Meet the garden staff

This week, I thought I’d introduce you to the team responsible for garden upkeep. Contrary to popular belief, it’s not just me running this botanical empire. No, no - behind every borderline-chaotic garden is a support crew of highly trained professionals….and some not-so-highly trained, endearingly unqualified providers of moral support.

I’m the Head Gardener, of course, but I couldn’t be without this lot when it comes to keeping the garden ship-shape.

1. Annette - keeper of my sanity

The most important member of the team (and the only one actually qualified), Annette arrives once a week like a green-fingered guardian angel. She weeds, she tidies, she tackles the jungle I deliberately pretend I can’t see, all while I’m busy landscaping yet another section of the garden like a woman possessed. A couple of hours a week doesn’t conquer the wilderness, but it does stop it from swallowing me whole. She weeds so thoroughly, my own efforts are put to shame.

Without Annette, my garden would be a reenactment of Jumanji with less drumming and more crying. With Annette, we can pretend the patch she weeded that week is representative of the rest of the garden, while studiously ignoring all the other weeds.

This is what we call progress.

Photo: Annette’s a bit shy, so this is her avatar. I have to say, it’s a fairly good representation.

2. Pancho - Senior Garden Assistant & Professional Hazard

Pancho, my faithful black-furred companion, attends every gardening session with the dedication of an employee who believes hugs are productivity. Her duties include:

Presenting her head for pats every time I bend over
Providing affectionate head-butts that send me face-first into the flower bed
Protecting me from hostile plastic pots. Pancho has made it her mission to ensure I’m free from a killer-pot ambush. A braver security officer you will not find.

3. Pebbles - Sub-Assistant Gardener (supervises mostly by sitting on things)

Pebbles’ work ethic is strong, if the task involves sunbathing, lying on new seedlings, or wrestling her brother in the strawberry patch. She believes strongly, and vocally, in sharing her gardening advice, which sounds remarkably like scolding. I suspect she disapproves of 97% of what I do and is merely staying to document my mistakes. She considers ‘judgement’ to be her main calling in life.

Still, she shows up. Often on the seedlings I was hoping would survive the week.

4. Possum - Junior Office Boy (questionable moral compass)

Possum, dear Possum. Bright of eye, empty of brain, soft of fur, and chaotic of soul.

He’s either a gentleman or a psychopath and rather enjoys the suspense of keeping us guessing. His chosen tasks include launching surprise attacks from the shrubbery, biting hands that weed, and tormenting Pancho until she runs laps like she’s training for the Olympics. Annette, being a seasoned cat rescuer, tolerates his nonsense with far more grace than I deserve to ask of her.

We love him. We fear him. It’s a complex relationship.

5. The Royal Poultry + The Mighty Red Baron = Waste Management Division

Finally, we have the esteemed residents of Cluckingham Palace, who specialise in organic waste disposal at remarkable speed. They accept most weeds, scraps, and offerings with the air of minor nobility receiving tribute from peasants. They follow us with great reverence, believing we’re bearers of impeccably sourced delicacies. Which, to be fair, we occasionally are.

They may act like aristocrats, but they earn their keep, and they do look good doing it.

So that’s the Garden Crew! Highly varied in skills, wildly unbalanced in usefulness, but collectively keeping up the morale of the Head Gardener so she can continue to soldier on with rock stacking, gravel shoveling and all those good things that make a gardener wonder if she has, in fact, gone a bit woolly in the head.

Did you know?

You can eat dahlia tubers. It’s true! Have I tried it? Not on your life. I think you all should give it a go first and let me know the results.

What to do in the garden this week

Northern Hemisphere

🍵Frankly, I think you’ve earned a bit of a rest after all your hard work over autumn. Sit down and have a cuppa!
⛄There’s not a great deal you can do in areas with heavy and lasting winter snowfall, but where you’re getting a lighter, more temporary snowfall, you can give the trees and shrubs a bit of a shake to relieve them of the weight of snow, helping to prevent branches snapping. We get occasional winter snow at our place, and I can usually be found out there getting myself covered in falling snow as I give the trees a good shake. There’s nothing worse than looking out the window to see a substantial branch hanging at an odd angle.
🏡On the warmer days, ventilate your greenhouse to reduce dampness.
🌱Sort out your seed collection and plan next spring’s layout. I usually toss out any seeds that are more than a couple of years old as their germination reliability is much reduced.
🥔Order your seed potatoes.

Southern Hemisphere

🌸Keep up your succession sowing of veggie seeds and annual flowers if you want to prolong your summer supplies.
🌧️Depending on your rainfall, make sure your garden gets at least one deep watering a week in dry periods. It’s better to water less frequently and deeply, than more frequently but shallow. As I write this the rain is falling, which is very welcome in summer. A gardener never complains about the rain in summer!
🌻If you didn’t mulch over winter and spring, those weeds will be starting to drive you batty by now. It’s not too late, in fact, it’s never too late to mulch. So, tackle a patch at a time, weed it, mulch it, and then move on to the next area. Mulch will save your sanity as well as keep your plants healthier.
🏡It’s heating up (a LOT) in your greenhouse, so prop doors open and add shade cloth if needed. Ventilation should be around 20% of the floor area. So if your floor area is 18 square metres, you’ll need at least 3.6 square metres of ventilation space. I have large front doors on slides that sit open all summer, two side windows and two windows on the far wall up high to let out the heat. The only thing I haven’t got that I’d quite like is roof vents. If you have an option to put in roof vents, do so, it would make a huge difference to your ability to regulate the temperature.

What’s new in Behind the Garden Gate

🍂Feature plant: this week it’s about more than one plant. It’s about great trees for autumn colour. My tree-planting scheme is largely based around deciduous trees designed to provide spring blossom and/or a blaze of autumn colour. And that’s why autumn is one of my favourite seasons. When the rest of the garden colour is coming to an end, my trees pick up the slack and create a colour showpiece. Not all trees provide autumn colour though, so this post is about which trees I grow for maximum autumn impact.
🌳You know those days when…. - I’m sure you all think I garden with total joy and a smile on my face at all times. Well, I’m going to shatter that illusion with this wee post “Can this just end already!!”.
📷Snapshot shed: as usual, more photos designed to inspire.

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Photo: My favourite photos from the garden this week. I’m not much of a photographer, but sometimes the elements just seem to come together and the lighting works. I love these photos. The pale pink rose is Cuppa Tea, new to me this season. I love it already and I’m planning more for next season. The darker pink is a good old carpet rose which fills the corner by the deck and steps perfectly.