Gosh, two perfect late January days. The gift of a pruning saw has made the tangle quake. Sawdust flew, and suddenly there was room to move, and, at last light. Some good bonfires too. And all of a sudden, the garden seemed to need a new direction. The apple crop last season was so good, and I had such fun with them, I'm determined to do what I've not done for nearly twenty years - go kitchen garden mad. I'm clearing out a shade border at the far end of the garden, where the shade is cast by a high stone wall. I've dumped some big clumps of Helleborus orientalis seedlings into a tiny strip of ground called 'the wood' (beautiful H. orientalis variants are seriously lovely, but dingy ones are seriously dingy), and burnt, root by root, a Carex that's run amok. Saved are the clumps of double snowdrops. More bonfires for the ivy that i've begun to strip from the stone. Well, some of it will become cuttings - it's a splendid variety with big green and scarcely lobed leaves called, I think, Bowle's Heart.
So what will grow (and fruit) in fairly permanent shade? Well, I plan to plant six blackcurrant bushes. They won't crop quite as well as they could, but enough to give plenty jams and liqueurs. Yum. Also, the wall should easily support some sort of netting to keep the birds away. And underneath the currants. Well, I'm rescuing some pink-flowered hepaticas now engulfed by a thuggish epimedium, and they should do well down there.
But I've also some seedlings raised from a few plants elsewhere here of a white fruited alpine strawberry, which would give a fruiting understory, flower prettily once the hepaticas are over, and flummox the birds....
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