Garden Rubbish

A Reminder of last Summer's Pleasaunce

Sellars and Yeatman are best known for their book '1066 and all that' but they also wrote a book which was a formative influence on me as a gardener entitled 'Garden Rubbish'.  In that book the garden was divided into 'The Pleasaunce' and 'The Unpleasaunce', a plan I have adhered to ever since.  In January pretty much the whole garden can be classified as 'The Unpleasaunce', so much so that a modest snowfall comes as a bit of light relief since it blankets the whole in a pleasing and tidy white so that the general unpleasauntness of it is hidden from public view.  However gardening experts will tell you that January is a good month to browse the seed catalogues and plan your gardening for the busy months ahead.

For writers this is also a profitable exercise as the lovely English names of the flowers will also bring some colour and variety to your descriptive passages and it is well to know when the different varieties are in bloom to avoid making a literary horticultural howler.  Descriptive names like larkspur and marigold, toadflax (like a baby antirrhinum in different colours) and woodruff (blue and scented), cornflower and sweet sultan (white, rose and yellow), and pretty drifts of candytuft bring romance and poetry to a plain description.  Then if you want to sound more knowledgeable you can toss in a bit of Latin (variegated) - calliopsis (yellow and brown), nasturtium (all colours, commonly found in vegetable patches), ageratum (blue), linum grandiflorum (red) - even my dog Latin knows grandiflorum means a big flower - from South Africa the Ursinia and Veridium, both daisy-like and orange with a dark centre.  Since the church gave up using it horticulture is the one area where Latin is still used on a daily basis. 

You can, if you wish, do a little light digging in January if the weather is not too inclement and winter storms provide plenty of opportunities for repairing garden arches and fences and replacing uprooted bush roses, or you can stay in the warm and read a good book and pray for a fall of snow which will make your garden all pretty, white and sparkling and put off any real work until next month.