Inevitably, over time, this blog has shifted and drifted in topics and style. Just like the garden has morphed and changed.

Sometimes diary, sometimes investigative, sometimes creative, sometimes science-based, sometimes poetic. I can’t discern any obvious pattern for these changes, it simply reflects what interests or stimulates me at any moment. Whether anything else is at work, I have no idea.

Choosing a title often helps me get started and after another glorious few weeks of weather, the focus simply has to be the lush state of the garden, landscape, insect activity, and birdsong: the totally immersive outside natural world, and having the time to engage with it.

Upland West Wales at its most benign and beautiful.

A perfect blend of plenty of sunshine with (still, just) sufficient soil moisture for plants to be growing well if not vigorously, and benign day and night temperatures. It turned chilly for a couple of days, and came close to frost forming, which would have devastated much of this lush growth, but fortunately, it stayed just above freezing. Daytime temperatures have only rarely topped 20 degrees C, and winds have been light.

Whenever and wherever I look in the garden or across the hills, the foliage is indeed looking lush, the more so for our chosen intermingling naturalistic style of garden where foliage form and colour contrasts have a huge impact at this time of the year, and there’s almost no bare or mulched soil.

Which photos to include to capture this is tricky, and in many parts of the garden seasonal flowers have their impact too, but it’s the totality of visual (and auditory) experience, wherever one looks, helped inevitably by the lovely light, which has left the impression that this will be a spring to remember very fondly. And much more enjoyable than the Lotusland experience I described about 2 years ago, where similar conditions, but with higher temperatures, meant that watering, and water conservation became pressing concerns very early on. This may yet be a worry for us in the weeks ahead.

Thus this blog post has no grand aims, it falls into the record category and is a reminder that when the weather turns, which it surely will, the spring of 2025 has completely dispelled the weather-linked gloom which lingered throughout much of 2024.

A couple of star performing plants over the last 10 days have been the Malus hybrids and Clematis montana cultivars, of which we have a few dotted around the garden, and now wish we’d propagated and planted more. As always, the close up of flowers of 3 to 4 finger widths diameter look superb. But it’s the sheer scale of the display this year with curtains of flowers hanging down over many, many feet, all still in perfect condition, which is so special. Capturing this on a screen really doesn’t do justice to this wonderfully vigorous and hardy plant. One needs to stand back and scan its form, clambering through its host tree – from a distance.

The plant below, is where our personal love of C. montana began – a gift from one of my nurses, shortly after we bought Gelli, and one of the very first cultivated plants carefully planted out. (Thank you, Gaynor!) Nearly 30 years old, the original ‘Elizabeth’ is still gong strong, and has given me at least 3 cloned daughters which are striving to rival it – this is just a small part of the mother plant, viewed from a distance.

The productive apples in the tyre garden, which had quite severe pruning last year, have delighted us and the bees with their masses of blossom, which is surprisingly variable in colour.

Our favourite has to be ‘Brownlees Russet’, a small late dessert apple.

Meanwhile the varied crab apples which have been grown from seed many years ago have taken up the baton from the bulbs in the main daffodil display area. Walking beneath these trees has been like sitting in front of a bee hive, early afternoon, when the drones are flying. The noise of bee activity has been that intense, “buzzing busily from bloom to bloom”, to quote an AI bot, as I wondered about the etymology of bloom and blossom.

Alliterative life in action.

Blossom is indeed an interesting word, deriving from the Old English word blōstmian, which itself has Germanic roots and dates back to the Anglo Saxon era of the 5th to 11th centuries, before the Norman conquest of 1066 saw a shift in language to ‘Middle English’. Blodyn, the Welsh equivalent, is surprisingly similar

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I’ve greatly enjoyed a couple of gardening related books which I’ve been reading over the last couple of months.

The first, ‘Adventures of a Gardener’ by Peter Smithers was published in 1995. I was alerted to it, after reading a short feature on Sir Peter Smithers, and how the Daphne bholua cultivar of this name came to be named – being traceable (eventually) back to seeds collected by him in the Daman Ridge area of Nepal. I can now report that the D. bholua plants I germinated form saved seeds a few years ago are showing excellent variability in size and habit, with the excitement of flower variations still a year or two away, I suspect.

The book gives an insight into the life and gardening times of Smithers, a high ranking British diplomat and close friend of the Ian Fleming, author and creator of James Bond. It’s a physically beautiful, high quality book with superb photos – all taken by Smithers. It was written when he was over 80, and follows his early life story, subsequent overseas postings and his interest in plants and growing things which began, (very unusually) as a child of four and lasted his entire lifetime.

One memorable example of his obsessive attention to detail was his buying of a huge leather bound ledger, whilst a pupil at Harrow school. Every seed, plant or bulb he grew was recorded in this book. When he’d completely filled it, some 50 years later, there were over 32,000 entries, by which time computers had appeared on the scene and he’d switched to recording details using more modern technology. There are chapters on some of his favourite groups of plants, (e.g. Wisteria, Magnolia, Nerines, Lilies) and indeed one about his cameras and how he took his photographs; pre-digital technology of course.

However, some of his best writing concerns the plans and making of his final, last garden, on a mountainside near the village of Vico Morcote, overlooking Lake Lugano in Switzerland. A project begun at the age of 57 which required terracing of the bare mountain site, commissioning a stunning contemporary modern house dug into the slope, and planning a garden to wrap around this and integrate with the mountain scenery and native vegetation. It worked so well, that in 2001 he won a major Swiss award for the garden he’d created. Sir Peter has died but the new owners still allow a few visitors, and this link illustrates the fabulous challenging location of the house and garden.

For all of the images and stories, however, what made the biggest impression on me was the list of 12 principles which he drew up, before he began work on this garden (in 1970). They struck me as way ahead of their time, and chiming with our own very slowly arrived at thoughts on garden making. But our ideas have taken decades to volve and mature and still need tweaking, as age has crept on. His principles are all wonderfully perceptive and direct and I’ll try to summarise some of them in simple form here:

1: The garden should be a source of pleasure for owner and friends, not a worry.

2: Therefore it should be created to minimise labour, and should be designed to reduce the work involved as the owner ages – by appropriate design and planting.

3: Thus the planting should only be of a permanent nature, creating a self supporting ecosystem of plants capable of sustaining itself with minimal human intervention, so no annuals or staking.

4: Plants flowering early or late in the season have preference to extend the season of interest.

6: Planting must be done in a dense way to avoid space for weeds.

7: The design is based on a Japanese stroll garden, which follows a defined route around the garden and takes the visitor back to the house.

8: No plant is ever sold or exchanged – the pleasure of owning a plant isn’t complete until it has been given to friends. (Whilst sympathetic to these thoughts, I’m aware of how affluent he was!)

Having set himself these guiding principles before even starting work, it’s clear from the book that they worked incredibly well in the creation of his, and his barely mentioned wife’s, special place. It has to be added, of course, that he clearly had considerable  financial resources and a significant global network of the horticultural elite which enabled him to achieve all this, but only limited help in making and maintaining the garden – he was very much a hands in the ground gardener.

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Well worth reading, if you can find a second hand copy. His final chapter, titled simply ‘Dreams’ also contains some of the best writing I’ve ever read about what (sometimes) can inspire people to design and make a garden. The book ends with these reflective words, which I’m sure would strike a chord with many long term gardeners, who’ve been fortunate enough to spend decades in a garden they’ve created from scratch:

“It would be nice to end life surrounded by the beauty which is my garden. But should this not be possible, it would not matter greatly. As long as memory lasts, my garden will remain with me, like my own past life, a delightful dream which once I dreamed here on this mountainside.”

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Shortly after reading (most) of this book we were fortunate to be able to watch and listen to a presentation by Nigel McCall, at Cothigardeners. Nigel has been involved in a project with the nearby wonderful Aberglasney Gardens since 2014, which is possibly unique in the UK, if not beyond.

A serious amateur photographer, he’s been visiting the garden for all those years, whenever he can and the weather is suitable and taking photographs. But not just any photographs, internationally acclaimed, award winning photos. Click on this link to see just how many awards or commendations he’s scooped at the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition (which receives 20,000 submitted images annually) . All taken at this single garden. A couple of years ago he produced a book featuring some of the best he’s taken in all that time, ‘Aberglasney – a calendar year’. With just a few introductory words written for each month by Morgan Towler.

The three most interesting things I took away from the talk – (apart from a copy of the book!) were that over all those years, he’s only ever been able to get a good photo of some plants, particularly Magnolias, on a single occasion. Magnolia ‘Mark Jury’ being one chosen example – and the spring of 2016, being the only year. So whilst being a fabulous flower, it rarely (in our weather) performs to its full potential. How many of our plants fall into this category, I wonder? And also highlighting how weather and light can play a big part in the alchemy of a garden memory or scene.

Secondly, that he has no real interest in gardening, himself!

Or even in the plants, although he has now learned the names of many of them. For him the challenge seems to setting up and taking the best possible photo. And the long term record which has he has created of that garden’s evolution. No professional garden photographer could ever achieve this scale of detailed, beautiful observational imagery.

In this regard he explained the different techniques he often uses, with multiple images of the same scene being taken from a tripod based camera, with different focal planes, or different exposures. And then cleverly stitching them together back at base with appropriate software, to create a more beautiful image than could be achieved with a single exposure. I’m sure if it had been available in his day, Peter Smithers would have explored such options. But is it blurring the line a little from what our eyes actually perceive in a studied glance? 

He also explained how much time he spends looking for the best backgrounds when taking plant portraits, and how using telephoto lenses helps in this process. I’m afraid I’m limited to my trusty Lumix zoom lens bridge camera. And don’t have the time or energy for sophisticated post-image processing. However, after the talk I’ve made a conscious effort with trying to take some better photos of Welsh poppies, now an iconic, independently minded plant in our garden. Which have never looked so good, or been as numerous before, after a binge of seed collecting and scattering a few years ago. I have indeed realised what a difference background or narrow depth of field can make to the final impression of these fragile, tissue paper flowers.

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And to bring things up to date for the month since I last wrote anything here, I should record my thoughts on the Gardener’s World piece that was broadcast on their Episode 6 Good Friday programme. The generally expressed opinion from everyone who contacted us about it was that it was done very well. And we thought so too, so many thanks again to Kath, Gary, Gary and Jess for helping to craft a lovely story using me as a novice presenter. Inevitably massive chunks of what I was recorded saying and doing was metaphorically left on the cutting room floor. But we always knew this would be the case.

And in any event this blog and my YouTubes are our story – this was someone else’s snap shot story crafted about daffodils and life here.

As I do, I’ve reflected a little on the editorial decision and synchronicity of shoe horning this piece into their Easter programme at the very last minute, after so much detailed planning. With its emphasis on daffodils. And sheep. And lambs. And a scruffily dressed strange fellow who spends a fair bit of time on the ground amongst the sheep which have been named after daffodils. Were there hidden hints here at an Easter message, sneaked in amongst the bucolic gardening scenes? Who knows.

At least, I think, I avoided any major faux pas, although as I, and a few other keen gardeners noticed, the media force that is The Don, did come out with the following line just after the video scenes returned to his base. When he was discussing the RHS initiative this year to try to track down a trio of older named daffodil hybrids. His words are preserved for posterity around 52 minutes in, (unless or until they get edited away into oblivion):

“Now some daffodils are becoming extremely rare. And the RHS would like your help in discovering 3 in particular. They are…Mrs. R.O. Backhouse, Mrs. William Copeland, and Sussex Bonfire. And if you either have those in your garden or have seen them growing, then… get in contact with the RHS.

If we do just get one or two of those and can collect the seed, then that keeps them for posterity”.

(PSST, and sorry everyone, but that’s not what happens with seeds from hybrids, I’m afraid. Bulbs come true to form, sadly seeds from hybrids don’t).

Incidentally, I’m really excited by this daffodil, which popped up in our tyre garden. Many days after the last to flower cultivars had emerged, and growing in between tyres, so (possibly) a seedling. It looks a little like a cross between late flowering and tall ‘Oryx’, and the late flowering ‘Pippit’. If it survives and thrives, and always flowers this late, it’ll be a really valuable addition to the daffodil range, since this sort of pastel yellow doesn’t jar at all, so late into spring. It’s even later than N. poeticus recurvus which usually marks the end of the daffodil season with us. 

I’ve needed to spend quite some time responding to an unexpected email bag of contacts from people known, and unknown as a result of the programme. Mostly appreciative observational comments. A couple were wanting to know where I bought my hat – more to that story than meets the eye. Someone more locally wanting to source some ‘Brunswick’ daffodils which resulted in the most amazing meet-up here on a glorious day, with two delightful older people, one Welsh, one German. Much interesting wide ranging conversation was had. I insisted they should have a look around the garden, which they duly managed, and we finally dug up some ‘Brunswick’ for them to have a go with. Also someone from Wales now tackling their own similar property restoration/garden creation mega-project in France, where daffodils were going to be significant plants, with an exchange of ideas about useful cultivars.

And then the old university contacts who spotted me and tracked me down. Which was very quickly followed by a Linked In invitation to a school 50 year reunion, and a few shared memories. Many thanks to everyone’s who got in touch, and this would have been written up much faster had we not also hosted a group of lovely Canadian ladies visiting us as part of a pre-planned holiday tour to (mainly) South Wales gardens. 2 hours is always a dash for such an event, given the nature of the garden, weather and chatty hosts, but they breezed in and out, had a wonderful time and I’m sure left with their own fond memories. Since their visit was on one of these very special spring mornings when the sun shone and the birds sang, I (quite impressively I thought) stitched together my own YouTube of some of (my) observed events on the day of their visit and managed to send it to the tour leader to be passed on, within 36 hours of them leaving.

3 days after they’d left us, I was struck with the nastiest cold I’ve had in years, and had to retreat to bed at times. As one friend jokingly commented, probably a transatlantic jet-distributed Trumpian pox virus. Which is just now waning.

However, notwithstanding this, the video illustrates, I hope, that such visits, like the BBC’s, are mere snapshots in the story of both life here, and the life and times of the visitors. Yet maybe, as Sir Peter Smithers noted, memories have been formed which might return fondly, for all involved at some future time.

As I’d been walking around the garden looking for telephoto shots to try on one early morning before the sun got too fierce, I glimpsed a view through other foliage, across our (hidden) access track, of the striking red new foliage of Pieris formosa ‘Wakehust’, set with the still white flowers against a blue sky.

And suddenly a song came to me. ‘From a Distance’. We’d first heard this live in Germany at Festhalle Frankfurt back in 1990 at a large venue sell-out by Cliff Richard and mega backing ensemble.

Very dramatic, but not quite in the league of this recorded event from Wembley in 1995, above. I had to do some ferreting to discover that the song was composed a decade earlier by American secretary/songwriter Julie Gold. Who talks about its evolution, and sings it here, on a poor quality, but poignant recording made in March 2020 – before such events were halted for a long while.

However, I think my preferred version is this, sung here more simply in its first recorded version by Nanci Griffith.

As I leave these thoughts and photos of this very special spring, in this very special place, embedded in this post, I’m struck by how they sit in stark contrast amongst the days of tumult which seem to surround us.

Do we all need more time and space to discern a pattern or plan in what is happening in the world around us currently?

Or will it all only become clearer, from a distance? In time or space.

Probably when for one reason or another we’ve left the scene, historians, if they still exist, will dissect the latest ebbs and flows in society with great interest and plot its evolutionary course with their incomparable advantage of hindsight.

For now, for me, this song and its lyrics seem from a very different era, place and time.

Hope, harmony, peace, are positive words to hold onto as summer approaches and temperatures rise from their current benign levels.