Early Colour

The mild weather has meant that many plants are beginning to flower earlier than usual in our garden. We have already had the ‘Rinjveld’s Early Sensation’ Daffodils  flowering in November and now my Lenten Roses (Helleborus x hybridus) are rearing their beautiful heads, crowning the handsome deep green leaves below. We have a particularly striking apple green seedling that is covered in strong bud branches and about to show off the freckled flowers with matching fluffy stamens that complete the picture.

 All this activity has encouraged me to begin tidying up my borders, although I am wary that we could still get a spell of hard weather. At the moment, plants are suffering from wind scorch on their unseasonally soft growth rather than frost damage, which has been the case for the past three winters! Tender plants such as Penstemon and hardy Fuchsias may look scruffy but all of the old growth will need to remain for another month or two if I can bear it! Never the less, the borders are taking on a different feel as the green shoots of Daffodils and Snowdrops begin to pierce through the soil, along with the perennials  Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’, Hemerocallis (Day Lilies) and Pulmonaria ‘Blue Ensign’. Pulmonarias are such useful plants for shade and early colour – often starting to flower in January and February, when there is usually very little apart from evergreens to give interest.

Evergreens are the furniture of the garden and still give the most interest at the moment. The Myrtle (Luma) that I planted as a cutting from my grandmother’s garden years ago is now a huge tree. The tiny, deep green leaves are very wind proof and the bark is now mature enough to take on a beautiful cinnamon colour despite the local cats using it as a scratching post! Of course, plants that are known as ‘semi evergreen’ such as Abelia and shrubby winter flowering Honeysuckles have also kept their leaves because of the mild weather and we even have a semi evergreen climbing Honeysuckle Lonicera ‘Halliana’, in flower! The Hebes in the front garden have made pleasing, evergreen mounds and one has fluffy white flower clusters, which are more usually out in late summer, when they attract butterflies and moths.

 My Miscanthus grasses have looked amazing all winter; their leaves and stems bleached out to faded browns and the skeletons of the feather duster flowers hung on until the last vicious gale that we had stripped them bare. There are already plenty of new shoots coming up from the ground, so I have removed the old growth and chopped it up into short lengths for the compost heap.

One of the bins is ready to be turned and the compost closest to the base is rotted enough to use as mulch over any bare soil as I tidy the borders. This really does help to keep the weeds down and will help to protect my Crocosmia clumps if hard weather does threaten the soft shoots that are appearing. 

Mr McGregor

Find pleasure in garden visiting

Penhurst PlaceFind pleasure in garden visiting has been written by Sandy Felton of Reckless Gardener on behalf of Notcutts.

Gertrude Jekyll once commented that “gardens are perhaps the most ephemeral of all art forms, for they are an ever-changing tapestry of colour, form and texture, a seemingly never-ending parable of life, death and immortality.”  What is it about a garden that makes us want to visit? Why do gardeners, and indeed many who do not or cannot garden, find fascination in visiting the creation of others’?

I have spent my life visiting gardens across the UK, Europe and Canada and each time I visit I have the same feeling of anticipation. What will I find? Will I like it? Can I take away an idea which would work for me in my own garden?

Garden visiting is a great pleasure for even in the smallest, humblest garden, there is sure to be something of interest, an unknown plant, an unusual arrangement, a quirky pot or ornament. I have learnt to curb my anticipation a little because I know that not all gardens live up to their reputation, or in some cases sadly do not warrant the entrance fee. Fortunately, in my experience this has been seldom and indeed there are many gardens to which I could go again and again without ever getting bored or tired.

In the UK there are the large gardens which mirror generations of taste and diversity. They encompass every gardening style from English landscape to contemporary - Hidcote, Powis Castle, Sissinghurst, Alnwick, The Garden of Cosmic Speculation and Mount Stewart being just a few. But for  every great garden there are hundreds of others encompassing a variety of styles and design all challenging our various climatic conditions. In many respects we are spoilt.

Sissinghurst

Hidcote is a personal favourite of mine – I have visited on several occasions and each time found something new to appreciate. In some gardens there is a strong sense of the owner’s temperament or nature as at Highrove, the garden of HRH the Prince of Wales, an interesting and I think delightfully diverse garden. A garden, is after all, part of the soul of its creator and if you can feel something of the history, soul and spirit of a garden you are more than half-way there to appreciating what makes it tick.

The National Gardens Scheme is a wonderful organisation responsible for the opening of some 3,700 lovely gardens every year for charity. Many of these gardens are not normally open to the public so the famous Yellow Book printed each year with details of all the gardens is a valuable asset. Details on: http://www.ngs.org.uk

In time we may develop a leaning towards a favoured designer or gardener  – in my case Jekyll, Mawson, Tom Stuart-Smith, Cleve West, Beth Chatto and Christopher Lloyd. I love to find a Mawson garden I haven’t visited and rather as one would with a famous painter, contrast it with his other designs.

I never pass down a street without peering over the odd garden wall to see the magic which hopefully lays beyond. It is so sad that so many of our front gardens have been turned into concrete to provide for the ubiquitous motor car. The little book in my pocket is ever ready to note down a new plant or record a comment about a planting combination which has worked in a particular situation.

Then in the dark winter months it is a pleasure to sit and leaf through gardening books depicting those gardens which I have visited or to look at my own pictures of remembered days.

WallingtonI don’t mind weeds, I am happy with a variety of styles and I am not necessary ultra-critical of any particular garden. A garden is what the owner/gardener wants to make it and I have no problem with that – we garden for pleasure and if the garden brings pleasure to its creator then that is how it should be.

To gain an appreciation of different styles is one reason for garden visiting as it helps the gardener understand that no one particular style is necessarily right. My own preference for the cottage garden suits me and my garden, but I have no doubt that another owner might come along and completely redesign my little patch into a contemporary oasis of decking and stainless steel.

We should all take away something from a garden visit – it might be stimulation, a sense of belonging or a simple planting idea. We might be lucky to have a conversation with the gardener personally and share experiences – an added bonus.

Spring will soon be upon us and with it my quest for yet more gardens to start visiting - the list is already growing – wonder what I will find this year? Happy visiting.

Sandy Felton is features editor of www.recklessgardener.com

All photographs © Reckless Gardener

(Photographs – Sissinghurst, Penshurst Place and Wallington (NT) Northumberland

Keeping Busy...(always jobs to do!)

Firstly I would like to wish all of our readers a Happy New Year and look forward to a successful gardening year! My first wish has to be for the ground to dry up so that I can catch up with digging on my allotment, which is now badly behind schedule. Last year was the same; I had to spend some long hours digging in February to catch up. Ideally I will get one of my two plots single dug. I start by taking out a trench to a spade’s depth and moving the soil from this to the other end of the plot in my wheelbarrow. Any debris and annual weeds are then skimmed off the top of what will become the next trench and buried, face down in the bottom of the first trench. These are then covered with the soil from what will become the second trench and so on. Any perennial weed roots such as Couch Grass and Dock Leaves should be removed and burned, but not composted. The soil should be left in large clods and can be broken down to form a ‘tilth’ with some vigorous raking nearer to the time of sowing and planting. My second plot will be used to grow potatoes and later crops, such as squashes and runner beans. I like to manure the ground for these when I plant them out so the soil does not need to be prepared so far in advance!

Philadelphus SilberregenI have managed to spend some time in the garden this week and pruned some of my shrubs. We have a Parrotia persica (Persian Ironwood) which will eventually become far too large for the space it occupies, but it is one of my favourite large shrubs with beautiful orange and red autumn colours and small red flowers through the winter on the bare, grey branches. Left to its own devices, Parottia makes a wide spreading shrub or small tree, so I have to prune off branches every so often to keep it in bounds! My Cornus (Dog Woods) were all pruned hard back to a basic framework last winter, so will not need any attention now. They continue to light up the garden with their sealing wax red and olive green stems that give a good vertical accent.

Philadelphus are some of my favourite summer flowering shrubs with their creamy white flowers scented of orange blossom. It is easier to see the shape of these and other deciduous shrubs at this time of the year and a light prune to tidy them is a good idea.  The Holly was given a trim just before Christmas and I will tidy up other evergreens later in the spring, when they begin to grow again. My ornamental Grape vine Vitis vinifera ‘Purpurea, grew really well last year and I have pruned it back to a basic framework. Each shoot has been taken back to four buds and some of the weaker growth removed. My Clematis are looking very untidy, but I must be patient and wait until next month before giving them their annual haircut!

Mr McGregor

New Year Resolutions!

Last year sped by so quickly, I can hardly believe it is 2012! The wet weather has hampered work on the allotment – the soil is far too wet to dig at the moment, which means I will have to make every effort in January to complete my winter digging. In the garden, apart from sweeping the last of the leaves from the patio and taking vegetable peelings out to the compost bins, I have done very little. The wintery showers that creep up when I am engrossed in a task have mainly confined me to the house – I have had my face stung by hailstones too many times and know that, once the weather improves, I will work twice as fast and with better humour! 

Tweet Tweet - view from my window!The garden is deceptively inviting when the sun comes out and with all of the new growth, unharmed as yet by hard weather, positively spring like. Still it is best to take this ‘down time’ and plan for the coming year.

The first of my ‘resolutions’ for 2012 is to heed the weather forecasts and make sure that I do not put off tasks when the sun shines! Last year I kept a note of dates when seed was sown, so this year I can learn from being too impatient in early spring and sowing the first crops too early. This resulted in poor, slow germination and the next sowings catching up and overtaking the initial ones!

I also intend to compost even more material from the house, including more paper shreddings and the ash from our wood burning stove, which I mix in with coarser material to stop it making a soggy mat! You can never put too much mulch onto a garden – the compost that we produce is not enough for our garden, so I have to mulch different areas each time a compost bin is emptied. A good layer of at least 15cm helps to improve the soil, keep in moisture and keeps down the weeds. It is also a great way of recycling!

Our garden is now very bird friendly, with lots of berrying shrubs for the thrush family, seed heads which we leave through the winter for the finches and sparrows and a thick Privet hedge on one boundary that provides shelter and cover from predators. We do get Sparrow Hawk attacks occasionally but the birds know to dive into the hedge for protection and mostly get away! However, I do intend to put up more feeders and try to attract some more unusual visitors throughout the year.

And lastly, I will plant more Tulip bulbs this autumn and not complain about the task which is one that I do not enjoy! Like many gardeners, I have a problem keeping Tulips from one year to the next but think it may be because our garden is too shady and the bulbs do not get baked in the summer sun. On the other hand, a drift of these graceful flowers in late spring teamed with Wallflowers and Forget me Nots is to me, one of the best rewards of the gardening year!

Wishing all our readers a very Happy New Year

Mr McGregor

Christmas Greenery

Christmas Day is not far away and always seems to sneak up more quickly when it falls on a Saturday or Sunday! Mrs McGregor has visited our local garden centre and brought back a beautiful Nordmann Fir, which won’t drop its needles in the house. I prefer the pine forest scent from Norway Spruce, but the ‘needlefast’ trees save us one of the traditions of Christmas – getting the vacuum cleaner out every five minutes! This is made worse when our cat, Thomasina, decides to investigate the tempting shiny things hanging before her eyes – even though she is now a teenager and should know better! I cut a few centimetres off the base of the tree and put it in a bucket of water in the garden shed, still in the net, until we were ready to bring it into the house and decorate it over the weekend. We have a heavy duty stand which holds water, so the tree can continue to drink and be merry whilst in the sitting room!

Ilex Aquifolium Argentea MarginataWe have a house full of guests this year, so my thoughts are turning to decorating the house with greenery from the garden as well as feeding our friends and relatives from my allotments! As I write this, we are in the grip of yet another gale – I think this winter will be wet and windy rather than particularly cold but don’t quote me on that! There is still a long way to go and the late spring frosts always do the worst damage to tender young shoots and leaves. I just hope my Brussels sprout plants are not rocked out of the ground before the Big Day!

Back to the greenery! I always hold on to any lower branches that are taken off the Christmas tree in order to fit it into the stand. The tips of these are useful to add into arrangements or to make a wreath for the front door. It is time to trim our lovely green and silver variegated Holly (Ilex aquifolium ‘Argenteovariegatum’) so that I can use sprigs above the picture frames in the sitting and dining rooms. The bolder coloured gold and green varieties look great in table arrangements with big red candles and I think I will combine these with some dark green Choysia ternata (Mexican Orange Blossom), whose leaves will add to the shiny, rich effect.  Because of the mild weather, our Box plants have put on lots of fresh green, fan shaped growth, again useful for flat table arrangements. Viburnum tinus (Laurustinus) has started to flower with beautiful clusters of white blooms and these will look great with some bare stems from our olive green Cornus sericea ‘Flaviramea’ (Dog Wood). Despite the rain and windy weather, our winter Jasmine (Jasminum nudiflorum) is still flowering well and I may even include some of our early flowering daffodils as a surprise for our visitors!