Further Down the Garden Path- a Few More Snippets from The Cottage Gardener

Asking for a discount at The Garden Centre

In England its often a good idea, as a professional gardener, to ask for a trade discount at the garden centre. Its usually 10% because you are likely to go there quite a lot if you’re a professional and thus spend a significant sum.

Anyway, I was helping a friend in France with his garden and as a result bought about 100 euros worth of plants from the garden centre there. Unfortunately, I was rather overzealous in trying to persuade my friend to ask for a discount. This irritated the owner greatly (the French are experts in being bolshy) but to our great surprise gave us a tender cyclamen worth about 10 euro.

What we were supposed to do with a pink cyclamen houseplant was another question altogether. Its not really the sort of thing men , if they’re not gay at least, would see any point in having. There then came the absurd situation where Lou said ‘well its your commission- you keep the damned thing…’ to which I replied ‘What can I possibly do with something like that?’ ‘Well, you could give it to that old witch at the village shop…!’

After that I decided I wouldn’t ask for a commission in French garden centres anymore…

Salthouse Church

I have referred to many East Anglian churches in my book but Salthouse church deserves a special mention. It is slightly up the hill from the beach and the delicious lobster salad at Cookies Crab Shack.

As a result it seems to occupy the role of a lighthouse because it is so close to sea but perched majestically above it and thus when lit up could guide ships in the night( it is pictured in the featured image).

Its proximity to the sea also means that when a storm whips up the church whistles and rattles in the most evocative way. This poetic influence on the artistic community has resulted in some very good exhibitions being held inside it which is unusual for rural East Anglian churches….

Furthermore, the track leading up to it is much like an ancient holloway with gnarled oaks covered in ivy on both sides of a sunken path. The heath above affords an excellent view of the church framed by the sea with only the goats who graze that gorse covered hilltop for company.

The Over-Sold Garden Design

I have recently completed a course in garden design. Prior to becoming a lecturer the woman who taught us had worked for a big firm of landscape architects. She described the perverse situation where they would pitch the most creative and elaborate designs to the council in order to get the project.

However, because of the severe budget constraints the council were tied by they would rarely ever realize any of the blue skies thinking they had envisaged in the actual project.

I can imagine a mood board( the pictorial inspiration for any design which is grouped together on a piece of A2 card) taking inspiration from a Vermeer painting , for example. Only for the project to manifest itself 5 years later in some scruffy grass and badly pruned trees!

Belgravia potatoes

I had a client in Belgravia who used to joke about growing new potatoes in his small back garden. The idea of ‘The Good Life’ in Belgravia which had ,at that time, the highest land cost per metre square in the world is quite out of keeping with the sophisticated ornamental gardens in that area….

But this was a time when the grow your own movement had re-surfaced thanks to various celebrity chefs and people were using all kinds of bits of land to grow vegetables on. But the idea of doing such a thing in Belgravia with pigs in the front basement and a extremely messy allotment in the back is ofcourse more than a little funny. Perhaps he could have sold the potatoes to the local and extremely smart cafe called Dalesford Organic calling them “local Belgravia potatoes” and charging £25 per kilo!