Lilies are poisonous to cats

I have some large terracotta pots at home which are planted with sumptuous lilies, all gloriously in flower at the moment and smelling incredibly heady in the late afternoon particularly. Last year we had such heavy downpours that they were spoiled very quickly; this year they are making a wonderful display. I thought I'd post my blog this week about lilies because so many people don't realise that they are very poisonous to cats. This is especially a problem with cut flowers - they might be left on a low table and brushed against by a cat or the flowers chewed. The pollen is so thick - not a good idea to get it on your clothes! and some people cut the stamens off for this reason - and cats may easily groom themselves and injest the pollen. This can cause renal failure, vomiting, blindness, paralysis and death. More details can be found on the Cats Protection website amongst others. I first came across this when I saw a press cutting about it, stuck up with drawing pins in a village noticeboard in Sawrey in the Lake District (near Beatrix Potter's house, Hill Top) by some public spirited cat loving person.

Sanguisorba Collection at Chesters Walled Garden

High summer, though you wouldnt know it from the weather, and the Sanguisorba collection is out into flower. Some of the plants will be flowering well into autumn, some, such as salad burnet, are due to be cut back already - so for a long period there are always some plants within the collection in flower. They have had a bit of a battering from the wind and rain and are staked with rusted iron supports which hardly show. I love their flowing forms and mass of small flowerheads waving on long stems. In the foreground is Sanguisorba stipulata (which used to be called S. sitchensis), then Sanguisorba obtusa with its pink candyfloss flowers and behind that a variety of Sagnuisorba officinalis (the wild greater burnet) known as 'Martin's mulberry.'

The garden wildlife is amazing as usual. There is something interesting happening every day, and yesterday it was a young nuthatch that flew into the shop. It kept settling on the wooden beams and I had to turn out the lights to encourage it to fly out of the open door. Also yesterday, I saw the first hawker dragonfly in the garden, newly emerged. This is a bit later than last year (see my blog entry for June 07). Two greater spotted woodpeckers flew onto the nuts whilst some visitors had their backs turned and were choosing plants in the sales area - they were youngsters and less cautious than the adult woodpeckers who will wait until people are rather further away.

I went to photograph a local National Gardens Scheme garden yesterday morning - Cheeseburn Grange at Stamfordham - so that I can write it up for my piece in The Journal. New to the Scheme, it has been transformed from a wilderness over 15 years and I hadnt known what to expect. I was delighted by the garden and felt I could have spent much longer imbibing the atmosphere. For the full description go the Journal archives after next Saturday (icnewcastle.icnetwork.co.uk)

The Moon and Flowers

Saturday was Midsummer's Day but who would have believed it! "Unseasonal" was how the weatherman put it, which was sad because so many people were looking forward to our special event in the garden. Nevertheless, lots of hardy folk turned up, even in the afternoon when it was steadily raining, and had picnics in the yurt in a resiliently British way.

It was the world premier of The Moon and Flowers, a collaboration between poet Linda France and sound recordist Chris Watson, which started as a seed of an idea when Linda visited the garden once a month on the day of the full moon for a complete year. The resulting cycle of poems reflect the seasonal changes in
the garden and much else besides - I can't do them justice by describing them, you need to come to the garden and here them relayed in the clematis-covered arbour where they can be heard for the next couple of months or buy the limited edition copy in the shop.

Chris Watson, world renowned sound recordist who has worked on numerous wildlife programmes, visited the garden with Linda during September's full moon, once at dawn and again at dusk the same day and recorded his soundscape of birdsong and natural noises. Linda said "It was magical. Chris has worked all over the world but, here, we were both almost awestruck. Being in this beautiful place seemed such a privilege." Last Saturday, Linda gave two live readings of the poems, followed by which was Chris's recording of her voice overlaying the birdsong.

The garden was serenely green and lovely in the rain and the readings took place in a beautiful yurt hand-made by Oran Villiers-Stuart (www.underwoodworkshop.co.uk) using local timber, larch, oak and ash. It was the perfect place to hear the poems and to listen to the evocative sound of a Northumbrian piper and, later, a cellist. The whole event was funded by our local arts centre, Queen's Hall in Hexham, and brilliantly brought together by Holly Clay. People came out from Newcastle for the day and we were amazed by just how many ignored the weather and came for what for me was the high point of the year.

Really sharp hand shears!

At this time of the year there are so many jobs to do in the garden and I have discovered a really useful pair of single-handed hand shears that leave your left hand free to grab grass, long trails of clematis or whatever it is you are trying to cut back. They are also great for harvesting herbs such as this marjoram in the picture. Called Jakoti shears, they are imported by a family in Somerset, who were given a pair by a friend who bought them from a hardware shop on a Greek island. They found them to be so useful for all sorts of gardening jobs from topiary to lawn edging, that they bought them in to sell in Britain.

I like their bright red handles which are cheerful and not easily lost in some box hedge in the garden! They are also, very usefully, self-sharpening and we have now used them for some time in the walled garden and they are still as sharp as when we got them. They are also used for sheep shearing and you can see them in action on the website - www.handshears.co.uk - with a Greek farmer shearing his sheep in a video. It's a strangely lovely video to watch with the only sounds being the tinkling of sheep bells, the snip-snip of the shears and the occasional baa!

"A swarm of bees in June ...."

I've just got back from the garden in late evening where we have been collecting a bee swarm that arrived in a rose bush this afternoon. Of course it just happened to be one of my favourite roses, rich, darkly scented, purple red, and to collect the bees some of the top growth would have to be cut off ... My son, Tom, who is a beekeeper (and has his own website of photographs at www.tomwhitephoto.co.uk) put our old straw skep on top of the rose branches where the swarm was clustering so that the bees would go up into it - they climb upwards naturally and into the dark skep balanced on the branch where the queen was. Left like that til dusk, the bees should all end up in the skep ready to be scooped up - a free prize to a beekeeper.

Using a smoker to encourage the bees to move up the branches, they carefully snipped bits off the rose until the ball of bees was hopefully mostly in the skep and then - this is the difficult bit - tipped the skep into a hessian sack. It's a dramatic moment when the combined buzzing of thousands of bees is heard! You always hope that somewhere in the mass, the queen is there. With the sack tied up (it has to be breathable so hessian is good) the bees were put in the landrover and taken off to a hive that Tom had prepared ready to take them. The old saying of 'a swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay, a swarm of bees in June is worth a silver spoon, a swarm of bees in July is not worth a fly' means that the earlier a swarm is collected the more valuable it is - well, to get one on May 31st is pretty good!

The other thing that has happened this week has been that is was week 4 of the Poetry Workshop run by poet Linda France. It has been wonderful to see the people on the course quietly taking in the garden in a very deep way - really looking and having the time to reflect (which I envy them as I am always looking for the next job to do!) This is a photograph of the group meeting up at the beginning of the morning.



The workshops are leading up to the event on Midsummer's Day, June 21st, when there will be the world premier of the collaboration between Linda France and world renowned sound recordist, Chris Watson (recently seen on Springwatch). Throughout the day there will be timed presentations of this extraordinary work with live presentations of Linda's beautiful cycle of poems that she wrote from visiting Chesters Walled Garden once a month on the day of the full moon for a calendar year. Chris recorded the sounds of the garden as the birds went to bed and work in the morning (4 am I think it was!). There will also be elderflower champagne, strawberries and music from Northumbrian piper, Sue Dunne. Look out for details on www.queenshall.co.uk.

Biodynamic compost at Brantwood

Last Thursday we were in the Lake District at Brantwood, Ruskin's house on a hillside by Coniston Water, a garden that we love and have visited many times. Sally Beamish is the Head Gardener at Brantwood and they have just held the 2nd Northern Biodynamic Spring Conference there. As well as trialling biodynamic methods at the garden, the Conferance enabled Brantwood to become a conduit for linking hill shepherds, gardeners, farmers and anyone interested in biodynamic culture. Sally is following the 2008 Northern Hemisphere Astro Calendar of Brian Keats and Stefan Mager - we hadnt come across this one, using the Thun's calendar ourselves (see my other posts) but it did seem to have a nice clarity in its layout, a more pictorial approach.

The photo above is of Sally's compost heap which is in the pretty orchard below the house. It was more than twice as high when made and has sunk to this level, topped by sheep's wool and incorporating biodynamic preparations. Around the orchard are examples of the six major plants used in some of the preparations - yarrow, chamomile, nettle, dandelion, valerian and oak bark. We havent so far experimented with these preparations at Chesters Walled Garden but think we will in future to see how they work. Sally is doing an agricultural trial at Brantwood with chromatography soil testing to measure the effects from biodynamic preparations against untreated turf.

This picture is of the woven lattice fence in the herb garden at Brantwood, beautifully made of thin layers of locally harvested wood.

Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb.... and sweet cicely

Our terracotta rhubarb forcer, handmade at The Potting Shed in Hexham, has produced some wonderful, delicate stems, vivid in colour, delicious in taste. We cook them with chunks of stem ginger, using a little of the ginger's sticky syrup, and a couple of large leaves of sweet cicely; its aniseed flavour and natural sweetening happen to grow at the perfect time to be used with the rhubarb. As a wildflower, sweet cicely grows particularly well in Northumberland because it likes the cool river banks and road verges, being the first umbellifer to flower in the spring. We have it on display in the main herb border, growing in the sun, though it does especially well in semi-shade.

The last few days of warmth have brought the garden on in a tremendous burst - it was just waiting for the end of the cold weather, poised in energy. I find it hard to believe that it happens so quickly, when I look at a verdant fern that I last saw (surely only a week ago) as tiny croziers. The daffodils and tulips are colouring the beds and this picture is of the centre of the formal beds which later will be a fuzz of acid green from lady's mantle.


The formal beds are planned not just for colour but to be attractive to insects from early spring to late autumn; tulips and daffodils followed by two different salvias, 'Blue Queen' and 'Rose Queen', and the lady's mantle, then Verbena bonariensis following for several months and Sedum spectabile as a final banquet. The formality contrasts nicely with the naturalistic planting of the rest of the garden and the lawns are a welcome green space to sit - or lie, as I found last year when seeing a man flat on his back, gazing up at the sky through the massed purple heads of the verbena!