A Riot in the Potager

That's right, there is a riot going on in my potager because I've had it up to here *points to a place 10 feet above her head or would do if her arm was that long* with colour coordinated borders. Because frankly why bother? Why should you have colour coordinated borders? Who says so and who are they when they are in the garden dancing the polka? Exactly, there is no such thing as the Garden Police so stuff the whole colour coordinated thingy as it's overrated anyway.

Had a good chinwag with Mother Nature about it all and after she had finished laughing her cute and shapely behind off she told me there is no such thing as colours that do not coordinate. You want proof of that? Well gentle gardener, have a good look round and you will find that Mother Nature combines all colours with the most wonderful, not to mention uplifting, effect.

So last year I decided to run riot in my potager and as I had just created a new bed there and was wondering what to do with it so I thought I'd go utterly bonkers (technical term) with plants and bulbs. And here's the result:

That's right, a riot of colour that hits you soundly in the solar plexus and frankly, isn't that just what you need after a long dull, grey and dismal winter?

Another pet peeve of mine is that most of the time when gardeners actually bother to bung in some tulips they (the tulips, not the gardeners) are always huddled together in groups like startled Sunday schoolmarms who find themselves inadvertently in a redlight district. What's up with that grouping thingy, the having a clump of red tulips here and a gaggle of yellow ones over there? Snorefests, the lot of them! But if you are very lucky, you could come across a more adventurous type of gardener who has planted her/his tulips in rivers. Ooh ar, get her/him!

So if you want to be a bit rebellious yourself why not try out this recipe next autumn for a riot in your garden? It's very easy and great fun, just what gardening is all about.

Riot recipe:
- buy tulips in many different colours and in vast quantities
- make sure quite a few of them flower at the same time but also see to it that you have enough early, middle and late flowering tulips to continue rioting in your garden for at least 2 months
- put all the bulbs in a big bag or pot and give it a good shake, mix them well
- go out into your garden and start throwing the bulbs about with gay abandon in the area where you want them to flower next spring
- plant them where they fall, no smuggling!
- after planting your tulips, bung in loads of Forget-me-nots in white, blue and pink, Aubrietas in many colours and some Phloxes subulata too
- stand well back and wait a few months
- come Spring put on helmet and safety goggles and watch your Spring garden explode!

 Colour Is Its Own Reward from Fingers of Love by Neil Finn (Crowded House)

Apart from running amok in the potager I've been writing about gardening on other websites as well. On ThinkinGardens you will find my article : The Gardening Animal, the biology of its behaviour here and today on The Guardian website you will find Tulips, Are They Really That Difficult to Grow? here. On the Guardian site you can leave comments so please do if you feel so inclined.



Copyright 2010 Y.E.W. Heuzen

Speed Weeding

You have heard of speed dating before, unless you've been living under a rock for ages, but speed weeding is a  different kettle of fish altogether, you will be happy to know. With speed weeding you will not be introduced to a new weed every 3 minutes nor are you expected to chat it up and take it out for a meal. And no hanky-panky either.  Phew, what a relief!

Speed weeding is something to be instantly applied in case of an emergency when, for instance, a bunch of gardeners are about to visit your garden the very next day and that happy event has caught you with your plants down.  Your garden looks a mess, even though it looked pretty good 5 minutes ago before you realised that a visit from gardening friends was imminent. What to do? Panick is an option, it always is, but why not go for a spot of speed weeding instead? So much better for your nerves, I promise you, simply immerse yourself in the Zen that is speed weeding.

 By now, gentle gardener, you are gagging to know how to speed weed to get your garden looking all pretty and shining, not to mention immaculate, for that all important visit from fellow gardeners in less than 24 hours. In short you want me to dish the dirt. Righto!

Speed weeding is the art that wily gardeners like yours truly have developped in case of a garden emergency. What you do is simply remove all the weeds that shamelessly and blatantly are messing up your otherwise gorgeous garden. Weeds hiding away in corners or simply out of sight you leave be, no time to pull those out. Just get rid of those that have a frightfully high profile and can only be missed when you have both eyes firmly shut. That's it!

 And while you have been franctically scrolling down to find out how to speed weed, your search has been wonderfully illustrated by images of how the Bliss garden looks at the mo. Utter Bliss, I know.

Copyright 2010 Y.E.W. Heuzen

Five, Four, Three ...

Five

Four

Three

Two

One

Springblooms Are Go!

In a garden near you International Springbloom Rescue is there to save you! Gone are the winter blues the moment springblooms appear in their droves. Smiles light up on many a face, puppies are frolicking, kittens are purring, birds are singing, bees are buzzing and suddenly all is right with our widdle world once more. 

If your world is still devoid of springblooms call International Springbloom Rescue, their mission is to save you from flower deprivation forthwith!

Copyright 2010 Y.E.W. Heuzen

Potager Fun: Mix and Match

Potagers are fun, anything goes. You can mix vegetables with flowers and herbs and fruit trees and whatever else you care to throw into the pot of potage (soup). Mix and match people, don't be scared, simply mix and match.

Kitchen (victory) gardens have become all the rage lately but not every (would be) gardener is the proud possessor of vast acres. Many have to make do with just a tiny plot of land. Potagers are the right choice if you want to grow your own veg, fruit, flowers and herbs but want your smallish garden/yard to look pretty at the same time. 

A potager is a kitchen garden, an ornamental one. Most people love flowers (ooh pretty!) so do add flowers to your potager. They will not only look good, both in the potager and in a vase, but will also attract loads of insects which is a real bonus. Apart from that you'll save loads of money as you don't have to buy those poisonous bunches of scentless flowers from the shop. 

There are quite a few misconceptions about the potager concept; some people think it's mostly a kitchen garden which it is not as the pretty aspect of it is also of the importance that is very. Some think that potagers are mainly about annuals but again with the no. You can pretty much bung everything in; trees, flowers, bulbs, shrubs, veg and even the kitchen sink if you feel inclined to do so. Another thing not widely understood is that the pretty is not only provided by flowers as vegetables, fruit and herbs can look awfully pretty too. See those black peppers? Gorgeous or what? I rest my case.

So go forth and potager away with gay and colourful abandon. Plant roses next to your garlic, have cabbages together with bulbs. Plunk that kitchen sink smack in the middle of your potager and plant it up with whatever takes your fancy. Be brave, be bold, have fun! Have a potager feast for all your senses, you know you want to.

copyright 2010 Y.E.W. Heuzen

Get Your Spring Fix Here

At what o'clock is Spring? That's a question I ask myself as soon as the last leaf has fallen from the trees. Spring is my favourite time of the year as it's so full of promises of things to come. Whether those promises will be fulfilled remains to be seen, but often the promise of something good and the anticipation thereof is something to treasure in and of itself.

Spring is late this year; for a long time our gardens were, in sharp contrast to many a winter in decades before, covered with a thick blanket of snow. And quite a few of us (garden bloggers of the world) suffer from a surfeit of snow even now.

Courtesy of many a night of frost and freezingly cold days we've been experiencing lately, the ground is still frozen in the Bliss garden but it hasn't stopped that most magical of moments from appearing in the garden. The moment when from the unprepossessing brown earth suddenly a miracle of flowers erupts with utterly joyful abandon.

Although it's a miracle that has happened time and time again, it never fails to amaze me and fill my heart with utter Bliss. Is there anything more glorious and uplifting than this?

 You'll have to be the sad possessor of a very cold heart indeed not to find joy in the utter sumptuousness that is Spring!

copyright 2010 Y.W. Heuzen

How Now Brown Cow Meets Piet Oudolf

That's right, it's time for an elocution lesson. As a garden connoisseur you are bound to have heard of  Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf but if you are non Dutch speaking do you also know how to pronounce his name correctly?

When I talk with non Dutch garden geeks who are raving about Mr Oudolf I often have to ask them to repeat that name as it's mostly so badly mispronounced as to leave me clueless of whom they are talking about.

Joe Swift from Gardener's World is a prime example of how not to garble Piet's name. Last year in June he presented a GW programme about Prairie Gardens where he mentioned a well known designer by the name of &^$# gobble (**&^ dy *&#@ gook. What? I am Dutch and have heard his name mangled in unbelievable ways before but this was really bad to the power of über cheese.

So here goes, please pay attention and that goes for you in the back as well:

Piet is difficult to pronounce when your native tongue is English, I readily admit it, but lets have a go at it anyway: Piet is pronounced as ....... Pete.  Sorted!

Oudolf is slightly more difficult but I think you will be able to pull it off if you put your back into it.

Oudolf has 2 syllables: Ou - dolf

First syllable  sounds exactly the same as ou in house or ouch. Now say ouch, now say it without the ch. Done.

Second syllable: dolf. Say dolphin, now say it without the in just dolfff. Let's put those two sounds together Ou-dolff. Piet Oudolf. Done and dusted.

This free elocution lesson was brought to you courtesy of your friendly Internet neighbourhood gardener Yolanda Elizabet from Bliss!

O, and if perchance you know Mr Swift personally, please put the man out of his misery and direct him  Bliss-ward.

NB all the pictures shown in this post were taken in June 2008 at Piet Oudolf's garden and nursery.

copyright 2010 Y.E.W. Heuzen

Egg, Bacon, Spam, Baked Beans, Spam, Sausage and Spam

Spammity spam, wonderful spaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam! That seems to be on the menu lately and frightfully often too. Is it me or has there been an influx of spam recently?

Comments is something we bloggers love so please dear reader, keep them coming.  But spamments? Not so much!

It's very annoying when your blog gets hit by spamments. At one time a fully paid up member of the SadPeopleRUs society left 12 spamments on 1 of my posts. Twelve! How silly is that? Of course I removed them all forthwith. Fortunately this doesn't happen all that often. What does happen with nauseatingly regularity is spam left on older blog posts. The reasoning behind this tactic is probably that you are too lazy to search for that old post and remove the spam. Ha, how little do they know me. 

Blogger has been busy developing new thingumabobs and has given us, apart from the word verification thingy that stops spam bots, a new little tool to help fight evil spam! And fight it we will for the sake of Christmas, puppydogs, and fluffy kittens and stuff!

If you haven't discovered the latest Blogger Fight-That-Evil-Spam thingy yourself here's how you do it:

-go to Settings

-Click on Comments

- scroll down a bit till you reach comment moderation on posts older than ..

- fill in how many days you want

-save settings

This way you'll never have to hunt for spam on older posts ever again.

Of course you could also opt for moderating all comments before they appear on your blog but I personally am not that keen to spam-sit (simply can't be bothered) so I've chosen not to go that route.

Copyright 2010 Y.E.W. Heuzen