Tales from Awkward Hill

When I worked for the Evening Standard in London, our offices were opposite Kensington Church Street. At the other end of Kensington Church Street - at the Notting Hill end - was a restaurant called Kensington Place, which was a favourite lunch venue for Standard hacks. (Those were the days ...) On the way to Kensington Place, you passed the Churchill Arms pub, which has to be London's most beautiful hostelry. It's shut at the moment, of course, but normally it has the most spectacular display of hanging baskets I have ever seen. I always had to be dragged past it by colleagues who were less horticulturally obsessed.
I love hanging baskets, but I am useless at looking after them. I once bought one of those gadgets that raise and lower them so you can water them more easily, but even that didn't help. However, this year I have no excuse. I have all the time in the world to water, and even though my garden is shut to visitors, I can enjoy my hanging baskets and so can my neighb…

For gardeners, one of the most frustrating things about the lockdown are not the restrictions, but the lack of gardening kit. It's fantastic having time at home at this time of year, but not so fantastic when you can't get hold of compost, or aggregates, or even seeds.
Most of the big seed companies have been swamped with orders for vegetable seeds, and are struggling to cope. The local builder's merchant where I order things like soil conditioner and gravel has closed for the duration.
However, you can still buy plants. There are lots of small independent nurseries continuing to do mail order, mainly because they are run by just one or two people, who can run the business despite social distancing.
"Small is beautiful" is a theme of the coronavirus crisis here in the UK. The small shops have stepped up very quickly to meet demand. Our village post office and the trout farm shop, which usually make a lot of their money selling souvenirs to tourists, now stock tin…

My son is 30 today. We had planned to spend his birthday here in the Cotswolds, with his girlfriend and my daughter and his grandmother and whoever else wanted to come, but of course we can't. We are FaceTiming instead. Happy birthday, Rory!
I feel a bit sad about this, but I'm trying to stay cheerful. The family is all well, albeit spread out across southern England, and I don't really have much to complain about.
So I took myself into the garden this morning to see if any blossom had appeared yet. Boy, was it cold! The temperature is actually 8C (46F) but with a blustery north-east wind blowing, it feels more like -8C (17F). I had to keep scuttling back inside to get my fingers warm.
I always think I have two mature ornamental cherry trees in the garden, but in fact I inherited three. One has grown horizontally over the paddock next door after being crowded out for years by a horse chestnut and a beech, so it doesn't look as if it's actually in my garden. My nick…

How can staying at home take up so much time? I meant to post this yesterday, but didn't get round to it, thanks to various chores which took longer than expected. The UK is in lockdown because of the coronavirus, so when you go to the supermarket at the moment, the stores are only allowing so many customers in at a time, and spacing out the queue so people don't have to stand next to each other. As you enter the store, you're given a trolley by one of the staff, who has wiped it with hand sanitiser. At the checkout, the queue is spread out again to leave at least a metre between each customer. This is very sensible, but means a shopping trip takes three times as long as normal. Then I had to deliver shopping to the three people who asked me to pick stuff up for them because they are unable to leave the house. It was great to think I was doing my bit to help - I felt like the Pony Express! So here is the Bibury Gardening Club newsletter on growing tomatoes. I'm going to ca…

This climbing rose has been cut back hard on old stems each year to create this framework.
By George Blackwell, Bibury Gardening Club member Photographs and captions by Victoria Summerley
Now is the time of the year to prune your roses. Choose a sunny day, don a sturdy pair of gloves, find a pair of secateurs or loppers and face the thorny bushes.
1 Take a good look at the rose bush. Look for dead wood, plus any growth coming out of the rootstock. These should be removed.
2 Seek out last year’s growth. These will be the straight shoots with no side shoots.
3 A rose bush needs to be hard-pruned so first cut all growth down to 18” (45cms) from the ground.
4 Look at the centre of the bush. If it needs thinning out, only leave lastyear’sgrowth.
5 Now you are left with lastyear’sgrowth look for aneye bud on the outside of the stem.
6 Justabove the eye, cut off the top growth. Do this on all stems.


BEFORE: This newly planted rose is 'Peace', a hybrid tea. Note the top shoot on the right-hand s…