BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine

Tales from Titchmarsh

As spring races on, don’t stress about getting all those seasonal tasks done – instead just enjoy every one you do manage to do, says Alan

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Have you noticed how your mood changes with the unfolding of spring? Your shoulders come down, there are sunny days that show off the iridescenc­e of daffodils, and out come camellias, magnolias, rhododendr­ons and azaleas, and suddenly everything in the garden is lovely again. And yet, there is that distinct feeling that nature is racing ahead and you are struggling madly to keep up.

Between November and March, life in the garden runs at a slow pace – or no pace at all. It’s a great time to catch up, the only time when the gardener moves faster than the plants. February finds me up a ladder, pruning the climbing roses on the wall of the house and tying them in. This year I managed to complete the job on the very last day of the shortest month of the year. I also managed to fork over, feed and mulch a long narrow bed that is home to Japanese maples and hostas. Then I moved on to the beds and borders that still needed clearing of faded foliage, left there (I tell myself) to help myriad insects come through a freezing winter protected from the cold.

I worked on through March, aware that the season was beginning to overtake me. In February, it was far too early to sow seeds on the veg plot, to plant my onion sets or my potatoes. March dawned – it’s still early – but it’s not called ‘March’ for nothing, since the air warms up, the buds on cherry trees fatten and burst, and before I know where I am, it’s April and I still haven’t done… well, you know the feeling. One day it seems to be too early and the next day it’s nearly too late.

Plan as I might, it happens every year this rush of spring, and while it frustrates me that I cannot keep up with it, I’ve learned to accept that each year will be the same but different, and if I don’t want to feel as though I’m chasing my tail until autumn, I must come to some kind of accommodat­ion with my plot and with nature itself.

The completion of every job offers me a chance to feel virtuous, and I must cherish those moments rather than mither (an expressive northern word for worry) over those things I haven’t done, and to ask myself if advancing years mean that I will have to tailor my garden to suit my physical abilities. What? The very idea! I’m a million years away from grassing it all down, and this feeling of being chased by the seasons has happened since I was in my teens. Why should it be different now?

You see, this is the sort of conversati­on that we can all have with ourselves, but I do think that reducing the number of beds and borders is a sadness that most of us cannot contemplat­e. Instead, we can plant them up so that they take less time to maintain, without ever having to use that ghastly phrase ‘labour-saving’. I ‘labour’ for pleasure, and

it’s that very labouring, which I call ‘gardening’, that makes my heart sing. If you don’t like standing on a riverbank, don’t become a fisherman. If you don’t like gardening… you get my drift?

The difficulty in finding peace of mind is compounded if you’re one of those folk who imagines that one day the garden will be finished. It will not. It will continue to grow, to try and get away from you, and it will do things that are often inconvenie­nt. Why is that shrub, which was so lovely for so many years, clearly unhappy or now so large that it has outgrown its place? The answer is simple – it operates to a set of rules quite different from your own. Unless you own stately acres, it will have a finite life in the scheme of things. Interior designers have it easy – they furnish a room and it never changes. True, the fabrics may fade a little, but that only adds to their homeliness. But the scale of the arrangemen­t will not change and the proportion­s that they have taken so much care over will remain indefinite­ly. Not so in the garden.

That is the challenge that faces us every day at this time of year. The secret is to acknowledg­e the fact and to love your garden in spite of it. There will always be something that’s not quite right. Good gardeners are those who recognise the fact and who regard it as a chance to refresh things, rather than a failure to achieve perfection. That’s my story – and I’m sticking to it.

The completion of every job offers me a chance to feel virtuous, and I must cherish those moments rather than mither over those things I haven’t done

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