Rebuilding a nursery - Copton Ash

[Tim Ingram]

Hardly a flower in sight but brimming with interest... from the Great Dixter Plant Fair this weekend.

Amorpha nana and Peucedanum longifolium (Sarastro, Austria)
Cynara humilis, C. cardunculus flavescens, Lathyrus splendens (Brighton Plants)
Rehmannia henryi (Derry Watkins, Special Plants)
Papaver triniifolium, Eryngium yuccifolium (Marina Christopher, Phoenix Perennial Plants)
Potentilla fruticosa 'Vilmoriniana' (Rein en Mark Bulk, Netherlands)
Scabiosa sp. (ex. Simien Mtns, Ethiopea - Paul Barney, Edulis Plants)
& Eryngium pandanifolium (Chelsea Physic form - Dixter Nursery)

- a place for the specialist nursery and a botanical perspective in horticulture?

Here is a great quote from a 130 years ago:

'A plant, a leaf, a blossom, _ but contains a folio volume.
We may read and read,
And read again, and still find something new.'

James Hurdis (1788)

Well I think that fits. There were plenty of more colourful plants too!

[Tim Ingram]

Picking apples and pears today for the 'Best of Faversham' market tomorrow. Very wet and overcast so we hope for a better weekend. These are just a few of the varieties we grow - others are Ashmead's Kernel, Spartan, Orlean's Reinette, Crispin, Blenheim Orange and pear Josephine de Malines...

[Maggi Young]

My word, those look good , Tim - wish I could be there at the market.

[Robert]

Tim,

A very interesting medley of apples and pears. Some I grow here in California, other I have never heard of.

Is D'Arey Spice a cider apple? We have a few of that type around our region. They are not the best for eating fresh but the cider is divine. 

[Tim Ingram]

I think D'Arcy Spice probably should be a cider apple! This is the description in 'Apples - A Guide to the Identification of International Varieties' by John Bultitude:

'Rather unattractive, late keeping dessert apple. Primarily a garden variety. Well known in East Anglia but is seldom grown elsewhere. White, tinged green. Firm, fine-textured, juicy, characterisitic aromatic flavour. Season - December to April.'

And in 'The Book of Apples' by Joan Morgan and Alison Richards:

'Hot, spicy, almost nutmeg-like flavour by the New Year; fairly sharp but sweetens. Firm white flesh, becomes rather spongy by spring but flavour remains.'

It has a tough and thick skin and needs a warm climate to grow and mature well, hence grown in East Anglia. We only have a small tree and don't usually get much fruit, but this year has actually been quite good - for pears also. A good hot and dry summer and warm but wettish autumn until recently.

(John Bultitude was a horticulturist trained at Ontario in Canada, who then moved to Essex and later RHS Wisley and transferred all the propagating stock when the National Fruit Trials moved from Wisley to Brogdale, near to us at Faversham, in 1952. He wrote his definitive guide to Apples in 1983. Joan Morgan was trained as a biochemist but has been strongly involved with the Friends of Brogdale and studying fruit for many years, and is a member of the RHS Fruit and Vegetable Committee. She and others were instrumental in maintaining the collection at Brogdale when it was threatened with closure in the late 1980's).

[Maggi Young]

Thank you for the apple information, Tim - adds interest for me for sure.

[Robert]

Tim,

Yes, thank you for the very interesting information.

[johnralphcarpenter]

I have D`Arcy Spice growing here, but it hasn`t fruited too well so far.

[Tim Ingram]

And cake! From a neighbour at the market yesterday. This was called 'Garden Cake' - a very nice version of carrot cake which included courgette and nuts and a very rich icing. The icing was topped with dried rose petals. A nice exchange for some bags of apples from the garden...

[Tim Ingram]

A good day yesterday at the autumn meeting of the Fritillaria Group. This is a genus so fascinating to the plants-person for its wide diversity in form and habitat, and often beauty and subtle elegance, that it draws you in even if many are not so easy to grow. Christopher Grey-Wilson spoke on the great variety of species he has encountered in extensive botanical travelling around the world and Bob Wallis on 'The Yellow Bells of SW Turkey' where there is a high level of endemism on isolated mountains close to the Mediterranean. Pretty specialised for those less experienced and knowledgeable about the genus such as myself, but still fascinating for the ecology of these places and many of the more familiar plants that grow along with the fritillaries. Where else too would you find really well grown rarer bulbs and plants such as Paeonia clusii, Iris stolonifera, Allium schubertii, and the new hybrids (from crosses with related species) of Fritillaria imperialis available for sale? (these from Norman Stevens and Jacques Amand).

I didn't take a camera to this meeting but here is my take on the spring meeting in 2015 when many flowering plants were on show and Martyn Rix, amongst others, spoke on the genus: http://www.alpinegardensociety.net/diaries/Kent/+April+/662/

Interesting too was Paul Cumbleton's introduction to the Fritillaria Group website: www.fritillaria.org.uk which includes a Forum similar to the SRGC Forum here and gives a great opportunity to share experiences in cultivating the genus. Gillian said to me that the talks were very much over her head, and in many ways they were for me too even though I have read about and seen examples of many fritillarias. We don't grow a great number of bulbs and they are a subject in themselves. None the less the great appeal of the Group is as much for the friendly atmosphere and the really knowledgeable and gifted plants-people who belong to it, and the way these plants are valued and understood, just as we find for many other plants. Whether we will grow many choice fritillarias in the future is a moot point but it is an extremely fascinating genus for the reasons I give above, and I am sure we will try more in the garden with a better idea of where they may prosper.

Perhaps most interesting of all was talking to Laurence Hill whose detailed studies of the genus Fritillaria on his website: www.fritillariaicones.com are extraordinarily comprehensive and beautifully presented, showing the wide variation within individual species - which is often not apparent to most gardeners who have not seen plants in Nature - and details of their life cycles and morphology. For the botanist, plants-person, and especially nurseryman or anyone who grows and propagates plants from seed extensively, his work has a strong resonance.

[Tim Ingram]

This has to be one of the best years I remember for autumn colours here in the south-east. A hot dry summer, cool moist autumn, so far few if any damaging winds and large diurnal changes in temperature (no frost yet with us). It is one of the very few years we have had grapes set on the purple leaved vine (but there are several vineyards not too far away). Two of these trees - Betula ermanii and Liquidambar styraciflua - were raised from seed (and not selected clones) and always colour well. The Medlar ('Nottingham') was one we used in flower on a Chelsea display for the Hardy Plant Society a good time ago, beautiful in flower, fruit and autumn colour, but not especially edible (Or at least we never know what to do with the fruit? Apparantly, from listening to Gardeners Question Time recently, there are wild medlars that are good to eat from the tree, but is this when they are grown in a much hotter climate?).

[Tim Ingram]

And a superb crab apple that came from the breeding programme run by Hugh Ermen at Brogdale near to us - 'Little Star' (if our records are correct). Hugh passed several of his selections on to my father, which never became commercially available, but there is another, 'White Star', grown by Frank Matthews (the fruit tree suppliers on the Welsh borders who had close links with Hugh's work), so it would be interesting to compare them.

[Maggi Young]

Very good autumn colour, Tim. Those Malus are very well- laden with fruit  - a  most impressive display!

[Robert]

Tim,

Are your Medlars bletted? or do they still taste terrible after bletting? Generally the bletting process greatly improves the sweeten and flavor of this fruit.

[ArnoldT]

I've done the Medlar thing.

I've bletted them and made a sort of compote.  Taste a bit like an apple that has been allowed to brown.

Robert.  If you want a couple to give a try PM me an address.

http://www.suncesrbije.com/en/clanak/medlar-compote/868

http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2012/11/medlar-jelly-recipe/

http://www.jamieoliver.com/magazine/blogs.php?title=medlar-jelly-recipe