Garden Centre

Saturday, May 31, 2008

More floral contrasts

Here’s another of my favourite pairings – and it’s one of those serendipitous happenings – totally unplanned. The iris had been in place for several years when the Californian poppies were windblown in as seeds and appeared out of the blue.

The colour combination works perfectly, it couldn’t have been better if I’d sat down with a style guide and planned it, but I wouldn’t have, as iris usually like moisture-rich soil and Californian poppies dry and poor growing conditions. So, with all that ‘intellectual’ knowledge in my head, I would never have put the two alongside each other. Nature knew better, slapped them into the same space, and for the past four years has produced this lovely show.

In similar fashion we’ve be ‘given’ windblown forget-me-nots this year, which have taken to the side of the pond as if they were a planned planting, and my currant bushes are as thoroughly underplanted with variegated nasturtiums as if I crawled in under there every year with a packet of seeds and made it happen. I don’t.

Sometimes I get the feeling that I should just watch the garden without interfering, I’m sure it would get along perfectly without me!

Labels: californian poppies, floral contrasts, iris, windblown seeds

The All Seasons Gardener at 2:04 PM 0 Comments

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Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Rarities versus native plants

Okay, time for a confession. Although I try to wildlife garden, and to have my heart and soul always committed to the many wonderful native plants that I grow, there are a few things that slip past me. So every year I allow myself to grow at least one exotic plant (if possible, from seed) and somehow find space for it in my garden. It does give me some qualms, I have to admit, but what can you do? You fall in love with a plant or a flower (or even a vegetable) and although you know you’re going to have to nurture it and cope with a dozen demanding foibles, you can’t rest until you’ve got it.

And for me, last year, this was the Crinondendrum Hookeranium. Well, for several years it has been the Crinondendrum, ever since I first saw it growing in a botanical gardens in Mexico. It has the most amazing fleshy red flowers, somewhat heart shaped, pendant (hanging down) and velvety to the touch. It took probably seven years for me to locate one after years of attempting to grow it from seed failed abysmally (it’s a terrible germinator by all accounts) and so it came home with me last August. The thing is, that is after the flowering season, and so I was taking the plant pretty well on trust, not sure if it would flower at all for me. And here it is, showing off beautifully, obviously at home in a semi-shaded corner near the pond, and I love the contrast with the almost lime-green umbels of the perennial angelica behind it.

Labels: angelia, crinodendrum hookeranium, exotic plants, rare plants

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:36 AM 2 Comments

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Sunday, May 25, 2008

Garden weather and watering

Miniature roses soaking up the sun ...


Given that we were supposed to have ‘severe’ weather today, the most severe manifestation here in the south east of the UK was the risk of sunburn! It was still gloriously warm at 18:30, after a pretty well cloudless day, although there was heavy rain during the night. In fact it was a gardener’s delight as it was a perfect day to weed or plant with no need at all to water. But it isn’t going to continue that way all summer, so this is a good time to review our watering resolutions:

1. Adding plenty of organic matter such as compost and manure to the soil to improve water retention, plant health and soil structure. This is one of the most important steps in making your garden drought-tolerant and flood tolerant, as soil that contains organic matter soaks water down to the impermeable lower strata much faster than soil that is compacted – not a lot of people know that! Also, the healthier plants are, the better they cope with drought conditions, whether they are environmental or just because we’ve gone on holiday.

2. More water butts – we have one large one, and I want another to gather water from the shed – could be a task to complete on tomorrow’s bank holiday I reckon!

3. Recycling water from the bath. We shall be doing this properly this year, as we have a thing called a drought buster that sits in the (cooled) bathwater and pumps it down to the garden. Can’t wait to test it …

4. Removing weeds because they compete with other plants for water as well as space – I went out and hoed the garden today, finding a scary number of dandelions lurking in amongst the oriental poppies (the leaves are similar enough to be ignored if you don’t get up close) so I feel virtuous about this one right now.

5. Watering at the right time: gardens are best watered early in the morning, to reduce evaporation. Evening watering, though popular, leaves water on the plants overnight, which can encourage fungal diseases. This is somewhere one of us fails badly – himself is a glutton for wandering out at dusk and spraying the whole flowerbed with the hose: leaves, flowers and all, not at all good behaviour, but I don’t know how to break him of the habit – hide the hose perhaps?

Labels: garden watering resolutions, watering garden

The All Seasons Gardener at 2:01 PM 2 Comments

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Thursday, May 22, 2008

Water gardening

Every morning that I can (and if I’m not running around Chelsea Flower Show getting blisters, that’s most of them) I eat my second breakfast (yes, I’m a hobbit) by the pond. Of course in winter it’s more a case of hopping from foot to foot while sipping tea from a thermal mug held in fingerless gloved hands, but in spring and summer I can relax and really take in the extra dimension that water brings to a garden.

To begin with, there are reflections, shrubs looking at themselves in the water like a mirror, flowers doubled in their beauty; then there is the wildlife: mayflies and damselflies, midges, frogs and fish and our elusive newt or newts (we don’t know how many we’ve only ever seen one at a time and that at rare intervals), birds and pond skaters. And there’s also the microclimate; the extra dimension that cool, shaded water brings, with the ability to grow marginal and pond plants, to feel the haze of moisture coming off the water in the heat of the day, and the gentle chill it carries in the morning hours even when the rest of the garden feels sunny.

Above all though, there’s the sound, the rippling music of the cascade, the tiny movements of fish and insects and the buzzing, susurrating, chirping or gulping they produce, and the sound of even the gentlest breeze moving through the stems of water plants.

All of which go superbly with a cup of tea and a bowl of muesli …

Labels: garden ponds, water gardening, water plants

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:40 AM 0 Comments

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Monday, May 19, 2008

Chelsea themes - colours you won't see this year!

It’s an interesting start to the Chelsea Flower Show. If you have a preview pass you may (or may not) have a photographic pass too. I don’t, so no photographs from me, I’m afraid. However, I can say with some certainty that the big themes emerging this year are very evident.

The last couple of years have been about glitz – many prizewinning gardens have had tricks, jokes or just downright showiness at their heart - but this year we can expect the gold medals to go to much more understated gardens, for the simple reason that the casino-bright gardens of previous years have disappeared almost entirely. So pots like these were almost entirely missing from the preview day.

Water and eco-gardening are two substantial themes this year, because for the first time the organisers have lifted their ban on animals to allow fish in one of the gardens – which we actually view from the side, so that we’re seeing a water garden as if we were underneath it, not on top of it. Eco-gardening was ‘imposed’ by the committee, and each garden designer has had to explain how his or her will be dismantled and disposed of, something that’s never happened before.

But the real difference this year is that the gardens are green – from Arabella Lennox-Boyd's minimalist design (a path across a pond curving one way, a ribbon of water lilies intersecting it) to the lovely Global Warming garden by the University of East Anglia, it's notable that green is the predominant colour.

Labels: chelsea flower show

The All Seasons Gardener at 7:11 AM 0 Comments

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Sunday, May 18, 2008

And the scented garden is smelling lovely!

I love all plants, but scented plants in particular. Himself often says I ‘see’ the garden through my nose, which sounds a bit Kenneth Williams, but I know what he means!

Because I adore most scents, I grow Old English roses, rather than the less scented modern ones, wallflowers, thyme, night-scented stock, lavender, lily of the valley, scented geraniums, scented rushes, sweet peas, mahonia … and that’s just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

If you want a scented garden, here are some tips:

Try provide shelter from the wind as it will otherwise blow away all the glorious fragrances – this is a real problem for me in windy Sussex, so I plant my scented darlings in wind-free corners. If you don’t suffer from breezy weather, you can plant in raised beds which raises the wonderful fragrance higher into the air for you to enjoy.
Plant fragrant things like thyme, lavender and rosemary along paths or in cracks in paving so that they will get brushed or bruised as you pass, releasing their fragrance.
Latin names containing odoratus, citriodorus, fragrantis, moschatus or suavis, all mean sweet smelling, so plants with those names will tend to be fragrant.

Labels: scented garden, scented plants

The All Seasons Gardener at 7:45 AM 0 Comments

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Monday, May 12, 2008

Garden treasures in May

It’s very easy at this hectic time in the garden to forget to stop and look around – and also equally easy to miss the more subtle beauties of the garden in amongst all the showy ones.

Things to look out for that you can hardly miss because they are slapping you in the eye include: Solomon’s Seal with its white bell-shaped pendant flowers, the plum trees that are at their best just as the cherries ‘go over’ and the anemones and tulips. But the things you might miss include the Euphorbias, with their small green flowers on the end of erect, somewhat Dr Who looking stems, and the blossom of the Photinia, as shown in the photo. It’s really tiny, each blossom only half the size of my little fingernail at most, but utterly gorgeous.

Photinia is usually grown for its fantastic red spring foliage, and so it’s cut back hard in winter to force the bright new growth, but the flowers are like miniature tropical blooms and well worth seeking out.

Labels: may flowers, may plants, photinia, solomon's seal

The All Seasons Gardener at 3:35 AM 0 Comments

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Friday, May 9, 2008

Dividing plants in May

Today I’ve been taking advantage of the early rain and later sun (a perfect combination) to lift and divide snowdrops. They are an exception to just about all the rules in the way you treat them – they are much better split when their foliage is still green, and extremely difficult to establish once the bulbs dry out, so if you don’t have snowdrops in your garden or need more, this is the time to buy them from specialist nurseries who sell them ‘in the green’ or beg them from neighbours who have established clumps. They should be divided every four years, or sooner if they start to look congested and you don’t need to sort them by size or plant them individually, break them into clumps about the size of your palm and bung them back in – they’ll do fine!

And of course the other job at present is hardening off which means a lot of carrying pots and trays around: while some plants like to come out of the greenhouse or propagator straight into the sun, others like to ease into outdoor life in a shady, but not chilly, place. In the former group are tomatoes and pelargoniums, and in the latter, celery.

Labels: celery, dividing plants, pelargonium, snowdrops, spring bulbs

The All Seasons Gardener at 9:07 AM 0 Comments

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Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Garden colour schemes for May

Here’s a question for you – do you like complementary or contrasting colours? I notice that many gardens in may offer the former kind of display – forget-me-nots with pink tulips for example. I tend to prefer the contrasting colour approach: these bluebells are lovely on their own, but even more impressive, to my way of thinking, when backed by the acid yellow of the perennial behind them – and if any reader can remind me of the name of that sherbet-lemon yellow, slightly prickly, clump-forming plant, I would be grateful, as it has completely escaped my mind.

What’s happening this month? Well sometimes it feels like everything is! There’s very little time to stop and admire colour schemes, because everything is shooting up, needing to be planted out, or demanding a prune.

By now I’d usually have cut back the flowering stems of my hellebores, which I usually do as soon as the flowers have ‘gone over’ – pruning back to the base so that new shoots come up strongly for next year, but this year even the hellebores were a little slow to appear, so I’m giving them another week to finish flowering. I’m also leaving two stems of the helleborus niger to set seed, as I’d like to produce some plants to give away to friends.

I need to set some canes to support my raspberries, and also to help a new weigela get the idea of what’s required of it – weigelas are often described in old plant books as being ‘of lax disposition’ which always suggests to me that they have problems getting out of bed in the morning

And the weeds always, always, need to be hoed over, or pulled up by hand. May is definetly not a quiet month in the garden.

Labels: bluebells, hellebores, may flowers, may plants, weigela

The All Seasons Gardener at 12:40 AM 0 Comments

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Monday, May 5, 2008

Bamboo Heaven

The garden today is full of things we are seeing for the first time this year: mayflies around the pond, tadpoles (not very many this year, the late frosts caught most of them, I fear) huge swathes of fully open bluebells and the new green tips on the bamboo.

We have three different bamboo plants in the garden, one of which was here when we arrived and we’re still trying to get rid of! They are an incredibly invasive plant, you cut them down, dig them up, spray them with chemicals that would melt concrete and lo and behold! next spring they reappear. That’s the minus side. The plus sides are many too: they make a fantastic screen and once they establish are largely maintenance free, they come in a range of colours and heights to suit you (we have a black bamboo with emerald green leaves that is incredibly impressive, it looks as if we polish it with ebony boot polish and a soft cloth every day). One of the best things about bamboo though, is the noise that it makes – a constant susurration of whispering sounds that is as calming as water.

Labels: bamboo, bamboo problems, may plants, spring growth

The All Seasons Gardener at 5:08 AM 0 Comments

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