A Nice Green Leaf: Amateur Gardener. And proud of it

I am going to come right out and admit that I like Amateur Gardening. I don't mean I enjoy bumbling around in the garden not really knowing what I'm doing (though I am partial to a bit of that). I mean I really like the magazine. Despite it's being apparently targeted at the over-90s and being "downmarket trash". 

There are many reasons I love Amateur Gardening. Firstly, you almost always get a free packet of seed. In fact, you only don't get a free packet of seed when some thieving over-90 has got to Co-op before you, and swiped it. Not rubbish seed, either. Mr Fothergills, no less.

Secondly, I could spend hours going on about how fascinated I am with Lucy and Emilie. (Not as fascinated as I was when they used to have Lucinda, but nonetheless.) Lucy and Emilie work for the mag and have to pose for all the practical demonstrations, doing their best to look like nice girls while gazing at clumps of aquilegia/dead euphorbias/automatic watering systems. Plus in winter they have the best assortment of colourful jumpers you will ever see in print.
Honestly, the £1.80 cover price is worth it just for them.

But finally, despite the magazine's downmarket, gnome-owning credentials, for me it is the best source for having up-to-date, fairly gossipy gardening news. Before there were gardening blogs, this kind of thing was essential. But even now, I think their news editor Marc Rosenberg does a really good job of rounding up intriguing stories, ranging from reporting the hoax Alan Titchmarsh skunk-growing video to giving the facts on cardboard eco-coffins.

Apart from these star features, there is also sound cultural advice in the form of Anne Swithinbank's kitchen garden column, which I find really handy, and Bob Flowerdew who as far as I'm concerned is top class great. Which prepares me nicely to try and chuckle at Peter Seabrook's signing-off column, which he appears to regard as unfinished unless he's having a little dig at the solar-panel-installing, mediterranean-plant-growing ninnies amongst us. Well, you can't please everybody.   

A Nice Green Leaf: Holiday mysteries

Currently on a week's secondment to Oxford where I'm teaching a course on the eighteenth century landscape garden (students all particularly raving about Tim Richardson's wonderful Arcadian Friends, just out in paperback). We had a hot trip to Stowe and an amazing time at Rousham, and we even managed to take a turn around Addison's Walk (of which more in a later post).

The biggest problem of the week is managing to retain any kind of semblance of an air of horticultural authority in the face of all the weird stuff the class have managed to spot growing in flowerbeds. And of course I have no reference books.

The first problem was the pink flower in the first image. "Its name is on the tip of my tongue," I told the class, confidently, yet it never actually arrived. I looked like an idiot. Nevertheless, I scored some points recognising Salvia "Hot Lips" in a Magdalen college border, seen first at Hampton Court. But then I lost them again on this mysterious daisy. (Daisy-ish? Oh god, fine, make me beg. JUST PLEASE TELL ME THE NAME.)

And what in god's name is this fella (left)? I think I have some credit in the ID bank after I put a name to Garden Monkey's oddity -
so somebody, please help me get my reputation back with the Oxford
crowd. Don't lose all respect for me - can't you just think it's sort
of sweet that I don't know what they are? Missing you, xxx

A Nice Green Leaf: All the fun of the fair

Oh we are loveably good at plant fairs in England. And probably in Scotland, Wales and Ireland too, but I don't know because I've never had to go that far in search of a good one. (Feel free to send me notes from any cross-border stunners; I can always be persuaded.)

My mum and I went to one in Selbourne a few weeks ago, and I've just got round to sorting through the pictures. I love the intensity with which people at plant fairs shop. They are like consultants visiting patients on the ward round, taking notes and indulging in low whispered conversations.

I'm also fascinated with the way that a plant fair tells you so much about gardening fashion. The small nurseries already know what we are all looking for having observed in detail exactly what sells, as well as what they have to cart home unclaimed.

I spent a good deal of time eavesdropping, because it's useful to find out what the plant fair crowd are going wild for, and also just because it's fun. Dieramas, for example, were a massive hit at Selbourne. Conversations about how to get them to flower echoed around the fields, as they are tricky customers at the best of times. Evidently the secret is partly just waiting - like peonies, they are fusspots who will hold out for several years after disturbance before they finally deign to grace the garden with blooms. 

Another plant that's everywhere this year is Astrantia, of all shapes and colours. This one is "Buckland" but I also loved George's Form, very very pink, and Roma which is a Piet Oudolf find. Apparently Margery Fish was onto Astrantias back in the 1950s: I, sadly, have been somewhat slower to catch on.

And in terms of late herbaceous interest, I could see that selling like local hot watercross buns were:

Gauras aplenty. What a useful plant: good with dry conditions, deliciously pretty and apparently not even that tasty to slugs.

Thalictrum "Ellin" - a really gorgeous tall one, and "Hewitt's Double" as the name indicates, double pink flowers, giving slightly more oomph for your money.

Eryngiums of many shapes and sizes, but particularly bourgatii (very
bright blue) and another good one called E x zabelii "Jos Eijking".

Penstemon "Sour Grapes" I fell hard for this bluey-mauvey lovely.

Salvia turkmenistanica var "Mojito" (trademarked name, no less! Ooo, get him.) The plant has been described elsewhere as smelling like a housemaid's armpit: I was too blinded by total smittenness to notice.

My best all-round stand actually belonged to the volunteer group of gardeners from Gilbert White's house at Selbourne itself. "Wakes' Weeders" sell only plants that would have been available in the late 18th century, with a wonderful range of digitalis and 18th-century veg, all in tip-top nick too. They run the plant sales at Selbourne all year round, so you could visit any time this summer and peruse their range.

Just one more thing. Never forget you actually have to get the whole lot home. And plant it. These ladies had five wheelbarrow loads, and a little bird told me they'd been at another plant fair the day before. Ladies of the multiple plant fair, we mortals who felt guilty about buying more than one thing can only salute you.

A Nice Green Leaf: Points memes prizes

Anyone who's read the Selfish Gene may already be familiar with the word "meme" - Richard Dawkins invented it to describe a piece of cultural behaviour which evolves by principles of selection, just like a biological entity would do. 

Garden bloggers benefit from a range of virally-awarded prizes, which often get called "memes" (I'd love to know who first applied the term to blogging). The good news for me is that Veg Plotting just awarded me one called Arte y Pico. (I explained this pyramid-like scheme to my boyfriend, who just said, "Does this mean you are going to get £32,000 within 14 days?". I think probably not, honey.)

If you know anything about viral blog prizes, you know I first have to mention the blog who invented the prize to begin with. Arte y Pico is a knitting blog in Spanish, so I can't tell you that much about it. But I love the viral journey the prize must have travelled to come all the way to me - awarded from darkest Chippenham. 

Now in order to carry on the Dawkinsian movement across the web, I have to tell you the following five rules:

1. Choose 5 blogs you consider deserving of this award for their creativity, design, interesting material, and contribution to the blogging community, regardless of the language.


2. Each award should have the name of the author and a link to his/her blog to be visited by everyone.


3. Each award winner should show the award and put the name and link to the blog that presented him/her with the award.

4. The award winner and the one who has given the award should show the Arte y Pico blog so everyone will know the origin of this award. Translated, it means "the peak of art".

Finally, here are my picks of five blogs to watch. I chose:

Typing on the Void:
Pete Free's blog is a totally delightful diary of a hard-working National Trust nursery supervisor who also manages to spend their free time chasing up as many four-star gardens as possible with cream teas in between. Pete constantly makes me want to go and visit more gardens. So the blog's a shoo-in.

Happy Mouffetard
has a very long-running blog which juxtaposes gorgeous macro shots of beautiful flowers with recipes and an irresistible sense of humour about fern fronds. Delightful.

Can't believe nobody's awarded We're Going to Need a Bigger Pot
a huge medal for her hilarious quest to reconstruct a Mesozoic garden
in suburban West London. This is the kind of thing great Radio 4
programmes are made from!

Likewise with Plants are the Strangest People. I love euphorbias, that's enough for Mr Subjunctive and I to bond over, but his tales of working in an anonymous Iowa nursery are always enlightening and often hilarious. 

Finally, the horticultural blog that cheers me up almost every day, despite having slightly more love for Chris Beardshaw than I can ever condone. It may not have much "art" in the old-fashioned Rembrandt sense, but according to a more modern Tracey Emin-style standard, it
has plenty. Check out Arabella Sock and her marvellous Gif-tastic entertainments - just remember not to take it all too seriously...

A Nice Green Leaf: Carporticultural (Porsche part II)

Because he is an absolute evil genius, and because he has got the entire internet inside his head like it's the Matrix, Alex from Shedworking has just been able to send me the best link ever.

The Toyota Prius got roundly slagged off by almost everybody in our mini symposium the other day, but this blog shows that they are streets ahead (ahem) of the opposition in constructing not just a garden, but an entire house around having a place to recharge an electric car. 

According to Dwell, Toyota has been making these gorgeous, clean-lined steel-frame homes
for more than quarter of a century - and look how beautiful and sleek they are, slotting into an existing gap in the time it takes most Brits to do their converyancing. Now the car company has gone one better and is designing a re-charging stand into the parking place.

I have to say this is much more my cup of tea - I love it! And I'm hoping the glazed space beyond the car provides a nice spot for an elegant shade-loving courtyard. Mmm, all the heucheras I can fit in there...

A Nice Green Leaf: Fake plastic tree-type garden chair

By Emma Townshend

White plastic garden chairs should be banned. It's not complicated.

But check this out: young designer Maarten Baas has taken the gloriously humble piece of summer furniture we all love to hate, and turned it into a limited edition piece of "design art" retailing at a cool £1300.

The "Plastic Chair in Wood" comes in an edition of just 50, so don't be slow!

A Nice Green Leaf: Bloggers Rule. OK?

Garden Monkey sent me a link this morning to a piece about whether serious critical writing is going to get killed off by blogs. Brian Sewell reckons there's an argument against the democratisation of criticism: that amateurs will never do as good a job as the "skilled". But there are so many great things about blogs (spontaneity, intimacy, and the potential for developing long-standing private jokes about time-lapse photography are three that immediately spring to my mind). 

Whatever the good points of blogging, though, the holy grail of bloggers is generally (as Jay Rayner points out) to become  "real" professionals.

Typepad are celebrating three such successes this morning on the front page, and in the much tinier world of garden blogs we are currently toasting Deb from Beholder's Eye who has won a Malvern Autumn Show garden commission, and Emma Cooper, aka Fluffius Muppetus who had her first piece in The Guardian this weekend - about eating weeds.  

Worth pointing out that I only know about these two utterly delightful bits of news from Garden Monkey. GM is on average more likely to be getting abused for being a wickedly malicious stirrer, but in my experience can be most often accused of being generous, thoughtful and proud of friends' achievements in a grown-up and verging on proudly parental fashion.

(Not that the Monkey will necessarily thank me for tarnishing their reputation with this allegation of genuine niceness.)

Anyway, I have some thank-yous to do regarding the Big Green Leaf: to everybody who posted pictures, to everyone who looked at the pics, and especially to those who took the time to comment. Installing Google Analytics can be good for the ego, but nice comments are better. I would particularly single out Victoria and VP who I noticed  posting all over the place. 

But in terms of my overall highlights: I've told everyone I know about Mrs Be's vegetable spectacular; I love Nancy Bond's utterly appropriate Robert Frost poem; I admired the pristine hostas of Lisa Greenbow; Q's Sunday Bug Safari; Joy Best's best efforts to make a garden despite raccoons and naughty boat-toting relatives; Zoe's mind-altering kaleidoscope of greens with special huge rave choon; and Karen the Artist's Garden's wonderful and funny gold, silver and bronze awards.

My best plant discovery was Hoe and Shovel's variegated shell ginger, and a Jatropha "Buddha Belly" - yum. But these are just little glimpses of the pleasure I got trawling round the whole
lot. Thank you all so much for taking part. And while we're raising our glasses, let's toast the benign authority of the blogosphere. Long may we all - ever so democratically - reign.