Garden Centre

Sunday, March 30, 2008

Native plants

Perhaps spring is the one time of year when if we don’t have native plants, we don’t have anything much in the garden. This is because, as you might have noticed, a British spring is unpredictable, unreliable, vicious and confusing. And native plants have learned from experience how to cope with the hell that is March, April and May.

Daffodils have been late this year, and the bluebells, which started early, actually gave up and froze their blooming season for about two to two and a half weeks, remaining green for considerably longer than usual. Violets appeared early too and seem to have sailed through the late snows and drenching rains that assailed them. Plants from the Mediterranean, such as lavender and rosemary, have coped reasonably well, although in some more northern parts the first growth on lavender was nipped off by air frosts last week. The ones that have really suffered though as the imports from further afield: the early clematis, which doesn’t mind some really low temperatures (it comes from the Himalayas) but detests the combination of cold and saturated roots; the syringa has been blighted right along the eastern coast of the UK; and the camellia family, which needs a very good spring indeed to be at its best, has done what it always does in a bad spring – shed all its blossom to be strewn across lawns and gardens everywhere.

So, if you want to have a great display, regardless of climatic conditions, invest in native plants.

Labels: native flowers, native plants, spring flowers, spring shrubs

The All Seasons Gardener at 9:17 AM

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