The All Seasons Gardener

Spring flowers, or not, as the case may be

2012-02-16T03:26:00.003-08:00

Over at An Artist's Garden, there’s a wonderful blog about taking root cuttings. It caught my eye because Karen talks about which plants may be suitable for root cuttings and that one way of judging this would be to see which ones come up in the old place, after you thought you’d moved them to a new one. And in the list of potentials she has pasque flower…

How I wish this were true for me!

I have never got around to moving a pasque flower (aka pulsatilla, either rubra or vulgaris, both are gorgeous) as they never survive more than a year. Pulsatilla, generally, is said to resent being moved, but as it’s never been my experience to get one to the point where it’s lived long enough to need rehoming, that’s not been the issue for me. They also resent excessively wet winters and I think that’s our problem – they just get waterlogged. But I do love them as is usually the case with plants I find it difficult to grow, and I’m wondering if I couldn’t succeed growing them in ‘stone’ containers with really good drainage. Suddenly I have a deep desire to get more plants and attempt the experiment. I wonder if OH would notice …

Winter garden flowers

2012-02-14T05:14:00.003-08:00

I really struggle to understand why people have daffodils when they could have hellebores. I know it’s a matter of personal preference, and to a certain extent I blame Wordsworth and his poem which branded a certain flower on the public consciousness. But, to me, daffodils offer so little in terms of variety, while hellebores provide a superb range of colour from almost black through to pure white with every shade of cream, pink and purple in between.

Also, hellebores really thrive in snow, it seems to bring out the best in them. They love a rich soil and I will feed my generously after they flower, with blood fish and bone. When they become congested I lift them and cut them into three with a spade – smaller than that and they tend not to survive – even after division they may not flower in the first year, but they generally return the year after.

It's not just flowers that add winter colour - the pond is almost frozen but leaving some of the marginal iris to set 'berries' every year gives a chance for some excellent winter colour contrasts. I cut the berries back in spring so the plants don't multiply.

Wildlife and Winter

2012-02-09T05:17:00.000-08:00

I don’t mean to be difficult but really, the squirrel problem is becoming ridiculous. I accept, truly I do, that my problem is minor. Compared to James Alexander Sinclair, for example, who has moles, hedgehogs, cats, foxes and mice, a few squirrels would be nothing. But I don’t have a few, I have a plethora.

There are too many squirrels, and they are digging up my mulch (throwing it over their ratty little shoulders in wild abandon) in order to try and find anything at all edible in the soil beneath.

I am not violent, and I don’t even tap on the glass or send the dog out to chase off the little monsters – I know it’s a hard winter and they need to survive any way that they can, but I do object to them digging up my beautiful blooming iris reticulata and throwing them all over the lawn, just to get to imaginary nuts.

In addition, they are nipping off the berries, and this unrepentant fat-tailed rodent has just grabbed a bunch of pyracantha berries and is scoffing them like a Roman sybarite with a bunch of grapes!

Winter Gardening Tips

2012-02-06T03:20:00.000-08:00

It’s a tribulation to me that I can’t do much in the garden when the ground is frozen and the days are cold – but long and bitter experience has taught me that I always do more harm than good.

About the only tasks that can usefully be undertaken in really cold winter weather are essential maintenance of structures and pruning of some shrubs and fruit trees. We want to prune the big apple tree, and had set aside Sunday morning as a potential time to tackle it, but the frozen ground precluded any attempt: setting up ladders on ice is definitely dodgy, and even if you tie the top of the ladder into the tree (which you should, whenever possible) there’s still a 50% chance of the bottom of the ladder slipping away from you and leaving you dangling.

Similarly, walking on frozen lawns simply results in areas of dead or damaged grass that show up as brown patches in spring – it’s really not worth it. If you do have to walk on frozen grass for any reason, it’s better to put down a plank and walk along that, as it distributes your weight more evenly and doesn’t do so much harm.

We’ve checked the cascade into the pond, and it’s running fine, so that although 7/8ths of the water is covered with ice, the final eighth allows birds to drink and the water to be oxygenated for the fish. We’ve put out an enormous fat tower for the birds, and laid a plank over the one bit of grass that we might have to walk on, to get to the greenhouse, if it snows again and we can’t see the path. Otherwise we have very little to do except sit indoors and wait for the thaw. Of course, there are some consolations, like the iris finally flowering.

February Garden Tasks

2012-02-01T07:07:00.000-08:00

Okay, this is the garden in February, and yes, that is a compost bin lying on its side at the bottom of the garden. Rather foolishly I decided to move it just before the big freeze struck, and now I can’t dig the ground to seat it in, so it’s lolling around like a great big groke at the bottom of the garden. If you don’t know what a groke is, you obviously didn’t read the Moomintroll books as a child.

That apart, things look … okay. The grass is stupidly long, but who’s going to cut the lawn in January (not OH, that’s for sure, he had to cut it in late November and was not best pleased)! The white things on the wall are my plant labels, being washed and then repainted with the names of the annuals I am planting at home and at the allotment, this year. It’s too cold to do anything outdoors today, so there they will sit until the weather warms a little.

The cotoneaster along the fence is making a wonderful blaze, it looks like a flash of sunshine on an otherwise bitterly cold day. You can’t see any of the hellebores, of course, they are too small to show up, but there are subtle patches of colour in the garden which are quite delightful when you get close to them.

Apart from moving compost bins and marking out spots for annuals, my tasks this week include keeping an eye on the greenhouse plants, protecting tender plants from the extreme cold that’s suddenly arrived and spreading wood ash from the bonfire wherever it would be useful: that’s primarily away from the three Rs (roses, rhubarb, rhododendrons) and any fruit. Fortunately we only have roses in this garden, so I don’t have to worry too much. There's a good post on using ash over at My Tiny Plot.

I also like to turn over rocks and pebbles so that any slugs or snails hiding beneath may freeze to death or become bird food. It may seem a bit vindictive, but I think of it as serving the purposes of our feathered friends!

Winter colour and spring hopes

2012-01-30T05:09:00.001-08:00

The greenhouse is looking rather good, I think. The overwintering parsley is slow but sturdy and available for gremolata that makes winter stews worth eating (you can make gremolata with rosemary as well – which is great with lamb meals); the rocket is equally slow and very, very, very peppery (quick tip – if you grow rocket through the winter, cut the amount you want at least six hours before you want to eat it – the peppery flavour decreases with age); the lemongrass is really thriving – shooting up like herbal fireworks in fact; the pelargoniums are surviving well and the overwintering sweet peas (just out of sight on the staging) are definitely racing away.

In the garden, all is gold and purple, like an ancient Oriental despot’s finery – the crocus are shiny, the winter jasmine zingy and this iris stylosa is readying itself for a dramatic display. Now, if the broad beans will just start springing up, all will be well!

Greenhouse sowing

2012-01-26T08:43:00.000-08:00

We’re off! This year I overwintered my sweet pea seedlings from the autumn, so they didn’t need to be sown, which is usually an event that takes place in the last week of January: my son was born on 29th January and when he was a baby we used to call him sweet pea, so it’s become a tradition to sow them around the time of his birthday. Not this year though …

Instead I’ve started off the broad beans and bush beans and the purple Ipomeas are also in pots. I am only sowing to give the plants away this year, as it keeps the seed viable and as long as the people I give the plants to give me back a couple of dried seed pods, I shall be able to keep my stock going until I have somewhere to plant them again.

The little bulblets that I took off the parent bulbs when I lifted them and put them in storage over the winter are all fine – one or two have even begun to put out green growth in their trays of compost which is surprising as they are way too small to have stored enough energy to flower and survive. I suppose the really mild winter has had an effect on them too.

In the garden I’m having an anxious wait to see if the perennials I bought last year will survive – the Romneya looks okay, the Astrantia has vanished completely (but then, they always do) and the Echinacea appears to still be alive although OH, having seen it in flower in somebody else’s garden last year, muttered something to the effect that he won’t be at all disappointed if it doesn’t make it through into bloom in ours this year!

Flowers from the January garden

2012-01-24T01:52:00.001-08:00

This week’s vase contains hellebores and viburnum tinus. Although it’s a tiny little vase, it works really well because once the tealights are lit in the other holders, the gentle light reflects well off the pale flowers – and because the screen is set up on a mantel, the full effect of the beauty of the hellebores is available because they are slightly above average eye level and the freckled interior of the bell-shaped blooms is revealed.

Of course hellebores aren’t the easiest of flowers to work with: some people have an allergy to their sap and to be on the safe side I always wear gloves when cutting them or dividing the plants. Then they get airlocks very easily, so what I do is cut them as long as possible, then take them in the house, plunge them in cold water up to the blooms and cut them again, using a sharp knife rather than a pair of scissors – that means that water rushes into the hollow stems rather than air so they continue to take up water. To be really on the safe side, I then make pinholes every inch or so up the stem so that the air is forced out when the flowers are arranged in the vase.

Because they, and all other flowers cut from the garden at this time of year, are winter flowering, they don’t appreciate the warmth indoors very much – the best way to keep them going is to put the flower vase on the floor in the coldest room of the house overnight to revive them. If you have a porch and it doesn’t get morning sun, that’s an ideal place as long as it’s frost free.

The best way to display hellebores is always to float them, when they really become show stoppers, but for today I’m happy with my little bud vase of winter colour, and every time I walk into the room I get the light, faintly dusty, scent of the viburnum which is a delicious counterpoint to the gloom of winter.

Winter flowers ...

2012-01-16T07:57:00.000-08:00

Viburnum Tinus flowering beautifully

Hellebores starting to bud.

Snowdrops but no snow

2012-01-13T09:05:00.000-08:00

Apparently the spring flowers are weeks earlier than they should be, although in my garden the snowdrops actually seem to be a little behind this time last year! According to meteorological records there were only four air frosts in the last three months of 2011, compared to 35 in 2010, and that’s not good news for those contending with slugs and snails and the blasted, benighted, blithering whitefly that are plaguing brassica growers across the UK.

So, snowdrops are in full bloom in places that don’t usually open their doors to visitors for a further fortnight, which traditionally heralds a good snowdrop viewing week, and daffodils are in bloom in sheltered areas. I’ve seen silver birch in full bud in Sussex and the robins have been singing for at least a week.

My unforced hyacinth bulbs are showing, as are some of the anemone de Caen who will certainly suffer for their presumption, and I just wonder how long things are going to survive their winter reprieve before a killer frost mows them down?

Shame corner – the greenhouse

2012-01-10T07:21:00.000-08:00

I just found these two poor babies, like the babes in the wood, hidden beneath and behind a heap of pots that were in the corner of one of the shelves in the greenhouse.

They’ve grown all in one direction, as if they were Tradescantia, and I had to lop about five inches of pendant growth from each one when I repotted them, but they had a brilliant root ball so I’m confident that they will survive the decapitation.

They are dianthus, a supposed perennial that never survives the winter in our heavy clay. I took the cuttings from a friend’s garden and then totally forget about them. They’ve survived six months in a small pot of John Innes #2 which suggests they are amazingly hardy (and undemanding) but I know that unless I remember to lift them in autumn and put them in the greenhouse, they will rot below ground and as soon as I brush against them in the late winter, they will fall apart as if only held together by spiderwebs and the memory of once being a viable plant.

As far as I can recall, they are single, red and very fragrant. I love the smell of pinks, of all kinds, and these appealed to me as the little red flowers against the silver-grey foliage were dramatic and appealing.

So I’ve replanted, lopped and installed on the kitchen windowsill to give them a chance to recover and be turned round every few days so they grow straight(er). I’ll pop them back out into the heated greenhouse in February and get at least one summers’ scent out of them.

I am a bit ashamed of myself though – plant neglect is not one of my usual sins and these two are obviously tough beasts to have made it this far.

Forcing, faking and flowering

2012-01-04T06:43:00.001-08:00

Victoria has a brilliant post about the natural and unnatural history of the poinsettia, that most forced of winter flowers (not that it’s a flower, exactly) which led me to reflect on the nature of flowers in winter in a temperate climate and why we invest so much in something so transient. And truly, so fake, because it can hardly survive here even with a lot of care.

I don’t like poinsettias that much, have never owned one, and never bought one for somebody else. I do have a dirty secret though – at this time of year I haunt garden centres, buying up the pots of forced hyacinth bulbs that they sell of a half price or better between now and February. Often they are droopy – the flowers hang over the edge of the pot instead of standing up like soldiers in overlarge busbys. I don’t mind that. I buy them for their fragrance, to which I am addicted, and then to plant them out in the garden, where they will flower much later in the following year, but flower they will.

I don’t force any bulb – I am too lazy. But I do like to have something going on in the garden at all times, and right now it’s my winter planters that have lovely tall stems of miniature iris already, the first anemones are going for it (why? It’s way too early but they obviously want to beat the rush) and the stubby emergence of the hyacinths has begun too. It’s just as exciting, to me, as the whole showy, fragrance-free, delicacy of the poinsettia, but my bulbs will survive without needing much more care than a regular repotting and they provide fragrance, colour and – dare I say it? – excitement, for many years.

The long and the short of it . . .

2011-12-28T07:13:00.000-08:00

OH is pruning the apple trees. One of the problems with being a sentimental gardener is that nothing good ever gets removed so the best never gets a chance. These apple trees are the bane of my life and if I’d been a different kind of gardener – the sensible kind – they would no longer exist. What I should have done, if I’d had any sense, was to hire a tree surgeon to visit the house in the week before I moved in and take them out, roots and all. But OH loved them as soon as he saw them, despite the fact that they are huge, unwieldy and unproductive. So they stayed.

I say they are unproductive, but while one gave us about five apples this year, the other, in a bumper year for fruit, decided to produce about 50 kilos of large, pappy, blemished apples which it then deposited on our next door neighbour’s flat garage roof. I’ve gingerly tiptoed around up there, trying to remove them all via a bucket and rope system (all a bit Heath Robinson) but their garage still smells like cider vinegar and I feel guilty.

And then there’s the winter pruning – every year the trees put on vast upward-facing growth that supports little or not fruit (apart from the one tree that had a joke with us this year) and which has to be pruned out or it shades the entire garden. So OH has been clambering up the ladder every day over the holidays to thin out the growth. And I am looking at the heap of apple prunings (and bits of iceberg rose, which is definitely the best thing about that apple tree) and defiantly not picking them up and doing anything tidy with them.

Still, the rosa mundi will be happier for the extra light … if it doesn’t end up being destroyed by having rose clippings, a stepladder and/or a substantial OH land on it.

Winterising

2011-12-22T02:52:00.000-08:00

I’m busy getting ready for winter. This time last year we were blanketed in snow, so today I’m amazed to be working in sunshine so warm I don’t need a coat. What I’m focused on is my evergreens. Some are exposed and in Sussex that means they have to endure strong to gale force winter winds, which can drive some of the more tender varieties into permanent dormancy. So I’m wrapping my most vulnerable evergreens in sacking as it allows them to breathe. What I do, rather than wrapping the actual plant, is hammer in a few fairly substantial sticks around the plant, then weave the sacking in and out of them to create a windbreak. If snow is forecast then I’ll go out and wrap more sacking around the plant itself but I find that creating things like the windbreaks one puts up on the beach is usually sufficient and doesn’t lead to rot and fungal build-up in the plant base which can happen if you overwrap the stem of a plant for long periods.

I’m also cutting back any of the perennials that don’t naturally desiccate in winter, such as the Alchemillas. Plants that dry out, such as Echinacea, normally do fine with their heads left on, and add some winter interest too, but the moister plants often rot if they freeze. Our Arum lilies are still showing leaf, for example and a strong frost just turns them to slime, so I hack them right back and they seem to thrive on it.

What I want for Christmas . . .

2011-12-16T02:35:00.000-08:00

Isn’t this elegant? I would really like two of these for my patio corners – they aren’t cheap but they would definitely outlast me and I’d be able to have some wonderful planting schemes.

My gardening hero, Beverley Nicholls, had two wonderful lead pineapple shaped planters that he found in a salvage yard: his books contain accounts of how he put them on pillars by his gates and filled them with exciting displays, sometime plants but sometimes magnificent floral displays – I rather fancy doing something like that myself1

It’s snowed for about half an hour here, then it rained with demonic intensity and blew a gale, and now it’s completely still and calm – weird. I’m about to go and check the trees and the fence posts while the weather allows.

End of year blog of shame

2011-12-14T05:30:00.000-08:00

Almost exactly a year ago, OH tackled the monster palm tree. He left a tall stump that we were feeding the birds from, as we had deep snow last December. Guess what, a whole year on, we still have a four foot stump! So maybe this year we’ll get rid of the stump and in 2012 we’ll plant something else – at this rate I’ll definitely have to live to be 100 to improve the garden. Isn't it hideous?

Karen was talking about time and I totally concur: behind the stump you can see the cotoneaster I have been impotently threatening to remove since we moved into the house 15 years ago … one and a half decades and I’m still talking about it!

And next to the cotoneaster, those ugly bamboo stems that OH promised to help me get rid of four years ago. Seriously, we have a procrastination problem, and it’s shaming.

So I’m going to start tomorrow. And I’m going to start by cutting back that cotoneaster, and working out a planting scheme to replace it, and buying the plants with any money I get for Christmas, and then maybe next year I won’t have to post this particular blog of shame … maybe.

Small winter garden pleasures

2011-12-09T03:33:00.000-08:00

I was lucky this week – I went to a garden centre for entirely other purposes and came across something that’s been on my ‘wish list’ for a long time: rosa mundi Gallica (which is rumoured to have been named after love affair.

It’s a really lovely rose, very showy and with a pleasant but not very developed scent. It takes up a lot of space and like many of the older roses can be prone to mildew so it needs to be pruned to be very open in the heart of the shrub and with good air circulation at ground level. Given all that it needs, it flowers only once, but with an absolute flush of striped pale and deep pink (or light crimson) flowers with golden stamens, such a number of them that they can actually bow down the branches and require support. In early autumn the large and bright red hips form and they are popular with birds. So having found it, I’ve dug the hole …

The mahonia is in full flower and whenever the sun shines it’s got the full attention of the very last of the bees. The fragrance is like honey and lemon so it’s no surprise that the bees love it.

End of Month view

2011-12-01T09:02:00.000-08:00

Should have posted this yesterday but was hoping to nip out all day and get a final photo of the pond – silly idea really, the rain went from vertical to 45 degrees to nearly horizontal and back again with hideous regularity.

Anyway, a year ago the garden looked like this … lots of things in pots (they have all gone), lots of nerines (long over and gone this year, not a single one left in bloom yesterday), there’s still a vine on the shed and lots of leaves on the Katalpa.

This year’s garden looks very different. No pots and no vine – which has gone up to the allotment to provide some fence cover there. I have planted many many many many (an extortionate amount, in both money and time) cyclamen because I have finally given up the idea of having bulbs other than snowdrops. Whether it’s our clay soil that rots them off (very likely) or the squirrels that dig them up (also very likely) we never get more than one year’s flowering from our bulbs so although the cyclamen were a large capital outlay, they do survive in the garden and will give us a fantastic show of autumn colour instead of the spring blaze I was hoping for – different season, same effect, or at least that’s the plan.

The rain has beaten every leaf off the Katalpa which annoyed the Dickens out of me. I do love the smell of fallen Katalpa leaves but there’s no fragrance at all once it rains and the tree, once leafless is a dispiriting little object. The viburnum is in flower, and there are still four blooms on the Iceberg rose that has taken the apple tree hostage, but apart from that rain really has stopped play in my Sussex garden.

In fact it was so dark and gloomy yesterday that it was impossible to get a decent picture of anything at all. Well, almost anything … there was this.

Final November tasks

2011-11-29T06:31:00.000-08:00

It’s blowing a literal gale outside – I’m watching my bamboo whipping to and fro like a cheerleader’s hair. Mind you, I’m not exactly depressed by that, I’ve been trying to get OH to cut it back so that I can blowtorch it to death for several months now, but he hasn’t got round to it. The bamboo (black) was one of my enthusiastic mistakes and I really don’t like it and wish to be rid of it. It’s invasive stuff and I must have been having a brainstorm when I decided it was the right thing to plant by the pond.

At the end of November it’s also time to vacuum up the final apple leaves, and the fallen apples that are lurking, so they don’t damage the lawn or make the paving slippery. Our apple trees are not healthy creatures: they are ancient and prone to all kinds of disease so we don’t make leaf mould from them, we just dry and burn them. I also cut back the lavender and cotton lavender, cistus and alpines so that they have good air circulation, as they are more likely to rot from damp and cold than suffer from the effects of a dry frost.

I’m also digging over the back border which is east-facing, prone to waterlogging and worth breaking up now so that frost can get in and continue the work. I simply rake off the mulch, turn the soil between the plants a little, digging in spent compost from the tomato and pepper plants that were in the greenhouse, and then leave it exposed to the elements so that the soil is fractured by frost and ice. Every three or four years I really work up this border as it is the worst area of the garden for fertility.

Once the wind drops a bit we shall trim back the pond plants, taking off all dead growth from the marginals, dividing the marigolds and replanting them and dropping the containers one ledge deeper into the pond so that they are more protected from freezing.

Birds, food and felines

2011-11-23T02:11:00.000-08:00

I notice that Victoria has a blog about a subject that’s troubling me too. Since our little old cat, Fera, died two years ago, neighbouring cats have begun birding in our garden. We usually feed in winter and keep edible plants going in summer and autumn but I’m wondering how many of the birds have just become feline fodder.

The problem is that Fera never bothered to hunt but was ferocious about seeing off any cat that tried to hunt on her territory. She was small but born in Dagenham and had a clear sense of her own rights and a willingness to die (or kill) to defend them that had many a large male cat cowering in fear. Without her, our bird paradise has become more of a killing ground.

We’ve tried orange peel (didn’t work) and water pistols (work but only if you remember to keep them filled up and by the door, which I forget all the time) but haven’t come up with a long-term solution other than to get another cat, and there’s no guarantee a new cat wouldn’t be a bird hunter!

Watching a long-tailed tit balancing on the cotoneaster this morning, oblivious to next door’s moggy sidling along the fence, I realised I’ve been living in a dreamworld and I really need to do something about this – but what?

November Greenhouse Tasks

2011-11-18T08:47:00.000-08:00

Three years ago I had no greenhouses: now I have three (okay, two greenhouses and one glass-fronted potting shed) which feels like a magnificent amount of luxury. It does also mean quite a bit more winter work:

1. The tender plants are now all in one greenhouse or another – because they need a lot of air circulation to get through the winter, each pot has a six inch ‘exclusion zone’ around it, to stop pests and diseases spreading through overcrowding. It’s amazing how few plants you can get into three greenhouses on that basis – how did I ever cope with none?
2. The six inch zone does make it much easier to check over the plants every week and take off dead leaves or hunt down pests like baby snails that lurk under the pots and then sneak out and have a good munch in midwinter!
3. We’ve also cleaned out the gutters, not that we’ve had much rain recently and checked that the heater is working: it doesn’t get switched on until January, when the peas get planted into disposable pots, but it’s easier to ensure all is well now, than to wait until it’s time to plant seeds and then have to rush around and get all a new heater or components to repair the old one.
4. We haven’t topped up the greenhouse insulation yet, but probably over the weekend we’ll whack the bubblewrap around the inside of the glass. It’s about the right time to do it although the weather still seems very mild.
5. I’ve also sown our winter lettuce and rocket, started off another pot of basil and divided the chives so that we can have a few chives with our winter potatoes.

As I was living tender perennials to overwinter, I found this handsome chap in hiding - I hope he's going to find a suitably clement spot in which to spend the cold months!

Mid-month view

2011-11-15T08:08:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I haven’t posted a beginning of the month photo (or any other full length photo) of the garden for several months. That’s because, once again, half the garden is full of bits of non-garden equipment that were supposed to only be around for a weekend but are still cluttering paths and clogging up beds that I had hoped would be empty and dug over (or at least dig-over-able!) by now.

There are a few very minor compensations for this: like the corner of the garden that shelters this coneflower and a few late nasturtiums that would usually be long over by now: I think the pile of wood that has been leaning against the wall by this otherwise neglected spot has protected the plants from the harsher winds of November, so that this last insanely optimistic burst of summer colour has emerged, just when I needed it!

Winter flowers

2011-11-11T04:03:00.000-08:00

I’m always a bit confused when people tell me that there’s nothing going on in their garden through the winter. I agree that it’s not the most exciting time of year, but there’s still a lot going on and for me:

• The winter greenhouse is stocked with overwintering plants and cleaned ready for spring germination.
• My winter bulbs are already well advanced – I get a little nervous when this happens, especially as this year’s nerines are over and done with, several weeks before I usually expect the later ones to begin, but there’s no arguing with them.
• Mulching has begun.

We mulch with wood chippings – some tender and beloved plants also get special winter wrappings, like my romneya Coulteri which is being carefully trimmed back to a foot or so tall, then given a loose wrap of straw inside a wire frame which used to be one of those huge baskets that supermarkets fill with bargain items.

We mulch the winter bulbs and all our planters with pea gravel, partly to hold in nutrients that otherwise get washed away by heavy winter rain and partly to deter squirrels which otherwise insist on burying nuts in all the tubs and planters!

The crinondedron also gets a straw wrap but some other plants, notably the mahonias, actually get the mulch cleared away from their roots in November. An old gardener from Oregon once told me that if you wanted a mahonia to flower and fruit, let the frost nip at her root! Now I have no idea if there’s substance to this, but I do like my mahonias to flower and so I carry out this act of exposure annually and I do get a very good show of early flowers, so I shall continue to do so! As for fruit, the Oregon grape, as the berries are called, are rather like sloes, they add a delicious tart and complex flavour to jams and jellies, so getting extra berries is a good thing too.

Preparing for winter

2011-11-03T04:35:00.000-07:00

It’s never too early to get ready for the worst of the weather. It’s time to move terracotta pots into the greenhouse, giving them cool, dry place that stops them cracking under moisture expansion as water turns to ice. Plastic items such as pots and furniture that may become brittle should also be brought inside. Metal items should be cleaned, and where necessary primed and painted with weather-resistant paint to allow all winter for the paint to cure.

Snow generally slides off the corrugated panels of a greenhouse, especially if it’s heated, but if it starts to build up in a heavy winter, brush it off with a broom to stop the roof carrying too much weight.

Carry out a weekly check that any plants being over-wintered in the greenhouse are healthy: pick off discoloured leaves and any dead flowers to prevent disease. Watering greenhouse plants is a sparing winter process, and ensuring good air circulation is vital to stop rot and fungal diseases.

Paths need clearing of fallen leaves and this is where a leaf blower is valuable. There’s a wide range available: some suck, some blow, many do both, and all help a gardener to keen things tidy and safe. Fallen leaves, once gathered, can be added to the compost heap to nourish the garden next year.

Firewood has become essential to many of us, especially as fuel bills soar. A log splitter is a good investment if you have a wood-burning stove, as it removes most of the hard work, reduces the risks of using a blade to cut wood and stops splinters flying around. Log splitters also allow you to cut large amounts of wood, ensuring a good winter supply that keeps things toasty-warm on the home front.

If you are buying logs to split, ash is generally considered to be the best wood, burning with high heat; beech is a good choice if well seasoned; and willow is becoming an increasingly popular product as new British willow woodlands produce environmentally sustainable coppiced wood for burning.

Winter gardening – a question of scale

2011-11-01T04:13:00.000-07:00

This is the time of year when big and splashy tends to vanish from the garden – okay there’s winter jasmine on the way and the glory of the winter viburnums still ahead of us, but really it’s all about the small scale for the next few months.

So that’s when my winter planters come into their own – this one is almost tropical in its colours: flamingo pink, cactus green and deep purple. The forms of the plants are also sensual and shapely, I find their curvy, plumpness to be a wonderful counterpoint to the dramatic black and white or the subtle grey on grey that winter so often offers.

Of course the scale of this particular planter is titchy. In a macro photo it looks like a dramatic desertscape, as if an armadillo could be lurking in their somewhere, along with a couple of guys in big hats on horses.

In reality it’s small enough to pick up and carry around (just) although it’s a heavy little planter so I don’t move it more than once or twice a year. You can see by the size of the little trug next to it that it's not much bigger than A4, although it's nicely deep and thick-walled so that the plants don't get too much wind chill or desiccation. Even so, the solidity of the stone effect, the richness of the colours of the succulents and their generous forms add up to something that punches weigh above its weight in terms of impact, particularly when there’s snow on the ground and these rosettes of colour punch through it like Christmas decorations with attitude.