A few days of strong wind were the feature of the week. It stopped active gardening for two days, caused damage to a range of plants but, thankfully, nothing particularly serious. All will recover quickly and the garden will be none the worse for the experience. It was enough to dull my enthusiasm for the garden a little and I have been less than energetic this past while. Nonetheless, I did manage an amount of work – riddling the contents of a compost heap is slow work but produces beautiful material for the garden.
It is a feature of gardening, a feature not regularly highlighted in gardening magazines nor television gardening programmes, that it is, for the most part, a monotonous, repetitive and unexciting pastime. It is no surprise that it generally does not appeal to the young. Garden writers and television programme presenters prefer not to allude to this fact, feeling it more interesting to present everything in a positive light, for it is to their benefit that gardening appears an exciting and attractive hobby. Some go so far with their positive spin as to verge on being misleading with talk of low maintenance gardening. Maintenance is the essence of gardening and to suggest to novice gardeners that it is otherwise is spurious.
This was to have been the week of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show but, as with so many other activities, it had to be cancelled. One side effect of this cancellation was the enormous gap it left in television programming for the BBC which has, in past years, given two to three hours coverage each day to the show. They filled the gap by showing “highlights” from previous years, video snippets of award-winning gardens and floral displays in the Grand Pavilion, interspersed with interviews of the great and good of the gardening world. The programmes brought back pleasant memories.
Today dawned sunny and bright, with a blue sky and only a light breeze. The poor weather of past days had passed and we were back to gardening again, a long day but very pleasant. It brought out new blooms which always gladden the heart and reward the routine of maintenance.
Enjoy these and a few photographs from this past week:
Iris germanica ‘Superstition’ 
Iris germanica ‘Immortality’ 
Iris germanica ‘Benton Strathmore’ 
Iris germanica ‘Jane Phillips’ 
Iris germanica ‘Benton Strathmore’ 
Paeonia ‘Copper Kettle’ 
Paeonia ‘Jan van Leeuwen” 
Paeonia ‘Coral Sunset’ 
Tulipa sprengeri 
Rhododendron ‘Moser’s Maroon’ 
Rhododendron ‘Madame Masson’ 
Aesculus mutabilis ‘Induta’ 
Rosa ‘Souvenir du Dr. Jamain’
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Paddy Tobin, An Irish Gardener 
Paddy I love seeing pictures of your extensive garden. You keep it so tidy. I’m glad to know I’m not the only one who sometimes finds it hard to get back out to the garden after a few days off. Keep up the good work.
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I have an excellent head gardener! LOL But, I like the garden, enjoy being busy there but there are days when it is a struggle to get off the bum and get going. All the same, with us all in lockdown, it is great to have a garden to keep us occupied.
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Qu’elle coleur! I liked the acceptance of monotony. There are some days when action has to precede motivation and its only when one goes out and does something that one is inspired to do more. As you rightly say nobody mentions the tedium.
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There have been many days when action has had to precede motivation! It’s a good motto! Enjoy the week.
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Yes – its all in the definition of “low maintenance”! Your garden is looking positively manicured!
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If we removed the maintenance what would we do!
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Enjoying your posts Paddy and the photo updates of your beautiful garden…. particularly that unusual form of chestnut tree and the tulip sperengii . We lost a large branch of a young horse chestnut tree in the storm at the weekend – the only one with blooms on it. It has left a gaping hole in the trunk of the tree. ☝️ it survives as it was grown from a conker collected by the children.🙏
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We were fortunate to have no serious damage done at all – just some small twigs broken and leaves tattered. Nothing that won’t recover quickly.
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