For the past couple of months I’ve been carefully tending a small patch of ground by the east wing door. It was obviously a gravel car park when this place was a pizza restaurant, and the quality of the ground hasn’t changed much since. Stones, rocks, small odd shaped pieces of glass that turn out to be sections of bottles from the 1820s (well, this is an old pub after all) and even some old colonial era coins. However, I’ve dug it, mulched it, raked it, and a couple of months back I had a semi pristine flowerbed.
Back in blighty if you want vivid expansive acres of wildflowers, the classic process is to sow seed trays with flower seeds and raise them from scratch, however, here’s a curious thing. You can’t buy seed trays in Australia. I must have visited every garden centre known to man, and all of them shake their head. Not in Australia... it’s so warm, you just plant your seeds straight in the ground.
So, that’s what I’ve done.
I’ve spent the best part of two months carefully tending this most delicate of gardens, watering the delicate seedlings, and raising them until, after eight weeks, some were a good six inches high. And I did have a vast array of swan River Daisies, Marigolds, Nasturtiums, Flox, and Poppies. Except when I got home this evening, the cupboard was bare. For those of us blessed with the gift of sight, it was woeful to behold. The scorched earth had little left, except that is for my remaining line of sunflowers. But that’s about it.
What could cause such devastation? Slugs? Snails? Some weird Australian aphid? Killer locusts? Nope... The phantom gardener had struck.
“What about my seedlings?” “There were none – just a few weeds” “They were wildflowers” “Exactly – just weeds. Plants in the wrong place” “I think you’ll find I was planting them in exactly the right plants – just not necessarily in the right order.”
Someone's going to hang from the yardstick for this.
