A Breath from Elsewhere by Mirabel Osler

Author:Mirabel Osler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 1997-11-26T05:00:00+00:00

Losing One’s Head, or Loss of Face

Experiments are a continuing part of gardening. Whenever I think it’s time to be sensible about the garden and to go for what does work, I’m goaded on by remembering a Danish scientist who invented a robotic bee to entice real bees to a source of nectar. Now there’s madness. A similar lunacy, and only slightly more problematical perhaps – but it might work – would be to grow sempervivums along the roof ridge of the kitchen extension. An encrustation of roseate plants nesting amid rabbit netting fixed to the tiles would make a decorative spine to a rather boring roof. And why stop at houseleeks? Could I grow cyclamen? In autumn would they flutter like butterflies against the sky, or would it be too sunny up there? Or after a downpour, would the courtyard be strewn with their corpses?

My eucalyptus scheme turned out to be a flop, but I’ve already shrugged that one off. Experimenting in the kitchen is an acknowledged pastime; experimenting in the garden less so. Why? Are you more likely to look foolish? But if your heart is in it and you can remain laid-back, then many wild gardening ideas are worth pursuing, or at least giving a second thought.

In addition to my method of binding a yew with a rose, I’ve experimented with other things. By giving a spiraea the third-degree treatment after letting it flower for the last few years, I’ve turned the bush into a large ball so densely white in spring the leaves are concealed and a cobweb of scent smelling of honey surrounds the plant. The rose ‘Tuscany Superb’, which is far too big for where I have it, has to be mauled annually as I tie the branches round and round on themselves to make a compact shape. Subjecting the bush to this restraint has resulted in buds breaking out along every horizontal twig, so that by July the rose is covered with dark crimson flowers.

On the counter of the town’s delicatessen stand cylinders of cheese that when uncut look like weathered rocks. The illusion of pumice, verdigris and strata of calcification appeared so real I wanted to carry one home to stand at the top of my garden steps; instead I compromised. The owners of the shop saved me the best bits of cloth from the larger cheeses, which I cut and glued onto plastic flower pots. I imagined how their appearance would be a pleasing alternative to over-shrill terracotta, and how the rumpled folds of mottled and moulded material would give the courtyard the splendour of limestone antiquity. Unfortunately, I hadn’t foreseen that such pungent material would prove an elixir to woodlice and ants; by the end of the winter I found the bottom of the cloth devoured. But alchemy is fun; and as an alternative to spinning flax into gold, turning plastic pots into rock is irresistible. So I shall try again and this time, to discourage predator insects, use something to counteract the reek of cheese.

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