Garden Centre

Monday, December 17, 2007

Winter colour, and flavour

I love this plant – I grew it from seed, from seeds, actually given to me by another gardener who snipped a bit of her berberis, complete with berries, for me to carry home and plant the berries ‘in the green’ which I did. It is, in truth, almost impossible NOT to grow berberis (traditional name barberry) from seed, but the variability of the plant is very great and you need to see the parent plant to get some idea what yours might end up as: some are green and some are purple, some berry very heavily and others, like this one, go in for fiery winter colour before the leaves drop. They are all incredibly spiny.

I wanted this one because of its autumn colour, which is just like a bonfire on these very cold December evenings, and it hasn’t disappointed me. In three years from seed, it’s made a substantially spiky bush and the birds have discovered it as a good source of winter food. There are two reasons for this:

1 – they enjoy the tangy fruits which are a good source of winter vitamins. One can, it is claimed, harvest them, although one would have to be the most committed masochist ever, I believe!
2 – because even the most determined cat or fox will think twice about tackling berberis, I use my bayberry shrubs as holders for fat balls that the birds can peck from in complete confidence that no predator is going to get them out of that lethal thicket of needle-sharp spines.

Labels: berberis, bird food, winter colour

The All Seasons Gardener at 8:13 AM 0 Comments

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Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Gardening - a little rant ...

Doesn’t this kind of thing annoy you? It drives me absolutely spare!

It’s bad enough that half my neighbours are turning their front gardens into paved deserts, just to have somewhere to park their cars, without my little bit of green becoming a living bin.

1 – if you have to pave your green space, can’t you at least have a couple of corner beds that house small trees or shrubs and an under planting of native flowers? You could be saving the lives of countless insects and birds by giving them an oasis in which to rest before moving on to the next green space, and it would provide a bit of run off for all the water that will otherwise have to fill the drains and – quite possibly – flood your house. And I’ve got to say, I think it serves you right if that happens. One of the major reasons that the floods this year were so bad was that this kind of paving or slabbing or bricking of front gardens means that water which used to be soaked up by the soil or taken deep into the ground by thirsty trees and shrubs now sits on the surface and has nowhere to go.

2 – why does every drunkard in the South of England choose my garden for his bottle, can or chip wrapper? Some of them are so carefully inserted into the hedges that I think there must be a litter fairy who is just picking on me! But there will soon be a shock in store for all these litter depositors – behind my evergreens I’ve planted berberis and once the spiky, spiny, impossible to remove, barbs dig into their hands, they’ll be sorry!

Labels: berberis, garden makeovers, garden planning, garden vandalism, litter

The All Seasons Gardener at 12:26 AM 0 Comments

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