I escaped the squirrels this year by covering all my pots of bulbs with black netting. They have been a pain in the past, digging up the tulips and narcissus not long after they were planted or, worse still, taking a bite out of the bottom to render the bulbs useless. Often the fresh bulbs had not even had time to break root and were cast aside, cartoon fashion, while I played the angry victim, fists on my hips, cursing each time it happened. Covering the soil with chilli powder seemed to address the problem the year before last, but it had to be reapplied after rain. I also wondered whether the disfigured shoots that appeared had been affected by it, too, rather than by the usual suspect, aphids. Although I didn’t like the black netting, I was beginning to feel the smugness the gardener gets in outwitting the predator.
It is always a mistake to rest on your laurels at this point, for the garden is nothing more than a larder to many of the animals that pass through. I have never had a problem with pigeons previously, apart from their bullying tactics at the bird feeder, and hadn’t thought about the risk to bulbs elsewhere in the garden. However, one morning during the Christmas holidays, I stumbled outside and within minutes there I was again, cursing. It was as if they were trying to keep me on my toes: lining the path on both sides, with droppings and telltale grey feathers as proof of the culprits, lay the wreckage of my Ranunculus ‘Brazen Hussy’. These celandines were up early in December, and for the first time I had carefully cleared away the last of the year’s perennials from them so they wouldn’t have to strain to reach the light. By doing so I was able to take pleasure in the dark rosettes making their annual appearance, showing the promise of spring. The clumps have been steady and fast in their growth and I have taken pride in the show they make, since they all come from one small plant I was given as a teenager. But on this damp morning, there were little pits where there had been sizeable clumps just the day before. Leaves stripped, plump tubers cast aside.
Not one plant had survived the massacre. However, in covering the remains with a fresh roll of netting, I came upon the silver lining that usually occurs where there’s a garden disaster. Pushing through the trampled mud and guano, with tiny grass-like spears, were the Crocus chrysanthus ‘Zwanenburg Bronze’ that I had planted among the celandines last April. I had forgotten about them because they were never intended for this position. The year before I had decided I needed a sign of early life at the front, outside the kitchen window. Windows that look straight on to the garden should always have something going on within their frame, and the end of winter called for this note of optimism.
The reason the crocus were moved was twofold. Most importantly, and it is worth remembering this if you are putting crocus into a garden, they need direct sunshine to open reliably. An unopened crocus is only half the experience, for the true joy is in seeing the petals thrown back in abandonment, revealing the saffron-coloured anthers. This direct response to early sunshine can see them opening almost before your eyes and lifts the spirits at a time in the year when you need to play your cards hard in the garden. The second reason was I had never grown this crocus before, and although they were pretty among the early-flowering Viola labradorica at the front, the maroon stripes over gold were a much better complement to the ‘Brazen Hussy’ than the snowdrops already established here.
As soon as the flowers began to fade I moved them ‘in the green’ so they had time to re-establish before falling into dormancy again. I have yet to see a pristine flower in situ, but before I moved them I cut a flower to place among the celandines to see if I liked the combination. In an eggcup of water in the sun at the back of the house, the flower opened to reveal the full range of what a crocus has to offer. The dark celandine foliage heightened the darkly striped reverse to the petals and made the gold of the inner flower that much brighter.
I have been wary of planting crocus in the garden precisely because, when it comes to bulbs, it is the favourite food of the urban squirrel. I have lost 1,000 bulbs in one sitting in one urban garden, each and every one dug up in an orgy of gnawing, as well as 2,000 to pheasants in a country garden. This hurts when you have been on your hands and knees for an afternoon or more with a head full of optimism about the show to come. That said, I have been lucky with the Crocus tommasinianus ‘Lilac Beauty’ that are planted under the Cercis in the pot up by the house. Of all the crocus, these are the best for naturalising, and they have started to self-seed in the five years they have been there. I love them for the simplicity of their dark-mauve outer petals and paler-lilac inner ones - the perfect complement for the intense orange anthers within. There are several forms of this early-flowering species: ‘Whitewell Purple’ is darker; ‘Ruby Giant’ violet, with a lighter base and margin.
I prefer the species crocus to the blowsier and later-flowering Dutch hybrids which often suffer in winter storms. Christopher Lloyd planted quite a display of the C chrysanthus hybrids on the entrance lawn at Great Dixter, and when I visited the garden two years ago, just after he died, they were in full flower in early March, throwing their petals back in low sunshine. There is magic in this moment, for many are bicoloured, with the inner part of the flower quite another shade from the outer. I like the striped forms as much as the plain pastels. ‘Ladykiller’ has a plain purple reverse and lilac interior; ‘Herald’, the earliest of all, a plum exterior and primrose interior. Pale ‘Cream Beauty’, and the delicate ‘Snow Bunting’ are paler still, inside and out. I have them teamed up with dark-leaved Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’ in one garden where I’m experimenting with 100 or so of each.
Although the detail in the markings of the C chrysanthus hybrids means that you need to plant them where you can get close to see the detail, I am planning an extensive planting in a new garden now I know that netting in the first autumn will keep the beasties at bay. I will be armed with a list of favourites made from notes this spring so that I can order 1,000 of each when the bulb catalogues drop through the letterbox in September. I aim to plant a huge drift which will appear like confetti in grass that is still low and apparently lifeless. It will be a river of twinkling colour that flashes open and closed with the changeable weather of early spring.
lifeandhealth.guardian.co.uk
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