This isn’t quite as straightforward as it sounds, as there are a lot of beautiful plants in my garden that aren’t useful, or at least not useful in their present locations. This means that some beauty must be sacrificed on the altar of usefulness, but only on a temporary basis, in order to make room for more beauty. Garden­ing is a very complicated business.

Regardless of drought, some herba­ceous plants take up an in­ordinate amount of space, and hardy geraniums are among the worst offenders. I’m not quite sure what that chalky-pink one in my kitchen border is called, Geranium endressi and G. oxonianum spring to mind.

Either roots as it goes, creating large, sprawling and rather hand­some leafy mats, decked in pink flowers for months on end. There are numerous self-sown seedlings, always craftily placed, and by the time I spot them, they’re already in full flower and far too vulnerable to be dug out and potted up for sale.

Geranium macorrhizum falls into the same category, but seeds with greater abandon. The highly aro­matic leaves of this plant are made into geranium oil for the perfume industry and change to vivid orange and red in the autumn.

Young plants are especially charm­ing and have a knack of placing themselves into awkward, bare corners, gracing them with splendid displays of pink, white, mauve or magenta flowers in early summer. I rarely have the heart to pull them up.

It makes superb ground cover, but in the Old Garden, where I have many treasures waiting for a spot in cool, humus-rich soil, it is now too overwhelming to be classed as use­ful. Large areas underneath shrubs and trees in the New Garden, temp­or­arily covered in membrane are waiting for some lusty geraniums.

The moving of bare-rooted plants will have to wait until the autumn, or at least until we’ve had some significant rain. A wet day or two hardly manages to dampen the sur­face, leaving the lower soil regions bone dry. Digging planting holes in some of the new beds is a frustrating business, as the dust simply slides back. It’s like trying to excavate Saharan sand.

I was surprised to read that we had nine days of rain during June. Not in Tresta. Apart from celeriac, beetroot and legumes, which are doing superbly well, vegetable growth is still stunted, and our re-sowings of root crops are making little progress.

During a prolonged drought it is tempting to blame everything that goes wrong in the garden on this one factor. When my purple fennel started to collapse, I carted cans of water to it every evening, in an attempt to revive it, and could have saved myself the trouble. As more and more stems started to droop, I eventually investigated and found several large cream coloured chafer grubs munching their way through the crown of the plant.

It is – perhaps this should be past tense now – one of the most impor­tant inhabitants of the Long Border, providing a subtle, smoky backdrop to all the hot colours there. More often than not it is such key plants one loses, rather than those that play a minor role, or one has several acres of; let alone those one wishes would quietly vanish altogether. I’m sure my garden is not the only one where plants remain be­cause they’ve always been there, regardless of the contribution they make, or in some instances fail to make, to the overall picture. I’m not sure why I’ve tolerated three huge clumps of some nameless filipendula with dirty pink flowers for the best of a decade. Relegating them to the compost heap has left me with some delectable planting spaces; perfect for hostas, dwarf astilbes and dicentras.

Last week I mooted the removal of some large and, dare I say, ugly trees, a criminal offence in the eyes of some Shetland gardeners, and beauty, as we know, lies in the eye of the beholder; so far at least two sycamores, one Japanese larch (among the oldest trees in the garden) and a crab (or should this be “crap”?) apple feature on the firewood list.

There aren’t all that many apple trees in Shetland, and mine has its moment of glory when it blooms in late May; it never fruits, and for the rest of the year it blocks the view to the South Border from the kitchen window and bores me to tears. I’d much, much rather have the Lang Kames and its deep, stark, subtle beauty in my garden than this apple tree. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said this in public, as we now seem to have a branch of the beauty police in Shetland, and I run the risk of being carted off by men in white coats. So be it.

The old roses have excelled them­selves this year, and by removing a few trees, there’ll be space for more; I’ve already indulged in a brief, short-listing scan through David Austin’s online catalogue. They’ve revelled in the heat and the drought which is no surprise, as some of their ancestors hail from hot, dry climates, such as the Middle East.

Rosa ‘Albertine’ is a vigorous rambler and has, over the years, not only engulfed the porch, but is now reaching for the roof of the house. It is best viewed from the south-facing skylights, and is such a magnificent sight that I’m toying with the idea of moving to the guest bedroom for the duration of its flowering. The scent from its coppery pink flowers, pro­duced with great abandon, wafts in through the open window and fills the upper floor of the house.

Until a couple of weeks ago it was all but invisible from the garden, obscured by a large specimen of Eleagnus ebbingii, an evergreen shrub with handsome grey-green foliage. Its removal has revealed the cramped and starved conditions ‘Albertine’ has had to put up with for almost two decades.

Planted in a tiny raised bed it hadn’t been fed since planting, and with the greedy evergreen as a close neighbour I can’t work out how this rose managed to get enough nut­rients, let alone water, to put on such a magnificent performance year after year.

Rosa filipes ‘Kiftsgate’ was also an invisible rose, unless one flew over the garden in a helicopter. It is a huge rambler, capable of reaching a height of 10 metres or more, and can, since we removed a row of Japanese larches, be seen as one walks from the Round Garden into the White Garden, where it lives. Its enormous clusters of single white flowers hold sway through most of July.

Rosa alba ‘Maxima’, the great white Jacobite rose, really lives up to its name this year, the shrub has more than doubled in size, and is spreading wands of scented double white bloom over all its neighbours, dominating the South Border.

Rosa alba ‘Celeste’ is to my mind one the most beautiful old roses we can grow in Shetland. It has hand­some grey-green foliage; its semi-double, pink flowers have an un­surpassed clarity of tone, and open from long, perfectly scrolled buds. It easily reaches two metres and is disease-resistant.

Old roses don’t perform well if planted too close to the sea, or in a place where they are constantly battered by winds. For gardeners in such locations allow me to recom­mend Rosa ‘Sarah van Fleet’. It has all the charm of an old rose, rich pink colouring, a strong perfume and semi-double flowers, but thanks to the rugosa blood in its genetic make-up can put up with a good deal of exposure. Due to its fiercely thorny wood it should never be planted near a path. : : : : : I eventually managed to free myself from the vice-like grip of High Maintenance Husband’s hand and ran up the garden path to the house. There I found Lily the Sup­reme Illustrator comforting Society Lady, who was in floods of tears. I’ve mentioned in the past that SL shows great skill and finesse in the culinary department, but today’s starter of grilled asparagus was off the menu. She’d burned the spears to a crisp, and, as highly an accomp­lished cook as she would have pulled an alternative from her sleeve with ease.

Not on this occasion. She fled from the room with a loud wail and locked herself into her bedroom. At exactly the same time the cargo vessel Shambolia, course set for Sydney, slipped her mooring ropes at Southampton dock. She was one of the last privately owned cargo ships in the world, and Captain Blunder, who was getting a bit long in the tooth, and was rather unsteady on his sea legs, was worried.

If this trip didn’t go as planned, and he failed to deliver his cargo on time and in mint condition, this would spell the end of the Shambolia. There had been rather too many insurance claims of late, and his premiums had gone through the roof.

Rosa Steppanova

Phytoplankton is at the bottom of the food chain, eaten by zoo plank­ton, which in turn is consumed by the pond fish and other creatures. He enthusiastically rattled off a list of Latin names, and I can’t remember a single one of them.

This, I’m sure, will please some of my customers who, at times, find themselves at the receiving end of my botanical Latin enthusiasm. Thank goodness the garden always comes to the rescue, and seeing a plant in the flesh not only connects it to its name, but beats the most detailed description. The second, much smaller pond is underway, thanks to Shetland Con­servation Volunteers. Clive Ban­nister, Pete and Linda Glanville and Ann Karin arrived armed with spades, forks, gloves and trowels, and immediately set to work, stripping the turf off an area marked out by a hose pipe pegged securely onto the grass.

Building a pond on sloping ground isn’t straightforward, and when our first one was dug, we had to get a second digger in, as the first excavation was sloping precariously to the south. With “Millimetre Pete” as our consultant engineer, exact levels were established in no time.

Cutting through the dry, matted sods was hard work, but building the faely dyke around the lower edge, and ramming soil into the air spaces was great fun, as was the coffee break. Linda always brings the most delicious cakes and tray bakes. This time it was rhubarb and white chocolate cake – out of this world.

All I had to offer in return was a pick-your-own strawberries session. Harvest usually starts in late July, and this is the first time we have had strawberries in time for Wimbledon.

With the help of our friends we picked 30 kg within a fortnight, and the freezer is filling up fast. There’s little time to process them into jams, ice cream, cheesecakes and sorbets at this busy time of year, but whizzed through a blender with a little sugar and lemon juice, and frozen straight away, they retain all their taste and aroma for at least six months, and take up far less space than berries frozen whole.

We grow them on a labour saving, matted row system, which means runners are aloud to root and grow into fruiting plants. This makes picking difficult, but the yield is phenomenal. The bed is now in its fourth year and still going strong. After harvesting is complete, we simply dig out the oldest plants, and let youth take over. There are several varieties in a free for all, but the most prolific and by far the tastiest is Fragaria ananassa ‘Marsh­mallow’. It’s far superior to any you can buy, but you’ll never find it in a shop or on a supermarket shelf because the berries don’t travel well.

The blackbirds take gashes out of a good few if we don’t net them. Any blemished or slug-damaged fruit is thrown onto the lawn, and they soon come and help themselves. I was pleased to watch one bird I hadn’t seen for some time tuck into a hearty supper the other day.

In late spring we came across a female that constantly held its beak open, a beak that showed a rather strangely shaped upper mandible. She spent a lot of time sitting, tail and wings fully fanned out, in the South Border, on one occasion less than a yard from a sun-bathing cat (why is there never a camera to hand when one needs it most?). I didn’t expect her to survive, but there she was, her beak now closed, but still showing a curved upper mandible; perhaps it was broken and since mended?

Some blackbirds like to start the day with a refreshing bath, and it is a joy to watch whole families splash­ing and preening in the shallows of the pond in the morn­ings. There’s still plenty of water in it, but in many parts of the garden things are getting desperate.

We confine watering to plants in containers and those newly planted; established plantings don’t get a look-in. Apart from the pond side plantings, moisture lovers all over the garden are at a critical state now. Ferns, hostas, astilbes and filipen­dulas are close to collapse, and we only have two options: to cut them to the ground and forgo their flowering for this year, or to water, water, water.

This, without any doubt, is the longest and most severe drought the garden has ever gone through. Trees draw a lot of moisture from the ground, and plants in their vicinity, especially those growing in full sun, are feeling the pinch. While attempt­ing to plant something in one of the raised beds of the Kitchen Garden, I found nothing but dust, regardless of how deep I dug with my trowel.

We have to make contingency plans for next year. Mulches applied in spring when the ground is wet prevent a lot of evaporation, and removing some large and greedy trees is another strategy.

It’s not all doom and gloom. South Africa is settling down well, with the first gladioli and watsonias in flower. Watsonia bulbifera, with its long-tubed, elegant apricot flowers, is one of my favourites. Suc­culents revel in heat and drought, and provided they have been well soaked before planting, can store enough water in their fleshy “leaves” to last them all season. There is an abundance of home-grown food now. All kinds of salad leaves and herbs, radishes, sweet, finger length carrots, young turnips, spring cabbages, courgettes, broad beans and the first golf ball sized beetroots.

On the brassica front we’ve encountered a new pest this year, one not usually associated with these vegetables. Leatherjackets, stoury worms, or crane fly larvae are well-known pests on pasture, but also gnaw the fine feeding roots off newly planted brassicas, which causes the plants to collapse. With ample rain they have a chance to re-grow their roots, but during a pro­longed drought they’re doomed.

We also had very poor germina­tion among our carrots and parsnips, which meant we had to re-sow in mid June, but due to a lack of moisture the young seedlings are making very little progress.

It is very difficult to germinate lettuce and its relations when temp­eratures are high, and now, as the weather has cooled down, is the time to give it another go. We’ve sown chicory, lamb’s lettuce, Swiss chard, and repeat crops of dill, rocket and mixed leaves for autumn harvesting.

While the hot, dry weather hasn’t been beneficial for edibles growing on a sheltered baking, south-facing field, it has worked wonders for the roses. We try and give every bush a bag or two or rotted horse manure in the spring, but some are always overlooked, and manage perfectly without it, which, in some cases is nothing short of miraculous.

There was a bowl of roses on the dinner table, a table laid with the best linen, china, crystal and silver, but rather than the large, merry crowd usually encountered at Society Lady and High Maintenance Husband’s Edinburgh abode, there was only one other guest: Lily, the Supreme Illustrator.

My heart was pounding as we mounted the stairs; I was filled with a joyful anticipation and suddenly knew that, as soon as the door was opened, a very large black and white tom cat would throw himself at me and smother me with kisses.

There was no sign of Mr Gentle­man, and SL, strangely flustered and nervous, pressed a glass of champagne into my hand and, while avoiding my gaze, asked me to join HMH in the garden at his urgent request.

He came towards me, hand outstretched, lips pursed for a kiss: “Aahh, Rosa, how very good to see you.” What seemed like a heartfelt welcome was no such thing. His eyes were hard, his face contorted into a sardonic grin, and his lips, raised in a snarl, exposed two rows of small, sharply pointed teeth.

I turned on my heel, attempting to flee to the house, but he caught up with me, gripped me by my elbow, and frogmarched me to his pond, his empty pond. “We all know what that means don’t we?” he hissed. “The finest fish money can buy used as cat food.” He was spit­ting with rage: “That vile creature of yours! He’s done it this time, and I promise you, he’ll never been seen alive again.”

Rosa Steppanova

Blanket weed is one of two algae that colonise ponds, especially new ponds without much surface cover. The algae need light and high nutri­ent levels to proliferate. Shading parts of your pond helps to reduce it, as does lowering of nutrient levels. Many aquatic plants come complete with a little sachet of slow release fertilisers. Give it to your house­plants, and never use anything rich to fill the sub­mergible baskets. Use plain garden soil, or even better sand or grit which contains virtually no nutrients. Don’t worry about the plants; they’ll get all the food from the water.

Never ever feed your marginal plants with either artificial fertilisers or organic manures. Both can lead to nitrogen run-off during wet weather, which will not only enrich the water, but is actually detrimental to aquatic life.

Fish, it must be said, turn even the most nutrient poor water into the opposite in no time, especially in a small pond. There’s really nothing you can do about this, apart from now and again scooping the mud and their decaying droppings from the pond bottom.

In my pond about a quarter of the surface is now covered in vegetation, and the marginals are starting to move in from the edges. Both water lilies have expanded massively since last year, and are in full, glorious flower, with new buds expanding every day. I bought a white and a yellow one, and still have their colour labels to prove it, yet both are pink, as pink as they come. They’re not at all what I had in mind and give the place a sort of Barbara Cartland quality.

The vegetation includes several floating islands of something that looks like an incredibly delicate and incredibly green grass. I’ve no idea where it came from but the fish love it. They sunbathe under­neath it, and allow me to tickle their bellies. It also makes a great nursery.

The fact that fish can not only survive but breed means your pond water is of good quality, and there is a plentiful supply of oxygen and food. Some of our goldfish have now bred for a second season. All are black or brown, and very difficult to spot in the peaty water, but of late last year’s crop have been joined by some diminutive fish, about a centimetre long.

I’ve no idea how many eggs are laid, but it must be hundreds, and there is no way of telling just how many of these “invisible” fish are actually swimming about. Given that big fish eat small fish it borders on the miraculous that any have survived at all.

There’s really no need to feed pond fish, but keeping them well fed might give the small fry a better chance. That’s a good excuse any­way for creating a daily feeding frenzy, and seeing them leap out of the water is very enjoyable. Feeding also tames them. Given time and perseverance, even the most timid among them will sooner or later join in. Mine now come to the surface as soon as they “hear” my footsteps.

The plantings around the pond are also coming into their own now. Candelabra primulas with their ascending tiers of flowers in a delectable range of colours are some of the easiest of Asiatic primulas to grow, and all they ask for is a soil that never dries out and division of the clumps every three or four years to stop them from becoming too congested.

Siberian irises are also very easy to grow, and associate well with the primulas and other moisture lovers such as hostas, especially those with large, plain leaves. Iris sibirica, the species, is an elegant plant, with elegant flowers to match. It reaches three feet in a damp season and is covered in deep blue flowers with silver markings.

There are countless cultivars, and here are some of the best. ‘Silver Lining’, described last week; ‘Dance Ballerina Dance’ is a relatively new introduction with rather large flowers. The wavy edged falls are rounded and of a greyish lilac, while the ruffled standards a pale lavender shade – very striking.

‘Butter and Sugar’ would be more aptly named cream (for the stand­ards) and lemon (for the falls) as that describes its flower colour rather better. It is perhaps the most charm­ing of them all, and best planted in a generous group. ‘Gull’s Wing’ is new to me and the best white I’ve come across to date. Large and pure white, the flowers are enhanced as well as given an edge by a flash of greenish yellow from the almost hidden signals. ‘Hubbard’ is a violet purple with prominent green and silver signals.

No June garden is complete with­out a few irises, and if your soil isn’t damp enough to grow the Siberian ones well enough, try Iris farreri, an Asiatic beauty of modest stature and blooms of a pale, luminous yellow that open from long, pointed buds.

So far I haven’t had much luck with the delectable Pacific hybrids. Slugs are very fond of them, and I have lost many during the pricking out process.

Eventually I managed to bring a pot of three seedlings, raised from Scottish Rock Garden seed through several winters. Not daring to separ­ate them, the whole lot was planted out and now provides me with pastel yellow and two different shades of blue; exquisite flowers, veined like butterfly’s wings from one plant as it were.

Iris ‘Holden Clough’ is an extra­ordinary creature. I use the term deliberately as the brown and golden flowers, intricately veined and pat­tern­ed seems more suited to jungle creatures or tropical insects than hardy border plants. Give it plenty of space as it can grow very large in time.

Finally my desert island iris Iris setose has been in the garden for almost 30 years and is still going strong. It puts on a tremendous display of Wedgewood blue flowers each June. The large, drooping falls are enhanced by white-rayed signals, and topped by bolt-upright, narrow standards. It is easy to grow in any soil or position and enchants in spring, when the new, violet-tinted sword shaped foliage emerges from the soil.

Before we move on from the iris theme, perhaps I should explain some of the terms used. Falls are actually the plant’s sepals, or calyx segments, while the standards are the actual petals. The word signal refers to the base of the sepal, which is often a different colour or shows prominent veining in a contrasting shade.

What a wonderful midsummer we’ve had this year – truly magical. As the longest day is all too often marred by clouds, wind and rain, the late sunshine was wonderful, but not Shetland-wide I’m told. Compensa­tion came the following day, with blue skies and blazing sunshine everywhere. What a treat, I’m sure we’ll all be raving about it for years, and I must briefly rave about the splendid dinner my friends James and Magnie arranged. The food was simply divine and perfect for the season. Nothing beats a bit of succulent salmon, new potatoes and something I can never get enough of: fresh asparagus with sauce hollandaise.

The dinner turned into an all-night party and we danced on the lawn until six in the morning. I’m really coming around to the idea of lawns. Dancing on gravel, or even in a wild flower meadow, just wouldn’t be quite the same. Lawns are long-suffering, but Magnie’s lupin border looked a little worse for wear at the end of the night – the wine was flow­ing rather freely and some guests danced rather enthusiastically.

His garden in Culswick houses a wonderful collection of plants, huge phor­miums about to burst into bloom, rhododendrons sporting new silvery foliage, and a bank smothered in magnificent cotoneasters and juni­pers. He also owns the best specimen of Paonia delavayi I’ve ever seen. It is compact and short-jointed, flowers freely in a dark maroon, the foliage is superb, and each leaf is held by a striking red petiole. I hope it’s going to set some viable seed.

And now it’s high time to catch up with his magnificence, his large­ness, his expansiveness, Mr Gentle­man, Society Lady, the love of his life, her cruel, jealous spouse High Maintenance Husband, and their love – or could this by now be a hate – triangle? It’s almost a year since Mr G. received an invitation to join SL and HMH in their pied à terre in the Scottish borders. I had my doubts right from the start as the card had not been written in SL’s elegant, flowing hand, but showed the unmistakable spidery scrawls typical of HMH and his mean and nasty character.

I tried to warn Mr G, but he, filled with longing for his beloved and joyful anticipation of an imminent reunion, would not listen. He packed his suitcase and booked a flight to Edinburgh for the next day. We said a tearful goodbye, early in the morn­ing at Sumburgh Airport, and that was the last time I saw him.

Rosa Steppanova

Seasons don’t adhere to the calendar, and at Lea Gardens we’ve had summer and summer temper­atures for quite some time now. It’s a different world here, compared to the rest of Shetland. I only leave the place if I absolutely have to, and on the rare occasions I do I forget at my peril that there’s a cold, draughty world out there.

Last Saturday I loaded up my car with plants for the Tingwall farmers’ market to join my friends and fellow growers Ann and Babsie for a few enjoyable and companionable hours. With the sun blazing since five that morning, the garden was baking by nine. I discarded my woolly jumper and set off in a thin cotton top from the Mediterranean to the sub Arctic.

I ended up wearing said jumper as well as a winter coat that James, who ventures from home almost daily, and knows about the climate “out there” had handed to me. I also bought myself a woolly hat to keep my lugs from freezing.

Perhaps the weather had changed, I said to myself. It hadn’t – on my return the garden was shimmering in the heat, and I gardened in shorts and a t-shirt for the rest of the day. Shelter, shelter, shelter. That’s the secret. If you, for whatever reason, can’t create it yourself, you’re welcome to share mine, and enjoy a few hours of real summer.

The garden’s annual green phase – a week or two when the flora holds its breath, to make the transition from spring to summer – was all too short for my liking. I love this all-green spell when the flowers hold their breath, nothing but buds and promise. Ferns are at their best then, all the trees are in full leaf and the last of the hostas have unfurled their foliage.

This year the columbines and Welsh poppies were impatient and filled the dark spaces between shrubs and underneath trees with ribbons of blue and dotted the ferns with luminous yellow. Both are ferocious self-seeders and, just before they drop their final petals, I cut them to the ground and cart them to the compost heap.

Columbines hybridise freely and I find it extremely difficult to discard even a single seedling. All are left in situ where possible, or potted up until they come into flower for the first time. The majority are nothing to write home about, but just now and again a pleasant surprise turns up, such as plants with scented, double flowers.

Some years ago I crossed the greenish white Aquilegia fragrans with the blue and white Japanese Aquilegia flabellate, and still have some of the offspring, tall, impres­sive plants with pale, ice blue flowers and a strong, fresh eau-de-cologne scent. The scent gene still gets about it seems, and is parti­cularly welcome in those strange little pleated and fluted flowers, reminiscent of a traditional Austrian Guglehupf cake.

All columbines are said to be short-lived but, apart from the long-spurred hybrids which tend to run out of steam after two or three seasons, I’ve had some blue singles and old-fashioned granny’s bonnets in the garden for almost 20 years. Cutting them to the ground after flowering is probably what keeps them going.

Scent isn’t something we asso­ciate with aquilegias but there is no doubt that theirs adds to the overall fragrance of the garden in June. Deciduous azaleas have a strong, sweet, heavy perfume that carries on the air, and the first roses are out now, almost without exception spe­cies, and therefore single flowered. Rosa xanthina from Korea is a perfect gem with neat foliage, reminiscent of Rosa pimpinellifolia and sweetly scented cream flowers that open from elegant yellow buds.

Oriental poppies, if they like the spot you’ve given them, will be with you for life – and have the potential to outlive you. These plants need the most careful siting, not only to provide them with the ideal growing conditions – sun or part shade, and a well-drained soil – but also because moving or removing them will prove well nigh impossible.

Papaver orientalis has long, fleshy roots that reach deep into the soil, more often than not too deep to allow the gardener to extract them in their entirety. If your soil gets waterlogged during winter, even for brief spells, these tap roots start to rot, and your poppy is doomed.

There’s a modest, ordinary red one in a sheltered, south-facing, raised bed outside my ben window. I’ve come to resent its presence, as the space should be occupied by a plant that cries out for such a location, while the poppy could easily make its living elsewhere. Countless times I’ve dug it up, and countless times it has returned – re-grown from scraps of root two feet below ground and probably safely wedged between the foundation stones of the house.

Choosing the ideal poppy for your garden is no easy matter. Cultivars fill two pages of The Plant Finder and, apart from the poppy red ones there is now a delectable range of pinks, whites, maroon and bi-coloured ones to choose from.

For me ‘Türkenlouis’ (Turkish Louis) comes top of the list for reds with its flowers of pure, glowing scarlet with fringed edges to its petals. “Harvest Moon” is an excellent orange red, on a more compact plant. It flowers earlier than most. I used to adore the dusky hues of ‘Patty’s Plum’, but feel more ambiguous about this poppy now. It doesn’t die very gracefully. Rather than shedding its worn petals it holds on to them until they bleach to an ugly, brownish lilac. Still, the colour is unique, and dead heading is the answer to the problem.

Pink oriental poppies do something to me. I can’t get enough of them, but shall limit myself to three plants today. ‘Kleine Tänzerin’ (little dancing girl) has small, cupped blooms of a light, clear pink, each petal marked with a dark stain at its base. ‘Pink Ruffles’ does exactly what is says on the tin. Several layers of fringed, ruffled petals look playful and over the top in warm, light pink.

‘Wild Salmon’ has the largest flowers of any oriental poppy in my garden. Some are almost 20 centimetres across, and as with all poppies, it pays to take a closer look into the centre of the flowers, where a large, green and purple carpel is surrounded by rings of sooty stamens.

A quick trip to the veg patch after our return from sooth was a bit of a mixed experience. Everything planted out is growing away fine, but the sowings are patchy at best, and disastrous on the parsnip and carrot front. There was nothing for it but to get out the drag hoe, and beat up the rows. There’s bound to be a good downpour soon to water it all in.

Summertime, and the living is easy. Most of the cats have taken to the hills, and only return sporadically for a saucer of milk and a nap on the duvet. They behave like wild cats, stuff themselves with meat, and then sleep off their kill until the belly rumbles again. It still amazes me how even the smallest cat can fit a whole rabbit – as large as itself – into its stomach.

Sadly, they pay a price for this bounty. As the rabbit dies, its fleas jump ship so to say, and the ears, sometimes the whole head, of the cat is attacked, resulting in thick, hard scabs, some scarring, and in rare cases, loss of fur along the spine.

But wait a minute. Aren’t cats sly, devious, deceitful and manipulative creatures? (Surely there must be more stereotypical adjectives, but can’t think of any more just now). It has been suggested by my old friend Jonathan, that my furry darlings are pulling the wool over my eyes. Perhaps he’s right? Rather than hunting rabbits, they’re probably singeing the down off swans, roasting rain geese, boiling bonxies and salting down whimbrels for the winter in barrels fashioned from tightly woven heathery twigs.

And that’s not all. Having foolishly believed that the caked peat around their necks is proof of their creeping into rabbit warrens, the truth has dawned on me at long last. I now know that these cunning muggies hitch lifts on lorries. They force the drivers (claw held to jugular) to take them to Sumburgh Head where they pull puffins from their burrows, before broiling them on little camping stoves.

Rosa Steppanova

Down there, the show is either over already, or has reached its zenith – far, far too soon. What is there to get excited about from now on I ask?

While things have been earlier than usual in Shetland, we still have lots to look forward to. Oriental poppies, irises, aquilegias, and all the other treasures of June are just getting into their stride.

A fortnight ago, James and I were lucky enough to catch the deciduous azaleas at Glendoick Gardens. Breathtaking is the only word to describe them, both visually and olfactory. They embrace the whole warm range of the chromatic spectrum: cream and pale peach, pumpkin yellow, deep orange and fiery red. Their heady scent carries on the air, and bees and bumblebees, their legs weighed down with large sacks of pollen, hovered drunkenly above the blooms.

Sadly there wasn’t time to see the whole garden which, incidentally, is open to the public all year round, and tickets can be purchased at the nearby garden centre, just off the A90. We were rushing south to Desborough, near Corby, to attend the wedding of Alison Innes, who lived in Shetland during the 1980s and still has many friends up here.

We hurtled through Rutland, once England’s smallest county, and probably the closest the green and pleasant land gets to big ranch Texas. Mega-quilts of technicolor rape and green wheat as far as the eye can see; all boundary hedgerows long since grubbed out. Sensitively cut verges though, bends and junctions only. I’d like to think that this happened for environmental benefits, but given a countryside spiked with UK Independence Party posters, it was probably a public spending cut exercise. Still, the SIC could do worse than follow suit.

At the entrance to Oakham, on the shores of Rutland Water, Britain’s largest man-made lake, a Britain in Bloom winner sign caught my eye, and I was just about to slam on the brakes for a detour, when the nearby roundabout provided a taster. Equidistant triangles, planted with triangular plants, planted equidistantly in ever decreasing triangles – white, then red, then blue, jingoistic gardening by numbers. Should Lea Gardens ever win such an award, please promise to cart me off to a loony bin.

A few miles further south, a most unexpected and wonderful sight: one of those huge rectangles of wheat disrupted by, not just patches but galaxies of red field poppies. What joy. I’m sure the wretched farmhand has since been dismissed for sloppy sowing, and/or insufficient weed control, and the farmer in question has probably been suspended from the Rutland Farmers’ Association.

Alison was beautiful and radiant in a 1950s style dress of cream satin, patterned with olive green roses, a matching hat and veil, and glimpses of one of those gone with the wind multi-layered rustling petticoats. Simon, the groom, and now ex-Metropolitan chief inspector, looked very handsome, but men, sadly, are so very restricted by dress code. They can either wear a suit or a suit. One of the gentlest and kindest men I know, I was shocked to hear, in the best man’s speech, that the one thing he misses about the police service is kicking in peoples’ doors at six in the morning. We partied the night away, then headed south to Surrey the next morning, after a leisurely breakfast with brand new Mr and Mrs Moy and fellow guests.

Over the past 30 years I have developed a very soft spot for Surrey, where Maureen, my mother-in-law, still lives. Hedgerows flank every road, with some of the trees meeting overhead to form leafy, green tunnels, wonderfully cooling in the sweltering heat. A tree I’d never before seen in its full splendour was the red-flowered horse chestnut – towers of green studded with warm red “candles” – a magnificent sight.

I’ve known the Farnham, God­alming, Guildford part of this county for over 30 years, but there are always new delights to discover. This time the revelation was The Mill at Elstead, a restaurant with a large garden, and a mill race and pond, as the name suggests. The food is heavenly, and after lunch you can stretch out on the grass, at the pond’s edge with a coffee or a glass of wine. Weeping willows bathe their branches, blue iridescent dragon flies dart above the water, and the swans take stale bread (supplied on request by the kitchen) from your hand. I can’t think of a more blissful way to while away an afternoon.

Wisley, the Royal Horticultural Society’s jewel in the crown, is not far away, but when it comes to buying plants, I feel irresistibly drawn to Morris & Stevens, just off the Compton roundabout. This is probably one of the most untidy nurseries in the country, it even beats the bittercress and willow herb at Lea Gardens, but the range of plants on offer is stupendous. Unimaginable treasures can be found at very reasonable prices. The nursery specialises in herbaceous perennials, is run by a couple of hard-working and dedicated enthusiasts and I can’t think for the life of me how they manage to not only produce, but look after thousands of beautifully grown plants with just two pairs of hands.

I came away with a car boot full, among them Papaver orientalis ‘Royal Chocolate’, a sumptuous brownish red, and Polygonatum humilis, a dwarf solomon’s seal. They’re new to me, and, fingers crossed, if they settle in, and lend themselves to propagation, they may become worthy additions to Shetland gardens.

One can’t possibly drive all the way to England without a brief visit to the capital. James’s younger sister Alice’s house in west Ealing has a most charming garden with bright blue ceanothus, something I’d love, but have so far failed to grow, walls clad in clematis, roses, and a most impressive wisteria (see ceanothus) which provides the roof for an al fresco dining room. No garden is complete without cats, and this one is inhabited by the siblings Porgy and Bess, who scale the high walls and present their owner with gifts from her neighbours’ plots – sticks of ever increasing length and girth.

Roses. They really can grow roses down there. In June all of England is one big rose garden: climbers clothe the facades of houses, ramblers fling their limbs into the tallest trees, floribundas smothered in blooms, and old, pink, fully double and quartered shrub roses with a heady scent to match their opulence, trained through climbing hydrangeas. The latter I’ll try and emulate here, as it’s such a successful arrangement. The white lace of the hydrangea complements the pink heaviness of the rose, and neither needs a trellis. I can never resist Southall; drink­ing in its vibrant colours and spicy scents, is like a visit to the Indian sub continent, and dinner at Gifto’s Lahore Karahi, 164 The Broadway, where everything is cooked in tandoors (traditional clay ovens) is a must. In the good old days you could take your own booze. Hand­some, smiling waiters opened your bottle of wine before discreetly wrapping it in a large white napkin for a £1.00 corking charge. Gifto’s is strictly teetotal these days, and perhaps all the better for it.

Rosa Steppanova

What I do know is that the down­pour on 23rd May came not before time. It refreshed the whole garden, made the scent of rowan and white­beam blossom carry on the air and watered in the new plantings. No endless rounds of pot-grown sub­jects – what a relief.

In fact, I was so delighted that I claimed that rain as my personal wedding anniversary present (30 years and still going strong); and there were two others courtesy of Mother Nature. When I lifted a pot of lily seedlings from a high ledge at the front door, a large, golden-green frog jumped out of it.

Later that day I found a black­bird’s egg hidden underneath the foliage of a dwarf veronica in the nursery. No nest, just an egg; a beginner perhaps? Or, the thought crossed my mind, the missing egg from the abandoned nest mentioned earlier this month? It has now joined the other three in the nest on my hall table.

May has rushed past as usual, and early spring, with its stretches of bare soil swathed with bulbs and primroses, is like a distant memory. The garden is lush, green with young fern fronds and unfurling leaves. My red tree peonies (Paeonia delavayi) had an early start this year and some of their large green seed- pods are swelling alarmingly. Those plant­ed in shade don’t flower quite as freely as those in sunny spots, but their flowers last a good deal longer.

Seedlings take between five and seven years to start flowering, and no matter how many flowering-sized specimens I manage to pro­duce, they’re instantly snapped up in the nursery. There are times when I try to put off potential customers, as these shrubs can take up a lot of space in small gardens. A much better bet in such situations is another Chinese species, Paeonia potaninii, a small, suckering shrub with red-tinged ferny leaves. The flowers are proportionally smaller, slightly nodding, and include mar­oon, crimson and a warm orange red in their chromatic range.

Anniversaries must be celebrated in style, and to my mind there’s noth­ing better than a bit of cham­pagne planting of an evening. It goes without saying that I can’t afford the real thing, but Spanish Cava, or French Veuve de Vernay brut will do just as well.

Coaxing my husband into active participation in these events doesn’t happen all that often; he usually sticks to his role as consultant, ex­plain­ing the needs and habits of the more obscure plants in his personal collection and suggesting suitable habitats for them.

On the rare occasions I can per­suade him into joining my creative frenzies, he always comes up with the most brilliant ideas. Last week I bemoaned the lack of shelter in my new peat garden. Enter James and Larix leptolepis, the Japanese larch. It never occurred to me that this stately conifer could be “bonsaied” into a tailor-made hedge for small spaces. Planted on a curved ridge, it will provide fantastic shelter from the south-east in as little as a couple of years.

Clipped to a maximum width of 70cm it can’t be allowed to grow tall enough to give protection to my little flock of Cardiocrinum gigan­teum (giant Himalayan lilies). And, as tales with good villains are always the most exciting, I must update you on the Broadleigh Gardens giant lily saga.

Assured, and assured again that the rotting, root-less bulb I’d re­ceived would be fine, I removed the browning, squishy outer scales and planted it with a benediction, next to the other, healthy ones I’d bought. The latter started into growth the minute their roots touched the ground and soon put out large, glossy leaves.

Broadleigh lily tried to unfurl a leaf, tried for about three weeks, but failed. There was clearly something wrong. I dug around and underneath it very carefully so as not to disturb its roots, and could have saved myself the trouble. There were no roots, just a bulb, rotting away quietly.

I should have known. It was all my fault. According to Broadleigh I’d omitted to dig one ton (!) of manure into the soil first, or bury a dead sheep underneath the bulb. All I could muster was a poor, stillborn lamb and a hundredweight of horse muck. No wonder the bulb failed so miserably.

Stories that have a villain must also have a knight in shining armour. Every gardener who’s seen Paeonia rockii in the flesh wants to grow it. It makes a sizeable, rounded bush with handsomely cut foliage and opens large white saucer-shaped flowers in June, each petal marked with a purple blotch at its base.

Three good-sized shrubs (a spe­cial offer from Thompson & Mor­gan) arrived, but only one came into leaf. I snipped away at the tips of the other two – dead wood, snipped a little more – dead wood. All their top growth was dead. What had I done wrong? Should I have planted pig’s trotters or fish heads with them?

With the Broadleigh experience fresh in my mind, I didn’t hold out much hope for a satisfactory out­come, and was pleasantly surprised. The first replacement, still dormant (obviously kept in cold storage), arrived today, and is alive from tip to toe. That’s what I call good customer service.

The larch hedge won’t be tall enough for another of my dream plants either, one that richly deserved but didn’t get a mention last week. Enkianthus campanulatus is a native of Japan and a perfect delight. It’s a medium-sized, deciduous, ericace­ous shrub with two seasons of glory; the first in May and June, when its branches are hung with clusters of tiny bells, fawn or pale yellow, deli­cately striped with brown or maroon. The second comes in autumn, when the foliage turns the most glorious shades of peach, orange and fiery red, colouring unsurpassed by any other shrub I know.

It is easily grown in acid or peaty soil, in a reasonably sheltered, but sunny position. I also have one with deeper coloured flowers. I’m not sure which species it is derived from, as I only know it as Enkianthus ‘Red Bells’. The colour of its flowers is hard to describe, somewhere bet­ween cinnabar red and warm, light mahogany, deepening with age. It is smaller in stature than the species.

Menziesia ciliicalyx, also from Japan, is a midget by comparison; deciduous, with azalea-like foliage, and branches hung with small, glisten­ing urn-shaped flowers just beneath its new, fresh leaves. Col­ours range from cream to a rich, deep mauve. A treasure for the larger rockery provided the soil is acid and there is a modicum of shelter.

As I said last week, my peat garden contains no peat, a lamentable state of affairs. I reckon that between 0.8 to – at the very most – 1.2 cubic metres should give it a nice finish. A drop in the proverbial ocean com­pared to Viking Energy’s 800,000 cubic metres of peat to be stripped off Shetland’s moors. I believe I can take my wheelbarrow up the Dudd (our local peat hill) with impunity, to scrape the odd möldy blett.

Rosa Steppanova

I had a massive, passionate, devastating crush on a teacher when I was about nine. He was called Michael Klose, and he was very ugly – stick-thin with lank blond hair, thin lips, a hooked nose and thick-lensed horn-rimmed glasses, yet I adored him because just now and again we had the most wonderful adult and wonderfully intellectual conversations. He was the first adult to take me seriously, not only respond­ing to all my childish ques­tions in an honest and in-depth way, but answering every one of my letters I wrote to him during the summer holidays. Where are you Michael (pronounced Mee-chaa-el)? If you read this, please get in touch.

Some plants I have a massive crush on fall into this category. They are not beautiful in the conventional sense, but they press the right but­tons. I’ve, sadly and vexingly, long since lost the label of a herbaceous peony I raised from seed a long time ago. Given a little corner in a generously limed bed, it grew a little each year and eventually produced its first bloom. Nobody apart from me has ever noticed it. The more flamboyant inhabitants of the bed steal the show with their magentas, purple and fuchsia reds. My ex­quisite pale yellow darling doesn’t get a look in.

Enough of this Meechaael in­duced tangent. My first horticultural crush was rock gardens, rock gar­dens, rock gardens. All those little treasures, creeping, crawling, trailing, had stolen my heart – a case of unrequited love if ever there was one. The more affection I heaped upon them, the more they spurned me – until many years later, when I had ceased caring for them but could provide them with the conditions they crave: full sun, light soil and perfect drainage. They performed like well trained dogs, and I spurned them for being so easy to please. Isn’t this always the case?

This first infatuation was eventu­ally followed by something appro­ach­ing real passion and full emo­tional involvement. Reading Alfred Evans’ The Peat Garden and its Plants was electrifying. The late Alfred was of course curator of the world-famous peat garden at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh. I still visit that shrine as often as I can, and most of my time there is spent drooling. My relationship with peat gardens has become complicated as well as simplified over the years. More unrequited love of a kind, but in reverse this time. A little slope, initially on the eastern frontier, but now, since we’ve expanded, bang in the middle of the garden, was the place where our predecessors originally kept their peat stack. As the stack was shifted to a more convenient place, its location be­came a compost heap cum rubbish dump. My friend Dorota would probably have called it the armpit of the universe, and she would have been right.

After extracting two Singer sewing machines, the cast iron re­mains of a fire place, a mangle, several dozen pairs of leather boots, an assortment of broken bottles and china – there it was: my very own peat garden. Unimaginable treasures flowered and flourished there. Stately slate-purple notholirions and pink spotted nomocharis, tiny trilliums, fleshy leaved, white Roman­zoffia unalaschkensis, the rarest blue poppies and Rhododen­dron williamsianum. And – planted far too close to the front of the bed – one of my dream rowans, Sorbus setchwanensis, an exquisite and exquisitely slow-growing, fern-leaved, pink-flowered, white-berried tree.

It was all too easy. In time I grew a little tired of those wan, exquisite, slow-growing beauties. They were like puppies, constantly wagging their tails. Let’s add a little excite­ment and an easy maintenance element, I said to myself, some broad (very broad, as it turned out) winter-flowering heathers, a few native ferns, two, or even better, three large and flamboyant azaleas, a pair of lusty bog myrtles and – the most fatal mistake of all – weed-proof ground cover by the name of Oxalis magellanica. Please forget this name as soon as you’ve read it – unless you have a very large garden and want acres of it swal­lowed up by a perfect and innocent little plant with tiny clover leaves and masses of white flowers.

What gave my little peat garden the death knell were two plant thefts. It is a universally acknowledged truth that some gardeners when visit­ing other gardens carry capa­cious handbags, capacious enough to hold an assortment of appropriate tools as well as seedlings, cuttings, ripe seed heads and, on occasion, semi-mature plants. I don’t believe that my Glaucidium palmatum or my Shortia soldanelliodes have found their way into Shetland gar­dens. I’m sure they’ve gone through the Sooth Mooth, and now grace the gardens of connoisseurs far afield.

There’s no greater turn-off in life than love turned sour. Just now and again my conscience was pricked when I came across one of my treasures drowning in a sea of Magellan clover. Alas, it was never pricked for long enough, as I was off to new fields, indulging in passionate affairs with new, exciting and far more flamboyant lovers. South America beckoned with flame coloured embothriums and Chilean lantern trees hung with large, vermillion cherries.

Now, imagine that first love, somebody who’d perhaps proposed marriage to you but was turned down many moons ago, showing up on your door step. You have, all these years, carried a torch for him or her. And there’s your second chance.

I’m not sure when I originally read Alfred Evans, but he’s now become my bedside companion once more, and he is still as fresh and – perhaps more important – as relevant as he was all those years ago. He’s my faithful guide to Lea Gardens’ much enlarged and improved peat garden, a well con­toured and slightly raised south-facing bed. There’s just one draw­back. Unlike the first creation, this one contains no peat whatsoever, just bog standard, heavy, acid soil. Drainage has been improved by incorporating some well washed beach grit, and large amounts of rotting leaf mould. Instead of the peat blocks, recommended by Evans (there’s even a photo of a Shetland peat bank in his book), boulders of acidic rock will have to do.

This planting, exposed to all the easterly winds, which give the garden a thorough thrashing several times a year, is a lot more challenging than my first, snug little peat bed, and only time – and the winds – will tell if it can succeed. A north-east, south-east spine of dwarf mountain pine, Chiliotrichum diffusum, larger yak hybrid rhododendrons, upright Shetland juniper and the odd shrubby potentilla thrown in for good, but rather incongruous mea­sure, should provide some shelter. Apart from that, I’m working on the “nothing ventured nothing gained” principle, playing it safe in places with stretches of vanilla-scented Primula alpicola and vigorous white Ourisia macrocarpa, while taking calculated risks with treasures such as Codonopsis clematidea, a delicate beauty with grey-lavender bells, and ground-hugging, deciduous Rhodo­dendron camtschaticum with large red flowers.

There are autumn-flowering Chinese Gentians interplanted with Dodecatheon meadia. The latter has vivid magenta flowers, as well as a rather vivid name. Given my non-existent Greek, I managed to work out dodeca (12), and theo (god). Totally unlikely, I told myself, and consulted my botanical dictionary. And there it was, the little thing is indeed called 12 gods! It is easily grown in damp rich soil.

Some of my readers probably remember the much overdue, and much moaned about clear-out of cold frames and assorted pots earlier this year. It was time well spent and has yielded unimaginable treasures, such as a large pot of Erythronium sibiricum, a rare eastern trout lily, which came to me in a seed packet from Finn Haugli of the Tromsö Botanic Garden half a life time ago, three strapping little shrubs of Menziesia ciliicalyx var. purpurea, a small deciduous Japanese shrub with striking, waxy, rose-purple, pitcher-shaped flowers in early summer. What more can the heart ask for? I’m besotted.

And so, I hope, are the plants in question. Not with me, but with their new environment. A plant kept in a pot, however spacious, is still a plant in prison. Releasing them after many years of confinement has given them a new lease of life, and should, I hope, at least elicit a modicum of gratitude towards the gardener.

The new peat garden has con­sumed me of late, and the rest of the garden, not to mention the nursery, have been badly neglected as a result. “Feeling guilty, worried, waking from tormented sleep, the old love has me bound, but the new love cuts deep.” These lines from Joan Armatrading’s song The Weak­ness in Me describe the agony of the lover torn between two loves rather well. And we all know where this can lead, painful separation, messy divorce.

Thank goodness, such scenarios only apply to human relationships. Gardeners can have it all. It’s never too late to start a new love affair, and there’s an incomparable sweetness in rekindling an old one.

Rosa Steppanova

Tales of woe abound: whole beds of tulips in their prime wiped out in a few hours, bedding plants set out the night before turned to crisps.

It is heart-breaking when this happens – every five years or so, if my memory serves me right – but it’s a reality every gardener at 60° north has to live with.

At Lea Gardens, anything in the firing line of that storm looks a complete mess as a result, with the worst damage at and above eye level. Every tree and shrub on the western front has been badly burnt by the wind. The scented leaves of the balsam poplars are black shreds. The buds on Canadian elders, just about to burst into bloom, hang limp and brown.

There was also, much to my dismay, considerable damage on the east side of the garden, an area I believed to be well “covered” by a shelter belt. A newly-planted golden leaved alder at the north-eastern margin of the pond looks as if it had been torched – it’s spring display cruelly cut short with not a speck of golden green to be seen.

Black is not a colour we associate with spring. And there was a shade of white I hadn’t expected to see for at least another fortnight. We managed to get our vegetables in early, too early to bother protecting the brassicas from the cabbage white butterfly with agricultural fleece or windbreak netting. But there they were, several of them, fluttering about the South Border, pretending to be quite harmless.

Black and white is far too monochrome for May. Let’s think pink instead. There is a feast of pink in the Back Yard just now, raspberry, sugar mouse, carnation, coral, peach and rose – all courtesy of rhodo­dendrons, primarily Yakushimanum hybrids.

There’s pink elsewhere in the garden, the mauve-pink of tulips, the soft, lilac pink “cow parsley” of Chaerophyllum hirsutum and the first flowers on Geranium macor­rhizum ‘Ingwersen’s Variety’, and there’s a fair bit of pink to come yet. But none has quite the same impact as these “yaks”. Each one gives a good, solid cubic meter (rounded not square) of pink.

Even Rhododendron ‘Golden Torch’, which eventually turns to a luminous pale yellow, starts its flowering season in pink. A deep clear shade in the bud changes to warm peachy tones. This gradual lightening is something all these hybrids have in common, and, in all likelihood, has to do with their Jap­an­ese genes. The wilding, Rhodo­dendron yakushimanum sports cherry red buds, the flowers open a deep pink then gradually pale to apple blossom and finally white.

All have a long season of beauty. It starts as soon as the buds start to swell and reveal a glimpse of colour between the pale green bud scales, and ends with the unfurling of the new foliage a couple of months later. The young leaves are never green, but wonderful shades of buff, white or silver.

We used to grow all our rhodo­dendrons in pots, but have since taken a leaf out of the book of one of Britain’s most famous rhododendron growers and breeders, the Coxes of Glendoick. They grow these shrubs without exception in the open ground, then lift and pot them for sale when they’re at their best.

There’s open ground and open ground. At Glendoick the lining out beds are completely sheltered, much like woodland glades, while those at Lea Gardens are out in the open, facing the sea, and the plants in them have to put up with a fair bit of punishment. Still, it somehow works. Those plants higher up the hill suffer a bit of leaf scorch, but manage to bud up beautifully.

It’s all to do with horticultural realism, and Shetland Horticultural Society plant sale last Saturday was a good lesson in that department. It was immediately apparent which plants had been grown in Shetland and which hadn’t.

I’d rather have a lop-sided plant with a few scorched leaves, knowing that it is fully used to the Shetland climate, than an unblemished one that’s come out of a poly tunnel and will curl up its toes after the next gale.

The amount and variety of locally grown plants was impressive, but some of the pricing was quite unrealistic, more developing world than wealthy island community. Growing plants is still seen as something of a hobby or a sideline, with the prices of some items barely covering the cost of seed and compost, leaving pennies for the grower.

This doesn’t just apply to Shetland. Workers in agriculture and horticulture are still amongst the lowest paid in the country, which is a disgrace. If we want a viable horticultural industry in the islands we have to take it seriously, move away from the pin money ethos, create proper jobs and pay decent wages.

That’s enough ranting; let’s get back to pink, and my desire to continue the impact beyond the rhododendron season. I’ve never been a gardener that goes for bedding in a big way, but just now and again, a bit of summer bedding will do the trick.

I’m thinking opium poppies – lots of them. There’s already a red one in the garden which produces single or double flowers, and self-seeds wherever I want it and don’t want it. This year I raised some dark plum purples and a voluptuous double pink from seed. Pricked out as clusters, rather than single plants in large plug trays, they had lived outdoors since the beginning of the month and were crying out to be planted.

I want them all to make a real impact, pink in the South Border, red in the Entrance Bed, and dark plum in the Long Border of the garden extension. Spring bulbs just going over present perfect planting spots as, for that matter, do spring bulbs in their prime.

I’m referring to the Spanish bluebell here. If my garden was left to its own devices it would be filled with nothing but bluebells. Pulling up their flowers as well as their leaves, created an astonishing amount of space, all now filled with plump little poppy seedlings. Fingers crossed, their neighbours won’t be in too much of a hurry to take over the newly bare territory.

Wading into a well-filled border in May calls for a certain amount of agility and a good sense of balance; it also presents the gardener with a last chance to do some, often much needed, hand-weeding in all those places that become out of bounds once June arrives. There’s no scope for the Dutch hoe, but the long edge of trowel, pushed to and fro a few times will do just as well.

The hungry gap hasn’t yawned quite as wide as I’d feared earlier on, largely thanks to one plant. Good old Swiss chard has provided us with rich pickings since the end of April. The German cultivar ‘Lukul­lus’ not only stands up to the weather, but also comes into new growth early.

The leaves, when picked young, are very similar to spinach, and can be used in the same way. Green omelette features regularly on our menu, and is very easy to make. Wilt a large amount of roughly chopped Swiss chard in a large sauce pan, squeeze out any excess liquid (a salad spinner works well for this), mix with a few well-beaten, sea­soned eggs, and fry in a little olive oil over a low heat until set. Great with a tomato, garlic and parsley salad.

Premiers always raise the pulse, especially if they’ve been long in coming. Podophyllum hexandrum has been in the garden for three years now, and is an extraordinary plant. Podophyllum means a leaf on a leg, and the stout leg is topped by something resembling a shaggy ink cap, or a barely open cocktail umbrella with a camouflage of green and brown mottling.

What looks like one leaf is actually two, and between them a good sized solitary flower rises in May. It is, of course, pink, a muted blush shade. A prominent seedpod graces its centre and will expand into a large red, squashy fruit, provided the bees have done their job properly.

Rosa Steppanova

“Lift Gunnera manicata early spring and line planting pit with thick polythene” received a red circle well over a month ago, but somehow was forgotten about in the hustle and bustle of a busy plant nursery and garden.

The note was made because, two years after planting, the plant in question didn’t live up to its expected giant dimensions. It never showed any signs of stress, but I was sure that the lack of giantism was connected with a lack of water.

The gunnera is now in flower, and had revealed the reasons for its modest dimensions. It has turned out to be Gunnera tinctoria, the giant gunnera’s smaller cousin. The young leaves of both species are highly susceptible to frost and need a suitable covering, such as their old, spent foliage, to protect them.

Gunnera manicata has green flowers, while those of G. tinctoria, displayed in the typical cone-shaped inflorescence, are a fetching crimson. All hail from southern South America, and Gunnera repens makes superb, weed-suppressing groundcover in damp places. It also manages to sneak into the pots of its neighbours in the nursery.

There used to be a time when all the pots in our nursery were weed-free, a freedom achieved more often than not, with the help of germination inhibiting herbicide called Ronstar (how do they come up with these names?). Abandoning Ronstar, for environmental reasons, has given rise to some rather interesting events.

“A weed is a plant in the wrong place.” I’m not sure who to attribute this quote to, but it is still by far the best definition I know. We still blitz bitter cress, grass seedlings, and an unnamed willow herb, that has the knack of making itself look important enough to be left unharmed by inexperienced weeders.

That leaves a whole host of other “weeds”. Columbine and foxglove seedlings frequently turn up in the pots of others plants, as do polemoniums and Welsh poppies. Candelabra primulas also like depositing their numerous offspring in the pots of their neighbours.

The fecundity of Primula florindae, the Himalayan cowslip, knows no bounds. There’s no need to sow seeds, as vigorous young plants can simply be lifted from the gravel in the nursery aisles.

Geranium macrorrhizum seeds around like the proverbial mustard and cress. It is a vigorous plant with scented leaves (oil of geranium is made from this), and whenever it has planted its seed in a pot filled with small and vulnerable treasures, it is weeded out mercilessly. Where its vigour matches that of its host, I tend to leave it in situ. Certain shrubs and trees are also very free with their progeny, especially escallonias, hebes, black currants, olearias, rowans, Swedish white­beams, cotoneasters and Sitka alders.

When I point out these stow­aways to my customers, offering to remove them, the answer is always a no, and quite rightly so. Who on earth would turn down getting two, three, or even four plants for the price of one? The little invaders are easily separated from the major plant and can be potted up or planted out separately without causing any damage to host.

There’s just one more “weed” to be mentioned, the one I’m rather partial to and, I have to admit to my shame, I try to remove from all plants before they are sold. I’m not sure how this is coming about, but Shetland native orchids, northern marsh and heath spotted, have started to seed themselves about in the nursery without any encouragement from me.

Perhaps that statement isn’t quite true. There were three orchids in pots and I tried to encourage them to seed by placing three full-sized seed trays filled with delicious compost at their feet. The trays remain empty to this very day, but every pot in their vicinity sports orchid seedlings.

Most have placed their offspring into rather precarious situations by seeding into the pots of mature or semi-mature shrubs where these youngsters are bound to be shaded or starved out in the very near future. Under no circumstances could this be allowed to happen, and all large shrubs containing orchid seedlings were placed in the potting queue for examination and possible surgery by myself or Dr Kara, my gardener.

Extracting the fleshy roots of an orchid from the matted and tightly woven root balls of hebes and escallonias turned out to be an impossible task. The only way to save the orchids was to cut large wedges out of shrub’s root balls, leaving the latter rather depleted in the sub-terrestial department.

A shrub, devoid of most of its root system, needs to be pruned hard in order to survive, which meant reducing about 30 beautiful woody plants to the size of liners. After completing the surgery, I couldn’t make up my mind which plant was the weed in this particular incident.

As the garden already has a lot of native orchids near the pond I initially decided to pot up the “wedges” for sale and, having had limited success with pot-grown orchids, googled “compost for terrestrial orchids”. The result popped up immediately but the mix was a very complicated one, including components I’d never heard of. The wedges have now been added to the areas around the pond, where their friends and family are thriving already.

Pots of mixed blessing are becoming a regular commodity. Where the originally intended plants have left some space, others take advantage. It’s rather difficult to sell these in the nursery, because it’s hard to give priority to just one pot inhabitant, and the jury is still out regarding which will be the dominant one.

For the time being I’m planting them out in odd corners, keeping a watchful eye. One pot, containing a seedling each of Linaria purpurea, Geranium pyrenaicum, and Viola cornuta should be an interesting one to observe, as the plants match each other in both vigour and the power to produce self-sown offspring.

In all likelihood, it was I who introduced a new weed to my garden. There were no dandelions here when I came, and now there are quite a few. Dandelions are weeds of course, but I refuse to give them their proper slot. If they were rare they’d be much sought after for their beautiful yellow flowers and edible leaves.

I’m toying with the idea of growing some prize specimens in large clay pots. Their only drawback is their self-seeding, and that is easily taken care of. One simply removes the spent flowers before they get a chance to release their little “parachutes”.

My herb and salad garden is bordered by mixed plantings on its southern and eastern margin. Ferns, hostas, perennial honesty, dicentras, double celandines and other well-behaved plants inhabit these beds. There are definitely no foxgloves, but hundreds of foxglove seedlings turn up in the spaces between herbs and salads each and every year.

There are places in the garden where I long to have foxgloves, and in order to have them there I have to go through the elaborate process of digging them up and planting them where I want them. There are always far too many for my needs, and when there is time and compost available, I pot some up to be sold in the nursery.

Whenever I do so, nobody on this island is interested in buying foxgloves; they, and all my efforts, go to waste. With this experience fresh in my mind, there are years when the surplus young foxgloves go to the compost heap. Yes.

You’ve guessed it. That is the year when everybody is crying out for foxgloves and I have none to offer.

I am led to believe that the above-described scenario is known as “Sod’s Law”.

It doesn’t just apply to foxgloves. It also applies to my hiding plants. The other day, a customer who’d travelled all the way from Orkney, and was asking for a plant of Thalictrum aquilegifolium, a won­der­fully airy concoction of tiny columbine leaves and fluffy heads of mauve flowers, was sent away empty-handed.

The next day I came across half a dozen of these plants in the “too small to sell August 08” department. My gardener, Dr Kara, suggests a computerised register of all plants and their whereabouts, which is a good idea on the face of it.

Alas, plants are moved around all the time, potted up, potted on, pruned, shaped, kept back, brought out. It would take all my time to keep such a register up to date, with no time left to write my column. In this case the choice is a straightforward one: the register is the weed, my column is the desirable plant.

Rosa Steppanova