Garden Centre

Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Datura and Brugmansia - death and beauty

This is one of my favourite plants – sometimes called Datura and sometimes Brugmansia, with the common names of Angel Trumpets or Thorn Apples, they are all from the same family – Solanaceae; which includes the common potato and the Deadly Nightshade. The basic difference is that Datura/Thorn Apple is usually an annual while Brugmansia/Angel Trumpet is more commonly a perennial. Both tend towards woody stems and become large trees and bushes.

In Victorian times they were highly popular because they were superb plants for the conservatory or could be set on occasional tables in large rooms where people would dance – the plants give off a wonderful perfume, highly sweet and pervasive, all night, which, along with the huge flowers, made them doubly attractive in an era where people were only just coming to terms with personal hygiene.

Sadly, they don’t survive outside in most of the UK – even if they can cope with our cold winters, our rainy springs will tend to carry them off, because they originate in sub tropical regions.

There’s a cunning word play in the name of the Angel Trumpet, which not only recognises the shape and size of the flower, but picks up on the negative association the plant has with witchcraft and poison – arising from Datura’s use as an hallucinatory drug and shamanistic medicine in many parts of South America. In other words, eat this and you’ll hear the angels’ trumpets as they come to carry you to heaven! If you want to grow these plants you have to be aware that the whole thing is toxic if eaten, seeds, flowers, leaves and roots, and that the hallucinations are not guaranteed while the risk of death is.

They are plants that need vast amounts of water, which is best given at room temperature as cold and wet can check the plant or even cause it to rot, and it needs potting on regularly if you have it in a greenhouse, because Brugmansia can grow eight feet in a summer! The scent is sublime, and the plant would be worth growing for that alone, even if the flowers weren’t so gorgeous.

Labels: brugmansia, datura, garden flowers

The All Seasons Gardener at 1:04 AM 0 Comments

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Saturday, July 28, 2007

Going, going ...

The sweet peas are nearly gone. These are about the last of them, beaded with rain (what isn't?), and on very short stems, but still scenting the house gloriously. August is almost upon us, and despite the wettest summer since records began, most of the standard tasks for the 'hottest' month are still on my list of things to do:

Autumn crocus need be planted this month, to get an extra week or two of flowers after the main garden plants have finished for the year - and this year I'm going to dip my bulbs in turpentine before planting to try and beat the squirrels; last year I didn't get a SINGLE flower!

Spring flowering perennials need to be divided and transplanted in August, this is a lovely job for the long warm summer evenings, if we get any …

My summer flowering shrubs like ceonothus and weigela will be pruned back into shape after they have finished flowering.

Autumn and winter vegetables will need to be organised, we're growing all year round onions, carrots, lettuce, spinach, black radish, and winter cauliflower and for all of them we'll be sowing seed directly into the garden in the next week or so.

Labels: august, autumn crocus, garden flowers, garden tasks, summer pruning

The All Seasons Gardener at 12:43 AM 3 Comments

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Wednesday, July 25, 2007

A home fit for geraniums ...

And this is what they are going to go into! Okay, it doesn’t look terribly exciting at present, but this is a stone peat-box or (because we don’t make them from peat anymore, that being a relatively non-renewable resource) a hyper-tufa box, which ‘himself’ has made expressly for my geraniums.

Hyper-tufa is a cast rock-like material which can be used to make relatively inexpensive pots for the garden. It looks like rock, can be cast into almost any shape, is very lightweight and also strong enough to withstand the freeze/thaw cycle of most northern climates. We like it for three reasons:

1 – it is relatively heavy which means it doesn’t blow over in the all too frequent Sussex gales, which many other planters do

2 – it weathers really fast, after a month it looks old, after a year it looks ancient, and our oldest trough is five years old; rich in mosses and lichens and still coping perfectly with the vagaries of our weather

3 – we can make it into any shape we like.

Basic recipe

It’s so simple, just mix - part cement, 1 part sand, 2 parts compost

Then add water slowly until you get a thick porridgy texture. A mould can be made from two wooden boxes with the inner box about two inches smaller than the outer and the inner one covered in bin bags – don’t use cling film, it’s not tough enough! Pour the mixture into the bigger box to a depth of about an inch or so, the smaller box is then placed on the mixture and the remaining hyper-tufa rammed down the sides to make the walls of the container. Leave to cure for about three weeks, longer in damp weather. Now add drain holes as required using a screwdriver or drill – or use dowels coated in Vaseline that can just be knocked out of the bottom of the trough when it’s cured. Fill the trough with water or leave out in the rain for a couple of weeks to take all the chemical effects of the cement out of the equation before making drainage though.

Labels: container plants, garden flowers, geranium, hypertufa, troughs

The All Seasons Gardener at 8:30 AM 1 Comments

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Monday, July 23, 2007

Geranium madness

Like most gardeners, I suppose, I get sudden passions. The current one is for geraniums, and this is the stripy wonder that I’ve been trying to get hold of for weeks. I’ve persuaded ‘himself’ to make me a special container for this, and the Madame Salleron that is trying to flower, despite the rain, and I’ve got the geranium bug in a big way!

But of course, they aren’t really geraniums. Wikipedia says: Pelargonium is a genus of flowering plants which includes about 200 species of perennial, succulent, and shrub plants, commonly known as geraniums. Confusingly, Geranium is the correct botanical name of the separate genus which contains the related Cranesbills. Both genera are in the Family Geraniaceae. Linnaeus originally included all the species in one genus, Geranium, but they were later separated into two genera by Charles L’Héritier in 1789. Gardeners sometimes refer to the members of Genus Pelargonium as "pelargoniums" in order to avoid the confusion, but the older common name "geranium" is still in regular use.

Indeed. What I like about pelargoniums is that many of them have scented leaves, that smell of mint, pineapple or rose and … well … geranium, of course. The oil that is used in aromatherapy is extracted from both the leaves and the flowers. Geranium has been grown for centuries for its fragrance and the extracted oil has been used to soothe and heal wounds and as a mild analgesic and sedative. Possible benefits from using the oil include: stress reduction, pain relief, removing fatigue and nervous exhaustion, lifting melancholy and easing depression, reducing fluid retention, and repelling insects – which may be why people have traditionally grouped scented leaf pelargoniums near their doors and windows – folk wisdom, clever innit! However, if you get a sudden urge to go all geranium in the aromatherapy rather than the floral sense, be aware that the oil may irritate sensitive skin and you shouldn’t use it if you are hypoglycemic because there is a chance it can lower blood-sugar levels.

Labels: aromatherapy, container plants, geranium, pelargonium, plants

The All Seasons Gardener at 3:47 AM 1 Comments

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Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Gardens in the News ...

But not for very much longer ... recent ICM Poll, commissioned by Natural England, discovered that 45% of 18-34 year olds do not feel they are well informed about wildlife gardening and 37% of 18-24 year olds said they would like to do more but don’t know how. So The UK’s leading wildlife and horticultural organisations have joined Natural England to create and sign a wildlife gardening manifesto to save the nation’s gardens, particularly those in towns and cities. It is claimed that in London, front gardens with an area 22 times the size of Hyde Park are now paved over and lost, reducing havens for wildlife, increasing the impact of flash flooding and contributing to climate change, so it's not just a problem for wildlife, it's a problem that ruins our houses and pushes up all our insurance premiums.

However, apart from the benefit to our own health and wallets and the survival of declining species, such as hedgehogs, frogs and bumblebees, that live on our doorsteps, this manifesto is a good thing because if only people gave up creating sad little vistas like the one above, which is fit only to be a cat toilet, and got on with growing simple native plants, the country would look better too!

Labels: garden design, garden makeovers, garden wildlife, natural england

The All Seasons Gardener at 11:47 PM 0 Comments

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Why July 15th is important to gardeners

July 15th was St Swithin's Day. The saying claims:
“St Swithin's day - if it dost rain, for 40 days it will remain.
St Swithin's day- if it be fair, for 40 days 'twill rain nae more.”

In other words, any rain on this day heralds another forty days of rain but if it stays dry, forty days of fine weather lie ahead. I don’t know about you, but I woke on Sunday morning to not just rain, but torrential rain, thunder and lightning!

Surprisingly, for a man who’s had such an influence on British horticulture and agriculture, not much is known about the chap called Swithin who was to go on to be canonised as a saint. It is likely that he was an advisor to Egbert, King of the West Saxons and we do know that he was consecrated as Bishop of Winchester in 852. On his deathbed, it’s claimed, Swithin requested that he be buried by the north wall of Winchester Cathedral, where passers-by could walk over the site of his grave and the rain fall upon it. But about a hundred years after his death, it was decided to move his body inside the Cathedral. The removal of his bones and relocation in a more ‘appropriate’ location took place on July 15, 971 – that night there was a great storm! In addition, prayers to Swithin were rewarded with miraculous cures and it was that, rather than his ability to get the heavens to open when his wishes were thwarted, led to him being canonised as a saint.

Meteorologically speaking, there’s absolutely no evidence to support the forty days theory – and in truth Swithin is only one of several European saints whose ‘days’ are supposed to be followed by periods of wet or fine weather. What I do know for a fact is that this summer has been a great one for slugs, and if they carry on at this rate I won’t have any lilies left! My garden is also full of baby snails, and although I don’t like using slug pellets, even organic, wild-life friendly ones, I’ve given in to the need to try and conserve some of my flowers from their predations, but there are so many slimy night-hunters around that my slug pellet bill is getting out of hand.

Labels: garden pests, garden secrets, slugs and snails, st swithin

The All Seasons Gardener at 5:39 AM 1 Comments

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Friday, July 13, 2007

Garden Designs, the good the bad and the ugly …

This garden has a real air of 1970s design. It brings to mind the era of The Rockford Files and The Partridge Family, Caramac bars and Click-Clacks (which you may have known as Bangers, Bonkers, Clackers, Crackers, Gnip-Gnops, Klick-Klacks, K-Nokkers, Popper Knockers, Quick Clacks, Rockers, Super Clackers, Tikka Takkas, Whackers or Zonkers!). Something about this design is redolent of those tan-coloured leather jackets with waists that TV detectives always wore, and luxurious sideburns.

If you think I’m being sarcastic, think again. The seventies didn’t give us much to be proud of in design stakes, but some of the seventies gardens have more than stood the test of time and one theme of that era, the year-round garden, has become a classic. The absolute apex of this garden style is Foggy Bottom in Norfolk, started by Adrian Bloom in the early seventies, as part of the Bressingham Garden complex which was created by his father Alan in the 1940s. The garden at Foggy Bottom is famous for all-year round colour and interest using heathers and conifers and is regularly featured on TV and in magazines. A superb book containing much of Adrian’s work, called ‘Winter Garden Glory’ shows how this kind of garden can be both low maintenance and spectacular in appearance. In addition, a craze of the current decade is foreshadowed in these seventies designs; there’s an air of the Zen garden in those mounded shapes of greenery and the contrast between warm coloured paths and soothing foliage, without the distraction of flowers.

Although this garden could do with a bit of a tidy up, perhaps - and some pruning to bring the growth back to the lower levels of those heathers - the colours and textures contained in it are excellent, the maintenance would be minimal for the gardener and the initial investment in plants, made perhaps three decades ago, has repaid the gardener with substantial plants that have stood the test of time.

Labels: all-year gardening, garden design, seventies gardening, zen garden

The All Seasons Gardener at 12:19 AM 0 Comments

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Wednesday, July 11, 2007

The grass is always greener ...

And if it's not, you might get arrested!

Only in America could this happen. According to the BBC, an American woman in her seventies has been left bruised and bloody after an unexpected clash with the police who came to caution her for not watering her lawn, which comes as a fascinating contrast to all the Brits who got cautions last year for watering their lawns during the hosepipe ban!

It seems that Utah pensioner Betty Perry refused to give her name after being upbraided because her garden breached local regulations. However, Ms Perry says the officer hit her with handcuffs, cutting her on the nose, although the police department spokesman insists she slipped and fell.

Ms Perry says she was not resisting arrest, only turning away to enter her house and call her son to help her resolve the confusing dispute. "I tried to sit down and get away from him [the police officer]," she told Utah newspaper the Daily Herald. "I don't know what he's doing. I said: 'What are you doing?' And he hit me with those handcuffs in my face."

The officer in question had judged that Ms Perry's "sadly neglected and dying landscape" breached an Orem city guideline and was attempting to issue a formal caution when the incident occurred. Ms Perry was treated in a local hospital for the cut to her nose and for other bruises before being taken to jail, but she was released after police decided there were "other ways" of finding out her identity without jailing her, a police spokesman said, adding that the arresting officer would not be named but had been placed on administrative leave.

Ms Perry, who says she has never had a run-in with police in the past, has been offered help by local church leaders to clean up her garden.

Labels: garden news, garden tasks, lawn care

The All Seasons Gardener at 7:02 AM 0 Comments

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Monday, July 9, 2007

How is your garden growing? The All Seasons garden is much as it was in June – green, green, green. Everything is sappy and verdant, putting out masses of green growth, but the floriforousness (to coin a word) that I’d usually be seeing by now is not there. The lilies have begun to open, a week later than this time last year, and the roses are at their best, although they are almost lost in the green leaves of everything else. My bay tree has gone insane, putting on about eight inches of growth in the three weeks since I last trimmed it, and that’s eight inches in all directions, up down and sideways, so it looks like a haystack rather than a cone. And my laurel and fig have also sprung up a couple of feet on the warm and rainy weather we’ve been having.

The big shock is the wisteria. We pruned it back so hard that it didn’t flower this year (we had to, it was so rampant on the garage roof it was lifting off the tiles and chucking them onto the paving, like a delinquent child!) but that hasn’t stopped it roaring into new summer growth, and it is now only about two feet short of its height in November when we took the machetes to it. The problem with wisteria is that it throws out long whippy new growth like a cowboy’s lasso and if you don’t get on its case immediately, it will have travelled six or seven feet in a weekend, hooking its clever little tendrils onto anything in range.

Three of the four kinds of lavender I grow are in full growth: Lavandula augustifolia, the classic lavender, Lavandula intermedia with white flowers, and Lavandula latifolia which has no flowers to speak of but has very wide leaves that can be hung up and dried and used to scent cushions, wardrobes and so on, but the fourth, Lavandula stoechas, which has fatter purpler heads, really isn’t thriving – it seems to need more sun than this year has given it to perform well.

My broad beans developed rust overnight and my pea pods aren’t fattening as fast as I’d like – and the forecast is for yet more rain …

Labels: garden news, garden tasks, lavender, wisteria

The All Seasons Gardener at 10:14 AM 2 Comments

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Friday, July 6, 2007

Dealing with perennial weeds

Let me share with you one of the unfairest facts about wet summers. It’s not the horrible weather; the need to pull on boots and waterproofs when we should be gardening in shorts and sandals; the rust and blight that strike favourite flowers and crops – it’s this: perennial weeds grow faster in wet weather than cultivated plants. This means that horrors like convolvulus arvensis (bindweed) as shown above, take over and romp across the borders like nasty invading aliens for whom we haven’t yet found the answer (and the common cold, the convenient alien destroyer in 'War of the Worlds', is more likely to strike us in a wet garden than our weeds).

And bindweed is a monster because the roots can extend down fifteen feet or more and the plants can grow from even the smallest bit of left behind root. It is said that by persistent digging and hoeing (and digging and hoeing and digging and hoeing) you can eradicate bindweed and its even nastier relative, bellweed, in a couple of years – but so what? New colonies can establish from seed or from roots on neighbouring land and hover on your boundaries just waiting to invade.

So what can you do?

Fork up and remove as much of the root as possible when carrying out autumn and winter digging. In spring as new growth appears, dig out new shoots. Where you can’t dig without disturbing plant roots, sever the weed at ground level with a hoe. It’s a satisfying sort of guillotine process and it’s a good thing it is satisfying as it needs to be repeated throughout the growing season as new growth reappears – in my garden, about every second day, in fact! If you’re not organic, you can try using glyphosate, which is a non-selective total weedkiller applied to the foliage, where it is transmitted throughout the plant’s system, disrupting cellular processes until the plant dies. Now, apart from being a chemical control, which is not permitted to organic gardeners, the fact that it’s non-selective means that neighbouring plants will die just as fast as your weeds if they are touched by the spray. In addition, it’s important to have good leaf coverage so that as much chemical is absorbed as possible by the plant. I'll stick with my hoe, thank you!

Labels: bindweed, garden tasks, garden weeds, perennial weeds, weeds

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:23 AM 0 Comments

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Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Off on your holidays …?

It is that time of year, I suppose, when gardeners across the UK leave their glowing plots and acres and travel abroad, returning to find that bindweed and ground elder have taken root, the person who was going to water hasn’t, and slugs have eaten the hostas. That’s why I go on holiday in November …

Anyway – when you’re off on your travels, you’re bound to take in a garden or two, aren’t you? The bulbfields of Holland, Versailles and the Parc Andre Citroen in Paris, the Bauhaus garden Dessau in Germany – further afield, Cape Town has its Garden Route tours and New Zealand has wine and garden visits … almost wherever you go, there’s something to be seen.

But be careful – look all you like, but check the rules before buying plants (or even worse, taking seeds or cuttings from other people’s plants, which I’m sure you’d never do, dear reader) to bring home. Within the EU, you can bring in almost anything apart from rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias, and viburnums, which are excluded under complex quarantine regulations owing to problems with disease. From America, a much wider range is prohibited, and from many countries there are plants that either shouldn’t be exported due to rareness or due to their invasive nature once they hit our shores. The simplest way to check is on the DEFRA website, to see what you can and can’t do.

And another point is that many airlines don’t allow cabin plants. Arriving at check-in with a rare oleander or tree fern only to find it has to travel in the hold (or not at all if you’ve tried to evade plant rules) can be a disaster, because for any plant not securely wrapped the low temperatures in unpressurised holds can be like the same number of hours in a winter storm.

Travelling by car makes bringing in larger sizes and quantities of plants much easier and trips to Holland and Belgium in particular are perfect opportunities to top up your bulb and perennial stocks, but watch out for customs – whole vehicles full of plants can sometimes make them think you’re in the horticulture business, and for that you are supposed to have a licence ….

Labels: garden holidays, garden tasks, importing plants, travel

The All Seasons Gardener at 7:56 AM 0 Comments

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Tuesday, July 3, 2007

English Roses

Do you remember that Harry Enfield character ‘Loadsamoney’? He used to say ‘Gerra load of my wad!’ if that helps. Well, I’ve never felt like that, mainly because I’ve never had much money, but there is one time of year when I do feel like accosting people who walk past my house and yelling ‘Gerra load of my roses!’

In particular, this beautiful, heavy-headed, English rose from David Austin. I think it’s Perdita, but I bought it from a place that had lost its label, so it’s difficult to be sure. In any case, the rich colour, generous scent and beautiful drooping tendency make this one the rose that I love best.

Here’s what David Austin says about it: Perfect rosette-shaped flowers quartered at the centre and of delicate apricot-blush colour. The growth is strong and bushy with polished, deep green foliage. Good disease-resistance and repeat-flowering. A rose of charm and refinement. Won the Henry Edland Medal for fragrance at the Royal National Rose Society's Trials. A strong English Rose, myrrh fragrance with a Tea influence.

To which I would add that my garden is not ideal for roses, having the wrong soil, the wrong aspect and being infested with black spot, rust and other horrors from the amazing lady who used it as a market garden for several decades. Even so, this rose never disappoints me. One flower will scent a large room, and a bunch of flowers is intoxicating. I’d query myrrh fragrance (or mine is a different rose, perhaps?) because the scent that I pick up is sugared tea with a hint of orange, nothing musky or heavy and certainly nothing as strong as myrrh.

If you want to grow English roses, there are a few things to bear in mind.

Unlike most of the old roses, the new varieties of English rose often deliver two or even three flushes of flowers during the season. However, roses don’t enjoy competition and it is advisable to surround them with plants that are not too robust. Roses can be very effective in large pots and half barrels, although they need to be watered regularly and fed too.

To ensure repeat flowering:

1. Always plant roses with a good manure base, and ensure they are in a medium which helps them to extract nutrients and water from the soil – my ‘lovely’ clay and chalk mix soil is less than ideal and my roses go into a hole that has been entirely backfilled with good topsoil and vintage compost.
2. Water well and feed twice each year with a good slow release rose fertiliser.
3. Deadhead spent blooms right through the summer and remember that the final flush of flowers may arrive as late as October, so don’t slacken off the deadheading in September!

Labels: David Austin roses, English rose, garden flowers, rose growing

The All Seasons Gardener at 12:53 AM 2 Comments

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