Black stemmed cow parsley

It is glorious weather so this post will be short as there is a lot of weeding still to do and, now that we are almost into May, a lot of daylight to do it by.

This photo is of Anthriscus sylvestris "ravenswing", a black stemmed cow parsley recommended by Sarah Raven in her book The Bold and Brilliant Garden. It is a big improvement on the general cow parsley which covers the verges here. Now I love cow parsley - there is no finer sight than verges of cow parsley fluff with the last of the pink campion and a few bluebells - but it is not a garden plant.

Ravenswing has daintier flowers which seem to almost sparkle against the dark red leaves and stems. It does self sow but does it very gently (not something you could say of the wild cow parsley) and is a couple of weeks earlier into flower.

It also doesn't seem to have the rank smell of cow parsley when cut and looks beautiful in a vase mixed with black and white columbines like "Magpie" and "Guinness".

I am looking at wild flowers a lot this week - one of the things that we want to do is create a couple of meadow patches here - one in front of the house will be flagrantly based on the entrance to Great Dixter and I will use all sorts of things there to try and create that million flowers type tapestry effect. The other will be in the sloping field and I want to be much more careful there.

I read a lot of books about wildflower meadows over the winter and found that I should really be trying to get very, very local seed to create my patch - the general seed mixes are seemingly not ideal as they bring in slightly different genetic pools into the area. This is seemingly the case even if they are British or even Scottish mixes.

I want to do this properly so I am now collecting seed from an area of 5 miles around the house - we grew some hawksbit last year and I have some baby primroses in plugs. I have my eye on campion and water avens in the lane which should have seed next month.

It will be slow - no quick fix of buying a bag of damp meadow mix - but I think we can take our time. (Euan will laugh at this as I am the most ridiculously impatient person)

Warning - this post contains a photo of a dead mole.

Our approach to wildlife is very simple - if it was here before we were then we have to learn to live with it.

Hence we put up with hares (that nibble hedges), voles (that tunnel under growing plants), pheasants (that eat bulbs) and yes, moles (that turn the grass paths and beds into ripples). While most farmers I know are keen on wildlife and do a lot to nurture it, this latter foible is regarded with hilarity (and I suspect a little annoyance) by our farming neighbours who enthusiastically annihilate all moles with a variety of horrible methods. It is of course for a reason, while a mole to me means an unsightly hump and some nice friable soil to steal as potting compost, to our neighbours it means ruined silage as the soil mixes with the harvested grass.

Minou obviously feels the same. The photo above shows Minou the foreman instructing Jasmine to "keep digging" for a mole that he could obviously hear under the ground. The photo was taken at the beginning of a week of frenzied activity - cat issuing instructions, Jasmine digging until her claws hurt and the mole cheekily coming up behind them with 8 fresh hills. This took up most of their waking hours from last Monday.


This morning this is what we found on the lawn - a beautiful sheeny black mole with 2 telltale puncture marks on his neck. Mr Mole is no more. Minou is a great hunter (he usually catches 2 of everything, one for himself, one for Jasmine the sidekick) but is scrupulous about hunting when hungry and then eating his catch. This was something quite different - he just knew that mole was laughing at him.

I am very sad - it is very easy to be sentimental about such a stunningly beautiful animal. Katie had to be persuaded that a dead mole is not a suitable soft toy.

Shop - 27th April

We are very tulipy today - a medly of orange tulips, including the lily tulip Ballerina which smells like fresias, tall apricot "dordogne", deep purple "recreado", yellow parrot "texas gold" and the giganitically tall cream "purissima".

There are also baby moon narcissi and some anenomes, late hyacinths and love lies bleeding.

Here is Jasmine sunbathing and waiting for customers to pay her attention.

Tomorrow I shall be at Baldernock Garden Club's annual plant sale in Baldernock Church Hall, Balmore Road 11-1. There is usually a very good plant stall so I am taking my money. here are details of the garden club.

Sweetpeas

There are certain things that I like cooking - mayonnaise, sour dough bread, handmade pasta - that I think appeal to me simply because few other people do them from scratch. At the moment I have a pig's head simmering on the stove to make brawn. All these things are straightforward and easy, and only time consuming if you are not already at home.

I am a bit like that about the things I grow as well - I like the straightforward things that no-one else bothers with doing. The flowers that I get the most pleasure from growing are sweet peas - and I suspect that a lot of that is because I sow the seeds in the autumn, overwinter them and am then planting out great plants in 2 litre pots in April, rather than the rather weedy plants available in the garden centre.

By popular demand (Claire) I have a limited number of pots for sale tomorrow at the van- they are 2 plants to a 2 litre pot, £3.50 or 3 pots for £9.

First come first served.

My ideal May meal - fresh eggs from our chickens, home made mayonnaise, salad from the garden and (perhaps) some asparagus from my patch with a bunch of the first sweet peas on the table.

Rain. . . .

We have been having the very best kind of rain - gentle even warm rain that smells sweet and sinks right down to the roots of the plants. The garden is growing at a fantastic rate - both plants that should be there and weeds that shouldn't - I swear you can see the leaves extending by the hour.

I love working outside in this kind of rain - you can't feel yourself getting wet and the earth smells wonderful.

We don't water plants here - well they get watered in when they are first planted and again after 5 days if there has been no rain, but after that, not a drop. My theory is that they get better root systems if they have to make an effort to get water and that they encounter more nutrients in the soil.

Having said that, it is not that hard a test as we are a wet part of the country - but we had the same heatwave as everyone else last summer and the flowers didn't droop or mildew.

Euan is busy designing a system of siphons and water barrels to take rainwater from the house and greenhouse roofs to various points in the garden, tunnel and field. Soon I hope to not need the hose at all.

The photo is of a self seeded Cerinthe major.

Planting dahlias

I meant to do this post earlier in the year to encourage people to buy dahlia tubers - but then we sold out of them at the CL fair and I forgot until today when I planted up my own tubers.



Dahlia tubers look like mis-shaped potatoes grouped by strings around a central stalk. Every tuber must have a piece of stalk or it will not grow.




The shoots will develop at the join between the hangy down bits and the stem.

Plant the tuber with the stem uppermost into a large pot of ordinary potting compost.

Fill up the pot but leave the top of the stem above the surface of the compost.

Water well and put somewhere warm. I have put mine on a heated mat in the tunnel but on a smaller scale anywhere warm will work. If you put them into the dark make sure you check for sprouts every day or they will become weak and lanky.

Within a couple of weeks shoots will begin to develop. Only when this happens should you begin to water. Keep the plants inside until the frosts have passed and then gradually get them used to outside temperatures by letting them be outside for increasing periods of time

Tulips - how to stop them going bendy

One of the questions I get asked again and again is how to stop tulips going bendy in the vase. So here we go!

The bendiness is caused by 2 different things. A bendy stem is usually caused by an airlock in the stem, preventing the water from going right the way up. A bending over head is usually due to the tulip continuing to grow after it has been cut which along with the increasing weight of the head, leads it to bend over.

To cure the air lock - take your tulips, make sure the stems are bendy and lay them side by side, all heads level, on a piece of brown paper - them roll it into a tight straight parcel and bind it well with string - see photo.

Put the kettle on and pour an inch of boiling water into a mug, cut 1/2 and inch off the bottom of the stems and put them at a slight angle into the mug. You should see an air bubble come out of the bottom of the stem. Put them immediately into a vase of tepid water and wait 2 hours before unwrapping - they should be set in a straight position. This can be done both with tulips just bought and ones that have done that croquet hoop thing in the vase.

If you want to cure the twisting stem of the growing tulip (and I must say I like the elegant writhing of the parrot tulips) you can destroy the growing plate of the flower by repeatedly inserting a needle in and out of the stem, just below the flower. Seemingly people used to be employed just to do this in stately homes. The tendency of tulips to continue growing means that they didn't work well in the very ordered symmetrical arrangements of the C19th as within a couple of days they would be poking out an inch above the rest of the flowers.

Green Gallery Opening

Sally and I set up our stall outside the new Green Gallery this lunchtime - the sun was shining, the birds were singing, you could feel heat bouncing of the pale pink of the outbuilding wall.

By the time the Gallery opened at 2 our basky wee corner had somehow turned into an arctic wind tunneland we were laughingly innappropriate in our dress.

That aside, the afternoon was a good one. It was certainly very busy - for a half hour it was like that episode in Jimmy's Farm where they have to have stewards helping people reverse miles down single track roads and comandeer fields to park in.


The photographs are of Carneval de Nice tulips, a spring window box with muscari 'fascination', narcissi 'baby moon' and tulip 'gavota', and a cow in the sculpture garden - look at those eyelashes!

Green Gallery Opening and a temporary addition to our family.

Today was a day of rest - I just haven't got down to anything - just drifted from one half completed task to another.

I began potting on lavender cuttings which will be for sale at Drymen School's Fun day on May 12. The lavender stall will be manned and managed by the school's eco board and all proceeds will be going to pay for improvements to the school playground. I have agreed to nurture the cuttings until the sale. What a responsibility!

Tomorrow afternoon I shall have a stall at the opening of the Green Gallery- this is quite exciting. The Green Gallery used to be in Aberfoyle and always had a good mix of art and crafts. Its owner, Becky Walker has a keen eye for the kind of paintings, sculptures and ceramics that actually work in a home. I have never been in the position to buy a painting (though I have coveted a few) but over the years I have bought some lovely pottery and ceramics. Just before Christmas the Gallery moved to Becky's home in Buchlyvie - the Christmas Exhibition was in her actual home, a beautiful Victorian sandstone house with wonderful views to the hills. Now the gallery has moved to its proper place, a converted coach house in the grounds. I saw the space yesterday and it looks lovely - calm, clear yet domestic. There is also a sculpture garden I am keen to explore as getting pleasing sculpture for outside can be difficult. The opening is tomorrow 2-5 and all are welcome. More details of the exhibition are on the Green Gallery website.


This is Tim - a 12 year old Jack Russell. Tim's owner died last night so he has come to stay with us until he can be found a new owner. So far he seems to be a lovely dog - he and Jasmine are rubbing along fine and the cats are ignoring him.

He is used to being the only dog in the house with a single owner so I was a bit concerned about how he would take to us. So far, so good though he is still at the compulsive wandering around stage. His owner was not in great health for a while I am told so he didn't get many walks - his wandering sounds like someone drumming their long fingernails in impatience.

If anyone knows of someone with space in their home and heart for what seems to be a great wee dog - call me on 01360 660 903.

Best Day Ever!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We opened for the season this morning at 10.30. We had customers arriving from 9.30, calling in on their way back from vegetable shopping at France Farm. From then until 4 it just didn't stop. I am overwhelmed with people's support. One lovely woman travelled all the way from Broxburn having seen us at the CL Fair.

I was worried as the hot weather (see never satisfied) brought on some of the tulips and all of the fritillaries too fast so the garden looks beautiful but they are too far out to sell. Also deer got in while I was at the Country Living Fair (who did leave that gate open?) and ate over 800 tulip bulbs in one fantastic feast.

From Wednesday I have been prowling the garden. Would there be any flowers to pick? Would there be any customers? Would anyone want what I have.

But Sally and I found that when we looked, there were rather a lot of flowers out there. We filled the buckets with them and then was a rush of making up and wrapping all day. We have NO FLOWERS left and the stall is a mess of snipped stems and stripped leaves.

I am exhausted but very, very happy. Tonight we drink gin!

The photo is of Carneval de Nice - a double tulip, masses of raspberry ripple leaves forming a ball of a flower. It looks great in pots but is very bad at reblooming the next year.

Talk, talk . . .

Tonight I have been at Buchlyvie Garden Club talking about growing cut flowers. It was good fun. I was actually a bit nervous - I was using a borrowed power point projector and worried that something would go wrong with the connections. I can use it if it works, I am lost if something goes wrong.

In the end it was something more mundane that caused problems with the visuals. The screen, usually stored in the gents loos, was missing and we were faced with the prospect of having to project the images onto a mustard coloured woodchip papered wall. Lovely.

With 2 minutes to go before the start the missing screen was discovered . . . locked in the WRI (Women's Rural Institute) cupboard. Is this inter-club rural rivalry?

The flowers in the blue bucket are Narcissus "geranium", one of the longest lasting and most fragrant narcissi- a Sarah Raven recommendation . I picked a few buckets full to take along and sell to raise funds for The Tullochan Trust.

A post about post . . .

As a couple of people responded to my comment yesterday about the cost of postage I thought that I would open out the topic a bit and ask for some feedback both from other small mail order businesses and from people who buy mail order.

What can small businesses do about the cost of posting things?

I do a mailing two or three times a year - at the start of the season, sometimes at the end of the season and before Christmas. Ideally I would like to cut this down to one mailing a year but I do feel that, from a business point of view, a clutch of pretty postcards in the hand is better than any number of e-mails. They can be stuck to a fridge, handed on to friends etc. etc. . . .I hope. Am I right? Do people relish getting a bright hand addressed envelope (Or might they be disappointed that it isn't a birthday card with a fat cheque inside?)

There is also the issue of paper. I use recycled paper for all letters and print-outs but I do not use recycled envelopes as I couldn't source them in bright colours and I could not afford the cost of recycled postcards. This is not as good as it should be. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Then there is the issue of mailing out orders. We thought long and hard about this with the website and decided on a flat fee as, when I am buying things, I like to be able to do a transaction in one go without faffing about with e-mails (spot the stressed mother). We pitched this at £4.95, sort of on a par with Cath Kidston, Plumo or the White Company which are the type of catalogues my customers tend to read.

The average actual cost of the mailings I have done so far has been £7.50 (and that is postage, not boxes or tape) so really I can't afford to bring it down any lower. None has been under the £4.95.

What is other people's experience of this - do you look at the postage and think mmmmm, maybe I'll pop into the shops in town? Are people more au fait with postage costs in our post e-bay world? Should I be conning couriers into thinking I am a big company?

That aside - I am on a high today - the first batch of letters went out yesterday, would have arrived with people today, and already I have had phonecalls from a high percentage of last year's subscription customers re-ordering for this year. If I could work out how to insert one of those smily face icons, I would.

Prize Draw

We had a small prize draw at the Country Living Fair - The prize was this basket of gardening goodies - kneeler, soap, giant fork and trowel and a set of aluminium labels.

It was won by Wendy Waller of Edzell and (due to holidays) will be dispatched to her today.

Today I am stuffing envelopes with my new postcards and an announcement that we are open from Friday. Surrounded by bright green envelopes, it makes me realise how much paper, time and money is spent on mailings. This was partly the reason for the prize draw. To enter we had to be given an e-mail address - not so that we can spam people - just to make it easier to let them know when the season begins and ends and what we are doing for Christmas.

Time shortage being what it is, I haven't put the names onto the computer yet . . . . so much for efficiency.

And then they were back on the bus

Well the Easter school holidays are over - and goodness they went quickly. The children were picked up this morning at 8.30 by Alan on the school bus and we are back into routine.

Judging from most of the mothers I meet, I am unusual in actually enjoying the school holidays. I am definitely not a morning person (another reason why I am not a conventional florist - who knows what I would come back with from a 5am flower market) and, though I tend to be up and about quite early, I am not quite all there until 9.30 at the earliest. The morning routine of "get your shoes on . . .get your shoes on . . .GET YOUR SHOES ON !! !" is not my finest hour.

So when all that can be abandoned in favour of free ranging scruffy, layabout kids I am happy. And the fine weather this year has made it a breeze - the children were happy playing outside doing Blytonish things. They produced a local newspaper, they did some elaborate dog training with jumps, they made a veg patch, they just lay for hours on the trampoline reading. We even managed to wean our younger daughter away from the television.

I felt like a really good Mum. For once it all worked - I could keep a benign eye on them from my weeding, we ate when we were hungry and there was no running about from piano to swimming to Brownies. Mind you, you should have seen the colour of the bathwater last night.

And we are all beginning to get back some colour after the peely wally milk bottle colour of a Scottish winter.

Drymen Primary School garden

Yesterday we were at Drymen primary School as part of a parents task force to sort out the beds in the playground.

When the school was built flower beds were incorporated into the playground. Unfortunately they were filled with concrete and rubble under a thin layer of soil (Why do they do this?????). They were also flush with the tarmac surface - encouraging children to run straight over them in pursuit of a ball.

As places for the children to grow anything they were a disaster - puddles lay on the surface in the rain, and they baked solid in the sun. Apart from daffodils and weeds nothing ever grew.
Last year's planting efforts were even more dismal than usual as someone came along with a spade and stole most of the plants. The CCTV which was installed after other vandalism will hopefully stop this happening again.

The children at the school are all keen on the idea of planting things and particularly in making their playground a haven for wildlife. It has been a shame that their efforts have been doomed to failure, through no fault of their own.

So over the Easter holidays a group of parents got busy, Colin Campbell created wooden raised beds from wood supplied by Gilmour and Aitken timber yard, and yesterday we had a grand weeding session, finally filling up the new raised beds with very fine top soil.

One of the beds was planted up with salvaged plants with some additions from here. Hopefully the children will have lots of ideas as to what they would like to see in the other 4.

Really wild . . .

Sometimes I think that I give the wrong impression of our land. I concentrate in posts about the flat bit near the house, the bit that forms the cutting garden, the bit which takes up most of my time. I rarely mention the rest.

In reality we have about 4 acres here - around about 1 acre is flat - the house is built on this bit and we have put up a polytunnel and lots and lots of raised beds.

The rest of the land slopes behind this down across a small tussocky field then a swampy field and finally through a bluebell wood down to the Altquhir burn.

This whole area is completely untouched and has been for at least 20 years - it is where I go to be quiet and is why we bought the house. Today Zoe and her friend Jan went down to the woods to play on the tree swing - sitting on the river bank they watched 2 herons fishing in the river. It is a very special place.

It is at this time of year that the fields begin to come alive with flowers - dog violets under the hawthorn trees, cowslips in the grass banking between the deer fences, kingcups in the swamp. Soon there will be cow parsley and scabious, meadowsweet and elderflowers and bluebells, bluebells everywhere. Nothing I grow really matches up to these.

My favourite thing at the moment is to lie in the grass under a hawthorn tree looking up through the old twisted branches with their new fresh green shoots.

This is my 300th post - doesn't time fly.

Thinking blogger awards

A pink bee tagged me as one of her thinking blogger awards and now I have to pass on 5 recommendations for blogs which make me think.

Normally I try to avoid any of these tagging things - they are a bit chain lettery and I won't pass them on even though I am very aware that it makes me sound very pompous. This is slightly different as it is a chance to mention blogs that make me think and change my life in some way.

Fairly recently someone told me that they saw their blogging as a way of finding friends. To be frank my (internal) reaction was that she needed to get out more and find some friends where she could see the whites of their eyes. However, thinking today about who to chose for a mention here has been a bit like the way I chose my friends so there you go.

I am notoriously picky about chosing friends and I have ended up with an eclectic mix, but the thing that binds them together is that they all have opinions (often completely opposite to mine) and an ability to articulate them well. So that is how I have selected these blogs.

First the two blogs that I check out every day for a bit of what I would call the domestic political - intelligent women with distinctive voices and few hostages - Heather at Eie Flud and Lynn at Gigi Bird.

Next El who is doing the same in rural America with her brilliantly titled Fast Grow the Weeds. I read a lot of American blogs to try to counteract the anti-Americanism of our media that equates all Americans with George Bush. El writes like all the cultured, caring, aware Americans that I have been fortunate enough to meet and work with over the years. Not a Hummer or a Big Mac in sight.

Then there is a blog I came across by accident a few days ago while googling for fair trade cut flowers Crap at the Environment - I don't know how much they post - the strapline is "Saving the environment despite not being very good at it" and there were a number of postings that were both very funny and made me think.

Finally the posts at Garden Rant are all very opinionated and bump you out of complacency- I particularly enjoy Michelle's posts - she also posts at Sign of the Shovel but that is a bit erratic at the mo.

There are lots of others but these are my top 5.

The season is about to start - van open from next Friday, bouquets from now. The photo is of a bouquet that went out yesterday evening.

Asparagus

My Dad is a very good gardener. He learned from his father and he grows excellent fruit and vegetables on what really amounts to a sand dune in East Lothian.

He remains slightly amazed that I have ended up gardening for a living as I showed neither aptitude nor interest as a child.

I am putting this photograph in for him as he is an occasional reader of this blog.

My Dad grows exceptional asparagus, one of my favourite foods. My birthday is in May, at the height of the asparagus season and I have always associated my father's asparagus bed with my birthday - I have always felt that he grows it especially for me in the way that he plants masses of strawberries for my Mum.

Of course this birthday treat has become more of a problem since I left home and insisted on living outside East Lothian, so a couple of years ago Dad grew me some asparagus plants, and then, when they were ready to plant out, he came over for the day and made me an asparagus bed.

I chose to site the bed near to the house so that I can see when it needs weeding - and here is a picture of it - look Dad, weed free and there is an asparagus shoot!

Family weddings

Yesterday was a family day - we headed over to my parents in East Lothian for a day of catching up and bracing walks along Gullane beach.

We also fitted in a visit to see the church and hotel where my brother Stephen and his fiancee Helen will be getting married in August.

I shall be arranging the flowers so it was a relief that they are both lovely venues - full of light and air. I always dread wedding receptions in those dead corporate type venues where the flowers have to fight against the polystyrene tiles on the roof and the rails left over from audio visual presentations.

At the moment I am trying to build up a visual portfolio of month by month ideas for weddings and events - on actual wedding days there never seems to be enough time for taking anything other than record shots.

The photo shows Zoe modelling a bridesmaid headdress, a half band of individually wired hyacinth florets, each with a couple of amber glass beads in the centre. She looked very, very pretty in it practicing to be a bridesmaid!

Seed sowing

Today has seen the beginning of our seed sowing. I used to sow seeds far too early - champing at the bit in February - forcing seeds to germinate and then having to nurse the seedlings through frosty March and April.

Now I sow only 6 weeks before the last frost (here that is Mid May) so that the seedlings will fill a 9 cm pot just at the right time to go straight out into the garden.

I sow most of my hardy and half hardy annuals into coir jiffy pellets - they are low in nutrients so ideal for seed germination. I line up the pellets in old wooden seedtrays (I bought a load of 1950s seed trays that came from an old nursery - I use most of them but some are available for sale) - 35 to a tray and then put them into a poly bag in the boiler cupboard until they germinate. After germination they go into the tunnel so that they can get a lot of light. If it is going to be frosty I cover them with fleece, but otherwise they get no coddling.

The main problem with the coir is that they dry out quickly - one of the reasons that I squeeze them into the seed trays rather than using wider spaced plastic trays they come with - so you have to be on hand with water a lot. This is also why I pot on - into 9cm pots - as soon as I can see roots.

Euan and the girls are in charge of the vegetable plots this year - so yesterday they got weeding.

Presents for my girls

One of the important reasons that I began my business was that I wanted to be around for my girls. Zoe was 3 and Katie newborn when it all began and the business has grown with them - finally getting more serious when Katie hopped on to the bus to school last year.

I wanted to be able to go to all the school shows and to help with the school garden. I wanted to have them wandering about aimlessly in the sunshine during holidays.

It all sounds idyllic doesn't it? The down side for them is that I may work from home, but I do work. Running a small business is all consuming and at busy times they don't get enough attention.



It got particularly bad around the Country Living Fair - I missed a parents' evening, the house was hemmed in with boxes of stock and they were farmed out to a series of friends after school - so I decided to get them something as a thank you for their tolerance.

I have long admired Manda at Treefall design's sock puppies so I decided to get a couple of them - as you can see from the photos the girls are delighted.

The pups came beautifully wrapped with the most gorgeous gift tags so thank you very much Manda, beautiful!

Peblo v. Jasmine - an update

This photo is of Peblo, survivor of the fox attack, frequent flier, and determined free ranger.

Up until Tuesday, Peblo would shriek and squawk when she met Jasmine - running around like a particularly interesting feathery ball - with dog in pursuit until I rescued her.

On Tuesday I was on the telephone and didn't get out there as quickly as usual. Peblo, fed up with the chase, stopped, turned on Jasmine and pecked her sharply on the nose. Now Jasmine is largely ignoring her- chicken, what chicken? - she is obviously not used to being attacked by her toys.

I suspect it will not last so I have bought a copy of The Practical Dog Whisperer as suggested and so far I am very impressed by the simplicity and humanity of the approach. I will report back

Snakehead fritillaries

I have a particular soft spot for snakeshead fritillaries.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh's iconic watercolour of fritillaries was the best selling postcard at the Hunterian Art Gallery where I was a curator pre-flower growing. The watercolour is a fine, accurate botanical drawing with a tension between pure representation and the checkerboarding pattern which fits so well into Mackintosh's textile and furniture designs.

Inspired by the glamour of the flower it was the first bulb that I had the courage to plant in drifts - I bought 200 bulbs and put them into the small lawn in our first garden. Every single one bloomed, and if you lay down in the grass and blinkered out the flower and vegetable beds you could believe that you were in a meadow.

They were also the first flower that I sold - to a flower shop in Glasgow.

Snakehead fritillaries get their name, I suspect, from the way that the growing stem writhes around on the ground. Like the snowflakes I mentioned a couple of posts ago, they like damp conditions - ideally a spot which doesn't dry out too much in the summer. They colonise water meadows and are ideally suited to a patch of damp grass. I grow them in patches in the cutting borders and they are now self sowing with thin blades of new bulbs clustering round the parents. The only pest is pheasants - which love to eat the bulbs - but they will only do this before they start into growth so fine netting over the clump during the winter deters them.

Fritillaries make very good cut flowers - as long as you remember to dip the cut ends into boiling water for a couple of seconds and as long as you top up their vase regularly. They are the thirstiest flower I know.

I prefer then, one or two stems to a vase, on their own against the light. They are one of those flowers that repays careful study. I keep meaning to have a go at drawing them.

Herbs and health

Tomorrow is my annual check up at the endocrine clinic in Glasgow. I am not looking forward to it, partly because it will be a waste of a sunny day but mainly because I dislike the attitude of the medical consultants that I deal with.

There is a tendency, particularly I believe in teaching hospitals, to treat results rather than patients. I have an illness which is fairly rare so I have had hundreds of tests - and I find that as soon as results come back the doctors stop listening to me and start checking numbers.

About six months after I began steroid replacement I read about a herbal remedy - rhodiola rosea - which is meant to support adrenal function and give more energy. I thought that I would give it a try and found the boost in energy to be amazing - I no longer had to spend the afternoon in bed in order to be up for the children coming home from school. At my next consultation I mentioned the rhodiola to the consultant and he completely dismissed it as though I had said that I had taken up witchcraft.

It occurred to me that if the rhodiola was having such a big effect, it should be being properly managed by a medical person. So I looked up medical herbalists in the yellow pages and called up Jean Riddell who practises in Helensburgh and Drymen.

The difference between Jean's approach and that of the hospital doctors has been amazing - she is interested in my long term quality of life rather than a set of figures and has addressed all sorts of issues, things which I had not worked out were connected to my lack of steroid production. We have been working towards maximizing my adrenal function and reducing my reliance on steroids. We have been able to take down the steroid dose which I am on by 3/4 which is far better for my general health - I look less like I have stored my lunch in my cheeks.

Yet I know that tomorrow the doctor I see will not be at all interested in the treatment I receive from Jean and will dismiss it all in an arrogant and insular manner. Euan's advice is to breeze in, tell him that I am keeping very well (which is the truth) and then breeze out again. I will endeavour to do just that and then take advantage of my time in Glasgow to hit the delis.

I would advise anyone who has a chronic condition - even something fairly minor - to go and see a medical herbalist - the first meeting is usually free and I have found the benefits to be amazing.

Snowflakes

The warm weather is certainly bringing the plants on quickly in the garden this week.
This photo is of a clump of Leucojum aestivum "Gravetye Giant" which is flowering 3 weeks earlier than last year.

Leucojum is also known as the summer snowflake or Loddon lily and looks from a distance rather like a snowdrop in size, colour and grace. This variety - named in 1924 by the garden writer William Robinson after his home, Gravetye Manor - is about twice the height of the normal species and is super-model elegant.

It is a very useful bulb to have growing in Scotland as it likes having wet feet - seemingly you can even plant it as a marginal plant in a pond. It would look wonderful reflected in the water.

It also - surprise surprise - makes an excellent and long lasting cut flower. I first saw it is a magazine article about the florist Shane Connolly where he had about 30 stems simply displayed in a pottery crock. It is so elegant on its own, it doesn't really need any other embellishment.

Though one clump is flowering this week, I expect others to hold on until we open the van again on 20th.

Chicken and dog problem - advice please

Right from the beginning I have had a clear vision of what our garden will become - what looks like sticks in a field to everyone else are, to me, stately hornbeam hedges flanking paths, what is a bit of a dip in a swampy copse is, to me, an amphitheatre seating area surrounded by coloured dogwoods. And so on . . .come back in ten years.

An important part of this vision is free ranging chickens. On a visit to Sarah Raven's garden at Perch Hill Farm in East Sussex I saw a clutch of bantam eggs amongst the cabbages - and that is what I want.

But we have made a grave mistake in the plan.

We used to have free ranging chickens. Our first flock lived in houses at the top of the field. They had the run of the place and were blissfully happy, following me round and rooting for worms. Blissfully happy, that is until all but one were eaten by a rampaging pack of young foxes which struck just before dusk.

So, fearful for the safety of the one remaining and intent on getting more chickens, we built a chicken run near to the house and this is where they have been living. They are happy enough I suppose but it isn't the same life at all and though the run is large - about 4m x 6m - they quickly turn it into mud.

During the year that the chickens have been in the run we bought a dog. Jasmine, scruffy unclipped miniature schnauzer, is wonderful, affectionate, an indispensable part of the family. And a chicken chaser. She doesn't bite them - if they stop running she'd not quite sure why the game has stopped - but they don't know that she won't snap their heads off and I don't know that they won't have heart attacks.

As the chickens are in the run it is only when they fly over the netting that they meet Jasmine. But ideally I would like to give them back their freedom, let them pootle about the garden on their own.

Does anyone have any suggestions - do you think it is too late to try and train our mutt?

Today we are Scotland on Sunday newspaper's "Healthy Planet Tip of the Week".