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I love having a garden. And one of the best things about a garden – particularly at this time of the year – is the anticipation, watching all the plants coming up after the dormancy of winter. I like planting seeds and watering them and feeding them pricking them out and weeding them and watching as they grow and flourish.
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I love reading gardening books and looking at photographs of other gardens, and the gardening columns in the weekend supplements with their photographs of wonderful plants, old and new, and deciding which ones of them would go best where in my new plot.
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I’m a sucker for plant and seed catalogues and garden centres and I find it hard to walk past even the smallest and least promising display of seed packets without having a browse through to see if there’s anything I’d like to plant. I’m a sucker for plant sales at village fetes however scruffy and unpromising the wares may be. I even rescue those pots of herbs from supermarkets and thin them out and keep them going on my windowsill the way other people rescue battery hens.
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Above all, I love the planning of a garden – like photographs, they’re always better in your head – and the realisation of a coherent theme: all white plants, perhaps, or medicinal ones, or drought-tolerant, or just something with interest all year round.
Here, though, I think my theme has been selected for me.
This year, I shall mostly be planting things that deer and rabbits don’t eat.
I’m just so …sorry that your garden has become grazing ground. So what kinds of things are deer/rabbit resistant in your area? And surely you don’t need drought-tolerant plants!
I also love having a garden, well in my case a plot!
My plants tend to get nibbled rather than chomped as thankfully we don’t get deer or squirrels on the allotments.
Happy gardening! xx
Nikki – not much, it looks like. And you’re right, but I couldn’t think of a snappy antonym for drought-tolerant … flood resistant?
Flighty – fortunately the veg are well protected so my plot is safe
The anger that my wife feels when she confronts rabbit decimated plants takes her to the very edge…Lately she has had a new enemy – the seed munching, baby plant munching, mice in the greenhouse. Every night she wraps her plants up in various covers etc. It’s like Fort Apache – the Bronx. The owner of Border Farm Supplies has retired to the Med. on the strength of his sales to us of mousetraps.
My landlady’s chickens deal with the mouse menace. It turns out these are hunter-killer chickens. They’ve also despatched baby rabbits, although so far they have not managed to tackle a deer.
I believe Deer & Rabbits can be discouraged by using lead in the garden. Enquire at your local gun shop
Isn’t the answer one of those dog things?
Since deer and rabbits eat anything that’s not concrete you could be in for a trying time….
I’ll know when I get the shotgun out that my transition from townie will have been complete…
That’d be berberis and thistles then …
yep. Also chives, it seems, and monbretia
Oh, and ground elder…
How did I miss this other blog? What a pip to find it.
BTW–just ordered the book!
Thanks – hope you enjoy the book. We do seem to be ploughing the same blogging furrow…
I doubt you’ll have much luck shooting deer with a shootgun.
Get yourself a nice big rifle…
Oh, make that things that deer and rabbits and hares don’t eat…
Our garden is littered with the remains of rabbits, voles, mice, moles and various birds (not a single blackcap to be seen either). Cats is yer answer – though I admit you’ll need quite a big one to deal with the deer.
Maybe one of these?