Horticultural Fireworks

Autumn began to creep in very early this year, there were Acers turning colour in  August, the hawthorn hedges have been weighed down by berries for weeks and my favourite shrub in Monmouth has spent the whole of September and October looking absolutely spectacular.

If you’re passing Bridges Community Centre it’s worth a detour into the car park just to see the Cotinus, the translucent oval leaves are the colours of glowing embers, from gold and orange to scarlet, cerise and rich deep burgundy. The transformation from a dull shade of dark green began on one side and has gradually suffused the whole shrub until it’s become a flaming bonfire.

If you’re there on a sunny day have a wander into Drybridge park too where the rich butter yellow and ambers of the lime trees are perfect against a clear blue sky and the lonely Acer griseum, dwarfed by the big old trees makes up for its lack of stature with  vivid vermillion leaves and ginger peeling bark.

It’s a great tree for autumn colour and for a small garden it’s pretty near perfect. Like Amelanchier lamarckii and Sorbus ‘Vilmorinii’ it’s small enough for most of us to accommodate and now is a good time to think about planting a new tree or three, the soil is still relatively warm and the roots will have the winter to settle in before the top growth gets underway again next spring.

November isn’t all horticultural fireworks though, it can be a melancholic time of year especially as the mists settle in along the Wye, but we gardeners are always looking forward and now is a brilliant time for making plans for next year whether just on paper as sketches and notes, or as I’ve done recently taking cuttings and collecting seed. I have to curb my enthusiasm for new plants at the moment as our house is up for sale and so I’m restricting purchases to bulbs for pots which is no bad thing for any of us to splash out on.  They’ll be a welcome burst of colour next spring and can be chosen for placing in any aspect or in any colour scheme, from vivid orange and cerise tulips to clash violently in full sun to quiet and refined snowdrops and aconites placed with ferns in a shady corner.

They’re temporary flowers and fairly inexpensive to buy so we can have fun without the guilt of an expensive and embarrassingly permanent horticultural mistake. If orange and cerise become a bit much together they can be separated after flowering and planted at either ends of the garden to flower happily for years to come.

If we’re still here next spring, mine will make a great entrance either side the front door and if we’ve moved on, together with my cuttings from favourite shrubs and all those saved seeds, they’ll move house too and be the beginnings of a brand new garden.

Grasses – high fashion and here to stay.

The shelter and seclusion of the garden is no place to hide from the fleeting fads and fancies of high fashion as anyone who fell victim to the ‘Majorelle blue deck’ phase will admit. Like it, the ‘heathers and dwarf conifers’ era has also long since been and gone, except for the once dwarf, now fairly sizeable specimen conifers towering over front gardens reminding us that in reality the term ‘dwarf’ actually  meant slow growing.

We can still see heathers of course where they look their best, vast purple swathes of them still grace our acid uplands, at home in their native environment, not with alien conifers but sedges and grasses, their natural partners of windswept hillsides and the latest addition to the plant world’s fashion palette.

In recent years the ‘new perennial’ movement has swept through northern Europe,  its free and easy natural style emulating the steppes of  Russia the North American prairies and for this time of year it’s the current fashion statement of choice.

A mix of long and late flowering perennials and architectural grasses there’s something for every early autumn garden here except perhaps those of the very neat and tidy brigade of gardeners who can’t keep their well oiled shears and sharpened secateurs away from anything which doesn’t form a tightly clipped blob. Who knows, one day this might become the latest ‘must have’ look.

Personally I’ve welcomed the move away from rigidity to a looser planting style and use grasses not only with perennials but shrubs too.

Clipped balls of balls are transformed by the arching waves of Hakonechloa macra and taller columnar shapes like Cupressus sempervirens look wonderful with the great sprays of Molinia flowers. 

I love them too with species roses, Viburnum, Cotoneaster and Berberis where they’re an accompaniment to hips, berries and turning leaves their colours heightening and fading together as the season slowly changes and we’re nudged unwillingly into shorter and colder days.

Many grasses have wonderful autumn colours in their leaves and flowers, and for those of you who haven’t yet been seduced by this latest garden style some of the best  are the Panicum family, one of my favourites is ‘Shenandoah’, a real beauty, turning wonderfully red later in the year.  For stunning leaves, Imperata cylindrica is striking all year, the ends of its leaves suffused with vivid red right through the summer and autumn.

If it’s structure and shape you’re after then Miscanthus are hard to beat, tall and statuesque in both leaf and flower and for the absolute ultimate in elegance, Miscanthus ‘Morning Light’ has the timeless grace and elegance of Joanna Lumley in flowing white linen. How’s that for high fashion!

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    ‘Live and let live’

Two very rare things have happened to me recently, the first being that because there were no immediate deadline to meet I  had time to just potter in my garden and enjoy it and the second is that I’ve just been watching two fat fluffy young thrushes sitting together sunbathing on the patio; it’s uncommon for me to see one thrush in my garden never mind two.

It’s odd isn’t it that we take more pleasure in the rare or unusual, than the common and everyday animals and plants.  I’ve hardly paid any attention to the six or seven blue and great tit babies that are around the bird feeder almost all the time, like collectors of trophies we would rather see warblers than sparrows and orchids than dandelions in our gardens. We even classify the most prolific plant separately as ‘weeds’.

I think it must go a long way back into our early human ancestry when we perceived successful species to be a threat and now we begrudge the success of species that do well, ridiculous isn’t it considering what a threat we are to the rest of life on the planet.

Not a week goes by without someone telling me that a once interesting insect is

‘a pest’, a shrub chosen for its speed of growth, now ‘completely overgrown’ or a creeping perennial, pretty it’s early days has  ‘taken over the whole garden’.

Surely we should appreciate the cabbage white butterflies as we do the holly blues and congratulate ourselves that we have such fertile soil that the honeysuckle we put in a foot high is now up to the bedroom window and those lovely little wild violets, so delicate in a pot, are now seeding themselves into every nook and cranny in the garden.

I think it’s time to live and let live, celebrate the successful, consider them in more detail, appreciate their many good qualities and to that end I’m going to sow again the wild carrot romping through the border, close up its flowers are covered in hundreds of tiny beetles and the white mallow where little wasps hide in it’s lovely shiny cups.

This isn’t just the wildlife fanatic in me being given free reign here, there are some sound principles of design at work too. The boldness and solidity of bigger clumps and drifts of the same plant help to make a small garden seem larger, repetition of the same plant creates cohesion and harmony and if a plant has seeded itself and spread around happily and healthily, then it has to be from it’s own perspective at least, ‘the right plant in the right place’.

Any horticulturalist would agree I think that that is the basis for successful planting and by association a successful garden.

As long of course that it’s not a species being too successful … and when it comes to the number of snails eating the leaves of my runner beans…..but then again, without the snails I wouldn’t have the thrushes.

New favourites

This month's new favourite plant combination, wild carrot and greater burnet. I haven't grown these two native plants together before but absolutely love them; the way the burnet waves and bobs about in the wind is pure magic. Wild and wonderful!

Wild about my garden

I’ve just had a quick whip round my garden to pick a few flowers for a vase to cheer up a shelf in the hallway. It’s a hastily gathered bunch and I’m no great shakes at flower arranging but it does look very pretty with all the artless grace and freshness of early summer. Shining yellow buttercups, tall white willow herb, pink and white  campions, burnt orange fox and cubs, spires of purple toadflax and dog daisies, their faces turned up to the sun.

You’ll notice from the names that there’s nothing terribly exotic here, no hybridised and interbred garden flowers, in fact they are all common native flowers or very close relatives and no less lovely for that.

I enjoy having them in the garden even more than in the house, they are a perfect example of ‘the right plant in the right place’ perfectly suited to the conditions they’ve evolved in. Growing healthily and vigorously, full of flower and joie de vivre they are also full of pollen and nectar for the local insect population and importantly, a food source for bees.

We all know what a hard time bees are having now and how vital they are to our economy as well as our ecology, it’s a scary thought that we couldn’t grow many of our food crops without them but as gardeners there’s so much we can do to help.

Choosing flowers which are bee friendly, rich in pollen and nectar which is easily accessible to them isn’t difficult, lots of traditional ornamental garden flowers like Nepeta, Sedum, Aster, Anemone and Verbena are great but many wild flowers are even easier to grow and lovely to look at too, they are an essential part of my summer garden 

There are flowers arranged in flat topped bunches called umbels, like cow parsley, wild carrot and hogweed and daisies, big and small, are not single flowers they’re masses of tiny ones jam packed together in the centre of a circle of ray florets. These arrangements allow bees to eat and drink their fill within a small area, not wasting energy flying between widely spaced flowers.

Tubular shaped flowers like honeysuckle, foxgloves and clovers often grow close together in spires or ball shapes and are perfect for bees too, some like white clover are better for honey bees while bumble bees prefer red clover, apparently it’s all to do with the length of their tongues.

It isn’t just their wildlife benefit which makes wild flowers so valuable to my garden, or their lovely vibrant colours, it’s the combining and contrasting of their shapes which gives my garden its summer structure. Just like a flower arranger I can use their forms to create interest, harmony and balance.

No wonder they look so good in a vase!

‘Up close and personal’

It’s no coincidence that we find flowers the most beautiful part of a plant, the whole point of them is to be attractive, by their shape, colour and perfume. It is just about sex after all, their job is to get their pollinators to them by any means available and we find them irresistible too.

From breeding plants together to create ever bigger, brighter longer lasting blossoms to recording them in every possible way, we’ve endeavoured to make the most of their all too fleeting charms to keep them blooming for longer and record them for posterity.

From the Elizabethan ladies at their needlework and the Victorian amateur naturalist with his magnifying glass and watercolours to me and my daughter with our digital cameras competing for the best close up shots of my garden’s flowers, we’ve always felt the need to capture the moment, the peak of perfection of these most transient of beauties.

As a designer I spend much of my time exploring how colours, forms and shapes contrast or combine together, the composition of the whole picture being of more importance than the individual snapshots, but when it comes to flowers I’m just as seduced by them as anyone.

Each single flower is unique, it demands our full attention and the closer we look the more we see there is to appreciate. The subtleties and shadings of translucent colours, the variety of shapes as individual petals fuse or separate and just a sniff of the scent, in one intake of breath, can take us back years to a sun filled happy childhood and granny’s garden.

 

Of all the elements which combine to make a garden, flowers have always had the most meaning to us, that’s why this month when so many are at their most glorious and abundant we should take the time and trouble to really take a good look and appreciate our wild and garden flowers. 

Make the most of it, get out there, up close and personal. 

Design - Why bother?

Absolutely everything ‘man made’ that we use in our everyday lives, from knives and forks and tables and chairs, to the cars we drive and the houses we live in, have the origins of their form – the way they look, in their function – the thing they do.

In other words they have been designed to be fit for their purpose.

So why is it that still most of our gardens continue to just muddle along, bits of them occasionally changing piecemeal when the home changes hands and often it seems with very little real thought and consideration.

Take patios as an example. Most builders’ standard layout (sorry builders!) is a  rectangle of slabs along the back wall of the house regardless of its orientation, the material it’s made from or its age and style.

You might end up sitting shivering in the shade if it faces north on paving that looks just like all your neighbours’, it might be a lost opportunity, but at least it’s not a living thing and it won’t die by being in the wrong place.

Plants on the other hand could very well do just that if so little thought is put into their placing. Different plants need different conditions to thrive depending on their species origins. Some need full sun and well drained soil, maybe these came from the Mediterranean region or coastal sandy soils. Some need shade and deep humous rich soil, possibly woodland dwellers and others will need more moisture than the average coming first from the margins of streams and ponds.

Luckily most gardens can supply several conditions so we can accommodate plants with quite a range of different needs. By a north facing wall, instead of that paving , we could have Hosta and ferns, in the drier shade under a hedge or trees, Epimedium and Pulmonaria and on a sunny bank Lavander, Rosemary, Sage and Thyme.

By choosing plants which are best suited to them, we can use the opportunities these conditions give us to make the most of our gardens.

There’s a lot more to planting design than this of course but fundamentally it’s not about the latest plant fashion, at its heart it’s the it’s the combining of the right plants in the right places.

Our gardens are ‘man made’, and just as worthy of being made fit for purpose and designed with as much thought as anything else, so this spring when you go to the garden centre and buy some lovely new plants make sure that you’ve put some thought into the design of your planting first.

Why bother?  Just look at a well designed garden, it really is well worth it.

Measuring the changes in the seasons by breaking shoots and fattening buds is something all gardeners share. It’s the encouragement we need to remain optimistic as the chilly March winds blow . Winter is nearly behind us, spring just round the corner and then it will be summer with all its blissful flowery fullness.

If it stays cold and I need a bit of reassurance, then I go through photographs of gardens I’ve designed. They are usually taken in mid summer, preferably on a good day. After all, as well as a visual record for me, they are my shop window so I like to display the results of my designs at their sunny best.

They also give potential new clients faith and confidence in my abilities, knowing that the beautiful gardens they can see in them have grown and blossomed from the seeds of ideas developed and drawn up as plans.

It’s in this same spirit of confidence and faith in nature that we go out and buy packets of seed. It’s amazing to think that those tiny specks of dust and parcels of genetic material will become flamboyant silky headed poppies, shimmering white saucers of cosmos or sprawling nasturtiums. What incredible reward we get for such little effort and a bag of compost.

When it comes to growing vegetables it’s incredible value for money too. So easy to grow yet expensive to buy, runner beans are an absolute essential for me and one day I’m going to weigh the crop from one bean plant just to calculate the return on my investment in one bean seed.

My dad had even better value for his money, he always saved his bean seeds form one year to the next, driven as much by his ‘careful’ nature as the fashion of the time.

Gardens and plants are as prone to the whims of fashion as anything else we can be convinced to buy, but there’s one at the moment I’m all in favour of.

From the rise in popularity of vegetable growing it seems to be the current one and what a great way to use your patch of land.

Good for the body, good for the soul and good for the environment, as long as you garden organically of course.

It can’t be done with anything other than a spirit of optimism and I can’t think of any better way to prepare yourself and your garden for summer.

Brilliant birds!

This winter my garden has been an absolute delight, there’s been so much to look at I’ve hardly been able to drag myself away from the window. What has kept me there when I should have been doing other things is nothing directly horticultural but much more a result of the prolonged spells of cold weather and my investment in generous offerings of peanuts, bird seed and fat balls!

It’s been just like Autumnwatch, the number and variety of visiting birds over the winter has been exceptional, especially as my garden is on the edge of a housing estate.

For sheer size of wingspan in such an enclosed space the heron made the biggest impression and was the most surprising with a pair of pheasants strutting up the drive a close second.

Less of a surprise but just as welcome have been the passing fieldfares and redwings dropping in and lovely to see that the solitary thrush who’s been around for a while now has a mate and has overcome his shyness enough to hop down out of the tree onto the hanging bird table,

In terms of sheer numbers, the blue tits, great tits, sparrows blackbirds and starlings were the indisputable winners but the goldfinches brought all their relations, encouraged I think by the ‘mixed finch’ seed I splashed out on. This has also been a bit hit with a flock of beautiful apricot coloured bramblings, they first came in ones and twos with a group of chaffinches, then suddenly increased to at least ten, flitting about too much for an accurate count.

With such a number and variety of avian visitors it does seem churlish to complain about species I haven’t seen in my garden but I was very disappointed that the beautiful waxwings which were spotted on Goldwire Lane passed me by. Apparently they are attracted by large numbers of berries and although I can offer them hawthorn, sloe and guelder rose as well as the more exotic Crataegus prunifolia

(a hawthorn relative with marble sized orange berries still hold on in January) they were obviously not impressed.

If only I had a bigger garden I’d plant a rowan tree especially for them.

I’ve found from experience that attracting birds, like any other wildlife can be reasonably straightforward. Provide food, water and cover and if they’re in the area they’ll find the garden, but I have made some mistakes too. In the spring I split and moved a big Miscanthus grass whose seed heads had brought in reed buntings and linnets last winter, but it hated being moved, sulked and refused to flower so not only did I miss its striking winter silhouette, there were no reed buntings or linnets either this year.

Oh well, winter’s nearly over and longer hours of daylight bring the opportunity for more time outside and a bit of a revamp. Another Miscanthus will be top of the list and if only I had room for a rowan… I wonder how well one would grow in a pot!

Happy New Year

January the 1st right in the middle of winter, has always seemed to me to be a very unnatural time to choose for the start of a New Year. Much more in tune with nature’s rhythms is the vernal equinox in mid March, which is where New Year was before the Roman Julian calendar in 46BC. Quite a while ago I know although according to Google we British only really embraced the 1st of January date in 1752, not very long ago at all.
I’m still not convinced though, I’d much rather be able to see more evidence of new growth and renewal along with more clement weather and longer hours of daylight, March would be much better.
But the 1st of January it is and although cold and dark the snowdrops are pushing their pointy noses out of the chilly soil and some of the earlier Hellebore flower heads are full and fat and just about to burst.

One of my favourite cold weather flowers, winter aconites, are ready to pop up and make me smile with their bright sunny cups of flowers sitting just above the soil on their frilly ruff of green bracts. They always catch me by surprise by sprouting up overnight like mushrooms and as they’re soon over I’ve planted some by the front door to make sure I don’t miss them. Luckily the front door faces north and I brush all the dead leaves which the wind swirls around it onto their patch of soil in the hope that I’m fooling them into thinking they’re living in woodland under the canopy of deciduous trees, their favourite habitat.
Like lots of early flowering plants, they like woodland edge conditions, they’ve evolved to make the most of the light available while the trees are still bare of leaves.

The hedge at the bottom of my garden makes a perfect, if very short, edge of woodland. Beneath the hazel the deep summer shade is ideal for ferns and now the leaves are decaying gently beneath and the blackbirds and thrushes are busy poking through them, the bare branches are lined with rows of lengthening catkins, soon to be full of yellow pollen.
The Mahonia relishes the shade there too. It’s flowered its socks off all November and December and been a magnet for blue tits, maybe there are tiny insects sheltering in the sprays of flowers or maybe blue tits just like bright yellow.
It’s one of those ‘tough as old boots’ plants as are its companions in my garden, Cornus ‘Flaviramea’ with yellow and orange stems and a birch with bright white bark. They are all happy in my woodland edge with a big clump of Hellebores and a few snowdrops at their feet.
I put them together partly to emphasis their seasonal appeal but mainly because they like the conditions and so are happy to grow together there.
Happy plants, happy birds, happy garden, happy me. Maybe New Year in January isn't so bad after all!

A gift for Christmas

It's that time of year again and if you're looking for a really special gift, a Garden Design Consultation is the perfect treat for anyone with a garden.
                                                        

'Two for the price of one'

It’s been absolutely fabulous for flowers, fruits, berries and autumn colour this year and my garden like so many others has been lush and glorious. As we come to the end of another year I have no complaints, even the slugs struggled to make an impact on  the abundant growth.

But that’s all over now, I’ve picked up the last of the perennial leaves left soft and mushy by the early frost and although the reliable grass stems are still holding their own, the tree branches are bare and the stark bones of my garden are revealed again.

As in every other winter for as long as I can remember, I find that I’ve forgotten what summer looked like. It’s the same with the landscape around me, I look up at the hills and just can’t imagine them green. In high summer it’s exactly the opposite, I can’t remember what winter looked like!

I don’t know if it’s just me or if we all feel that way as the seasons make such a dramatic impact on our surroundings.

Apart from the worry of impending older age and memory loss, this does have a positive side in that the view from my window is so different from six months ago that I feel as if I have two gardens for the price of one.

There are a few stalwart evergreens standing resolute in the face of seasonal change but apart from these if I compare summer and winter photographs the difference is remarkable.

Last year’s ice and snow were magical, especially at night when the garden lights made the frosty branches sparkle like tinsel dusted Christmas cards, but if this year we miss out on the arctic conditions then even dismal grey days will have their moments.

I used the sloes from the hedge to make slow gin so that will give me a warming reminder of better days and there is still some of my grape jelly from the vine outside the kitchen door. I have just a few quinces left, their faint but evocative scent all but gone now and a dwindling supply of little pumpkins and squashes which keep so well and look like a photograph from ‘Country Living’ sitting in the bowl of some old scales in the kitchen. There’s just a hint of loss with the last of the summer harvest though, so if it’s a bit of a lift I’m after, the birds do it for me.

The vibrant wings of the goldfinches, great tits and siskins flitting to and from the bird feeders, the sudden flash of the sparrow hawk as he darts through to catch a blue tit, the cheery robin almost always present and if we’re really lucky redwings and fieldfares might briefly join their blackbird and thrush relatives to strip the sloe and hawthorn branches.

Provide for the birds and even after the Christmas spirit has long evaporated you only have to look outside for a refreshing dose of winter cheer.

Into Autumn and beyond...

Autumn in the garden can be absolutely spectacular. The fiery brilliance of the turning leaves, the vivid gloss of the fruits and berries and the late summer perennials. Dahlias, asters, Japanese anemones and sedums keep the flower colour going to the bitter end and as the weather becomes inevitably greyer, murky and miserable the garden gives a last intense burst of colour, brilliant on those few perfect clear blue sky days.

There are some plants which far from performing a final fanfare are actually just coming into their own. Nerines are amazing plants, their shocking pink spidery flowers so unexpectedly exotic.

We don’t often think of choosing grasses for their flowers but they can add so much. Theirs is a quiet charm, not just in terms of colour but also for their texture, elegant shapes and their ability to sparkle in the chilling air and attract seed eating birds right through into the depths of winter.

The many named varieties of Panicum virgatum or switch grass, like ‘Hanse Herms’ and ‘Squaw’, their tiny flowers dangling singly from sprays, like little glass beads in the wet, and reddening leaves which arch gracefully at the tips.

Miscanthus are generally taller and stay reliably erect even in strong wind. Their flowers are upright in fairly dense fingers, often in darkening shades of bronze or plum. My favourite is Miscanthus ‘Morning Light’ with fine green and white striped leaves which as the weather turns colder fade to bleached blonde for the winter.

I have very mixed feeling about Cortaderia which we all know as pampas grass, probably because I have memories of so many seen planted in the middle of a lawn, incongruous and so out of place.

I’m embarrassed to admit now that I think it can actually look quite good in a mixed planting with other stars of the season, its flowers sprouting up and bursting into huge feather dusters. Bold and brassy it’s a definite statement plant for this time of year and then as early spring turns the sparrows’ thoughts to pairing up, they’re pulled to shreds to be recycled into lovely soft fluffy nesting material.

That’s the wonderful and optimistic thing about the garden, it’s always making us look forward. At the moment it’s through the less appealing days of winter and on towards spring and new growth. Autumn isn’t just the end of this year’s pleasure in the garden, it’s a  time of year to take stock of what’s worked well and what hasn’t, celebrate the successes and learn from the failures.

Now is the best time to plan for the garden’s future. It might be just ordering a few new spring bulbs or planning an altogether more wildlife friendly garden, whatever it is you’d like to make the most of in the garden, the opportunities for renewal are endless.

Planning for change

This summer in the garden may be drawing to a close but there’s still the autumn to look forward to with all its rich colour and harvest of fruit and berries.  I’m already thinking further forward though and I’ve been wandering round making notes of plants I think I’ll move during the winter and changes I’d like to make to my garden next year.

Planning for changes can mean something as simple as deciding to plant a few bulbs for a quick lift and burst of spring colour or as radical as a complete revamp, reorganisation and redesign. Whatever the result you want to achieve in the garden, as everywhere else, the more it’s thought through and planned with care the more successful that result will be.

With new clients I always start with how they use their garden, what about it gives them pleasure and suits their way of life and what does not. What style of garden would enhance the house and often just as important, the surrounding landscape too.

Are they the type of people who are more comfortable with order, neatness and  a manicured look, or do they feel more able to relax with a laid back informal approach, something a little bit rough around the edges. Whatever style they favour, all the individual elements need to work together, there should be a sense of harmony, a flow and natural movement  around the garden with  each element or feature in the most suitable place, so that they look and feel as if they belong together and to their surroundings.

This difference between clients, as well as garden sites, is what keeps my job varied and interesting. Gardens are very personal spaces and the plans I might draw up for any individual garden will depend almost as much on its current owner and their tastes and preferences, as they will on its particular position, aspect and soil type. One of the challenges for me as a designer is how much can the site be manipulated, hopefully within the budget, to give the owners what they want and give the garden its own sense of place, some essence of its natural identity. The thing I’m most often asked for and the most difficult to achieve, is that the garden mustn’t look designed, it should look as if it‘s always been there, that it belongs.

Until only a very few years ago, there’s been the view that gardens are places where we can introduce whatever plants we take a shine to and keep them in unsuitable soil and positions by dictating to nature, controlling it by the use of pesticides, herbicides and constant vigilance.

Thank goodness that’s all a thing of the past at last and we’ve learned that the natural world isn’t the enemy but the friend that with understanding how it works, holds the key to planning and achieving a beautiful garden.