THE GRUMPY GARDENER

Have you noticed the irrepressible cheerfulness of TV gardeners? Carol Klein  on Gardeners’ World gurgles inexpressible wonderment about her burgeoning blooms. Others take optimism to yodeling heights.

 

Last week after months of idle self-pity I decided to start gardening again. Whilst we and our neighbours share a three-acre parkland full of mighty elms, our own little gardens leading on to this are more a thing of nail scissors than shears.

But gardening of any kind is serious so I must be prepared. I put on my crumpled gardening trousers and my gardening jerkin with its multi-pockets for secateurs, string, spare gardening gloves and a small but lethal trowel. I open the door and squawk…it’s freezing out there…..!!

I retreat indoors to do some research. It makes gloomy reading; “clean out, clear, remove, repair and tidy.” Most of all there’s the caveat “prune but not too soon.”

The next day it’s sunny, so I try again. I adopt the random-inspect-and-ruthless-remedy technique, favoured by dilettante gardeners. It comprises surprise attacks on areas of weeds or degenerate perennials. I fill a surprising number of refuse sacks with floral detritus quite fast and reflect on the philosophy of gardening. There’s the current fashionable vogue for wilding and pest balance. There’s the ‘if-you-can’t-eat-it-don’t-plant-it’ Vegetable Fanclub.  But I belong more to the school of striped lawns and immaculate herbaceous borders and, failing that, a less-is-more strategy.

After two days of work I have two tidy garden cupboards packed with impressive array of nuclear-powered pest-killing products and all those plastic pots, old seed packets and out of date stuff have been binned. The garden has a new layer of top-soil – have you any idea what damage 30 litres of that stuff can do to your back? The worst of the straggling overgrowth has gone and the plant-corpses of the past season have been removed. To give hope for the future a few about-to-bloom bulbs have been strategically placed to please the eye and cheer us.

Finally the garden is tamed. I am a bit grumpy because I ache all over but escape my wife’s reproachful glances when our garden is neglected. It’s only early next morning, as I walk around this fresh canvas on which nature will paint its colour, that I realise how nice being  clean and tidy is.

So I decide on two final touches. Karcher is a second-generation, family-owned German business. They make various excellent products but my favourite is the pressure-washer for cleaning paving. Our muddy paving slabs are transformed to a sparkling, clean, grey blue. It’s pure magic. Danke schön Karcher. 

 

The second is to prune the dead wood in the awkwardly located lavender bushes which have got a bit out of control. Balancing on one leg I get along splendidly until I overbalance, slip and fall into some viciously prickly Teazel plants. Gardening is dangerous,  I mutter, with 115,000 accidents a year in the UK when they last counted. No wonder I’m a grumpy gardener. But like fishermen -  not grumpy for long. Gardeners always hope for a great year, huge marrows, wonderful roses and spectacular displays. Gardeners know there’ll be growth and we’re heading towards the growth season. 

 

Man-made artifacts are less predictable, as the past week or so has shown. Cryptocurrencies (which have a gardening cousin in the Dutch Tulip Bulb Bubble of the 1660s) have declined by 40% compared to their November peak.  More dramatic, in many ways, is the recent, colossal share price tumble of Meta (aka Facebook, Instagram et al).

 

 

Maybe it’s best to leave growth to gardeners and rejoice in seasons.