If you are lucky enough to have a plot... keep calm and carry on gardening
Even in these strange times, there are plenty of jobs to do in the garden, says our expert Agnes Stevenson. But make sure you take care while you work.
If you find yourself up with the dawn chorus and fancy some early morning gardening, remember it can be cold at this time of the day and so it makes sense to do a few stretches before getting started.
And be careful with tools, this is not the time to put a fork through your foot or to cut yourself with a rusty pruning knife.
Safety is a priority at a time when access to medical help is limited and we all have a responsibility to reduce the burden on the NHS.
Our sloping site has been the scene of several tumbles, so for the moment I’m taking extra care while working on the steepest areas.
And this week I’ll be pressurewashing the paths and patio so we don’t have a repeat of last year’s incident when my son slipped and broke his arm.
But safety aside, the garden is one of the best places to be at the moment and all of us who have outdoor space are in a very fortunate position. Of course you may have to make a few adjustments to how you do things but that just gives you the chance to try out new techniques.
There’s little chance now that I’ll get the delivery of the topsoil I need for the curving bed around the patio, so I’ve planted it up anyway, placing each shrub on its own mound of earth and packing some extra compost around the roots. Mounding plants is a proven technique on damp or heavy soil and, as long as nothing is allowed to dry out, then it works very well.
I’ll just add more soil until it’s level with the plants, but for the moment this has allowed me to move ahead and freed up lots of large containers I’ll use for growing more vegetables. Meanwhile the defensive measures I’ve taken to protect the fritillaries from being eaten seem to be working. These grow on the grassy bank that faces the kitchen window and I’ve covered clumps of them with decorative wire cloches so they
are out of reach of rabbits and pheasants.
Fortunately nothing feasts on snowdrops and I have some nice clumps to split up and spread out. I started three years ago with just a handful of plants and I’m delighted how quickly these have multiplied. I’ve done the same with the wild primroses and now parts of the garden are covered in them.
In some gardens grape hyacinths are a bit of a menace, but here they don’t get out of hand so I’m also going to divide these in the hope it encourages them to bulk up faster, but before I do that I want to find a home for the Gunnera manicata that’s been over-wintering in an old compost sack. This giant Chilean rhubarb can grow two metres tall and its leaves are as big as umbrellas.
It loves a damp spot and, as well as having a mature specimen, I’ve also been raising more from seed. These have just come out of the propagator and, if all goes well, we’ll eventually have a forest of these monster plants.