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Gardening articles that may not include tips

Creating A Focal Point in Your Garden

Creating A Focal Point in Your Garden

lavender

Sometimes as gardeners, we place all the emphasis on plants. However, a few well positioned ornaments and focal points can heighten the interest and drama within a garden.

The above photo is from Lady Margaret Hall Gardens, Oxford. This is a sunken garden with a mixture of lavenders, verbena and ornamental grasses. The two earthenware pots and sun dial in the middle of the garden provide a perfect foil and complement to the understated planting.

Box Symmetry

box

In this photo, the eye is steered towards the gap in the end fence. There is a neat symmetry, which helps to provide a relaxing feel to the garden. Notice how, the gardener has encouraged the eye to follow a certain path.

lavender

Focal Point With Plants

mixed border

Verbascum ‘Banana Custard’ provides a focal point in this mixed border

Photos from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford and garden in Yorkshire; copyright gardeners tips.

Climate Change and Garden Insects

Climate Change and Garden Insects

Moth

One thing is sure the climate in your garden will change. You already know one week will be different to the next and I can’t remember when two months or any years were the identical to others. In many areas you can get 3 or 4 seasons in one day (or in Scotland one hour!).

Another thing to be sure about is the ‘law of unintended consequences’ or we might not get the effects we expect and plan for.

The march of insects, predators and undesirables.

Changing climate does not bring more alien species but it can make our environment more welcoming for them when they do arrive. Recent arrivals include but are not limited too:

  • Lily beetle the bright red insect devouring my lily bulbs as we read
  • The Harlequin ladybird still a pleasant curiosity but rapidly out eating or native species with its voracious appetite. …

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UK Deciduous Azaleas

UK Deciduous Azaleas

Deciduous azalea

Description & Growing Deciduous Azalea

  • All Azalea are Rhododendron but not all Rhododendron are Azaleas. Now we have that as clear as a muddy pond what is an Azalea?
  • An Azalea can be an evergreen or deciduous flowering shrub with pale or startling coloured blooms.
  • Some Azaleas are scented whilst others are without scent. Whatever you think about deciduous Azaleas, ‘muddy and boring’ they are not.
  • Azalea are some of the most gay and brilliant flowering shrubs yet grown.
  • For the technically minded Azaleas are in the genus Rhododendron, with evergreen azaleas in the subgenus Tsutsusi and deciduous azaleas in the subgenus Pentanthera.
  • Most deciduous azaleas are hardy but asiatic species need more protection when young

 

Rhododendron occidentale #4

 

Varieties & Hybrids of Deciduous Azalea for Growing

  • The species have been much crossed and bred but the scented Rhododendron luteum and Rhododendron japonica are available as species.
  • Knapp Hill hybrids are amongst the most colourful deciduous Azaleas.
  • The Ghent hybrids have sweetly scented, honeysuckle-shaped flowers with long stamen emarging from the tube.
  • The Rhododendron Mollis Azaleas are crossed between Rhododendron mollis and Rhododendron japonicum
  • Rustica hybrids have fragrant double flowers and Occidentale hybrids flower in late May
  • The Exbury range were bred by Lionel de Rothschild who loved deciduous azaleas and carried out much breeding work to enhance colours and scent. The Solent Range was started by George Hyde a private grower in Dorset but bought for Exbury (Images).
  • For specimen plants Azalea Coccinea Speciosa or R obtusum are recommended

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Chose Your Berberis Variety

Chose Your Berberis Variety

A prickly subject is our Berberis unless you pick with care.

berberis-orange

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Berberis Julianea is a colourful low maintenance foliage plant with flowers, berries and prickles! Good Berberis are  prickly flowering shrubs often with fragrant flowers ranging in colours from pale primrose to pumpkin orange, light pink to darker red.

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Saxifrages in Alpine Gardens

Saxifrages in Alpine Gardens

There are a host of different Saxifraga or singular Saxifrage. They make for an interesting group to grow and collect both in the garden and in troughs or pots depending on the variety. Saxifrage kolenatiana has rosettes that throw up spikes of flower in summer similar to its better known Saxifrage relative ‘London Pride’.

Groups of Saxifrages

These are just some of the groupings of Saxifrage each contain many variants, varieties and species for which you need a more detailed document. See links below.

  • Saxifraga x arendsii or Mossy Saxifrage is useful for walls, troughs and shady rockeries.
  • Saxifraga stolonifera  groundcover under flowering shrubs or small trees OK in shade or Saxifraga x urbium London Pride
  • Saxifraga cotyledon or Pyramidal Saxifrage for troughs and pots
  • Saxifraga paniculata: Encrusted Saxifrage, group 4 for walls, edger; sun to part shade
  • Saxifraga primuloides: a miniature variety for shaded rockeries


Links and Further Information
The Saxifrage Society

Saxifraga World

BBC

RHS  Silver Saxifrage Trials

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Click on book to buy from Amazon.

Hydrangea Aspera Shrub

Hydrangea Aspera Shrub

The leaves of this Hydragea Aspera are one of its key features. As with other Aspera subspecies the branches and leaves are ‘strigose’ which botanically means ‘beset with appressed straight and stiff hairs’ that means rough and furry to me.

This  specimen shrub is 4-5 feet tall and whilst it comes from the Himalayas some plants can be a bit tender.

The Purple flowers open to a clear white (that is almost burned out on this photo) but the overall effect is pleasing. The flowerheads make good internal decorations.

The colouring of Hydrangea Aspera is not affected by aluminium or acidity of the soil.

Other Hydrangea species that are closely related include H.Involucrata, H. Strigosa and H.  Villosa.   H. Sargentiana is a taller more leggy coarse shrub brought from China by E H Wilson with a low growing H. Longipes and H. Galbripes.

For Complete Hydrangeas book click here and for cheap colourant click this link
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Hydrangeas available from Thompson & Morgan

See Help to change Hydrangea colour

Gardeners Question Time

Gardeners Question Time

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A cheap tip for members of the RHS is to borrow books from their libraries. I am reading the entertaining Techniques and Tips for Gardeners from the BBC Gardeners Question Time Team. A well produced book of over 300 pages contains a wealth of information and ‘nuggetts that rarely find there way into practical books’

Nuggets and Gardeners Tips

  • Create shady areas for underplanting by puning off the lower stems of shrubs to create a trunk with a head of top growth.
  • If a tender shrub like Callistemon ‘Bottle Brush’ or Pittosporum is cut down by frost leave it until summer as it may grow back from the base. Once new growth starts you can cut away the dead stems.
  • Don’t be upset if windbreaks take a hammering during wild winters, that is the job they are supposed to do.
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16 Exceptional Gardeners and Seven Christmas Books

16 Exceptional Gardeners and Seven Christmas Books

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If gardeners are exceptional people then buy them a copy of this book for Christmas. It contains 20 stories and profiles about encounters with gardeners and a day in their life to provide reading matter for dark garden-free evenings.

Amongst those covered are these sixteen:

Roy Roberts Landscape Gardener
Roy Lancaster from Gardener’s Question Time
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Tony Schilling Asian Heath Garden at Wakenhirst
Thomas Pakenham Meetings with Remarkable Trees
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Geoffrey Dutton the Concrete Gardener
Beth Chatto Essex girl gardener
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Howard Donald Waterer
Anthea Gibson ‘The Cotswold Gardener’
Lady Salisbury writer of a Gardener’s Life
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Dan Pearson ‘Guardian of Gardeners’
Kim Wilkie ‘Reality is a condition induced by lack of imagination’.
Ronald Blythe Outsiders Gardener Friends.
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Lucinda Lambton President of Garden History Society
Richard Mabey of Food for Free
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Hugh “Wine Atlas” Johnson
James “Gaia Hypothesis” Lovelock.

Click on the book cover to buy from Amazon

Month by Month Gardening for Guru & Novice

Month by Month Gardening for Guru & Novice

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The Royal Horticultural Society produce many books and this one, RHS Gardening Month by Month by Ian Spencer contains over 1,300 seasonal tasks. Covering tasks for every part of the garden, expert plant advice and lists of star plants from January to December it is a great confidence booster. When you have finished those tasks it will be time to start a new year!

Whether you are a green-fingered guru or are just starting out enjoy 12 months of successful gardening. With help on what to do when to ensure your plants are well cared for and your garden blooms all year round.
Easy-to-follow, this guide not only tells you what to do when, but shows you how to do it.
You only need to browse and not follow slavishly.

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