English Garden Eclectic

For quite some time now I have had an interest in annuals. That these useful plants have become the basis for the annual meadow seed mixes that looked so stunning in the Olympic Park during 2012 is not a surprise. Many are very hardy, weather resistant,easy to grow, low maintenance and have a long season of interest.

They also give a garden a quality of fecundity and abundance, a wild touch. They evoke the feel of an idealised summer meadow, and can be just as effective in a small space as in a large one, an urban setting as much as a rural one.

In fact I am so taken with them that I have written a talk about them within recent months.

It is a little late for New Year’s resolutions. This post is less about the traditional idea of a resolution. It is far more about pulling together thoughts and ideas prompted by much of my present reading.

As I write, we are just entering a phase of snow and cold. But for all that, in under 8 weeks, many of us will be well along with the results of our sowing annuals, tender or hardy, ready for this year’s garden displays.

Obviously it is impossible to predict what kind of weather we will get this year. That is something way beyond our control.The ongoing instability and unpredictability of the weather is going to continue. Many climatologist even go as far as to say it will get a lot worse.This will affect many crops and ornamentals that we grow. I think we would all profit from not relying on traditional timetables and seasonal tasks. Get out on days when the ground can be worked.  

 This all rather calls into question traditional sources of tasks/advice for this month/week – written far in advance of the actual month - and in a vacuum caused by the copy deadlines of newspapers and magazines. By the time we read the articles, the season has moved on. Or not been at all as predicted. We need to work when we can- make doing the garden more of a priority on a decent, dry day for working outside. Non-essential activities can wait for a rainy day. Robin Lane-Fox was discussing just this topic in last Saturday’s gardening section of the Financial Times..  For once I find myself agreeing with him. Despite my generally differing views on the routine use of powerful chemicals in gardening. My own experience bears out not a few points in his article. The wet season of 2012 was perfect for camellias. My own rather small, potted specimen, under a metre high, of Camellia x williamsii St EWE has 25 flower buds on it as I type. Incredible. Far less good were  many full-petalled rose varieties. Flowers were ruined by rain and  leaves suffered heavily with black-spot. Many older roses, like the Bourbon varieties, hate wet, cool seasons. Rosa ICEBERG managed to flower very well and heavily in several gardens where I either work, or pass by regularly. This despite all of them having a light speckling of leaves attacked by blackspot. My recommendation then, for this new season, would be not to grow plant varieties and species that really like much more warmth and far less rain than we tend to get here in the British Isles. Also, avoid ones that are effectively slug-bait. Dahlias and cosmos did well. So did many tender salvias. Hardy annuals like cornflowers and California poppies gave a long display with dead-heading. Asters and hardy herbaceous phlox were wonderful. Build on your own experiences of what did well. In terms of potatoes, stick more to early varieties and the new ones that are particularly blight-resistant. Bear these observations in mind as you order your seeds and bulbs.

Like all gardeners, I am always looking forward to the coming season, to next year, to those seeds germinating – often for them to turn-up in the first place – to an avidly awaited event, a future point in time.

It’s what growing plants and having gardens –  be it acres or a few pots – does to us. Looking ever hopefully forwards.

Despite the early drought into March 2012, and a relatively dry winter 2011-2012, we have just had the wettest year since 1910 in the UK.

So what of 2013? So far in this winter, we have avoided severe winter weather. Severe wet yes, but not significant freezes. The land remains very soggy indeed. Travelling up and down the country I have seen that a large proportion of fields are flooded. The Thames has been very high indeed. Old Deer Park near the Thames at Richmond remains underwater, as it has been now for several weeks if not months. So what is to come?

I have made some efforts to try and find someone who will commit to any kind of prediction for this winter in the UK – but to no avail. However, my idly looking at science magazines in a local branch of WH SMITH, did turn up something.

It would seem that the climatological data resulting from recent observed changes in the jet-stream, and ongoing Arctic ice-cap melting, favours a severe winter. This from a N America climatologist writing in  SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN recently ( Why winters are harsher: by Charles H. Greene – Dec 2012).

So far we have already avoided a bout of extreme cold that hit E & Central Europe a month or so ago. It was prevented from coming as far west as the UK by the jet stream’s opposing action. The same mild, windy and wet that was and is making a mess of the remaining ‘skeletons’ of dead flower stems and seed-heads of gardens based on perennials, such as in the picture above. So much so that I saw them being removed at RHS Wisley on a visit just a few weeks ago – and this on land that is sandy and drains well.

Our usually stormy winters are why I think any big perennial planting scheme in the UK – or any small one either – needs supporting shrubs to give structure. The dead stems are not likely to make it too far into winter without collapsing. Neat, long-season evergreens like phlomis, an ever-grey small shrub in the planting pictured above -at RHS Wisley. This particular one is the neat, and very silver Phlomis italica.

As I can’t predict exactly what is going to happen for the rest of the winter, I am going back to my seed catalogues and notes.  As someone once remarked to me many years ago, ‘ If you don’t like the weather ( in the UK), just wait a bit….’

Sound advice. In the meantime, Happy 2013 to all of my readers.

After the wettest season on record for a century, we are now less than 5 weeks off of the end of this year. I have been putting gardens to bed for some clients over the past several weeks. The frost is likely to hit everywhere by the end of the week. When it does, I shall be lifting dahlias for storage until next year.

Gardening programmes like BBC’s GARDENERS WORLD have already finished their runs for the year. As Monty Don recently commented on that programme, it has been a good year for some plants. Fuchsias have grown and flowered well. Far better than in recent, drier years. Whereas potatoes and tomatoes have gone down with blight, and pelargoniums/’geraniums’ have done badly and had rust and other fungal diseases, hardly growing at all.

For hardy shrubs and trees this has been a year of considerable extension growth. The increase has been dramatic.

Amongst plants I have been lifting this week as part of bringing the season to a close, are some sub-tropical bedding subjects. Plants like the Ethiopian Ensete ventricosum Maurelii illustrated opposite, and the variegated canna – Canna PRETORIA. Cuttings are taken of some plants, such as the red-leaved Iresine herbstii in the picture. Space in greenhouses is at a premium with all the plants that need protection. Cuttings take up a lot less room In Central London, the micro-climate allows many tender plants to remain in situ over the winter. Until recent cold winters came along, my colleague Chris Raeburn, Head Gardener at the Phoenix Garden could rely on the more hardy scented geraniums coming through the winter unscathed.  He had scented leaf varieties growing as permanent shrubs. Unfortunately, these no longer survive there as they did. They are back to being tender plants, put out for the summer. For the moment, the Phoenix Garden is closed as a new building is being constructed, and hard landscaping work is going on. I look forward to the re-opening in 2013. 

 The large, established specimens of the Canary Island date palm – Phoenix canariensis ( see above)- still amaze me as I walk towards Kensington High Street. This is more a plant we expect to see on holiday in Southern Spain, or the South of France. Currently there are four all quite close to one another at Kensington, but I do know of one other not so far from there on a roundabout near Westminster and Vauxhall Bridge. At this point I am not going to try and second-guess what plants will make it through this winter. Rather, I wanted to look at plants that wouldn’t, and at ones that obviously have. This through some extremes too.  The weather people have become far more cautious about predicting the winter. I haven’t been able to track down any I would consider reputable, neither online nor anywhere else. Will we have more rain? I certainly hope not. Or snow? Prolonged freezes? I suppose we will all just have to wait and see. In the meantime, I am looking at seed catalogues, making lists, putting some more tender subjects into storage, and helping to plant a few hardy trees and shrubs. One very good thing about gardening, it makes us look forward. we are always thinking about next season.

Recently I have been looking at the posts for a lot of other garden-bloggers. Some are far better known and established than I am. From what I have been reading I detect that people are wanting change. For now I’ll just deal with in the gardening sphere.

This is something that I have been thinking about for some years myself now. It would seem that I am far from being alone in this. But what kind of change? If what has gone before has largely run its course, what’s next?

At the moment there are several ongoing strands in UK garden culture. They are some of them of historical origin , and some very much recent developments. For me, many of them have exciting aspects, and great potentials. However, none ever seem quite to fulfil them fully. It’s a bit like gardening books. Most have saving chapters, but none quite do the job.

There are no doubt others, but the ones I will look at seem to be the main ones. Modernism and minimalism seem to be too much about paving and materials. Empty spaces, and none of those untidy living things. I think I can leave these areas to trendy show garden-makers. For most of us they offer little or nothing. So the categories are broadly as follows:

Edwardian style gardens- Inspired by the great houses of the late 19th & early 20th centuries. Highly-cultivated, high-maintenance. Typified by the works of Gertrude Jekyll and her collaborator, the architect Edwin Lutyens. Very much alive in many of the well-known National Trust gardens. Considered to be quintessentially English. Amongst still exisiting examples; Great Dixter – former garden of the late Christopher Lloyd; Hestercombe and Hidcote

Potager and Kitchen gardens. There are some truly wonderful examples out there. The cult of Grow Your Own, and the current fashion for vegetables and allotment-holding is very much tied in with this. Possibly the best UK example is at Cambo in Scotland, in the walled garden. But there will be others.

The Hardy Perennial Style. Typified by the work of Piet Oudolf, sometimes called the Dutch Wave; and the New American Garden in the US. Lot of perennials, some grasses. Big blocks of any one species. Coming to a peak mostly late in the growing season. Spring bulbs and a few selected early perennials for earlier in the year. Internationally admired, adopted and imitated. But actually now getting to be rather dated. This style is into its third decade now. No longer new.

Wildflower Meadows. Hard to do on a small scale, and actually quite hard to do period. An on-going maintenance problem potentially if the soil isn’t right. Too fertile and weedy plants like nettles take over. Undisturbed, the more showy species such as moon daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare), often die out all together. Restricting grass growth is another problem.

Urban Gardens. The size of gardens still decreases, so less has to become more. Incorporating such innovations as living walls, vertical gardening and green roofs, and many ideas taken from some of the other categories mentioned here.. This is an area with great potential, and relevance to our largely urban gardening public. Making more out of less actually gives great scope for innovation. Hydroponic living walls will come down in price and improve in reliability once they are modified for a wider market.

Sustainable Gardens. Are these cottage gardens with a more wild twist? I think it could be argued that way. However, cottage gardens cut across a few of thse categories. They incorporate potentially hardy perennial, period and sustainable as well as kitchen garden style – or can do.

So sustainable style? To some extent this is being driven by a lack of funding in public spaces. Local authorities spending less on parks, verges, embankments etc. Much of the work here is being done by a few influential landscape practitioners. Mostly in the UK James Hitchmough and Nigel Dunnett with their associates including Noel Kingsbury – wh0 by the way – has a great blog I have only just discovered. Basically plants and plantings that look very much after themselves. We are not talking hedge-trimmed-to-death awful car-park shrubs either.

Of these categories, I think the Edwardian garden will always have a romantic resonance – even though most of us lack sufficient space for them. Nationally and internationally it is still highly revered, and people continue to flock to Hidcote, Hestercombe and similar properties.

Potagers have enormous scope as many grow more of their own food. The trick with it still seems to be how to achieve this and produce a beautiful garden. Lots of scope here and a opportunities for creative development.

Wildflower meadows need space. The place for these is largely in the public realm, on roadside verges, public parks and the like.  Here they offer low-maintenence and low-cost, wildlife-friendly landscaping solutions. There is also a place for those developing spontaneously – without human intervention. The most successful forays into this seem to be the annual cornfield-based – plus non-native flower – mixes. The Pictorial Meadows mixtures developed by the landscape dept of Sheffield University seem to be the best source of seed mixtures for these. Many local authorities seem to have taken to them. Certainly I admire the examples I see in my local parks and public gardens.

Hardy Perennial Style needs space too. Not a good solution for a small garden. It is also not as sustainable as it is often claimed to be. A problem in the UK is our winters,. They are often wet, soggy and windy. The dead stems and seed-heads, upon which this style relies for winter decoration are flattened. Not many of these seed-heads stand-up to our winters. The palette of those that do is quite small.

I will add though, that the palette of plants that lend themselves to this style can have advantages. Mostly lack of high-maintenance requirements. Staking is not required. Nor is much feeding.Useful to modern gardeners with less time and smaller plots. There isn’t room for plants to flop over one another.

Sustainable gardens are definitely the way forward. Water is becoming too expensive to use on watering more than limited areas of our gardens. Plants do need to be able to grow and thrive without too much intervention. One of the problems here is that what works in a more continental climate, doesn’t work in the UK. Weeds can grow here most of the year. We have a very competitive native flora. So bunching/clump-forming grasses get invaded by weeds, and weed grasses. Experimental work and research here is being carried out. Mostly at Sheffield University’s Landscape Dept. A palette of plants that work for us is being trialled and tested – as are management techniques that deal with the weed problems without herbicides and high levels of maintenance.

The future will be an amalgamation of all of the ideas above. Reliable perennials with selected shrubs. Vegetables and annuals. Fruit-trees and other edibles. Which sounds like cottage gardens – but without the very fertile ‘vegetable’ soils – perhaps? Due consideration of site and increasingly difficult weather conditions. The right plants for the right conditions and level of maintenace and inputs. Sustainable, wildlife-friendly, adverse conditions tolerant, decorative, easy to grow and beautiful.

It’s not just economically that we are living in interesting times.

Members of the Asteraceae or daisy family have rather liked this cool and damp summer. They have built up strong clumps that this autumn flowered, and are still flowering, in profusion. Most have came originally from fairly damp tall grass prairies in North America. This is a rather damp environment. So reasonable soil moisture is present at all times.

Asters have done very well. Most have had no mildew at all, which in more normal years they tend to – probably due to abundant moisture. In normal years this can make the leaves quite unsightly and affect the vigour of the plants themselves. Known traditionally called Michaelmas daisies – they are floriferous late-season herbaceous plants, often fairly tall - and in shades of almost red to pink, purple and blue verging onto violet and lilac shades.

Despite there being many species of this genus, from most temperate regions of Europe and Asia; most of the ones we grow come from two species, native to N E USA. They are namely Aster novae-angliae – the New England Aster; and A. novae-belgiae – The New Holland/New York Aster.

I tend not to grow the Aster novae-belgiae forms because I don’t have a reliably damp soil, and I dislike the mildew. It can be so bad that plants don’t thrive.

However, forms of A. novae-angliae I DO grow. It doesn’t get mildew – and this despite coming from almost swampy environments in its native country.

All are on the tall side, so not for front of border positions. Above can be seen A. novae-angliae VIOLETTA – one of the taller varieties at around 5 feet/1.5m.  A wonderful depth of colour. Others I have grown are the strawberry pink and somewhat shorter A. novae-angliae ANDENKEN an ALMA POTSCHKE, and the hummocky pinky-purple A. novae-angliae PURPLE DOME.

I do grow a fair few other asters, but they come earlier in the season and are long over. These I will be saving for a future article.

Next in my short list of recomendations is Helianthus LEMON QUEEN. This is a perennial relative of the more familiar annual sunflower Helianthus annuus – the development of which for cut-flowers has given us so much colour in our gardens in recent decades. They are wonderful, but the display of these annuals is not a log one. However, the perennial forms flower for rather longer.

H. LEMON QUEEN is a large plant at around 2m tall and with a similar spread, few plants offer such a wonderful display – and one which lasts for weeks. This is a perennial, returning year after year, and not an invasive thug like some of the related perennial sunflowers.

A smaller form I am currently trying out is H. CARINE, which is shorter, and has more of a cream and less lemon-hued flower. So far I am finding it to offer a lesser display over a shorter period. I’d stick with H. LEMON QUEEN myself.

Finally I recommend the reliably perennial Rudbeckia fulgida varieties. Yet another North American, but this plant is from woodland edge and meadow habitats. So it will tolerate part -shade. This plant has a very wide range in the wild, and consequently a lot of natural variation. Most widely available is Rudbeckia fulgida sulivantii GOLDSTUERM. More reliable still is R fulgida deamii.

Both are far more resistant to slug and snail damage early in the season as they come into growth than their popular relatives in the genus Echinacea - the coneflowers. In my experience, beautiful as the coneflowers or echinaceas are, they are not reliable perennials, being too prone to damage by slugs and snails. Perhaps in their native country the colder winters hamper the depredations of molluscs. In the UK they don’t.

In fact, in a study done by Dr. Noel Kingsbury on the reliability of hardy perennials, taken from surveys of growers of these plants throughout the UK, the rudbeckias are amongst the most reliable. Being the most long-lived of perennials, along with the grasses in the genus Miscanthus.

Growing these plants is easy. They all require reasonably fertile soil and some moisture and a sunny site. Which is the simple recipe required for all of these autumn daises to succeed. A bit of judicious reduction in height of the shoots earlier in the season – the well-known ‘Chelsea-chop’ because it is done at around the time of that show in May is worthwhile. In fact, if you reduce the shoots more at the front of the clump, and less at the back, you can stagger both heights and flowering time.

In addition, it can reduce the need for staking of these often tall plants.