Horticultural Highs And Lows

Tuesday was a most unremarkable day, just about everything having returned to its normal pattern. Back at Harlow Carr the gardens looked spectacular under their drapery of severe frost, I would much rather have wandered through them than sit through another lesson on fertilisers, more chemistry than horticulture. Still things perked up a bit in the afternoon as we discussed alpines, and with a superb example of an alpine house on site, we took a mini field trip to gaze upon the plants that five minutes earlier had just been names in a text book. The art is all very admiral I'm sure, but to be honest all the tweaking and preening involved is so very Victorian, all very well if you are retired but too time consuming for your average jobbing gardener and don't get me started on auricular theatres! We are moving on again next week to propagation, now there's something more practical to get our teeth into but sadly also lawns, or should that be yawns?
"A lawn is nature under totalitarian rule" Michael pollan

" The least of the work of learning is done in the classroom" Thomas Merton