Browsed by
Category: Flowers and Plants

Annual, perennial and interesting flowers with advice on culture, information, tips and recommended varieties

Flowers in Salads

Flowers in Salads

nasturtium
An interesting article at the Independent – Is Gardening the New Cooking?

Many top class restaurants are using a variety of flowers to spice up their menus. It has led the public to remember old fashioned methods of collecting flowers to add to salads or meals. A free and colourful way to add a little extra to your meals.

Whilst many flowers are edible, it is always important to remember a  child could become very ill if they were not educated about the dangers of plants such as foxgloves and laburnums.

Which Flowers can go in Salads?

  • borage,
  • pansies,
  • violas,
  • honeysuckle,
  • garlic chives,
  • nasturtiums,(all parts are edible)
  • beans and peas (including their black and white flowers)
  • Rose Petals
  • Herbs from Basil to Rocket
Growing Hardy Orchids

Growing Hardy Orchids

Butterfly Orchids

This wonderful variety of Orchids is known in its native Japan as ‘Butterfly Wings’ Its delicate and beautiful flowers bely its relative hardiness. This variety can stand temperatures down to 0 degrees or even lower if not over watered.

Like other orchids it benefits from bright conditions but needs to be sheltered from direct sunlight. An east facing window is ideal.

Orchids need careful watering in free draining soil.

In the growing season, you want to feed them with a proprietory orchid feed once a month – following instructions to avoid over feeding.

This variety of Ponerorchis are supplied as naturally small tubers. Their flowering season is from April to early June. As well as beautiful flowering, they provide a delicate vanilla fragrance to fill any room.

Always use special (usually bark based) orchid compost. These composts help provide the free draining conditions orchids need.

Extended Flowering Season. One of the delights of orchid growing is the length of blooms that can be maintained. After a flowering stick has faded, try cutting it just above the second node to try and encourage a second bloom.

The Orchid family is very large and diverse and it is advisable to take note of particular requirements of different varieties. But, don’t let their reputation of being difficult put you off!

Special Orchid Offer

Related

Skunk Cabbage for the Waterside Lysichiton americanus

Skunk Cabbage for the Waterside Lysichiton americanus

skunk-cabbage

American Skunk Cabbage Lysichiton americanus is planted in groups along the streamside at the Valley Garden Harrogate. Over the years the plants have seeded themselves freely and now make a fantastic display covering the full length of the stream and beyond. The yellow flame-shaped flowers really called spathes, are 18 inches high and look magnificent reflected in the water in April and May. Then the flowers are followed by enormous paddle-shaped, leathery green leaves which remain until dieing back in autumn.
Lysichiton camschatcensis has a hypnotic white spathe and lime green flowering head and a cross between the two species produces a cream spathe (I like to call a spathe a spathe). This spathe surrounds a cigar shaped stem called the spadix which bears many small, bisexual green flowers.
…

Read More Read More

Taking Delphinium Cuttings

Taking Delphinium Cuttings

delphiniums-skipton-richard-sara

The towering spires or spikes of Delphinium are to be admired from near and far. How much better if you can increase your stock of a favourite plant by ‘Vegetative Propagation Methods’.

Method 1
April is a good time to take a cutting from the base of the plant below soil level. Cut out a sturdy 3-4 inch shoot that is about pencil thickness. Too thin and the shoot wont make a sturdy plant and to thick and it will be hard to root. Make sure you get low down taking a shaving of the old root with the cutting. Failing to do this will encourage a rapid but spindly growth that wont last the summer. A bit of hormone rooting powder can be used but the cutting should root quite easily. Pot on or plant out when healthy and strong growth is showing.

…

Read More Read More

Fringed Tulips a Crispa Flower

Fringed Tulips a Crispa Flower

fringed-1
Tulip Crispa or the fringed Tulips looked really good at our Spring show so I have planned to grow some next year. These photos were taken on the bench demonstrating what good cut flowers Tulips can be. The fringed or lacerated petals are unusual yet elegant and add to the attraction of these strongly coloured flowers.

Tips on Fringed Tulips

…

Read More Read More

Garden with a Bird Bath

Garden with a Bird Bath

bird-bathsource

A bird bath can be popular with our feathered friends and be a focal point in the garden. If creating a new bed, for plantings, that will have a bird bath as a centre piece locate the bath just off centre. Work into the soil suitable compost  about 4 inches of garden compost will give the bed a good start.

Plant suggestions

  • Use plants of varied heights and colours and bear in mind you are trying to attract native bird species.
  • For the back of the bed try a Persian lilac growing upto 10 feet. Syringia Persica has fragrant mauve flowers.
  • If there is a wall or sturdy fence try Virginia creeper Parthenocissus tricuspidata with it’s red autumn leaves and hiding place for the birds.
  • …

    Read More Read More

Plum Blossom

Plum Blossom

plum-blossom-2

Spring is well underway but I must take care of my blossom on the Victoria plum. It looks fantastic at the moment and speaks of a good crop this summer but a nip of frost just now would be a real let down. Plums are prone to frost damage and as I am prone to eat Plum jam I will try protect this tree and its blossom.

As the tree has grown above a safe picking height I will trim the upper branches later in summer when the danger of silver leaf disease is much lower.

To augment my plum crop I planted a Czar plum (see below) at the beginning of 2008 and it is showing a very upright habit. This I will encourage into a bowl like shape to get air and light into the centre of the tree for future years. At the moment the rhubarb is a bit too rampant under the plum so I think it will have to come out .

…

Read More Read More

Fuchsia from Cutting to Show

Fuchsia from Cutting to Show

micro-greenhouse

My Fuchsias didn’t over winter very well so I wanted some new ‘cheap’ stock. My first attempt was to buy strong looking plants from a nursery but foolishly left them to get frosted in a very cold greenhouse. These cuttings were on sale in there own nifty mini greenhouse with the roots in a water-gel to sustain then through the retail lifecycle.

I got 12 plants for less than £3 and I have potted them on on a window ledge and 4 days later the largest is already for ‘stopping’. I will pinch it and then others out at the growing tip to encourage branching.  If you are wanting a ‘standard’  shape ie a single bare stem topped with a globe of flowers, then do not pinch out the top but remove all the side shoots and main leaves on the stem until the stem is 12 inches tall and the head has been formed.

Training Fuchsias

  • Standards have already been discussed and they follow the training of a bush fuchsia. The bush fuchsia will be trained to have a stem of about 1.5 inches without branches and all growth then eminated from a selected number of laterals.
  • A shrub has multiple growths from below soil level. training starts ater 2 or 3 pairs of leaves have formed by pinching out the growing tip. this process is repeated until the plant is the size and shape required.
  • After every stop give the plants a nitrogenous feed to promote new branches. Plants flower 6-8 weeks after the last stop and in that time the feed can be changed to a 1:1:2 ratio with more potassium to encourage flowering.

…

Read More Read More

Wallflower Bowles Mauve

Wallflower Bowles Mauve

everlasting-wallflowers

Bowles Mauve is a wallflower Erysimum linifolium that performs for several years unlike its strongly scented cousins. It is a short lived evergreen perennial that gets a bit leggy if not kept in check. The plant flowers all summer long and it seems as though it is flowering itself to death.

  • Take regular cuttings which are easy to root and grow on.
  • It grows 2 feet high and wide in most types of soil preferring alkaline to acid
  • Also try  other Perennial Wallflowers, Bowles Yellow or the shorter ‘Little Lilac Kiss’ from seed
  • Erysimum perofskianum Gold Shot as its name suggests has golden yellow flowers
  • Butterflies are attracted to this plant of the brassica family
  • As a member of the Cruciferae family the flowers grow from stems originating in the centre of the grey leaves and have 4 petals each in the shape of a cross.

everlasting-wallflower

 

Read also Everlasting Wallflowers

Colour of Spring

Colour of Spring

colour

What is your favourite colour combination? 
Cerise, Shocking Pink scarlet and yellow seems a bit off colour to me.

colour-2

Your second choice includes a white Hyacinth perhaps Carnegie or Aiolos
A bit better at keeping the colour temperature in check.

colour-3

Which Parks Gardener thought up this combination?
My kids would call it yucky and I think that is polite.
Think about colour schemes when putting plant close to one another.
The stripped greens of newly mown grass have a lot to commend them.

…

Read More Read More