Very Wet Wet Wet: Now that’s what gardeners call music
Recent and persistent rain may not be to everyone’s liking, says our expert Agnes Stevenson. But it can be just what the green-fingered among us ordered
Chat over the breakfast table in our house in recent weeks has frequently turned to the subject of ponds. Rain has turned parts of the garden into a quagmire but instead of bemoaning it we’ve been considering ways to make a feature from ground so saturated that every footprint becomes a permanent puddle.
Until we moved here I didn’t realise it was possible for a slope to hold so much water. Parts of our steep garden are now so wet that rushes are appearing and a trip to the compost heap in the top corner involves squelching uphill and trying not to slide all the way back down again.
A weeping cherry tree near the bottom of the slope has finally succumbed to the dampness and the acanthus, which were planted out earlier this year, keep losing their lower leaves as a protest to having their roots in water. I’m going to lift them and pot them into free-draining soil before they give up the will to carry on.
Yet for everything that hates the dampness, there’s another that relishes it. The magnolias are in their element and I’ve had to give the New Zealand holly a haircut after it put on huge amounts of growth.
Some parts of the west of Scotland, like the woodland of Argyll and Bute, are classified as temperate rainforest
and I’ve come to realise that we are living in one of them. During last year’s scorching weather the clay soil remained wet and even on the hottest day it’s possible to detect moisture in the air, providing ideal conditions for many ferns and acers, whose papery-thin leaves are liable to turn crispy in dry conditions.
While I love the exuberant growth you get in a damp climate, I’d like the soil to dry out long enough to get on with moving things around the borders.
There’s a huge Lonicera “Baggesen’s Gold” I’d really like to shift, but even if I could dig it out, it’s rootball would be so saturated that lifting it would be to risk a trip to A&E.
And I suspect it would take more than a layer of grit beneath their roots to prevent bulbs planted this autumn from rotting before they’d had a chance to put up any flowers.
But clay, however damp, is not all bad. It is very rich in nutrients, helping to keep plants healthy.
Best of all, when tamped down then worked to a smooth surface, it makes a leak-proof base for a pond, without the fuss of textile liners.
Meanwhile rudbeckias, echinaceas and heleniums are continuing to put on a fine show. Many of these lateflowering prairie plants can be found growing in damp meadows in the USA, so a spot of rain does nothing to dampen their vigour.