Garden Centre

Friday, May 22, 2009

Weigela: another shrub some people love to hate

I’m very fond of the candyfloss pink form of the Weigela and quite a few butterflies seem to like it too. A few years ago, you could find Weigela in garden centres here, there and everywhere for a couple of quid and people planted them with wild abandon, loving their fast growth rate and, of course, the huge stems of white, pale-pink or magenta flower trumpets.

And then they realised the downside: Weigela is what is charmingly called a ‘lax’ grower, which always makes me think that it’s got rather slutty habits, like pushing the dust under the furniture instead of getting the vacuum cleaner out. What lax actually means is that the Weigela will throw out a couple of dozen long springy stems, and then decide it can’t be bothered after all, and let them fall to the ground in rather pretty bending arches, with then absolutely smother themselves in flowers. And that’s all great, until the blossom falls in a rather messy brown pile, and you’re left with eight foot stems of rather uninteresting branches that bend every which way and seem to try and trip you up.

The answer is heavy pruning every year. This keeps your Weigela lush and dramatic but also pins it back in its corner for the rest of the year so you can get round the garden. And then you get the best of all possible worlds. What could be better than that?

My Weigela is underplanted with variegated ivy, which echoes the dappled colours of the flowers rather well, I think.

Labels: variegated ivy, weigela

The All Seasons Gardener at 3:31 AM 2 Comments

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Tuesday, May 19, 2009

May flowers - unknown roses

I don’t know what this rose is. It was planted in the front garden when we arrived, and in the first three years we lived in the house I don’t think it ever flowered. In year 4, armed with some pruners and a lot of hard-heartedness, I pruned it to within an inch of its graft. The following year it produced beautiful blush pink and golden blooms in May and has done so ever since. It’s strongly scented, with a tea and sugar fragrance, and has large open flowers. If you think you know which of the many hundreds of roses it is, please let me know.

Because we’re on pretty intractable clay and live in a windy, salt-exposed environment, even though the garden at the back as six foot fences, we don’t have massive success with roses. I have one Old English Rose, which holds its own but has never really been impressive, one Ernest Morse which does pretty well, and an Iceberg climber which thrives (but then Iceberg would survive in a dustbin, given an inch of soil) so this rose, whatever it is, makes me very happy as it provides the illusion of a British summer garden without putting me to too much effort!

Labels: English rose, may roses, rose garden

The All Seasons Gardener at 1:25 AM 0 Comments

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Saturday, May 16, 2009

Greenhouse ponderings

So, the greenhouse is lovely and the recent wet and windy weather has completely proved its value but I have a question which I have not seen asked anywhere else and almost fear to ask myself, in case it proves that I am a complete idiot.

Back when we were looking at greenhouse options, it became clear that because there was only one possible location, in the far corner of the garden, it also had to be a polycarbonate greenhouse as our neighbour’s teenage son has a set of goalposts in the adjacent corner of their garden and no glass would have survived long under the onslaught of him and his chums practising (and missing) their penalty shots and skying the ball onto our greenhouse roof.

So far, so good, the polycarbonate has coped with any number of footballs and as we are nearly into basketball season, a few of those too. But are all polycarbonate greenhouses quite so noisy in windy weather? Ours is like standing an inch from Rolf Harris’s wobble board.

Or am I a complete idiot?

Labels: assembling a greenhouse, noisy greenhouse, polycarbonate greenhouse

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:47 AM 0 Comments

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Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Tamarisk: exotic shrub or tatty tree?

I have a real issue with tamarisk. It’s said that Abraham planted a tamarisk to invoke the name of God, which presumably means that it’s a tree that has biblical value, and you see lots of tamarisk in the Maghreb region, providing windbreaks for more tender crops on the lee side of the trees’ growth. The tree is known in America as the salt cedar and bees certainly love the tiny, pendant pink flowers but not only do tamarisk have such deep roots that they suck water from all nearby plants, they are a horrible fire risk – their dry, fragile growth is a real invitation to wind-blown sparks or lightning strikes and when people drop cigarette ends in summer, tamarisk is likely to go up like a petrol soaked bonfire.

When we moved into this house there was a tamarisk in the back garden. I waited until my other half was safely away for the weekend and dug it up. It did actually take all weekend because when I say deep-rooted, I am not exaggerating – the neighbours probably thought I was digging a grave!

Anyway, the tamarisk was replaced by a viburnam, which is a better bet for winter colour and for allowing the rest of the garden to get some ground water too, but as I walked past a neighbour’s house this morning, I saw this … and wondered if I’d really done the right thing.

Labels: garden shrubs, tamarisk, viburnam

The All Seasons Gardener at 4:29 AM 2 Comments

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Friday, May 8, 2009

Garden flowers in May

It can be difficult to know what spring flowers you’re going to get in which month – last year the bluebells were earlier, being just about in bloom before the hellebores went over, but this year they are later, and have come into their own with the lilies of the valley and the early lilac, which is a lovely combination.

I don’t understand how bluebells are sometimes pink and white, but in my garden at least I believe there must be a pH related element, as there is for hydrangeas, because when I got my fifty bluebells, some four years ago, I planted ten in one place and forty in another – simply taking ten bulbs at random from the pack. Those ten, on the south side of the garden, have come up pink and white while the other forty, on the eastern side, are all blue. Now I suppose the blue ones might have had a couple of pink or white in with them originally and they might have smothered them, because the blue are bigger and more vigorous, but I don’t remember ever seeing white or pink among the blue and there’s definitely never been any blue bluebells in the south border. Isn’t that strange?

In the background of my bluebells, lilac and lilies of the valley are a couple of sprigs of photinia Red Robin, because its bright scarlet leaves provide a lovely foil to the subtle colours of the spring blossoms.

What you can’t get from a photo is the heavenly combination of fragrances: the top note of the lilies of the valley, followed by the sugar sweet lilac and finally, when you’ve been sitting in the room for a while, the clear cool perfume of the bluebells. Glorious.

Labels: bluebells, garden flowers, lilac, lily of the valley, photinia, spring bulbs, spring flowers

The All Seasons Gardener at 10:17 AM 0 Comments

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Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Garden tasks for May

I’ve finished showing my hardy annuals – last year I found that the cold damp spring prevented a lot of outdoor sown annuals from germinating, but this year the germination rate has been very nearly 100% - and I’m a bit worried that my later sowings will catch up with the earlier ones in no time, instead of producing later blooms as they are supposed to.

I’ve lightly raked some general purpose fertiliser in around my crocus and snowdrops before they disappear completely – it gives them some reserves to build their bulbs for next year’s flowering and it’s an easy task to forget when the foliage vanishes.

As far as pruning is concerned, I’ve cut back several of my hellebores but left one flowering stem on each of my helleborus argutifolius plants to set seed as I have several requests from friends who want to grow their own plants and as I divided my hellebores last year, I won’t be dividing them again this year to make new plants to give away. By the way, although they look pretty in a cottagey vase, the best way to display the beautiful flowers of all hellebores is to cut them from the stems entirely and float them in a large shallow bowl. That way their glorious freckling can be seen in all it’s subtle elegance.

And I’ve also neatened up my saxifrage and aubrieta just to keep them tidy. Sadly I’ve lost yet another edelweiss, that’s the third one in a row that hasn’t survived in my garden and I don’t know why, other alpines seem fine, so I shall have to find something else to grow in its spot next year – any suggestions?

I’ve filled my two hanging baskets this year as salad baskets – they contain:
• Red Orache
• Mizuna
• Variegated nasturtiums
• Sage (which I’ve pinched out to try and keep the plants bushy).
And I’ve got to say, they are already starting to look very pretty as well as tasty!

Labels: alpines, hanging baskets, hellebores, May garden tasks

The All Seasons Gardener at 7:30 AM 0 Comments

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Friday, May 1, 2009

Six months of greenhouse ownership

I can’t believe it’s six months since I left himself in the garden with 275 bits of labelled aluminium and polycarbonate and hid indoors, typing madly and pretending that I had a deadline to meet. I did make lots of tea, of course, but that was almost my entire contribution to the process of setting up a greenhouse.

And now I can’t imagine how I could live without it. We’ve only had one failure to date – the passion fruit seeds have simply not germinated, despite people telling me that as long as the seeds were super fresh they would zoom, vine-like, out of their pots and loop around the greenhouse. They haven’t.

But apart from that, everything has germinated, everything has bloomed, nothing has curled up and died. And the most amazing thing of all is that our garden season has been brought forward by about a month, just by having this clement, frost-free place in which to raise or overwinter my plants.

The downside: well I am getting quite fed up with carrying trays of plants in and out of the greenhouse twice a day – it’s a shame that the only flat space in the garden on which said trays can be set to harden off is the entire length of the garden away from said greenhouse. Bad planning on my part, but there’s nothing to be done about it now, unless I move the shed and fill in the pond and … well, you get the point. And also, it’s a time vortex. I go out just to check how many borlotti beans or lupins have germinated and it’s a whole hour before I realise that I said I’d only be a minute …

Labels: borlotti beans, greenhouse, lupins, passionfruit

The All Seasons Gardener at 4:02 AM 0 Comments

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