No time for calm after the storm!
I know I’m not the only gardener looking on in dismay at the state of their plot after a week of heavy rain and strong winds, but the severity of the situation only hit me last night.
Leaving for work in the dark and returning home after sundown I wasn’t fully aware of the extent of the damage my garden had received, until my neighbour called in last night to ask if I knew I’d lost a fence panel!
With torch in hand, I ventured out only to be shocked to find that as well as the fencing, my cold frame has been battered apart, three panes of glass have been knocked from the greenhouse (fortunately only one broke), half of the corrugated plastic had been ripped from the chicken run roof and my shed door had been blown open to allow heavy rain to soak anything near to the doorway – good bye to all the granular feeds now clumping in boxes of dripping wet cardboard!
My vertical growing system on the patio wall, full of violas and primroses, has also taken a knock – the plants don’t look great but at least the system is fixable.
The damage to structures has had a knock-on effect to many of my plants, though this is mainly concentrated on the veg patch. The greenhouse panes fell out on to my over wintering onions, as did the chicken run roof, flattening everything underneath them.
And with the wind allowed free reign inside the greenhouse, trays of hardy annuals sown back in autumn are now on the floor alongside trays of upturned cuttings and pots of bulbs. While most of the flower border is resting, I had rather high hopes for a patch of overwintering cerinthe seedlings – already a good 60cm tall, but most of these have been bashed beyond recovery.
The lifted cold frame exposed my protected asparagus crowns planted in November – the rain that came with the wind has left them sitting in saturated soil. Fingers crossed they’ll cope, other wise I’ll be planting again this spring!
So this weekend will be one big tidy and repair job. First on the to-do list will be salvaging plants in the greenhouse. Then I’ll secure the boundary with a couple of new fence panels. Next the chicken run, then the greenhouse panes, then the cold frame situation, then the… did I say weekend, maybe that should be the next month!
About Kris Collins
Kris Collins started out in gardening as an estates worker at Richmond Park, west London, before training as a Royal Parks apprentice at Greenwich Park (south east london). After a stint as greenkeeper at The London Golf Club, Kent, he made a move towards journalism as a reporter for Horticulture Week. He now writes for Amateur Gardening magazine, Britain's best selling weekly gardening magazine, and tends his own garden in a leafy part of Hampshire.
