After a blooming success in 2020, this summer’s gardening disaster has proved I am no Monty Don

A year ago, I was riding high. During the first Covid lockdown, amidst home-schooling tantrums and bog roll anxiety, my garden became my salvation. And by August, the hard work had paid off: flowers bloomed; tomatoes were ripening; we had a glut of beans and courgettes; various salad leaves kept on giving; and we were even harvesting homegrown sweetcorn for the first time. I began to fancy myself as a youthful(ish) Monty Don, and wondered where I might buy some braces to hold up my outdoor work trousers.

With plant life abundant, fauna followed suit. Bees and hoverflies of many varieties hummed their way from wild geranium and apple blossom to marjoram and fuchsia. Birds arrived in greater numbers than ever before: I marvelled at twittering long-tailed tits, was thrilled by a lone green woodpecker, and had a shock when a red kite landed in a tree just outside the window. Taking our cue from Springwatch, we dug out a teeny wildlife pond in a previously dull patch by the front door and watched in awe as frogs made it their home.

So successful were my gardening achievements that I began to consider a complete career change. If Kim Wilde could do it, why not me? And after all, having done teenage work experience as a park ranger, it would really just be a case of coming full circle.

A year on, however, reality has hit hard.

For a while, back in spring, I was confident I could build on 2020’s green-fingered glories. I levelled and returfed our small front garden in April, and the grass seemed to take well. I managed to deal with an algae build-up in the pond and was rewarded by the appearance of frogspawn, then of newts. I planted a ton of vegetable seeds, and dreamt of homemade chutney.

But things took a turn when I found one of our frogs (the kids said it was Jayden) floating upside down, being nibbled by tadpoles. And in the back garden, many of the daffodil bulbs I had replanted rose up from the soil but didn’t flower.

Indoors, half of my veg crop failed to germinate, perhaps put off by the cold weather. Seedlings that did emerge seemed punier than last year: only the tomatoes were relatively reliable.

Things got worse still when I planted out too early, failing to take note of a forecast that predicted weeks of rain and unusually cool temperatures. When my apple tree was nipped in the bud by a cruel frost, I should have known the game was up.

Still, I soldiered on, just as Kim or Monty would have done, protecting my French beans as well as I could, and watering them diligently during rare spells of sunshine. Alas, I might as well not have bothered.

Where last year brought happy bees, bountiful butterflies and all things bright and beautiful, 2021 has been the year of one thing only: slugs.

Even putting aside my childhood phobia of these vile creatures, the last few months has been an unparalleled horror show. Three days after I planted out my courgettes, there was literally nothing left of them, munched to zilch by guzzling gastropods. Half of my runner beans went the same way, as did the spinach, not to mention marigolds, salvia, dahlias and more besides.

My decision to let the back lawn grow wild patently backfired, as it became a playground for all things slimy. And although I have pelleted the blighters repeatedly, I’m fairly convinced that the wildlife-friendly brand I’m using is mainly friendly to slugs and snails. In fact, the pellets might even be having some sort of steroid effect. I’ve seen slugs tiny and vast, and of more hues than I knew existed: black, brown, grey, orange, yellow, beige, ochre, russet, taupe, khaki and burnt umber. Farrow & Ball could create an entire new range of earth colours just by looking at the molluscs in my garden.

To top everything off, I discovered last week that my tomatoes have blight. The variety? Gardener’s Delight. I bet Monty Don never has this trouble.