Garden Notes November, 'Preparing for Winter'

Hi again,
Our Parish Magazine Garden Notes for November were squeezed out by some dire warnings about the liver. Very timely, perhaps. For those who would have liked to read them, here are the Notes, on the topical theme of preparing for winter.

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By the time you are reading this, frosts will be close by.  November is a busy month in the garden to tidy up and to prepare less tender plants for the cold weather. Heated greenhouses  require a deep purse, but there are ways of saving tender plants unless temperatures sink impossibly low. By November we will have bubble-wrapped the greenhouse to add protection – large sheets with big bubbles, easily available and reusable year after year. One or two vulnerable plants will become houseplants, such as the white bougainvillea.  We have experimented with both lifting dahlias, and leaving them in the ground under a deep mulch. Both seem to work equally well. If leaving them in, react quickly after the first frost, cut the dahlia down and pile the mulch (an old compost heap perhaps) over the stump. Old bits of carpet (preferably without rubber backing) can also serve. On non-hardy fuchsias, we generally buy new in spring rather than spend money on preserving the old, although it is worth experimenting with lifting and storing. My grandfather rarely lost a fuchsia, but is no longer around to ask, alas. My simple recommendation is to grow more hardy fuchsias, such as Fuchsia magelanica (red/purple and pink/white),  Hawkshead (white), Display (pink),  Garden News (pink), Madame Corelissan (red & white), Delta’s Sarah (blue & white), Genii and many others. Some may lose their leaves in hard winters, but never panic. We always leave our potted agapanthus outside, sheltered by a house wall. Succulents such as aeoniums will need protection, but sedums are relatively hardy.

November is a time of tidying and preparation. Normally shrubs and climbers are pruned after flowering to provide maximum growing time for next year’s flowers. However we had to delay a hard prune of the rose ‘Rambling Rector’ and the white wisteria as they provided a safe nesting site for a whole range of birds. Hard pruning it now will probably sacrifice full flowering next summer, but it has to be done. Getting beds clean of weeds is an autumn job if you want a good start in spring. Bindweed and ground elder is our bane, both of which need weedkiller even if you, like us, try to minimise garden chemicals. Parts of our garden has not been ‘fed’ for years, so digging in farmyard mature will help the soil retain moisture even in drought. Parts of our garden have clay soil, so have sharp sand sprinkled liberally when digging. This gradually breaks up the clay and makes the soil more friable.

Some plants are best moved in winter when in or near dormancy. We have a young Victoria plum which needs moving, and a young apple. Roses also must be moved in dormancy. We have just moved a dwarf Japanese prunus (flowering cherry) which judging by the lack of effective roots will need a great deal of TLC.

October-November is the time to put in bulbs. We are mixing daffodils and tulips – a refurbished bed with white multi-headed ‘Thalia’ dafs will mix with black tulips, ‘Queen of the Night’. Later in the season, penstemons and astrantias have been planted for summer colour. We prefer to have blocks of same cultivars rather than mixing. Some areas are right for dwarf types, and other beds for full size flowers. There is a considerable choice today – yellow, white, even pink, mixed, with trumpets and without, with single or double flowers. To thrive, daffodils need reasonable light and need to be in a position where the leaves can remain on to feed the bulb for next year. Planting in a lawn means that the patch cannot be mown until June. Paths can be cut through the ‘meadow’ but this can be a bit of an eyesore that you must tolerate. It helps to remove dandelions. In beds the task is simpler, planning a succession where other flowering plants are scarcely visible at daffodil time but fill out to hide the daffodil leaves later. Our favourites for this is golden spirea and peonies. Another idea is to grow the dafs in large pots, two or three layers of bulbs for a dense show. Include slow release fertiliser in the soil mix.  After flowering feed with liquid fertiliser and as the leaves shrivel store the pots in an invisible area of the garden, or place planks over the top and stand pots of trailing plants on this new ‘shelf’. Then they are cleared out next November, remove the plants and let the daffodils sprout again. I find, if I remove the bulbs and store them, they never get planted next year.

One final point. If you divide a plant, don’t throw away plant material that could be found a good home. Be a good neighbour.    

                                                                                                                

Stephen and Jean Bigger. 2014

Garden Notes (Blunsdon) March

GARDEN NOTES   MARCH

Imagine a plant with the following name: “Growing from a bulb, spear-like leaves, yellow flower with trumpet in spring, with acorn-sized seed pod afterwards”. Now translate that into Latin, and you have an old-style plant name – for a daffodil of course.

Plants have both common names and Latin names. The wild daffodil is known also as a Lent Lily, The best site for them near here is Dimock in Gloucestershire but we knew them first in North Yorkshire. The names we use today go back to Carl Linnaeus who invented a system meant to be simple. He used mythology on occasion: as we write this the Iris is in flower and is advertised for the feastday of Saint Valentine – Iris was the Greek goddess of sea, sky and rainbow, blue like an iris flower. She carries a ewer, a waterpot, and fills the clouds with rain, so she is busy at the moment. Irises flowering now are the bulbous ‘reticulata’ hybrids, essential plants for the spring garden with commercial names such as ‘Harmony’, ‘Pauline’, ’Jenny’, ‘George’ – but our favourite is the pale blue ‘Katharine Hodgkin’. Reticulata, literally ‘net’, refers to the net of fibre around the bulb. A hybrid will have cross-pollinated different species. Commercial names have a marketing function; named plants unfortunately rarely come ‘true’ from seed but revert to their original mix of species.

The most topical plant for February is the snowdrop, resembling a tear-drop in shape but as white as the snow, or even milk. In plant mythology, snow flakes dropped to earth and became flowers to cheer up Adam and Eve after a hard winter. Its Latin name Galanthus joins the Greek gala, ‘milk’ with anthus, ‘flower’. Its common form in galanthus nivalis, ‘of the snow’. The name snowdrop dates at least back to 1633. It is not a native species, but when it was brought over from Turkey is a mystery. There is also a double (‘full-flowered’) form named galanthus nivalis flore plena There are hundreds of different varieties, the differences visible only to specialist collectors, but of these tall snowdrops are well worth looking out for. Of the rarest forms (such as yellow tinted forms) a single rare bulb might cost you hundreds of pounds. Round hear snowdrops of many varieties are best seen at Colesbourne Park near Cirencester – but the first weekend in March will probably be your only time to go. The Elwes family who live there have the tall galanthus elwesii named for them, an AGM well worth stocking in the garden. By the time you read this, garden centres may well be selling off pots of snowdrops which you can sink into the lawn for next year.

The Lent Lily we began with was given the name Narcissus by Linnaeus after the classical myth of narcissus the youth who fell in love with his own reflection in the pond. Wild daffodils have been hybridised into the miniature and dwarf varies offered for natualising in grass, of which Tête a Tête has a stranglehold. There are many better, albeit more expensive types with different shapes and colours – white, orange and now even pink. They are best planted as bulbs in Autumn, but again, potted bulbs can be bought in now.

Daffodils are divided into trumpet, large cup, small cup, double-flowered, triandrus (multi-flowered per stem), cyclamineus, poeticus (pheasant-eyed) and wild. There is an enormous range so it is fun to experiment. Our garden has the remnants of Jetfire, 10 inch but robust flowers with orange trumpets. Of the whites, Mount Hood is ever more difficult to find, but Ice Follies and Ice Wings are  passable alternatives. Bravoura is now impossible to source, and I have found it beautiful but not robust. Pheasant Eyes have never liked our garden. Of the miniatures, the best catalogue we have is from www.miniaturebulbs.co.uk, a Yorkshire company. If only for the pictures, the catalogue is worth a drool.

Finally, in flower now, the native hellebore kept its well-known name into Latin – helleborus. Most garden varieties are hybrids, giving a wide range of colour, but there are many wild varieties.

Our last comments are a warning. You will be tempted with baby plants like fuchsias to grow on, plug plants etc. These are tender, one frost and they are finished, so you will need to give them protection. We have so far been spared hard frosts, but it’s best not to be too complacent. We have however bought in from Duchy Nursery in Cornwall a collection of unusual fuchsias which are sitting inside on a windowsill. Since there are two dozen of them, it needs to be a big windowsill. Ten or so were bred by John Wilson at the then Lechlade Fuchia Nursey (now a garden centre) and he gave his new plants names beginning with Lechlade – e.g. Lechlade Tinkerbell. John Wilson then moved to Reading and his later new plants are prefaced by Whiteknights (e.g. Whiteknights Amerthyst). We will let you know how they get on. If anyone has any Lechlade or Whiteknights varieties, please get in touch.

Stephen & Jean Bigger.