A pleasure shared

This week, I plant more bulbs than my creaky knees can stand and make a big batch of lamb, mint and feta meatballs to help me through.

My Gracie on the front steps, with some of the bulbs from Farmer Gracy.

If a trouble shared is a trouble halved, it’s also true, for me at least, that a pleasure shared is a pleasure doubled. If I like something – a book, a restaurant, a bar of chocolate, a florist, a face cream, a podcast – I’m going to tell you about it.

I have friends I love cooking with, visiting galleries with, and brocanting with. Sometimes they’re all the same person and that’s magic. These side-by-side facing-out friendships are the riches of my life. Last week, two of my dearest gardening friends came to stay, so we had uninterrupted days of visiting nurseries, looking up Latin names, discussing soil and aspect, leaf form and ground cover. We weeded my recently-planted garden, reshaped existing beds and created new ones. In the evenings, we read out plant combinations to each other over dinner and glasses of wine.

One of the challenges of gardening here, in a new country, is having what I call reverse problems. In London, I had a damp, north-facing garden. Here I have a dry garden a metre above sea level which has full sun for a lot of the day. The plants I once coddled and coaxed into life in London, grow like weeds here. Hello, all of my beautiful sages and lavenders. (The Lavandula dentata flowers for months at a time and self seeds everywhere. Free lavender? Who ever heard of such a thing.) There are also surprises. Roses, which I love and always thought of as thirsty creatures, do very well in our dry garden. I’ve planted six of them and will plant more this winter.

The second challenge is working out where to buy plants. There are large garden centres such as Jardiland and Gamm Vert and which are great for equipment, pet food, pots and houseplants, even chickens, but though I’ve found the staff to be helpful and knowledgeable, the selection of garden plants can be a little pedestrian. I’ve written about them before, but I owe most of what’s in my garden to excellent local nurseries, Pépinière Filippi and Pépinières de Montimas, both family-run places which specialise in dry gardening.

In anticipation of our friends’ arrival, I ordered 500 bulbs. I was not planting those things alone, not with these knees. In England, I always bought my spring bulbs from Bloms Bulbs. I found the choice and quality to be exceptional. Here, I lost myself on the Farmer Gracy website – they deliver in England but also within the EU – my enthusiasm tempered only by the thought that at some point, I would have to plant them. I filled that basket anyway, with tête-à-tête and pheasant’s eye narcissus, grape hyacinths, purple alliums of all sizes, including the insane-looking Hair, which I’ve wanted to plant for years. I also lost my mind to tulips, as I do every year – inky purple Queen of Night and peachy Apricot Foxx, bright orange, sweetly scented Ballerina and warm pink Mariette. I added some butter yellow City of Haarlem hyacinths for the pots on the front steps and a few Coral Charm peonies because ‘Add to Shopping Basket’ is my love language.

Photographs courtesy of Farmer Gracy. The combination of Queen of Night and Apricot Foxx, which is called Day and Night in their catalogue, and Allium Hair, which I've always wanted to plant and now I have.

Now, thanks to the help of Vicky and Denise, those bulbs are planted and all we have to do is wait until spring. Planting bulbs is possibly my least favourite garden task, but it is probably the one I am most grateful for having done.

Because we were outside as much as possible, many of our meals were assemblies – bread, salads, slices of ham, cheeses, fruit – and patient dishes like the meatball recipe I’m sharing with you today, something you can make ahead and warm up when the clouds threaten rain.

Wherever you are, I urge you to plant your bulbs right now, possibly today, even if it’s only a couple of pots or a window box. It’s a gift to share with future you, a little sweetly-scented joy on the horizon, and who doesn’t need that?

Useful addresses

Bloms Bulbs blomsbulbs.com
Farmer Gracy farmergracy.co.uk

Meatballs are where it’s at

These meatballs are great if you’re feeding a crowd – you can easily double or triple the quantities and they keep brilliantly in the fridge for a couple of days. I made them with grated courgette instead of breadcrumbs to lighten them as one of our friends is coeliac, but obviously if you’re not concerned about making them gluten free you can use a small handful of breadcrumbs instead.

Serves 4-6

For the meatballs