To all the millennials who used to dance in the local nightclub to Better Off Alone by Alice Deejay, or Believe by Cher, or Superstylin’ by Groove Armada: hey, how are you? How are your gardens doing? Invested in a rain butt yet?
It’s funny how we once used to lie to our parents about going to the cinema and instead dice with alcohol poisoning in fields, but now get excited when a friend gets a new air fryer so we can compare basket capacity. I have a favourite spatula. Sometimes I treat myself to brand name kitchen roll. You get older, and interests change.
I am an elder millennial and I’m in my gardening era. At this age one naturally bends towards one or more of the big four: wine knowledge, gardening, running or birds. This summer I’ve chosen plants and, more specifically, I’ve become a clematis bore.
Chances are, if you left your house right now and walked around outside, you’d never be further than six feet from a clematis. They’re like the beautiful, climbing, flowering rats of the plant world. People love to coax them up and around doorways, along trellises, across walls.
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I’ve rented in Dublin for more tha 20 years, which means I’ve never put down literal roots. The permanence of planting versus the impermanence of renting results in a reluctance to invest time and, more importantly, money into a garden that you can’t take with you when you go. I’ve lived in my current rental for over six years and have never gone further than some halfhearted supermarket planters. Last year I attempted an evergreen in a large pot, but it swiftly died and revealed itself to be a nevergreen.
I’m limited to pots because my outside space consists only of paving slabs, no soil. I dream of nothing more than a patch of grass, but the internet tells me that planting grass seed on top of concrete is a fool’s errand. Grass will only ever grow over concrete if you don’t want it to.
I took a notion this summer to put some of the cognitive dissonance of gardening in a rental aside and decided I needed a clematis to add some beauty to the grim glass and tubular railings that are so reminiscent of Celtic Tiger shopping-centre-as-home-design chic. I did this with the understanding that I would a) need to invest in quite a large pot, and b) if I ever leave, I won’t be able to wrench the clematis tendrils from their forever home and must entrust it to the next tenant. And sure look, the way things are going I might be here forever.
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Turning to the internet for advice is often like going for a swim in the Sea of Conflation. Everyone who’s ever grown a clematis and posted about it online is sure that their way is the only way, forgetting about the myriad factors – climate, soil, aspect, expertise, patience – that led to their success. I allowed myself to become completely bamboozled about pot size and soil type, never mind that there are about 800 varieties of clematis.
I turned to the internet gardeners of TikTok and YouTube for some more solid advice. The internet gardeners I favour are comforting dad figures, amalgamations of 1990s gardening icons Gerry Daly from Greenfingers and Alan Titchmarsh from Ground Force. Remember Ground Force? I guarantee if you bring it up to anyone the first thing they’ll mention is presenter Charlie Dimmock’s penchant for going braless for comfort on the show. How thrilled the expert horticulturalist must be to have that as her legacy.
My clematis – variety unknown because I prematurely binned the little tag that came with it – has been in situ for about two weeks now. I’ve given her as sizeable a pot as I was willing to purchase and taken heed of the “cold feet, warm head” rule – she likes her roots cool but lots of sun on her vines and leaves. I got her a trellis to climb. I go out and check on her every day like a lunatic and she’s currently promising two flowers, so I have the hospital bag ready to go for whenever she pops.
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She’s not alone out there either. A fuchsia I’d given up on sprang back to life and I added a friend from the sale section in B&Q. There’s a miniature rose bush doing its best, along with something that is possibly a weed but its lovely and green so it can stay. Next stop, Chelsea Flower Show.
