Our columnist Nigel Slater on the amazement he still feels at the arrival of flowering bulbs in spring.
It is half a century since I ran up the path to my father’s greenhouse to tell him that the seeds I had planted in my thin strip of garden were peeping through. I can no longer remember if it was the calendula, cosmos or candytuft (my pocket money obviously hadn’t got me very far through the seed catalogue), but I still remember the excitement with which those shoots were greeted. To be honest, it is no different now: the excitement – no, the amazement – that a seed I have sown or bulb I have planted is poking its green tip through the earth.
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Current ‘amazements’ are the collection of narcissi in pots clustered about my long, slim London garden. They announced their presence in December with small upheavals and fissures in the compost that signalled a vernal stirring underneath. There are plenty of snow whites this year: the graceful Narcissus ‘Thalia’, N. ‘Petrel’ and N. ‘Elka’ all growing in pots until I decide if they will naturalise happily in the beds, by which I mean are not too tall and finish tidily. I don’t mind that the varieties I have around this garden are well known; some might say, unadventurous. Familiar faces are reassuring, particularly in spring. “Oh, hello again” has always been an easier greeting for me than “pleased to meet you”.
“The excitement – no, the amazement – that a seed I have sown or bulb I have planted is poking its green tip through the earth.”
There will always be a place for the old classics in my pots and window boxes. N. ‘Cheerfulness’, N. ‘Cornish Chuckles’ and the crumpled face of N. ‘Sir Winston Churchill’ are as sure and steady as they come. As much as I look forward to the annual toot-toot of orange trumpets from Narcissus ‘Jetfire’ and N. ‘Itzim’, the majority of early spring joy comes in the faded primrose shades of N. ‘Angel’s Whisper’, N. ‘Silver Chimes’ and – new to me this year – N. ‘Pipit’. Each pot is protected with a witch’s hat of chicken wire, which has worked a treat for the past two years and can be recycled for years to come. The cheery, cheeky N. ‘Tête-à-tête’ is irresistible and I have planted it in abundance around the bare stems of my Magnolia denudata and Cornus kousa var. chinensis ‘China Girl’ in their oversized pots.
The continual wonder that I can grow things is, I can assure you, echoed in the kitchen. A successful cake taken from the oven today will be met with the same sense of disbelief as that first tray of butterfly cakes I baked aged nine. The wonder of both cooking and gardening never dims; indeed, as life itself becomes more complicated, such small joys as buns rising and bulbs breaking ground seem to burn more brightly than ever.
Despite the encouragement of my father and Mr Ritson, my school rural science teacher, there is still a sense of wonder that the glowing cluster of Crocus ‘Orange Monarch’ around the roots of my old Robinia aren’t just beginner’s luck, or that Rosa Lady Emma Hamilton’s new, wine-red shoots have anything to do with my pruning.
“The wonder of both cooking and gardening never dims; indeed, as life itself becomes more complicated, such small joys as buns rising and bulbs breaking ground seem to burn more brightly than ever.”
I have no formal gardening training. Everything I know (or think I know) has come from reading and watching and listening, soaking up other gardeners’ experiences like a sponge. As when my first row of carrot seedlings came to naught, I continue to take every failure personally. Why have the mixed colour crocuses, which were such delicate fairy cups in the catalogue, come up the size of small tulips? Each failed snowdrop or misjudged shade of hydrangea feels like a personal insult. It hurt when the hepatica around my artfully rotting tree stump suddenly disappeared, and when the epimediums were not quite the shade of amber I had hoped. I am only grateful that the successes are as enriching as they were all those decades ago.
Early spring is the time I cherish the smallest of garden pleasures. The tufts of palest blue Scilla siberica singing their hearts out in the borders and the sudden, ghostly note of perfume that seems to come from nowhere. Spring is always curiously late in my garden, despite being sheltered and surrounded by other buildings, but there are still small surprises to gasp at, if you look closely. This is the time to smell everything that is good in the garden. Not just the narcissi, but the warm pile of plum and cherry leaves that has already broken down into tilth the colour of chocolate cake; the smell of my old gardening jumper; and the ball of tarred string in the trug (and second only to sweet peas and in particular Lathyrus odoratus ‘Cupani’ in my list of favourite garden smells).
“Early spring is the time I cherish the smallest of garden pleasures.”
Early spring is also a time full of hope. The hope that much-loved plants will return (I eagerly await news from the Viburnum plicatum f. tomentosum ‘Mariesii’ that tragically lost all its leaves last summer) and that the new additions I planted in autumn, such as an expensive Acer palmatum, have settled in and overwintered safely. Having finally got round to planting primroses, tiny, chubby cushions that went into the ground in late autumn, I long to see those first pointed yellow buds appear among the acid-green rosettes of crinkly leaves. The softest of yellows, they will look good among the moss-covered logs at the top of the garden.
Oh, and look, the emerald green beaks of tulips ‘Brown Sugar’ and ‘Black Parrot’ (a sumptuous combination of faded silk and velvet ballgown) are once again pushing through in the terracotta planters outside the kitchen door. Planted late last November, deeper than a burrowing squirrel should go and guarded throughout the winter by sentries of hazel twigs, the plump shoots are already showing. It is once again time to run excitedly up the garden path.