What Sort of Winter Do You Call This?!

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086                                                                                                                                          Well, here we are on 21 December, the first day of Winter and the shortest day of the year. Cathy is wrapping up the last few prezzies and I have been outside washing down the paths and tidying up. The weather has been unseasonably mild and I have actually been looking for jobs to do outside rather than sitting indoors. The weather pundits are predicting a long hard winter which will delay Spring and confuse the heck out of the garden again. But, already the bulbs think it is February! The weather guys might be right though because I have never seen the trees and shrubs so laden with fruit and berries, a sure sign of a hard winter to come…..or so the old wives tale goes.Sorbus hupehensis

The little Rowan tree, Sorbus hupehensis, is bent double under the weight of it’s luscious pinky white berries and the Blackbirds are perching precariously on the spindly young branches to get at them.

Sloes

The Blackthorn tree, Prunus spinosa, is covered in ribbons of juicy sloes, so heavy that the branches are likely to snap. Already, the road beneath is stained blue with the remains of squashed fruit and I am amazed the foragers and gin-makers have not discovered it.

Wormery

The wormery, which is normally asleep by now is still active and busily taking all our tea bags and veggie peelings to turn into next years ‘special’ addition to potting compost for the very best plants. It can’t last….something has to change soon to send the worms burying for cover deep in the lower trays.036

Even the fish still think it’s summer and expect to be fed twice a day! Get down and go to sleep I say! The pump is off and the food is packed away until next year!003

In fact everything is cleaned up, tidied up and packed away. The cold frame is empty and ready for a bit of essential maintenance to the lid, the cheap plastic ‘overflow’ greenhouse is full of pots and trays..all washed and cleaned. Where is the snow? I’m ready!Leaf composter

The compost bins are full to bursting with leaves and herbaceous shreddings and, apart from a few last minute weeding jobs, the autumn clean-up seem to be finished for a change.006

All the tulips are planted and the only thing remaining to go in the ground is a tray of Cyclamen hederifolium purchased, believe it or not, from our enterprising milkman who buys them in from Pershore College. Two pints of semi-skimmed and a tray of Cyclamen please!

I hope you all have a jolly good Christmas and a wonderful and productive New Year.

End of Week View

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The header picture taken today is Gladiolus murielae, aka Gladiolus callianthus, aka Abyssinian gladiolus, aka Acidanthera bicolor, aka Peacock Orchid. It is a half-hardy corm native to east Africa and is utterly charming. I have often described her, as she is surely female, as a demure young lady in a pretty white dress staring at her feet, too shy to look up to her admirers. Sadly, like all her bigger and bolder cousins, she has to be lifted and stored in a frost free place for the winter.007

Everything is slowing down and gradually going to sleep for the winter. I have decided I am very much more a shorts and tee shirt gardener than hat, coat and boots. Does that make me a wimp? Not sure, but I know that there is no fun trying to work on sticky clay soil with mud sticking to your boots, filthy trousers, and cold wet hands. On the mild days I have managed to get most of the autumn jobs done but I awoke this morning with just one thought…must get the tulips planted! I bought a collection of 90 Lily-flowered bulbs this year and that is a lot of pots to plant. I adore tulips but it is pointless trying to grow them in my cold sticky clay. I also have Sammy the Squirrel and his friends to contend with who love tulips as much as I do. So, 6 large terracotta pots and an enormous mix of compost and grit later and they are all standing proudly in their new positions along the front of the bungalow.008

I have no idea what this pelargonium is called, it was bought for £1 in our society plant sale with no label, but when it came into flower I was knocked out. The flowers are creamy white with salmon pink centres and have been going non-stop since early July. I am determined to keep it going over winter so it is now in the kitchen basking in 23° and sending up more flowers to show its appreciation.Today I was taking my Canna Durban, Fuchsia arborescens and tender evergreen Agapanthus africanus over to my friend Paddy’s centrally heated Hartley Botanic greenhouse for the winter. Did you catch the faint whiff of greenhouse envy as I wrote that?! Seriously, it is centrally heated with mains gas! Once his tomatoes and melons are over for the year there is plenty of space for his tender potted plants as well as few of mine.

Just got voted in as Vice-Chairman of our Horticultural Society so a bit chuffed.

Loam Stack Really Works!

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003Not a particularly pretty picture I know, but I am thrilled with the result of a stack of turves I made last year when I dug a new border out of the front lawn. I had read about making ‘loam’  (a euphemism for ‘good soil’) which is exactly what I need in great quantity. So I decided not to hire a skip but instead to painstakingly stack the cut turf grass to grass and soil to soil in a tall metre square to see if alchemy would turn nasty clods of clay soil and a few grassy tufts into the good stuff. And it has!005

It’s still a bit sticky but the grass has composted and been absorbed into the soil to make a friable loam of sorts. It was easy to slice and dice and is now languishing in my raised beds ready for next year. Overall, a good way of using up waste turf if you have the room to leave it stacked for a year or so.

David Bellamy Comes To Town!

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048                                                                                                                                             For those of you old enough to remember him, David Bellamy OBE is an extraordinary botanist, prolific author, diver, conservationist, environmental campaigner and TV personality. He was also the voice behind the Ribena advert in the early 80’s and the subject of Lenny Henry’s famous parody which spawned the catchphrase “grapple me grapenuts” on Tiswas. You might therefore understand how honoured I was to meet the great man in person last week. How it happened is still a bit of a mystery. It all started a year ago when I floated the idea of a Tool Amnesty at our Horticultural Society to raise our profile, gain valuable publicity and do something for a worthy cause. Little did I know what I was getting myself into!

Maybe I didn’t explain it very well or maybe it was a bit too radical but our Committee just didn’t seem to have the same enthusiasm for the idea that I had. Needless to say, the outcome was that it became my project! To cut a very long story short, nine months later in August, eight gardening clubs and two garden centres held the amnesty for a month and collected a total of 569 old, broken and unwanted garden hand tools from people who cleared out their sheds, garages and greenhouses for us. The response from the public was overwhelming and I soon had to clear out my garage to cope with their generosity.002

I had approached The Conservation Foundation for help, a charity co-founded by David Bellamy in 1982 to promote conservation and environmental awareness. A wonderful public relations consultant, Lindsay Swan, turned out to be the perfect partner, someone who appreciated my efforts, encouraged and helped me to make the amnesty a success. In return, after much grovelling and harassing, she agreed to try to get David Bellamy to come to Cheltenham to receive the tools on their behalf. No mean feat as he is now 81 and living in Durham, 300 miles away. We were initially talking about 350 – 400 tools as being a great haul but 569 clinched it!

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And so it was that early on a warm and sunny Monday morning in November, off they went in the back of a van to the local garden centre in Cheltenham to be sorted into piles, counted and inspected. During the collection, I noticed tools being donated that I had never seen before; very old, well made tools with beautiful ash handles, individually numbered spades, forks with three tines instead of four, heart shaped hoes, turf lifters, moss rakes, home-made row markers, scythes, sickles, billhooks and clay spades to name a few. I invited a local retired head gardener, Colin Brookes from the Miserden Estate, to see them as he is also a specialist collector of historic tools. He quickly picked out the most unusual ones for the press release and kindly offered to put a value on them if the Foundation wished to sell them at Malvern or Harrogate next year.084

We gave Mr & Mrs Bellamy a warm welcome and a cup of tea after their long journey and took them on a tour of the tools in one of the large greenhouses we had borrowed for the day. It was then I realised that he is not your usual TV celebrity. He was genuinely impressed and enthusiastic about what we had achieved. He was charming and gracious and rather humble. I liked him a lot and was glad we had chosen to help his charity.065

The inevitable press photos followed, staged with tools held in alarmingly dangerous poses by the assembled gardeners and Chris Evans who owns the nursery and also happens to be our Vice-President. The local papers lapped up the story and we got great coverage of the event and the Society which, as I recall, was the point of the exercise in the first place. Funny how these things often take on a life of their own!

 

Autumn Asters

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007We decided to see some Asters before the weather closed in (which it did today!) and so we visited The Picton Garden in Malvern which holds the National Collection on a bright sunny day a few weeks ago, prompted by a visiting speaker to our horticultural society, Marina Christopher, an excellent author, plantswoman and speaker. We met Helen Picton who was very helpful and interested to hear that we may have acquired a new variety in the Plant Heritage exchange scheme this year. 043                                                                    Aster ‘Claudia’ came to us with a rather anonymous label and, although recognised by the RHS, no suppliers are listed in the Plant Finder. I sent a photo to Helen and she believes it may be a small flowered pringlei hybrid and worthy of inclusion in the Collection. I will divide the plant in spring and supply her with some propagation material.  

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Asters are combined with Kniphofias and Rudbeckias, tall perennial grasses and sunflowers to provide complimentary colour and height. The colour range of asters is rather limited to the blue/white/pink range so the bright yellows and oranges interspersed with the pastel shades of the asters provide punctuation and separation in the borders.022

I prefer the tall novae-angliae or New England asters which are mildew resistant but require staking, compared to the smaller mounded novi-belgii or New York varieties. The Picton Garden

The other problem with the taller novae-angiae varieties is the nasty habit of dropping their lower leaves just before they flower, leaving bare stems with brown, shrivelled and dead looking leaves. However, if they are part of a mixed border and placed behind other plants, this is not noticed so much. The shorter novi-belgii types are more prone to mildew but are usually stocky and self supporting.037

They are not called Michaelmas Daisies for nothing, and around 29 September is usually the best time to see them at their best. We certainly enjoyed our visit and will go back a little earlier next year. Naturally, I didn’t come away empty handed and have now added the tall and beautiful violet-purple Aster ‘Helen Picton’ to my little collection.

Aster 'Forncett Flourish'

Aster ‘Forncett Flourish’

Although they only put in a brief appearance for a month or so, Asters provide a welcome blast of colour just as the garden is beginning to turn brown and go to sleep. If they are strategically placed along with hardy Chrysanthemums, perennial Rudbeckias, tall grasses, late flowering Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’ and even tall fiery red and orange Dahlias and Kniphofia rooperi, they will prolong colour and interest until the end of October.

What’s Not To Like?

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033A garden designer giving a talk at our Plant Heritage meeting on Saturday told us that some of her clients simply refuse to have anything yellow in their gardens. I have mentioned this before and I am still puzzled as to why some garden owners dislike the colour yellow. Is it because it is brash or simply too strong a colour? It would certainly not work in a garden filled with pastels and muted tones.

This Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’ makes me smile every time I pass it and Bidens aurea ‘Hannay’s Lemon Drop’ does the same.'Orange Allouise'

This Chrysanthemum, ‘Orange Allouise’ is rather more yellow than orange and for some reason always reminds me of dripping melted butter!022

Surely, no garden would be complete without at least one Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’?

Looking at my garden today and looking back over the year, I realise that it is full of yellow, red and orange. Strong, bright colours which bring my garden to life, even on a dull day. Perhaps it’s all about the gardener and not the garden!

Death & Decay

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It is all too easy when writing a blog like this to talk about how good things are and to only put up your best pictures of flowers and foliage on sunny days and in good light. But we all know gardens are not always like that! So, just for a change, I thought I would post some images of my garden on this miserable wet mid-October day.

In reality, at this time of year I am surrounded by a scene of death and decay. 074

Last weekend a friend introduced me to the concept of plants that ‘die well’. I don’t know who originally coined this phrase but it is very apt. Some plants do seem to die better than others. This Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’ dies badly in my book and smothers everything else in the process.
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The leaves of this Amelanchier lamarckii. on the other hand, die back well with interesting colours and a gradual decline before dropping in November. My alkaline clay is not well suited to it but a generous annual mulch of leaf mould seems to be doing the trick.041

Echinaceas die well because they continue to stand tall and straight and maintain their cones filled with seeds which the finches love. 038

Of course, there are a few bright spots as well. The Verbena bonariensis collapsing into the waiting arms of Bidens aurea makes a lovely chance combination051

And despite the atrocious weather today, my Granddad’s Chrysanthemum which I have named ‘George Simons’ after him, still looks fabulous.025

Some foliage always looks better adorned with raindrops and Cotinus coggygria is one.040

The impossibly named Aster ‘Andenken an Alma Potschke’ is definitely not dying but it doesn’t like the rain. If it wasn’t held up by all around it the metre high stems would be horizontal now.062

Already horizontal and revelling in the wet conditions, the lawn is looking magnificent.

Had to end on a high note!

Seedaholic!

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If there is one thing that gets my horticultural juices flowing it is collecting seeds from the garden, and not just my garden! I find it irresistible. It has become a bit of a compulsion which might get me into trouble one day if someone spots me leaning over their wall or fence gently helping myself to a seed head or two. At this time of year I am inspecting my plants daily, checking to see what seed is ripe and ready to be collected.

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The compulsion really got a grip after I joined the Cottage Garden Society and discovered their wonderful seed exchange. It got worse when I joined the Hardy Plant Society and found a similar but even larger seed exchange programme and worse still when I joined Plant Heritage. Need I go on! I think it is the little boy in me that is still amazed that a seed no bigger than a grain of sand can grow into a plant 2m tall, flower and set seed between March and August. Nicotiana mutabilis and Nicotiana sylvestris are two such examples.064

Propagation is my thing. I love it. Each year the seeds are collected, dried, cleaned and put in small paper envelopes. They are stored in ice cream tubs and go in the beer fridge because they store better at 4°C.  I can’t wait to get started, and by mid-February am itching to turn on the electric propagators. By mid spring I am overrun with seedlings and by early summer what I don’t need has either been sold at club meetings, plant sales or given away to neighbours, friends and family. By late summer I am sowing biennials and by early autumn can’t wait to begin sowing hardy annuals and perennials. It is a rhythm which is in tune with the life cycle of plants and the seasons, I am just doing what nature would do, but in my greenhouse and cold frames.005 (2)

It is still extraordinary that this tiny infant plant can become a strawberry but it did. When I sow sweet peas in late October and they germinate with no heat, no comfort of any kind other than the protection of a cold greenhouse, it reminds me of the ways of nature. That’s what peas do. They send down a root system in winter and foliage in spring, flowers and seeds in summer. We tend to think seeds need cosseting, they don’t. If we do what they expect to do at the right time, in the right conditions, they perform. Never mind what we think….they will do it when they want to….even if that takes months…..even if they need to be frozen first….the trick is to mimic what they do in nature.014

The sweet peas sown on 31 October last year and overwintered in a cold frame were so much stronger than the spring sown seeds. The root systems were better, the flowers were bigger and they lasted for longer.012

Give me a propagator, seeds, compost and vermiculite or grit and I am a happy bunny. Give me seeds that are ‘tricky’ and I am in my element. 009

The greenhouse and cold frame, slug and snail proofed, sheltered from excessive sun and rain, with a free-draining base of gravel and the aid of mushroom trays are all I need to produce hundreds of plants each year, almost for nothing. And the seeds I have too many of go to the seed exchanges and my local society seed swap to share the process with other like minded gardeners. What could be better!

Bidens aurea ‘Hannay’s Lemon Drop’ – one year on

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003Ever since I posted about this unusual Bidens almost exactly a year ago, I have noticed that it keeps showing up in the ‘top posts & pages’ so readers are obviously interested in it and how it performs. I thought it was late to flower last year because I had grown it from seed in March and it was going to need several months to attain it’s height and maturity. When it did flower it was stunning in it’s simplicity. Dainty and delicate white tipped canary yellow flowers on tall wiry stems. Frankly, when it died away last winter I didn’t expect it to re-appear, and so I was delighted when it did. Bidens is not generally considered to be hardy but this variety is reckoned to be hardier than most.

Bidens aurea 21 May

Bidens aurea 21 May

It was probably due to the very cold and wet spring this year but it took forever to appear and it was the end of May before I noticed any new growth. However, I was delighted to see far more growth than just the three plants from 2012. It had spread several feet and now covered an area 1 metre across. This fresh young growth sat reluctantly through spring and didn’t do very much until the end of July when it suddenly took off and the first flowers finally appeared at the end of August, exactly the same as last year!009

If anything, I think it might be slightly shorter this year which may be due to the horrible clay soil it sits in and the corresponding lack of nutrients but the foliage colour is a good dark green and it looks very healthy. The flowers, three or four at the top of each stem, open successively and seem to last a week or so before the next bud opens. Bidens aurea 'Hannays Lemon Drop 2'

If it spreads again next year I may have to re-classify it as invasive because, as much as I like it, I don’t want it to take over the border. It is already swamping a few things so a bit of division is called for next year. A number of visitors from our horticultural society have asked for a piece so it will end up in several more gardens.

A plant I can heartily recommend. If only it was scented!