Garden Centre

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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Wednesday, October 10, 2007

After the Rain

While November probably brings the wettest, darkest and most horrible days of the gardening year, as in the famous poem by Walter de la Mere (no not the one by Thomas Hood, although that’s famous too)

There is wind where the rose was,
Cold rain where sweet grass was,
And clouds like sheep
Stream o'er the steep
Grey skies where the lark was.

October can offer some nasty surprises too. Yesterday’s rain beat everything in the garden flat – the bamboo is lying down, which is not a huge surprise, but the photinia is flat too, and that is unexpected! Of course, a lot of the garden plants that have suffered were previously at least partially under the canopy of the monstrous apple tree that we cut back at the end of summer, so this has been their first real exposure to strong weather without a protective umbrella.

Fortunately we’d cut back the plants on the pond margin, or they’d all have either toppled over and bent over and spread vegetable matter across the water surface – that’s not a problem in summer when insects, fish and other forms of biological action will destroy plant detritus very fast, but in winter those fragments of leaf and seed will just sink, becoming rotten and contributing harmful gases to the pond, which can build up fast if the pond freezes over. Our timing was just about right for that, at least.

So this may be the last summery picture – my brave nasturtiums shaking off the rain.

Labels: autumn colour, autumn storms, bamboo, garden ponds, photinia, rain

The All Seasons Gardener at 12:09 AM 0 Comments

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