The five minute alpine trough 🌱
Hello friends!
Here are my five minute forays this week:
Monday: It’s beautiful. It’s warm. I go out with no particular mission in mind…just a desire to be outside. As I walk out a huge group of birds swoop past me and dive into the ivy that coats the entire west-facing wall of my garden. They’re so fast I don’t even catch the merest glimpse…just the thrrrrrrrrump of the wings. Are they wrens? Wrens like to hide. I’m frustrated, as I knew I would be, by the lack of coverage on the back wall - the one next to which I planted three climbing hydrangeas two years ago and which are still bare. The hydrangeas are doing their best - they flowered in their first year, and they put on lovely new growth each spring; just not LOTS of it. I did a bit of reading on this, and found that they like to be watered lots…and I’m not surprised. Living with your roots next to masonry cannot be the best place to find food and water. So I water well, and resolve to be more vigilant with the hosepipe in future. As I do this, I notice the fairy lights that I put up two years ago, and which have long since ceased to work. They looked so damn pretty wound around the trunks of five lollypop hornbeams but they’re an eyesore now and need to go. I tug at one of the cables. It is really tight, and I realise the trunks must have expanded. This makes me feel terror of strangulation and I quickly remove all the lights, thinking about how I might replicate this effect another year but in a more sustainable way.
Tuesday: Oh god, must I actually recount this to you poor lot again? Yes, I had to go up to Primrose Hill again, where I knock on an anonymous door in a very posh road and get my hair hoovered and heat-treated and combed through in search of lice. THE. GLAMOUR. NEVER. ENDS. In the evening I have to comb through my daughter’s hair in the same way (because I’m way too tight to spend £200 getting HER hair hoovered in Primrose Hill). All of which to say, no gardening.
Wednesday: It was raining when I woke, and it’s still raining, pretty hard, with no sign of abating. I drag my wet bottom off to my local massive garden centre to shop for two new containers for my lilac trees. They’ve been pot-bound for a year or so now, and I can’t stand it any longer. I want terracotta but there is only a single pot large enough, so I plump for two of those indian dolly bin things… probably only useful as cachepots but at this stage, in the rain and the mud, I am past caring…and oh, I can lift two of them up with my little finger so BONUS!! I also buy five little alpine plants because I want to make a trough (recipe for which below).
Thursday: I finish my alpine trough, pilfering some sempervivum from another pot and sprinkling gravel - see below for the full lowdown on how to make this. I also find 15 small plastic pots and fill them with the seedlings of argyranthemum that I ordered from Sarah Raven here. The seedlings are beautiful, The packaging is not. I decide to make a list of nurseries and garden centres in the UK who do plastic-free mail order. I put a message out on twitter, and by the end of the day I have a grand total of THREE nurseries. I can’t believe this is the case. If you lot know of any garden-related retailers doing plastic-free mail order (doesn’t have to be UK based) please do let me know and I’ll add them to the list, which I will share with everyone so we can shop without worrying that we’re going to end up with a mountain of single-use plastic.
Friday: It rains. And rains. And rains. We do an easter egg hunt in the rain with neighbours. And we drink prosecco. I am drunk by 5. Getting drunk in the middle of the day is a good way to avoid a hangover. You just have to GO TO BED SOBER... We drink tea and eat take-out sushi in front of the telly. No gardening.
How to make an alpine trough
Alpine pans and troughs are the loveliest presents (to yourself or anyone else) and make a wonderful addition to any outside table. They are extremely low-maintenance and this one took me ten minutes to make. The trick with alpines is to think about where they live, and then replicate that.
You need:
A wide shallow container, or a proper alpine trough like this
Some broken pieces of terracotta or pebbles or old polystyrene blocks for drainage
Some broken pieces of terracotta or slate, or some shard-like stones. Think SCREE.
Some multi-purpose compost
Some horticultural grit
Some alpine plants. Mine were: Armeria, Sedum, Veronica and Erysimum. Bought at the garden centre and wrestled from their plastic which I left ceremoniously at the counter.
Some sempervivums (house-leeks) to fill in the gaps
Method.
Mix the compost about two thirds compost and one third grit.
Keep thinking about your mountainside and how craggy and free-draining it is. Add your drainage to the bottom of your container
Fill the container with the gritty compost and push in some craggy bits of terracotta or slate - get them facing the same way. Use this for inspiration!
Now squish in your plants randomly, hugging your shards of pottery slightly, and spilling over the sides a bit.
Now add some sempervivums. If you’re buying them new, then make sure there’s a hen and some chicks (little baby sempervivums attached to their mother) You can detach these and plant them separately - burying the ‘umbilical cord’ gently in the compost and leaving the rosettes proud of the soil. Space them evenly around, so they can creep slowly and fill in the gaps.
Water the pot and finally top-dress it with small horticultural grit or gravel. This will keep the crown of each plant dry and prevent it rotting. If needs be, gently pull the plant upwards so that the gravel gets right in around each rosette and crown.
And one last thing:
I've been reading a book (I KNOW!....who ACTUALLY AM I????) I rarely read now, because of time restraints. I use audible instead, but I do read books that people give to me...a little bit each evening...takes me forever. Anyway, I just finished Kate Bradbury's "The Bumblebee Flies Anyway" and it's been a bit of a game changer for me. It's a powerful testament to the fact that if you want to enthuse and persuade, your very best weapon is a PASSIONATE PERSON. Wildlife has always interested me...of course it has...I'm a gardener, but I've never really made the time to find things out, and watch, and listen, and distinguish which bee is which, and what that bird is. Reading this book has provoked a real shift in the way that I garden, and enjoy my outside space. Every decision I make about the garden is now focused not just around myself and my family, but also the wildlife to whom my garden provides shelter, sustenance etc. I've downloaded a birding app and I'll be cutting my lawn at different heights this year (more of which anon)...and basically the adventure continues. Hopefully I'll be able to teach my kids some of this stuff so it doesn't take them forty odd years to get the bug. You can pre-order the book here, and I recommend it heartily.
All the good things, as usual
x Laetitia
Daily posts on instagram
You can find my books here and here (Sweet Peas for Summer is a bargain right now at only £2.99!)
Do you Pinterest? Is that even a verb? Anyway, I love it and you can find me here
I'm also on Twitter if you tweet