Mulches Pros and Cons - organic - I missed a few!

Wups, I wrote about organic mulches last week, and I lost a couple of them!! Thanks to all the allotment holders out there, who yelled and screamed at me for missing them out... *laughs*

In my opinion,  these are not really mulches in themselves, they are more suited to the allotment, where appearance doesn't matter: but there is a school of thought which says that they can be used direct on the soil, under a "proper" mulch, to suppress weeds and to enrich the soil.

1) Newspaper

Spread it out in a thick layer, water it well, until it is absolutely soaking wet, then fling your organic mulch on top.

In time, it will rot down, thus enriching the soil, having suppressed weeds in the meantime. Cheap, quick, and very much "no dig". Which means you can't easily plant anything for a year or two, until it has done its work. 

This could work if you have inherited a large garden, part of which is infested with weeds: you can use one of these materials to keep it under control until such time as you are ready to turn it into a proper garden.

It's important to use only black-print newspaper: coloured inks contain chemicals which are not good for the garden. Also, when people say "newspaper", they do mean "newspaper", not "glossy magazines"... because glossy paper will take a long time to rot properly. Plus, glossy magazines are usually highly coloured!

Good points: cheap, quick to apply.

Bad points: not amenable to planting: and if the newspaper dries out, it won't rot...

2) Brown paper

Very much as above: just make sure it's the fluffy stuff, not the shiny stuff, because shiny paper will take a lot longer to rot down.

Good points: as above:

Bad points: as above 

3) Cardboard boxes 

This is very much the heavy-duty version of the two paper options! Again, it's essential to get them good and wet before you put the mulch on top, otherwise they won't rot.

There is an additional problem with using cardboard boxes: many of them are constructed from several layers, glued together for strength, and the glues can contain heavy metals. Not good for the garden! Anything with corrugated card in it will contain glues, and should be avoided. 

It is also a good idea to remove all sticky labels, before you start...

Good points: as above:

Bad points: as above

There, are we all happy now? *laughs*

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Mulches Pros and cons - Part II: inorganic mulches

Following on from my article on pros and cons of Organic mulches, now we can have a look at inorganic mulches - that is, anything used as a mulch which does not biodegrade.

Inorganic mulches fulfil much the same roles as organic ones: they retain moisture in the soil, they suppress weed growth, they keep roots cool, by shading them from the sun: they also look lovely! The only thing which inorganic mulches don't do, compared to organic ones, is to gradually rot down into compost.

They are usually a lot more expensive to buy, but you only buy them once - well, sort of. Hmm, I should clarify that: organic mulches need to be topped up every year or so, because they gradually rot own into nothing. This does not happen with inorganic mulches, but that doesn't mean that it's a one-off purchase. 

Then you need to consider the knotty problem of whether to use membrane or not: I've written about this at length, so check that article out for details.

And the good news is that you can plant through shingle, very easily, even years after installing it. Just scrape back the mulch, cut a slit in any membrane, peel that back as well, then dig a hole, plant the plant, replace the membrane, and gently replace the mulch. Perfect!

They are not entirely "maintenance free" because they will eventually become host to weeds: you will either have to spray them with something like Pathclear twice a year, or you have to hand-weed them from time to time.  But generally speaking, they will indeed suppress weeds.

Inorganic mulches can be used in small areas, or they can become a major part of the "style" of the garden:

This sort of thing - left - is not to my taste at all, but if you don't really like gardening, this might appeal to you! 

(In which case, why are you reading my blog???!)

This garden, described as a "minimalist gravel garden", contains clearly delineated areas, using different coloured gravels, with rope-top edging stones to keep the areas segregated. Each area has one single piece of planting, plonked in at random.

I don't like this particular one - picture taken at random from the internet - because there are no clear paths: if I'd done it, I would have kept the planting to the dark areas, and kept the light ones as "paths".  But that's just my opinion.

This sort of thing is not quite as "low maintenance" as the designer would have you believe: plants shed leaves all year round, and you will need to clear them up, otherwise the various gravels will become dirty.  And if your chosen specimen trees/plants require regular clipping, then you will need to clear up assiduously, otherwise the shingle/gravel becomes clogged with the dead foliage, which encourages the growth of weeds.

You also need a generous depth of inorganic mulch, otherwise the dirt - both washed down in the rain, and creeping up from above - will spoil the look of it.

Here is a prime example from one of "my" gardens, from some years back: the owners had planted Box hedges, with shingle between, but the shingle was skimpily applied, and they had never maintained the area, allowing clippings from the Box to lie on the shingle and rot, which encouraged further weed growth.

As you can see, not very pretty! Even after I'd carefully hand-weeded it, and raked out every spec of dead Box leaves, the shingle was still dirty and unattractive, and in the end I persuaded the owner that we needed to rake out every scrap of old shingle, lay down a membrane, and relay new shingle.

One possibly surprising aspect of shingle is that it is not a barren desert - far from it! 

In my own front yard, which is fully shingled, I have found worms happily living in the shingle, when I have had to scrape it back for any reason: even in the middle of summer, the shingle is invariably moist, once you get down a couple of inches.

And here are a couple of newts, happily wandering around the front yard. 

There is no grass, no pond, no beds, no soil, no water: and yet I have a yard full of newts. They seem to like lurking around the many pots which I have there, and they seem to find plenty to eat in the matrix of the shingle, which provides a million small, moist spaces for bugs, creepy-crawlies, and all sorts of edible goodies. If you are a newt, that is. 

Another excellent point regarding inorganic mulches is that you can walk on them all through the year: no more muddy shoes! You can just pop out, even in the rain, and move around the area with ease. 

Mind you,  unless you have really tough feet (Lesley, this means you!), they are quite unpleasant to walk on with bare feet,  unlike a lawn.

Let's run through a few of the more popular ones.

1) Shingle or Gravel - pretty much the same thing. 

Small bits of stone, some may be a bit sharp, some are more rounded. Quite cheap, especially if you order by the tonne bag, but you will need to have somewhere for them to plonk the bag down without blocking your own driveway, while you laboriously trundle it through to the garden. Cheaper shingle is one homogenous colour, a sandy-orange colour: or you can pay more to get "golden" shingle which is kind of multi-coloured, and a bit more interesting to look at.

It comes in two sizes - 10mm ("pea shingle") or 20mm. If you get the smaller stuff, cats will use it as a litter tray: you will also get the shingle stuck in the tread of your boots. Larger material, 20mm, is better behaved, and less attractive to cats.

Good points: quick, cheap, looks wonderful, very low maintenance.

Bad points: after ten years or so, it starts to look "dirty". Easily fixed by raking well, and/or spreading another layer on top.

2) Rounded pebbles, or Stones, or Cobbles

These are usually used in smaller area, mostly because they are very expensive to buy, and very heavy to move around. 

They are best used as a feature: they can be added to a shingled area to break up the expanse.

Here - left - is another example from the internet, showing how areas of pebbles provide different textures, and modify the possible monotony of a larger shingled area.

They can also be used to form a "river" or "dry stream bed" effect.

Or they can be used just by themselves, grouped closed around the base of planting.
 

Good points:  interesting shapes and textures, and they last forever!

Bad points: expensive to buy/

3) Slate 

This is a flat mulch - small, usually rounded flakes of slate, very nice for mulching the tops of decorative pots. They are available in slightly more unusual colours - purple, dark blue - and they are less noisy to walk on than crunchy shingle.

They can also be used for paths - left - as long as you make sure to have a solid boundary, otherwise the grass creeps in to the slate...and the slate flakes can "walk" out onto the grass, from the action of people moving along the path.

And yes, they also need weeding, from time to time:  I have written about Slate Paths at length!

Good points:  attractive, unusual colours

Bad points: expensive to buy, will still need weeding.

4) Rounded glass

This became terribly trendy a few years back: 

..and before you shriek in horror, the glass is rounded, so it's not sharp and dangerous, but I have to say that I don't really care for it much, myself.

I find it slightly too artificial!

As with all mulches, it really works best if it is firmly contained: in this example, left, there is a good high boundary on each side of the bed, to keep the glass in place.

You really wouldn't want it getting onto the grass, as the mower would then spit it out at high velocity, which could be nasty, rounded or not.

 A more appropriate use for glass mulch would be on decorative pots: this - right - is a small pot of miniature plants, and the glass mulch makes a lovely understory for the planting, as well as keeping the small plants clean, and enhancing their visibility.

Good points:  looks fab when it rains!

Bad points: it's glass! Inherently dangerous..

And there you have it, a few types of inorganic mulch, how to use them, and their various good and bad points.

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Mulches: pros and cons Part I - organic mulches

 Recently I wrote about the basics of mulching and that -  of course! - let to a follow-up question: what are the pros and cons of the various types of mulch materials?

In that article, I said:

"Typical organic mulches include home-made garden compost, leaf mold, bark chippings, micro bark, farmyard manure, "strulch": inorganic mulches include shingle, gravel, rounded pebbles, slate, rounded glass. Even old carpet, newspaper, brown paper, cardboard boxes - it depends on the "why". "

And now we have time to run through each of those, in turn.

Let's start with the organic mulches, then come back to the inorganic ones.

1)  Home-made garden compost

This is what you make yourself: it's the perfect way to recycle your own garden waste into something useful and wonderful. The nutritional content will be pretty variable, but does that matter? No, it doesn't, you are taking the plants full circle, using the dead parts to feed the living parts. This is what would happen in nature - without us, faffing around in the beds and borders, the previous year's plant material would just fall to the ground and eventually rot, returning the "goodness" to the soil. 

But in real life, no-one wants a border filled with mushy dead brown stuff, encouraging slugs and rot: we want to be able to see our plants, we want them healthy and floriferous, so we take away the dead material (and the weeds!) turn them into compost in our compost pens, then return the material once it has been processed.

Good points:  it's free! And you are fulfilling a "cycle" by keeping your garden's nutrients within your garden, rather than throwing them away.

Bad points: will probably be full of weed seeds! Home made compost just doesn't get hot enough to kill off the seeds and sterilise the soil, as bought-in compost does. However, what's a few weeds? Catch them while they are small, and pop them back on the compost heap to go round again!

2) Leaf mold

Wonderful stuff, I am a huge fan of leaf mold: and why not, it means taking a waste product  - dead leaves in autumn - raking them up (which we do, anyway), popping them into some chicken-wire pens in a far corner of the garden and leaving them for two years. No stirring, no feeding, no chemicals, just leave them to rot down naturally.

The resultant product does not contain much in the way of nutrients, but it does contain minerals, and it's a fantastic soil conditioner! If your soil is claggy clay, it helps to break it  up and make it more friable. If it's loose, sandy soil, it bulks it up, making it better able to support plants physically, and much better at retaining moisture and nutrients. If your soil is dusty and tired, then it adds bulk, again, improving moisture retention, and encouraging a proper ecosystem of worms and bugs. Wonderful stuff!  And it's free!

Good points:  it's free!

Bad points:  "does not contain much in the way of nutrients"!

3) Bark chippings

These are usually bought-in, in bags: they need to be loosened before spreading, as the packs are usually very compacted, in order to give you good value for money. So cut open the bag (properly!) and tip the contents into a wheelbarrow, then fluff it up with your gloved hands, and/or a hand fork or trowel. 

Once it's loose, you will observe that there seems to be twice as much of it, which means it will go further. 

If the soil is dry, be sure to water it before spreading bark, which will otherwise act like a thatched roof and will keep the soil dry! This is not good for the plants... so, ensure the soil is wet by applying bark just after it's rained: or spray it with the hose before spreading. Use a "bowling" action to spread it loosely across the soil: don't just dump it down in great lumps.

Good points: Quick, clean to spread, makes the beds instantly look fantastic!

Bad points:  birds will flick it about all over the place, because it is a lush environment for bugs, beetles, worms etc. So be prepared to rake it all back on the beds, from time to time. Small point of interest: my first EVER gardening job, 20 years ago, was mostly flicking back bark from the lawn. True story! I turned up, all nervous, and the owner ("Hi, Bobbie!") asked me to go round all the borders, flicking the bark back onto the beds. Every week for a couple of years, that was my first job of the morning: half an hour to flick up the bark, before getting on with proper gardening.  But of course, if  you like the birds, then it's wonderful, because they have a lovely time rootling around in it!

You will also need to top it up every couple of years, because it does eventually rot down and disappear.

4) Micro bark

Exactly as above! It's just bark that has been through a finer grade of chipper. Or, more likely, it's actually the by-product from bark manufacture, and comprises all the little bits which fell through the screen while the bark was being packed... or is that me, being cynical? Who knows...anyway, it's just as good as proper sized bark, it looks lovely, really freshens up the bed or border, and the birds love it.

Good points:  as above: instant freshen-up for the beds

Bad points: as above, birds love it. Plus, being smaller pieces, it rots down to nothing quite quickly, often within a year.

5) Farmyard manure

Also known, rather coyly, as "organic matter" for the benefit of people who don't like the idea of spreading poo on their gardens. Cissies! It's only processed grass, or hay (which is dried grass), that's all! It is mostly from cows, sometimes it's from horses: sometimes it doesn't even tell you, on the bag, what animal produced it... but be assured, it's always from grass-fed animals.  This is important because if you were using anything originating from meat-eaters, you would have a garden full of rats.

The contents can be quite variable with regard to the amount of nutrients it contains, but hey, it's semi-digested grass, and grass is full of nitrogen, so it's got to be good for the plants! The texture is also quite variable: some bags are full of lovely crumbly stuff, some are lumpy and cloddy, which is not what you want.

Good points:  easy to buy in nice neat plastic bags. Does not smell.

Bad points: there is no legislation forcing the producers to do any checks at all as to what drugs have been given to the animals. The "organic matter" could contain any number of chemicals, from worming preparations, right through antibiotics and into regular vaccinations,  growth hormones, etc. We just don't know.  It's nice to think that all such drugs would be broken down by organisms, before it reached our gardens, but we honestly don't know. 

5a) Horse poo collected locally

A sub-set of "organic matter" is manure you've collected yourself from a local horse yard: most of them have to pay to have the muck-heap taken away, so most equestrian yards, and especially private owners with just a couple of horses, are more than delighted for you to take it away, for free. The "catch" is that you have to fill your own bags, but the good thing is that if you are filling your own bags, you can pick the good stuff. 

"Good stuff" is defined as material which does not smell the tiniest bit stinky, and in which you can't see any individual clods. As with home-made garden compost, the golden rule is "if you can see what it used to be, then it's not ready".  If you can see leaves, or sticks, or stalks - or, with horse manure, if you can see defined clods - then it's not ready. The phrase "well rotted" means exactly that: you can no longer identify any components, it's just one homogenous mass. This means finding the oldest part of the muck-heap - if in doubt, ask the owner.

Good points:  If it's local horse manure, it's free!

Bad points: you have to collect it yourself... and although the material you are taking is not smelly, you often have to wade through a lot of stinky stuff in order to get to it, because - by definition - it's at the back!

6) "Strulch"

This is a commercial product, it's "Mineralised Wheat Straw" / It's actually a by-product from flour production: the heads containing the grains are harvested to make flour, and the stalks are otherwise wasted - that's what used to be burned in the fields every year. Strulch is a patented process, so we can't find out exactly what they do to it: the official website bangs on about adding minerals, and how the process "stabilised and colours" the straw. "Colours" it? To make it brown, so it looks nice?

It's heavily plugged as being an alternative to peat, suitable for vegans, and for being organic, and so on and so on and so on. Frankly, I'm biased against it right from the word go, by this evangelical, holier-than-thou attitude, but there you go, that's just me! I met one lady who swears by the stuff. 

It's comparable in price to farmyard manure, and the producers stress how "light" it is, which makes it easy to apply.

Good points:  Light, easy to apply.

Bad points: I have never used it, so I can't add any bad points!

So there  you go, that's a bit of insight into the various organic mulches: stay tuned for the next exciting instalment: Inorganic mulches!

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Did you know: Roses can suffer from sunburn?

I didn't know this, either! Until the day, last summer, that a Client asked me what was wrong with her Rose, was it dying, because half of it was brown.

I went to have a look, assuming she meant that half the plant was brown - but no, it was the individual stems, which were healthily green on one side, but brown on the other. 

Here is a sequence of three photos of the same stem, I am slowly twirling it:

First, the sunburned side:

Second, half rotated, showing how the dark patch has a clearly defined edge, along the mid-point of the stem:

And here is the "back" side of the shoot, clean and green.

I had to research this, as I'd never heard of it before, but yes, sunburn is a "thing" on roses.

Usually, it occurs where pruning has revealed some previously-sheltered stems, and - like us - if they are not gradually exposed to more sun, they will burn! 

It doesn't seem to harm them, though: this particular rose just kept on growing as though nothing had happened, and flowered in the normal way. Well, not this particular stem, of course, because I cut it off in order to bring it home and take photos of it, ha ha, ... but the rest of the plant was fine.

There is no need to take any particular action, in the hopes of avoiding this phenomenon: just continue to prune your roses as you normally do. 

And I've written about pruning roses plenty of times, so I won't repeat it all here - just type "rose pruning" into the search box, top left of the page, and take your pick!

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Mulching: when and why to do it.

 I often get asked this question, along with "what exactly IS mulch?", and usually I just say to people "type the word mulch into the search box, top left!" because I have written about various aspects of mulching, many times.

Many, many, times.... (as the late, great, Betty Marsden would have said)

But in response to a plea from a "complete beginner" *waves cheerfully*, here is Mulch 1.01/

To start with, what do mean by mulching? 

Well, mulching is the addition of a top layer of material to the beds, borders, and pots in our gardens. 

What can we use for mulching?

Pretty much anything: organic or inorganic, depending on why you are mulching. Typical organic mulches include home-made garden compost, leaf mold, bark chippings, micro bark, farmyard manure, "strulch": inorganic mulches include shingle, gravel, rounded pebbles, slate, rounded glass. Even old carpet, newspaper, brown paper, cardboard boxes - it depends on the "why".

Why would we do it?

For many reasons, which often overlap. They can include the following:

- to smother weeds. A thick layer of organic matter can suffocate a smattering of casual weeds, although it won't help with perennial weeds such as dock, bindweed, couch grass etc.

- to prevent new weeds appearing. A layer of inorganic material such as pebbles, grit, gravel, or slate will cover up the soil, so any weed seeds wafting in on the breeze won't be able to germinate.

- for decorative purposes: some people don't like seeing bare earth, particularly in their glazed pots, so a layer of coloured slate, or bright clean pebbles, can make things look more contemporary and “clean”. In addition, some plants really benefit from a light-coloured mulch: I'm thinking of my favourite dark grass, Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Nigrescens' which can be completely lost in a border, flanked by dark earth: but which really comes into its own when growing through shingle.

- to retain water. Water evaporates from the surface of the soil, so a thick layer of mulch will keep it in. This is particularly valuable if your soil is thin, sandy, or poor: just make sure you apply the mulch after it's rained - or after you have watered well - otherwise the mulch will act as a roof, keeping the water out.

- to enhance the soil structure. Leaf mold or compost, spread on top of the soil, will be taken down into the topsoil by the action of worms: we don't even need to dig it in! Whether the soil is thick, heavy clay, or light starving sandy soil, the addition of organic matter will improve it. And even bark chippings will, in time, break down and become incorporated in the soil.

- to add nutrients. Home made compost, or bought-in farmyard manure, are both rich in nutrients, and can really help a poor soil to improve: the natural action of rain on the top, and worms on the underside, will transport all that goodness down where the roots of our plants can get it.

So when should we apply our mulches? 

The usual answer is “in spring, and in autumn” but frankly, I shovel the stuff on whenever I have time, whenever the soil seems to need it, and whenever there is plenty of it on the compost pile!

Having said that, it is easiest to apply it at the end of the year, when you have cut back all the tatty old herbaceous material and can see where each plant is. Without all that vertical material, you can fling it from front to back of a border with ease. This has the advantage of also offering frost protection to the crowns of slightly delicate plants, such as dahlias and peonies, who seem to enjoy a bit of cover.

Then again, in early spring, when the plants are starting to grow: this is a good time to get nutrient-rich home made compost out there, so that the nutrients don't get washed out over the winter. 

 

Oh, and I should also say, that another good time to apply a compost or leaf mold mulch is when you are expecting visitors to the garden: there's nothing like a layer of dark, clean mulch to smarten up the beds.... can you see how far I've done?!

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Why we can't plant very close to patios, or drive edges

A Client asked me, recently, why they couldn't get any plants to grow at the very edge of their recently re-laid patio: they wanted to "soften the hard edges with planting" (as recommended in gardening books and internet articles) to make it look the way it did before it was re-laid.

This - left - is the sort of effect they were looking to recreate: where the plants grow right up to the edges of the patio.

They had tried putting in plants, right at the very edge of the patio slabs, just as they had done in the past - but they'd all died. 

The problem lies in the way patios are laid, these days: in the old days, patios used to be properly built: having prepared the foundation, builders used to construct a "form" of wood, around the area: they would then lay each slab separately, on blobs of concrete, taking care that they were all level and flush with each other: once it was all set, they would remove the wooden form, fill the gaps with pea shingle, and replace the soil, right up to the edge of the patio.

This meant that planting was possible, right up to the patio.  Edges were softened. Clients were happy.

But that required skill. 

These days, they just spread a layer of concrete, and lay all the slabs at once, mortaring in between the joins. This is much easier and quicker to lay, it makes a very solid patio (right up until the time the joints start to crack, of course!) with no weedy joints. 

But the problem, from our point of view of wanting to add plants around it, is that they have to build a ramp of concrete, flaring out from the "loose" edges of the patio, ie any edges which are not butting up to a wall, house, or garage.

Like this:

Can you see the "ramp" of concrete?  

It projects out, all the way round this small patio, including going under the grass, and extends several inches further underground.  

It makes a good solid patio, and once the soil is replaced, and smoothed back level with the slabs, it looks lovely: but it clearly shows why we can't plant right up to the edge.

By the way, don't even get me started on the lack of a straight edge at the back here: as far as the builders were concerned, this edge was "out of sight" and therefore didn't matter. Ah, I do love people who take pride in their work, don't you? 

To be fair, the front edge did look very nice.

Drives, incidentally, are the same: the edging setts have a big ramp of concrete extending under the lawn, or into the bed.

For the lawn, it really doesn't matter, as grass will grow over stone, brick, concrete....

 

As I mentioned in a post last February, about replacing a poor-quality lawn:

... this - left -  was an area of apparently perfectly healthy lawn, been there for years, but it turned out that the patio to the left, extended all the way underneath it. 

You can see how I've rolled back the turf like a, well, like a roll of turf!

The grass was happily growing, and had been for many years, with barely an inch (3cm) of root-filled soil. 

So we don't need to worry too much about the grass.

But plants are a different story, partly because they need their roots to be in a decent depth of soil, and partly because concrete has a very high pH, between 12-13, which is pretty much as high as the scale will go.

Reminder: "normal" pH is around 7.  An "acid" soil will have a pH of maybe 4-5, and will be suitable for acid loving plants such as rhododendrons, camellias, pieris etc, and will turn your hydrangea flowers blue. An "alkaline" soil will have a pH or maybe 8-9, and quite a few of the edible plants, vegetables etc, are quite happy with a slightly alkaline soil. But 12-13? Pfff! Way, way too alkaline!

The only answer is to choose spreading plants, so that you can plant them a foot or so away from the new patio, and just allow them to spread gradually. Forget this instant gardening! Be patient! *laughs* They will get there, in time, and you will forget that you even had a problem with the area.

And that, dear reader, is why we can't plant close to a patio or drive...

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New Ideas v Common Sense

There's a lot of articles and books being written these days, about eco-systems, permaculture, forest gardening and so on, and many of them tend towards the over-intense, dippy-hippy indoctrination type of thing. 

Like most of us, I don't like being preached at: I don't like being told that I “must” do this, or that I "must" do that: I like to think that I'm a grown-up, and I can make my own decisions, thank you very much. 

But there's often a very good idea at the bottom of the ranting, and it's well worth keeping an open mind: open, in the sense of being open to new ideas, and at least prepared to consider any “new” information, or “new” research results. 

After all, remember the case of Rachel v The Snapper? *laughs*

On the other hand, there is no point rushing to jump on the latest bandwagon, before there has been time to assess it on a longer time-scale: just about every aspect of gardening is based on duration, on a "length of time", and anything that offers a quick fix is bound to be a failure.

One example of this is the 3-month compost heap. Yes, there are people on the internet claiming that if you use their product, their method, their chemicals, you can have perfect compost in under three months. Not in my experience, you can't!

Or the recent fad for mulching mowers: ten years ago, this was terribly trendy, because it hit all the right buttons - no more piles of slimy rotting grass, and it's much faster to get the mowing done, because you don't have to keep stopping to empty it. Oh, and we're returning the nitrogen-rich clippings to the sward, so we won't need to use chemical fertilisers any more. 

At that time I was still in the PGG (Professional Gardeners' Guild), and many of my then-colleagues rushed out to buy mulching mowers for their hundreds of acres of grass.  But, ten years on, most of them are now starting to go back to their old pick-up mowers: as predicted, they are finding that returning the clippings just causes a build-up of what is called "thatch", a layer of small bits of dead grass which prevent light and moisture from reaching the soil, and therefore the roots of the grass. This results in the grass becoming sparser, not becoming increasingly lush.

So what seemed like a great idea has turned out, over a period of ten years or so, not to be a good idea after all. 

I suppose the "trick" is to be able to spot the new ideas which are winners, and to avoid the losers - easier said than done!

My personal philosophy is to do due diligence on any "new" ideas: do some research, do some reading, get some facts: then apply common sense to it. And if it's a new wonder tool, I would try to borrow one, before I bought it. Like the Snapper.....

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The power of Daffodils!

I never cease to be amazed at the "strength" of plants - and not just the obvious strength of something like Japanese Knotweed invading a house,  or a mighty tree pushing aside fences and walls, in slow motion: no, I'm amazed at smaller things, for instance the way a tiny weed will push its way up through tarmac. Or the way that spring bulbs will manage to find a way up through almost any obstacle.

This morning, checking over my pots of bulbs, I noticed this:

"Huh!" I thought, "Have those darned squirrels been digging in my pots again?" *grumbles under breath*

But when I looked closer...

 

I'm not sure if you can see it clearly in this photo, right, but the entire top couple of inches of the soil has been  lifted up like a crusty lid. 

All done by the daffodil shoots!

How amazing is that?

It's like something from a cartoon, where lots of tiny creatures all heave together, and lift something huge.

 

 I've also found daffodils shouldering their way up through a pile of bricks - left - which the careless garden owner had left in a pile on the border.

When I lifted the bricks, I found that not one single daffodil had been "killed" , every single one had found a way up through the bricks, even if it meant having to go sideways a bit before pushing themselves onwards and upwards. 

Moral of the story - plants are amazing!

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There's good design... and then there's bad design...

And I believe that this one comes under the heading of "bad design"... *laughs*

When you have a large mature Lime tree overhanging your garden, don't plant an intricate Knot Garden with low Box hedging, surrounded by a lumpy bumpy crazy-paving style random stone path....

... because it will drive you crazy every year.

Unless you have a gardener, of course, in which case you just say to them "Oh, clear up the courtyard garden, would you?"

... whereupon they will spend hours patiently raking up the mess for you.

Hours.

And hours.

Week after week......

Year after year...... 

Barrowload, after barrow-load...

What would I have changed, had I been asked?  How would I have made this design "better", if I'd been here when it was first planned?

Well, I would not have gone for the lumpy bumpy path, that's for sure: if they wanted the rustic look, I would have suggested herringbone bricks or paviours.

And yes, you've all heard my diatribes on the sheer hell of herringbone block paviour drives... but I would rather have that, than the lumpy stone crazy-paving above, because you can't rake it, you can't sweep it, and the Lime seed pods get caught in all the deep, soil-filled crevices, and then take root.

(It's also a hellish trip hazard for the rest of the year, but that's only applicable if you have senior folks living there.) 

We even tried jet-washing it, one year, but that didn't work either:  the guy who was employed to do the work blasted so much soil out from between the lumpy bumpy stones that many of them became loose underfoot - thus worsening the trip hazard aspect. And, in point of fact, deepening the "ruts" between them, so even more of the Lime tree debris was caught in the crevices.

I would almost be tempted to put aside my "gardener" hat and say "tarmac the lot!" but no, that's a step too far in the direction of convenience.  But just plain shingle, as is present between the Box hedges, would have been easier to manage than lumpy bumpy stones.

The above courtyard garden is a good example of how what appears to be a "nice" design, or a "nice" idea, is inherently impractical, because whoever designed it did not consider the annual autumn leaf-fest which the Lime tree droppeth gently, from above.

As for the Box hedging, well, I have a soft spot for that, so I wouldn't advise against it: but I would, in this situation, suggest simplifying the design, by removing some of the inner hedges:  this would mean more space in between them, ie easier to rake. 

In fact, I would probably have specified that the gap between the hedges must be wide enough to accommodate the width of the rake!

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