the garden at The Old Brewhouse

May 2021

The oaks are coming into leaf now, just ahead of the ash, so maybe it will be a good summer for ‘stay at home’ holidays.

I was further afield walking on a shady green lane near Walsham-le-Willows when I came upon this orchid. It was solitary, I searched nearby but there was no sign of any others. When I got back I tried to identify it from my wild flower books and the internet. This can take some time and lead you deep into the fascinating world of botanical classification.

Orchids can be difficult to pin down as they produce so many variations – may or may not have spots on their leaves when they’re Spotted Orchids, may produce white or pink flowers if they’re Early Purple Orchids. Also there seems to be much re-classification of the Latin names since the days of Keble Martin. I decided this specimen could be either dachtylorhiza fuchii or orchis mascula or orchis fuchii . They hybridise easily, though this one seemed to be on its own so that must be less likely. In the end I sent off for the Field Studies Council’s laminated, fold-out Orchid Guide – one of their wide range of excellent illustrated guides to plant and wildlife.

During lockdown last autumn a friend in the north of England asked if I would like to share her order for alliums. We had hoped this would mean a chance to meet up to to share out the bulbs but in the end they came by post. This month we have been eagerly swapping pictures of tightly packed flower heads emerging.

April 2021

There were snow flurries in early April as we finished painting the new outbuilding. We had moved one apple tree, Blenheim Orange, from the site to a temporary home in the vegetable patch, but left the Lady Henniker tree in place just feet from the building. The builders carefully protected her as the concrete slab was laid, the wooden frame was built and clad in weatherboards, the scaffolders arranged their poles and boards around her branches and the roofers worked around her to put the reclaimed tiles in place. Now the tree is coming into leaf and somehow adds to the impression that the building has been there for many years. I plan to plant iris and roses against those black walls.

There were fritillaries growing in the meadow when we came and each year there are more. The small groups self seed and they have spread. They usually start to flower in early April. I gather some seed to scatter in other damp areas of the garden and new clumps are forming at the far end of the pond.

Before work on the outbuilding started we cut dozens of 4in deep turves from the site and placed them, tile-like on the ground at the far end of the pond. Now the primroses and cowslips in those turves are flowering, the grasses are coming up and I’m looking for signs of pyramid orchids.

*This small lathyrus vernus sat in the path of freezing winds last month but has burst into flow*er *now.*

*In the autumn I added more bulbs to the clump of erythronium Pagoda under the* *lilac*

*The cold weather this month seemed to hold the horse chestnut blossom in suspended animation above the frail new leaves until released by the warmth of the sun.*

And finally, at the end of the month, the delicate young leaves and flowers of the amalanchiers began to frame the view of the pond – just the effect I had in mind when they were planted about eight years ago. Gardening can be so satisfying.

March 2021

All through March there were moments when the sun just switched on like a spotlight in a corner of the garden and here a group of Tête à Tête daffodils take a few moments centre stage. Each time it reminded me of how much I’m missing the theatre during Covid times.

Gardening plans this winter included getting some ferns for the shady bed and the far end of the pond. Online I found the specialist nursery Fibrex based near Stratford on Avon and browsed their catalogue. In the end I ordered five: Three thelypteris palustrus, (marsh ferns) and one each of scolopendrium (hart’s tongue), matteuccia struthopteris (shuttlecock) and the rather special polystichum setiferum Bevis. My order was acknowledged with the note that plants would be dispatched after 22 March. They arrived on 25 March in the most careful and eco-friendly packaging. Each plant was in light compost in a small (surely bio- degradable) bag. This was wrapped in a sheet of newspaper, which came above any small fronds and was secured with a single elastic band. For dispatch the plants were protected in a folded cardboard box with a cushioning of shredded newspaper. They were in tip top condition when opened. There had been some frosts so I waited a few days before planting and then the packaging went on the compost heap. Let’s hope the late frosts don’t harm them.

*Unpacking ferns from the Fibrex nursery*

We also planted two sections of yew hedging in March – one as part of our boundary behind a swamp cypress Taxodium distichum from the excellent Crown Nursery in Ufford which is now closed. The other section is to provide a backdrop to a garden seat which looks over the pond. Our outing to Glebe Farm Hedging to pick up, suitably distanced, the bundle of bare-root plants was the major excitement of this month.

*The section of boundary hedge behind the taxodium distichum*

For a long time we’d thought about having a little gate through the hedge from the garden into the lane. A Covid winter brought our plan to design and make the gate to fruition. P did a craftsman’s job putting it together and now it looks like it’s always been there.

*The garden gate under construction – the frame made from offcuts roof battens . . .*

*. . . and the frame was topped with hazel wands we cut from our tre*es

There were certainly glimpses of sun this month but March was mainly wet and the fields around told the muddy tale.

February 2021

When the aconites catch the sunlight I know the spring cycle has started in the garden but it doesn’t mean that winter is behind us yet. February brought us a few days of bright, beautiful snowfall – heavy enough to produce snowdrifts to wade through and snowmen of various sizes. The sharpness of the air, the covered branches of the pine trees nearby and above all the brilliance of the light brought memories of the mountains to our flat, East Anglian landscape.

Work on the garage outbuilding really got under way this month with the laying of the concrete slab. At the same time it was good to see that the cowslips and primroses in the turves we had carefully moved were coming through in their new places and, hopefully, any pyramid orchids will follow on soon.

When I found that the winter vegetables, chard, kale and sprouting broccoli, were being nibbled and grazed in the back garden plot right by the kitchen door, we thought it must be a solitary muntjac making a brave foraging expedition. We were wrong. The deep, crisp snowfall this month showed us that a whole herd of the dainty-footed creatures sweep through the garden nightly!

I’ve been browsing the catalogues looking for vegetable seeds, yew hedging, roses to plant by the new garage and an hydrangea quercifolia for the shady bed.

The spring bulbs and plants from de Jager planted last autumn – mostly muscari, erythronium, camassia, iris reticulata, narcissi and cyclamem – are all coming through firm and strong. The only exception is the anemone nemorosa which seems to have vanished without trace. Instead there is a thriving clump of arum maculatum. For some reason these Lords and Ladies, some green, some spotted, are running riot in the garden just now.

I will definitely be planting Tiger Cross marrow, Cobra and Purple Queen French beans, Bolthardy beetroot and Nero di Toscana kale again. The runner beans and leeks were not so good so I might look for something else this year. And I didn’t have the space to put in broad beans last October so might try a spring planting.

January 2021

It must have been around 1988 when a student gave me a tiny pot with a sprouting ‘oak’ in it. I took it home and tended it though the coming leaves looked like holly to me. But it grew and after a while I potted it on and while looking up holly in a gardening book stumbled across the ‘holm oak’ and realised what my six inch sapling with holly-like foliage was. And what it might become.

There was no possibility of planting an oak in our London back garden and for several years I was dutiful in potting it on. But I got sidetracked in my gardening interests – as you do – and other things in pots took precedence. There must have been a period of about eight years when the two, then three foot tree remained neglected in an 18in pot in a sheltered position behind the pots of herbs, mimosa, lilies and an African lime which claimed my attention. About the turn of the millennium I found the dry, root bound holm oak still living in its pot against the wall. Guilt stricken, I went out and bought a very large clay pot. With good drainage in the bottom and lots of new compost on top this was home to the holm oak and she was carefully tended. By 2008 she had reached eight feet and developed mature, glossy, oval holm oak foliage and took pride of place in the van load of pots, plants and cuttings and gardening tools we brought to the Old Brewhouse that year.

But she wasn’t home and dry yet. We were delighted to find that our next door neighbours had a huge, ancient specimen holm oak in their garden. I was eager to get mine settled in good earth and quickly chose a planting spot at a corner of our boundary. It wasn’t until two years later that I realised it was absolutely not the right position for a tree which would grow to more than 40ft. She had to be moved, again.

*Great oaks from little acorns grow . . . The Motley holm oak*

This time we wanted to get it right and it was quite an operation. We carefully found the right position with enough light and space to spread – she will long outlive the tall weeping willow nearby. Peter dug a really large hole and together we struggled to dig up the tree with as big a rootball as we could lift. This was perched in our largest wheelbarrow and trundled precariously down the garden to the planting site. “You will never be moved or disturbed again” I promised as I backfilled around the site. She has settled so gracefully into this space and grown so much in height and width in the past decade – forgiving my neglect and making a huge impression on the garden. It’s good to think that she will be here for many years to come along with the English oak saplings in the boundary hedges which we encourage and protect.

January has been very wet though with a brief and pretty dusting of snow for a couple of days.

In the garden we completed moving the turves from the site of the new garage and laid them at the far end of the pond.

*Garage site cleared with primroses, cowslips and pyramid orchids moved to new site*

*Turves from garage site laid at the end of the pond*

I’m starting to look for signs of the bulbs, especially the alliums, which were planted last autumn. And there are vegetable seeds, yew saplings, ferns and roses on order which will keep us busy for a while.

November and December – foggy, damp and dark

Through November and December we kept up our daily walks but weren’t always able to follow our chosen routes as ditches became streams, roads flooded and waterlogged fields turned footpaths to mud.

*This bridge over a ditch led into a newly formed pond*

Here at the Old Brewhouse puddles appeared in the meadow and ducks came and paddled in them. Work in the garden slowed right down. The winter vegetables – rainbow chard, kale and some beetroot have been good but the few leeks failed and something – our resident muntjac – has been nibbling the chard but not the purple leaved ones. We will have to fence it off. The sprouting broccoli is a treat still to come and needs protection.

*Rainbow chard, sprouting broccoli and kale*

The biggest task in the garden at present is preparing for the building of a garage in January. We have had planning permission for this since 2008 but in recent months we’ve decided to go ahead with the project. The black weatherboarded garage on brick footings will sit alongside the hedge, on a plot where some of the many primroses, cowslips and pyramid orchids of the meadow grow. To protect these plants we have removed the top 4in of soil turf by turf and relaid the them near the pond and around the new shady bed.

There was a large crop of medlars this year and the branches of the tree were bowed down with the weight. They are an interesting fruit and we were eating ripe ones from the tree towards the end of November. Each fruit has a cluster of hard seeds in the centre and only a small amount of delicious flesh around them. But to make medlar cheese many, many fruit are needed and they have to be laid out on newspapers in a cool room to ‘blet’ or soften for a week or two. By 15 December they were bletted and the long process began. Recipes give various methods to extract the flesh – all are messy and time-consuming but my preferred method is fingers and a teaspoon. In Lockdown 2 I had plenty of time plus Radio 3 and 4, podcasts and audio books so the last of the preserves was boiled and bubbled into medlar cheese.

And so 2020, the year of Covid, drew to a close with sobering statistics, a sharp rise in the number of new cases and concerns about new variants. But there was also good news about vaccines in the coming months. Like many people our Christmas and New Year plans were cancelled so we put up the lights and decorations, set the dining table with candles and crackers and settled down to dinner, Zoom, Netflix and a toast to a better year in 2021.

October harvests and preserves

The colours are creeping in, green fading as the tawny reds, yellows and browns begin to show. There have been golden walking days, around here, at nearby fens and on the Suffolk coast, but we had to keep an eye on the Met Office app as we chose the days for our longer walks. The pictures look sunny but October was wet. There was heavy rainfall and gardening was in wellies, sliding around with mud-caked feet as we cleared vegetable plots, swept leaves and dug new flower beds.

In the spring I expected that courgettes would be a major part of the vegetable patch but had to think again as not a single seed germinated from three sowings. However the three home-grown marrow seedlings planted in their place have more than proved their worth. We will definitely plant them again in 2021.

Having a good supply of marrows set us looking for recipes and several became favourites. A Sri Lankan cucumber curry adapted beautifully to marrow –

– and it worked well with these pasta dishes too.

Best of all was Meera Sodha’s slow cooked marrow borani served on yoghourt with naan bread.

This month we gathered the biggest and heaviest crop yet from the quince tree. I worried that they might suffer drought in the hot, dry summer but recent damp weather seemed to swell the fruit rapidly and the bright yellow fruits were weighty and the size of your hand. We had to use the wheelbarrow to get them to the kitchen where hours were spent cooking them.

Many were simply baked with honey for puddings, or peeled, stewed and frozen, some were shared with friends and neighbours, a few made pickled quince to bottle but most went to make quince jelly and membrillo.

It’s a long, slow, process making membrillo. Part one is cutting, removing the large stones, slicing, chopping, stewing and straining the juice off through a jelly bag overnight. Next day part two involves lots of bubbling and stirring and the sweet smelling, pinkish-red result is spread in trays to set. Really good with cheese and tasty Christmas presents.

I’ve been planting bulbs for next year: muscari, narcissi, camassia, alliums and anemones. The vegetable patch is bright with rainbow chard and kale but most of the garden at the moment is damp and dripping with leaves to be swept, dead flower heads and black, bare trees. But occasionally there’s a lovely surprise, like this gorgeous hesperantha coccina ‘Major’ which flowered recently.

Late summer and autumn

When the restrictions of early lockdown eased we began to make visits to London to see family and friends and catch up on cancelled appointments. As well as seeing my hairdresser for the first time this year, I spent a lovely morning at the Garden Museum with a friend. The exhibition on Derek Jarman’s garden at Prospect Cottage on the shingle of Dungeness revealed the eye of an artist and the hard graft of a determined gardener. The Museum was founded by the Tradescant Trust in the derelict former church in Lambeth where the plant collectors, father and son, were buried.

John Tradescant the Elder was most probably born at Walberswick in Suffolk in the 1570s. He seems to have made a name for himself as he became Head Gardener for Lord Cecil at Hatfield House and around 1610 was sent to the Netherlands to source fruit trees for the estate. After this he travelled widely in search of plants, seeds and bulbs. In 1618, then working for the Duke of Buckingham, he went to the Russian Arctic and later to Italy, France the Middle East, North Africa and the Mediterranean. He also gathered specimens from the New World through his friendship with an early British colonist in Virginia. Many of the species common in our gardens today were collected and propagated by the Tradescants. Poppies, night scented stocks, jasmine, phlox, pelargoniums – even the Cos lettuce and runner beans that I planted this year and the Michaelmas daisies which are flowering in the garden now, came here through them.

John the Elder brought larch from Russia, lavender from France, lilac syringa persica and gladiolus byzantinus from the Levant and apricots from the Barbary coast. John the Younger made collecting trips to North America between 1628 and 1637 – Virginia creeper parthenocissus quinquefolia and the tulip tree liriodendron – continued his father’s botanical searches and catalogued the many curiosities they had gathered and displayed to the public in a ‘cabinet of curiosities’ known as The Ark. This first museum collection eventually went to one Elias Ashmole and formed the basis of the Ashmolean museum in Oxford.

The warm days of August spread on into a beautiful September and the garden produce kept coming. Marrows, French beans, green and purple, a few runner beans (a disappointing crop this year) and lettuce of several kinds led on to beetroot, chard and at the end of September we dug our first potatoes – seven nice sized ones off the first plant. We’re growing Maris Piper this year.

It’s been a good summer for fruit – early raspberries, plums and beautiful pears from the gardens of friends before our own greengages were harvested. We started picking blackberries from the hedges in July and were still bringing home plenty at the end of September. Apples have been especially good this year. Our own little trees produced a few and Ellison’s Orange was a star, but we’re still a lot of apples short of an orchard. However windfalls discovered on our walks and garden gate stalls with bags of Bramleys have meant lots of apple chutney and crumbles.

The lovely weather meant that the doors onto the pond have been wide open much of the time. The new water lilies flowered and we forgave the water voles for the leaves and buds they carried away. The mother duck who had disappeared with her ducklings in June returned with all five intact and grown.

Our foraging so far has mostly been for blackberries, apples and hazel nuts. Now, at the end of September autumn is here and we look out for field mushrooms on our morning walks. But even better was the quadrant of puffball mushroom given by a neighbour. Sliced and fried in butter with some parsley it was something special.

Partly for birdwatching and partly for the lovely autumn walks, we’ve been to Lopham Fen a few times recently. We saw a red kite in September, the first we’ve seen in East Anglia. We also found mushrooms, beautiful but definitely not for eating.

July – wild flowers and happy campers

Small things have been important during lockdown – birdsong, the germination of seeds, new waterlily leaves rising to the surface of the pond, the hum of bees in the vine by the back door and the pleasure of identifying the wild flowers of field, hedgerow and footpath. Scabious, toadflax, ladies bedstraw, marsh thistle, horned poppies, pink and white yarrow – all snapped to be checked in Keble-Martin when we got back.

Towards the end of June we netted the gooseberries. The four bushes have been sorely neglected but I think the weeds which had grown tall around them had actually camouflaged them from the birds. The harvest on 5 July was good.

The vegetable patch looked bare once the broad beans were cleared.

However the three marrow plants quickly filled the space by the hedge and started to flower. The little kale seedlings, two rows of chard and a line of sprouting broccoli began to cover the rest. The French beans, mainly dwarf Purple Queen with a compact habit plus a couple of prolific Cobra which turned out to want to sprawl all over everything. When the fence to keep out the muntjac went up the beans leant over it gratefully and gracefully.

However life wasn’t all vegetables. Our family campers came to stay more often as restrictions eased. The weather was beautiful and apart from sharing picnics and barbecues in the garden, we were now able to take outings together – a visit to the playground, a walk in the nature reserve, a canoe trip, a paddle in the sea and lunch in a pub garden. Together but distanced, still no hugs but better than Zoom for the time being.

June and the summer of lockdown

Summer seemed to come early this year, just when we were beginning to grasp the worldwide consequences of a pandemic and get used to the jargon of Covid-19 – social distancing, track and trace, Zoom and lockdown. We carried on with digging and planting and early morning walks.

Most of the vegetable seeds were sown on 24th April – the day we saw the first swallows arriving. The June weather and the still lengthening days has encouraged germination. All that is, except for the courgettes – still not a single shoot from several sowings from a brand new packet. Their allotted space has gone to four eager marrow seedlings which look set to make up the deficit.

The seedlings – kale, French beans, runner beans and marrows – moved from windowsills to spells outdoors and finally into planting position. Beetroot, chard, chives, lettuce and radish were sown direct and are mostly doing well. Some leek seedlings will go out later.

A gift of four special tomato plants came over the fence from our neighbours and I have given them pride of place in terracotta pots. They are Black Russian, Principe Borghese, Fandango and a Yellow – treats in store for late summer.

Newly potted up tomatoes and marrow settling into the courgettes’ space

This month’s garden produce was mainly broad beans and they were much enjoyed before they were finished, haulms hauled to the compost heap and their space planted with the kale seedlings. More plant labels on more vegetable rows . . .

Recent garden maintenance has included the repairs needed to the grass in the back garden after the laying of a new drain. When we found in November that willow roots had invaded and almost totally blocked the underground drainpipe, Peter took up his spade and pickaxe and dug The Trench – 40 feet long and 2 feet deep. Now it needed to be made good.

March – Pipe laid, trench filled, ground levelled and grass seed sown

The roses have been blooming well. Alastair Stella Grey rampant again against the kitchen wall, rosa glauca now tall against the telegraph pole and setting many hips for autumn. Viridiflora, a curious but charming old rose with greenish/pink bract/flowers leans into an old greengage and Meg, a 1950s climber has the sunniest spot on the south-east corner of the building. Celestial and Buff Beauty are in the back garden along the fence with their roots behind a shed. This year our neighbour had some trees on the boundary taken down. A slip of the chain saw sliced through the thick woody main stem of Buff Beauty but missed most of Celestial. The response from both roses to the shock but also to the flood of light from the west was immediate – lots of healthy new growth and buds. A new lease of life.

There are many pyramid orchids in the meadow and they seem to be spreading as I discovered several flowering at the far end of the pond. But this year there were two bee orchids as well. They have appeared in the meadow before but not for some time so this is a welcome return.

Our water voles have increased in number and don’t seem to mind us being around. We have watched them running around the edge of the pond, seen them swimming out to grab mouthfuls of curled pond weed, heard them munching on the rushes and there is now a neatly nibbled ‘lawn’ at the end of the pond where one or two of what I think of as the maiden aunts gather to graze in the evening.

The water vole trimmed grass by the pond

Muntjac are at home here too. They seem to be able to find their way through any hedge but mostly walk through the gate or up our neighbour’s drive. While talking on a video call recently a granddaughter had a good view of a munjac trotting across the end of the pond and leaping into the undergrowth on the far side. When we mow the meadow we find the flattened patches where they sleep – so our vines and vegetables all have stout netting around them to preserve the harvest. Now we just need to pick the greengages before the birds and wasps get to them.

The garden has been good to us during Corona virus lockdown and has also been a quiet place for family to come and camp in tents and campervan as a break from working in hospital, school, office, or at home with small children. Sharing distanced picnics, walks, barbecues and story-telling has made a big difference.