Wells Voice Article June 2020
NO meetings, no visits nor excursions, no gardens open, no plant sales nor flower shows, and yet gardening has carried on its seasonal business behind closed gates. Rarely have our gardens seen so much attention whether they needed it or not. Every corner seems to have been scrutinised, closely inspected and given some sort of seeing to. Or been left just the way it was.
This has thrown up a few eye-openers - the odd discovery of a long lost plant, a favourite old trowel or indestructible toy, a can of worms or snails and plenty of items to be added to the mounting accumulations destined for the tip. Occasionally a surprise has been sprung. Our treasurer, Jenny, who has been tending her pretty garden in Knaphill since 2006, cleared away a patch of invasive geraniums, only to uncover a well-established pathway, thus at one stroke creating an old-fashioned island bed. Gardening as archeology.
Those of us who have a garden of any sort and enjoy it, have been enormously fortunate as fresh air in fine weather, active exercise and close contact with growing things have brightened our days. Tentative steps are taken to open things up but future plans are uncertain. So, basically, it's still friendly heads peeping over the garden fence. Down on the ground there seem to have been more hoverflies, mining beetles, not to mention those most beautiful of insects, the butterflies, which go hand in hand with pretty flowers and cabbages.
Full summer is upon us and the pigeons are nesting yet again much to the joy of the jackdaws, magpies and squirrels who regard their residence as a sort of food bank providing them with daily eggs for breakfast. The roses are in full flush; the china rose Cecile Brunner is blooming continuously beyond the daisy lawn. The climbers and ramblers are responding to the early spring pruning and tidying up. Everything in the garden is lovely. Would that were true in a metaphorical sense.
Climbing Rose Cecile Brunner
The Garden Club is still in business and we have a website still in its infancy but well established for future events and contacts. See: wellsgarden.club
For those with gardens, enjoy your successes and failures. For those without gardens, enjoy other people's instead. Pip Harwood.