As September rolls into October I’m feeling, in equal measures, excitement and terror. The local ‘Garden Festival’ is only 2 months away. I have 7 weekends, after this one, until the big day. My garden is nowhere near ready, whatever ready looks like. I haven’t got a plan of what I want to do and, even worse, I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing. I’m not a horticulturalist or a garden designer or an especially experienced gardener. If i’m kind I’d call myself an enthusiastic amateur. If I was unkind I’d say I was a haphazard potterer.

This weekend I planted 13 dahlia bulbs and began the tedious task of mulching the entire garden with pea straw. I do this every year - mulching that is. It’s one of the few activities related to the craft of gardening that I feel qualified to do, having done it for years.

I don’t know why I fuss so much when it comes to mulching. I like to spread it thickly, leaving a gap around the stem of every plant. But I needn’t bother, because the birds come along and chuck it all over lawn (or at least what’s left of it).

One of the golden rules of gardening goes along the lines of, ‘In order to do a planned gardening job, 3 other unplanned gardening jobs must be done first’. I had to prune leggy and unsociable plants and do a ton of weeding before I could start the mulching.

I’m not sure if spring is the right time to prune plants, but as Christopher Lloyd pointed out in his book ‘Cuttings’, or was it ‘The Well-Tempered Garden’, the right time to do things in the garden is when you think of it (that sounds like something Winne-the-Pooh would’ve said). This approach works for me at any rate. Statistically, I kill more plants by standing on them by mistake then pruning them at the wrong time.

Here are a few photos of my suburban garden in the last couple of weeks.

Finally one of my Thalictrums is flowering. This one is Thalictrum aquilegifolium. For a plant that likes moist woodland conditions it seems surprisingly happy out here in the sun.

These reddish-brown flowers (above) belong to Euphorbia mellifera. They smell like honey.

This clematis is either Caroline or Marjory. I’m growing it up the branches of my Pseudopanax laetus.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about suburban gardens and suburban gardeners (probably because I have one and am one). I’m reminded of a chapter in a book called ‘The Pleasure Garden’ by Anne Scott-James and Osbert Lancaster, published in 1977. It’s a brief and funny history of the English garden (if ever so slightly dated in its assumptions about men and women). The chapter I’m thinking of is titled ‘The Suburban Garden’.

‘The Suburban Garden is the most important garden of the 20th century and there is no excuse other than ignorance for using the word ‘suburban’ in a derogatory sense…A suburban garden is compact and private, and it allows the owners to create their own world; its garden has advantages to match.

A suburban garden is usually rectangular…with solid boundaries of brick or fencing and with no great weed problem, there is no excuse for losing control.

But it is as a creative challenge that the suburban garden has its greatest appeal. Within this rectangle a man (or woman) can attempt to realise the perfect garden of his (or her) minds eye. He (or she) can make a rose garden or a rock garden, he (or she) can worship his (or her) lawn or cultivate flowering shrubs, he (or she) can follow a primitive instinct to be self-supporting and make it a miniature small-holding or he (or she) can fulfil his (or her) artistic self by making a mosaic of small beds filled colourful bedding plants.’ (The Pleasure Garden)

The suburban garden, stylistically speaking, has come a long way since 1977, and yet in many ways its still the same. The gardening suburbanite still wants to make their own little version of paradise, whether that be mid-century modern, tropical resort, something very neat with acres of box hedging and standard iceberg roses in rows or (as in my case) something that has the illusion of being wild and untamed.

At the moment my kōwhai tree is in full flower. An explosion of yellow. Here it is below.

Last Saturday I planted about 20 plants, grasses, bushes and trees, around a stream beside my local forest. Every year a group of us (mostly dog walkers) get together in spring and plant natives. Some years there are lots of volunteers and other years there are a couple of handfuls. This year was the latter. We’ve been planting for 3 years and its the same core group of people that turn up year in year out. It’s the way with every volunteer group that I’ve ever belonged to, unless people are paid or they get something in return then most people don’t bother to give up their time.

Everyone agrees that planting trees is a good thing for the planet but when you start talking specifics with people things quickly get political. Do you plant exotics or natives to counteract global warming. If you plant natives should they be grown from the seeds of locally appropriate plants or will any old natives do?

Natives are slow growing and exotics (specifically Pinus radiata) are fast growing. Fast growing exotic trees store carbon quicker than natives, but they don’t live as long as natives. When exotics get cut down for timber or they fall down in a storm then you’re back to where you started (with the carbon problem).

In Wellington, where I live, people plant trees in the community for all sorts of reasons. Mostly it’s for all the right reasons, to reforest bare land. But some groups plant trees in order to be able to chop down swathes of forest to make way for mountain bike tracks. I think the mantra goes ‘one tree is planted for every square metre of bush (forest) that’s chopped down.

I’m not a botanist or environmental scientist or forest expert. I don’t know very much at all, but I do know that one square metre of bush contains thousands, possibly millions of living organisms (if you count fungus and all those microscopic organisms). When the bush is removed the sun gets in and weeds grow and the soil dries out and a lot of things die. This bare patch, this miniature clearing affects the rest of the forest. One small immature native tree, years away from being environmentally useful, is not equal compensation for a square metre of decimated bush.

On a positive note, here’s a native clematis. It has self-seeded in my local forest - living proof that if you leave damaged forests alone, more or less, they grow back all by themselves.

And here’s some garden inspiration. This is the ‘South Seas Garden’ at Larnach Castle, Dunedin, which I visited in Easter this year. It’s made entirely with plants that grow in and around New Zealand and the Pacific.

The garden is spread across a hillside, facing the sea. It’s a wonderful place.

Here’s my dustbin and bucket garden. I’m happy with the plants but unhappy with the overall design. It looks a bit blobby, a bit clunky. I need to reorganise this area. It needs more plants, bigger plants. It looks like the top of the driveway, which it is. It needs to feel like more like a wild-urban-overgrown-wasteland-sort of garden. I want to add a small pond and I really really really want a glasshouse made out of recycled windows. I need to have a chat to my friend Paul who made the shed.

The first of my tulips to flower is an orange-red variety called Asahi.

I ordered some plants and dahlia bulbs a couple of weeks ago. Maybe it’s rampant consumerism or maybe it’s the romance of boxes arriving in the post. Either way, I love it when I arrive home from work to find a box of plants or bulbs on the doorstep.

You might’ve noticed but this blog is a week late. It’s going to be fortnightly now. Weekly is proving to be impossible, especially now it’s spring and there’s so much to do in the garden.

Today my friend Sophie gave me a stump. Once I move it into the fernery I’ll be able to call it a fernery and stumpery. Just like I’ve been dreaming of. Thanks Sophie.