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Thursday, February 18, 2010

Winter’s end garden beauty

Sometimes it’s not the new growth in a winter garden that creates the most loveliness but that which is fading and dying and vanishing away.

I’m really not a fan of hydrangeas – probably because I grew up on the Isle of Wight where they, along with rhododendrons – were everywhere, in massive and unmanageable profusion as a result of their enthusiastic planting by the Victorian’s, who tended to summer on the island and to like their big shrubs and fern gardens and grottoes. Familiarity seems to have bred contempt in me!

However, this one hydrangea does survive in my border, just so that it can produce this incredible display in January and February – I cut it back in March as I’m not at all fussed about getting a good early display of flowers, what I like this the fragile intricacy of its winter disintegration.

And the **** pond pump has packed in again this morning! It seems that the gurge is fine, but we need a new connector … so I’m ringing the distributor and asking them to send one – recorded delivery this time!

Labels: hydrangeas, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 3:27 AM 3 Comments

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Fooled by a neighbour’s garden

I was wandering around my own plot, with its mixture of rain flattened shrubs and snow blackened grasses when I saw something in my neighbour’s garden that piqued my interest.

It looked like an allium. But it couldn’t be, could it? My own mahonia was about the only thing that had any colour or form in my garden, and two snowdrops, not even properly open yet, that I was watching with hawk-eyes to make sure the dogs didn’t trample them. An allium? Were there winter alliums? My neighbour does have a particularly good alpine bed, which I envy immensely. If anybody could grow it, she could.

Well no, when I managed to get close enough to find out, it wasn’t or at least not a living one – it's made of printed fabric carefully glued to a plastic stem - but for the few minutes I thought that it really was a flower, it cheered me up no end!

Labels: winter colour, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:51 AM 3 Comments

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

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Mistletoe – a kissing crop

This year Britain has a massive mistletoe glut – and that’s good news for anybody who’s hoping to get romantic this Christmas! Good mistletoe harvests depend on mild winters and damp summers, so very few people actually desire the right weather to grow this strange parasitic plant, but given how much it costs, even in a glut year, you might want to try growing your own.

Traditionally mistletoe grows in orchards, and the two trees on which the average gardener might manage to produce their own crops are apple trees and limes.

If you want to grow mistletoe, don’t try planting your Christmas crop, because it won’t be ripe and therefore won’t germinate. The berries are actually mature in March and so you need to spot a suitable clump of the plant in a tree you can actually reach, and wait until spring to cut your berries. Bear in mind that birds like mistletoe too, and you might need to cover your clump to keep them off while it ripens.

You also need to take care when harvesting the berries, as they split easily and then the seeds inside harden, which makes germination much more difficult. And once you’ve cut your germinating specimen, remember that it is most likely to grow on the same species of tree as the original plant came from. Your tree also has to be at least fifteen years old, preferably twenty, and the branch you put your seeds on needs to be at least four inches in diameter.

It’s a really odd plant to grow as you need to cut some shallow grooves into the bark of the tree, then squeeze the sticky seeds out of the berries and insert them under the bark flaps which should be covered with fine net to keep the birds off. You need to get quite a few seeds into each branch, as you need both a male and a female plant for berry production and there’s no way of telling which seeds are which in advance.

Then be patient – as the seeds germinate and the mistletoe develops, you’ll see the branch swelling but it takes five years for a mistletoe clump to be big enough to set its own berries.

And a little known fact is that girls who refused a kiss under the mistletoe were said to be destined to remain single!

Labels: apple trees, mistletoe, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:21 AM 0 Comments

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Holly heaven

Apparently it hasn’t been a good year for holly, which means that I must be in a tiny minority. My three hollies have flourished like mad! There are a lot of reasons to grow holly – security, superstition and sustainability.

Holly, in folklore, protects the home from evil spells because the red berries, like those of hawthorn or the mountain ash, ward off malign spirits. A nice strong holly also wards off burglars if grown under windows! In early Christian belief, spiny leaves were a symbol of the Crown of Thorns and the red berries represented of the blood of Christ.

A holly will grow in almost any soil, provided it is not too wet, but makes large growth in rich, sandy or gravelly loam with good drainage, and a moderate amount of moisture at the roots. It is rarely checked, by even the most severe winters, once established. You can raise it from seeds, but you need to know that they don’t germinate until the second year, hence the berries are generally buried in a tray of earth for a year before being sown in pots. The young plants are transplanted when about a foot tall in autumn.

Because holly exhausts the soil around it to a greater extent than most deciduous trees, it’s a good idea to manure well in the spring before transplanting holly – and remember that a minimum of two years will be needed for the plant to recover the check given by transplanting. While birds seem to enjoy the berries, they are poisonous to humans. Deer will eat the leaves in winter, and sheep thrive on them.

Labels: evergreen plants, garden shrubs, winter colour, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 9:14 AM 0 Comments

Sunday, January 27, 2008

The flowers I’m not picking ...

From last week’s cold snap – this frosted polyanthus is today shining like summer has arrived – despite being touched by ice only five days ago. Today, of course, the sun is shining and there have been two bumble bees (white-bottomed ones which I’m guessing are B. hortorum) buzzing drunkenly around the garden as if it’s June already.

The bumble bees ignore the polyanthus, of course. Their favourite lurking ground is inside the flowers of the winter clematis, which then wiggle around on the plant as if they are bells being rung, and the bees also visit the winter jasmine, but they ignore everything else that’s in flower.

We put out logs last year for the solitary bees that we finally identified – these bees, which are great pollinators, nest in cavities in wood. In nature these are formed by beetles that live in the wood as larvae, then tunnel out as adults – so the beetles leave behind a ready made nest hole for bees and wasps that prefer to nest in cavities. Because solitary bees are great pollinators, because only the females sting (and feebly, at that, and usually only if you actually handle them roughly), because they don’t ‘gang up’ and swarm gardens, preferring to hang about on their own, I’m really keen to have more of them. It is said to be easy to recreate these ready-made nest holes. Simply drill timber with holes that slope slightly upwards (this stops them flooding with rainwater in bad weather and drowning the bee or its larvae) and watch the bees take up residence. Well, we did, but whether they bees will move in is anybody’s guess. I shall keep a close eye on the bee logs this year.

Labels: bees, winter flowers, winter interest, winter plants

The All Seasons Gardener at 5:36 AM 0 Comments

Saturday, January 5, 2008

Blatant beauty

Okay, after all that subtlety of my last post, here’s the absolute antithesis of subtle – my new mahonia. I bought this statuesque plant two years ago, when it was a measly two feet tall. It’s now peering over the top of an eight foot wall, and, for the first time, has blossomed.

I do have one little quibble about it – mahonia smells so wonderful that having the flowers eight and a half feet in the air is a bit of a waste; perhaps the crows and seagulls are getting the benefit, but I’m not!

On the plus side, the colour is astonishing, it’s like having a personal sun shining out of the darkest and mankiest corner of the garden, and for next year I have a plan (don’t tell himself – I’m not supposed to be buying any more plants) to invest in a cornus so that the bright red winter stems can make a crimson hem around the bottom of this golden flowering giant.

I should, perhaps, cut some of the blossom for the house, but I find it difficult to cut mahonia, for two reasons – the practical one is that mahonia (aka Oregon Grape) is very prickly and the stems are like wire, you need really sharp snippers and good gloves and the sentimental one is that it seems so cruel to cut any part of the plant when it’s being so brave in the garden.

Labels: mahonia, winter colour, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 3:06 AM 0 Comments

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

The subtle beauties of winter

At this time of year you sometimes have to search pretty hard to find things to admire in the garden. Of course, the canny gardener will have planted for that catch-all phrase ‘year round interest’ but sometimes objects of interest can be far and few between.

Lichens and berries come into their own at this time of year. Fruit trees, in particular, seem to be host to a lovely crop of lichens that are only really noticeable when the rest of the garden is bare of leaf and brown of stem, and berries which would be insignificant at any other time of year shine out like Christmas decorations amid the gloom.

This hawthorn is probably a chance arrival, deposited by a windblown berry or in a bird’s droppings. It’s been in the garden for a long time, long before we moved in, and it sits between the compost bins and the back fence, hardly noticed for most of the year. But in December it becomes a real focal point, not only because the birds turn up to eat the berries, but because the bright lichens on the branches suddenly demonstrate all their complex attractiveness of both colour and texture.

Other trees that are wonderful for lichens are oaks, particularly mature ones, crab apples and plums. We planted a crab apple for the millennium, which means it’s still too much of a baby to develop any lichen (there seems to be a relationship between the maturity of the branches and the lichenous growth which I’m sure a clever person could explain but it’s a mystery to me) but I’m hopeful that in the next couple of years it too will start to shine out in winter.

Labels: berries, hawthorn, lichens, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 6:16 AM 0 Comments

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Capital Pleasures

I went to London today, which is something that I try not to do if at all possible, and never near Christmas when the city becomes completely insane with tense shoppers and inebriated work parties in silly hats throwing up in doorways. But there are a few (very few) compensations for visiting the capital at this time of year.

The picture shows one of them – the really stylish way that certain London squares celebrate the festive season. Forget the lights of Oxford Street - the entire contents of this particular window box probably didn’t cost more than a tenner, but somebody has made a real effort to keep the contents in good condition, feeding and watering the cyclamen (which can thrive even when dry, as long as it’s not too windy) and the feeding ivy (which copes with anything but makes the best lush growth with a little slow release granular feed and a not too windy corner because wind strips the tender bottom leaves from the stems and makes the aerial roots very pronounced).

The colours are great, not gaudy but bright and somehow seasonal, and the combination of height and structure provided by the conifers is balanced almost perfectly by the descending column shapes made by the creeping ivy – in fact it’s a miniature masterpiece, on an office windowsill, in a quiet corner of academic Bloomsbury - and it makes me rather proud to be British.

Labels: cyclamen, ivy, window box, winter colour, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 11:33 AM 0 Comments

Saturday, December 8, 2007

Feed the birds for Christmas

All you need is

Lard or suet
Wild Bird seed, or your own gathered garden seeds and berries, or millet
Oats or breadcrumbs or cake or biscuit crumbs
Old hard cheese, grated
Yoghurt pots
Saucepan
Spoon
String or twine

Begin by making holes in the bottom of your yoghurt pots and thread length of twine or string through it – I use a hot skewer to make holes but this does smell a bit of hot plastic so I tend to do it in the shed!

The best ratio for this recipe is one part fat to two parts dry mixture, whatever that may be, but play around a bit, as different ingredients have very different ‘stickability’ and anyway, the birds never complain if it’s a bit tough to peck at or a bit crumbly.

Simply mix dry ingredients together in a bowl and then gently melt some lard or suet in a saucepan or microwave and pour it into the mixture, stirring madly until the fat is absorbed and the mixture sticks together.

Fill the pots with your warm fat mixture, compressing it down well and set the pot in the fridge overnight to really get hard – then either slide off or cut open and peel away the pot. Tie a big knot at one end of the twine to secure the cake and hang it in a tree or shrub (reasonably protected from rain and sun or it will either be washed away or melt) and wait for the birds to realise dinner’s ready!

Kitchen scraps can be added – but never anything too salty which dehydrates birds and can kill them so don’t add salted peanuts – in fact I prefer not to use anything that isn’t native, so I will put in chopped walnuts or hazelnuts, but not weird exotic things or raisins. I do put in lots of seeds like sunflowers, especially ones from the plants like poppies that I see the birds visiting in my garden – each autumn I just take some seedheads and shake the seeds into a jar, and then pour that into the bird cake when I make it – if I’ve seen them feeding on the seeds then it’s a good bet they’ll be thrilled to find them in their cake

Labels: bird food, birds, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 2:41 AM 0 Comments

Thursday, November 29, 2007

The British winter garden is not a pretty sight

Winter shows a garden’s bones. When the flowers, and even the foliage, are gone, all that remains is the garden’s structure, its ‘hard surfaces’ as we’ve all learned to call them since we started watching garden makeover programmes, and the skeletons of the plants we’ve chosen.

I spend a lot of time peering at other people’s gardens right now, to see what looks good naked! Trees like these, with a complex shape (that almost amounts to texture) against the sky, are wonderful in winter. Grasses look good too, but so many gardens seem to be empty of any kind of interest through the winter. Bamboo makes a wonderful impression against a cold winter sky, peeling barked trees or those with beautiful outlines like all the weeping varieties look romantic, and those ‘hard structures’ if they have an intrinsic appeal (nicely textured brick or stone, interesting curves to paths etc) have their own charm too. So why do so many gardens look like a muddy field?

I put it down to a British love of order and lack of imagination. We tend to make things ‘neat and tidy’ rather than ‘interesting’ and that means that our natural inclination to economy, efficiency and orderliness is reveals when all the fluffy stuff that makes up a garden disappears. When the Virginia Creeper falls from the shed, the delphiniums no longer hide the fence and the plastic pond liner is no longer concealed by the spear-like leaves of the Iris, our hideous tendency to make things small, square and ugly is revealed in all its horrible reality.

winter trees photograph by Meda, used under a creative commons attribution licence

Labels: garden trees, hard surfaces, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 1:44 AM 1 Comments

Monday, November 26, 2007

The Holly and the Ivy (and the pyracantha)

Did you know that it is reckoned that only about 1% of the average bird’s nutrition comes from bird tables and feeders? Birds eat insects and wild seeds of course, but these are not abundant in winter and early spring - so if you plant enough different fruit-bearing shrubs and trees, your garden will offer food to both winter and summer residents, as well as providing food for migrants in the spring and autumn if you're on migration routes. It's important to plant a range of shrubs because while some plants provide sugar rich berries that help feed nestlings in spring, others provide fatty berries that supply fuel to birds passing through in autumn and a final group have what are called persistent berries - fruits that desiccate and remain available during winter for year-round residents.

Another advantage of planting small trees and shrubs that retain their berries during the coldest months is the winter colour to your garden.

The rate at which birds strip berries from garden plants will change annually, according to weather conditions, how much food is available elsewhere and other local variations. As a general rule: birds tend to eat red berries first leaving the less palatable yellow, oranges and whites until last. Some red berries last better than others including the Pyracantha, Cotoneaster and rose-hips. For a good glowing orange-yellow I favour the Pyracantha 'Soleil d'Or' which has abundant long-lasting berries and thrives in an exposed garden location.

Labels: cotoneaster, holly, pyracantha, winter colour, winter interest

The All Seasons Gardener at 10:21 AM 1 Comments

Saturday, November 3, 2007

Plants as structure – the bones of the winter garden

These are the seed heads of garlic chives. Not our 'eating' garlic chives, which have their heads resolutely lopped off as soon as they appear – which always makes me feel like the Red Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass, yelling ‘off with their heads’ every two minutes – but our decorative chives.

I have two lots of both kinds of chives, eating ones right outside the door, where I can nip out and grab a bunch for salads, or to chop and lay on top of any egg dish I happen to be cooking, and decorative chives, in clumps in the garden and the latter are grown just for these lovely seed heads.

They will last all winter, and give varying effects to the garden when not a lot else is in bloom. Through November they are usually wet and windblown, and have subtle shades of brown and beige. Into December they become paler and drier and tend to be rimmed with frost. With any luck, in January, they will be standing stalwart but fragile above a layer of snow, and in February I go out and cut them down, ready for the spring growth that appears like magic in March.

Dried plant material, whether seed heads or berries, or certain flowers (like sunflowers) left on the plant stem all winter, can add real interest to the garden. Matched with winter flowering plants (hellebores are my favourite) and berrying plants for splashes of colour, they can give you a garden as full of interest in the cold months as in the summer.

Labels: chives, seed heads, winter interest