MARCH 2024: MULCH MAGIC
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“Overwhelm is an artefact of the heavy cloak the world puts around our shoulders, and the garden invites us to shrug that stuff off whenever we enter in. So, bring on the signs of spring, and the opportunities the season offers to be part of something at once familiar, and new and exciting. And to hell with the list of things to do.”
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Hello March!
Feeling inspired by chirpy birdsong? Great! Not thinking about your green space? Also great! Nature doesn’t mind: she likes it all a bit shaggy. Andrew Timothy O’Brien’s words are nature’s ideal gardening motto to live, and grow by. No pressure. Being outside, tickling plants, for me it is sheer happiness. I graze my way through the little jobs until I catch flow and finish with a gigantic pile of pruned wood hours later (which incidentally makes a gorgeous shaggy dead hedge).
Overwhelm is nevertheless deeply uncomfortable so if you’d like seasonal help in your garden, or if you would benefit from someone to motivate you and buddy up with, or you simply want advice on growing or planting, STUDIO.SCHIPPER’s services can be tailored to your own green needs. If you have a particular green wish or need: reach out via studio.schipper@gmail.com.
Included in this March newsletter are: Plant of the Month, Shriek of the Week, a book review (with a book giveaway! See further below), Music to Garden By, a gentle To-Do list and an in-depth article on how-to do sheet mulching for paying subscribers.
In February paid subscribers were able to find out how to sow. You can access this article by subscribing month or yearly. Thank you to everyone who has supported my work thus far!
PLANT:
While they have already finished flowering I am still putting in a good word for… snowdrops (the common Galanthus nivalis), because now is the time to buy these as plants ‘in the green’. Snowdrops establish better than (dried out) autumn bulbs when planted with the green leaves and stems attached to the bulb in March. They are ready to be ordered for immediate planting out. This is such a practical way to plug gaps in your snowdrop drifts or add elsewhere in the early Spring garden. They’re perennial, meaning they’ll come back year after year. Naturescape is a good nursery for buying snowdrops in the green, and by that token also to order the buttery yellow wild daffodil (Narcissus pseudonarcissus) in the green.
SHRIEK OF THE WEEK:
I didn’t come up with this fun title, but Charlie from Birdsong Academy did! So clever. Every week he presents a lyrical bird and word audio recording helping people to find, identify and enjoy birds in Britain by ear. My favourite Shriek of the Week is the Coo-COO-coo Collared Dove.
BOOK:
Shaggy, wilder gardens are where gardening trends are at. This is out of necessity, not fashion.
”Imagine a garden that is as beautiful as it is productive, hat is brimming with wildlife from bees to birds, ad that gives yo fresh, wholesome, chemical-free food with flavours that go beyond anything shops can offer”
- the note on the back of Eat What You Grow by Alys Fowler
These words describe a bountiful, eye-pleasing garden and growing system called polyculture. Poly = many. Such spaces thrive on mixing plants, from pretty ornamentals to edibles, on diversity of species and on building a garden from the soil up. Because it is not a one-size-fits-all solution each new space can nurture it’s own multiple plant species on the same piece of land.
The gardener, writer and presenter Alys Fowler explains all with her book Eat What You Grow: how to have an undemanding edible garden that is both beautiful and productive. It is a volume I come back to frequently because of the handy descriptions of the different layers, known as stories, and their relevant edible plants that make up a well-thought through multi-functional planting design. Think full sun upper storey fruit trees, mid-storey climbing berries, ground cover wild garlic; plants that not only function as pretty-to-look-at but double up as yummy! There are great descriptions of readily available perennial vegetables, the ones that come back year after year saving you the consuming work of sowing vegetables every. single. March. There is advice on berries, herbs, edible flowers and how to best group these as compatible planting schemes. Imagine a garden where you can pop outside to pick the kale leaves for your winter soup, or where children can forage for flower snacks…
Beyond the accessible and well presented knowledge, Eat What You Grow is a lovingly designed book with painterly photographs by Roo Lewis and the extra special illustrative touch of Anka Dabrowska (Instagram) who actually lives in my neighborhood Walthamstow!
Visual artist Anka Dabrowska contributed all the botanical ink drawings to Eat What You Grow, each in her unique pointillist style. Her own work often incorporates stencil spray painting techniques of political and queer slogans juxtaposed with tenderly dotted natural objects. You can purchase cards and prints in her store HERE or visit her website for larger works or commissions HERE.
GIVEAWAY! GIVEAWAY! GIVEAWAY!
STUDIO.SCHIPPER has one extra copy of Alys Fowler’s Eat What You Grow to give away (UK shop value £22). To enter: subscribe for one whole year (£45) by 31 March 2024 and everyone who has joined since January will be in for a chance to win. I’ll draw one name out of a straw hat, under strict supervision by an overqualified referee. They will win the book, plus postage to send it to them.
MUSIC:
This month’s Music To Garden By: MARCH soundtrack is perfect for wrapping up warm and sitting outside in the garden with a morning coffee contemplating the gentle to-do-or-not-to-do task list below. No pressure.
GENTLE TO-DO, OR NOT-TO-LIST:
- Start sowing indoors (see previous paid subscriber’s post HERE)
- Drink morning coffee in the garden and feel that Spring energy fizz!
- Prune winter flowering shrubs now they’re done
- Plan daffs and snowdrops in the green
- Sheet mulch for improving your soil’s health. See paid subscriber’s post below
- First high cut of the lawn if the soil is not muddy! Rake off those cuttings (mulch!) and any thatch. A full organic lawn care article will be available to paid subscribers in April
HOW-TO SHEET MULCH:
A thriving garden begins with what is underneath our feet: soil. If your plants are struggling, spindly, with yellowing leaves when it is not even autumn, showing signs of disease, it could be that those narrow garden beds and borders have run out of steam. In a less controlled natural environment organic waste is regularly returned to the soil feeding all plants and creatures in a healthy cycle of nutrients and mutual support. Mostly, in nature, there is no bare soil, which is why weeds, or as I prefer to call them more politely, wild plants, colonise the ground where the seed lands.
Organic mulching is ideal for investing in soil and in your garden. The RHS defines mulch as “loose coverings or sheets of material placed on the surface of soil. Mulches can be applied to bare soil or to cover the surface of compost in containers.”