Easter Pictures
Happy Easter 
No (snow) platforming this Easter
Moving in to Spring
Garden Seats to view Cyclamen
The 18th century Union Jack Gardens at Wentworth Castle were originally called the ‘wilderness’. It was dense with shapes, texture and contrasts of shade and light. Now it may be a suitable place to take a seat in the garden and see the original Yew trees and the variegated ‘creamed’ Hollies.
Wentworth Castle starts with an invitation to take a seat while you admire the unusual grounds. The seats are unusual too!
The living plants are less unusual but in the stumpery there are shaped tree roots riven from the soil and replanted upside down. This fails to affect the well mulched cyclamen growing from what must be substantial corms.
Gardeners can be a hardy lot but you need a hard bottom for this type of seating.
More traditional cast iron seat. Why do we paint them and other garden items in Wedgewood Blue?
Cyclamen mulch is made from coarse wood and bark chippings
In the last year the renovated garden originally designed in 1707 was forced to close. The Yorkshire Post reports ‘Talks are underway to secure the future of the only Grade I-listed landscape in South Yorkshire, which is said to be “nationally significant†for its extensive monuments including some of the earliest follies in the country. In an irony which would not have been lost on its founder Thomas Wentworth, who only built the estate due to a bitter dispute over the inheritance of the family seat at Wentworth Woodhouse …’ Sadly there has been no progress and I have to rely on my old photographs.
Raised Beds
Several companies manufacturers produce raised beds kits for gardens. Marmax products make their raised beds from recycled High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) and donated this set to the library and learning centre at RHS Harlow Carr when it was new. Hard wearing, long lasting and doing its bit for recycling this use of plastic in the garden is to be admired.
Supplied in flat pack, kit form the sides are in depths of 140mm so you can also make 280 or 420 deep beds by using 1-3 levels screwed together. In old money I make that five and a half inches 11″ and 17″ or thereabouts.
Other Methods.
- The old railway sleepers took a bit of a dive when creosote was banned or frowned upon in gardens. The seepage of chemicals from sleepers seems small to me and the method is still popular if you find old sleepers.
- DIY fanatics may use log piles or build more substantial retaining walls in breeze blocks or natural stone
- Old pallets, preformed or tanalised wood and concrete blocks can be features as raised beds. ( see some more pictures for inspiration and ideas on the type of raised on these images.)
Uses of Raised Beds
- When top soil is shallow raising a bed with better soil helps plant draw moisture and sustenance.
- Raised beds help improve drainage on heavy soil.
- Raising a bed can be used to introduce a different soil type to your garden.
- Beds warm up quicker when raised and can be angled towards the sun.
- Smaller plants can be lifted for closer inspection or to get the perfume and it may avoid getting down on your knees.
- Flowers, vegetables and soft fruit can all be successfully grown in a raised bed. Often prize winners are grown with augmented levels of soil where conditions can be controlled from a raised bed.
- Raised beds can be very useful to those suffering visual impairment, restricted mobility or other physical disabilities.
Retaining wall filled with good clean compost a raised bed for primula
A brick wall to allow a slope alongside a raised bed of spring Daffodils
Cottage Garden and Annuals Triptych
This is a series of 3 photographs of my favourite cottage garden on Main Street Menston. Late summer each year will see me leaning over the Yorkshire stone wall to admire the ‘gaudy’ collection of flowers that create one enormous display.
Design Features
- The hard landscape is suitably constrained and smacks of belonging to a true plantsman or plantswoman. The red brick from the family home and a small section of slatted paneling limits the borders of this front garden.
- The garden barely needs to borrow from the surrounding landscape but the old grey Yorkshire stone walls add a timelessness to a short lived period of glory from the plants.
- Like my garden this garden suffers from a drain cover in an inconvenient spot but it is as disguised as practical with the wooden hooped barrel used as a plant pot. (How else can they get more flowers on show?)
- The central bed is designed as a lozenge rather than a more normal oval or circle. It works well and allows the gardener access from all 4 sides.
Flowers on Display
- The main feature is not of structural plants or herbaceous perennials but the selection of bright cheerful annuals.
- Wispy Cosmos and Nicotiana edge over the roadside wall on which I lean to take these three photographs.
- Good strong yellow flowers predominate and link the whole composition together. I particularly like the Tagetes, Marigolds and Rudbeckia .
- It would be churlish to mention the grass which is in fair condition towards the end of summer.
Chelsea Blue
I like a good strong blue in the garden and not because Chelsea FC play in a blue soccer strip. With the 2018 Chelsea flower show on the RHS calendar I have selected a few photographs to highlight my favourite colour.
Hydrangea Macrophylla
The faceless pansy can be a substitute for a viola it plays well as a center forward or in midfield.
In goal we must have the African with the furry edged petals in Violet
The B team Allium is just getting back into form after a long layoff. A mid season injury saw a 4 week metatarsal break disrupt his training.
Anemone and Ranunculus in defense occasionally charging down the wings
Large Scale Water Features
Moon pond water feature with pheasant – early spring at Studley Royal Ripon
Probably a bridge over a thousand years old at Fountains Abbey Nr Ripon. The Snowdrops set off another far older water feature with a bridge that was destroyed in the reformation in the 16th century. The snowdrops are probably related to the first known cultivation in 1597.
Posidon or ‘Neptune’ by Oliver Andrews standing in the middle of the Moon Pond after the restoration of the 18th century pond that had fallen into disrepair.
RHS Garden Book Resources
RHS and Books
This week I revisited RHS Harlow Carr library for the first time in several years. I previously volunteered in the ‘old potting shed’Â library before the new building was completed. Then I was part of the team that moved and reshelved all the books from one part of the garden to the ecofriendly new premises.
At the time of our relocation there had been a spate of thefts from the Lindley Library and some very valuable tomes had been taken. Good old artistic books with frameable prints were also susceptible to loosing pages to the ner-do-wells. So the powers that be decided to install anti theft devices in the spine of all the books at Harlow Carr. After much painstaking work we volunteers were told the exit was not compatible with the spine tags and another exit system had been purchased. As a consequence new RFID tags a couple of centimeters square had to be fixed inside all the books that already had a metal spine. Several good looking end papers were damaged or covered in this process. Imagine my ‘surprise’ (not) when the 3 books I borrowed this week were passed to my by the librarian in a way that circumvented the exit alarm because it wasn’t working properly.
The harlow-carr-library-learning-centre-is-eco-friendly as reported here eight years ago see’ library’
Orville Lyttle   A Tree of Knowledge?
RHS Lindley Library Disaster Prone
- Named after botanist and artist John Lindley the library is a multisite operation with books, paintings, photographs and old documents at Wisley, London HQ and other RHS gardens. In addition to old and modern books the RHS has an extensive collection of paintings and photographs plus horticultural paraphernalia.
- When I tried to visit the library last January it was closed for stock taking! Now I bother to check the website and warn you it is again ‘Closed: First fortnight in August’.
- The library in Vincent Square London was saved from a proposed closure in 1995 by refurbishment of the downstairs area. Then in 2011 it was damaged by fire but reopened in 2012.
- Bigger disaster occurred when a notable book thief stole 13 volumes published between 1848 and 1860 of ‘Une Nouvelle Iconographie des Camellias’ by nineteenth-century Belgian horticulturist Ambroise Verschaffelt.
- William Jacques, also known as the ‘tome raider’ stole antique books worth £50,000 from the world-famous Lindley library and was jailed for three-and-a-half years after skipping bail and evading recapture for several years.
- Jacques used a false name to sign in to the Library before stuffing valuable books under his tweed jacket and fleeing, Southwark Crown Court. I was shown how easy it was to circumvent the security gates by balancing items on your head (but keep that under your hats).
RHS as Hard Copy Publishers
- The most popular RHS publication is probably ‘The Garden’Â a members monthly magazine that often ends up in charity shops or NHS waiting rooms.
- Also very popular are the annual Members’ Handbook, The Plantsman and the RHS Plant Finder
- Coffee table books are produced regularly often in a joint venture with other publishers like Dorling Kindersly. This supplements the technical treatise on specific subjects under the RHS own imprint including Botany, Genealogy, Latin for Gardeners and encyclopedias.
- I have cheekily chosen the following title to highlight because I am not sure ‘How Do RHS managers Work?’
What Others Say about RHS
- RHS is a charity generating over £82m last year 2016/17. The accounts are silent on how much of this relates to publications, RHS enterprises ltd operates some commercial activities with profits gifted back to the charity.
- The Lindley Library contains works dating back as far as 1514. It is widely regarded as one of the world’s most extensive horticultural collections, including books, journals, pictures and art concerned with botany, garden design and history, as well as practical gardening.
- The Heritage Lottery Fund has awarded £4.8 million in a first stage grant towards an overall project of £160 million 10 year development project.  HLF said “Wisley is such an important site in the history of plants and gardens – a superb setting for some rare and fascinating plant specimens along with thousands of books, artifacts and photographs…….
My Books on How to Garden
I am almost as keen on books as I am on gardening so it is natural that I should combine the two by collecting books related to gardens and gardening. The attached pdf is a cold list of my current collection by title, authors, publisher and date of publication. The extra columns were for my amusement showing the number of pages ( over 100,000) and a score that I attributed when I first browsed the book. The collection is a bit eclectic as a result of acquiring what was available and affordable at the time augmented by family gifts.
Why Collect Garden Related Books
- A good book with knowledgeable content is priceless as long as I apply the ideas in my own husbandry.
- A good picture is worth a thousand words. Where would we be if we were not seduced by a good picture on a seed packet, plant label, magazine or more importantly inside a book.
- A bit of history goes a long way and all plants and species have their own tale to tell. Keeping old seed catalogues and public garden brochures will remind us how things were. Books about plant hunters and patrons can highlight our social fabric.
- Before the internet and google, knowledge was power and attracted a price for those who shared their know how via books, magazines and radio shows. Much of my collection was produced during of just after WWII when growing larger crops was vital.
- If I was more industrious I would have recorded my books using the Dewy decimal system where all books have a classification number and reference. 580 is generally reserved for Plants with the following subsections
- 575 Science of parts of plants
- 580 Plants
- 581 Specific topics in natural history of plants
- 582 Plants noted for specific vegetative characteristics and flowers
- 583 Magnoliopsida – Dicotyledones
- 584 Liliopsida – Monocotyledones
- 585 Pinophyta – Gymnosperms
- 586 Cryptogamia – Seedless plants
- 587 Pteridophyta -Ferns
- Some 20th century books will become more valuable as evocations of a bygone era. Good writing and art work, first editions and special books by key designers may lead the way.
- One challenge for me has been to find a niche within the published gardening books where I do not currently have any coverage. There are some monographs and old classics where I would like to invest but for the time being I will content my self with a look at planting in accordance to the phases of the moon. This area, also called Biodynamic gardening, is often popular in the press and media at the turn of the year or following blue moons (both of which we have just experienced.)
New Books on Biodynamic Gardening
Anecdotally biodynamic gardening increases yields with quality, edible crops with a good depth of flavour. Science has not yet proved how this can be measured
These guides have been published annually for over 50 years to help gardeners choose the optimum days for sowing, pruning and harvesting various plants and crops.
Get help from nature – my garden needs all the help it can get and maybe just the sun is not quite enough so I’ll give the moon a go as well.
The moon garden is planted and tended in harmony with phases of the moon to take advantage of gravitational pull on the earth’s water table. Sow when the moon is waxing never plant anything when the moon is waning.
Expanding into growing beyond the garden is a book that includes tips and ideas on large-scale farming, livestock market gardening. cereal cultivation and commercial vegetable growing.
Foliar Feeding Hints & Tips Frenzy
Foliar feeding does at least some good. First and foremost it makes me, the putative garden expert, think I am doing some good for the plants in my care. If the fertilised plants pick up any extra nutrients so much the better. If they also repay me with a better crop or display then wow!
What is Foliar Feeding
Foliar feeding is the method of supplying nutrients to plants through their foliage. It involves spraying water-dissolved fertilizers directly on the leaves. Many believe that foliar feeding is preferable to soil application and that it is associated with higher yields and better quality. However I am firmly of the belief that both forms of fertiliser application is best.
Foliar feed can involve the drenching of leaves and stems with suitably diluted liquid fertilizers. This allows nutrients and trace elements to pass into the plants system through direct leaf and stem absorption.
Greenhouse spraying helps humidity and the removal of dust from leaves so why not add some weak feed to the spray and add nutrients to plants through their foliage.
I personally believe this method is a supplement to normal root based feeding which is naturally derived from water uptake.
How to Foliar Feed
Mix up your chosen feed by diluting concentrated liquid feed or dissolving fertiliser salts in warm water. Using a very fine spray apply the solution on top and under all the leaves.
Evening is the best time for plants to be treated with a foliar spray without jeopardizing the plants other root based feeding schedule and risking burn from strong sun.
Small amounts of nutrients should be applied little and often. I find foliar feeding useful for specific situations such as ailing plants in need of a ‘pick them up’. I spray the leaves of tomato plants all over.
To increases the retention of the spray solution, by reducing the surface tension of the droplets, add a surfactant like a couple of drops of vegetable oil in the spray. This will contribute to a more uniform coverage of the foliage.
Benefits of Foliar Feeding
A Garden Jim but not as we know it
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Fiona Weir, has been supported by the Freedom board and was invited to take the creation – a traditional black cab festooned with hundreds of colourful bee-friendly plants to the fringe festival at the Horniman Museum in Forest Hill.
I regularly fill the boot of my car with large bulky garden waste that would take more than 2 years to rot down. I have never tried using under the bonnet for extra space but console myself with rear seats that lay flat hatchback style. If I still had my chipper it may be a different story. I would still have my chipper it it didn’t clog or rust! Perhaps Santa can beam me up to an intergalactic compost heap that will do away with roots, weed seeds and compost undesirables.
Hull had a bee in it’s bonnet for the City of Culture 2017
Other Garden Sculptures
 Memorial Garden Bradford City Fire Disaster 1985
Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow there’s Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow – not quite Klingon language.
Roylan