Is it a table, is it a bench?

Mrs Plutus and I recently took delivery of our table, come bench. We were strolling around Hampton Court Flower Show earlier in the "summer" and came across The Bench Company's stand. We'd been intending to get a bench for half way down our garden (the sunny bit) for quite a while but hadn't yet got around to actually making the purchase. After a stroll around the rest of the flower show, an overpriced but delicious wild boar sausage and a couple of pints in the sun we decided to return to purchase a bench that turns into a table. By this time I think I was swept away with the notion that I would have a Transformer in my garden. OK, no robot in disguise I admit, but a pretty cool and functional piece of kit. Also important to note that the company called me well in advance of the delivery date, stuck exactly to the agreed delivery time (on a Sunday I should add), assembled the bench in the desired location and were thoroughly nice folk ensuring I was totally happy with my purchase before they left to make their next delivery. Here are a few pics of Mrs Plutus performing the transformation:


Even though it has only been around a few days it has already become one of my favourite places to be. Sure, I'm not officially working right now but I still have a lot of work to do. It is that little bit more satisfying being able to do said work in the sun on my new purchase while listening to the cricket in the background. Here is a pic of my new desk in action:

Love it...

Wisley Flower Show

Wisley Flower Show. I didn't know about it until I visited Wisley last week and saw them erecting the marquee tents. The Wisley information desk told me to expect a small version of the Hampton Court Flower Show that Mrs Plutus and I had attended earlier in the summer. Indeed the forewarning was accurate - this was a small but enjoyable show, centred around a large marquee that was 50% fuchsia exhibition and 50% streptocarpus, heuchera, gladioli, pelargonium and agapanthus. Mr and Mrs Plutus senior met me at the show and we all had a very educational time wandering through the gardens afterwards. Highlights of the stroll include (mostly for Mrs Plutus senior's benefit):

Lychnis - a perennial that was rather disappointing when it first arrived in my garden. A few little dianthus-style flowers each on a thin stem two feet from the ground. Didn't look like much at first but the proliferous production of magenta flowers has been simply wonderful. Regular dead-heading is a must!

Eupatorium - another perennial. The variety most common at Wisley looks like a large dogwood (cornus) with the beautiful dark red stem and is apparently an extremely useful plant that can treat malaria, gout, arthritis and many other conditions. I look forward to learning much more about this at the Chelsea Physic Garden in a few weeks!

Eryngium - Sea Holly. This is a beautifully structural plant that would look amazing in a border with acanthus and a prolific verbena at the back.



Lantana Camara - A particularly attractive flower that looks like a hybrid between a primula and a hydrangea in my opinion. Apparently it is quite invasive so please be careful planting it in your garden!

Canna - not really my thing but a couple of images for Mrs Plutus senior. Enjoy...

Stolen Vegetables

I've been put in temporary charge of my friends' allotment. Doesn't really involve much work when the weather is this bad. All I had to do yesterday was pick some beans and tomatoes so that they'd continue to fruit.


Really drums home the importance of sun though. I have an amazing garden but the southern boundary is lined with several huge trees which cast a shadow over most of the garden until early afternoon. Not even gonna think about the effect of the roots! I've managed to populate all the non-veg areas with relevant plants, most of which are doing very well, but vegetables are a different story. The difference between identical crops (same seeds sown at the same time in the same greenhouse with the same water) that have been planted in my garden and my friends' allotment is huge. Some things crop well in my garden (tomatoes, peppers, beans and peas especially) but some things don't crop well at all (notably root veg). However, EVERYTHING crops so much better at my friends' allotment. Maybe I should gather together an army and plan an invasion...

Shrub Pruning

The RHS gardens at Wisley run a variety of short courses as well as half day and full day training sessions. Members get a great discount and of course, free entry to the gardens any time they want. As an RHS member, I thought I'd pop along to the afternoon shrub pruning session on 13th August.

So what did I learn? Well, it is all common sense really. The golden rule is to look after your tools because, even with all the knowledge in the world, if you use blunt instruments you'll end up with poor results. You don't have to have a pair of Felco secateurs (although they do have a great range of tools to suit pretty much all requirements - and I'd love a pair if anyone feels the need to buy me an unexpected gift). After returning from the training, one of the first things I did was sit down with my old inherited secateurs, an allen key, a spanner, a screwdriver, a sharpening stone and my bike degreaser and lube. Taking them apart, sharpening the blade, cleaning the mechanism and reassembling them are all really easy steps. Look out for an entry on this topic coming soon.

On to the shrubs themselves. Bernard, my teacher, first took us through some of the most common English garden shrubs and how they behave. Buddleja, fuchsias, hydrangeas are found in most gardens and all flower off the growth formed in the same year. Therefore, you want to prune them pretty hard - cutting back most of the long stems (especially in the case of buddleja) so that they don't form ugly, long, old, woody growth. As is typical for most shrubs (and perennials for that matter) you want to regularly dead-head during the flowering season to encourage further flowering. Otherwise the dead flowers try to set seed, diverting energy away from producing more blooms. Pretty much all shrubs want to be pruned hard in early spring, i.e. late February or March. This hopefully gives the worst of the frosts time to pass before the new, young growth forms after pruning. Careful with winter flowering shrubs like forsythia. You really want to prune this straight after flowering. Leave pruning forsythia until late spring and you risk losing the next year's flowers.

Here are a few pieces of shrub-specific advice:

Buddleja davidii
Can be considered a weed I suppose. It grows everywhere, especially along the banks of the railway lines in south west London, but when in flower looks majestic and attracts so many useful insects to the garden, hence the name butterfly bush. I have always been more of a fan of the darker purple hues and so I have a Black Knight variety in my garden. This pic doesn't really illustrate what a lovely colour it is, apparently my camera simply can't handle its purple-ness!

I took a couple of cuttings earlier in the year, kept them in my open greenhouse and a couple of them even put out tiny little flowers. Donated a couple to my mum earlier today.

Hydrangea
Leave on flowers over winter to add a little frost protection. Personally I find the brown petals of the old flower heads rather unsightly but if they serve a purpose, then I guess I can live with it. When performing the early-spring pruning, you want to look for early bud growth and cut below that point. The theory here is that the early bud growth is a sign of how far the "spring energy" has risen up the stem. If you cut below the first bud growth you are forcing the shrub to put out new growth from where it has energy. Prune above the early bud growth and the shrub doesn't yet have the energy to start growing.

Philadelphus
Like other summer flowering shrubs, philadelphus flowers on growth it put out the previous year. As before, remove flowers when they start looking tired, but only if the shrub is small. I don't have a philadelphus in my garden but a couple of my neighbours do. The larger of the two would probably take a day to dead-head. Besides, I quite like the carpet of white when all the petals fall.

Wisteria
The old English country garden favourite. I have a small wisteria that I keep in a (large) pot. However, he has failed to flower reliably for the last couple of years. There are lots of theories on pruning wisteria, Bernard didn't claim to have the only method, he didn't even claim to have the best method, but he told me the method they use at Wisley and they get an abundance of amazing flowers every year.

We're assuming that the shrub is established and that you are not trying to train it into a new area. Throughout the growing season, probably worst from August onwards, the shrub will be sending out long runners looking for new places to climb. These can be taken off whenever necessary or unsightly by taking them back to 6 buds or shoots. As the leaves fall in winter, you will have a bare wisteria skeleton with each branch being six shoots long. Leave this over winter, then in February or March prune each spur by half, i.e. back to three shoots/buds.

And that's it. Of course, that isn't really IT, there is an awful lot more to successfully maintaining shrubs. If you haven't already done so, check out the RHS website as it has plenty of extremely useful advice.

All for now, see you soon...

Finding time

OK, OK, I know. I said I'd post every few days and it is now nearly a week and nothing new has arrived. I've got some free time coming up and will throw something interesting out soon...

1st - 10th August

Strange feeling saying goodbye to everyone at work even though you are going back. I've never said a permanent goodbye to anyone I've known for 8 years, except at a funeral of course, so this experience was odd. But there is too much to look forward to, I don't fancy getting caught up in any negative emotions.

First week of my three month journey was spent in Italy where two of my friends were getting married. The wife and I avoided honeymooning in Italy in August last year thinking it would be too hot. Good move! Last week it was between 30 and 35 degrees C most days and we were without air-conditioning for most of the week. However, the magnificence of the locations more than made up for the lack of sleep, continual sweating, heat stroke and general crabbiness. See what I mean...?

My Introduction

1st August 2008 was a big day in my life. I left my job of eight years, albeit only temporarily, to embark upon a three month journey of discovery...

From the ages of twenty one to thirty I have been working in the semiconductor electronics industry and while it can be a fascinating place at times, I need a change! Generally speaking, silicon valley companies treat their employees well. Not many employers allow their employees to take periods of unpaid leave for personal development purposes so I consider myself lucky to be able to take time away from my job to hurl myself into everything I find fun, interesting and enjoyable.

A little about me... I am an engineer by education and trade. I believe it to be a deficiency of the English schooling system that I had to decide upon my vocational career path at the age of fifteen. I studied Maths, Physics and Electronics A-Levels and then went on to study Electrical and Electronic Engineering at university. Not wanting to waste my education I chose to follow a career in the electronics industry. To this day I've had no regrets – my work has allowed me to travel the globe and taught me many extremely valuable skills. I've even been passionate about it at times. Recently, however, I have become tired of the politics, exhausted by poor management and disillusioned about following a career just for the sake of it. I'm embarking upon a journey of discovery, finding out what is out there, trying to understand what I want to do “when I grow up”.

I'm going to be taking a variety of training courses over the coming months – horticulture, garden design, woodworking, wood sculpture, wood turning and a bunch more. I'll be spending much belated time with my good friends and family as well as finding some time to make profitable renovations to my flat. I spend so much of my time cooking and, without wishing to sound too arrogant, most of the end products are way better than your average restaurant food. Hence I shall also be commencing the scripting of my recipe book. Haven't decided upon a theme yet, that'll probably come with time although working with whatever Kingston-upon-Thames market can supply me at a reasonable price may well dictate some of the contents.

Hopefully you want to stay with me during my journey. I intend to post at every available opportunity although several of my training courses mean I have to stay away so I can't make any guarantees.