Hazel collected the vital sign-off slip from Tatton today to confirm that we had cleared our plot down to bare earth. It’s all over bar the photos, the recollections and hopefully some future visitors to the garden.

So now it’s back to the proper business of running the nursery and garden and preparing for our second NGS day on the 5th August. As ever, there are plants to weed and pot on, and new plants to bring out, but my thoughts are already shifting to next year. Debbie has cleared and cleaned the big greenhouse so I’ve started collecting seed and cuttings in earnest. This is where the heart lies – spotting a plant I want more of, eyeing it up for material, watching it to maturity and catching the plant just at the moment when it is ready. It’s a weakness, a passion, an instinct and a steadily increasing capability. I can tell you exactly where there is a single Astrantia maxima seedhead, now flopped and nearly at ground level – another week and it will be mine. In another border there is a solitary Meconopsis ‘Fertile Blue Group’ seedhead. That needs to mature for a few more weeks, but I check on it every day nonetheless.

I know I will end up with more plants than I can possibly use in some cases and frustrating failures in others. If the Dictamnus seeds that I collected earlier this week germinate I will be thrilled, if the Pulsatilla double red seeds come true to the parent I will be ecstatic. And this is what it’s all about – challenge, success, failure, experimentation and finally new knowledge.

I have to send a single photo to the RHS on Monday to represent the garden. A close-up would be easy (the aforementioned Astrantia maxima below, for instance?), a vista is much harder. I’ll send this one if I can’t summon up a better one by Monday.

July 27, 2007