March’s Garden Update
Buttery Yellows and Olive Oil
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour
From ‘Auguries of Innocence’ by William Blake
Last week we completed the last of the winter work when we cut back the remaining herbaceous borders; there’s a few roses that still need a light tidy but I like to do those while the Forsythia is in bloom which will be any day now. This week I’ve been driving to work over a carpet of wrinkled white petals strewn across the drive, as the snowdrops bow out for another year. On the banks either side of the drive are glimmers of buttery yellow as Narcissus pseudonarcissus, our native daffodil, start to emerge. The Forsythia is a prompt for the now, but also but an augury of what’s to come and it’s hard not to feel excited for what’s ahead when the cues are there. The grass when crushed underfoot now smells like very good olive oil, and just last week we found a bleary-eyed toad in the bathroom, fresh from its winter brumation. My mind is always racing on, so psychologically I’m in spring but when I look around me I still see skeletal trees and lashing rain – a reminder that there is still time.
Since the winter work is now behind us, we’ve switched into planting and seed sowing mode. We’re tucking in bare root roses and peonies, sowing vegetable and cut flower seeds and lots of things to go into pots and containers. Over the last couple of months we’ve also been tackling our somewhat-neglected compost heaps which seem to be really cooking now, and will hopefully provide an abundance of beautiful mulch to spread on the soil. Our secondary aim here is to reduce or eliminate our reliance on proprietary compost mixes, which are expensive and come with lots of plastic and transport costs, and I will talk more about this as things progress. In the next few weeks we’ll be planting trees, mulching, moving figs, and building plant supports for runner beans and the autumn sown sweet peas which is such a hopeful job. The potted tulips are well on their way now and I can’t wait for that first flush of colour. What we’re seeing now in this liminal season is only an intimation of the sublime, but, if you have the capacity to conceive of the sublime then a tiny bit is really all you need.
Kate