Once upon a time, i.e. more decades ago than I want to count, I used to get gardening ideas from plant company press releases. Try the EverBloom Petunia for Sensational Summer Sizzlers. Except that by the end of that summer the EverBloom variety had been replaced by the Passionate Purple one and I'd get letters for the next 10 years demanding to know where the reader could obtain the EverBloom.
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I have stopped reading press releases, especially as I don't recommend any product unless I've tried it and loved it … or haven't tried it but want to, in which case you will have a full and frank disclosure: I have no idea if this works but it looks fun. These days ideas come from mooching around nurseries or other people's gardens or, this weekend, from getting stuck in a Melbourne suburban traffic jam just before the football started, as I was dumb enough to stay in a hotel near one of the big football venues.
But at least I saw lots of gardens, close up. Lovely leafy gardens, all apparently owned by anally retentive gardeners, or possibly they all hired the same landscape gardening and maintenance firm, because almost the entire block, as the taxi crept along, had a hedged front fence. And I mean EVERYTHING was hedged.
I had never realised you could hedge aloes. They turn out to be small and neat and closely fitted like a blue green jigsaw with large ones spreading out on top. Divine. A hedged philadelphus and banksias, pittosporum that had formed a close-knit green wall and even a hedge of Iceberg roses but the traffic jam began to move after that so I don't know if they were bushes at different heights or a climber twined up lattice but the effect was stunning – bright green leaves and masses of white flowers even now, possibly from the reflected heat from the bitumen.
It's left me wondering what else might be hedged.
There is one, major, irrevocable rule to hedging. It is called "little and often". The faster a plant grows, the more often it needs to be trimmed as, if you cut too far along a branch or chop into too sturdy a branch it will die off, and a long green hedge with a brown splodge in the middle is depressing, unless you cut it out neatly and pretend you always wanted a window, or "moongate", there all along.
The more often you trim, the more closely the hedge will be twined together, slowly filling all its crevices so you have wall of espaliered peaches or apples or figs, grevilleas or bay tree or whatever else you choose to tackle.
But only take on a hedge if you know you will continue to maintain it. Even one year of neglect can mean your hedge encroaches on the footpath – become a hedge hog, in fact – and hacking it back hard may mean dead hedge.
And while on the subject of full and frank disclosure: I have no idea how long it took to grow that aloe hedge. Or the Iceberg rose one. Twenty years? Thirty? Three? A press release might have given me the answer, though not necessarily a full and frank one.
But there was no doubt that those hedges had a stunning effect and even almost reconciled me to the taxi bill. And this summer, just maybe, I will tackle a hedge again. Bloomfield Abundance roses maybe, for a million tiny button holes roses and an elusive fragrance and soft green leaves. And all the fun of seeing what happens, how long it takes and if I can possibly duplicate the dedication, patience and perfection of those Melbourne gardeners.
This week I am:
* trying to remember to order a Bloomfield Abundance rose;
* wishing I had planted six times as much parsley last summer. Every year I forget just how little growing our garden does as soon as the temperatures hover around 3C;
* turning vast amounts of nutrients retrieved by deep tree roots into mulch via piles of autumn leaves;
* pigging out on pomegranates, too tough for salads now but perfect for sucking the seeds, swallowing the juice and then, er, disposing of the seeds – this is a private activity, not to be shared even with your nearest and dearest, but delicious;
* pruning the blue salvias which went berserk this year and have turned into a jungle, stopping sunlight reaching my study windows;
* discovering we are going to have a jungle of naked ladies next year (belladonna lilies) as several have set seed and strewn it about their clumps. If they keep being this promiscuous I will need to hoik them about, and another name for a prolific plant is "weed". But not till next year, unless they have spread further than seed can bounce.
