Free We Made a Garden by Margery Fish

weeks, and after the first lot have bloomed there will be a second lot to take their place. It is usual to cut the flowers in front, and let them come up to take the place of the ones at the back. If there are a lot of tall heleniums in a border half of them can be cut, and the rest left to flower naturally. Very tall Michaelmas daisies mean a lot of staking, but cut down to six inches in their youth they will never be a problem.
    It is very easy to get colours badly mixed, and then the secateurs should be used to cut off the blooms that are clashing. Shrubs that are growing unevenly should be shaped, and plants that are bent or crooked should have the offending limbs removed.
    Yes, a pair of secateurs is always useful and I envy men their pockets, they can always have a pair tucked away somewhere.

11. Watering
    Watering was another garden job on which Walter had very strong views. Nothing annoyed him more than to hear that overworked bromide ‘You can’t start watering unless you go on doing it every day’. His theory was that people who have to go on doing it every day don’t water properly. They give a pleasant little sprinkle which damps the ground and makes it smell delicious, without even beginning to get down to the roots of the plants, in fact it tempts the roots to come up to the surface to get a drink, and they get burnt up unless that little sprinkle is repeated every day. If you scratch the ground after a so-called watering you will usually find that the water has hardly penetrated below the surface.
    Walter’s way of watering was thorough in the extreme. He had lengths of hose with which he could reach every part of the garden, and it took him several days to do the job as he thought it should be done. This, of course, was in the days when one was allowed to use a hose and there was no restriction on watering from main supply.
    A sprinkler was permissible on the lawn, but for the borders Walter liked to use a strong jet of water which he directed to the root of every single plant in the borders, and directed it for several minutes.
    I can see him now on a hot summer day in an old panama hat and short sleeved shirt, with a tussore waistcoat which he wore for gardening and summer golf (to hide his braces, he always said he hadn’t the figure for a belt!). He would stand all day directing the life-giving water to the thirsting plants, with brief intervals for meals. He always maintained that a thorough watering like that would keep everything going for at least a couple of weeks, and he was quite right.
    Another theory he repudiated was that one must not water in the sunshine. His reply to that was that it was better to water in sunshine than not at all, because it was obviously impossible to water as he did in the brief evening hours. He was very careful not to direct the water to the flowers and foliage, always aiming at the roots.
    I had one complaint about this wholesale watering business and that was that it always brought our persistent clay up to the surface and the next day the top of the beds was solid clay, which baked to iron hardness in the hot sun. I always told him that he invariably chose the moment to water just after I had been round the garden forking up the soil to as fine a tilth as I could achieve. His usual reply was to ask me if I wanted everything in the garden to die of thirst. So, of course, after every great watering I was down on my knees again hammering away at the lumps of clay to break them down and allow air to percolate into the soil. The real disaster was if we had to go away before I had had a chance to get round the garden.
    Since the war we have not been allowed to use a hose in the garden, as there always seems to be a water shortage in the summer. Keeping the soil well hoed all the time helps as it allows the dew to get to the roots. Another way of helping your plants to get through a spell of very hot weather is to mulch them. Some people find sawdust satisfactory,