Gardeners Tips

Carnivorous plants are not as hard to grow as you might imagine. There are several ways you can grow interesting displays of these consuming plants. If you want to grow Pitcher plants similar to those above read Easy Carnivorous Pitcher Plants.

Tips for Growing and Displaying

• The top Gardeners tip for these plants is to supply plenty of rainwater. Tap water contains too many chemicals.
• The cold greenhouse display below incorporates a stream supplied by a small garden pump and recycling filter.
• The water helps the insects, that the plant will consume, to breed.
• You can grow your plants in a half barrel, large terracotta pot or an old rubber trug.
• Buy hardy varieties from a specialist nursery. Badly treated plants seldom recover.
• Discourage flowering for a couple of season to build up the plants strength.

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Bug bane of a gardeners life? No Bugbane is just another name for Actaea. Part of the Atropurpurea Group this variety was on show at Harlow Carr and is probably ‘Hillside Black Beauty’. The White Allium flowers set off the dark foliage.

Growing Actaea Simplex

• Plants are accommodating but do not like thin alkaline soil.
• Support using stakes before the flowers appear as they can reach 6 feet tall.
• Cut spent flowers down to the ground in spring.
• Lift and divide congested colonies in late autumn or early spring.
• The fruit are noxious to creatures large and small.
• Part of the Buttercup family they are generally tall, with great spikes of white flowers in autumn.

Actaea Varieties

• Other varieties include Actaea matsumurae ‘White Pearl’ and Actaea simplex ‘Black Negligee’ both also called bugbane.
• Actaea simplex ‘Brunette’ AGM with fabulous dark brown leaves.
• Actaea Pink Spike is a clump-forming perennial with purple-brown foliage and arching stems of fragrant, pink, flowers.
• Actaea simplex Pritchard’s Giant has large spikes of tiny white flowers and yellow seedheads

Your garden will have viewing points from which you can see a vista. This green vista has scale and impact but you can create your own combination with just a few well chosen plants.

Plants in this Display

• The woods form a back drop to this view and include some old Rhododendrons and various deciduous trees.
• Drawing the eye to the centre is an Acer palmatum with purple-green leaves and a strong geometric shape.
• To the left is a lime green conifer that could be Taxus baccata an upright Yew.
• Immediately in front of the Acer are a collection of acid loving acid yellow Ferns.
• The strong leaf shape of the Rheums are in the fore ground.
• At the front are flowered Primulas of the Candelabra variety and a collection of grass like Iris.
• Other plants fill up the space so that in the middle of August there is no bare soil showing.

Selecting Your Vista

• For your backdrop use trees or shrubs to screen out ugly areas.
• Vary the shapes of trees, shrubs and plants.
• Green has more shades than any other colour from bottle green to lime, blue-green and purple-green to yellow-green and so on. This provides opportunity to select contrasting or complementary shades.
• Shape and texture can play an important part in providing the eye with something to consider after the initial view has been taken into account.
• Construct your layout like an artwork. Split the view into thirds vertically and horizontally and aim for interest at the intersections.
• Circular and triangular impressions work well be keeping the eye moving but holding it on the main view.

Rheums are not just Rhubarb link

Overwintering as the name suggests is the treatment of a fuchsia to protect it during winter so that it will survive to perform again next year. All Fuchsias can be overwintered as cuttings and I recommend that as a belt and braces approach.

Overwintering Hardy Fuchias.

• Hardy cultivars are bred and grown to survive British winters and do well particularly in the south. Fuchsia magellanica ‘Gracilis’, Happy, Lady Thumb, C J Howlett, Graf Witte, Lena, Margaret and Thompsonii are hardy varieties with an AGM.
• The micro climate for a Fuchsia can help it survive. If grown in full sun the wood will ripen to a firm brown twig that resists freezing. Well drained soil prevents water logging.
• Plant deeply, at least 4″, so that buds below the soil are protected.
• I cut back the soft growth in October and cover the root and shoot area with bracken or peat substitute.
• In spring I prune down to just one or two buds at the base to encourage new growth.

Overwintering Decorative Fuchsias

• Unless your fuchsia is known to be hardy it is safer to assume it is not and treat it accordingly.
• Take semi-ripe hardwood cuttings before frost in October and keep in a frost free room to root over winter.
• The whole plant can be overwintered for several years by making it dormant from October. Stop watering, harden the wood outdoors in the sunshine where possible.
• Put the plant in a cool, dry frost free place. If it starts shooting it is too warm.
• Water thoroughly with tepid water only when the root ball becomes totally dry.

Restarting Overwintered Fuchsias

• Hardy Outdoor varieties will start themselves. Pull off the bracken leaves after the danger of frost has passed.
• In spring bring out the pot plants and prune back to one or two buds per shoot. Cut out crossing branches and make the plant open.
• Repot in fresh compost.
• Place in the light and warmth and syringe the branches. Do not over-water, wait until shoots are growing strongly before any feeding.
• Stop the plants to get bigger flower heads. Beware overwintered plants can start to loose the size of flower after several seasons.

See also Fuchsia Pink Fantasia on Gardeners tips

The Sedum or Ice Plants are providing a treat for the bees and insects in the garden this September. Many other plants have ‘gone over’ quite early this year so these Sedum blossoms will be quite welcome as a pre-winter energy booster.

Autumn Insect Food

• Late Rose flowers seem especially well scented at the moment and this will also be attracting nectar feeding insects.

• I have left a couple of rotting apples on the ground and of course the slugs are now getting free reign on the Hostas.

• This morning I spread an old compost heap on a plot that I am renovating. The bio-activity and insects have done a great job breaking down the garden waste but there are still bits for the insects to keep feeding on as they work their way back into the garden soil. If you think about the waste products produced by insects no wonder the compost is rich in food – they provide the P in NPK!

• My sprouts have been decimated by butterfly caterpillars

• Some plants are having a final burst of individual flowers like the Cistus below.

The hot subject for discussion this Autumn seems to be the renaissance of Dahlias. For me they have never been far from my garden but I understand how fashions come and go then return.

Quick Dahlia Cultivation Tips

• Disbudding two out of three buds per stem with produce longer, stronger and more weather resistant stems.
• Support all but the very low growing Dahlias with a stake or triangle of canes.
• Keep feeding with high potash feeder until September.
• Remove dead and dying flowers regularly.
• Earwigs may be a problem for flowers destined for the house but otherwise they are good predators and should be tolerated.
• Buy new tubers from a Dahlia nursery. A plastic bagged retail plant often disappoints and I have never known one flower better than the picture on the packaging.

Single and Collerette Dahlia Varieties

• Single Dahlias bred from the dark leaved varieties like Bishop of series are popular this year.
• The garden writer Rachel de Thame has had a pink variety name after her.
• After Eight is the name of an AGM winner with  white flowers on very dark leaves.
• Collerettes are flowers of two petal layers rather than one single – see pictures
• One collerette that caught my eye was ‘Twyning’s Revel’ a 4-5′ high plant with salmon flowers, orange centre and dark fern foliage

Note
Dark leaved Bishop’s children Dahlias are looking very good as Autumn comes to an end. Children will be surprised the leaves are not green and the flowers remain so colourful read more
See a mosaic of Pink Dahlias with top ten pointers