Plodding about
FETTLING , PLODDING, CHRISTMAS... escaping, COPING.
My dad bought me back to GL7 yesterday from native Nottingham which was kind. Actually I was spoilt because he picked me up before Christmas too and so as a result, I haven’t got the flu which I would probably of got because otherwise I’d of been travelling on the trains due to stupid mind that won’t learn to drive but I’m beating myself up about that and anyway the traffic hitting Stow-on-the Wold was dire, everyone spilling out back into London. The little towns, this one and Burford are hot potted up with Traffic due to small main streets and traffic lights. But it was luxury still to get back this way rather than the train either via London to Swindon or Worcestershire Parkway to Charlbury.
I wanted to get back to the hens. This is the tie of animals, you struggle to leave them and when you do you feel guilty AND then I get annoyed at being the odd one who only has this seemingly to worry about imagine if in order to produce a christmas dinner we all had to take care of a farmyard and kitchen garden, that would make a good reality tv series actually. The breaking of the trusted routines, the checking in, even though everything is set up for them to be very pampered and well fed and safe, its a worry and so now I am back and typing this.I should be writing and finishing my flower book proposal but I have bad mental block today so at least I’ll do this substack, which is nice.
I suppose that I was badly behaved on Boxing Day, because it was so very beautiful and full sun so I gardened at my mums alone with my mum at my grandmars awaiting the arrival of my brother. Here, I mostly raked up an area of adopted ground opposite her cottage that we call the orchard. A slightly romanced terminology for what are four or five trees really planted too closely together most would deem.
I really needed the time outside, quietly trundling about raking up clods of grass, hard pruning the roses and making the fallen apples look a bit neater to reveal the tight little peaking clumps of snowdrops. There are nettle stings as a result of pulling them that made my fingers buzz hours later and the mud has stained my nails badly. Despite two baths and scrubbing they still don’t look presentable, I never learn to wear gloves which is foolish.
This is a teardrop spec of shaped ground that was formed due to the now endlessly roaring towns inner relief road about ten years ago now. Its just fettled a little bit, it can look scruffy. I want the look of sort of half still tendered to allotment plot. The opposite look to my grandmar Sheila’s well mulched over flower bed, where her elephant watering can, now looks very proud amongst the black raked over compost.
In the Orchard, clumps of nettles are allowed for the butterflies but at this time of the year, its roughly cleared in its middle so that the snowdrops can soon start to show themselves off through the young hawthorn hedge that surrounds it.
The cardoons of wonderous William Morris curtain print design, I cut back hard. As its been mild, they are still quite big and floppy, quite out of proportion to the little snowdrop bells to come. This is a look of shabby gardening but still with control and thought of the overall oil painting. Its my favourite sort of gardening really. Not too careful, not too primed like that favourite old jumper or scarf, tatty but lovely.
I have hopes this area gets visits from hedgehogs. We have put in little baths of water for them using an old dustbin lid and an old stone bird bath too, plus the raked up bits and cut down pruning’s of buddleia are mounded up as a big pile, if not for hedgehogs, then for bugs.
These snowdrops that the cardoon leaves have been chopped back for, I liberated about two years ago from a building site on the other side of my home town. Along the bypass some old grazing land long taken hold of by bramble had been freshly cleared and trawled, with the wooden posts banged in and sprayed red, signalling the new build houses that were soon to be built here.
It was February and a vile grey day and yet dancing and peeking up through the clay in the middle of the security panelled off, quite large plot of earth were two huge clumps of snowdrops.
I rescued the lot with determination, taking a fork and spade and two buckets in the dullness of that days dusk. With a wheelbarrow awaiting the buckets tucked into the hedge that I crawled through by the pavement, I then trundled back with them, wellies cladded in clay. I divided up the snowdrops between the little bit of land here, my grandmar sheila’s garden and my dads garden and some also went to the Linby village parish too to be planted on the verges there.
Large clumps of Snowdrops are heavy little cities of congested bulblets. They must be pulled apart as much as you can be bothered to do, into ideally trios of just 3 bulbs and then you throw them across a flower bed or plot of land, dobbing them in where they land in order to create a naturalised look.
Snowdrops hate to be above ground so never buy them as dormant bulbs as they establish poorly but plant them in the green when they are in active growth in good haste. I also learnt of late that snowdrops do poorly in small pots because little pots are liable to freeze even these hardy dainties of winter too much.
Division of them, often, is key. They like to be split up and replanted every few years and this effort will result in snowdrop gardens and meadows awakening like magical snowdrifts. They truly are a very uplifting little flower to warm the mind with at a time when ones own head can become unbelievably heavy and congested into itself.
The Nottinghamshire snowdrops will be in full bloom by the first week of February I would imagine if not before it depends how mild the winter chooses to be, it could turn to artic tundra we have many weeks of it ahead of us! When they do bloom though I recommend visiting Newstead Abbey near to my native Hucknall to see them in Monk’s wood there and if you are in GL7, the church yard of Cirencester Cathedral is full of them. It is very movingly beautiful to seeing such determined trembling and elegant, silent beauty amongst the headstones there naturally decorating them . Of course, there are many gardens that open for snowdrops and hellebores including two of my favourites that are Coton Manor, Northamptonshire 7/8th Feb; 14/15th Feb and 21/22nd Feb 2026 and Easton Walled Garden near Grantham open from 11th February 2026. I should add that while Sissingurst in Kent is not really known for snowdrop time, there are some beautifully large cultivated ones to be found awakening in Vita Sackville-West’s famous and romantic white garden. As one would expect they poke up and nod above the most beautifully iced mulch of the stirring flower beds here. So if you can visit Sissinghurst not just at rose time in June but arguably in late winter, you see the structure of the garden at its best at this time of the year too.
My friend Juliet Nicolson newly joined to substack , Vita’s granddaughter and esteemed author, most recently of The Book of Revelations - Women and their Secrets, spoke very movingly about knowing the garden that is Sissinghurst to Cate Blanchett on radio 4’s The Today Programme over Christmas listen here - play 13 minutes into the episode.
Back to the trees above the snowdrops in the orchard. I had dreams of these, when I planted them as bare root saplings some ten years ago now, of the resulting canopy being alive with blackbirds in the winter as the trees are crab apples. Somewhat foolishly the largest of the two central trees chosen were due to an alluring photo of their large, Snow White pantomime like blood red fruits.
Crab Apple Wisely bears the largest fruits of all crab apples and these are what we have here. Wonderful, that is if you want to make crab apple jelly but the point of choosing them was in thought to them being a feast for blackbirds rather than the faff of muslin cloth and piff .
Alas the envisaged blackbirds today are seldom seen. The dry summer combined with a huge influx of cats seems to have them done for, at the moment. I listened to bird song though on Boxing Day still whilst pottering as the robins and wrens could be heard singing. Goldfinches do well in towns, a pair nested in the Wisteria against mums house last year and the little tiny, fur like rimmed nest tumbled out from it by the autumn with the brood flown long since. A flock of goldfinches is known as a charm. Like the goldfinch nest, the Wisley crab apples have too since fallen off the trees. They are heavy and the first proper late autumn storm sees them drop, like weighty proper antique baubles to the ground.
A smaller fruiting crab apple would hold onto its fruits for longer and look far prettier for it as a result. But still they look very beautiful in their almost fading ruby decaying state mixed with a few yellow fruits of a neighbouring quince tree. I should add as a merit to the Wisley crab apples that they do have an incredibly beautiful and big pink show of blossom before unfurling their copper and bronze spring leaves and they have grown well here, helping to hide the traffic signs on the other side of the wall.
I took some of the Wisley crab apples back with me and have arranged them with what are on the cusp of becoming frazzled Christmas berried arrangements, hawthorn, stinking iris, rosehips and smaller crab apples.
And so now an otherwise bare, compost filled low but large terracotta pot awaiting a stirring of tulips within it has been festooned with red and ruby berries like some sort of Nigella Lawson creation of sprinkled pomegranate seeds festooned and rained down onto cream. The blackbirds here have been pecking it, like its their own table top berried Christmas fruit cake. Its terribly cold here today so they seem glad of the collected offer and I am glad that I also took up my mums offer of packing me back here with a very large slice of her beautiful home made Christmas cake!
Wishing you all a nice few days. Arthur x
You write about nature and gardening in a way that makes me want to immediately go outside into my very small, very wintery garden and dig. That cake looks delicious
Loved reading that Arthur. Thank you. X