Garden Centre

Thursday, November 29, 2007

The British winter garden is not a pretty sight

Winter shows a garden’s bones. When the flowers, and even the foliage, are gone, all that remains is the garden’s structure, its ‘hard surfaces’ as we’ve all learned to call them since we started watching garden makeover programmes, and the skeletons of the plants we’ve chosen.

I spend a lot of time peering at other people’s gardens right now, to see what looks good naked! Trees like these, with a complex shape (that almost amounts to texture) against the sky, are wonderful in winter. Grasses look good too, but so many gardens seem to be empty of any kind of interest through the winter. Bamboo makes a wonderful impression against a cold winter sky, peeling barked trees or those with beautiful outlines like all the weeping varieties look romantic, and those ‘hard structures’ if they have an intrinsic appeal (nicely textured brick or stone, interesting curves to paths etc) have their own charm too. So why do so many gardens look like a muddy field?

I put it down to a British love of order and lack of imagination. We tend to make things ‘neat and tidy’ rather than ‘interesting’ and that means that our natural inclination to economy, efficiency and orderliness is reveals when all the fluffy stuff that makes up a garden disappears. When the Virginia Creeper falls from the shed, the delphiniums no longer hide the fence and the plastic pond liner is no longer concealed by the spear-like leaves of the Iris, our hideous tendency to make things small, square and ugly is revealed in all its horrible reality.

winter trees photograph by Meda, used under a creative commons attribution licence

Labels: garden trees, hard surfaces, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 1:44 AM 0 Comments

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Monday, November 26, 2007

The Holly and the Ivy (and the pyracantha)

Did you know that it is reckoned that only about 1% of the average bird’s nutrition comes from bird tables and feeders? Birds eat insects and wild seeds of course, but these are not abundant in winter and early spring - so if you plant enough different fruit-bearing shrubs and trees, your garden will offer food to both winter and summer residents, as well as providing food for migrants in the spring and autumn if you're on migration routes. It's important to plant a range of shrubs because while some plants provide sugar rich berries that help feed nestlings in spring, others provide fatty berries that supply fuel to birds passing through in autumn and a final group have what are called persistent berries - fruits that desiccate and remain available during winter for year-round residents.

Another advantage of planting small trees and shrubs that retain their berries during the coldest months is the winter colour to your garden.

The rate at which birds strip berries from garden plants will change annually, according to weather conditions, how much food is available elsewhere and other local variations. As a general rule: birds tend to eat red berries first leaving the less palatable yellow, oranges and whites until last. Some red berries last better than others including the Pyracantha, Cotoneaster and rose-hips. For a good glowing orange-yellow I favour the Pyracantha 'Soleil d'Or' which has abundant long-lasting berries and thrives in an exposed garden location.

Labels: cotoneaster, holly, pyracantha, winter colour, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 10:21 AM 0 Comments

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Friday, November 23, 2007

Winter wonders

One good thing about the worst possible weather, as we've had recently, is that it gives my cornus a chance to shine. The bright red stems look just as good against a dully grey sky as they do when beaded with rain or rimmed with frost, or even half buried in snow. But to get this spectacular winter stem effect with dogwoods, you have to cut them back hard each spring, usually in around mid-March but a bit earlier or later is fine, just don't leave it too long, so the plant starts its new spring growth.

The reason for this hard pruning is to encourage as many upright cane-like stems as possible. The new stems have the brightly coloured bark, but the older stems are nowhere near as spectacular which is why we need to be so ruthless. Believe it or not, new stems will grow three to six feet in a year, sprouting from below the pruning cut, then growing quickly and becoming covered in not very exciting oval leaves. I have the red-stemmed variegated leaved version, which is more exciting than some others, but while it can be rather mundane in summer, it comes into its own now.

Labels: cornus, dogwood, winter colour

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:43 AM 0 Comments

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Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Gardens on the curriculum

I wonder why we don’t do this here? In Alameda county, in California, nearly 200 schools have some kind of gardening programme for children up to twelve. This, in the face of the technological mountain that has swept schools into the cyber age, (with increasing childhood obesity as a constant concern) makes perfect sense to me.

To date, nearly 200 public schools in Alameda County garden have programmes that provide a variety of educational opportunities. Students are encouraged to explore the multidimensional aspects of life's processes and discover the origins of fresh food while their nutritional awareness rises. Not only that, but studies commissioned by the California Department of Education cite a direct correlation between school garden programs and positive impacts on children's health and academic achievement.

That doesn’t surprise me at all! I wish there was something similar in the UK, where only ‘special’ schools offer young people a chance to get outdoors and grow something.

Garden for children photograph by Space Cadet, used under a creative commons attribution licence.

Labels: all-year gardening, children

The All Seasons Gardener at 12:21 AM 0 Comments

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Saturday, November 17, 2007

Winter Colour

Doesn’t have to come from flowers. One of the most flamboyant autumn plants is the Virginia Creeper, which, given a good sunlit wall, will almost literally explode into colour – you get the feeling that when you stand near it, you should be able to feel the warmth of those glowingly warm tones.

Of course it’s not to everybody’s taste and it does have a few downsides, like:

-- the fact that the glorious colour only lasts a few weeks, and even less if we suddenly get a cold, windy night, when the leaves can be stripped from the plant entirely

-- a tendency to invade, not just upwards with its self-clinging vines, but outwards, grabbing onto other plants in the vicinity and strangling them

-- not looking that special all summer – it has nice green leaves, but nice is about all you can say for them, they aren’t spectacular and the flowers are so insignificant as to cause many Virginia Creeper owners to claim their plant doesn’t flower; it does, they just never notice.

But for my money, if you have a garage wall to cover, there is nothing like a Virginia Creeper; they are tough plants, requiring no care to speak of, and you can cut them back to a couple of feet in height every few years and let them find they way back up the wall again.

Labels: autumn colour, virginia creeper, winter colour

The All Seasons Gardener at 2:55 AM 0 Comments

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Thursday, November 15, 2007

Winter flowers

What’s in bloom in your garden? For some reason, my arum lilies are suddenly having a new spurt of small flowers – although we’ve had a couple of air frosts, they seem not to have got down low enough to attack these arums, because even the smallest touch of frost browns them and they turn to slime the next day. My nerines are glorious, and they have been joined by the pure yellow Winter Jasmine.

It grows in full sun or partial shade and is as hardy as a Sherpa on top of a Himalayan mountain. It can grow to three metres tall and wide, and flowers from December to March.

Unlike many other jasmines, it doesn’t twine, so will need tying in if grown vertically. As you can see, ours is simply woven into a simple trellis, which is all the support it seems to need. The stems are quite flexible and stay green even in winter when the bright yellow star-like blooms appear. The best thing about Winter Jasmine (jasminum nudiflorum for those who like botanical names) is that – unlike the arums – it continues to flower even in the coldest weather.

Labels: flowers, winter colour, winter jasmine

The All Seasons Gardener at 1:18 AM 0 Comments

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Monday, November 12, 2007

Where there's muck, there's money

Muck

A frustrated Blackpool pensioner says he has been left gob-smacked after being told by council workers to wash the roots of the plants he puts in his recycling bin.

Gordon Caddy, 73, was not sure if he was being wound up when his garden waste was left behind because there was mud on his plants. He found a warning slapped to the top of his bin warning against putting soil in. Now the pensioner, who has called the council's refuse staff fussy, is looking for tips on how to grow plants without getting soil on them.

And brass …

Billionaire Sir Tom Hunter has again increased his stake in Dobbies Garden Centres.

Sir Tom has spent £500,000 on new shares, taking his total holding to 3.02 million hares, or 29.16 per cent of the garden centre chain. The entrepreneur's West Coast Capital vehicle withdrew from an acrimonious battle to takeover Dobbies earlier this year, after Tesco made a £155.6 million cash offer to gain a 65.5 per cent share.

Since then, Sir Tom, who owns rival chains Wyevale Garden Centres and Blooms, has signalled his intent by gradually increasing his stake in the group. His shareholding is now large enough to stop Tesco delisting Dobbies.

Roots photograph by Orin Optiglot, used under a creative commons attribution licence.

Labels: Blooms, Dobbies, garden news, tesco takeover, Wyvale

The All Seasons Gardener at 9:41 AM 0 Comments

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Thursday, November 8, 2007

Down the Garden Path

Isn't this one of the most gorgeous things you've seen? I love these cottage garden paths, and one of the nicest things about them is that they have interest all year round, as plants fade and others take their place, unlike formal paths where the plants are regimented and don't have the chance to 'express themselves' by billowing over the edges of the walkway.

There's only one problem. Well two, actually. The first is himself, who lives entirely to lop and chop anything he thinks is 'untidy' and plants hanging over paths suffer his pruning on an almost daily basis, and the dogs, who - particularly at this time of year - head out into the garden at sixty miles an hour, when they see a squirrel and send anything in their paths, including me, flying. Gravel wouldn't last a week under their rocket-propelled paws!

So much as I love the cottage garden path, I'm stuck with paving.

Labels: autumn colour, cottage garden, paving

The All Seasons Gardener at 2:26 AM 0 Comments

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Tuesday, November 6, 2007

What do you want for Christmas?

This is what I want. Not just the dovecot but the birds to go with it. I’d love to have doves but they are (a) unbelievably expensive and (b) not terribly hardy. So I’d be willing to settle for a pair of homing pigeons.

Interestingly, scientists have finally solved the mystery of how pigeons, dropped off hundreds of miles from home, find their way back to their lofts. According to a study, the birds use the strength of the Earth's magnetic field to work out where they are relative to home. "We are now confident that pigeons do use the intensity of the Earth's magnetic field to determine position during homing," said Todd Dennis of the University of Auckland, who led the research. In his experiment, Dr Dennis released homing pigeons in an area of New Zealand where the Earth's magnetic field is naturally distorted, called the Auckland Junction Magnetic Anomaly. His idea was that, if the intensity of the magnetic field influenced the birds' ability to position themselves, they would be confused by the anomaly when released. Once out, he found that the birds flew up to four kilometres in the wrong direction, parallel or at right angles to variations in strength of the local magnetic field, before redirecting themselves towards their loft.

The real reason for wanting pigeons in the garden is that they attract any number of other birds – and I’d like more of our feathered friends to visit us. We had a woodpecker last year and have seen a thrush already this November, so anything that encourages this progress would be great!

Labels: birds, christmas gifts

The All Seasons Gardener at 12:09 AM 0 Comments

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Saturday, November 3, 2007

Plants as structure – the bones of the winter garden

These are the seed heads of garlic chives. Not our 'eating' garlic chives, which have their heads resolutely lopped off as soon as they appear – which always makes me feel like the Red Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass, yelling ‘off with their heads’ every two minutes – but our decorative chives.

I have two lots of both kinds of chives, eating ones right outside the door, where I can nip out and grab a bunch for salads, or to chop and lay on top of any egg dish I happen to be cooking, and decorative chives, in clumps in the garden and the latter are grown just for these lovely seed heads.

They will last all winter, and give varying effects to the garden when not a lot else is in bloom. Through November they are usually wet and windblown, and have subtle shades of brown and beige. Into December they become paler and drier and tend to be rimmed with frost. With any luck, in January, they will be standing stalwart but fragile above a layer of snow, and in February I go out and cut them down, ready for the spring growth that appears like magic in March.

Dried plant material, whether seed heads or berries, or certain flowers (like sunflowers) left on the plant stem all winter, can add real interest to the garden. Matched with winter flowering plants (hellebores are my favourite) and berrying plants for splashes of colour, they can give you a garden as full of interest in the cold months as in the summer.

Labels: chives, seed heads, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 2:41 AM 0 Comments

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