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Category: About Trees

Articles involving trees, shrubs, bushes, woods and hedges plus related subjects

Smoke Bush – Cotinus coggygiria

Smoke Bush – Cotinus coggygiria

Electronic smoke from cigarettes but not from these smoke bushes.

cotinus-coggia

Red leaved plants seem to be doing very well in this wet summer. I spotted this healthy shrub at Harlow Carr on a recent visit. The name smoke bush comes from the clouds of very fine, fluffy, grey flowers that appear on panicles in such profusion that it looks like a cloud of smoke.

  • This variety is probably Royal Purple both it and other Nocutts hybrids are easy to grow at home.
  • Propagate by taking a spade to an existing shrub and chopping one piece out without lifting the plant. A sort of division in situ.
  • They are deciduous shrubs and mine have a lax habit that probably needs a bit of pruning but I don’t want to sacrifice the flowers.
  • The mature shrubs are a neat round shape.
  • The leaves are also a neat round simple leaf

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Gardeners Tips for Choisya

Gardeners Tips for Choisya

You pays your money and you takes your Choysia- ternata, pearl or sundance it is up to you.

Choysia

This Choisya ‘Sundance’ is an evergreen shrub grown from a young shoot cutting. The plants are trouble free and create a dome shape 4-5 feet high and spread in a similar number of years.

  • Grown mainly for the bright yellow of the new leaves they can be nipped brown with late frosts. Such damaged, scorched or wing burnt leaves should be cut off.
  • The small star shaped white flowers in April and May are very aromatic. A second flush of flowers may be obtained in Autumn.
  • Leaves also smell of basil or a bit citrusy if crushed
  • Choisya ternata ‘Aztec Pearl’ commonly called Mexican Orange blossom has narrower divided leaves and I find it is a bit thin in habit. The flowers are more numerous.
  • Choisya ‘Sundance’ is quite dense and the leaves, even when they have turned green, remain attractive and glossy.
  • Choisya will stand partial shade and can be used as part of an informal hedge
  • Propagate in Summer or Autumn, cuttings are easy to grow
  • Prune to keep in shape and cut out a third of the branches to renew from the base when needed.

Gardeners Tips 2011 Choysia

Berberis Decidious or Evergreen

Berberis Decidious or Evergreen

Berberis

Your Berberis may loose their leaves or remain evergreen through winter. This purple leaved variety, Berberis Thunbergii has turned from very dark to red coloured leaves and after another frost they will be gone. The red berries wont last long either as they are feeding small birds which have already thinned them out. The spines will remain as a deterrent to unwanted intruders and fresh new leaves will reappear in spring.

Best evergreen varieties include Berberis candidula x carmine, Berberis dawinii (flowering orange see below) or one of the hybrid Berberis stenophylia.
Berberis and bee

Best for red or blue-black berries, include Berberis aggreata, Barbarossa, Micrantha, Berberis microphylla and Berberis buxifolia. Berberis vulgaris which used to be eaten in Victorian times plus Berberis heterophylla and Berberis darwinii are all worth considering for cooking or eating dried.

Best yellow flowered Berberis Dictyophylla, Berberis Koreana and Berberis darwinii.
Chose other Berberis varieties

With literally hundreds of species and varieties to select from you can experiment with a Berberis that is just right for your location. Many varieties are extremely prickly so be warned

Berberis

Book Cover

Decorative Bark on Trees

Decorative Bark on Trees

For texture and visual interest do not ignore bark. Some of my favourite trees have captivating bark that looks good through all four seasons.


When the leaves fall you get a chance to inspect the bark on your trees and shrubs. Some bark is outstanding and worth growing for it’s own sake.

Five Trees for Decorative Bark

Acer griseum, paper bark maple, the outer bark peeling in papery flakes to show the copper-colored inner bark; opening leaves bronze colored, turning red or orange in autumn.

Paper-bark birch has shining white bark with large leaves turning pale gold in early autumn, making it more useful than other birches with colored stems.
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Ornamental Horse Chestnuts Shrubs

Ornamental Horse Chestnuts Shrubs

Grow your own conkers but small may not win too many conker contests.

Most people recognise the large ornamental Horse Chestnut trees with the palm-shaped leaves and spring racemes of flowers that lead to conkers in Autumn. Unless you have a large paddock or personal woodland it is unlikely that you grow Horse Chestnuts (Aesculus Hippocastanaceae) but the family contains some smaller varieties.

Aesculus x mississippiensis and Aesculus mutabilis are large shrubs or small trees with flowers that are dark red and yellow.
The Aesculus pavia in USA is called the Dwarf Red Buckeye tree. It is early to leaf and starts blooming when it is just 3 feet tall. This 3-10′ deciduous tree is a wonderful little red flowering tree to plant at the edge of a woodland garden or as the focal point on the curve of a path.
Aesculus Parviflora or Bottlebrush Buckeye is an attractive shrub, up to 10 feet high. The white flowers are borne in erect spikes or racemes.
Aesculus sylvatica is a rounded shrub or small tree, up to 25 feet high and wide that has yellow to reddish coloured flowers on the spikes.

Buckeye is the State flower of Ohio and has its own web site

Book Cover
Not particularly a gardening book Horse Chestnut ‘is a study of the commonest species in Britain. Do you know why it is called the ‘horse’ chestnut and that it is used in shampoos and how you take it on holiday with you? British forces would not have kept Germany out of England during the First World War without this tree. There would not be a State of Israel without it either. Remember learning Under a Spreading Chestnut Tree? Well who wrote it and how many versions are there? Bet some of you have played ‘Conkers’ but how old is the game? Which artist has painted the tree more than any other and do you know about ‘Chestnut Sunday’ in Bushy Park?’

Help Growing Euonymus

Help Growing Euonymus

Euonymus need little help from gardeners to produce a fine show of leaves. The green, white and yellow combinations are great but dwarfed by the leaves that turn brilliant red in autumn on some varieties.
There are over a 100 species so there is a Euonymus for your garden.

Leaves

Growing Euonymus in the United Kingdom

  • The RHS have awarded an AGM to Euonymus Fortunei Emerald ‘n’ Gold’, ‘a dwarf evergreen shrub of spreading habit, with broadly yellow-margined leaves, tinged pink in winter; occasionally produces a few small, inconspicuous greenish flowers’. AGM is a recoginition that a plant will grow successfully in the UK.

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Acer platanoides Drummondii and Greenery

Acer platanoides Drummondii and Greenery

green-n-white

Green and white are very accommodating colours in the garden as they are both clean and fresh. This combination caught my eye  with the Climbing Hydrangea petiolaris just flowing over the top of a wall in which was growing Valerian alba.  Against the wall was an Acer platanoides Drummondii and all the colours seemed to blend so well. …

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Blackthorn and Sloes

Blackthorn and Sloes

Blackthorn is a multi branched, deciduous tree or bush that can grow up to 20 feet tall (the Blackthorn in this photo was 7 feet tall as were the ferns!).
The stem is dark to black and the small branches create thorns hence the name Blackthorn but in Latin Prunus Spinosa.
Like its relative the Cherry plum, Blackthorn produces small fruit we know as Sloes.
The thorns can be very sharp and the bush can be a bit ragged unless kept in check.

Blackthorn is often used for and found in hedgerows or on the edges of woodland and is easy to grow as part of your mixed hedge. In early Spring it is covered in small white blossom before the leaves come into bud. Blackthorn is good for attracting butterfly caterpillars but is best known for the small, spherical, blue-black fruit that are available in late Autumn.

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Variegated Dragon Plants – Dracaena

Variegated Dragon Plants – Dracaena

Many house plants have leaves of green and cream or white combinations but a red edge to the leaves of Dracaena marginata tricolour makes it stand out.  This plant is also called variegated silhouette plant and is one of the family of Dragon plants.

Hints and Tips on growing Dragon Plants

  • These slender pointed leaves have attractive dark and lighter colours edged red running along the length of the leaves.
  • Do not feed in winter and only modest fertilizer is needed next spring or summer.
  • Keep the soil on the dry side and do not leave the plant roots in water
  • Remove the growing tip to encourage branching once the plant is 18 inches tall
  • Dracaena is a fine family of house plants  liking temperatures of 15-22°C such as …

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Tree Preservation Orders in Your Garden

Tree Preservation Orders in Your Garden

Local Authorities can issue a Tree Presevation Order (TPO) making it necessary for the owner or occupier of any land to obtain prior consent of that authority 6 weeks before any lopping, pruning or felling is carried out.

A TPO is designed to prohibit the cutting down, uprooting, topping, lopping, uprooting, wilful damage or destruction of protected trees or woodlands. TPO’s are issued to conserve and protect trees from development but the cost and excessive control is leaving some trees to die of neglect.

TPO’s can protect individual trees, hedgerow trees, groups, areas or woodlands buy not hedges shrubs or bushes.

Nearly all trees in a ‘Conservation Area’ are automatically protected by this legislation. The Forestry Commission have the right to prevent woodland being destroyed and issue licenses for thinning out and felling on your own land.
Tip – check with your local authority before embarking on a major tree uprooting scheme. Conviction in a Magistrates Court can lead to a fine of up to a £20,000.

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