Garden Centre

Monday, July 23, 2007

Geranium madness

Like most gardeners, I suppose, I get sudden passions. The current one is for geraniums, and this is the stripy wonder that I’ve been trying to get hold of for weeks. I’ve persuaded ‘himself’ to make me a special container for this, and the Madame Salleron that is trying to flower, despite the rain, and I’ve got the geranium bug in a big way!

But of course, they aren’t really geraniums. Wikipedia says: Pelargonium is a genus of flowering plants which includes about 200 species of perennial, succulent, and shrub plants, commonly known as geraniums. Confusingly, Geranium is the correct botanical name of the separate genus which contains the related Cranesbills. Both genera are in the Family Geraniaceae. Linnaeus originally included all the species in one genus, Geranium, but they were later separated into two genera by Charles L’Héritier in 1789. Gardeners sometimes refer to the members of Genus Pelargonium as "pelargoniums" in order to avoid the confusion, but the older common name "geranium" is still in regular use.

Indeed. What I like about pelargoniums is that many of them have scented leaves, that smell of mint, pineapple or rose and … well … geranium, of course. The oil that is used in aromatherapy is extracted from both the leaves and the flowers. Geranium has been grown for centuries for its fragrance and the extracted oil has been used to soothe and heal wounds and as a mild analgesic and sedative. Possible benefits from using the oil include: stress reduction, pain relief, removing fatigue and nervous exhaustion, lifting melancholy and easing depression, reducing fluid retention, and repelling insects – which may be why people have traditionally grouped scented leaf pelargoniums near their doors and windows – folk wisdom, clever innit! However, if you get a sudden urge to go all geranium in the aromatherapy rather than the floral sense, be aware that the oil may irritate sensitive skin and you shouldn’t use it if you are hypoglycemic because there is a chance it can lower blood-sugar levels.

Labels: aromatherapy, container plants, geranium, pelargonium, plants

The All Seasons Gardener at 3:47 AM 1 Comments

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Friday, June 1, 2007

Chelsea!

I can finally sort out my thoughts. I don’t know what Chelsea means to you (‘blue is the colour, football is the game’, quite possibly) but to me, and a lot of other gardeners, it means the Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show. It’s the biggest annual bean-feast, competitive gardening event and all round jolly in the UK gardening world, but it’s also a superb venue for picking up new ideas, for exploring trends and for ear-wigging bitchy gossip.

If, like me, you’re there on a journalist ticket, you get – if you’re lucky – one day to tour all the gardens and make notes on everything you see, and that means ending up with something very much like vegetative indigestion. There’s so much to see, so much to smell (not a huge amount to touch, sadly, it’s rather a hands-off show for obvious reasons), so much colour, texture, space, light, the sound of a thousand water features sends you running to the loo where the queues are longer than those for strawberries and cream at Wimbledon ….

Okay, back to the point. Once again the judges - that formidable bunch of horticulturalists - handed out a plethora of awards. Did I agree with them? Sometimes. I thought the National Linnaeus Tercentenary Committee garden (what a mouthful) was gorgeous and well-designed, but the Fortnum and Mason's one was just a bit tacky; too focused on ‘themes’ and not enough on plants – and their shell grotto arches were, frankly, naff.

My favourite garden: The CAF Giving Garden; Where the Wild Things Are - didn’t place at all, which is utterly bizarre to me. Based on the book by Sendak which many of us read as children or to our children, it was a lovely, imaginative and thoughtful planting; perhaps not entirely pulled off visually but really beautifully worked through – the bed of the little boy was covered in camomile, lavender and passiflora, which all encourage sleep and then there were exciting ‘dream’ plants like banana, giant elephants ear, flowering rhubarb, artichoke and angelica which indicated the ‘wild things’ that the little boy encounters. It would have got gold from me!

And once again the BBC Peoples’ Award went to a classic garden, as opposed to the somewhat avant garde ones that won the formal judging. The Old Gate, designed by Adam Woolcott and Jonathan Smith is based on a 1930s and ‘40s theme which the judge’s seem to have overlooked. It just goes to show, you can’t please everybody.

Labels: chelsea flower show, garden secrets, plants

The All Seasons Gardener at 9:03 AM 4 Comments

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