Gardens
Nota bene
Ursula Buchan
My first reaction was to suspect it of apomixis — the capacity to reproduce asex- ually. I used to think that this propensity was confined to dandelions (and, after I had been told a highly coloured version of the facts of life at school, to the more timid-looking of my friends' parents), but in fact quite a few plants, including the entire blackberry tribe and many grasses, go in for it from time to time.
In a state of some little excitement, therefore, I fetched my notebook to record details of this interesting phenomenon. Wishing to examine the seedling more closely (and not wishing to keep another specimen of this not-very-heavenly tree), I dug up the plant — only to discover what I should perhaps have guessed, that this was no seedling but a root sucker instead. The tree, perhaps under stress from lack of water, had thrown a sucker some 30 feet away from the trunk and I had been nicely fooled. If I had thought for a minute, I might perhaps have realised that no seedling could have grown so tall so quick- ly, especially during a droughty summer. But it was only when I sought to make a note that the truth dawned.
Like Life, my garden is full to bursting with instructive lessons such as this. The failure to observe, analyse and note the evi- dence of one's eyes undermines one's efforts to achieve and sustain a successful garden just as much as lack of artistic sensi- bility, or time, or money ever can.
Over the years, therefore, I have strug- gled to record something of what I see, although at times the exigencies of family life have made me less assiduous than I would like. Whenever I have taken the trouble, however, my knowledge of plant behaviour has deepened and my pleasure in the garden intensified.
Long ago, when the world was young, I was tempted to record interesting facts of garden life in the bright and beautiful record books which form such an impor- tant staple of gardening publishing. Howev- er, books called Mr McGregor's Country Garden Diary were too short on space not taken up by trailing lianas of honeysuckle to be truly useful, and tended to contain nuggets of horticultural information which were picturesque but a century out of date.
These days, I use two invaluable, but not conspicuously attractive, little books. The first is an ordinary, hard-covered address book, which is small enough to fit in a large jacket pocket, but sturdy enough to last for years. In this I can record the names, posi- tions, habits and lives of individual plants. For weather and (interesting) cultivation notes, a five-year diary suits me, because direct yearly comparisons are helpful. This diary can also be used for forward plan- ning, although having intention and achievement set out on the same page does ruthlessly expose one's inadequacies.
The difficulty of writing notes in the rain or when muddied is overcome by using a special notebook with waterproof pages called the Aqua Scribe, and transferring the notes to the other books later — some- times much later.
It is impossible for me to sustain consis- tently any more complicated system than this. Tidier and more energetic minds than mine will devise better schemes, no doubt. The trouble is that, after hanging up the border fork at the end of a day, the desire to record garden activities and impressions burns only dimly. It is then I must remind myself that the two best tools in the shed are a notebook and pencil.
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