Gardens
Call a spade a Brotzman
Ursula Buchan
Until recently, I have always gardened on a light, free-draining, sandy soil. I used to complain about it ceaselessly because it always dried out by August, whatever the summer, so that flowering faltered .and leaves withered. When we moved house and bought a garden on a heavy, moisture- retentive, fertile, stony clay, I was paradoxi- cally blithe, keen to reassure doubters with homely sayings like 'a clay soil breaks your back but not your heart'. Now, however, I cannot easily draw the anatomical distinc- tion.
That is, since the day I planted 'pheas- ant-eye' narcissi in grass in a proto- orchard. The idea was to grow them in broad strips (to make mowing easier), and I looked forward to spring when they would wave and dance under the fruit trees. The future charm and timeless beau- ty of the scene enchanted me. I had ordered, from a wholesaler, a satisfactorily cheap 25 kg bag of bulbs. That is 56 lbs in old money, or, to put it more simply, about 1,500 bulbs. I was not counting. What I wanted was generous, full-bodied planting.
It was early September, before the rain had softened more than the top inch of soil. I was impatient, though, because such large-scale planting could well take several hard-won afternoons. In any event, I scarcely wanted to wait for the transition from concrete to glue which happens so quickly to a clay soil in a wet autumn. Clay is not the ideal medium for daffodil bulbs, I know, but I had plenty of grit ready to put into my trench to help drainage. I embarked, cheerfully, on the task of dig- ging a long, deep, broad trench with the Brotzman Memorial Spade.
This spade (called a 'shovel' in Ameri- can) is named after a friend, a conifer nurs- eryman, who, with the good-natured thoroughness which so characterises Amer- icans and shames more recessive Brits, had once brought it as a present, wrapped up carefully, in his luggage. The blade, sharpened by long and abrasive contact with Ohian sand in the hands of a massive, muscular Ohian, is as square as his beard. The haft is wooden but almost entirely encased in forged steel, and bears the leg- end 'A.M. Leonard and Son, Piqua, Ohio. Heat Treated'. Although almost twice as heavy as any other spade I use, it is well balanced and comes to hand easily. If any- thing could make the work light, it was the Brotzman spade.
But stony clay is not like any other soil. When it is without moisture, which is the case after a long drought, you can only dig a trench by making a slit and then progres- sively shaving the side of it, removing sliv- ers of compacted dirt as thin as milk chocolate gratings. You dare not chance digging with vigour, for the shocks which go up your arm when spade meets subter- ranean stone wear down the spirit and, anyway, those stones effectively bar the spade's progress.
It was no good. I would have to use the pickaxe, a tool which I have always consid- ered suited only for husbands wishing to remove tree-stumps. Nowhere, ever, had I seen or heard anyone suggest that you might have to plant bulbs with a pick.
In the end, I used a mixture of the spade and pick, preferring to stand the jolts and stops and the risk of gashing my leg rather than those unnerving, unpredictable shocks up the arm, but turning to the spade once the biggest stones were removed. The deli- cate, pure white-petalled, orange-eyed, scented flowers no longer danced before my eyes.
Although almost every gardening task can be done badly and yet still be effective, I knew that, if I skimped this one, I would destroy the reason for doing it. Bulbs plant- ed too shallowly will dry out in the autumn, when they should be making their flower buds for the spring, and will come up 'blind', that is, without flowers. There are few more pointless sights than a sea of daf- fodil leaves. So daffodil bulbs, which are three inches long, must be planted with their roots embedded in grit nine inches below ground.
Every inch had to be fought for. Never, ever, will I advise someone to dig a runner- bean trench, plant bulbs in grass, or dou- ble-dig a new border without trying to imagine what those seemingly simple acts require for anyone who gardens on a heavy soil.
All the livelong afternoon, I glanced rest- lessly skywards for rain that would respectably end that dreary, painfully slow, arm- and back-aching occupation. At long last, the area dug exceeded that still to be done, and those daffodils danced once more in my head. But I had discovered something disturbing, from which I had previously been shielded by my old, light soil. The most necessary attribute for a gar- dener now seems to be not 'green fingers', or money or botanical expertise, but courage. And that had almost failed me.
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