Country Diary

The Age

Saturday May 24, 2008

Luki Weatherly

I HAVE SPENT SOME TIME looking for the solenoid which controls the seventh station in our watering system. There are 16 stations, covering about half of the four-hectare garden.

I am usually good at finding the solenoids and can even fix simple problems. But this problem is not simple. The solenoid I am looking for has been turned off for a very long time. Now, water is mysteriously leaking from the spray heads, not fast because we have capped them but wastefully.

When I got an automatic watering system 20 years ago I watered indiscriminately. Parts of the garden, like the shrubbery, which had never had it so good hated the new regime and trees got strange fungi. The long, deep roots of the box hedges rotted wherever the water had a chance to settle.

Many bulbs simply disappeared in this damp world. It was pretty disastrous. Now I operate the system manually and sparingly (or not at all in the past two years) and I prefer hoses.

The kind man who keeps the system going says the solenoid is to blame and needs to be replaced. I felt quite confident I knew where it was but the green plastic lid I located did not cover a solenoid, just a mass of wiring. It had to be somewhere in the overgrown shrubbery. But where?

I have always liked the area as it contains a lot of deciduous trees, a few shrubs and and lots of bulbs, some of which are pushing through at the moment such as sternbergia, nerines and little mats of cyclamen. It also contains a few real thugs such as ivy and I. foetidissima which I have occasionally restrained a bit but not quite enough.

I thought I would just clear a path along the central pipe lines. It was not very difficult because in places the pipes were above ground or very lightly covered and the ground quite moist, particularly near the leaking spray heads.

I liked the look of the area without the cover of thugs so I decided to widen my track, especially when I kept on unearthing poor little bulbs that were buried by their big neighbours. I have just about cleared the central bed and my husband has emptied the trailer twice. But I have still not found what I was looking for.

Perhaps we will be able to solve the problem by bypassing the area. I hope so because much as I like the central area being a haven for bulbs I do not think I can dispense with the thuggish plants which kindly keep weeds at bay in the very large, outer shrubberies. They battle with each other and need very little help to look green and happy. The missing solenoid must be buried in their depths. If that is the case it will have to rest in peace. -- LUKI WEATHERLY

"Pottering by", Denise Gadd's gardening blog, appears fortnightly

on theage.com.au/ Life and Style.

© 2008 The Age

Back to News Index | Back to Home