I am leaf picking and it’s a very monotonous (and back-breaking) task and I’ve spent days getting muddy and I have tramp’s nails – no offence to men of the road intended here. My nails are ringed in black grime and impossible to clean! I wear them as a badge of honour though. It’s been a wet year so the leaves are not easy to gather up. They are sticking to the ground like Lycra on a plump middle-aged male cyclist’s rear end. Oh, I would kill for a run of dry days. Then the leaves would crisp up like prawn crackers.
I’m concentrating on the areas where snowdrops and woodlanders are, because they are pushing through the ground so much earlier than they used to. Leaves, on the other hand, are falling three to four weeks later than they did. Timings of both have been altered by climate change. This means that much of the leaf gathering has to be done by hand. Otherwise, precocious hellebore buds would get raked off! If that were not enough, this year’s leaves are twice the size that they usually are – thanks to all that rainfall. I have hazel leaves the size of small hands.
Why do I bother? Well! Gathering leaves in late autumn definitely helps to reduce slug problems later on, because lots of baby slugs lurk under the leaves. There are baby grey field slugs close my box bushes, for instance, and these plump pinkish grey mini creatures are bad news in the garden for they are the worst slug pest of all. There are small black slugs in other parts of the garden. They are all moving house and going up to the leaf bins far away from my precious plants.
Every leaf has to be carried, or barrowed, up to the leaf bins so I’ve worn a muddy track across the lawn. It’s all good exercise though and it’s worth it. Leaves are a useful commodity in the garden, for they rot down and produce leaf litter and that’s the perfect moisture-retentive mulch for woodland plants because it releases nutrients slowly. I have two wooden leaf bins and the leaves take a whole year to turn into crumbly chocolaty top dressing.
Making your own leaf litter makes gardening more sustainable, which is what we should all be aiming for. That helps the planet, because it keeps waste material within the garden. My three compost heaps are groaning under the weight of chopped off perennials and there are several dumpy bags of leaves too. No fossil fuel has been involved in this operation, just muscle power, and it’s cheaper than Pilates ladies. And I’m helping the planet in my own small way.
If I chose to add my leaves and garden debris to the green waste bin, they would be transported to the waste site fifteen miles away. Then they would get buried under the ground as more and more material got piled above. Buried material decomposes anaerobically, without oxygen, and it releases methane in the process. That’s the most dangerous greenhouse gas of all and WRAP (Water and Resources Action Programme) tell us that it’s “25 times more powerful than CO2, over a hundred-year period.” Methane helps fuel global warming and that drives climate change so there’s a Landfill Directive that aims to reduce the amount of green material going into landfill.
Everyone should be picking up their leaves and they should have at least one compost heap, because this nourishes the soil naturally. We tend to bury our garden compost under the vegetable plots and it feeds, nourishes and hydrates hungry crops such as courgettes, runner beans and brassicas.
I’m doing my bit for the planet, even though my nails and my lawn are a disgrace. Unfortunately, the woody material I can’t compost, such as rose and shrub stems, is still being added to my green waste bin. Years ago, that material would have been added to a bonfire. I’m working on that one.
The monotony of leaf picking allows the mind to wander far and wide and I think about individual plants as I reach get to them. I have Asian and Himalayan plants in my garden aplenty and they hate being too wet in winter, because they experience dry, cold winters followed by wet summers. The best way to limit the effects of climate change is to grow them close to woody plants because their root systems help to drain the soil and the overhead canopies shade the plants in extremely dry conditions.
I adore the fragrance of winter-flowering Daphne bholua and I have several including ‘Jacqueline Postill’, ‘Limpsfield’, ‘Mary Rose and ‘Peter Smithers’. The tight clusters of buds are primed and ready as are the fists of snuff-brown witch hazel buds and I have fourteen or more in my woodland patch. Once the shortest day has been and gone, the garden will begin to perform once again. Anticipation is part of the joy of gardening.
I am fortunate to have deep soil that drains well, so that helps in these wet years. My deep soil has no clay content at all and, if you’re not sure about your soil, the classic diagnostic test is to take a handful of your soil and squeeze it together. If it forms a ball, there is clay in your soil. If it forms a sticky small ball, your clay content is high. It’s not all bad news. Your soil is going to be fertile because it holds nutrients. Roses and shrubs should do well for you.
However, the soil’s likely to get sticky and cold in winter and it will compact, so keep your feet off it during autumn and winter. Those on clay soil should avoid autumn planting and wait for spring. Clay soil will also crack in summer, but a leaf litter mulch will help to keep moisture in.
Don’t be depressed. Some of the best gardens in the country have heavy clay soil, including Great Dixter in East Sussex. The gardeners there incorporate coarse grit and they also stand on planks when cultivating the soil because this avoids compaction. Scaffold planks are a very useful tool for the gardener. My soil, on the other hand, is hungry and I’ve begun to add dried seaweed to add more body, because this is a polymer. It swells when wet.
Monotonous tasks make the mind wander and I often think of key people in my life when I’m on autopilot. The other day I was thinking about one of my schoolteachers, a Welshman called Terry Humphries. He taught Geography and was also my form teacher for three years and he was great fun. I remember Terry telling us about Continental Drift, which was very contentious in the early 1960s. It involved the earth being one landmass and then drifting apart.
Many geographers discounted the theory. If you’re a gardener it makes perfect sense and helps to explain why some genera pop up on different continents, separated by lots of sea. China and America share many plants between them, although they’ve evolved in different ways. New Zealand and South America also share some plants, including pampas grass or Cortaderia. The Continents fit together like a jigsaw – with a few missing pieces.
Periods of glaciation eradicated lots of plants and the British native flora suffered in the last Ice Age, some 10.000 years ago, so we only have 1390 native species left. Some of the richest floras are found in areas that escaped recent glaciation and this includes China and South Africa. I found it surreal when I visited South Africa, because the landscape of interlocking spurs etc was formed by glaciers in their last Ice Age, something Mr Humphries taught me all about. Bless him.
The last Ice Age to happen in South Africa was 300 million years ago, so their flora has been able to develope since then, untroubled by ice. It’s unique and it contains 22000 plants. However, those plants sit in a rugged landscape that could be mistaken for the Scottish Highlands at first glance. I can’t grow proteas or grass-like restios, because the climate in Cold Aston is too severe and the soil is too alkaline. Some Cornish gardens manage them though. I can still enjoy crocosmias, kniphofias and agapanthus and their vivid flowers are pollinated by bees and long-beaked sunbirds. Mine are visited by wasps instead.