Garden Centre

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Holly heaven

Apparently it hasn’t been a good year for holly, which means that I must be in a tiny minority. My three hollies have flourished like mad! There are a lot of reasons to grow holly – security, superstition and sustainability.

Holly, in folklore, protects the home from evil spells because the red berries, like those of hawthorn or the mountain ash, ward off malign spirits. A nice strong holly also wards off burglars if grown under windows! In early Christian belief, spiny leaves were a symbol of the Crown of Thorns and the red berries represented of the blood of Christ.

A holly will grow in almost any soil, provided it is not too wet, but makes large growth in rich, sandy or gravelly loam with good drainage, and a moderate amount of moisture at the roots. It is rarely checked, by even the most severe winters, once established. You can raise it from seeds, but you need to know that they don’t germinate until the second year, hence the berries are generally buried in a tray of earth for a year before being sown in pots. The young plants are transplanted when about a foot tall in autumn.

Because holly exhausts the soil around it to a greater extent than most deciduous trees, it’s a good idea to manure well in the spring before transplanting holly – and remember that a minimum of two years will be needed for the plant to recover the check given by transplanting. While birds seem to enjoy the berries, they are poisonous to humans. Deer will eat the leaves in winter, and sheep thrive on them.

Labels: evergreen plants, garden shrubs, winter colour, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 9:14 AM 0 Comments

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Sunday, January 27, 2008

The flowers I’m not picking ...

From last week’s cold snap – this frosted polyanthus is today shining like summer has arrived – despite being touched by ice only five days ago. Today, of course, the sun is shining and there have been two bumble bees (white-bottomed ones which I’m guessing are B. hortorum) buzzing drunkenly around the garden as if it’s June already.

The bumble bees ignore the polyanthus, of course. Their favourite lurking ground is inside the flowers of the winter clematis, which then wiggle around on the plant as if they are bells being rung, and the bees also visit the winter jasmine, but they ignore everything else that’s in flower.

We put out logs last year for the solitary bees that we finally identified – these bees, which are great pollinators, nest in cavities in wood. In nature these are formed by beetles that live in the wood as larvae, then tunnel out as adults – so the beetles leave behind a ready made nest hole for bees and wasps that prefer to nest in cavities. Because solitary bees are great pollinators, because only the females sting (and feebly, at that, and usually only if you actually handle them roughly), because they don’t ‘gang up’ and swarm gardens, preferring to hang about on their own, I’m really keen to have more of them. It is said to be easy to recreate these ready-made nest holes. Simply drill timber with holes that slope slightly upwards (this stops them flooding with rainwater in bad weather and drowning the bee or its larvae) and watch the bees take up residence. Well, we did, but whether they bees will move in is anybody’s guess. I shall keep a close eye on the bee logs this year.

Labels: bees, winter flowers, winter interest, winter plants

The All Seasons Gardener at 5:36 AM 0 Comments

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Wednesday, January 23, 2008

What’s going on in the garden?

My list of plants in bloom is pretty extensive:

1. Five hellebores (all of them except the niger, in fact)
2. Both Mahonias
3. Violets
4. Snowdrops
5. Polyanthus
6. Jasmine Nudiflorum (winter jasmine)
7. Clematis cirrhosa (winter clematis)


I always say I’m going to pick flowers for the house, but I almost never do – not even the violets, because I have this weird feeling that removing them from the garden destroys an irreparable part of the eco-system. Now, this is absolutely not true, as the horticulturalist in me constantly points out, and many plants, the polyanthus among them, actually need to have flowers removed to produce more and better blooms.

Still, at this point in the year, when most of the garden is bleak and bare, there’s a daily excitement to going outdoors to see what has poked its head above the mud (we haven’t been blessed with snow this year) and that little bit of a thrill increases a thousand-fold if I catch the wonderful earthy fragrance of a violet and have to follow it through the garden like a human bloodhound, bent double so as not to lose the track, until I find the tiny purple flower hidden in the grass or concealed under the overhanging leaves of a skimmia or rhododendron.

Labels: garden flowers, winter colour, winter flowers, winter plants

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:23 AM 0 Comments

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Sunday, January 20, 2008

Back to the winter - hellebores

I happened to be out in the garden today, and damned if three different hellebores aren’t in full bloom! Somehow, in the last few days, when I’ve been busy doing other things, the wonderful Christmas roses crept up on me.

I love hellebores, partly because they are happy to flower in the shade although they always do better in a sheltered position away from the effects of strong icy winds in winter and spring that can damage emerging blooms. In fact the leathery green leaves can often be flattened by frost, which has the advantage of revealing the downward-facing flowers, but does also leave them open to frost damage in severe weather. You can cut them for the house and stick them in a vase, which helps you see their golden stamens and the lovely interior colours of the blooms, but I always cut my short to the head and float them in a bowl of water – which really does show off their subtle glories and makes a dinner party centrepiece that convinces your guests you spent a fortune to please them!

There’s really only one downside - hellebores, like roses, can suffer from a variety of black spot that is at best unsightly and at worst fatal. Drenching the whole plant with a systemic fungicide once a month should help to prevent this, or if you’re organic, remove the worst-affected leaves and hope for the best.

Labels: flower arranging, hellebores, winter colour, winter flowers

The All Seasons Gardener at 9:16 AM 1 Comments

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Thursday, January 17, 2008

Hyacinths

Or, as they are known in our house, hy-whyhaven’tIgotany-cinths.

There are two reasons for the complete dearth of hyacinth around the All Seasons Gardener’s plot:

1 – squirrels – which seem to eat every bulb, just about, that I plant, except nerines, and who make a special case for digging up the hyacinths in September, eating half the bulb, and then scattering the remainder on the path and

2 – small dogs – known as Rebus and Falco, who are agile enough to get onto every windowsill in the house and who knock off any plant pot put there, or eat its contents (Falco turns out to believe scented geraniums are dog breath freshener, they aren’t but he keeps trying) .

And I love hyacinths, so I’m reduced to buying them from the garden centre every year, guarding them on the middle of the dining room table and then planting them out, more in hope than expectation, surrounded by a little grille of wire mesh (the squirrels leave it on the path) and dipped in a pot of turpentine (which is obviously the squirrel equivalent of brown sauce, just adding a little piquancy to the flavour) and watching the squirrels dig them up in the autumn.

Hyacinth by geishaboy500

Labels: hyacinths, indoor flowers, winter colour, winter flowers

The All Seasons Gardener at 11:34 AM 0 Comments

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Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Still stuck indoors

And today’s weather suggests I should be building an ark, rather than a planter, but that’s what I’m doing. The reason? I ordered Romneya seeds.

Now Romneya is a bit of a love/hate plant. I, personally, cannot get enough of it. I first saw it in a Cambridge College garden, nodding gently slightly above my head, and giving off an intoxicating aroma of honeyed lemons in the late afternoon sun. It’s known to grow up to two metres tall, depending on climate, and has, as well as these astonishing saucer sized flowers, large grey leaves. It was not introduced to cultivation until 1875 and it first flowered in the Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin, in Dublin, which is one of my favourite places, and so it seems fitting that this plant should enter my garden.

So what’s the problem?

Romneya can spread widely by suckering, a habit which is described on one American site as ‘In sandy soils they can grow under your house and come out the other side, under driveways, or consume your entire yard.’ Hmm. Now my soil is not sandy, but I have had invasive plants before, notably Chinese Lanterns and I have no desire to go there again. On the other hand though, I do want this lovely big flowers in my garden. So the compromise is to build a nice big (very deep) wooden planter, with feet, paint it blue to really show off the colour of those flowers and that foliage and hold it in reserve against the day that my Romneya seeds turn into seedlings.

Romneya by scott.zona

Labels: container plants, growing plants from seed, romneya, seeds

The All Seasons Gardener at 2:20 AM 0 Comments

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Friday, January 11, 2008

Rain, rain, go away ...

One of those New Year’s resolutions it’s almost impossible not to keep is ‘Don’t start to turn over the garden soil until you are able to take a fist full of soil, squeeze it and it crumbles easily when it hits the ground’. Who’s so thrilled by rain that they want to be out their digging in it?

There’s plenty to do - during damp days you can always prune or just pull your wellies on and pull up some weeds.

Use planks to protect your soil, especially your lawn in extremely wet and waterlogged weather, or it will compact to the point that it becomes lifeless and bad for your plants' roots, but with some protection of this kind you can always use the time when the soil is drying out to prune your dormant trees – and cut down any lovely bright dogwoods that have been adding a winter glow.

My seeds arrived today and once again, as I look at the packets I’ve ordered and all the seeds left over from last year I realise I’m going to need a bigger garden!

Labels: digging over, seeds, winter pruning

The All Seasons Gardener at 4:03 AM 1 Comments

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Monday, January 7, 2008

Brilliant whites, anyone?

You need two things – snow, and a garden with a beautiful range of galanthus (snowdrops to you and me). The earliest I’ve seen these was 8 January in the Anglesey Abbey Gardens, more than a decade ago, but February is the more likely month and there are several gardens around the country that open to show off their amazing display of these beautiful mid-winter bulbs.

Top of the list has to be Lambrook Manor Gardens, South Petherton, Somerset - www.eastlambrook.co.uk because the woman who created the snowdrop gardens here was such an aficionado (especially for pure green snowdrops) that she actually has a snowdrop named after her. She was Margery Fish and the Margery galanthus is a wonderful green-innered beauty. You can see it in the gardens too.

Otherwise, try Anglesey Abbey Gardens, Lode, Cambridgeshire or Heale House - www.healegarden.co.uk, Middle Woodford, near Salisbury, Wiltshire. This garden has a special offer, snowdrop walks with an experienced snowdrop locator on the first and second Sundays in February.

If you fall for snowdrops in a big way, remember they have to be purchased, and planted, ‘in the green’, ie while they are still full of juice. Those dried out bulbs sold in garden centres have a high failure rate and really aren’t worth the money!

Labels: snowdrops, winter colour, winter flowers

The All Seasons Gardener at 9:18 AM 0 Comments

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Saturday, January 5, 2008

Blatant beauty

Okay, after all that subtlety of my last post, here’s the absolute antithesis of subtle – my new mahonia. I bought this statuesque plant two years ago, when it was a measly two feet tall. It’s now peering over the top of an eight foot wall, and, for the first time, has blossomed.

I do have one little quibble about it – mahonia smells so wonderful that having the flowers eight and a half feet in the air is a bit of a waste; perhaps the crows and seagulls are getting the benefit, but I’m not!

On the plus side, the colour is astonishing, it’s like having a personal sun shining out of the darkest and mankiest corner of the garden, and for next year I have a plan (don’t tell himself – I’m not supposed to be buying any more plants) to invest in a cornus so that the bright red winter stems can make a crimson hem around the bottom of this golden flowering giant.

I should, perhaps, cut some of the blossom for the house, but I find it difficult to cut mahonia, for two reasons – the practical one is that mahonia (aka Oregon Grape) is very prickly and the stems are like wire, you need really sharp snippers and good gloves and the sentimental one is that it seems so cruel to cut any part of the plant when it’s being so brave in the garden.

Labels: mahonia, winter colour, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 3:06 AM 0 Comments

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Tuesday, January 1, 2008

The subtle beauties of winter

At this time of year you sometimes have to search pretty hard to find things to admire in the garden. Of course, the canny gardener will have planted for that catch-all phrase ‘year round interest’ but sometimes objects of interest can be far and few between.

Lichens and berries come into their own at this time of year. Fruit trees, in particular, seem to be host to a lovely crop of lichens that are only really noticeable when the rest of the garden is bare of leaf and brown of stem, and berries which would be insignificant at any other time of year shine out like Christmas decorations amid the gloom.

This hawthorn is probably a chance arrival, deposited by a windblown berry or in a bird’s droppings. It’s been in the garden for a long time, long before we moved in, and it sits between the compost bins and the back fence, hardly noticed for most of the year. But in December it becomes a real focal point, not only because the birds turn up to eat the berries, but because the bright lichens on the branches suddenly demonstrate all their complex attractiveness of both colour and texture.

Other trees that are wonderful for lichens are oaks, particularly mature ones, crab apples and plums. We planted a crab apple for the millennium, which means it’s still too much of a baby to develop any lichen (there seems to be a relationship between the maturity of the branches and the lichenous growth which I’m sure a clever person could explain but it’s a mystery to me) but I’m hopeful that in the next couple of years it too will start to shine out in winter.

Labels: berries, hawthorn, lichens, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:16 AM 0 Comments

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