The hops are late too. Matt still harbours ideas of making beer, but in the 8 (?) years of growing them he’s never managed it once. It’s more likely that these will end up in Christmas wreaths and boughs, along with dried hydrangeas, teasels, poppy heads and rosehips.

The hops are nearing harvest time, a good three weeks later than usual
Taking the wide view. In the foreground, the flowerpots support netting for savoy cabbage.

I don’t normally have courgettes coming into their own at the same time as the winter squash ripen. But that’s just what’s happened this year: after sitting in complete dormancy for weeks, finally I’m cropping several courgettes a week, and in the meantime the Jack Be Little squash are turning orange. The larger varieties are fattening nicely too; I’ll report on those at harvest time.

Jack be little pumpkin, about the size of the palm of my hand
An heirloom Italian courgette, gnarly and interesting

Dahlias are of course the queens of the September flowerbed. Just three of these orange cactus types can fill a vase, and I have them dotted around the house in their look-at-me glory. I have failed to take note of the varietal names of any of them other than Labyrinth (the coral one pictured at the back), a favourite. Next year I must grow more. I use them fresh, but other flowers are meant for drying, notably the teasels, of which I’ve harvested box fulls. I’ve now ripped the teasel plants out for fear that these 10-foot whoppers would self-seed on our neighbouring plots, making me Public Enemy #1. Note to self: if grow teasels again, be sure NOT to accidentally grow the giant variety.

The dahlias are now putting on a good show but I have totally removed the teasels, for fear that they would self-seed on all the neighbours’ plots
One morning’s cut flower haul. I could pick more but we’re limited on vase space in this house.

We were meant to be in Cornwall this week, which alas didn’t happen in the end, so I’m using the time to get the put-it-off-until-next-week jobs done. It occurs to me that this is the first week I’ve had off work for one entire year, which is madness, and then I spend this time doing serious hard graft, which is also madness. It’s good to get the jobs done though; if I didn’t keep putting them off, they wouldn’t be so difficult. This stretch behind the sunflowers was meant to be my perennial/bulb area, planted with lavender, tansy and spring bulbs. However the buttercup and couch grass got in, choking the plants and threatening to overrun the plot. It doesn’t look much but clearing this took four hours hard work.

This strip was thick with couch grass and creeping buttercup, as well as the ancient lavender. It took four hours to dig it all out.

There’s more to do. The soft fruits are swamped with long grass again, and the area that I’m eyeing up for tulips is thick with self-sown marjoram. Weed control is the absolute number one bane of the allotmenter’s life.

More happily, there are creative tasks too. The biennials that I sowed back in June have thrived, and I’ve remembered to actually plant them out far earlier than I normally do, hoping that the warm weather will allow the plants time to get firmly established before the cold comes. The broad beans came up about a fortnight ago, and in their place go sweet Williams, honesty and sweet rocket. Come May, I should be picking buckets of lovely blooms.

About two weeks ago I picked the last of the broad beans. In their place go the biennials: sweet william, sweet rocket and honesty.

Gardening shows/books often advise in July and August to stop, relax and breathe it all in; to admire what you’ve created. What bunkum. I have realised that both my allotment and garden are at their most stressful in high summer, because things have a) either not worked out how I wanted, so I’m disappointed, b) got over-run with weeds, so I’m cross, or c) need picking NOW NOW NOW so there’s yet another job to do amongst all the others (looking at you peas and courgettes in a good year). September into October is surely the best time, when there are low-maintenance flowers to pick (dahlias just do their own thing); when the cavolo nero and pentland brig kale sit quietly waiting for a chop whenever I feel like it; when the raspberries turn red in abundance; when the squash tantalisingly fatten. Yes, this is the golden time. Though I do wish that all the jobs/weeds would take care of themselves.

Also this week (month):
Harvesting: Dahlias, sunflowers, cosmos, cornflower, ammi visnaga, teasel, amaranthus, cavolo nero, pentland brig, russian red kales, chard, a few carrots, courgette, raspberries (they’re really going for it now), a few sparse meagre French beans, a few cherry tomatoes. Broad beans ended about two weeks ago. Buying up early English apples and pears from the local farm shops.

Jobs: Dug out the lavender patch of couch grass and buttercups. Started prepping ground by dahlias for spring bulbs. So much weeding. Took up broad beans and planted out biennials, savoy cabbage and kohl rabi, though I have not much hope for the latter. The climbing French beans that I planted directly are finally now flowering, after what feels like months of irritation at their performance. At home, re-seeded the lawn and dug/manured back bed ready for spring bulb planting.

Cooking: Invited my parents over for two-rib roast beef with all the trimmings and the Chapel Down sparkling rose that I bought in Kent for my birthday, to mark keeping Harry alive for another year. Made a massive chocolate birthday cake alongside kids’ party tea of pink wafers, pizza and capri sun. Cooking and eating has gone badly this month due to work, illness and strange bedtimes, and I’ve been even buying M&S ready-meals for myself, which is a sure sign of being out of balance.

Reading: I’ve recently given up on too many books to mention but I am enjoying How to be Sad by Helen Russell and The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman. Plus the Sarah Raven podcast and Ramblings on BBC Sounds.

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The seed list, 2021

I’m still struggling to break through the chill factor. I see people walk past our window wearing cute little canvas trainers, cropped trousers, no socks, and I am staggered at their bravery. Do people just not feel the cold?! For whilst the days might be lengthening (there’s now a dim silvery light at our daily 6.25am wake-up, which is preferable to pitch black) the wind penetrates to the bone. After a trip to the park it takes a good thirty minutes to defrost. On Instagram I see people sowing their seeds, berating themselves for being late, but I think, hold on, slow it down, winter’s not through with us just yet.

In the kitchen, a few feta-stewn salads are making their way into the late winter/early spring repertoire, but for everyone of those I make there’s still at least three items of stodge. Chelsea buns, crisply caramelised around their swirly square tops, and rhubarb crumble cake are sustenance for the winter body and the Lockdown mind.

Chelsea buns
Rhubarb crumble cake

Meanwhile thoughts have turned to the garden and allotment. The buds on the hydrangea seem to fatten in time with the government’s promise of lockdown easing – we’re nearly there, nearly there, but not quite yet. Until the weather turns, we have to be patient. And instead, do some planning: What can fill that tricky area of dry shade at the back (I’m trying out some ferns)? What can we add to the front garden to make it look slightly more loved (answer, persicaria and erigeron daisies)? Have any of the perennials made it through? Already I see bronze fennel shoving its feathery fronds up through the mulch, and there’s hints of the nepeta returning, but of course it’s too early to say. I’m distracted by pictures of staggeringly expensive shallow bowls of muscari flogged by posh florists and buy up a pack of bulbs for a fiver, so that Harry and I can make our own.

Potting up muscari bulbs

One thing that I HAVE decided this March is that starting off annuals in October then over-wintering them is a total waste of effort and money. Last autumn I started broad beans, sweet peas, cosmos, delphinium, lace flower and ammi, leaving them in the cold frame or a window sill over the winter, and only the sweet peas have made it through. (To be fair to the broad beans, they would have been OK but the slugs got them.) The rest are a complete, abject failure. I think it was the lack of light in our overlooked terrace that got them, so until I have the glasshouse of my dreams, I won’t bother again.

The sum total of attempting to sow annuals in autumn. Lesson: don’t bother unless you have a light-filled greenhouse.

Yesterday we prepared the sun room for its spring-time temporary role as a propagation centre. Out went the bags of plaster and cement (hurray) and in came the dinky wobbly tables, the heat mat and the cobweb-matted pots and trays from the shed. I’ll hold off sowing most of my seeds for a few weeks yet but the broad beans and sweet peas should be OK if I begin a few trays now. It feels good to be starting again: to paraphrase Vita Sackville West, to plant something is an act of hope.

The sowing room is set up and ready for action

Planning is key. I prefer to sow undercover and then transplant to the allotment, but I am mindful that we’re seriously limited on space for pots and trays. As if to remind myself of what to do and when to do it, I’ve listed all the seeds that I have accumulated for this year’s planting, noting when they need to be started off, so that I can have some kind of sowing plan. Then at some point in the next week or so I’ll draw up a plan of where they will all be planted on the allotment. There’s lots of old stalwarts in here but also a few new additions for 2021: flower sprouts, a lovely ugly bumpy yellow courgette, toadflax, scabious and honeywort. For those who like such things I list the seed list for 2021 here:

Edibles                                 
Broad bean – Aquadulce
Basil – Bush
Basil – Thai
Lettuce – Alpine mix
Lettuce – Salad bowl
Lettuce – Oakleaf
Lettuce – Merveille de quatre saisons
Rocket – Apollo
Carrots – Touchon
Courgette – Rugosa Friulana
Courgette – Genovese
Kale – Pentland brig
Kale – Cavolo nero
Pea – Blauwschokker
Flower sprouts               
Tomato – Red cherry
Parsnip – Dugi Bijeli
Spinach -Perpetual
Watercress                      
Chard – bionda di lione
Chard – Bright lights
Borlotti – Lingua di Fuoco
Climbing french bean – Anna
Climbing french bean – Cosse violette
Climbing french bean – Cobra
Dwarf French bean – Rocquencourt
Dwarf French bean – Vanguard
Dwarf French bean – Tendercrop
Runner bean – Scarlet empire
Pumpkin – Jill be little
Squash – Hokkaido
Squash – Golden butternut
Chicory – Variagata di Castelfranco
Kohl rabi – Vienna blanco
Cabbage – Savoy
Plus already in the ground: Blueberry, raspberry, redcurrant, blackcurrant, strawberries, oregano, sage, rosemary.

Flowers for cutting                             
Sweet pea – Lady salisbury
Sweet pea – Mixed selection
Sweet pea – Elegant ladies
Sweet pea – Almost black
Dill                                    
Strawflower – Mixed
Strawflower – Salmon rose
Cornflower – Classic magic
Cornflower – Double blue
Cornflower – White
Cosmos – Dazzler
Cosmos – Purity
Cosmos – Velouette
Cosmos – Pied piper blush white
Amaranthus – Red army
Calendula – Nova
Calendula – Indian Prince 
Honeywort – Purpurascens
Scabiosa – Tall double mix
Toadflax – Licilia Violet
Delphinium – White king
Delphinium – Blue spire
Sunflower – Red sun
Sunflower – Oriental mix
Sunflower – Magic roundabout
Nigella – Persian jewels
Cleome – Colour fountain
Ammi visnaga – White
Zinnia – Early wonder
Digitalis – Suttons apricot
Sweet rocket                   
Verbena bonariensis    
Honesty                            
Echinacea                        
Sweet william                
Achillea – Cerise queen
Achillea – yellow

Plus already in the ground: Foxgloves (self-sown then transplanted into rows), dahlia (about 8-10 varieties), teasels, sweet william, lavender, allium, chrysanthemum.

So now we wait, hoping for the mercury to rise and lockdown to end. And in the meantime, there’s rhubarb cake to be had.

Also this week:
Allotment/Garden: Matt removed the big blackberry from the raspberry patch using all kinds of hacking equipment. Prepped the sun room for seed sowing. Started off broad beans and sweet peas.
Harvesting: PSB, pentland brig kale, cavolo nero, rosemary.
Cooking & eating: Rhubarb crumble cake with Herefordshire forced rhubarb found in Aldi; chelsea buns; I’ve got skilled at making dinners in the morning that can be easily finished or reheated in 5 minutes after Harry’s in bed….sausage and fennel pasta bake; stir fried pork noodles; chocolate pear pudding, that kind of thing.
Reading: The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert, such a relief to read an intelligent book that isn’t weighted with identity politics / genocide / disease / disaster after my reading materials for the last few months. Watching This Country on iPlayer, which is deliciously observant of real life in the sticks.

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Cut flowers in mid-winter

If you, like me, feel particularly emotionally jangly at present – what with the politics, the expense of Christmas, the darkness, the drizzle, etc etc etc – then can I suggest a few hours of gentle botanical crafting to ease frazzled nerves. Over the last few weeks I’ve been using up the dried stems of summer’s strawflower and hydrangea, arranging them into wreaths and swags for yuletide displays. And I mean ‘yuletide’, Pagan that I am, for there is something extremely grounding about bringing the natural world into the house as we approach the winter solstice.

Now, just because I like this kind of activity, doesn’t mean that I’m actually any good at it. My canister of gold spray paint is professional standard, procured by Matt (obviously) and therefore way too posh for me – just trying to get the nozzle to stay on led to this unfortunate drippy decoration of the skimmia plant outside the backdoor.

The skimmia got attacked by a drippy can of gold paint

Once I finally got the paint to work, I lightly sprayed the hydrangea stems, allowing some of their natural pink to show through. These are lovely as single stems in wreaths or grouped together in a massive vase.

Hydrangea heads sprayed gold

The strawflowers make a lovely simple wreath – dead kitsch and retro. I used the glue-gun to secure individual stems onto a willow base, which cost a few pence, for a display that will last for years.

Strawflower wreath (terrible photo, sorry)

For the front door, I decided to make my own swag using evergreens pilfered from my Mum’s garden, plus a few more hydrangea, strawflower and that spay-painted skimmia. I think it’s important to have a range of textures in these winter displays, and scent if you can – I used rosemary but bay would also work well.

Laying out the stems for the front door swag

I simply worked the greens together into a display that I liked, then tied them tightly with string and ribbon before trimming the ends. Half an hour’s work, cost is negligable, and – most importantly – we have a display that is absolutely rooted in the English mid-winter enlivened with a few colourful memories of the English summer.

This year’s floral swag
Strawflowers are the gift that keep on giving

Also this week:
Cooking and Eating: Blackforest Arctic Roll – whisked chocolate sponge stuffed with amaretti and chocolate ice cream, whipped cream, cherry jam, amaretto and clementine zest. A baked ham spiked with allspice and marmalade. Mince pies. Pomegranate seeds in everything, they seem never-ending.
Doing: Mainly hibernating and attempting to protect myself from politics and political fall-out (Birmingham is the most politically active city I have ever been in). But also a visit to the CBSO Christmas concert for tots, which was a joy, and to Lichfield Cathedral to see the Christmas trees.