All my gardening books and Gardener's World -- now "must-see TV" on Friday evenings -- tell me that I must work with the conditions that exist in my garden, rather than fighting them. There's no point trying to grow acidic-soil-loving plants in chalky soil, and if you have lots of clover in your lawn, have a clover lawn -- helpful stuff like that. Unless, of course, your lawn is made up of 50% moss, 20% ivy, 10% clover, 10% mushrooms, and 10% actual grass/weeds. We have at least three different varieties of fungi in the lawn at the moment, and I've spotted several other specimins during the past month. So while a camomile lawn or a clover lawn or even a daisy-strewn lawn all sound delightfully English, a "fungal" lawn isn't quite so appealing. Worse yet, I can't identify whether the damn things are edible or not, so it's not even as I can use them in a risotto.
To top it all off quite literally, what little grass there is is buried under a 2-inch thick layer of pine needles, courtesy of the large Scots Pine at the bottom of the garden. I keep raking them up and more keep falling, along with hundreds of pine cones. And the tree casts a shadow over the lawn in the winter sun, which means it stays dark and damp -- just right for promoting mushroom growth. Sure, it's a beautiful tree, a feature of the lane even -- but if it weren't here, I wouldn't miss it. In fact, I'd welcome its removal. (Ssh! You're not allowed to say things like that around here.) Perhaps it's time to crack open the BBQ for one final -- and incendiary -- farewell to summer and to the tree ...
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