Daisies, wild edibles and invisible allotments

It’s raining heavily today, so there’s no point even trying to go outside into the garden, but if there’s a plus point to such dreadful weather then it does – at least temporarily – make people aware of what’s under their feet. Soil tends to be forgotten until it turns into mud, or you squelch along through sodden grass, or watch priceless fertility washed down the drain. Weather like this shows us the importance of winter soil care, particularly keeping soil covered (even if all you have is weeds!) so that plant roots can hold it all together for you.

We’ve all been there. We’ve all read the marketing blurb for a shiny new plant variety, and decided that we had to have it. We may have been good, and waited for a few days, to be sure that we really had to have it, but we’ve all paid money for brand new plant varieties for the garden. And then we find out that they don’t quite live up to the hype. You don’t hear about ‘early adopters’ outside of the tech world, really, but that’s exactly what we are, and a certain amount of disappointment is inevitable.

Every month this year I’ve been trying to read one of the unread books on my shelf, and to then decide whether it gets to keep its spot or needs to be set free to find a new home. For June I chose Nature’s Wild Harvest by Eric Soothill and Michael J. Thomas. It was published in 1983, and has been sitting on my bookshelf for three years, since I bought it in our local secondhand bookshop (which only opens on Wednesdays).

Now that the days are longer and the first flush of spring is over, gardeners all over the country have a chance to step back from frantic seed sowing, transplanting, digging and weeding and carry on gardening at a slower pace over the summer.

My parents are coming to visit today, to ‘see the garden’ (which is probably just a convenient excuse for them to visit). I am a little apprehensive – not least because it doesn’t look like it’s going to stop raining all day. We were going to have a barbecue; we’ve thought better of it.

One of the hottest gardening topics is how to turn your garden into a wildlife haven. Gardens are seen as a habitat of last resort for many hard-pressed species. Wildlife friendly products abound and you can buy homes suitable for any creature.

Over the weekend I got involved in a project that Sustainable Didcot (one of the local Community Action Groups) is putting together under the banner ‘Incredible Edible Didcot‘. The aim of the Incredible Edible movement is to encourage edible planting in public/communal areas, so that local people have access to food they can pick, but also so that people can come together with a sense of community. Sustainable Didcot have a community allotment, with a polytunnel, on the site where I used to have my allotment (our tenures didn’t coincide!), but this will be their first public planting.

I love growing unusual edible plants – not only are they potentially useful and easy to grow (because the pests and diseases they suffer from are not widespread), but they can be beautiful too.

On Friday evening we headed to London (an unusual event in itself) to the Natural History Museum for one of their special After Hours events. The museum stays open late into the evening for guests who have booked tickets to visit the special exhibitions while it’s quieter (although the main bulk of the museum closes as normal). We weren’t booked in for an exhibition – we ended up in the restaurant for a special tasting session of edible insects.

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Allotments are going to be all the rage this year. The National Trust recently announced that they’re making available enough spare land for up to 1000 allotments, via the Landshare scheme. British Waterways and British Rail are in on the act, too, looking for land along canals and railway lines that could be used to grow vegetables.

One of the great joys of spring is seeing trees leaf out and bloom. They bring so much joy, and do so much for us, and yet are rarely valued as they should be. In particular, ancient trees are wondrous, magical things. Impressive and complex structures, they have lots of nooks and crannies in which wildlife can find a home. As fungi feed on the tree they provide food for woodland creatures, and a hollowed out trunk provides shelter. Although ancient trees are in the final stage of their life, and technically in decline, they have a lot to give, and can go on living for a long time, depending on the species.