Forest Clump
When it comes to establishing spring flowering bulbs in the garden, it’s lovely to see a nice solid clump.
Who doesn’t love a clump? Whether it’s a great dense knot of snowdrops, a packed little corner of crocuses, or that ubiquitous favourite of garden, verge and motorway embankment, the daffodil, a clump is far better than a straggle and way better than a 'dotted about a bit, ooh and there’s one over there in the corner’.
The thing about clumps is they’re reliable. They’re established. They come back year after year with the same vigour, adding numbers and swelling their ranks. Why? Because they’re a clump.
The presence of clumps indicates that the plant has been well tended by the gardener. She or he has carefully chosen a spot where that particular species will thrive and in return the plant has responded to the excellent soil conditions and micro climate and generated more bulbs.
Which is presumably why I’m still waiting for my first created clump. This is no exaggeration. Whatever depth I plant my daffodils they go blind. Some grudglingly return the following year but show no sign of increasing their number. One autumn I thought it would be nice to have clumps of fritillaries coming through the lawn in spring and bought 50 from Parkers Bulbs. Not a single one appeared.
True, I was once the custodian of three big clumps of snowdrops at our last house, but it was all a terrible sham. They were there when we arrived. And it didn’t help matters that I laid a bit of a patio on one of them.
Of course for those who measure their gardens in fractions of an acre, a clump is small change, a mere bagatelle. For those gardeners who aspire to grand planting schemes with proper sketches beforehand, a clump is a minor detail, what they’re after is a drift. A drift is the Bentley Continental of garden design, more elegant than a stand and not in the same car park as a clump.
However I do possess a clump. Last week I was over in Brittany to trim a variety of hedges (my own, not in general) when I realised I had inadvertently acquired at least one. Down the lane from the longere is a field I technically own but have lent back to the farmer, Norbert, for the last twenty odd years. There is a grass bank underneath an old chestnut tree and in spring it is transformed into a bright yellow pincushion of primroses. I suddenly realised that intermingled in that theatre of yellow were clumps of volunteer daffodils.
I had grown daffodils up the lane since 1991, but over the years they had dwindled, and from a stock of 100 or so bulbs, now I was lucky to get 20 flowers ‘dotted about a bit’. No chance at all that these narcissi had clumped up. No-one else for miles around grew daffodils so I was pretty sure they were the progeny of my stock.
The clump may not be big enough to get Wordsworth excited but who knows, the field is six acres - in ten years I might achieve a drift. Provided I just leave them to get on with it.
