A rose and sweet pea arch

My new book, Sweet Peas for Summer is in the SHOPS, so I thought I’d do a little recipe in its honour

I’ve been wanting arches in my garden for quite some time now, (for sweet pea frolics and in order to satisfy my climbing rose fetish) and I’ve been holding back mainly because I thought it would be expensive, but then I spied these and realised it’d be silly not to really. True – it’s not like having a proper blacksmithed confection, but, well, it’s going to get covered in roses and sweet peas anyway.

So, for your gorgeous arch you need:

An arch like mine (or you could fashion one out of sticks and stuff if you were … handy.

Two climbing roses. I have three arches, and I’ve used Rosa. Cecile Brunner on one, R. Blairii No. 2 on the second and R. Constance Spry on the third. The first two are eulogised in more detail here, and the third, well, I bought my roses from here with the kind help of Tom (talented flowersmith, who should definitely write a blog, and we all need to bully him until he does just that). Tom convinced me about Constance Spry by telling me that an arch full of it would be ‘utterly camp’. Sold.

Sweet peas. It depends on the girth of the arch you’re going for, but each of mine got about six sweet pea plants planted on either side. You can get sweet peas in the shops right now. Mine were sown in October last year (I know…get me!) and came from here. This is the first time I have ever done autumn-sown sweet peas. It is deeply satisfying but in my HUMBLE opinion it’s not necessary unless you’re planting hundreds of the things.

Some well-rotted manure (optional, but great if you can get it). Otherwise, chuck in some ‘soil improver’ also sold in bags.

A nice, weed-free, fertile, sunny site (i.e. the holy grail). I cleared each end of my raised vegetable beds to do this project. Don’t worry too much if things aren’t perfect though. Sweet peas are terribly obliging. They will give it a good go, whatever you do to them. Roses are a rather longer-term proposition, so do pick one that’s suited to your site.

Some natural-coloured garden twine. (String, to you and me)

Some pea sticks or netting for those tendrils to climb up

Method:

First you need to erect your arch. Mine came flat-packed and I’m VERY glad I had a power drill to drive all those screws in (otherwise it would have taken me all day). It wasn’t taxing though…just boring. Stick it into the ground and make sure it’s properly secure. I know that I’m going to have to reinforce my arches some wintertime, because once there are roses all over them, then the wind will rock them (wind-rock is no good for roses, or anything else planty). This will probably involve driving a stake into the ground or something like that. At any rate, it’s far too boring to think about right now. Once my arch was up, I stuck a twiggy pea stick into the ground to proved something for the sweet peas to climb up. You could equally throw some netting over the arch and tie it down securely.

Next, plant your roses. If they’re in pots then they won’t have put out roots yet so don’t be surprised if all the compost falls away when you take them out. Dig two pretty deep holes at either side of the arch (you want your roses planted about 4cm deeper than they were in their pots). Put some well-rotted manure at the bottom of the hole and mix it with the earth that’s already there, so everything is nice and soft and there aren’t any big stones or obstacles to the roots getting down to find water. Put the rose carefully in its hole, looking at the stems and placing it so that they look like they’re in the best position to start climbing, and back-fill carefully, firming the whole thing in really well with your foot. Water your roses diligently and continue to do so every day for at least two weeks, with a can of water for each one.

Now plant your sweet peas. I dug two trenches (little ditches) for mine, either side of the bottom of the arch (so that some peas will climb ‘inside’ the arch, and some will climb ‘outside’. Put some well-rotted manure at the base of your trench and mix it in with the earth, then VERY carefully remove your sweet peas from their pots and plant them in the trench. If you have bought sweet peas, then there will most probably be several in each small pot. Do NOT separate them, but just plant them as they are, in a clump. Sweet peas hate their feet being fussed with so the less disturbance the better. I know that sweet peas are supposed to be spaced apart from each other but I promise this works, and if you try and separate the clump the plants will suffer (I’ve tried both ways!). If you really feel that things are too congested then you could just snip out a couple of the weakest looking seedlings at the base of the stalk.  If you have single sweet peas, then plant them 20cm apart. Firm it all in well, then gently gently gently tie as many shoots as you can in to the arch. This may not be possible at first, as your seedlings may be too small. You can see that I have stuck in some sticks (the sort you get attached to orchids with those funny plastic hair clips) to start them off in the right direction. You can do this too if you like (but do NOT spear those roots!).

It’s fiddly, but worth doing all the tying in at first, so your peas know where to go and don’t just trail along the ground, looking lost and sad.

Now water your sweet peas, and keep watering every day to get them off to a properly good start.

This is a ridiculously long post, so I’ll post again to give maintenance tips for this project.

If you give it a go, do post a pic on my Facebook page – would be great to see it.

An Easter Nest

I love nests

I am the nesting type.

Around this time of year I can usually be found fashioning things to hold eggs…chocolate or otherwise.

I recently spied this lovely thing on the Marfa Stewart website.

I had pussy willow (because I always end up buying it at this time of year)…and my old, dried, crispy Christmas wreath, looking forlorn in a dark corner…crying out for me to dismantle it. The result is nothing like the perfection of Martha’s…(I was time-poor, and the instructions are vague) but I love it all the same.

You need:

Some nest material: I used dried grasses from a selection of miscanthus and bunny tails that I’d just pruned from the garden, and the old, crispy foliage from some gladiolus callianthus that I had tied up aeons ago in my basement. Basically, a mixture of flat/thick and fine grasses….the sort of thing a bird might choose to make a comfy nest with.

Pussy willow: In all the shops right now – One bunch…mine came from the supermarket.

A wreath form – mine is about 35-40cm diameter

Some thin wire – mine is green

Wire cutters – I use sectaurs….*gasp*

Some fishing wire or thin, clear thread, and a thick, blunt needle (or ‘bodkin’ as my mother calls it)

Method:

First, take your wreath form and make a sort of dream-catcher out of it with your wire like this:

Next, separate your base-grass (in this case, my gladiolus leaves) into three or five handfuls and secure each of them with wire, and then attach them to the wreath form, just as you would if you were making a Christmas wreath (by placing them at regular intervals and securing them to the form with a long piece of wire like this:

So far, so messy, but don’t worry (birds don’t worry, do they).

Next, add in your thinner, prettier grasses. I just wove them in – I didn’t need to wire them because I had the framework. Concentrate on the outside of your nest – don’t worry about the base of it too much yet..you can fill that in later. Keep adding grasses until you have what looks like a bird’s nest with a hole in the bottom.

Now you’re ready to add your pussy willow. It’s really amazing how pliable this stuff is. Start by pushing each individual stem into the base of your nest, weaving it in and out of the criss-crossy wires so that you have what looks like a child’s drawing of the sun:

Then take the first stem and bend it firmly round the wreath form. Don’t worry about breaking it – go tighter than you might think possible. Martha says you can just tuck them in and that’s that…but my pussy willow had other ideas, so I threaded up a really long piece of fishing wire on a needle and ‘sewed’ the nest tight, holding each stem down as I sewed around it with my needle. There’s no denying that this is fiddly, but once you’ve got the hang of it, it becomes pretty easy to do.

Fiddle around with the nest until you are happy with the look of it, and then line the bottom with some more grass (and I used a bit of sphagnum moss and a few feathers from a forgotten hat too). Make sure it’s suitably messy (birds don’t do perfect).

My egg is a duck-egg – blown and dyed with pink food colouring. This is very easy to do.

Even better, store your favourite chocolate eggs here. There is something about this nest that says ‘hands off…I’m precious, and rare’.

If you don’t feel like doing quite this amount of fiddling, then I’ve written a cheat’s guide to nest-making which will appear very soon on the Crocus website…I’ll keep you posted.

Something to soothe

Never parTICularly been one for an ‘erbal infusion’ (unless it’s lemon verbena or peppermint)

I’m far more likely to munch leaves or a flower in a salad…

or cover it with sugar and put it on a cake…

… but stuff’s wee bit stressy at the moment, and I went out to pick a tiny posy because I thought it was something rare, and non-computer-based…and then I found myself marvelling at these pretty things, and I picked up Jekka’s Herb Book, and it said  that a tisane acts as a ‘mild sedative’…’good for anxiety and insomnia’, so I chucked some leaves and a flower in a cup.

Primula vulgaris are mighty easy to grow, particularly if you have a deciduous tree kicking around, under which they can live in a nice, moist, partly shady world.

Wild primroses are less common than they should be, so don’t pick them unless there are absolutely loads, and certainly don’t pull them up by the roots.

Colours vary from the palest of creams to much deeper, eggy yellows, and look how pretty the buds are:

You can grow them in a pot – just use JI No2 and water regularly, and you can divide them in the autumn if you’ve got big clumps.

The scent is sweet.

I think the small bottle of blooms did more for my jitters than the tea

My new book is coming out soon – and people – (people I admire and respect) are being SO nice about it. This is totally wonderful and deeply gratifying and NOT what I expect…So thank you English Mum and Fennel and Fern.

This site came under attack a while ago and I basically lost the whole caboodle. It was the brilliant Neil who resurrected it, and who is now helping me to improve it. My beloved Lust List has completely disappeared and I am re-writing it (slowly but surely…a little bit every day….). I am hoping to have it back up soon as poss.

February bells

Muscari (Grape Hyacinth) are out in the shops right now. You should plant bulbs in autumn and LOTS of them…in which case you could do a lot worse than create a river like this one at Keukenhof (oh to see that one day).

But for those of us with a little less space, they are perfect for a container, a window-box, or any piece of glorious china you happen to have at home…just employ a bit of judicious ‘plonkage’ and cover any plastic pot bits with sphagnum moss. Indoors, they will go over quicker, but frankly who cares?

They are perennial bulbs, which means they’ll come back year after year for you and have these tiny little urn-shaped flowers. They come in deepest cobalt, and also white and lilac (but honestly, why on earth would anyone want anything other than blue?).

A swamp for George

Soleirolia soleirolii – the perfect bathroom plant.

I’ve been using these lovely creeping emerald droplet-leaves for years now, both indoors and out.

Outside, they do this tight-knit, softening thing – the leaves are slightly tougher and darker, and none the worse for that. I long to take a machete to the cement between my paving stones and let it do its thing.

Some people regard it as a nuisance, but (as I’ve said many times before) nuisance plants are my kind of deal, for obvious reasons.

Indoors, it’s a very different proposition. You can put this plant in almost any sort of container and it will thrive. The warmer it is, the longer the creeping stems will become, and the softer the cushioning.

I have this hideous window in my bathroom, and found a tray thingy in one of the big sheds. I thought I’d make a place for George the crocodile (Schleich toy of the moment) to hang out, and decorate this desolate window-sill (although I’m not sure you can even call it that).

You need:

1 x Soleirolia soleirolii plant – available at good garden centres in little pots. Sometimes it’s sold under the name ‘Helxine‘, sometimes ‘Mother of thousands’, sometimes ‘Baby’s tears’ (ahhhhhh). I’ve never seen it sold in any of the big shed ones (silly billys, because it would fly off the shelves)

A container – anything you want, but you’ll need drainage holes, which is why I had to drill some in my tray. I drilled three large holes with a fat drill bit that had a point on the end of it. It took a grand total of ten seconds…but if you hate stuff like that, then just use an ordinary pot or pots – terracotta is nice.

Some multi-purpose compost – try to find one without too many huge bits of bark in it. But if you can’t, then just remove them when you come to fill your pot. This is simply to create the best environment for the creeping stems to attach themselves and put down roots.

A drill, to make holes (if you need them)

Method.

Fill your container with compost, right up to to the top. You don’t want to be leaving a gap between the top of the compost and the rim of the pot because this plant’s M.O is to ‘spill’ over the edge – it’s very very pretty.

Now remove your plant from its plastic and divide it gently into little pieces. How many depends on the number of containers you have to fill, but know that it only takes the merest suggestion of leaf and roots, planted with care and attention (or not) to get this plant started and within weeks it will have covered the surface of the compost.

Of course, you could just buy enough to fill your entire container and have the finished product right there and then…no harm in that, except watching things grow is more fun.

Plant your pieces, making sure that the roots go in your compost, and the leaves remain above it, but generally you can be quite slap-dash and just squish it in.

Water well from above with a watering can that has a rose attached to give you a gentle shower of water, and from below also, by putting your container into another one, filled with water, and leaving it there to soak.

Keep the compost damp at all times (which isn’t hard, in a bathroom, is it?)