Don’t fall in love with magnolias, they’ll only break your heart

Hasn’t it been a glorious March! For the most part anyway. The garden is rushing headlong into Spring with all the gorgeous sunshine  – the UK’s sunniest March since 1929 according to the Met Office.

It was warm (again, for the most part) and dry too. So dry that towards the end of the month I felt the need to water the pots of bulbs and even some of the flower beds. That doesn’t usually happen.

We will come back to that “for the most part” later.

Grab a deckchair, not a lawnmower

In early March I volunteered at Reading the Land: the Shaftesbury Book Festival, which aimed to explore great nature writing and share the writers’ passion for their subjects. I was at Dave Goulson’s session, cheerily entitled Silent Earth: averting the insect apocalypse.

In truth it was cheery in many ways as Dave’s love for the extraordinary variety of insect life and optimism for actions we can still take to help it last, were inspiring. 

So what actions did I take away from that talk? Well, my to-do list includes:

• planting more native flowers in the borders for insects

• mowing the lawn less often to allow flowers to grow amongst the grass (“grab a deckchair, not a lawnmower” in Dave’s words)

• sowing wildflowers (definitely a native mix – no imports) in the space where we took down a holly tree

• getting rid of any remaining pesticides and other garden poisons*

*I think the slugs are going to test my resolve on this last one

By the way, the festival bookshop was Folde Dorset. I’m a big fan of Karen and Amber’s shop at the top of Gold Hill, and if you ever stay with me, I will inevitably take you there for a look around. Possibly before or after a meal at the Grosvenor Arms, the festival’s main sponsor and another favourite of mine. 

Emotionally invested in magnolias

With the early warm weather, things that would normally be quietly murmuring in bud got busy a lot sooner than last year. The most obvious was the magnolias, which went for it 2 or 3 weeks earlier than 2021.

Along with camellias, they brought sudden light and colour to Woodridge. I wish everyone I know could visit when they’re in flower as they are far too lovely to keep to ourselves. Mind you, it seems to have been a good month for magnolias everywhere, if Instagram is anything to go by. (Does Instagram = real life? Discuss.)

And then, like last April, just when they were in their fullest pomp, the weather at the end of March took a nasty turn. Below freezing temps for a few nights, icy cold days, and of course it snowed … but pathetic snow. Enough to do real harm to delicate flowers but not enough to compensate for that with stunning landscapes or tobogganing.

We did what we could. But when the trees are that tall there’s not a lot you can do. One of the camellias was so heavy with luscious flowers that it threatened to break under its own weight, never mind the addition of snow (we didn’t know then how little would fall in the end). So we tied some branches to another tree for support and inserted makeshift props under others.

At first we thought we’d got away with it. Some of the more sheltered flowers, lower down, look ok. But there’s a sad tinge of brown on the rest. Don’t fall in love with magnolias, they’ll only break your heart.

Camellias are (slightly) hardier souls

I said we were worried for the camellias and yes, they did get a bit of frost damage. But their buds don’t open all at once, so there are still plenty of flowers that have survived. 

The different trees also don’t all flower at the same time. I have absolutely no idea what any of the varieties are (try looking up any given red camellia online and see how far you get). But this successive flowering means there are still beautiful blooms to share when our April visitors come to stay.

I think last year I counted 7 camellias. I discovered another 2 this year, which are flowering in some of the darker reaches of the garden. I reckon this is a direct result of our campaign to let in more light by clearing unnecessary undergrowth in places like the Bluebell Wood. It’s very gratifying to see tangible results from all that labour.

Not a winter fuel crisis

Back in our old house we installed a wood burner after a few years and it transformed our winter evenings. It also gave us something to do – collecting firewood from the park and cutting it into bits for burning.

We bought the chainsaw in that picture for about £40 in 2008 and it has paid for itself many many times over. We have a sawhorse now, so I don’t need to hold every bit while Simon cuts it. I do keep a close eye on him while he’s chainsawing, ready to leap into action and pack a severed hand in ice for reattachment, if worst comes to worst. But so far, so good. 

Anyway, here we have both an open fire in the lounge and a wood burner in Simon’s study (seriously, I don’t know how he manages to stay awake when it’s alight on a workday afternoon). So there’s a pretty good demand for firewood. 

Oddly there seem to be fewer opportunities to collect fallen branches out here in the countryside than when we lived in the ‘burbs. But luckily we have been doing a bit of “tidying up”, and there’s a fair bit of firewood from that holly tree and some others we cleared. 

I said in my last post I wouldn’t mention the ‘L’ word again, so let’s just say that we hope all the cyanide will have dispersed before we bring the logs into the house.

Adorably (perhaps) Simon can pick a log out of the wood basket, hold it up and tell a little story about where he got it and what else was going on that day. It’s like an antique shop dealer telling you the provenance of a particularly fine silver sugar bowl. Only with lumps of wood.

Other jobs for the month

Pruning hydrangeas and hardy fuchsias. I’ve been itching to get this done for months as they all look so scrappy. But Laura held out until March and of course she’s right to do so.

Replacing a handful of tired, leggy lavenders alongside the path up to the house with a dozen fresh, young lavender plants (‘Hidcote’ variety).

Planting a clematis in the courtyard alongside a phlox and low-growing campanula to keep it company.

Digging out the ground elder that’s making an appearance above the driveway, and transplanting a few leucanthemum (shasta daisies) and euphorbia in its place.

Trimming the tired old leaves off the dozens – no, I’m gonna say hundreds – of aspleniums (birds nest ferns). The new fronds are starting to unfurl and it has become a race against time. Every time I turn around there’s another one I missed. The compost heap is now 90% fern fronds. Believe me, there’s a lot of them. A. Lot.

But there are also daffodils…