How to do a quick early Autumn tidy up in the garden
This morning was spent helping my newest local friend Janet tidy up our next door neighbour’s garden. Janet is a trained horticulturalist and has many years of experience under her belt. Despite being retired for several years she maintains a number of local gardens and has a huge wealth of knowledge which I was very fortunate to tap into as we worked together in the strong September sunshine.
I learnt the names of loads of plants, how to prune a honeysuckle properly so that it is neat and tidy throughout the winter abut yet promotes vigourous growth in the Spring, why it is best to pull up evening primrosesafter they have finished flowering (they are biannuals and are finished while their seeds will have started growing elsewhere) but need to cut back echinacea (periennial so mustn’t dig up the roots or would damage next years growth).
The best bit of wisdom I gained from Janet today however, was how she works systematically round the garden starting at one point and finishing at the same place with a fairly clear goal of doing one type of job (she pointed out that the start/end point was chosen proximity to the bonfire heap so we could easily tip our huge bundle of prunings on to it at the end). This way of working is so different to my scatty, chaotic and distracted gardening style of hopping from one area to the other all the time thinking of the hundreds of other jobs which needed to be remembered and then completed. It is this novice and stressful way of working which makes me think that I dislike gardening but learning from Janet made me remember how rewarding gardening is as a pastime if one works methodically and sensibly.
Here is a quick review of how Janet worked this morning.
Janet explained we were only doing a quick tidy up and were therefore concentrating on removing all brown/dead stems, straggly overgrown areas and any huge weeds. All the tiny weeds look ok amongst the plant borders as they are green and innocuous.
We worked together round the back garden and into the front for about an hour. The garden looked remarkably neater than before