Gardener's Diary Blog
May 8th, 2008
Hello All,
May is here! I must be getting getting old because I hear myself saying the year is flying past. So far I am feeling good about our environmental plans. The board of Wyevale have enthusiastically agreed our ten Sustainability commitments and real action is underway. The most satisfying part has been the hugely positive reaction to our trial recycling scheme. It was clear our customers wanted somewhere to take back their flower pots. Yes, we all know there are sheds full of them. It is still a trial but those store that have them have been swamped. We hope to roll out to other stores as quickly as possible. The press have also been fantastic. It is incredible but breakfast BBC covered the store 9 times on Easter Monday!
In February we heard that a major DIY chain had agreed to stop selling patio heaters. Great news - we were the first making the same decision over a year ago… an important decision. With all this talk about climate change patio heaters had lost their credibility.
My predictions for the rest of the year - gardens and growing your own food. We have known for a long time about the environmental benefits of buying local food. What can be more local than your back garden? Even i am going to have a go - I have a rood terrace and not a garden. I am trying tomatoes, corn (yes, corn!), peppers and herbs. It is a wind and sun trap, so a tough growing environment. Let’s see what success I have.
Happy growing green!
Alan Knight
Note from editor: If you have any questions regarding the pot recycling scheme please leave a comment. We appreciate your feedback and will get back to you shortly.
May 8th, 2008
February 25th, 2008
My last blog, “Farewell to Winter”, in which I looked back over the past two months in the garden here at Bridgemere, I decided had gone on for quite long enough. So this is a p.s. to enable me to mention some Witch Hazels which enhanced our winter garden over many weeks, and to salute the remarkable Dutch plantsman who bred them, the late Jan van Hejningen, who died last autumn.
From the many hundreds of seedlings he raised, he only selected as worthy of naming and introducing those he considered to be both first class and distinct from any already in circulation. The three outstanding ones of this season amply fulfil his exacting criteria. Like all the plants he named, they each begin with the letter A-a little quirk of his. The first two to open, around the middle of January, are quite unique in a number of features. The flowers of ‘Aphrodite’ are a distinctive shade of burnt orange and are unusual also in the shape of their petals, which are broader at their tips. They are only just beginning to fade, in spite of a succession of sharp frosts, in the last few days of February. Those of ‘Aurora’ are the largest of any Witch Hazel, of a colour which is hard to describe-a sort of luminous, pale biscuit orange. (Sounds odd, but one gets to like it.) All three of these varieties are well-scented, but ‘Aurora’ is particularly good. ‘Aurora’ also has an excellent, upright, vase-shaped habit. The third variety, ‘Angelly’, may not sound so special, in that its flowers, though abundantly produced and of good size and quality, are yellow- a nice, clear, lemon-yellow,- like so many other Witch Hazels. However, the thing that sets it apart is that it is the last of all the Witch Hazels to open and continues to look good, long after all the others have faded.
The last Witch Hazel he raised, attempts to propagate which have only been made since his death, may yet prove to be the most wonderful of all and the one for which he will be most remembered. Its name is ‘Albion’ and its flowers are-wait for it-white, with a carmine centre. Don’t get too excited now- it takes years to build up stock of Witch Hazels from a single plant- and for many years this one will be as rare as the proverbial white hart-worth waiting for though!
February 25th, 2008
February 25th, 2008
I confess, I love winter. I hate it when it slips by too quickly, as it usually starts doing around the beginning of February these days. January is especially precious. The year is a blank sheet, with no crossings out. Resolutions can seem achievable. I’m sure I managed to fulfil some of mine before the end of the month; not, I am sorry to say, the one about writing at least one blog a week…
I have, however, been keeping a bit of a diary, in which I have recorded some random highlights in the garden so far.
There was a lot going on from the earliest days of the year, only some of which had anything to do with global warming.There is a little daffodil, for example, Narcissus ‘Rijnveld’s Early Sensation’, of which there is a group near the entrance to the garden at Bridgemere which has flowered in January, whenever it isn’t actually covered with snow, for as long as I can remember. It’s just a nice, ordinary looking daffodil which happens to flower at this time of year-that’s the way it’s programmed.
Not far from this group is a shrub which produces purple flowers on bare twigs, opening from deeper coloured buds, from the around the second week of the month. People wondering what it is are surprised to hear it is a deciduous Rhododendron, R.mucronulatum ‘Winter Brightness’. We used to grow a crop to sell on the garden centre, but no one wanted to buy it, for the young plants were small and twiggy and not at all most people’s idea of what a Rhododendron should look like. Now that we have this plant in the garden, showing what it can do, we should perhaps try again!
Much more like an ordinary Rhododendron is ‘Christmas Cheer’. Flowering in May it would be unremarkable, covered with pink flowers for weeks in January and February, it has been amazing, only finally going brown after a few nights of hard frosts. This one was been earlier than usual this year. It owes its name to the practice, in the days of big houses with head gardeners, of forcing it under glass for Christmas. Outside, in normal conditions, it flowers in March or even April.
So many winter flowering plants have the additional bonus of being sweetly scented. We have three splendid plants of Daphne ‘Jacqueline Postill’ in the garden, all about 6ft. high, which have been filling the air around them with their glorious scent for a good six weeks; and when they have recovered from their recent blasting by the frost, will carry on well into the spring.
Sarcococca confusa, the Christmas Box, of which we have several plants thriving in dry shade in the garden, had people stopping in their tracks with its powerful fragrance. This is a wonderful little shrub, always neat and attractive, with its glossy, dark green leaves-prized by flower arrangers- and tiny white flowers in winter followed by long-lasting, shining black berries.
I find the scent of the shrubby winter honeysuckle, Lonicera x purpusii ‘Winter Beauty’ delicious, but not quite so strong-you have to make a point of sniffing it. It is lovely to pick and bring inside, where the warmth brings its scent out more. The same is true of the enchanting, too little known Japanese Apricot, Prunus mume ‘Beni-chidori’, which has had scattering of bright carmine-pink flowers open since the beginning of February. It is best grown against a warm wall-not because it isn’t hardy, but to give some extra protection to those early flowers.
The scent I love above all others in the winter garden is that of Mahonia japonica. The pale lemon-yellow flowers are not as showy as those of varieties like ‘Charity’ and ‘Winter Sun’, but they open over a longer period-well into February-and their fragrance is pure lily of the valley.
February 25th, 2008
December 20th, 2007
Lonicera x purpusii ‘Winter Beauty’ is one of my long standing favourite shrubs. There has been a scattering of flowers open since the beginning of the month-a small version of the typical honeysuckle flower, yellow and white and sweetly scented. This is earlier than usual-I don’t normally expect them until mid-January. They will carry on opening now right through to the spring. It is a great delight to pick small pieces for the house, where they last well and where their scent is amplified by the warmth.
When siting ‘Winter Beauty’, bear in mind that, lovely as it is in winter and early spring, it is pretty dull during the growing season and can get quite big-which is fine if you have the space. You can keep it more compact by cutting a proportion of older stems right out at the base after flowering. It is easily satisfied in any reasonable soil, in sun or light shade.
I have known L.nitida ‘Lemon Beauty’ for years, but have only this winter come to realise what a good plant it is. It is a low, arching shrub, about 3 x 3ft., with tiny dark green, evergreen leaves with a pale yellow margin, providing valuable and long lasting material for flower arrangers. Grown entirely for its foliage, it does not appear to resemble ’Winter Beauty’ in any way; you would have to be not just a gardener but a botanist too to understand the link between them. However, though its flowers are of no account, it is a most useful and versatile plant, growing contentedly in sun or in the shade of trees, where it makes an excellent space filler and is a cheerful and attractive sight throughout the year.
‘Baggeson’s Gold’ is a better known relation, with even tinier golden leaves and a denser, taller, more upright habit. It is also less naturally elegant, but stands trimming well. ‘Twiggy’ is a neat dwarf version, which I saw used very effectively the other day planted in a group, in the garden of John Massey of Ashwood Nurseries. ‘Twiggy’ and ‘Baggeson’s Gold both need a sunny position to keep their golden colour.
December 20th, 2007
November 28th, 2007
I was reading an article about Clethra in a trade publication the other day, and it brought back to me on a dull, overcast, November afternoon how the sweet scent of this shrub filled the air around the information office here for weeks on end in late summer and early autumn.
W e have grown Clethra alnifolia, the Sweet Pepper Bush, for many years. It is not easy to grow well as a nursery crop, having a tendency to become straggly, (which I have now learnt can be overcome by cutting it hard back in the spring); and it is slow to get going after the winter. When it finally takes off, the leaves are glossy and attractive. The white flowers, which open in July are not showy, but are sufficiently well scented to earn it a place in the garden.
Things began to get more interesting when new varieties were developed in the States, which were generally more compact than the species and much more prolific in flower. Outstanding in both respects is ‘Sixteen Candles’, which is well named, with plentiful, upright flower spikes-very much like candles- on a neat, low, rounded bush. ‘Anne Bidwell’ is equally dense and compact, but slender and upright; ‘September Beauty’ is similar, but later flowering, as its name suggests.
There are delightful pink flowered forms too. I was much taken this summer by ‘Hokie Pink’, with masses of very pretty, highly scented pink flowers and by ‘Fern Valley Pink’, a looser, more vigorous selection, with pendulous, rather than upright flower clusters. It seemed be in flower over an exceptionally long period. ’Ruby Spice’ is an excellent deeper, rose-pink variety.
Clethra tomentosa is a rarer species, with distinctive, soft greyish leaves and long panicles of pure white flowers later in the season. Last September I was bowled over by a new variety called ‘Cottondale’, with panicles which must have been a good six inches (15cm.) long. This year, the promising clusters of buds have barely opened fully by late November, so I fear will never make it. A sad disappointment, caused I am guessing, by a shortage of sun in the summer. It will be interesting to see what will happen next year; I am reluctant to give up on it after its astonishing display last autumn.
Clerodendrum trichotomum is another shrub (or small tree) which delights with scented white flowers at more or less the same time of year (a coincidence that it should also share the same three initial letters of its name!), enhanced in the new variety, ‘Purple Blaze’, by striking purple new leaves, and followed by amazing, shiny blue fruits.
November 28th, 2007
November 14th, 2007
I have recently been introduced to Goji berries, which have apparently beome all the rage as the latest super food. They are delicious, I think-nice and chewy, with quite a distinct flavour-just the job for scattering on your breakfast cereal. The very day after I had eaten my first handful of these berries, there was an article all about them in the Daily Telegraph. There I discovered that they are the fruits of a shrub called Lycium barbarum, The Duke of Argyll’s Tea Tree. Coincidentally, we had produced a crop of this shrub in the nursery at Bridgemere a couple of year’s back. I had never come across it before, though I gather it is naturalised in parts of the South Coast, where it has been found excellent as a seaside windbreak, growing and spreading in the poorest of soils. Native to China, it has been grown in Britain for 300 years, so one would expect it to have spread around quite a bit. It comes across as an unspectacular plant, though with an elegant, arching habit. It has small purple flowers, followed by the now famous orange or red berries, which I have read can be highly ornamental, but have never actually seen. The plants we grew here didn’t sell terribly well. Alas-we were clearly ahead of our time-for now, we suddenly have people asking for it and have none to offer.
As soon as I discovered this exciting link, I rushed along to the patch of Lycium we had experimentally planted on an out of the way bank. Not a berry was there to be seen, so I do wonder a little how productive it is going to be in people’s gardens. All the dried berries in health food shops are imported from China, where they have been valued for their medicinal properties for generations and, I presume, are produced abundantly in their native climate.
The fruit of Cornus mas, the Cornelian Cherry, has been regarded as a super food for some time in Eastern Europe, where large numbers of free-fruiting clones of this shrub have been planted in recent years. ‘Jolico’ is the best known of these.
Cornus mas, which is native to Central and Southern Europe, is grown in this country-and has been probably for at least as long as the Lycium- primarily for its bright yellow flowers borne on the bare branches in late winter and early spring. The leaves, like those of most Cornus, colour richly in the autumn.
I must confess that, until recently I had not paid much attention to the fruit, which is anyway, at least on the straight species, not reliably produced in our climate. In the last few years, however, I have noticed that the variegated form, C.mas `Variegata’, regularly produces bright red berries, which are well set off by the attractive white-edged leaves; and this autumn I have been particularly struck by the crops of comparatively large, glossy fruits on the variety `Golden Glory’ AGM, selected for its prolific flowering. My interest in this fruit was further heightened when I was given a pot of jelly made by an adventurous fruit growing friend. It was delicious!
November 14th, 2007
November 8th, 2007
There is nothing new about plants flowering outside their normal season. Rhododendrons-thankfully confined to only a few varieties- have been flowering in autumn for as long as I can remember. This is a regrettable tendency on the whole, as people regard it as freakish and, of course, the performance will not be repeated in the spring, which is when we all want it to happen. However, when an entire batch of a rather lovely and uncommon Deciduous Azalea called ‘Bright Forecast’ flowered prolifically through this September and October, one couldn’t help but admire it. It will be a winner if it will just settle down to flowering at the proper time of year!
Witch Hazels have also always had a tendency to produce some stray flowers in the autumn. The flowers are invariably mean and small, and in red or orange varities, a sad wishy-washy yellow, causing outrage among customers who feel they have been conned!
November 8th, 2007
November 8th, 2007
A small maple which has caught my attention this autumn provides a good example of a rare plant with so many ornamental features and such a long season of interest that it deserves to be much better known. Acer crataegifolium ‘Veitchii’ has attractive, glossy leaves which vaguely resemble those of a hawthorn in shape, though larger and longer, and are unevenly splashed pink and white. Hillier’s Manual tells us they turn bright pink and deep purple in autumn, but this year at least, all the trees here have turned a lovely rich orange. Contrast is added by purple-red leaf stalks and young stems. The trunk and branches are finely white-striped, like those of more familiar snake-bark maples. Add to this clusters of cream flowers in spring, and this is something of interest and attraction in this small tree throughout the year. It will want to live well, in nice, humus-rich soil, in a reasonably sheltered site, though I have no reason to suppose lack of hardiness is a problem.
November 8th, 2007
October 25th, 2007
Autumn colour is a mystery which can never quite be explained, even by those who understand how the chemistry works. No doubt that is part of its charm. Some plants never develop any colour at all-the sycamore, for example. Others will will colour brilliantly one year and do nothing the next. Then there are those which, brilliantly, never fail to perform. The timing may vary-which one assumes has something to do with the weather-but, at some point, they will colour. High among these I would place Euonymus alatus and, even more so, its smaller-growing variety, ‘Compactus’-which can be absolutely relied upon, in my experience, to turn a glorious crimson from top to bottom. This year has been no exception, as you can see from my picture, taken in the middle of October, of a plant in one of our borders. There is one small hitch for those of us who produce plants to sell. Whereas it will always colour once established in a border, young plants in pots can often remain stubbornly green. I put this down to the high level of nutrients in the compost, which makes them “lazy” in this respect; and this is how I explain it to customers. It is one of those minor tribulations we have to put up with.
Some trees well-known for their autumn colour-Acer rubrum, the Canadian Red Maple and Liquidambar styraciflua, the Sweet Gum, for example, can be very disappointing. The problem is that plants raised from seed will always be variable; so the trick is always to go for named varieties, selected for their reliable colouring. ‘October Glory’ is a superb variety of Acer rubrum, as is the newer ‘Brandywine’, which turns a good deep red over an unusually long period. Among many varieties of Liquidambar, ‘Worplesdon’ has always given a good account of itself; and I have been much impressed by the recently introduced ‘Stared’, with more slender leaves which develop the most gorgeous colours.
October 25th, 2007
August 30th, 2007
I started blogging in the spring-and then abruptly stopped! This was not because I had lost interest in the idea of sharing my thoughts on plants with you, but simply because we became incredibly busy here-good in itself, of course-but there was always something more pressing to be done-so blogging just didn’t happen. This is a pity, as a day never passes without something of interest to talk about. So now I’ve decided to be more disciplined with myself and try and get something down on a regular and frequent basis.
I talked quite a lot early on in the season about flowering cherries. We have around a hundred varieties planted here, many of them very rare. I do my best to keep an eye on them, though it is all too easy to keep one’s head down and miss some wonderful things, as the spring whirls by. The one that stood out most for me and has been my top cherry for several years now, is ‘The Bride’. It is aptly named, having the most exquisite buds of any flowering tree I know, white tipped with carmine, giving a charming overall blush effect to the cloud of white blossom as it opens. It also has the advantage of being a small tree-so many cherries are really too vigorous for small gardens. As a matter of interest, it also happens to be a variety that Bridgemere was responsible for introducing to this country.
Another plant I would have mentioned at flowering time, had I got round to it, is Zenobia Raspberry Ripple. Zenobia pulverulenta is one of those unjustly little known plants. It is a small to medium sized shrub which bears long, pendulous clusters of Lily of the Valley type flowers in June and July. (It is supposed to be aniseed scented, though I have failed to catch this.) It needs well-drained, lime-free soil and is supposed to prefer light shade-though I find it does well in sun, as long as it isn’t exposed to drying winds. A variety called Blue Sky with beautiful bloomy-blue leaves and white stems was introduced about 20 years ago. Rasberry Ripple is a new variety with delightful pink and white flowers. It also has different foliage, glossy green, with attractive bronzey new growth. Both varieties flowered particularly well this year; I think they must have enjoyed the damp weather.
These Zenobias are in my mind at the moment because this morning I at last got round to doing something which has been on my “to do” list for the past few weeks, namely cutting off the old flowered growth of the plants we have here on the nursery-it only took less than a minute each and they will make far better plants as a result.
I have always liked the name Zenobia, who I discover from Stearn’s Dictionary of Plant Names was the Queen of Palmyra (today’s Syria, more or less) in the third century. It appears she was a middle eastern version of Bodaciea, who succeeded in driving the Romans, briefly at least, not only from her own country but from Egypt. She ended up being defeated and taken back to Rome in chains,- where she married a senator! Quite a girl!
August 30th, 2007
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