WEEDING AND WAXING LYRICAL

By LADYBUG

Even with the best planning and care, every garden can run into a problem or two.

Whether you are beset by beetles or blighted by blackspot, The Garden Problem Solver has the solution. Guided by the team at Gardeners’ World, and with advice from such gardening greats as Monty Don and Adam Frost, this is a handy book indeed.

Chapters on lawns, weeds, pests, etc., and ones on growing ornamentals, fruits and vegetables, cover almost any question you might have as a gardener.

Moss and or bare patches on your lawn? The book has you covered! There’s also a lawncare calendar with tips for each season.

Their advice for clover? Clover is good for pollinators, so consider leaving it. If you do want to remove it, lift it up with a spring-tine rake. Feed your lawn in spring and autumn and scarify in autumn.

Though deliciously desi – like malofy ata – “scarify” is a new word for me. I learn from the book that it means raking to remove moss, dead grass and thatch!

The section on container gardening has tips on growing roses in pots. Perfect for those whose garden is a tiny patio or a balcony, but reading the instructions, I want to try growing one in a pot, too.

Then I turn to the section on what bugs me the most – bugs. Mealybugs and spider mites, specifically. And go eww! over the suggestion to “clean any pests off with your finger and thumb”. But seeing where the advice is stemming from, resolve to give it a shot.

On weeds, Adam Frost has this to say (along with tons of sage advice on how to deal with them): “I’m not sure that there’s any garden task that has a worse reputation than weeding, and thinking back to when I first started as a 16-year-old trainee, guess what the job was that I hated the most? Yes, weeding! But today I am more than happy spending a few hours weeding. This may sound sad, but there’s something about this chore that I find really satisfying and therapeutic, and I love looking back at the grind I’ve worked on and seeing the difference it’s made to my patch.”

That’s really what gardening is all about, isn’t it? Making a difference to our own little patch?

With a foreword by American poet and essayist Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and absolutely gorgeous illustrations by Melissa Castrillion (I am so tempted to frame a couple) this book can be savoured at so many levels.

“It should surprise no one that, as a poet, I’ve been tickled for years to learn that the word anthology means a gathering of flowers,” writes Nezhukumatathil. “... How perfect, then, to have this gathering, this flowering, of poems about the connection of hand to earth.”

As someone of Filipina and Malayali Indian background, she says she rarely saw herself reflected in gardening poems and shares her pleasure in discovering this collection of poems from the world she wants to live in

And Tess Taylor shares how gardening helped her heal and saw her through the worst months of COVID. “In a difficult time, I tended the garden and the garden tended me back.”

There are what can be considered wise or “serious” poems and there are whimsical, joyful ones. Like A Small Needful Fact about a Parks and Rec gardener.

And there are delicious recipes to use the bounty from your garden, too!