Rose Food, The Best Party Ever, and Some News!

I am absolutely delighted to tell you that I have been asked to write for Scribehound Gardening, and that my first piece will be out at the end of this month.

I’ve been a subscriber to SHG since its inception and I truly love it, - it’s basically like Substack but if Substack had a gardening section, and the opportunity to subscribe to loads of gardening writers with one subscription fee (a package deal I guess). Every day, you get a new piece, either via email, or within the app (or both) and the great thing is that each writer has to read their piece aloud, so you can listen to it while you’re doing your gardening, or walking the dog or whatever.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve listened to Sarah Raven giving away her colour theory secrets, Mark Diacono telling me what fruit trees I should plant, Simon Lycett spilling all the floral tea about the various events he styles, Huw Richards myth-busting about companion planting, Ann-Marie Powell telling me what she wears to work in the garden, Ben Dark being terrifyingly well-read so I don’t have to…and all the other gigantic names (yes, Alan Titchmarsh, Tom Stuart-Smith, Adam Frost, James Alexander-Sinclair, Joe Swift…to name but a handful.)

The best bit is that the output is entirely unedited, and you can chat to each writer in the comments section under each article…so yes, it’s like being a subscriber on Substack, except you get thirty writers, and something new every day of the week.

If you’re even the tiniest bit interested in plants and gardening, then I really do heartily recommend subscribing. I absolutely love it.

Subscribe here

If you use my link above, then I will be rewarded, so a gigantic thank you to those of you who choose to do so. This is a dream for me, as I am completely wedded to keeping this Substack open to all.

End of public service announcement!

I went to the most wonderful party last night. It was one of those parties where you were transported to another world (in this case, the world of my two adorable, incredible, glamorous friends - married to one-another - who were each celebrating their 50ths. There was obviously delicious food and drink, but there was also a DJ using proper vinyl, and a mirrored dance floor with marvellous dancing girls with actual disco balls on their heads and there was a wonderful man with bongo drums attached to him who danced with us and drummed his fabulous drums, and there was a truly excellent magician, and we were taken secretly (as if it were only us, except it wasn’t only us…they were just staggering visits) to a hotel room where there was a famous bar-man making dirty martinis in the loo, especially for us, and a photographer taking silly shots of everyone on a giant double bed, and there was a lady in a negligee creating smutty poems for you on an old typewriter, and an actual tattoo-ist, doing actual tattoos and when we left there was a huge long line of mini-coopers ready to take any stragglers on to some other extraordinary destination. Oh, and there were cigarettes…remember those? I know cigarettes are terrible, but the smell of them is so extraordinarily nostalgic for us, who are of a certain age. And of course so many treasured, treasured people all in one place…right there in real life. What joy!

Are you Chelsea chopping any perennials in your garden? I will definitely be hacking away at the geraniums and nepeta which are all flopping over right now. I’m not nearly patient enough to chop only a few stems so that I leave half the plant to keep blooming and the other half to throw out new shoots; the whole lot has to go, after which I water liberally and add a quick liquid feed to cushion the blow.

I am also pulling out some (not all, but some) of the herb robert which does a totally marvellous job of covering any bare ground while my garden is still in it’s first proper season, but which nevertheless is still crowding some other plants.

Other than that, I am picking roses galore from lovely Cecile Brunner, who has suddenly decided she likes me (this may also have something to do with our wonderfully wet autumn and early spring but I prefer to call it favouritism).

If you don’t know climbing Cecile Brunner, she is, in my humble opinion, the perfect rose. Starting off with teeny tiny perfect miniature buds which form an old-fashioned 50s shape (but tiny) like this:

…and then she opens up to something more cabbagey like this:

…and then finally she becomes utterly dishevelled, like this:

…but all this happens all at the same time, so it almost looks like three different rose cultivars on one plant:

My mother has told me about something called Uncle Tom’s Rose Tonic - a Peter Beales recommended product - that I’ve ordered despite the eye-watering price tag. I’m going to be feeding all my roses with this. I should also draw your attention to this post from Butter Wakefield on the range of products that she uses and recommends. She likes to start feeding as early as mid February with an application of organic, topical multi-purpose feed, and she continues feeding every two-to-three weeks alternating between a maxi crop seaweed feed and an organic liquid feed by Neudorff.

The beautiful garden of Ricky and Jenny Raworth in Twickenham is a rose heaven. I once asked Jenny what her rose secret was and she simply said “We feed them”.

I wish very much that it would rain but I’m not going to bang on about it. Obviously I don’t wish it to rain on Chelsea, which I am so looking forward to seeing. Are any of you going? Please do tell me what you’re looking forward to seeing and which are your favourite bits? And tell me about the best party you’ve ever been to, and WHY it was the best….? And tell me about your favourite rose too?

x Laetitia