The bounty of Nigella
Let me explain from the outset that the link between Nigel (last week) and Nigella (this week) is purely coincidental. One's a lovely old dog, and the other is something that spreads itself round the garden from bed to bed.
The reason I mention Nigella is this: I was walking up the garden path on Saturday and suddenly saw Nigella emerging from under the concrete edge by the heucheras.
Nigella is a bit of a bed-hopper in our garden. You can’t turn your back for five minutes before Nigella pops up somewhere else.
Nigella first colonized a three-metre stretch of the right-hand bed. Not satisfied with that it has spread to the two rear flower beds in front of the vegetable garden.
Now we have got Nigella appearing in the raised beds (believe me, that’s going to be a short-lived incursion) and even in some of the pots.
Beth Chatto’s mantra – right plant, right place – is certainly true of Nigella in our garden. But with Nigella it’s more like – right plant, right postcode. Anywhere in the postcode will do.
We have some enviable problems in KT6. Apart from Nigella we are overrun with cyclamen, bluebells (both blue and white), euphorbia robbiae and a whole variety of aquilegias.
Cruising Squires Garden Centre on Saturday in the vain search for some lychnis (rose campion), I was directed towards the Cottage Garden section which had 1001 lupins but no lychnis. On the way I spotted some of the self-same aquilegias that I was contemplating digging out of the garden – they were on sale for £8.99!
A quick calculation revealed that I was preparing to trash ninety quid’s worth of aquilegias because for me they were the right plant in the wrong place, and they have such a long tap root they don’t seem to survive the kind of brutal removal I go in for. In fact it made me think about Charles Dowding the ‘no dig’ expert.
If you’ve got a magnificent plant in the wrong place and you’ve thrown away all the spades (philosophically not in reality, I’m sure he’s got the odd Spear and Jackson hanging around the toolshed) could you be tempted to dig it up?
If you spotted a fascinating little hybrid that had installed itself in an inconvenient location would you make a dash for the shed despite your no-dig principles, a bit like a vegetarian inveigled by the smell of bacon?
The dig/no dig debate is something to come back to. I have a farming friend in Suffolk who told me he doesn't have a plough and hasn't ploughed for years and that his field beans and wheat are all direct drilled. It seems astonishing because as Charles Dowding says, it is so ingrained into our psyche that we should 'plough the fields and scatter'.
Nigella is so widespread in our garden that dig/no dig is never a dilemma with us. It just gets hoiked out. Although we're big fans, we can't leave it springing up everywhere.
