Garden Centre

Monday, January 24, 2011

Garden Review: The Garden House, Brighton

On Friday I went to a little ‘event’ at The Garden House in Brighton, with a friend who’d been there in the summer. It was an extremely chilly day and I have to say I wasn’t thrilled by the idea of a garden visit! I’m very glad I went though, as Bridgette and Deborah were lovely hosts and their evident love for plants and growing things generally was the kind of gentle inspiration that gets you thinking positively about your own garden again, even in the depths of a grey and inclement winter.

On show were several very clever ideas: I really liked this planter made from an old fruit crate, and will definitely be stealing the general theme for my summer bulb planters this year – in fact on Sunday I went and bought some freesias simply to be able to plant up an old fruit box of my own!

The allium sculpture made of nails is very clever too – I showed the photograph to OH who is in charge of ‘hard’ landscaping, structures and sensible advice in the All Seasons garden and he harrumphed rather loudly, so I’m guessing that creating an allium from nails is not the easiest thing in the world … But that harrumph is often followed by a suggestion that links my wild imaginings to something a little more grounded in reality, so I am waiting, rather impatiently, to see what he will come up with that is 'like' an allium sculpture. I might have to remind him a few times, of course!

There were several lovely winter-flowering shrubs: a hammemalis of course, and a pretty virburnum which I am now completely mad for and wish to buy … I think it is Viburnum x bodnantense 'Dawn', and as you can see it bears small pink flowers on bare wood in January and those flowers have a light scent which is fresh and floral, quite unlink the winter daphne which I find a little overpowering, perhaps more like mahonia, but without the honey undertone that mahonia has. This failure of mine to remember the name has once again focused me on the idea that I really should buckle down to learning the proper latin nomenclature for all the plants that I love so much … maybe I shall make March my latin-learning month!

The Garden House greenhouse is well ahead of mine, which is still almost empty. I love peering into other gardener’s greenhouses, it’s like looking at the bookshelves in somebody’s house: it tells you a vast amount about their preferences, proclivities and habits!

Anyway, it was a lovely couple of hours, enlivened by home-made cake and demonstrations of how to create a winter planter and how to take hardwood cuttings. If you’re in the Brighton area, I thoroughly recommend a visit to this pretty, tiered, city garden and if you’re keen to learn about gardening, I’m sure Bridgette and Deborah are fantastic tutors!

Labels: "The Garden House", garden courses, garden review, greenhouse gardening, winter gardens, winter shrubs

The All Seasons Gardener at 3:45 AM 0 Comments

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Thursday, January 20, 2011

More signs of spring

Today has been ‘hunt the bulb’ day!

Usually by this time of year I have quite a few snowdrops but this year not a single one has appeared. It’s a bit worrying …

On the other hand, there are fat buds on the hellebores that I didn’t divide last year. The ones I did lift, split and replant are almost certainly sulking, because they really don’t like being disturbed, which is why I lift one third every year so that two thirds of the plants are always going to be in bloom.

The strange weather we’ve had: heavy frosts followed by a lot of mild rain, several times in succession, have led the birds into quite a frenzy of pecking behaviour so I’m hoping that by offering them fresh food daily they won’t take the crocuses to bits as soon as the flowers appear, but they probably will.

Labels: hellebores, snowdrops, spring bulbs

The All Seasons Gardener at 1:51 AM 0 Comments

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Monday, January 17, 2011

Mistletoe – crop for lovers

Fans of The Archers will know that Joe Grundy is hawking ‘mistletoe kits’ around Ambridge. Historically, mistletoe grew in orchards – so if you have either an old lime or elderly apple tree in the garden you could be in with a chance to produce a crop, but don’t try to use the berries from your Christmas decorations because they will be under-ripe. While they are beautiful, white and gleaming in December, they aren’t ready to germinate until March! 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.

To get a good harvest you need both male and female plants, and the male plant doesn’t have the same quality of berries, so you need to work with the yellower and more pendulous berries of the male plant as well as the bright white ones of the female, and when you harvest, cut from both plants or you will cause the growth to become unsustainable.

Bear in mind that birds like mistletoe too, and you might need to cover your clumps to keep them off while the berries ripen. Once you’ve cut your berries, uncover the plants to let the birds get in, as mistletoe is a fantastic bird and insect food that encourages unusual winter visitors to your garden – such as waxwings.

Using a clean knife, cut some shallow grooves in the bark of the tree, then squeeze the seeds, which are extremely sticky, out of the berries and poke them under the bark flaps. Cover the cuts with mesh or net to stop the birds picking the seeds out. You’ll need to put around six to few seeds into each area, as there’s no way of telling which seeds are male and which female. It can take five years to see berries on a new clump but after 18 months you should see a swelling on the branch where the mistletoe is taking hold.

Labels: Joe Grundy, mistletoe, The Archers, waxwings

The All Seasons Gardener at 4:33 AM 0 Comments

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Thursday, January 13, 2011

Recession-beating Gardening

This week I’ve had lunch with some other gardeners and realised there’s a big gap between some of us, who’ve been doing it for years, and others who are just getting their hands on a garden for the first time. The biggest gap seems to be expenditure: new gardeners are spending a lot more than the old guard! So here are some tips that make my gardening more cost effective.

1. If you can’t afford a posh trug or gardener’s belt, pick up one of those cardboard wine bottle carriers that supermarkets give away. You can put your pruners, gloves, labels and pen, seeds and hand tools in the different compartments and if you glue a bit of plastic bag to the bottom of the box, it will last a couple of months in weekly use.
2. I buy flower seeds with a friend – we agree on four or five varieties each and then split the packets as there are usually many more seeds in a packet than can be grown in the average smallish garden. To save seed for more than a year, get hold of those black canisters that 35mm camera film comes in, put the seeds in, label and store in the fridge.
3. Use old toothbrushes to clean out small pots and the mucky corners of greenhouses and cold frames that can harbour pests and diseases.

Labels: cheap gardening tips, recession-beating gardening, tips for gardeners

The All Seasons Gardener at 4:30 AM 0 Comments

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Monday, January 10, 2011

Signs of spring

Are far and few between in my garden right now, in fact it’s been so gloomy today I’ve struggled to take a single photo that didn’t look as if we were experiencing a partial eclipse!

Even so, here’s a welcome sight – spring bulbs. I know they look a little regimented but there’s a reason for that: this is my attempt to get bulbs to flower at least once before the squirrels get to them. In previous years I’ve planted bulbs in the ground or in containers and had less than 20% come up, owing to the depredations of the grey bushy-tailed rodent. So this year I tried a new system, planting under a metal mesh cover (you can just see it in the picture) heavy enough to stop the squirrels and with small enough mesh to stop them digging the bulbs out from in between.

The rows are so that I can see any gaps in the planting and in fact two bulbs haven’t appeared (yet) but that’s a massive improvement on past rates. These are iris stylosa and something else, by the way, not sure what the something else is, because it was a label-free packet given to me by a friend.

OH and I worked together to make this 'ancient' planter about four years ago. It's a blend of cement and potting compost ... smart, isn't it?

Labels: bulbs, garden planters, hypertufa, spring bulbs, squirrels

The All Seasons Gardener at 10:06 AM 0 Comments

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