“Our life is frittered away by detail… Simplify, simplify.”
Thoreau
I recently came across an idea that I intend to try next year that appears to make growing tomatoes simpler. A gardener in Maine got the brilliant idea (probably not original to her) to grow tomatoes around a vertical ring filled with compost. The ring is about four feet across and held together by chicken wire and supported by four metal posts. It’s constructed of alternating layers of soil and garden clean up debris to a height of about four feet. Tomato plants are planted around the bottom of the ring and are tied to the wire as they grow up.
I can start building my tomato tower when I start fall cleanup. That is to say not for awhile yet. I’m hoping for lots more warm days before I have frosted vegetable plants to feed next year’s tomatoes. It sounds like it should work but I won’t know until I try it myself.
The extreme hot weather has driven me inside and into the garden library. Some books I have had for years and some are borrowed from gardening friends. I’m always looking for inspiration and new ideas and also to have my own ideas challenged.
One of my new favourite books is The Garden at Highgrove. I might have to concede that topiary can sometimes be imaginative and inspired. And even fun. When Prince Charles bought the house there was no garden to speak of. There were a bunch of golden yews which he described as looking like blobs. He was advised to get rid of them before proceeding with his plans for new gardens. He kept them and had them pruned into wonderful shapes. They line a garden called the Thyme Walk made up of many kinds and colours of creeping thyme. And they look like they belong there. So maybe I will have to forgive the Romans for introducing topiary to England. In the right hands it can be inspired.
In another garden at Highgrove sweet peas are grown on arches made of hazel. Since I can now grow sweet peas as of this year and I have too much hazel, this might deserve a try next year. Hazelnut, alas, is the original suckering monster but is a useful building material.
HRH has created modern interpretations of some historical garden tropes. The classical temples are just right and suit the landscape. And I even like his recreated Victorian stumpery. The old weathered stumps are natural sculptures. There are archways made with stumps which look beckoning and mysterious. Never mind his father, Prince Phillip’s, comment which made me laugh out loud. He asked when are you going to set fire to this lot? Not a student of garden history obviously.
I’m choosing to be amused rather than upset by what were supposed to be dark purple glads. They are actually pale peach and white. Someone’s idea of a joke? I will never know. They’re beautiful cut flowers which is all that matters to me.
By Jill Williams
