Garden Centre

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Rethinking the white border

Oh dear. Perhaps Himself was right after all, and I should have applied the 90 day rule to the white border.

The 90 day rule is one that we’ve instituted for anything (but particularly garden things) that we can’t buy out of your pockets immediately. So a DVD or a take-away meal don’t count under the rule, but a new garden seat or a holiday does count. It stops us buying big things impulsively and allows us to explore other ways of doing things – for example, a lot of garden items can be obtained on sites like Freecycle. Even if you can’t get expensive items for free, spending 90 days researching them does mean that you don’t make purchases that aren’t right for you, especially in this time of tight money and little chance to find cash for luxuries.

Of course I haven’t gone too far yet, with the white border, but today, the first day that we’ve had full cloud cover from dawn onwards, the grey light in the garden has really made me reconsider my plans. A white border will definitely add light to the north end of the garden, but what it won’t bring is any warmth, and given that I’ve been thinking about this in the four months of the British summer, ie the short period in which warmth and light are predominant, as opposed to the eight months in which warmth is rare and light is more steely than sultry, I’m wondering how happy I’m going to be if I proceed. After all, I'll be depriving myself of this kind of November glory.

I think I’d better think it out again …

Labels: flower borders, white border, winter colour

The All Seasons Gardener at 8:36 AM 1 Comments

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Saturday, August 22, 2009

Autumn flowers already?

I always associate my cyclamen with autumn and so it was a shock (and a bit of a downer) to walk past the border in which they nestle and find that they are not nestling in a dormant state at all, rather, they are in full bloom!

The garden does look decidedly odd right now, with the late lupins and what I am determined to think of as the ‘early’ cyclamen because it can’t be autumn yet! It’s confusing to say the least. Originally from Greece, the plant in my garden is, as is so often the case, an unknown variety that was collected from my mother’s garden in Devon. I’m guessing that it’s C hederifolium because the plants are:

1. usually the first variety to flower outdoors,
2. the cyclamen that has the classic light pink blooms with silver-green arrow-shaped leaves,
3. small.

I chose them because they have the most superb foliage with lasts right through the winter and enlivens an otherwise rather boring area under the winter jasmine which is, of course, doing its yellow best to make winter interesting just when the cyclamen leaves are also noteworthy.

Labels: autumn flowers, cyclamen, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 2:15 AM 3 Comments

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Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Late and lovely August flowers

Now the reason this is such a late bloomer is my failure as a gardener. I grew these lupins from seed, but for a variety of reasons they got completely neglected in the seed tray, to the point that they were chucked outside the greenhouse door, on the assumption that the degree of aridness of potting medium that they’d endured for over a week meant that any seedlings that might have been about to emerge were effectively dead.

After a month, green shoots appeared in the abandoned tray that I hadn’t managed to move to the rubbish heap. But I’ve had that scenario before and found myself tending a tray of dandelion or chickweed so I just ignored the evidence that something was happening.

It wasn’t until true lupin leaves appeared that I rescued the poor things and gave them some tender loving care, and to my vast surprise, they have turned out just as well as the established lupins, but almost exactly a month behind, which is just about the length of time they spent on the rubbish heap …

Labels: garden flowers, growing plants from seed, lupins

The All Seasons Gardener at 7:20 AM 0 Comments

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Saturday, August 15, 2009

White border update

I’ve been marking out the plants that could be moved from other places in the garden to create a white border and thinking about the cuttings I could take from friends’ and neighbours’ gardens to keep the cost down, although that would mean the border wouldn’t look like anything much for quite a while.

Instant impressions could be created with bulbs – I have white alliums and white flowering garlic chives as well as fritillaries that could be divided immediately and put into place. Then there’s a white hellebore that could be moved to the border and it already contains a white-flowering tinus, so the hellebore and tinus would give a good start early in the year when there isn’t much colour.

Summer is a bit of a problem though. I know where there’s a white-flowering hydrangea that needs a new home, but I’m not terribly keen on hydrangeas, as they do tend to take over and their leaves are not exactly pretty. White flowering shrubs, apart from rhododendrons and azaleas, are not that common. I could choose a white hebe, because they are very cheap to buy, but I already have three hebes in the garden and I’m not sure I want more. A syringe would be lovely but I don’t think it would cope in the border which is okay in summer but very cold in winter.

Still, bulbs and hellebores are a start, and if I get cracking, I shall have begun redesigning the border before Himself works out what I’m up to!

Labels: redesigning borders, white border, white flowers

The All Seasons Gardener at 2:26 AM 3 Comments

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Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Bamboo or beast …

We have some bamboo in the garden – it’s supposed to be black bamboo, but it doesn’t look like the photograph – that was taken at Borde Hill Gardens, where they have the space (and the gardeners) to cope with bamboo.

I know there’s a high chance that our black bamboo will run amuck – any non-native plant can become an insane invader of other plants’ space, if it takes a liking to the climate and conditions.

These monopodial bamboos spread by underground rhizomes and can cover immense distances and, because they are interconnected to the parent plant, they can be almost impossible to kill off – containment is the answer – because the rhizomes don’t grew deeper than 18 inches, it’s best to give them a nice plastic edging of that depth to keep them to a set area.

Unfortunately we didn’t know that when we planted ours! I wonder if it will look like the Borde Hill plant one day?

Labels: bamboo, invasive plants

The All Seasons Gardener at 3:51 AM 0 Comments

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Saturday, August 8, 2009

Sensory Gardening

I am lucky enough to have all my senses in working order, although Himself might not agree – he says I have intermittent deafness, especially at plant sales when he asks where, exactly, I’m thinking of putting the gigantic plant I’ve just purchased …

Anyway, not all my friends are as lucky, so I’ve always had a tendency to plant with the idea of blindness, particularly, in my mind and that means planting things that are interestingly textured (and not spiky or toxic) at the front of borders for hands to brush as they pass, such as stachys (Lambs Ears to those of us who love the common names of plants) and focusing on scent as a major feature of the garden.

This week my sense of smell has been blessed by lavender. I have several lavenders in the garden, including the broadleaved variety which I think I’m going to dig up at the end of the year, it just doesn’t like Sussex winters and tends to rot down in February which is ugly as well as being bad for the plant, and white flowered lavender, which is beautiful. But it is the classic lavender-coloured lavender that fills the air with scent and with bees.

I also have a pink jasmine, but it’s not really inhale-able. It’s never done particularly well in the garden and I’ve moved it three times in twelve years – now it is doing rather well, but in a location halfway behind the greenhouse and to one side of the compost bin, which is not the ideal place for picking up the fragrance, so I’m wondering whether I should move it again.

Labels: fragrant garden, jasmine, lavender, sensory gardening

The All Seasons Gardener at 5:31 AM 0 Comments

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Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Planning new borders

Our rear border needs a complete replant and I’ve got a real yen for a white border. I’m thinking about it, rather than doing anything about it, just because I’m still not recovered enough from surgery to dig anything out, and Himself is watching me warily, wondering how much work this is going to involve.



So I made a list of the pros and cons which I’m planning to share with him in a few weeks time.

Advantages of a white border

1. I want one (well, as I’m the one who does most of the domestic gardening, it’s important that the garden is a place I love and want to spend time).
2. The bottom border needs a complete overhaul, and if we’re going to take out a large number of plants that shadow the greenhouse, why not replant with something that would be impressive and lovely?
3. White at the bottom of the garden would add light and colour to an area that’s a bit dark and grim at present.


Disadvantages of a white border

1. It will be expensive to replant completely.
2. White flowers can look a manky (rotten and dull) when they fade
3. Somebody is going to have to dig out some very well established shrubs to make this work.

I know what Himself will say – why don’t we take it slowly, replant one thing at a time … etc. Which is a sensible, practical approach. But it won’t result in a white border! I know this because I know us, and unless I make a definite plan and get ruthless, there will always be some plant or other than needs a home, or just needs heeling in for a while and it will end up in the ‘transitional’ white border which will therefore remain just as: multicoloured!

So if you can think of any other good arguments for a white border, please let me know! If I hand over my list just before my birthday and say I’d like to start the border as my gift … what husband could resist that?

Labels: garden borders, replanting borders, white border

The All Seasons Gardener at 4:04 AM 0 Comments

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Saturday, August 1, 2009

Garden visits

So, the one garden we got to visit was a very pretty town garden, recently completely rebuilt and replanted, with lots of hard features like the formal pond, flagstones, sundials and plinths and a low wall, with a small gazebo in one corner for sitting and eating breakfast.

One noticeable feature of the garden was that despite its sheltered location in the middle of the city and in the middle of a row of terraced houses, the plants were suffering from a degree of wind damage. Of course new plants are more prone to this, but even so, it was a sign just how strong and scouring the Sussex winds can be. At the far end of this formal pond, for example, is a small acer and the edges of its finely cut leaves were quite crisp and pale from sun/wind damage.

What did work particularly well in this garden was the limited colour palette: cream through soft yellow to pink and purple in the flowers, and the combination of strong structural plants and hard landscaping to give contrasts of form, especially when the sun shines – whether it would be so impressive during our long wet winters I’m not so sure, but perhaps the winter planting takes account of this by providing richer colours to lift the matt white of the paving and structures.

Labels: acer, formal pond, garden visits, hard landscaping, town garden, wind damage

The All Seasons Gardener at 4:16 AM 0 Comments

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