Author: The Cottage Gardener

And so one midsummer morning I stepped out of my house and before I knew it had arrived in gay Paris. Actually Gare du Nord has to be one of the most unpleasant places to spend an afternoon and as my friend David Wilkinson would say I did not feel culturally enriched by the experience. luckily it was a short walk to Gare de l’est where I caught the train to Strasbourg.

Strasbourg was very pleasant. I can see why it was chosen as the seat of the European parliament. It is in some ways an ideal European city sandwiched between the rest of France and Germany with efficient trams and numerous cycle lanes. There is a very pretty old town along the river and some grand Victorian municipal buildings as well. I happily wandered about for a couple of days before catching the train to Colmar.

Colmar is very twee and has lots of tourists. Even in May the number of nauseating Americans and camera toting Japanese was a bit much. So after a day of Disneyworld surrealism I moved to Ingersheim( actually really only a surburb of Colmar) in order to explore the Voges mountains.

Ever since I had watched a performance of ‘Arnika’ at the Bridewell theatre in London I had been intrigued by the mystery of the woods in this borderland between France and Germany. They obviously held many sad tales of betrayal and collaboration from WW2. I caught the train down the valley and then walked up to Soultzbach where there was a signpost to Reid Ferme auberge.

As I walked through the woods I saw many interesting types of plant which had colonized the clearings and was lucky enough to see an eagle and a stag as well. The  conifer woods themselves did have a claustrophobic stillness and was very relieved to reach the alpine meadow at the top which had been overrun with tiny yellow violas. Luckily despite it being 2.30 they were still serving lunch( if you don’t know the French as sticklers for punctuality at lunch-time!). So I sat down to a delicious lunch of pork pie and raw vegetables, ham and chanterelles with Savoyard potatoes and salad followed by cheese and apple tart with chantilly cream. Fantastic value for 20 Euro.

I then caught the bus and train through the Rhineland to Freiburg in Germany. I don’t have great fondness for Germany in general but Freiburg was a very beautiful university town. It was full of very clean streams and rivers that the locals swim in and it runs into the evocative landscape of the Black forest’s pine trees. It also has a cracking beer garden serving excellent beer overlooking the town (under some horse chestnut trees).Also, there was a charming restaurant ,under another horse chestnut near a gurgling brook that was the perfect spot for daydreaming as I lingered over a hot chocolate.

After a much delayed bus journey to Zurich (so much for German punctuality!) I spend the night in the little India area near Zurich station. In fact it was much too clean to resemble India but you get the idea. There was a huge variety of ethnic restaurants here and plenty of  banking money around judging by the types of cars. It reminded me of the City of London for that reason. I did not have time to look round the old part of Zurich near the lake as I was heading for Vienna by train. But I did buy an excellent picnic of a roast beef sandwich, applesaft  and milk chocolate bunnies after negotiating Zurich station so easily it could have been a provincial station. Why is this of note? Simply to point out that the Swiss seem to have an amazing attention to detail which is sadly lacking at British railway stations!

The journey to Vienna was full of stunning Alpine scenery and crystal clear lakes and my carriage was largely empty which made it even more enjoyable. When I arrived in Vienna I was slightly confused by the drawing of the station which looked a bit like a concentration  camp sketch(who would of thought it?). Finally I made it to my B and B (which had the faded charm of an Austro-Hungarian aristocrat’s apartment) where there were many jokes made about the Royal wedding and indeed whether Ms Megan had already been rolled over on my bed there. I had an excellent Wiener schnitzel and the following morning had breakfast at a very stylish coffeehouse before catching the train from Vienna to Ljubljana. The journey was in some ways more stunning than the previous day from Zurich and would highly recommend it to anyone who loves alpine scenery.

After a slightly depressing evening in the suburbs of Ljubljana I caught the bus to Lake Bohinj via Lake Bled.   Finally, I had arrived at the turquoise waters of the plantsmen’s paradise I had heard so much about and had done it overland. So far it had been more of a caper than a pickle!

So I’ve been on my walk through Suffolk- a distance of about 50 miles from Felixstowe to Homersfield on the Norfolk border. The weather was kind( well mostly!), there were a lot of flowers to see in the hedgerows and waysides and I didn’t need to see a chiropodist at the end of it!

I began by taking the train to Harwich (and then the yellow tourist ferry) to Felixstowe after exploring the Shotley peninusula. There were a huge number of birds including oystercatchers,terns and what looked like cormorants set against the stark background of Felixstowe docks. In terms of flora there were many cowslips, primroses and violets( some of the more unusual white ones too) which had colonized  the banks along the sea wall. It was also the height of the daffodil season so there was no shortage of yellow in the hedgerows.

After an unfortunate incident where I tried to walk up the A12 and a crazy, chainsmoking Dutchman kindly gave me a lift  to Woodbridge. I marvelled at Sutton Hoo’s ancient burial mounds of the Wuffinga kings of East Anglia in the freezing mist.

Then onto Orford and its Ness (via a rather delicious lunch at The Froize restaurant’s buffet in Chillesford).Sadly the Ness lacked much of the wild-life we were promised such as boxing hares and the unusual sea-pea growing in the shingle but its military history was fascinating.

After that it was onto Iken’s lovely church and then Snape against the backdrop of more stunning marshland. A brief foray into Aldeburgh for fish and chips and Benjamin Britten memorabilia was fruitful followed by the sighing pines of Dunwich heath and rustling grasses of Walberswick marshes.

Southwold was a joy. Good food such as beef and canellini bean stew and a room  at the top of an old victorian house that whistled in the wind at night. Finally I took in the churches of South Elmham known as ‘The Saints’ which are in a remote and beautiful part of Suffolk close to the Norfolk border. The houses were painted that distinctive Suffolk pink colour with thatch,woodbeams and sometimes a wild-life filled moat . It also made me wonder if the moat was a defensive feature when this was the badlands of the Norfolk/ Suffolk border. Anyway, these moats were fed by many little streams which contained water-mint, yellow flag, Meadowsweet and marsh marigolds( which were all just starting to emerge).

It was with great pleasure that at Homersfield I crossed the river Waveney to arrive in the foreign land that is Norfolk! It was a pilgrimage of sorts in order to see the great medieval churches of Suffolk as well as its flora and fauna. But it was also a chance to see the pleasurable minutae that you miss when travelling by car or train such as a caterpillar crossing the footpath,a barn owl swooping over a common or a red admiral landing on some heather.

As a holiday it was deeply satisfying but it also taught me, as a gardener, a lot about what habitats our native plants enjoy in the wild which is a really important skill to any naturalistic gardener.

I hope you are enjoying the joys of Spring too!

Sam MacDonald( The Cottage Gardener)

Inspite  of the bizarre spring  that we are having; which seems to lurch from one extreme to the other, I did manage to make it to Cornwall in March. I’d always wanted to go in the spring to see the camellias and maybe magnolias in bloom. Also, I had always hoped to walk with spring as it spread across Britain (apparently it moves at walking pace). In reality, this was not possible because of my knee but I did see a good many signs of spring including daffodils, red campion, camellias and celandines (as they were just coming into bloom).

Two out of the four days were sublimely good weather and as I trudged alone along the SW coast path it did feel like there was no place more beautiful on earth. The sea was a deep azure blue with the full force of the Atlantic behind it- so was quite an impressive sight. Being from Norfolk which although not as flat as everyone makes out, is nevertheless pretty tame compared with the Cornish coast, I often assumed the SW path stopped at the cliff-tops because from my angle of sight it appeared a sheer drop on the other side. Infact it took a direct but often sharply angled route that raised my pulse somewhat!

Also, there were some gorgeous boulder strewn beaches with the waves crashing heavily onto them and a good many streams wending their way to the coast through little sharp-sided valleys. Often they were planted up with architectural plants such as bamboos, camellias, tree ferns and gunnera which enhanced thier charm. In some way the Cornish don’t need to have gardens because the whole landscape is like one huge garden. For example, crocosmia and hydrangeas love the wet climate so much that they proliferate as a seemingly wild plant. Although it was a bit early for fuschias I’d imagine they do the same as they love a wet, mild climate.

In this trip I walked from Penzance to Lands End- a distance of about 12 miles over 3 days. It doesn’t sound much but when its pelting it down with rain,  your rucksack and clothes are soaked through and the whole walk is constantly going up and down steep rocky crags it feels like a lot more than the actual distance. Maybe I am just a pansy Southerner! However, It is a walk I would recommend to anyone who wants to see the most beautiful corner of England, though.

Hopefully next time I will make it to the Lost Gardens of Heligan with their famous pineapple production pits and immaculate walled garden as well as the wild beauty of Bodmin moor. But sadly that will be next time!

In London we try and grow a lot of borderline hardy plants because we want a taste of the exotic. In my own garden I have an Echium pininana( Hardy to about -5 degrees centigrade) which I was sure would make it once we got to late February. Now it is covered in snow and obviously not at all happy I am not so sure. It is too late for fleece and anyway it’s much too big for any easily assembled way of keeping out the cold.

Obviously, from that point of view you do not want cold weather because these exotic plants don’t like. But there are many temperate plants that prefer the cold weather such as the rose or apple tree which both need a period of cold( vernalization) to flower and fruit well.

Also, Insects do much better when the cold weather is not too severe because this means more of them survive the winter. Indeed, when you get mild Decembers, as we have done in recent years, pests are able to complete another lifecycle. Of course this means more pest damage which is obviously not good.

So it’s a delicate balancing act. And there is no perfect solution. Rather like farmers: who always have something to complain about in regard to the weather, it is  similar for gardeners. We want some cold weather but not too much and some rain but not too much. And so the list of demands goes on in our search for the perfect season whilst we try to adapt to the circumstances of the existing one!

So a few days ago I was walking along my very own garden route from Dulwich to Herne Hill farmers market. The sky was clear blue, it was even slightly warm and there was plenty of wildlife about. The daffodils were just starting to come out, as were the crocus and winter-flowering clematis.

Fast-forward a few days and it feels like we are back in January. There are a couple of inches of snow on the ground and we have our own winter wonderland, even here in Dulwich woods, with an icing on all the trees like a Hoar frost.

This demonstrates the capriciousness of spring. You seem to be moving forward and then suddenly , maybe because the wind direction changes, you get some cold weather. This last flurry of snow from Siberia has been quite severe by modern standards of mild winters. But, as we are not into March; hopefully it will not cause as much damage as say a late frost in May,  which I recall ruining all the Magnolia blossom a few years ago.

Here in London ,the golden rule is that, or at least we were taught at horticultural college that we have never had a frost later than the 15th of May. So, at that point you can plant out summer bedding. Of course, people often plant out bedding in April and  get away with it.

The other worry with late frosts ,since we are on the subject, is with fruit blossom. Invariably, if a plum or pear (which are particularly susceptible to frost because they flower in mid-March) have no fruit it is because it has not been a dry, warm spring. This might be because the cold damaged the flowers or prevented pollination.

On the plus side, Dulwich wood was spectacularly beautiful in the winter sunshine this afternoon. So perhaps winter is not always a dull,grey and extremely drawn out period of cold fingers and sad thoughts.