This beautiful China Aster, Callistephus chinensis, deserved a posting of it’s own just because of it’s glorious deep purple colour. Definitely worth remembering and sharing. It was grown from a packet of seeds called ‘Big Boy Mix’ and certainly lives up to it’s name with strong, 90cm straight stems which make wonderful cut flowers. Oh, that colour!!
The statue of Michaelangelo’s ‘David’ has followed us around for many years. It was a present to my wife when she left work and we feel compelled to have him ‘on show’! He has been nestled in a shady corner out of main view since we arrived and gradually, the ivy has got to work on him. We have always been slightly concerned about offending the sensibilities of our elderly female friends and neighbours and so nature has kindly provided a solution!
Helianthus ‘Miss Mellish’ AGM
The perennial sunflower, Helianthus, is one of my favourite late summer plants and they are just so cheerful! How can you not smile when you look at this picture!
The three Helianthus most commonly offered are ‘Lemon Queen’ a big, clump forming brute of a plant which runs riot in rich soil; ‘Monarch’ an enormous badly behaved double; and my favourite, ‘Miss Mellish’, still a rampant thug but such a pretty lady!
Other varieties include ‘Capenoch Star’ AGM and ‘Carine’ which is similar to ‘Lemon Queen’ but slightly shorter. Helianthus is a good plant for poor dry soils and, as can be seen from this picture, happily grows even in the dessicated soil beneath a conifer hedge. It really is a reliable star performer.
There are several less common Helianthus cultivars worth seeking out from specialist nurseries such as the tall ‘Maximilianii’ generally with fewer flowers and apparently a prolific self seeder; H. salicifolius with willow-like feathery foliage and chocolate brown centred flowers which love a sunny position at the back of a dry border, and the smaller, better behaved dwarf variety ‘Happy Days’ for a moist, rich soil in the middle of the herbaceous border.
Of course, the most common perennial sunflower relative is probably the Jerusalem Artichoke, Helianthus tuberosus, which is better known for it’s edible tubers than it’s flowers but is a perennial sunflower nevertheless. Its comparatively small and insignificant yellow flowers emerge when the plant is at it’s tallest, sometimes over 8 feet, and are often difficult to see.
If you want tall reliable colour in late summer and don’t mind a bit of yellow, these prairie daisies are hard to beat. It is the ideal plant to colonise a difficult or neglected area of poor soil or to hide an ugly shed providing height for screening, dark green foliage from mid spring and late summer colour until the first frosts.
It seems from what I have read, that the smell of Fennel, Foeniculum vulgare (hence the pun!) is one of those you either love or hate. I therefore consider myself lucky at the moment because the acid yellow umbelliferous flowers have given way to thousands of seeds which are now ripening on the huge clump by the back gate and there is the most gorgeous smell of licorice / aniseed as we brush past it each morning to take the dogs for a walk.
The tall feathery foliage on thick branching stems makes a bold architectural statement in any garden. It loves a well drained poor soil in full sun and, unfortunately for some, seeds itself freely around the garden. I think the smell takes me back to my childhood eating Bassett’s Licorice Allsorts and aniseed balls!
A lot of gardeners use Felco secateurs, I am one of them and have two pairs. They are wonderful and I wouldn’t be without them. They are my constant companions and, thanks to Helen Yemm’s advice column in the Daily Telegraph, I now even send mine away each year to Burton McCall in Leicester to be serviced, sharpened and cleaned. BUT….despite their undoubted quality and celebrity following, there are certain issues……..
Firstly, like all precision tools, they are ‘reassuringly expensive’, although they do come with a lifetime guarantee. If they were a foodstuff, they would only be sold in Waitrose. I have seen them for sale in various outlets for between £30 for the Economy version which nobody would want to own, to over £65 for the all singing, all dancing No. 7 with one revolving handle which “spreads muscular force evenly over all fingers, reducing the effort by a third and preventing tendonitis and inflammation“.
Secondly, judging from their weight and size, they are generally made for people with a large hand span, although there is a compact version No.12 for just £55!
The third problem is that you really need a holster on your belt for the Felcos because they are too big and heavy to fit in your pocket. If you leave them lying around there is a real danger of losing them. Personally, I don’t use a holster, I slip them in my back pocket and just hope they don’t fall out.
My wife, who has small hands, finds my Felcos too big and heavy for cutting flowers for the house, deadheading the annuals and general pruning. Instead, she uses an ancient, but small pair of cheap secateurs we probably got free with a magazine subscription, now blunt and useless.
Then I came across the Pocket Pruner from Burgon & Ball, a beautifully crafted pair of secateurs weighing just 150g and only 17cm long. Guaranteed for five years and with carbon steel blades, a sap groove to prevent sticking, an easy to operate and reliable finger lock and cushioned handles make them almost as good as Felcos, and the smaller size fits my wife’s hands perfectly. Best of all they just slip into her pocket and, at the time of writing, are just £12.95 from Amazon!
I have just read a most exciting tip in the latest edition of ‘The Cottage Gardener’, the quarterly magazine of The Cottage Garden Society and I thought I would pass it on.
I am indebted to Jo Webber from Looe, Cornwall, who wrote about her successful experiment of increasing her stock of Verbena bonariensis by layering, a propagation technique more commonly used with shrubs such as forsythia, daphne, viburnum, rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias. Jo explained that in October, when the plants had finished flowering, she cut off the seedheads and gently bent the tall stems to the ground, covering them with soil at each leaf node. Apart from making sure they did not dry out, Jo then ignored them until April when she was delighted to find lots of new plants! They were separated from the main stem and replanted where she wanted them.
A very unusual way of propagating an herbaceous perennial but I suppose it makes sense that in Spring, the growth hormones will be strongest in the leaf axils where side shoots would naturally form. Jo doesn’t say whether she wounded the stem at each leaf node before burying them, something you would normally do with shrubs, but maybe that is not required in this case.
I think this is an amazing and innovative idea and something I am definitely going to try for myself. I already have quite a few plants of this variety but I would happily have more. Normally, the stems would die back and new shoots would appear from the base each year but I have noticed that in mild winters, this species often shoots again from the previous years growth although a late frost can cut it down.
Thanks Jo!
Tomorrow, 11 September 2012, I celebrate my first year writing monthly pieces for Garden News and I have loved every minute. A big thank you to Jackie Whittaker and the team at Bauer Media for giving me the opportunity.
In September 2011, the popular weekly gardening newspaper, ‘Garden News’, appealed for a regular correspondent based in the South West of England and I thought I would have a go as I love my garden, love writing and love garden photography; all the basic requirements they were looking for. I sent them a brief personal profile and a description of my garden with a couple of photos and to my astonishment they replied immediately confirming my appointment!
My first contribution was published on 11 October 2011. It took several days to write and re-write my first 500 words and agonise over which 5 of the 150 photos I had taken should accompany them! However, I needn’t have worried; the editorial staff shortened a couple of sentences and changed the odd word but, by and large, they seemed happy with it and asked me to continue to write for the “Over…
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This variety of the popular north american Bidens aurea was introduced many years ago by Hannay’s Nursery in Bath and is one of the hardier forms which is why I decided to try it here in the chilly Cotswolds. The seed, which is barbed helping it to hitch a ride from grazing animals, came from last year’s Cottage Garden Seed Exchange and was easy to germinate into very sturdy little plants. However, during April, May and June they just sat there at about 30cm tall waiting for some warmth and sunshine.
I had read that this form of Bidens can run and become a bit of a thug if it likes your soil and aspect so I decided to plant it carefully in several very different parts of the garden. To my total surprise, it has done best with it’s feet in sticky clay and is now 120cm high and still growing. The flowers are a lovely lemon yellow tipped with white, similar in size and shape to Coreopsis to which it is closely related.
The dark green foliage and wiry green stems makes me wonder why this daisy species is an ‘aurea’ which usually means ‘golden’ or ‘yellow’ foliage. Perhaps it refers to the yellow flowers although this would be a departure from the usual nomenclature rules.
Received wisdom suggests this variety should be treated like a Penstemon, often hardy enough but take cuttings just in case. Also, don’t cut the old foliage down until April to give some protection over winter. I am going to collect my own seed and grow a few new plants each year given how easy they are to propagate.
The tall airy stems are strong and upright and do not require staking, a definite bonus in my windy front garden, and the flowers seem to last for ages attracting bees and other pollinating insects. Overall, a very garden-worthy plant for late summer colour which blends in well with reds, purples, yellows and whites and doesn’t mask the plants behind it. I have it planted in front of my Photinia hedge with white and dark purple Cosmos, Agastache and Nicotiana alata and alongside permanent shrubs of Euonymus japonicus and Amelanchier lamarckii. It just seems to work.
There are so many beautiful flowers in the garden at the moment but my plant of the day today is the dainty Gaura lindheimeri. There are many white and pink forms of Gaura and I have both but prefer the tall, plain white variety called ‘Whirling Butterflies’ because of it’s simplicity and visibility. Sitting here in my kitchen I can see the plant gently waving it’s wiry stems covered in small white butterfly shaped flowers a good 20 metres away.
It seems to like my alkaline clay soil and grows up to 150cm high in full sun and, being on the edge of the footpath, is much admired by passers-by. The pink flowerbuds start opening progressively in June and continue up the lengthening stem into autumn with the last few at the tips still around in November. No scent unfortunately, but you can’t have everything!
I find Gaura to be quite hardy here but it is so easy to grow from seed that it wouldn’t matter if you lost some in a cold winter. They flower in their first year and grow into a good sized clump if they are happy. They seem to work well in a mixed border and act as a foil for other bolder colours and leaf forms. They don’t need deadheading and I wouldn’t be without them.
Himalayan balsam (Impatiens glandulifera) has rapidly become one of the UK’s most invasive weed species, colonising river banks, waste ground and damp woodlands. It successfully competes with native plant species for space, light, nutrients and pollinators and excludes other plant growth, thereby reducing native biodiversity. As an annual, Himalayan balsam dies back in the winter, and where the plant grows near water it can cause flooding and erosion.
Last year, I noticed some plants on nearby waste ground which is at least 200 metres from home but this morning I found one in my flower border! It is only about 1 metre high but in full flower so I am about to remove all traces of it before it has a chance to set seed! Pity it is such a thug, it is quite pretty! The hooded flowers remind me of an ancient military helmet and it is one plant that would be guaranteed to grow in the most difficult areas of the garden!
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