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| (photo courtesy of freepixels.com) |
Any UK gardener of a certain age, as I am, will remember Percy Thrower - dear ole Percy stood and spoke the words of the BBC gardening bible from his Gardener's World pulpit.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/shropshire/features/2003/08/percy_thrower.shtml
He was the gardening guru who commanded the utmost respect and was the forerunner of the glut of TV's current gardening 'personalities'. I was a primary school child, nature monitor in school, who had been given my first cactus from the classroom window cill. Not just my first cactus, but the first plant to call my own. When I looked around for information to satisfy my burgeoning interest, the one consistent thing I noticed was the huge gap in age between me and anyone else who seemed to be interested in plants.
Though I saw Percy Thrower from a double generational distance, there were few other visible gardening figures that I noticed. I started amassing books to feed my interest. I remember my first plant book, a tiny pocket book, the 'Observer book of Cacti and Other Succulents' which I poured over till every page and every photo was familiar It used to follow me around from bedroom to kitchen, to school, back home, to toilet, to bed. I memorised all the photos and latin names when I was 8 or 9 - a huge benefit in becoming comfortable with latin plant names to this day. And as I think back to that tiny book which lit the fire under my germinating interest, I remember my grandmother who gave it to me once Christmas. At the time, it seemed like magic that she should have bought me a book on the one subject that inspired me more than anything. Later, as the mist of childhood mythology vanished, I realised that my parents had guided her book choice. Still, she had chosen that particular book and, so, given me one of the most important things anyone has ever given me. That is something for which I shall always be grateful. Thankyou Nan.
I quickly realised that I could devour plant literature and watch Percy perfecting his Chrysanthemums and Dahlias, but still my interests seemed strangely individual. As time passed, my interest in cacti and other succulents burst into other areas, indoor exotics, outdoors, hardy subtropical, dry gardens, container gardening and on an on. The one common element has turned out to be my own personal interpretation of what a particularly beautiful plant is. My taste, especially when young, did not encompass chrysanthemums and Dahlias - sorry Percy and sorry to my father, who, true to the then horticultural zeitgeist used to grow those plants, roses, fuschias, runner beans and little else. Rebelliously, I grew up to dislike those same plants. Only as years have passed I have, selectively, or so I like to believe, allowed myself to relate to some of those plants or their close relatives - think modern day marguerites/argyranthemums in place of chrysanthemums and some of the better coloured foliage Dahlias like Christopher Lloyd's keen use of Bishop of Llandaff.
I realise that my initial love of cacti and succulents taught me something special - a love of form before flower. As a child, I displayed unusual patience for my cacti to produce flowers. When they came, often lasting little time, their beauty seemed only enhanced by how starkly they sat against the spines and stem of the cactus and abstract posture of some other succulent.
Cactus in flower
(photo courtesy of freepixels.com)
(photo courtesy of freepixels.com)
So, for me, flowers have their place, but of prime importance, subject to goodness knows how many exceptions there may be in the gardening world, are the leaves and growth habit. I want a plant to look good even when not in flower. Flowers are a bonus. This sets me apart from many others who struggle to see a garden where there are not enough flowers.
All this meandering and self indulgent reflection, brings me back to Percy. One thing he taught my dear father, and all others of that generation, was how to dig. You dug in spring, you dug in summer, you dug in autumn/winter. When nothing else was to be done, why sit and relax in your lovely garden, when you could be digging, sweating and building an appetite. You dug soil that was heavy to put in conditioners. You dug light soils to do likewise. You dug good soils to keep them good. You dug soil, because "doesn't bare soil look lovely when it's neatly dug over"?????? My answer - NO, no no.
Let me be clear on this, I am not averse to soil being dug, when really of benefit. I am not seeking to replace one rule of 'you must dig' with it's opposite. What ticks me off is the thoughtlessness behind most digging. Back to my early suggestion, it really is one of those tasks many put on their list of 'things to do' in the garden; not because it needs doing, but because it helps to fill the list. A friend asked me a while back to help with her garden. In the process of being micro managed - sorry Mariam, but I have to say that - she gave me a list of things to do and asked me to dig some soil. I explained why it really wasn't necessary. This dig for England approach does not sit easily with my own ethos. I don't believe that hard physical labour, for the sake of it, is good for the spirit. Often it is a waste of time and sometimes a show off activity, usually for the male of our species, to be counted along with the hunter gatherer instinct.
I can almost hear the traditionalist gardener creaking from their seats and reaching for a shovel to beat me with, so let me explain my reasoning more carefully. I seldom dig in my small London garden. There have been times when I have dug away furiously, but that was when I was laying out a garden and breaking down heavy clay soil. Even when preparing my current garden, for the lion share of time spent on digging, an enterprising group of school boys knocked on my door and took that load off my shoulders and a little from my pocket. Now my garden is established, little digging is required. I dig to plant - no disproportionately large holes, just a little larger than the root ball going in, and I'm away. Fertiliser and manure goes on the surface - I don't spent time digging it in. With the kindness of worms and nature, it seeps its goodness into the soil.
What stopped me from digging wasn't pure laziness, but a sit back and think about it moment. I want my garden to be as 'natural' as possible and looked after along 'natural' principles. Of course, by definition, a garden is not 'natural', but the outdoors modified and manipulated by us. However, I like to let nature guide the way whereever possible. So think about how fecund nature is without digging. Meadows explode from soil low in nutrition and left undisturbed. Trees care not one jot for soil digging once they settled into appropriate soil and conditions. Nature hardly digs at all, yet there's abundance. So, even given the contrivance of our gardens, isn't it possible that we overdo the digging?
Another surefire way of making someone think twice about digging is what it does to the weed population. If you leave soil, relatively settled and pick the weeds off as they emerge, and well before they flower, a happy harmony can be achieved. When you start digging, everything can change. Weed seeds lieing dormant below the surface start to germinate. Some weeds use the digging to reproduce by root and other cuttings. You may actually be giving them a helping hand in their propogation - bindweed thrives on bits of root being cut up and dug around. After the war, where bombs had exploded in London, churning and firing the soil, Rose Bay Willow herb emerged as though to herald peace.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p008lwk0
Truth be told, it was the fire rather than than the churning that caused this gorgeous 'weed' to flourish, but allow me this slightly inconsistent but romantic example.
As with all of my suggestions, there is always an important caveat. They aren't rules. They're guidelines to be used when appropriate and rejected, if there is good reason. If you've got heavy clay soil and want to improve it by adding lime, then dig away. Intense cultivation of vegetables will take greedily from the soil and 'invite' more digging - even double digging some would suggest, along with generous use of fertiliser. I suspect, though, that most people could make their lives easier and gardens happier places by digging much less often. Try your own experiment and deliberately avoid digging whenever possible. Dig more shallowly if it has to happen. Are your plants any the worse for it? Mine never seem to be.
The Irreverent Gardener
