Garden Centre

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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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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Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Garden Flowers - Planning for Christmas

I’m wandering around the garden this week with secateurs in hand and a gleam in my eye. I’m planning my Christmas decorations.

There are a number of ways you can guarantee fresh flowers for Christmas without paying a fortune to the florist for them. You can force bulbs like narcissus and Amaryllis, and I intend to be doing that next year when the greenhouse is finally installed or you can grow flowers that will be at their best in December, which is a lot easier than it sounds, because Winter Jasmine, Witch Hazel and Tinus are all lovely hardy shrubs and trees that simply thrive on bad weather. Finally you can preserve flowers, leaves and seeds by a variety of means. I have taken seed heads from some plants and hung them upside down in the shed to dry and in the next few weeks I shall be giving them a light spray with gold paint and using them to make wreaths and place settings. I’ve also got a number of palm leaves in mind to cut fresh from the palm tree to use as backgrounds for smaller decorations to be hung on the internal doors of the house - they will have dried ivy leaves stuck to them, with a centre of bright poinsettias.

What I’m doing right now is preserving the last summer flowers with glycerine. You have to buy special liquid glycerine from a craft shop and heat it according to the directions which can vary. Then you slide the stems of mature branches or flowers (note mature – young growth doesn’t have enough fibrous interconnections to work with this method) into the liquid and leave for up to three weeks. You end up with perfectly preserved and pliable flowers – often a little darker than their original colour but otherwise as natural as if you’d just picked them.

Dried flowers courtesy of Elizabeth Tritippo at Flickr

Labels: christmas decorations, garden flowers, preserving flowers

The All Seasons Gardener at 1:01 PM 0 Comments

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Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Being a girlie gardener

Today I had a visitor who stood and watched me as I prepared to type this blog. It’s a bit disconcerting to be observed while blogging. In fact he put me off so much I stopped and made a cup of tea instead. We stared out of the kitchen window into the garden.

“Your garden’s very pink, he said.

“No it’s not.”

But when he pointed out that just about everything that’s in flower was indeed, a bit ‘pink’ I couldn’t argue with him. We walked around and looked at the cyclamen and the nerines, and most of the Japanese anemones are pink (there are a few white ones though) and the rock rose is definitely pink and this thing, which is part of the potato family and whose name I don’t know because I got it in a lucky dip at a garden centre …

“That’s not pink,” I said, desperately. “That’s magenta!”

“Which is just a way of saying bright pink,” insisted my non-girlie visitor.

Now, partly this is due to seasonality – you won’t find an early spring flower that’s red for example. The only red spring blooms are polyanthus and tulips and neither of them are the first bloomers: early spring flowers are either purple or yellow. Summer is very strong on hot colours like reds and oranges, which continue through to the autumn with dahlias, for example, but once the leaves start to fall, you’re back to a different palate, usually pinks.

Even so, I’ve got to say he’s got a point – my garden is a bit like horticultural Barbie-land!

Labels: autumn colour, garden colour, garden flowers, pink flowers

The All Seasons Gardener at 7:54 AM 0 Comments

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Wednesday, January 23, 2008

What’s going on in the garden?

My list of plants in bloom is pretty extensive:

1. Five hellebores (all of them except the niger, in fact)
2. Both Mahonias
3. Violets
4. Snowdrops
5. Polyanthus
6. Jasmine Nudiflorum (winter jasmine)
7. Clematis cirrhosa (winter clematis)


I always say I’m going to pick flowers for the house, but I almost never do – not even the violets, because I have this weird feeling that removing them from the garden destroys an irreparable part of the eco-system. Now, this is absolutely not true, as the horticulturalist in me constantly points out, and many plants, the polyanthus among them, actually need to have flowers removed to produce more and better blooms.

Still, at this point in the year, when most of the garden is bleak and bare, there’s a daily excitement to going outdoors to see what has poked its head above the mud (we haven’t been blessed with snow this year) and that little bit of a thrill increases a thousand-fold if I catch the wonderful earthy fragrance of a violet and have to follow it through the garden like a human bloodhound, bent double so as not to lose the track, until I find the tiny purple flower hidden in the grass or concealed under the overhanging leaves of a skimmia or rhododendron.

Labels: garden flowers, winter colour, winter flowers, winter plants

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:23 AM 0 Comments

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Monday, December 24, 2007

Yule log with a difference!

Here it is; the ‘log’ is a piece cut from the apple tree this spring, decorated (with two little exceptions) only with garden products – and isn’t it gorgeous? I can say that because I didn’t create it – this particular floral decoration was put together by 'himself' who has an amazing knack for this kind of thing (he takes a lot of the photos that grace this blog too, but don't tell him I think he's good at it, or he'll become insufferable).

Let’s start with the exceptions – we didn’t grow the citrus fruit rings (although we just about could have done) or the pomegranate (which is definitely out of our league!).

Everything else you can see came from the garden:

Ivy leaves
Holly leaves and berries
Purple hebe flowers
Yellow winter jasmine flowers
Sedges from the pond
Olearia leaves
The seedhead of a garlic chive
Laurel leaves
Dried lavender heads

And the final ingredient … plain flour from my kitchen cupboard!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all readers. I hope your garden’s have been as exciting in 2007 as mine has, and that you’ll join me again in 2008, when I’ll be making New Year’s Resolutions.

Labels: flower arranging, garden flowers, winter colour, winter jasmine

The All Seasons Gardener at 10:05 AM 0 Comments

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Saturday, September 15, 2007

Autumn’s bounty

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom friend of the maturing sun …

As Keats so truly said. There was a time when gardeners had a fetish about cutting every rosehip out of their gardens, to produce more flowers the following year, but now most of us are content to leave some hips for the birds and for winter colour.

Hips

These are aggregate fruit of the rose plant, consisting of several dry fruitlets enclosed by the enlarged, fleshy, usually red floral cup. Though too tart to eat raw, the ripe reddish-orange fruit of the rose is often used to make jellies and jams, syrup, tea and wine. Because they're an excellent source of vitamin C, rose hips are also dried and ground into powder and sold in natural food stores. Rosehip syrup was an important source of vitamin C for children during World War II and English children were paid three pence for a pound of rosehips which were then turned into Delrosa rosehip syrup. As many will remember, this brand of rosehip syrup was supplied to new mothers for their children up until the 1970s. You can make your own:

Rosehip Syrup

Pick a kilo of rosehips and place them in a large pan holding three pints of boiling water. Bring back to boil, remove from heat and let stand for ten minutes. Strain through a jelly bag (or a clean old pillowcase that you don’t want to use again) for about four hours. Return the strained liquid to pan with another pint of boiling water. Re-boil and allow to stand as before, strain. Pour into a clean pan, reduce by boiling until juice measures about a pint and a half to which you should add half a kilo of sugar. Stir over gentle heat until sugar dissolves, then boil for 5 minutes. Pour into hot bottles, seal. Once opened, this syrup goes off in a week or ten days, so choose small bottles or plan to use it up fast!

And Haws

The Haw is a small, oval dark red fruit about 1 cm long, berry-like, but structurally only containing a single seed. Haws are important for wildlife in winter, particularly birds which eat the haws and disperse the seeds in their droppings.

Haw Vodka

Pick berries, wash gently and dry .

Fill a small jar two thirds full of berries and then pour in 80% proof vodka to fill it to the brim and seal tightly. Leave to steep for six weeks in a darkened area (not full sun which makes it go brown and horrible looking) but at normal room temperature, shaking gently once a week.

Strain through a paper coffee filter into a clean bottle or jar and leave to mature for at least a couple of months (again in a darkened area at room temperature) before serving.

Labels: garden flowers, garden plants, garden recipes

The All Seasons Gardener at 1:04 PM 0 Comments

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Friday, August 31, 2007

Astilbe

As some compensation for the lack of cathedrals, good Spanish wine and excellent seafood in my garden, there is a current glory of Astilbes. The plant can be anything from a foot to four feet tall, depending on the variety you purchase, and is also known as False Goat's Beard.

In my opinion it’s an unbeatable plant for a damp border or pond-side – for several reasons:

1 – it’s good for almost the entire year, because the finely cut foliage looks attractive from early spring, and the flowers in shades of either cream, soft pink, or rich burgundy, are superb feather spikes that appear in early summer and will last until early autumn if the weather isn’t too hot. They all become a deep tobacco brown as the year fades, and you can leave them on the plant right through the winter, where they give some structural interest to otherwise empty borders, then before new growth appears in spring, you simply cut away any remaining flowers and foliage that remain and mew growth springs up strongly.


2 - you only need to buy one plant in each colour, assuming you want all three – because after two years, you can divide it and replant the pieces as a group, which looks very impressive. Even if you don’t want more plants (and why not?) Astilbe generally require division every four years or so, when decreased flower production tips you off that their roots are overcrowded. Simply dig them up in late autumn, divide by pulling clumps away from the main plant, making sure each new clump contains healthy shoots and roots. Plant the division, watering thoroughly and watch them spring to life!


3 – it’s almost pest-free, there’s virtually nothing that eats astilbe.

Labels: garden flowers, garden ponds

The All Seasons Gardener at 7:28 AM 0 Comments

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Thursday, August 16, 2007

New garden visitors

We’ve had two new arrivals in the garden this month, and I’m not able to show you a picture of either of them; one because it only turns up after dark, the other because it move too fast.

The first is an owl, possibly a barn owl, although we only hear it, which means identification is a bit of a problem. The second is definitely a sparrowhawk, and not just one; we’ve seen both the male and the female of what must be a breeding pair, skimming along the edge of our fence, flushing out sparrows to take back to their fledglings. It’s very exciting (although a bit tough on the sparrows, I suppose) because when we moved here, nearly ten years ago, the garden was pretty well bare of wildlife – to have increased our garden population to include two top level predator species is quite something!

The other reason it’s exciting is that it makes the garden an area of suspense, twenty-four hours a day. We never know what will happen next. Will we hear (or see) the owl? Will one of the sparrowhawks appear? Is this the day we’ll discover a new butterfly species that hasn’t previously visited us, or perhaps the famously shy newts will put in a rare appearance? Add to these more random expectations the daily pleasures of coming across a frog hiding under a large leaf, the mayflies darting across the pond, the constant scolding from the sparrows as we trim plants near their hiding places … from a rather bleak and unfriendly space, the garden has become a home and haven for so many species that we find ourselves apologising for disturbing them by tidying up!

It wasn’t difficult. The first thing was to get the pond healthy and once that was done, we built log piles, became organic (nearly) and started the process of removing highly exotic plants and replacing them with more wildlife friendly native ones. We’re not purists though; I still have beloved plants that I will never get rid of – my tigridia, dahlias, ceonothus etc, and our log piles are tucked out of sight, so the garden doesn’t look too tatty. Even so, we’ve been amazed how things have changed and how the garden resounds with the various noises and movements of our native wildlife.

Photograph by kthypryn, used under creative commons licence.

Labels: garden flowers, garden ponds, garden wildlife, owl, sparrowhaw, Wildlife Gardening

The All Seasons Gardener at 8:58 AM 0 Comments

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Monday, August 13, 2007

Dahlias

Funnily enough, dahlias have been on my mind for any number of reasons, recently:

1 – a friend who recreates old recipes is trying to make dahlia flour – yes, flour, not flower! The first dahlia tubers arrived here late in the eighteenth century, from Mexico and were viewed as vegetables rather than flowers. So she’s been drying, grinding and baking dahlia tubers as part of her research project and I’ve been steadfastly refusing to eat anything she produces. By 1815, the Belgians had produced double dahlia flowers and the plant had become a herbaceous rather than vegetable border resident. By Victoria’s reign, thousands of varieties of dahlia had been created.

2 – I’m reviewing the novel Black Dahlia, for a magazine. Not the best bedtime reading, unless you like going to sleep with dismembered women on your mind. That, of course, led to finding a copy of the 1946 film, The Blue Dahlia, because it was possible that the victim Elizabeth Short, who became known as the Black Dahlia, got her name after the film was released. And that, in turn, led to a quick peruse of Red Dahlia, a book based on the case of the Black Dahlia but updated as a kind of copycat case. Phew!

3 – and the garden is full of … yes, you’ve guessed – dahlias! They are a late summer showstopper and will thrive in almost any location and in almost any soil, but for really good flowers dahlia roots need a sunny location – this means at least a half-day of sun every day, more is better, and you need to shelter them from wind. Even so you’ll end up staking them because they are surface feeders with a mat of light surface roots which means the plant can easily blown over by even moderate wind – and even if they don’t get blown down, breezes break the roots and stop the plant feeding.

For big blooms you also need to remove the two little buds either side of the main bud (called the crown bud) and remove the side buds/shoots at the next lower pair of leafs and again at the next lower pair. This will force the plant to concentrate all its energy into the remaining crown bud which gives you a whopper flower.

Finally, once the first heavy frost blackens their leaves, you need to dig up the tubers and set them upside down in a dry airy space for about two weeks to drain moisture from the remaining stem(s). After that, store the tubers in trays of dry sand or peat moss in a cool, dry cellar or storage area – don’t let them desiccate or they won’t flower next year.

Labels: dahlia, garden flowers, garden research

The All Seasons Gardener at 9:49 AM 1 Comments

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Tuesday, August 7, 2007

Taking the Myth ...

It’s coming up to the time of year to plant spring bulbs: daffodils, snowdrops, crocus, chionodoxa etc. Assuming, that is, you don’t have squirrels. I’ve tried all the ideas I can (short of trapping, which is a nonsense as we have at least three parks within a mile of the house) to stop them getting my crocus bulbs and I’ll tell you now what doesn’t work.

1 – paraffin. Fine in the first year but by the second year the little grey monsters have either got used to the taste or it's worn off because they ignored all the newly-planted paraffin-dipped bulbs but dug up all the older ones.

2 – wire mesh. Yes it works, but you can’t dig your garden, or hoe to get rid of perennial weeds, the plants tend to grow distorted and skew sideways if they come up under a bit of mesh rather than a gap, and you have to lift it every two or three years, divide all the bulbs and put it down again, but don’t worry about the hassle of it all because long before then the grey menace will have worked out how to take the pins out of the edge and poached the bulbs anyway.

3 – pepper spray. Works for three days or until it rains and costs a fortune.

4 – distraction feeding. They take the peanuts and the bulbs.

5 - And the one thing that does work. Grow your spring bulbs in pots, mulched with slate chippings – for some reason the squirrels hate the slate – maybe it cuts their little paws, or the noise it makes is too much for them, but either way, this one (so far) is the business. The problem is though, that crocus in pots mulched with slate look downright weird.

So now I grow snowdrops only, and so far the grey beasts don’t like snowdrops …

Labels: garden flowers, garden pests, spring bulbs, squirrels

The All Seasons Gardener at 10:01 AM 0 Comments

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Saturday, August 4, 2007

Sunshine at last ...

June was grim, July the wettest ever, but finally August holds out some promise … or does it?

The holly is in berry, the rowans too, and some trees appear to be readying themselves for the change in colour associated with autumn? What’s going on? Wildlife expert Trevor Beer suggests the early arrival of the various fruits is due to the intense rain in July, which may have fooled the plants into thinking autumn has arrived early so they have begun to fruit for fear of missing the season.

Alternatively the early and warm spring may have pushed certain plants into an early autumn as their growing season is measured by weeks, not weather conditions.

Down in Devon, at the Royal Horticultural Society gardens, the ornamental acer trees have already started going through the autumnal colours usually associated with later in the year.

While weather experts insist that such localised and recent changes cannot be put down to global warming or climate change – because they don’t add up to enough of a trend yet to be measured - it is clear that weather extremes like these, and hurricanes, and flooding, and winters that aren’t cold enough to kill off garden pests, will all become a more regular occurrence.

This means the kind of container gardening shown in the picture may become more prevalent, as we learn to cope with the unexpected. Even so, this August you can expect to see the Dahlias come into their own – they are the princesses of late summer and along with other members of the daisy family such as the rudbeckias and heleniums they offer a riot of colour and form for otherwise rather tired looking borders. If you want something more permanent, the later blooming varieties of ceanothus give an azure bloom to the garden now, and hardy hibiscus are in full flower in shades of magenta and pink.

Labels: ceonothus, dahlia, garden flowers, garden news, garden pests, hibiscus, rudbeckia

The All Seasons Gardener at 7:04 AM 0 Comments

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Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Datura and Brugmansia - death and beauty

This is one of my favourite plants – sometimes called Datura and sometimes Brugmansia, with the common names of Angel Trumpets or Thorn Apples, they are all from the same family – Solanaceae; which includes the common potato and the Deadly Nightshade. The basic difference is that Datura/Thorn Apple is usually an annual while Brugmansia/Angel Trumpet is more commonly a perennial. Both tend towards woody stems and become large trees and bushes.

In Victorian times they were highly popular because they were superb plants for the conservatory or could be set on occasional tables in large rooms where people would dance – the plants give off a wonderful perfume, highly sweet and pervasive, all night, which, along with the huge flowers, made them doubly attractive in an era where people were only just coming to terms with personal hygiene.

Sadly, they don’t survive outside in most of the UK – even if they can cope with our cold winters, our rainy springs will tend to carry them off, because they originate in sub tropical regions.

There’s a cunning word play in the name of the Angel Trumpet, which not only recognises the shape and size of the flower, but picks up on the negative association the plant has with witchcraft and poison – arising from Datura’s use as an hallucinatory drug and shamanistic medicine in many parts of South America. In other words, eat this and you’ll hear the angels’ trumpets as they come to carry you to heaven! If you want to grow these plants you have to be aware that the whole thing is toxic if eaten, seeds, flowers, leaves and roots, and that the hallucinations are not guaranteed while the risk of death is.

They are plants that need vast amounts of water, which is best given at room temperature as cold and wet can check the plant or even cause it to rot, and it needs potting on regularly if you have it in a greenhouse, because Brugmansia can grow eight feet in a summer! The scent is sublime, and the plant would be worth growing for that alone, even if the flowers weren’t so gorgeous.

Labels: brugmansia, datura, garden flowers

The All Seasons Gardener at 1:04 AM 1 Comments

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Saturday, July 28, 2007

Going, going ...

The sweet peas are nearly gone. These are about the last of them, beaded with rain (what isn't?), and on very short stems, but still scenting the house gloriously. August is almost upon us, and despite the wettest summer since records began, most of the standard tasks for the 'hottest' month are still on my list of things to do:

Autumn crocus need be planted this month, to get an extra week or two of flowers after the main garden plants have finished for the year - and this year I'm going to dip my bulbs in turpentine before planting to try and beat the squirrels; last year I didn't get a SINGLE flower!

Spring flowering perennials need to be divided and transplanted in August, this is a lovely job for the long warm summer evenings, if we get any …

My summer flowering shrubs like ceonothus and weigela will be pruned back into shape after they have finished flowering.

Autumn and winter vegetables will need to be organised, we're growing all year round onions, carrots, lettuce, spinach, black radish, and winter cauliflower and for all of them we'll be sowing seed directly into the garden in the next week or so.

Labels: august, autumn crocus, garden flowers, garden tasks, summer pruning

The All Seasons Gardener at 12:43 AM 3 Comments

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Wednesday, July 25, 2007

A home fit for geraniums ...

And this is what they are going to go into! Okay, it doesn’t look terribly exciting at present, but this is a stone peat-box or (because we don’t make them from peat anymore, that being a relatively non-renewable resource) a hyper-tufa box, which ‘himself’ has made expressly for my geraniums.

Hyper-tufa is a cast rock-like material which can be used to make relatively inexpensive pots for the garden. It looks like rock, can be cast into almost any shape, is very lightweight and also strong enough to withstand the freeze/thaw cycle of most northern climates. We like it for three reasons:

1 – it is relatively heavy which means it doesn’t blow over in the all too frequent Sussex gales, which many other planters do

2 – it weathers really fast, after a month it looks old, after a year it looks ancient, and our oldest trough is five years old; rich in mosses and lichens and still coping perfectly with the vagaries of our weather

3 – we can make it into any shape we like.

Basic recipe

It’s so simple, just mix - part cement, 1 part sand, 2 parts compost

Then add water slowly until you get a thick porridgy texture. A mould can be made from two wooden boxes with the inner box about two inches smaller than the outer and the inner one covered in bin bags – don’t use cling film, it’s not tough enough! Pour the mixture into the bigger box to a depth of about an inch or so, the smaller box is then placed on the mixture and the remaining hyper-tufa rammed down the sides to make the walls of the container. Leave to cure for about three weeks, longer in damp weather. Now add drain holes as required using a screwdriver or drill – or use dowels coated in Vaseline that can just be knocked out of the bottom of the trough when it’s cured. Fill the trough with water or leave out in the rain for a couple of weeks to take all the chemical effects of the cement out of the equation before making drainage though.

Labels: container plants, garden flowers, geranium, hypertufa, troughs

The All Seasons Gardener at 8:30 AM 1 Comments

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Tuesday, July 3, 2007

English Roses

Do you remember that Harry Enfield character ‘Loadsamoney’? He used to say ‘Gerra load of my wad!’ if that helps. Well, I’ve never felt like that, mainly because I’ve never had much money, but there is one time of year when I do feel like accosting people who walk past my house and yelling ‘Gerra load of my roses!’

In particular, this beautiful, heavy-headed, English rose from David Austin. I think it’s Perdita, but I bought it from a place that had lost its label, so it’s difficult to be sure. In any case, the rich colour, generous scent and beautiful drooping tendency make this one the rose that I love best.

Here’s what David Austin says about it: Perfect rosette-shaped flowers quartered at the centre and of delicate apricot-blush colour. The growth is strong and bushy with polished, deep green foliage. Good disease-resistance and repeat-flowering. A rose of charm and refinement. Won the Henry Edland Medal for fragrance at the Royal National Rose Society's Trials. A strong English Rose, myrrh fragrance with a Tea influence.

To which I would add that my garden is not ideal for roses, having the wrong soil, the wrong aspect and being infested with black spot, rust and other horrors from the amazing lady who used it as a market garden for several decades. Even so, this rose never disappoints me. One flower will scent a large room, and a bunch of flowers is intoxicating. I’d query myrrh fragrance (or mine is a different rose, perhaps?) because the scent that I pick up is sugared tea with a hint of orange, nothing musky or heavy and certainly nothing as strong as myrrh.

If you want to grow English roses, there are a few things to bear in mind.

Unlike most of the old roses, the new varieties of English rose often deliver two or even three flushes of flowers during the season. However, roses don’t enjoy competition and it is advisable to surround them with plants that are not too robust. Roses can be very effective in large pots and half barrels, although they need to be watered regularly and fed too.

To ensure repeat flowering:

1. Always plant roses with a good manure base, and ensure they are in a medium which helps them to extract nutrients and water from the soil – my ‘lovely’ clay and chalk mix soil is less than ideal and my roses go into a hole that has been entirely backfilled with good topsoil and vintage compost.
2. Water well and feed twice each year with a good slow release rose fertiliser.
3. Deadhead spent blooms right through the summer and remember that the final flush of flowers may arrive as late as October, so don’t slacken off the deadheading in September!

Labels: David Austin roses, English rose, garden flowers, rose growing

The All Seasons Gardener at 12:53 AM 2 Comments

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Thursday, June 14, 2007

Basic Biology for Gardeners - Dead-heading

The plants in your garden really have only one interest, much like young men in too much aftershave on a Saturday night – which is to produce seed during a relatively short life! If you let them do this, their task is over.

However, you can trick your plants easily into continuing to blossom, simply by removing flower blooms that have passed their prime, which encourages the plant to produce more flower blooms, all with the intent of producing seed. This results, quite obviously, in a ready show of new flowers. You can extend the bloom life of some flowering plants by three or four weeks by nipping off spent flowers every day. These mesembryanthemums, being guarded by Rebus the blond Cairn Terrier, would have stopped flowering by now if I hadn’t been an assiduous dead-header.

But there are other reasons to dead-head – as I’ve already said in this blog many times, annuals reproduce by seed, and if given the opportunity, you may end up with far more plants next year than you ever wanted – Californian Poppies are the worst culprit for this, in my opinion, and they can take over a lawn in two summers, if you give them half a chance. So removing the flowerheads before they can set seed means you have less work to do in getting rid of unwanted plants next year.

Additionally dead-heading diverts the plant's focus from producing seed, to putting on new growth above and below ground. This means that new shoots will often appear and strong roots systems will develop. For perennials, this can extend the life of the plant as well as improving its appearance.

Finally, dead-heading reduces the scope given to pests and diseases to creep into your garden and take hold of your favourite plants.

Labels: garden flowers, garden secrets, garden tasks, garden tips

The All Seasons Gardener at 5:48 AM 2 Comments

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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Hot stuff and colour issues

Blazing June? Not where I live! The past week has been gifted with intermittent sunshine and torrential showers, with muggy heat but grey skies that have stopped the garden showing its full June glory. However, plants with hot colours grouped together make little bonfires of brilliance in the garden, and here you can see a fig tree that's trained to grow along the fence, fronted by an outdoor dracaena (the red palm in the background) fronted by kniphofia – better known as red hot pokers – fronted in turn by the fiery beauty of a papavar orientale or oriental poppy.

In other parts of the garden we have cooler collections; like white arum lilies and pale violet iris near the pond, flanked by variegated pond grasses and with lower growing clear blue forget-me-nots in front. And in other parts still, powerful contrasts give drama – purple iris and bright orange Californian poppies or clear yellow St. John’s Wort sitting alongside a blue ceanothus that shines like its common name – Californian lilac.

Using colour to create effects is useful, particularly in Britain’s changeable climate when we can’t rely on endless blue skies to provide the backdrop for our plants and structures. Plants aren’t the only way, however, you can use paint to change the effect of light and warmth in the garden or even use planters and pots to provide a focus of colour: black is dramatic and somehow rather oriental, silver is modern, adds light and supports the use of highly structural plants like topiary, while terracotta is warming and traditional and leads to an impression of Greek, Roman or even Egyptian influences.

Using colour requires us to be ruthless though – there’s very little point having a paisley swing set, floral cushions, tangerine coloured loungers, blue picnic-ware and a tartan rug if we want to create a coherent impression! Thinking ahead to keep our accessories either neutral (British Racing Green, for example, goes with everything!) or in line with our major design themes is essential. For an oriental garden, think of red wood, black as a good colour for fabrics and lots of green. For a modernist garden, link silver and aluminium to clear blue or purple and think about square designs and lots of light. For that traditional Mediterranean impression aim for rustic furniture styles, neutral fabrics with a lot of texture or those with bright ethnic patterns and chunky irregular glassware and blue and white glazed plates and pots to remind us of those wonderful old-fashioned urns and ewers hand-made by potters in ancient days.

Labels: garden flowers, garden tasks, garden tips, kniphofia, papavar orientale

The All Seasons Gardener at 3:43 AM 2 Comments

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Tuesday, May 8, 2007

Flowers from the garden

Okay, this week’s flowers are not scented, so I’m falling down on my claim that most of the year I can fill a vase from the garden with things that look good, and smell good. But be honest – do they have to smell nice when they look this fantastic?

Arum Lily - Zantedeschia aethiopica

Arum Lilies are one of the most dramatic garden flowers and they are astonishingly easy to grow. They enjoy moist to wet conditions, and shaded areas. If you grow them in pots, don’t ever let them dry out, and plant them in something like manure or compost, or even good old garden clay (like mine) but never peat, because if it dries out it's a bugger to get it wet again! They can get nipped by late frosts, or even chill winds, but if that happens, just cut of the browned flowers and the plant will throw up loads more very swiftly. They are great in water, but if you grow them in or near a pond, as I do, make sure their roots are deep in soil or well underwater to save them from frosts. And buy some of these - really special gloves - to help you pick your blooms!

Believe it or not, this beauty is considered dangerous in other parts of the world

“Sales and trades of the popular arum lily are to be banned throughout Western Australia from September 2006 under changes to the State's Declared Plants list. The ban extends an existing ban on the invasive and poisonous plant already in place in parts of the South West including Albany, Bunbury, Busselton and Jarrahdale. The ban includes the trading or selling of arum lilies at weekend markets and other casual outlets such as fetes and means movement of the plants or their seeds are prohibited throughout Western Australia. The declaration will not require home gardeners to remove their arum lilies, but they will no longer be allowed to plant more.”

Why? Because in this part of Australia, the arum lily has invaded thousands of hectares of pasture paddocks, forest and wetlands, requiring massive efforts by property owners and communities to clear it.

Labels: garden flowers, garden ponds, weeds

The All Seasons Gardener at 3:07 AM 0 Comments

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Wednesday, April 25, 2007

Why have a garden?

Not a lot of people seem to ask themselves this question, which always surprises me. Of course, we don’t always get a choice, we buy a house and hey presto! it comes with garden attached whether we like it or not, and we have to make the best of it, but even so, understanding your purposes in gardening can help you gain pleasure and save money.

For me, gardening has lots of purposes – including stopping me going mad by pounding the keyboard all day. One of the other reasons I garden was inspired by one of my gardening gurus – Beverley Nichols. You might vaguely remember his name; he had a column in a women’s magazine for several decades. He was a complex, often unhappy man, and a keen gardener who could write about plants in the way other people write about food or sex, making the reader want some for themselves! He had a few advantages over me – like being a much more successful writer and being able to afford Georgian mansions and gardeners to do the dirty work, but one thing he said struck me so firmly that I’ve never forgotten it. He said there was no reason for a person with a garden to be without flowers for the house, no matter what the time of year. He was right too.

I’ve made it a bit of a crusade to have some kind of flowers in the garden all year round, and I’ll be posting pictures of what’s in my vases every few weeks. But it’s not just any old flowers – I added my own twist to this claim; I want most of my pretty things to be scented too, because I’ve never really understood why people want flowers that don’t smell as good as they look. So today’s offering is a native British posy: lungwort (known in posh as pulmonaria) and lily of the valley. The former is prettily shaded in pink and blue, and the latter has a heavenly scent. And the table – well, there’s a story to that which I’ll tell one day.

Labels: garden flowers, garden secrets, General

The All Seasons Gardener at 12:06 AM 0 Comments

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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

What’s your biggest garden fault?

Labels: garden flowers, garden tasks, weeds

The All Seasons Gardener at 11:48 PM 0 Comments

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Monday, April 16, 2007

Tie me daffodils down, Sport (or don’t, as the case may be)

Do you do this? I’ve got to admit it looks very dainty. The daffodils in my garden are an untidy lax mess by comparison. The thing is, go where you will, and ask whom you like, everybody will tell you this is a very bad idea – looks nice, serves no good purpose, in fact.

Why? Well because it’s a question of nutrition. When any bulb has put out flowers, it will have shrunk to a tiny size, as a bulb is essentially nothing more that a warehouse holding flower-making components, when the job is done, there’s nothing left of the bulb. But we want it to flower again next year, and for this to happen, the warehouse will need to be replenished with food – which in bulb terms, comes in the form of starch. This is the purpose of the leaves, making food to build up the bulb to a decent flowering size. If you cut or mow down the leaves too early the bulb will not have stored enough starch to get it through next year’s flowering season. This is also why we leave bulbs in the ground after flowering, even if we’re going to have to lift them before winter, like freesias and gladioulus – it gives them a chance to build up their stores. Although tying the leaves together makes them tidier while they die down, it simply reduces the amount of light they receive, which means the photosynthesis is reduced and that means there is less work going on to feed the bulb. To extend the metaphor, we’ve reduced the warehouse staff to one man and his dog, who aren’t going to be much good at filling the shelves, and next spring we’ll be wondering why the flowers are so wimpy.

Regularly removing the dead flower heads, on the other hand, is beneficial to next year's flowering as the daffodil does not put energy into seed production. If you are a fussy gardener, like ‘himself’ then restrain yourself for six to eight weeks after the final daffodil flowering and you can cut off the withering leaves. For this task I use tree loppers which mean you can cut at ground level while standing up and then rake the leaves up with a light rake, no stooping or crawling around in the borders. Okay, it’s not the purpose for which loppers were created, but then, daffodils weren’t born to be tied either, were they?

Labels: garden flowers, garden tips, spring

The All Seasons Gardener at 1:51 PM 2 Comments

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Sunday, March 11, 2007

6 Sexy Spring Bulbs

Parrots

Not birds, nor Monty Python sketches, but incredibly gaudy tulips. A parrot tulip is decribed as ‘broken’ which means its colours are more or less randomly distributed and the edges of the petals are convoluted and feathered to give a dramatically impressive appearance. Some of the best parrot tulips are white flowers broken with bright green splashes around the base of the petal, like White Parrot, or the even more outstanding Weber’s Parrot which is shell pink, white and green. If you think tulips should be red, look out for Parrot Rococo, pillar box red broken with lime green.

Alliums

Yes, it’s posh for onion, but there are surprises to be found in this family. Allium Sphaerocephalum (better known as the drumstick allium) has bright magenta heads of flowers shaped like a giant drumstick – the kind used for drums, not the kind you find on chickens. They are incredibly easy to grow and look like a million dollars.

Camassia

Imagine a bluebell - now make it twice as tall. Got that? Now turn it navy blue, and the plant you’re looking at is Camassia quamash esculenta. If blue is not your colour, then Camassia leichtlinii semi-plena is the same shape and size but an amazing, virtually neon, yellowish-white.

Dichelostemma

Okay, this is a little bit of a cheat, because you can’t grow it outdoors, but even an unheated greenhouse is good enough for the Dichelostemmia, also known, very rightly as the Californian Firecracker. Up to a foot tall with heads of bright pinkish red flowers that form a loose ball, these really are stunning plants.

Snowdrops

Yes, I know the average snowdrop (or galanthus, to get technical) isn’t very exciting, but the giant double snowdrop is – it’s like the Abominable Snowdrop, twice as big and four times as showy as its shy cousins!

Techophilaea

If you see them, buy them. These are the fabled Chilean Blue Crocus. They need to be lifted in summer and kept dry in a cool greenhouse before planting out again in autumn. If that sounds like a lot of trouble, belief me, they’re worth it. There is no bluer flower than the Chilean Blue, and you can see it from one end of the garden to the other. Your neighbours will be green with envy.

Labels: garden flowers

The All Seasons Gardener at 8:34 AM 0 Comments

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