In my quest to transform what was once a large sandpit into a thriving healthy bursting at the brim voluptuous garden, I have come to realize my greatest resources for inspiration , plant suggestions, garden tools, and even gardening clothes are all based in the UK.  Here in the US there seems to be some sort of disconnect reagrding my ideals and requirements and what is available for information, inspiration and purchase.

Let me start where I always do,with  the rabbits. Here in our country  we have crappy worthless repellents , ugly hardware cloth, and basically useless traps. In England  they have these beautiful bamboo cloches to cover vulnerable seedlings, AND useful systemic treatments to make plants unpalatable. Sadly I have not been able to import either…..yet! Determination is my middle name ( well really it is Marie, but I like determination better) and I WILL find a way to get them  .

Moving on to tools, I have worked my way through a variety of edgers  and pruners, until I stumbled upon these made by a company in the UK. Not only are they beautiful and tools I would not mind leaving scattered about the garden like little works of art, but they are FUNCTIONAL!

The angle of the pruners makes  working with them a pleasure, and the edger…well that is plain magic I tell you. It cuts cleanly and easily through the sod leaving the perfect deep spearation between lawn and bed. I use to have  a stockpile of edgers in the garage….manual and power….. all terrible…hard to push through the ground and frustrating as hell…all place in the dumpster after this one arrived here . It is amazing that I should feel so happy when a tool actually does what it is supposed to do , but that is the curse of living in the USA. I showed it to neighbor who gardens almost as much as I do and she was in the car  in a heartbeat, on her  way to the only location in our area that carried them where she  bought their last one. Another neighbor chuckled when Bill offered to lend it to him after seeing him struggle with his, only to have him come back to return it saying he was absolutely floored at how well it worked and sorry he doubted Bill’s word.

Funniest part about it, the company that sells such an item has two websites, one where they sell these beautiful wonderful tools to the lucky people across the pond, and one where they offer a whole bunch of nuthin’ to those of us here in the states. That is just riduculous and condescending, and patronizing and makes me wonder if they are still mad about that whole revolution thing.

As far as information and inspiration  go, well ,we can name drop…Vita Sackville-West, Christopher Lloyd, Rosemary Verey, Gertrude Jeckyll, Helen Dillon ( Ireland counts as the UK ), Beth Chatto, Beverly Nichols, David Austin (et.al) for roses and Mary Toomey for clematis , why even Prince Charles shows up on my Great English Gardeners/writers short list! Two publications The English Garden and Gardens Illustrated are on my must read list monthly, and get poured over, dog eared, and highlighted , then place on a bookshelf where they will be re-visted all over again when I am stumped on a garden design or feeling garden deprived in winter. Here in the states I  crave only Tovah Martin’s quirky and entertaining writing style and occassionally Valerie Easton, Suzy Bales  or Ken Druse for inspiration. All our other  writers seem to confuse preachy -organic-native-homesteading-mumbo jumbo with ornamental gardening. They are two quite disparate entities, and the former does nothing for me. I want to dream in flowers, live in flowers,  revel in flowers and count on my garden to provide  oodles of them for me to do so.

If TV is your thing BBC always has great INFORMATIONAL programming , and beautiful garden tour DVDs for you to get lost in when you can’t be in your garden. The closest thing we ever had here was Gardener’s Diary with Erica Glasener, but that got cancelled in favor of insta-makeover shows where the quick design matters more than the plants and how to grow them well. I think a better show might be a call back to one of the “gardens” made on  a show like Yard Crashers  (HGTV) so we can see just what happened to those poor helpless plants that I am sure never make it past week one .

Which brings me finally  to pretty clothes … try to find THIS is the US of A...Garden Girl clothes are everything a gardening gal could want and then some. Carhartt may be warm and functional, but pretty? I think not!

I have always been certain I was born in the wrong century. I long for a simpler time , where life was difficult but rewarding, and hard work ,honesty and family were respected ( I just happen to also like antibiotics and the telephone, so there is no going back for me!) , but lately I  feel as if maybe I was just born in the wrong country and a house just like Hidcote or Sissinghurst  with all their accompanying history  as well as the to die for gardens  may be just the ticket to happiness for me. Think I can convince Bill to move?

ps here are some garden glam shots 🙂