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The agony and the ecstasy

Country Life UK

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April 09, 2025

GREAT is the agony of start-ing to work in the garden again when winter is at last behind us!

The agony and the ecstasy

And is that agony ever followed by ecstasy? Not really, because one never gets on top of all the jobs that need to be done to keep a garden looking good. The demands build up as the tem-peratures rise and the barometer moves from Rain to Fair. Then the weeds smile cheerfully, the grass grows exuberantly and there is no end to the drudgery of seed-sowing, planting out and watering.

I am a fair-weather gardener. I have never thought that any 'winter job' for gardeners was essential—at least, not during the winter itself. I like to see the snow-drops and Cyclamen coum and some of the early-flowering shrubs are heart-warming, too, but in January I'd rather stay inside and read a book or spend a few weeks in a warm and flowery corner of the Mediterranean.

I emerge from hibernation when the sun is higher in the sky and the temperatures reach the teens. That is the time to see what really needs doing in the garden. Early March brought us a splendid spell of mild weather this year. I began by digging out plants so thuggish that they really had to go (note to self, one can have too many bird-sown seedlings of the wine-berry Rubus phoenicolasius) and I removed every scrap of the handsome evergreen

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