“A Cash Machine that Sings! How Marvellous” she exclaimed

I am delighted to report that, at least at the time of publishing this post, there have been no further deaths or misfortunes at Blackpitts – if you discount the fat Bluebottle that buzzed annoyingly around our bedroom the other night. Eventually, I caught up with him sitting on the chest of drawers looking like an overweight Nigel Farrage.

Suffice to say that he will buzz no more.

Thank you to you all for your kind and supportive words: it has been a tough couple of weeks but life is returning to somer sort of acceptable – though different equilibrium.

Instead this week has been all about plants. It might seem that such a thing would not be a completely unheard of occurrence in the life of an itinerant garden designer and you would be right. However, this week was not just airily thinking about them or writing long shopping lists but actually getting down among the things. The more cynical among might not believe it but I have much dirt beneath my fingernails. It has been a frantic flurry of actually placing plants out ready for planting.

Sometimes I do detailed planting plans but no matter how detailed they might be I always change my mind when it comes to actually putting them where they should be planted. As a result I often just make it up as I go along which is usually much more interesting in the end although some of my more rigidly disciplined fellow designers may well disapprove. This week I have done both.

This one was done by the book: neat coloured plan and all that stuff. We tore out everything that was there except for a Magnolia grandiflora and a couple of roses.

As a contrast the  one was on a wing and a prayer: I ordered about two and a half thousand plants and until I got there I had no idea where they were going to go – apart from the hedges, one hornbeam and one of Chilean Guava (Acca sellowiana – Mark and the Edible mafia would be proud of me: other edible stuff included Cardoons and Angelica. I also wanted to plant Asparagus but the nursery had run out so that may have to wait.)

Would a list amuse anybody? If not then skip the side bit. I will show you the end result in due course.

Cornwall, I have decided, is very lovely in very nearly every way (beaches,hedges,lanes, fields, moors, countryside etc) except architecture. It boasts some really hideous houses many of them with porches that would not look out of place in the rougher parts of Pyongyang or 1950s Potsdam.

There have been two more, one in a heavenly bit of North Wiltshire and another beneath the temporarily aeroplane free skies of Berkshire. I will spare you further photographs of pots lying around on empty soil as you have probably got the idea .

I have decided that I don’t really care very much which party wins the election. They are all pretty similar and it really is not going to make a lot of difference to anything. Perhaps the fairest way to decide would be to stage a giant marrow growing contest. Or maybe tallest Sunflower – except that then Dawn’s competitive streak would kick in and she would win. Then we would all have to weed things, make hospitals out of loo rolls and participate in amateur theatricals.

Three Men Went To Mow are previewing at Grand Designs Live on May 3rd. I have a number of tickets which I am happy to distribute to the more deserving members of  my readership. I am also there on Saturday May 1st on my own talking about interesting stuff.(i) The tickets are valid for any day if you wish to avoid our frivolous cavortings.

I am listening to Marcel’s by Herman’s Hermits a song with lyrics worth reproducing

Marcel lives in Wapping, the ducks are due his tapping

Marcel’s got a houseboat on the Thames

There’s grotesque decorations, eccentric demonstrations

Let’s go down to Marcel’s on the Thames

CHORUS:

Knock knock, sesame it’s open, it’s Alice in Wonderland

Marcel, Marcel

Can we come around, can we see you right away?

Can we come around? It’s such a groovy day

Marcel, Marcel

Meet the oddest creatures with unfamiliar features

Greeks & Turks with clerks & lemon tyne

Men with long eyelashes & ladies with mustaches

On Marcel’s creaking house, it’s on the Thames

The picture is of the blossom of Prunus Tai Haku

(i) As is Matthew Wilson – landscape superstar and badger botherer.

Everything He Touched Turned To Jam

I have been asked by Clare Grant who writes a very lovely blog called Three Beautiful Things to list three things that happened yesterday. Clare does this most days (when she is not writing excellent posts about biscuits) and it is rather a good discipline to get into: here is my list..

1. I have been listening to wheelbarrows trundling past my office window all day and the sound of shovels scraping tarmac. As a result all my borders are covered in dark,chocolatey mulch (i)

2. Four Plain Chocolate Digestive biscuits, three black Papermate Tempo felt tip pens and a cup of tea.

3. I made a list of plants to order from Crug Farm which is always a pleasure. Sometimes I am tempted to only order things because I like the sound of the name. Who could resist: Aesculus wangii.. Zanthoxylum myriacanthum. Belamcanda chinensis ‘Crûg Colossal’. Ranzania japonica

It has been quite a busyish week actually. I know that calendars are dull but indulge me, I will be brief.

Client on Saturday to outline intentions: they were happy.

With contractors in Gloucestershire on Monday morning to sort out a wall.

Another builder mid-morning to talk about ponds and to set out Rhododendrons for planting.

Tree surgeon in the afternoon to condemn a load of scraggy sycamores and leylandii.

Forester at 2:30 to mark out site of new one hectare woodland (One hectare = about 1500 trees)

Bought a packet of Revels.

London on Tuesday to listen to Carol Klein at the VISTA thingy at the Garden Museum. She was charming as always and wearing a particularly nice coat, I thought. We also took time while we were there to film another episode of Three Men Went To Mow. If you were at all interested in Green Walls then this is the one for you: very educational. Perhaps.

Wednesday: wrote stuff – including two months worth of my shiny new column in the English Garden. It is called The Rake and you should read it: it also appears, in a slightly truncated form, in the American edition so you lot over there have no excuse. Made lists.

Thursday: A meeting of the Wisley Six: The very,very lovely Hayley Monckton and Alex Denman from the RHS. The gorgeous Cleve. The bit of country rough Mark Diacono. The bright light that is Juliet Roberts. And me. We lunched (with cake), gossiped scurrilously (enough indiscretions to make Matthew Appleby froth himself into a right state) and then walked around the fine gardens in beautiful crispy sunshine (with another cake stop later).

There were some fine plants ranging from subtle winter colours to vulgar glasshouse danglers

.

It is unfortunate that one of our number decided that he had to continue his already documented practice of fruit sniffing.

If anybody would like a ticket to the Ideal Home Show (March 20th-April 5th) at Earls Court then ask.

Monty is there on a couple of days. And the shouty man from Masterchef. And Linda Barker.

I have a handful which have been very kindly provided by the willowy Willow at MediaTen. She is also organising the Grand Designs Show in May. That is particularly interesting because, firstly, I am talking there on Saturday May 2nd and secondly (and more interesting) we are doing a Three Men Went To Mow Live Preview there on Bank Holiday Monday before we go to Malvern on the Friday.

Further details will follow. It is almost a mini world tour. But without tour buses or groupies – except for Cleve who is always being followed by women: it must be the memory of youthful thigh again. He also, apparently, has a picture of himself with not only a perm but a daffodil clutched between his buttocks. The stem was, he recalls, very cold: that is why, in my experience, it is always better to wait until the weather has warmed sufficiently before trying such things. Lilies are as effective as Daffodils and benefit from a better scent.

I am currently in negotiation for that picture and will make it available to readers of this blog the minute it is in my possession.

The picture is of an Hamamellis.

I am listening to She Said by Holly Golightly.

(i) The more observant among you will have twigged that, as I was listening to this noise then I was not actually wielding the shovel myself. Normally I would have done this as I quite enjoy muck spreading but unfortunately I did my back in a week or so ago by dragging a large tree up a hill. That is my excuse and I am sticking to it come hell or high water.

Normality Was Scattered All Over Costa Rica

This is one of those weeks where I am not at all sure what I should write about as nothing particularly fascinating has happened. I have driven to Cornwall and back to collect my daughter from University, I have ordered an enormous number of plants from various places and we went see the legendary Patti Smith in concert in Leamington Spa. This last was actually quite fascinating: she is always good. My wife is mildly obsessed with her (and has been for many, many years) so this was her second Patti smith concert in a week.
So (in the words of Marriott Edgar in Albert and the Lion), “seeking for further amusement” I have decided to write about my first visit to Malvern – as the show is looming and everybody else seems to have had their say over at Meet At Malvern.
I was first asked to talk at Malvern Spring Show in, and I get a bit fuzzy over this, 2004 on the back of a television series I presented called Small Town Gardens (it was the third and last series, in fact the last series of garden makeovers that the BBC produced). It was also my first proper lecturing gig – I had done a couple to local horticultural societies but this was different. I had never been to Malvern before so had no idea what to expect.

I was put up in a hotel in Malvern that was also being occupied by all the RHS Judges who had convened in Malvern in their official capacities. One of the things about RHS Judges in general is that they do like to let their hair down a bit whenever they are together. As a result the joint was jumping until the early hours: I didn’t really know them terribly well so merely observed from round a corner (at my lonely table for one).

Next morning I rocked up at the show ground and reported for duty. I was shown a large echoing barn that had, until recently, been the site of the fattest ewe or glossiest cow contest (the Three Counties Showground is not just about gardening: there are a lot of other things ranging from agricultural shows to meeting of the VW Camper club). I was junior end of the bill after Nigel Colborn – who did wise things chatting about plants that he had just picked up on his walk around the showground: I don’t know whether he paid for them or not. I was rather too intimidated to ask. And Joe Swift who drew things on an easel and talked about designing gardens on the diagonal – yeah,yeah. The whole thing was compered by a cheery fellow called Mike from local radio.

I was very scared: like rush to the loo petrified but by the end of the second session I was having a ball and realised that this was actually quite a good way to pass the time. Joe and I had a great time being very well looked after by the fabulous Nina. She was driving us around in some sort of golf cart at one point and as she slowed for some slow moving people we leapt off the cart and disappeared into the crowd. She didn’t notice for a while and then realised that she had lost us and an expression of panic crossed her face. We were forgiven.

I also decided that Malvern was actually rather a wonderful place run by jolly people and I wanted to come back again so started plotting…
Since then I have returned every year: the theatre materialised the following year – the first at any RHS Show – and has got bigger and better.
I have cavorted with Alan Titchmarsh,

pranced with Monty Don (sorry,couldn’t find a picture with his donship)

dallied with Diarmuid Gavin and debated whether Men or Women were better gardeners with various eminences gris (women won: mostly because there were more of them in the audience

The weekends are usually spent with my bald friend, Joe Swift.We are given a pretty free rein by the show organisers especially when it comes to competitive flower arranging. He is winning at the moment, but then he always plays it very safe while I am more avant garde: my “Bridge over the M6” was a conceptual triumph, although sadly no photographic evidence is available.

The second picture is of us with Reg Moule from BBC Radio Hereford and Worcester (who knows everything about nematodes and wriggly pests) and Katie Johnson who adds bubble and fizz to proceedings – although in this picture she seems to also be squeezing my breast.

I have presented fashion shows with the gorgeous Sabrina Duncan International (a firmly muscled Drag Artiste)

and I have been both boiling hot and absolutely soaking wet.

I have interviewed a whole string of supremely knowledgeable and talented nurserymen and designers
And a chicken has laid an egg on me.
Outside the theatre the gardens have got better and better. And there are more and more of them: the idea is that Malvern is a first stop for young and emerging talent. Especially since the elfin Chris Beardshaw has started his scholarship scheme: a chance for a young designer (designer, not Sock) to spend a year stalking Chris and building gardens at both the Malvern Autumn Show and the Chelsea Flower show.
It is a friendlier, less frantic show than say Chelsea, there is room to move around whether you are building a garden or just visiting. There are loads of excellent nurseries selling plants, food stalls, Arts and Crafts and every sort of garden sundry you can imagine. Including fibreglass gorillas and massage chairs.
This year will be fun especially as Joe and I are joined by Cleve West. We will be trying Botanical Art, more flower arranging, interviewing designers, grilling nurserymen (not literally) and generally jollying around.
See you there.
I am listening to the theme from The Sweeney: quite why, I do not really know.
The picture is of a slightly vulgar Arum.
Two years ago I wrote a very informative post about digging wells in a post apocalyptic world.
Last year I was in Guernsey.