Scottish Rock Garden Club Forum
General Subjects => Blogs and Diaries => Topic started by: Tim Ingram on August 08, 2012, 05:35:27 PM
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Edit by Maggi: This thread has been assembled from posts made in another, called 'Disappearing Nurseries' - Tim's posts are about the work he and his wife are doing to rebuild their nursery in Kent - it is too positive a tale to be left under such a gloomy title! Some of Tim's posts in the previous thread are also relevant there and so, rather than move them, link are included here which will allow the reader to see the photos posted previously.
Tim Ingram August 15th 2011
http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=7505.msg211435#msg211435 (http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=7505.msg211435#msg211435)
(photos are in the original post – link above)
Since this topic (Disappearing nurseries) is close to my heart, we are working hard to make our small nursery reappear next spring! I would like to thank the SRGC forum, and particularly those who run it, for providing a lot of the inspiration. Small specialist nurseries rely very much on the two way traffic that goes on between gardeners and growers, since most of us are both of these things at the same time! Gardeners in the South may remember the famous (to the cognescenti) Ramparts Nursery, that specialised in silver foliage plants many years ago. These plants suit our dry and warm garden well so will be amongst those we propagate.
We have a little way to go(!) as the images of the nursery show, but propagation is well underway and is a good counterweight to the heavier work!
Maggi Young
Tim, this is excellent news! We wish you the very best of luck.... and I am sure the Forumists will be more than delighted to become customers .... especially if you can manage mail -order! (Oh dear, that's landing you with yet more work, isn't it? )
You will keep us updated with progress, won't you.... there is little so satisfying as watching other people work!!
Tim Ingram
« Reply #75 on: August 20, 2011, 07:30:28 PM »
Our plans for rebuilding the nursery are quite closely linked to the local AGS Groups and the Shows held at Rainham in the Spring and Autumn. We are also going to open a group of our gardens via the NGS next spring. It seems like quite hard work, but anything worthwhile takes effort. What we don't have so effectively in the AGS is a proper balance between the 'Showing' and 'Growing' fraternities, and this makes it difficult to introduce new gardeners to these wonderful plants. The answer is to do what needs to be done until it works! So any aspiring nurserymen out there - go to it! Support will come from the people around you, whether moral or practical and difficult times can be overcome.
Tim Ingram March 02, 2012
http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=7505.msg235528#msg235528 (http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=7505.msg235528#msg235528) – more pictures there
I've come back to this topic because after a relatively mild winter, interrupted by a short very cold and snowy spell, there has been the opportunity to get on with our garden and nursery renovations, and the beautiful weather at present coincides with that wonderful time as seeds germinate and plants begin to grow away. We are progressing steadily with rebuilding the nursery, with seeds germinating and cuttings rooting and so a few examples are shown below. Much of running a specialist nursery has to do with finding and making a particular niche and the plants we have grown have always been dry loving species more suited to the south-east, and new and rarely grown plants. Inevitably these have a limited clientele and hence the importance of specialist plant societies like the AGS and SRGC which bring together gardeners who have the same fascination with the plant world. It is great reason for working hard at the local AGS events and Groups too.
So it is early days yet but we hope to really have the nursery up and running more efficiently by this time next spring, and by this time the shredder may see less action and the potting bench more! (The final picture of Eriogonum shows germination after the seed pots were placed in the fridge for 4 weeks after sowing. This allows more controlled cold treatment for certain seed when the required stratification treatment is reasonably well known, and helps when seed is available late or winter conditions are not cold enough. We are aiming to use this method more as results give us guidance).
http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=7505.msg240877#msg240877 (http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=7505.msg240877#msg240877) m ore pix.
Gradually the greenhouses are filling up... and the seeds germinating.
Ron M : Looks like your getting a nice set up there Tim
Will Itsell: Glass could do with a clean
Oh, it's shading
All looks good. One can tell a lot about a nursery (and the nurseryman/woman) from general tidiness. Good luck!
Tim Ingram April 01, 2012, 10:38:19 PM
Will, thank you for your kind comments. The glasshouse is tidy but it's still not so tidy outside, but getting there! Mostly my wife's work, I am busy shredding and large scale weeding, in between playing on the computer!
August 08, 2012, 05:35:27 PM »
Steadily the nursery is taking shape again. At this time of year, high summer, and especially with all the rain we have had, the garden begins to run away. There is a lot of weeding to do elsewhere and another section of the nursery to clear and remake but it is nice to see the plants beginning to line up again. The next step is to convince people they need alpines in their gardens!
In 'The Garden' (last issue) Mary Keen speaks of specialist nurseries and plantsmanship with the sense that younger gardeners are more drawn now to Naturalistic gardening and growing vegetables. There is a paradox there in that more thoughtful and educated gardening is just what is needed at a time of strong environmental and economic concerns. None the less we sell few plants at the local farmer's market so specialist nurseries are only ever likely to charm those of us who find the plants themselves charming and fascinating; a small but select band.
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How very satisfying Tim, it's shaping up nicely, you must be really pleased....I hope you convince the plebs ;)
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Must be hard work Tim but it looks to be coming on really well. Will you be doing mail order?
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Thanks Brian, David. We may well do mail order when we get properly into our stride, but it is hard work in addition to running the garden - will wait and see.
Brian - I certainly don't want to imply that gardeners not hooked on alpines are plebs. That would be unfair. No I think the onus is on those of us fascinated by these plants to carry that on to others - by no means easy, but at least if more are being grown there are more chances for new gardeners to discover them too.
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I certainly don't want to imply that gardeners not hooked on alpines are plebs. That would be unfair.
Indeed not, I perhaps would have been better to say the uninitiated, we have visited many, many gardens which have been wonderful even though there was a lack of many alpines. In my defense I did have one eye on the Olympics and one on my laptop.
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Hmmm, this is rather odd.... the thread is about disappearing nurseries and there Tim is, busily building up his enterprise again .... I thihnk this thread needs a revamp ..... I'll have a look tomorrow!
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"Not Disappearing Nurseries" ?
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I've pulled together the gist of Tim's posts in the 'Disappearing Nurseries' topic and renamed it to reflect the positive feel of Tim's work.
Good luck, Tim and Gillian!
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I think it's great that you are re-building your nursery, Tim and Gillian,
at a time when things seem to have to be "dumbed down" or made as easy as possible we need to encourage "new gardeners" by example! Once they know they can grow vegies from seed they can try perennials then alpines!
Afterall, Alpine Gardening is the Pinnacle of the Gardening World! ;D
cheers
fermi
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Tim ,
Is there a technical reason why you have grass path between your beds.Seems a lot of work maintaining them looking fine compared with gravel path.Also in spring and autumn are they not a bit soggy?
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John - there are a lot of idiosyncrasies with our garden which don't equate with efficiency. One reason we have never been terribly successful. The ethos behind the garden and nursery is to do with the way they complement one another and the view that I have of the garden as a place to learn about plants and discover more of them. The grass paths are more to do with how the nursery has developed. We have well drained soil so rarely have problems with the grass becoming too soggy - but yes it does take quite a bit of maintainance.
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The most important thing is that you like it!
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The most important thing is that you like it!
Yes! That's very true, John!
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At the moment the nursery is under winter wraps with only the excitement of seedlists and seed sowing claiming attention. While the weather is reasonably good though we have a lot of work to do in the garden, preparing for opening next February for snowdrops. A lot of these grow under rows of dwarf fruit trees, intermixed with a whole range of woodland perennials and ferns. These are slowly being worked through, cutting back leaves of plants like hellebores and mulching with good compost. The trees themselves also need quite regular pruning, though this is something I have still not really got the hang of. Generally we try to keep them open and not too congested, and preferably not catching visitors in the eye as they walk past!
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It is very satisfying tidying up areas, except when you turn the camera and see the next part that needs attention. Many of these woodland plantings become more more sophisticated with time as new plants are added, present plants seed, and a succession of species give interest right through the spring and into the summer - foliage plants like ferns keep this going right through to the winter. This makes them wonderfully interesting, but also means a lot of care needs to be taken maintaining them.
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You're lucky it's been dry enough to stick your head out of the door Tim, it's been weeks since I did anything meaningful outdoors.
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It is great to see the snowdrops starting to appear through the ground - I have very few early forms and most of these will be flowering in February. The picture shows a clump of 'Gerard Parker', always one of the most striking.
And finally what evey garden thrives on - compost. We make large amounts of this every year (which also implies a great deal of work), but once the ground has been cleared and this is spread liberally around the plants, the job seems quite complete. These examples have not broken down as well as more shredded material, which can reach remarkably high temperatures in a good compost heap, and over quite a long period, but are probably more typical of most gardens. Brown gold!
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Had a bit of trouble posting these so they all came separately. Us gardeners are a tough breed David! Seriously though we have had reasonable weather here - a few days very wet but nothing like over in the west country and elsewhere. Unfortunately we have let the garden slide a little (an alternative view is that it is much too big!) and there is a lot to do by next spring.
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Only on a gardening site would nearly 30 people look at pictures of compost! Priorities definitely in the right place. We have five rows of dwarf apples planted some 30 years ago and because of their fairly small rootsystems and light shade these make an ideal spot to plant woodland perennials. Two rows have been planted, especially with snowdrops, plus an increasing number of ferns. The last three though have been left neglected and become very overgrown with nettles and brambles. So with the relatively mild winter weather we are having so far a concerted effort is being made to get them cleared and ready for planting in the spring. This is one of the best places in the garden for really choice plants like trilliums and podophyllums and much more besides. These are a few examples now - the two sides of gardening; hard work and the joy of plants becoming established.
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Oh Tim, over five hundred have looked at the compost photos- it's only the maddest 30 that have ENLARGED pictures!! :D
The garden is looking a bit damp - we can sympathise with that..... :-X
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The snowdrops in our garden don't really get into their stride until a month or so, and then the rows of apples are a carpet of white and quite magical. However, there is still a lot of interest now when you look closely. Hacquetia epipactis 'Thor' is thrusting through the soil, and like so many early plants goes on looking good for several months. Most hellebores are swelling buds now, some almost opening, and the apple-green H. odorus very fresh and distinctive. Geranium x oxonianum 'Spring Fling' could just as well be called 'winter fling' for these rather curiously marked leaves, and G. phaeum 'Margaret Wilson' still shows its white-splashed foliage - this was discovered and named for a member of our Alpine Group and I think has become widely grown. Ferns in general become rather tattered by now but Polypodium x mantaniae 'Cornubiense' is an exception and very nice in dryish shade under a crabapple.
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Maggi that cheers me up even more - nearly 10% love compost as much as I do!
And the last picture...
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You are discovering the new Forum attachment limit of 5 per post, Tim..... :)
Strangely enough, even though most of the plants you show are well ahead of ours, we have found this year that quite a lot of ferns have kept looking smarter than usual through the "winter" so far.
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Nice going Tim. As I said on an earlier post you're lucky to live on the "dry-side" of this island, so far this year I've spent just an hour working in the garden and all my exchange seed has been sown (under severe protest!) in the kitchen.
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Is there a difference between G.pheum Margaret Wilson and G.pheum Margaret Hunt?
How are the seedlings?Some variegated leaves?
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Hello Tim like you a nurserymans work is never finished, we collect all the leaves to compost except the Ash and Sycamore which are very toxic, I am fortunate to get trailer loads of Beech leafmould from Brechin in return for some pruning work it is pure gold any way keep up the good work, cheers Ian the Christie kind
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Thank you Ian! A group of us are getting together to do a display at the Kent Garden Show for the Kent AGS, and I am hoping this might begin to re-engender interest in gardening with alpines, both for viewers and for those of us doing the display, and for the nursery - I shall have to show some pictures of our compost bins! I hope we might show a trough of later flowering rhododendrons - does anyone have any good suggestions? (This will be the late May Bank Holiday weekend).
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Tim any reason why there is eggshell in the compost, or are you just disposing it in an environmentally way?
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Ha ha, Neil - no the eggshells just went into the bin with everything else but they never break down. In the past we have shredded material quite thoroughly, and this then heats up wonderfully and makes a friable compost, almost like that out of a bag. This last lot wasn't broken up so much and took much longer to break down and has left various bit and pieces in it like the eggshells. A friend adds so-called biodegradable plastic to his heaps but neither does this break down in the timeline of a compost heap. Over the year we can make very large quantities of compost (using all the grass mowings too, which heat up so rapidly), so it is quite a major activity in the garden.
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I find eggshell breaks down quite well as long as you crush it in your hand before adding it to the heap
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I suppose I should then add them to the compost, never thought about doing that before.
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Hello again, hope the show goes well Tim, I remember in my younger days when I worked in one of the best garden shops in Scotland that the bulb planting compost and compost for pots, tubs without holes in the bottom always had eggshells in it I was assured that this prevented the compost from going sour some compost also had charcoal for same reasons, cheers Ian the Christie kind
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we collect all the leaves to compost except the Ash and Sycamore which are very toxic,
Toxic to what Ian? Plants or animals? Sycamore is tapped like sugar maple in some places I believe.
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We had a short debate about this on the AGS discussion pages and I think the size and texture of sycamore leaves means they tend to 'layer' and break down much more slowly than beech or oak (I called these the 'caviar' of leafmoulds!). Over a couple of years any potential toxins in sycamore leaves are likely to be degraded. Sycamore leaves are a lot more annoying to collect in the garden though - we tend to use a rotary mower which breaks them up nicely.
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Tim - a fascinating story, it is great to see your steady progress and I look forward to visiting when you are open for business.
I am always interested to hear about peoples experience with compost and leafmould, particularly which leaves you can and which you shouldnt use. The garden here has several trees in and around, and each year I make something like a cubic metre of leafmould (thats the volume when collected and stacked - it decreases as the rotting process occurs). Any excess leaves then get added to the compost heap. I heard recently that Walnut (Juglans regia) leaves contained a toxin and shouldnt be added to compost heaps (or presumably to make leafmould either). There does seem to be a logical reason for this, the Black Walnut (Juglans nigra) in particular, produces a compound called Juglone which inhibits the growth of other plants. It is apparently also produced by the Common Walnut too, but not in the same amounts. I have been using significant quantities of Walnut leaves to make leafmould and/or compost for 15 years without suspecting that I was causing any problems. I suspect that once the compost/leafmould is spread round the garden the concentrations of any toxins are insignificant. (I dont use these composts/leafmould) for germinating seeds
I had never heard that ash and sycamore were to be avoided, does anyone have ideas (in addition to sycamore layering idea mentioned above)?
To me the key to good leafmould (in particular) is too have a variety of different leaves and mix them well.
Chris
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Just discovered this thread and it will be very relevant to me as I start on my own new nursery within a very few week now.
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The weather has put a bit of a hold on activities for the time being. It puts a wholly different complexion on the garden and slows things down. I was dismayed to see an economist blaming the snow for x million pounds loss to the economy, as though the sun should shine every day! There can be few economists who are also gardeners.
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Hello Tim, weather much the same here have spent some time today getting snow off the roof of glasshouses frames and clearing our road again probably over a foot of snow now and yes we gardeners have to accept what nature throws at us, cheers Ian the Christie kind.
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Ian,
your place looks a bit different to when I last saw it! ;D
cheers
fermi
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the eggshells just went into the bin with everything else but they never break down.
All my egg shells go into a mortar and pestle next to a radiator. Every few weeks I grind them up and sprinkle them either straight onto the garden or into my vermicompost bins.
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Its more than 120 days since the last entry here and progress continues in a the sort of way you climb a scree; one step forward, and hopefully not one step back. The biggest difficulty is really committing to growing a range of plants that there is a relatively limited interest in - so there is also the need to engender more of an interest, hence other posts in other places. This year has probably been treading water, not helped by such a long dry spell through the summer, though this did enable a concerted effort to paint the house! We have always grown dry-loving species more suited to our climate, and a lot of oddball and unusual plants that can take some convincing for other gardeners to try. The alpine shows are an obvious place to parade such plants in front of gardeners, but it has to be said not too many new gardeners attend them. The garden itself is potentially a good alternative, but again most gardeners prefer the glories of dramatic plant fairs. So the specialist nursery really is a labour of love and an individual fascination in plants rather than an economic marvel!
Part of the need is to maintain stock plants from which to propagate and we are combining this with revamping parts of the garden. This raised bed was first made over twenty years ago and for a long time grew a wonderful range of alpines. We are now replanting it with a collection of small Mediterranean-climate species, of which a few examples are given below. Origanums are typical and the first picture shows O. 'Phoenix seedling', raised on Marina Christopher's nursery; very like 'Kent Beauty', but looks more robust. Marvellous plants for late in the year. The androsace may look little different to other forms of A. sarmentosa but was obtained years ago from a wonderful and rather unique French nurseryman, Jean Poligné, who ran a nursery near to St. Malo - so a reminder of a rare character - and in flower it is distinct (to the cognescenti). The third plant is a reminder of an enjoyable visit to the Czech Republic - Potentilla pulvinaris. A beautiful foliage plant, and one like others that will probably need some winter protection.
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Legumes have always been a great fascination. Oxytropis besseyi (from Alplains seed) would be very exciting to establish, and another O. zionis has also been planted on the bed. I haven't had great success with these in the past, so fingers crossed. They are unlikely to make good nursery plants, but some of the western American lupins are growable and can be stunning in the garden - the one shown is L. excubitis var. austromontanus, which Lester Rowntree (amongst others) praises in her classic book 'Hardy Californians'. This bed is not ideally situated, having a large specimen of Sophora tetraptera overlooking it (the best laid plans of mice and men...), but it does get good light for most of the day and succeeded well in the past. Our garden is also quite mild and next to the bed is the very beautiful Miscanthus nepalensis with its unique golden flower tassels. This is a relatively tender species but has grown well for several years.
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More familiar plants include Pulsatilla georgica (could this be an up and coming genus I wonder!), Thymus 'Peter Davis', a very good form named for the famous botanist, and an excellent sedum which has eluded identification so far (can anyone enlighten me?).
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Planting a bed like this is great fun, even if it is relatively utilitarian (i.e: not having the cachet of the crevice or rock garden). The next stage is to provide wooden edging so that the whole bed can be heavily top-dressed with coarse gravel. The narrow strip in front of the bed has been dug out and replaced with sharp sand, and planted with alternating dianthus and dwarf iris cultivars. My wife is unhappy with the Agave (a form of parryi), which should be very hardy given winter protection from rain), but which is a devil to weed around. So the trick is to allow no weeds to become established by several inches of top-dressing - and a planting like this does need some contrast from plants like this. The final two pictures show a couple more Californian lupins, L. albifrons var. collinus (a fine dwarf form of this very variable species) and L. breweri, which again gets high praise wherever I have read of it. Once these establish in a garden, even if short-lived, they generally set lots of seed and can be easily maintained. And can there be many more beautiful foliage plants?
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Finally a few pictures of the nursery - we have a great deal more to do to increase the range of plants, but the foregoing are examples of what we intend to grow, and by spring next year we should have a reasonable variety available and visitors will be very welcome. The garden also is of modest interest if you like snowdrops, woodland plants, many dryland species, and by summer a good assortment of weeds! (including a few umbellifers).
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Good great, Tim! I'm especially enjoying your lupins. I hope you discover the secret to longevity for them and can share it! I was wondering if your sedum might be Sedum obtusifolium?
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Hi Tim,
good to see you're getting stuck into the renovations.
It was really good to see your place after the Czech conference and to see the changes via this Thread,
cheers
fermi
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Thanks Lori and Fermi - yes, the sedum looks to be obtusifolium from a quick look on Google. It is quite a distinct and neat species, and a strong colour. I'm surprised I haven't come across it before. The lupins never seem to have been long lived with us, so I'm not too confident on that, but they are relatively easy to grow (he says crossing fingers) given really poor soil and a hot place, and we have had beautiful specimens of L. albifrons in the past. The small alpine species that I have seen on the NARGS Forum would be even more exciting, but I imagine more tricky. Many of the other N. American legumes are also enticing, especially when you see some of the posts on this Forum, but I think I try them more with hope than experience!
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I've moved this thread here to the Diary section - by popular demand :)
Tim - can you winter the agave outdoors ?
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Maggi - I have to admit that my last attempt with this Agave failed, but the problem is likely to have been too much wet rather than cold. This one is subsp. couesii, which is reckoned to be tolerant down to -18°C according to Gary and Mary Irish's book, so I have high hopes it will overwinter with glass cover. It has been planted high to maximise drainage around the crown of the plant, and we have just ordered a cubic metre of coarse gravel to top-dress the bed - watch this space next March!
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very enjoyable Diary Tim, always something to learn from it.
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Maggi - I have to admit that my last attempt with this Agave failed, but the problem is likely to have been too much wet rather than cold. This one is subsp. couesii, which is reckoned to be tolerant down to -18°C according to Gary and Mary Irish's book, so I have high hopes it will overwinter with glass cover. It has been planted high to maximise drainage around the crown of the plant, and we have just ordered a cubic metre of coarse gravel to top-dress the bed - watch this space next March!
Mmm, yes, wet might be more of a problem. We have as much trouble here with summer wet (usually!) as with winter wet and I' ve come to realise that I may be translating both into "not hardy" in my own mind - I have seen this recently in other forum threads - in the matter of Tigridias - being grown in the Ayrshire garden of Tom Cameron, and Belamcanda chinensis (Iris domestica) being grown by AnnE S. in the Hudson River Valley, USA and in gardens in Nova Scotia, as reported by John W. - I need to get braver about plant choices!
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Very interesting to read about how you get along Tim !
I'm also especially intrigued by how you get along with the Lupins !
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So pleased to read of all your progress Tim and I have to say that it inspires me a great deal as I am gradually getting my own bit under some sort of control but not, I have to admit, very close to the original plan.
There seems to be little time at present for writing a blog but I do want to continue with that. In some ways your progress is similar to mine and we both certainly know that there are so many things to do before we can say "I have a nursery," with real meaning.
Could you send me by PM please, your postal address. I have the Hypericum ready to send and would like to get it away before your winter sets in - horrid thought!
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I seem to be a peripatetic Forumist because I often put details on here, and equally on the AGS site! It gives the sense of being a diplomat, but another meaning of peripatetic, 'itinerant', probably sums it up better. I've just been cleaning up seed for the nursery and seed exchanges and remember the fascinating details put on here some while ago. As someone who has always propagated plants I think I find seed of equal interest to flowers! Cleaning the seed seems to provide a good opportunity to also take pictures and I aim to put more of these on the AGS site (having already started there), but just a quick example of Daphne retusa seed - a common enough plant but I would rate it as the best and most reliable species in our garden, having had it for over 30 years. A lot of promise in those seeds!
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I agree, Tim that seed is every bit as interesting as plants and flowers are - and without the seed, where would we be?
I don't know if you are aware of the scheme I have been promoting for some time to get photos ( with a grid scale in the picture) of seed of known naming?
The photos meantime are here :
http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=4426.0 (http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=4426.0)
The thread is titled Seed Identification : photos of named seed varieties - there are hundreds of photos there now, though of course it is our hope for thousands more.
The project arose from the hope to allow easier ID of seed for sending to the seed exchanges ( the idea grew from talks with Joyce Fingerut of NARGS and we hoped that SRGC and NARGS could join with the AGS on this project. Since then I've heard no more from the others but I am keen to keep up with the project if forumists will be so good as to get involved. Ian Pryde has done some work on this too.
There are always moans about mis-named seed being received and this is something we can work on to help that.
Might I suggest that your seed photos might be better placed in the special section, where they will add towards a larger attempt to be of use to growers and seed packers alike?
Obviously the photos are searchable here in the forum and are also being collated for future use in a format that could be utilised offline by he seed exchanges.
I harbour a dream that they could also be matched up with the archive of photos that Glassford Sprunt has been compiling over many years.
I think such a collection would be a tremendous resource were we able to make it accessible to all on this site.
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Maggi - I haven't taken pictures with a scale, but yes I would be happy to put them on the SRGC project - I've always thought a book on the subject, showing seed and details of germination requirements would be a wonderful resource (there are similar compilations for commercially more significant plants, notably trees and shrubs, but nothing quite like this for alpines and hardy perennials, even though plenty of information is available dispersed in many places). My thoughts of putting pictures on the AGS site were particularly to relate to the ongoing collection of seed for this year's seed exchange, so I will do that too in that capacity. I agree that that to put something like this together is a project for many of us to get involved in, and for the various societies to have involvement with - it is fairly fundamental.
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Final touches to the new raised bed.
1) Only twenty bags to go! Time for a tea break.
2) The bed top-dressed with coarse gravel.
3) The planting looks very bare at present but many of these plants are quite strong growing and it will be exciting to look forward to how it appears at this time next year.
4) Yucca schottii - ultimately a large species to 6ft plus, but will take a good many years to reach that size. This is 3 or 4 years from seed. The mixed gravel used is quite an improvement on the pea gravel I have used elsewhere, and little different in cost, so I may gradually top-dress other plantings in the same way.
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Looking good, Tim!
It'll be great to see it develop over time,
cheers
fermi
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Very good indeed Tim. What is the timber along the edges? I'm thinking maybe 4" x 4" ground-treated would just about do it? It's what I'll need to do here to get a little height in the nursery areas.
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Lesley - sorry I should have replied much earlier; the wood is tanalised ca. 4 x 2 in which we saved from an old commercial dutch light greenhouse we used to rent next door, and which I had recovered with Visqueen on a wooden framework. We have a lot of this wood and intend to make frames with it just as you suggest. We also saved quite a few of the dutch lights that hadn't broken and I have been using these to provide winter cover for raised beds. The glass will need refitting into new frames next year.
The nursery now is being put under winter wraps, and a concerted effort being put into weeding and clearing, especially areas with hellebores and snowdrops, and some of the wilder parts of the garden which have been left for too long. In between seed sowing gives some relief and the pots go into a mouse-proof frame on the shady side of a greenhouse. Next year should see many more plants becoming available, and steady inroads into replanting some of the overgrown parts of the garden after the exertions of 2013! (Anyone in the Maidstone area on Friday 6th Dec. who would like to hear about the Czech Rock gardens, which are such an inspiration, would be very welcome at the Mid-Kent AGS meeting at Bearsted at 8.00pm).
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progress is looking good and I am sure you have finished the raised bed cover just in time very heavy monsoon rain here most of the week even had an early morning frost now getting dark by 5pm as well, cheers Ian the Christie kind
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Ian - we have certainly had some heavy rains down here too! There have still been enough warm and dry days to get on with renovating a fine Prattens greenhouse that we built some 30 plus years ago. It is made of red cedar so mostly in good condition except for where water holds. The idea is to putty all of the glass to prevent drips and give it a good coat of water repellant and wood preservative to keep it going another 30 years. This is a propagation house and not quite the cutting edge of the new alpine house at Edinburgh Botanics which John Richards describes on his AGS Diary - but there is something about a good wooden greenhouse that really appeals.
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Tim, I do admire your raised bed and trough covers. I would be afraid to use glass here because we have so much wind and even things that are nailed down have become flying objects at times. I had a lovely trough cover once which was eventually found in the field where it had blown and was smashed to smithereens. My trough covers are plastic and were devised by a friend in NARGS. They're not put up yet but will try and remember to photograph them when they are.
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Anne - this is a picture of our sand bed in the front garden with the winter cover half erected over it. Once fully constructed it becomes quite strong and rigid. We have had some strong winds this autumn but, because this is open sided and well screwed down, so far it hasn't blown away! I've used this from November to March for three or four years now and it sort of takes the place of snow cover which we very rarely get for any length of time between winter rains.
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Alpines have the great advantage of being small plants so many can be contained in small polytunnels like these. The central area is due for a new set of glass frames next spring, in time for potting up cuttings and seedlings as the weather warms. If we are able to find enthusiastic new part time help in the nursery and garden, further polytunnels and propagation glass will be in the pipeline, but much depends on a growing interest in alpines for the garden in the south-east and in the development of out local alpine groups (but with a broader interest than just alpines).
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We have been lifting and potting snowdrops over the past few days as their 'noses' are becoming visible in the garden. Some clumps are quite congested and the usual technique is to gently separate them under water so that the roots are damaged as little as possible. New plantings are made with the smaller bulbs and good sized ones potted up - some like a form of elwesii that came from Kath Dryden, have huge bulbs and increase only slowly; others like elwesii 'Ransom's Dwarf' (a handsome plant) have multiplied very freely; yet others, the small late flowering nivalis 'Virescens', have the tiniest of bulbs but are good to keep for their historical interest if nothing else (newer virescent forms are much more striking!). Fingers crossed for a good February free of too much snow...
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Hello, hope you escaped the storm last night we had a severe gale with lots of snow still white around today and really cold. I have potted some snowdrops recently as well and have a G. nivalis x G. plicatus which came from Brechin it is late flowering I named it Kath Dryden can send you a bulb or two for interest. cheers Ian
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Ian - we missed the worst of the gales here fortunately. I would greatly appreciate bulbs of a snowdrop named for such a fine gardener and plantswoman! In her 2003 Manavalin's list Kath describes the snowdrop I have as: G. elwesii var. monosticus ? - she sold it at first as G. caucasicus 'late form', and finishes off by saying (like many poor nursery growers) 'I shall probably be corrected in due time.' Whatever, it is a fine plant with particularly good glaucous foliage and elegant flowers.
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Isn't it heart warming that there are so many folks spread around the world, who have such affection and respect for the feisty Mrs Dryden - what a loss her death was to the world of plants.
We so miss our happy phone chats when we were stuck at opposite ends of the country - Ian C. was fortunate to make much more frequent visits to Kath. She is still sorely missed.
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the usual technique is to gently separate them under water so that the roots are damaged as little as possible.
This was interesting bit of information I hadn't thought of. :)
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Leena - this is a (much too congested) clump of 'Lady Beatrix Stanley' which eventually I have got round to dividing! After freezing my fingers the first time I did this I now use tepid water and it is quite a pleasant exercise, though takes time.
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Very informative photos. :)
It also shows how new bulbs grow on top of the old ones, which I have been observing with my G.nivalis. Sometimes new bulbs come almost on top of the ground. Then again I dug up early autumn nameless G.elwesii clump, and those bulbs were very deep in the soil (20cm or something like that), and I don't think I had planted them so deep so they must have gone there themselves. They had also not multiplied very much, and I was thinking could it be because they were in so deep?
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I would suspect more that the G. elwesii just do not multiply so fast, Leena. If they had moved themselves down quite deep then they want to be down there and I would replant at that depth.
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If they had moved themselves down quite deep then they want to be down there and I would replant at that depth.
I tried to replant them deep. :) I had read somewhere that G.elwesii is sometimes in very deep in the nature, and also the new planting site was drier (the snow melts earlier in the drier slope and so I get snowdrops free of snow and flowering earlier than in my woodland bed :)) ), so I thought that there is more moisture deeper.
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Gardeners often write of taking over old gardens full of brambles and weeds. In a large garden like ours there are periods when parts of it become like this of their own accord. Rebuilding the nursery of necessity means that some of the garden has to take second place. Winter provides the chance to work on some of the wilder areas, and it is surprising how a few days concerted effort can make dramatic inroads. The alpine areas are tidy and reasonably weed free, but the herbaceous areas can become more overgrown with certain plants self-seeding and spreading too much. The globe thistle, Echinops, has become a particular 'weed', as a result of its wonderful attraction to bees, resultant seedlings, and persistent roots. A few will be kept but the majority removed, and more care taken to deadhead after flowering next year. Nettles enjoy the compost rich soil under the fruit trees, and along with a few other plants are readily renewed by seed from the overgrown field next door - they are satisfying to fork up and put on the compost heap, and easier to clear than they might seem at first sight. Hellebore leaves have been cut away to prevent the loss of flower buds to mice and voles over winter. Whilst doing this there is the stimulation of seeing the buds of peonies and other perennials, snowdrops emerging, and imagining the woodland plants under the ground, waiting for spring to grow away. The process of gardening seems rarely to be described but has the effect of teaching the gardener more about plants than anything else.
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Hello Tim, I see you have been busy as you say all the plants and bulbs that overwinter do teach us all about nature and gardening, we have a cover of snow again today which will please Santa I hope he is good to you and do take a break for Christmas I remember well Kath Dryden used to say we are heading for Spring once we got passed the 21st Dec look forward to then, cheers Ian the Christie kind.
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Just when progress is being made the weather throws a spanner in the works. The gales overnight have been as damaging to the garden as the 1987 storm, partly because many trees are much more mature. The main greenhouse is very sturdy and withstood both gales, but this smaller more flimsy one has had the end blown out - though it looks worse than it actually is and should be easily repaired. The cedar tree at the top of the drive has had its top blown out, and one of the biggest eucalyptus also come down (though this was always vulnerable, having divided into three large stems near the base). We should be well supplied with firewood for the next few years! Fortunately only the cedar needs to be cleared up straightaway, having fallen over the neighbour's drive, so the rest will take its turn after the Christmas festivities. The trials and tribulations of gardening!
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Sorry to see that damage ,Tim. No one hurt is a blessing but that's a lot of clearing up to do.
The Eucalypts are prone to being blown over in this sort of wind- they are often the first to go down in gardens round here. A big one quite close by seems to be hanging on so far but I wouldn't bet on it staying.
The gusting wind is every bit as bad as the constant blowing, I think.
The stormy weather seems very widespread - horrible to think of the flooding and other damage being suffered.
Hope you get no more damage, Tim and get some relaxation for Christmas with the family.
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Hello again, we have had the tail end of your storm hope all the glasshouses can be saved did not see any broken glass in your pic but sure makes lots of extra work take care anyway with no more problems, cheers Ian the Christie kind
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Hi Tim, what desolation to see your greenhouse damaged and trees down.
It looks like your gonna have extra work to clean the garden.
Mother nature is sometimes unfair with us.
i'd also been praying that both of my greenhouses stand up among storm.
You should repair the greenhouse before friday because another windy episode is expected...
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Our neighbours are away over Christmas, but with some elbow grease, some help from their friends with a chain saw, and much barrowing, the tree has been cleared up! The greenhouse has been eased back into shape using gentle persuasion with clamps, a car jack and a degree of patience - now all it needs is a half-centimetre adjustment so the door fits back into its catch! Just hope the winds tomorrow are a little less strong.
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Neat job, Tim - and speedily accomplished - and you can all feel so virtuous getting so much exercise at Christmas time -no pudding podge for you lot!
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Amazing job on the clean-up, Tim. May the New Year bring you gentler weather.
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The long term effect of garden fashion. This is one of the trees blown over in the recent gale - a gardening consequence of the fashion for 'dwarf' conifers in the 1970's and 80's. Now 30 years later these are not so dwarf and an excuse to remove them is quite welcome! None the less for the first 15 years or so of the garden they were, and some (particularly pines) still are, attractive features in the garden, especially over the winter. I now have some real dwarf conifers to replace them and wonder if fashion might turn around again and some gardeners might start growing more of them again? The Czech gardens show how perfectly they associate with rock gardens and alpine plants.
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"Dwarf" is such a relative term. I suppose next to their very big relatives they could be considered dwarf.
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A cautionary tale. One good reason for growing alpines and having a small garden is that it is easy! This is the tree of the Tasmanian Lemon Gum (Eucalyptus subcrenulata) eventually brought to its knees by the recent gale. Although it was planted as a small seedling (from Celyn Vale nursery in Wales), it developed three main shoots and was the tallest tree in the garden now 25 years later - two have collapsed and the the third stands leaning ominously, but is so tall I am wary of climbing it to cut it down. Amazingly it hasn't caused too much damage to the apple trees it has fallen on. Underneath these the snowdrops are beginning to emerge, and so the gum needs to be cleared away before the end of January when we open the garden. Investment in a good new chainsaw is in the offing! The huge quantities of smaller branches from this and other trees are being piled up ready to be chipped and eventually used as mulch. Our garden has always been thought of as a resource for growing and propagating plants, but it also has a way of developing of its very own, not quite under the control of the gardener!
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Tim, this is so true. Gardens do have minds of their own or so it seems. If you refuse to observe the lessons you are constantly being taught - the plants can take their ultimate revenge and refuse to grow. My garden plans here seem to come under the heading of "suggestions". If the plants have better ideas, I've learned to follow them.
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This is the continuing clearing up after the gale with Eucalyptus subcrenulata gradually being converted into piles of prunings for shredding and firewood.
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The real compensations come from watching the emergence of snowdrops and other plants. The garden is not just a collection of these but a resource which allows them to be propagated and increased. In the light of discussions that have occurred elsewhere about EU regulations and their potential impact on specialist nurseries and societies, and individuals, it doesn't seem lacking in relevance that private gardens and small scale enterprise have as much import in our plant heritage as Botanic gardens and larger scale horticulture - at any rate I like to think so. In addition a garden has connections to other growers and the significant gardeners of the past, which gives it a value rather different to other types of heritage.
Galanthus 'Wendy's Gold', just emerging under the apple trees is a cheering sight, especially since it was so nearly lost to cultivation and nurtured and distributed by Joe Sharman and Bill Clarke. For vigour it is by far the best 'yellow' snowdrop we have in our garden and always exciting to see.
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Cyclamen coum is the most colourful plant in the 'woodland' parts of the garden at the moment, and cyclamen in general do really well in our garden, including a fine self-seeding colony of C. pseudibericum. Finally this winter has been so mild relatively (if that is a dubious compensation for the intense winds and rain) that some alpines like Campanula 'Birch Hybrid' have just carried on flowering continuously from last summer on.
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It is a curious feature of gardens they they arise spontaneously in glossy gardening magazines. The first picture shows the ongoing clearing after the Christmas gales. But as they say 'a bad workman always blames his tools' - hence the need for a mattock in clearing this area of snowdrops and hellebores in our garden, which is overgrown with nettles. Part of the blame though lies with the field next door which has been left as a 'meadow' of nettles, thistles, docks and teasels (actually quite a valuable wildlife sanctuary!). In amongst the weeds the snowdrops are beginning to flower, and for the tolerant gardener (which I am becoming) they do associate well with nettles!
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Once cleared though the garden comes back to life and, as the winter aconites are beginning to flower and peony buds swelling, it is high time to sort this area out. By contrast with the mattock, the well worn trowel (a legacy from my grandparent's nursery), is a beautiful and refined tool for weeding between choice plants. Fortunately gardening is not rocket science, except when discussing the minutae of plant names, and simple tools - plus some elbow grease - do the job! The woodland areas well deserve this attention as the snowdrops flower and before the wonderful mix of spring flowers really start to emerge, and ferns begin to expand new fronds. The snowdrop is the early cultivar (for us anyway) G. 'Mrs McNamara', and the evergreen fern, which is rapidly becoming one of my favourites, Asplenium scolopendrium 'Angustatum'.
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I missed out the most vital photo of all! - help is important and the garden has always been a family enterprise, and the specialist nursery side of it even more: my wife Gillian and the dog Bobby (whose main job is watching out for rabbits and pheasants, plus the occasional squirrel...)
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I remember putting a picture like this on the Forum last year; 'brown gold', the results of our compost bins being spread under the apple trees! This has an almost mythical status in the garden and it's a great way of making a conscious effort to get on weed between the emerging snowdrops. A few more early flowers are appearing: Narcissus 'Cedric Morris' - very slow but delightful - and the flowering shoots of Helleborus odorus - a good and well scented form from Blackthorn Nursery.
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Home made compost is a wonderful thing - and one of the most valuable resources one can harvest from the garden. I'm always surprised when I hear someone say they " don't bother with it" :o
I always think the garden looks so smart when the compost is newly spread - an almost blank canvas for the season to write upon. Until the blackbirds start throwing it all over the paths, of course!
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There are those occasions when you have to start a job and then keep going until you get to the end. Unfortunately weeding doesn't come into that category, but we have made a real concerted effort on getting this part of the garden cleared of nettles and other weeds - ready for them all to return! As well as snowdrops and hellebores there are quite a few species peonies and other plants in here which were swamped by the weeds. All is not rosy because a few yards away the jungle still needs taming. None the less having done this there is that exciting prospect of coming in and planting with a whole new range of woodlanders which will bring the incentive of ensuring this area is weeded more often in the future. At the base of the cobnut is a beautiful clump of the only named hellebore we grow, 'Pamina', which came from Elizabeth Strangman at Washfield, and a memory of one of the finest nurseries I have ever known. When it comes into flower I will picture it to see if readers agree. The final two pictures show a small early form of Galanthus elwesii before and after weeding. Ecologically the former is probably more desirable, but for our visitors to the garden in February the latter will hopefully show them that we have been showing willing in the garden, even though some of it is still very overgrown!
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Lovely clumps of snowdrops Tim. I'm just repotting mine or planting them out. I hope to have clumps like yours in a year or two or three, under the trees. It will be the first garden in which I've been able to achieve this, if it comes to pass. :-\
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Lesley - I think my first love is woodland plants and the snowdrops have gradually built up over the years because we are so lucky to have a climate that allows so much interest over the winter months. I was first given a few varieties by the secretary of our alpine group and they have developed steadily over the years, stimulated by the great interest there is in them in the UK. They also introduce personality into the garden in the way that few other plants do because of who discovers them and shares them with friends, which is very appealing - perhaps reminiscent of the exchange that goes on, and has always gone on, between cottage gardeners. They are really beginning to grow away now so I will picture more on here in next month.
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There are a great group of people we are involved with in Faversham running the 'Best of Faversham' markets. This is a co-operative enterprise and non-profit making, and our involvement is in taking plants down into the town (good for us because generally the town doesn't come up to us!). Because we also open our garden for charity we are preparing a special display of snowdrops for the market tomorrow, advertising our open day in the middle of February, on Sunday 16th. This is a rough layout, pots still dirty and most needing topdressing with moss - will show some pictures of the market tomorrow. Will the sun shine and the flowers open? At the moment they are inside and look glorious, and there are a few nice querky named forms like Alan Street's brilliant 'Ding Dong', for which we are giving short pithy descriptions to show the town folk that gardeners can have a sense of humour, and nurseries a little more about them than the typical Garden Centre (with apologies to all the atypical Garden Centres out there!).
Our trials after the winds over Christmas were even worse on the east Kent coast, and Steve Edney, the Head Gardener at the Salutation Garden at Sandwich, has had to contend with the garden being flooded by the tidal river running alongside. At a meeting of the Ash gardeners last night he asked for volunteers to help with the cleaning up of the garden. He is a superb gardener so it must have come as a particular annoyance to have lost so many young plants, and be unsure of others - but he has great plans for the garden, and it will be nice to see how these progress through the spring and summer.
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I do hope the weather will be kind tomorrow, Tim - it's blowing a gale and pouring with train up here right now.
One can only sympathise with those victims of flooding - and what a large number they are this year. Very tough conditions for people and plants and not something that can be easily remedied.
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Forecast looks reasonably OK Maggi - so hope people come out. It is quite good fun doing something in the middle of the town, and if you grow plants you get pretty used to the weather!
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Hard to get a wider audience of the public to evangelise to, though, if the rain starts. :P
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It turned out quite a good day after a wet night and so we were able to 'evangalise', though to be honest this was not our intent. The 'Best of Faversham' market is working hard to revitalise the sense of Faversham as a small and historic market town, and seems to be making a good job of it. There are some interesting people involved with it, and one of the organisers, who also came up with the original idea, has worked previously with Virgin and the BBC and business, and does have a strong resolve to create a market in proper keeping with the town. Not only this she makes the most wonderful flavoured liquors, quite as appealing as the most striking of snowdrops! Another marketeer bakes 'Wild Bread' using old strains of rye and wheat, and is very popular in the town. He also has an interesting background, having done biological research in Madagascer, and his partner (who studied anthropology at Oxford), spends time abroad amongst indigenous peoples, following the way 'modernity' clashes and integrates with their cultures. So this could be said to be more than the typical market in some ways, or actually truer to a typical market in others.
The stallholders include a range of products from locally brewed real ales (almost as good as the damson liquor!), to some rather wonderful handmade chocolates, that reminded me strongly of the film 'Chocolat' with Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp.
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I have to show some of the chocolates after this! So here they are. These are pretty special and worth every penny! (even if you are a Yorkshireman or Scot - please take that the right way!). Despite some opposition from some quarters, the Town Council and the Mayor and many of the shopkeepers support the new market, and see the real benefits it brings in attracting new people and enterprise into the town.
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For us it provides the opportunity to show people the plants we grow. Despite the fact that we have gardened and opened our garden for charity for over 30 years, few people know about what we do or realise the great diversity of plants that can be grown in our gardens - and it seems we have to go to the town, rather than expecting the town to come to us.
The snowdrop display looked very good and did attract a lot of attention, even from all those people who just regard them as little white winter flowers often found carpeting woodlands and churchyards. There is probably no great likelyhood that we will convince many people to want to grow the more specialised woodland plants and alpines that have captivated me all of my life, but some of the more interesting ones will, and the 'Best of Faversham' certainly includes many of these.
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I must beg to differ, Tim - there is clearly an evangelical campaign afoot there to display the best of Faversham and teach the locals about what wonder lie on their own doorstep.
It's working on me and I'm hundreds of miles away!
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It's nice of you to say so Maggi - but what we really want to do is to encourage people to come and buy plants from us and share in the garden. I suppose 'evangelical' means converting people, but we are trying to simply show them something that is all around us, all the time (actually that's is just what you say!).
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The great clear up continues! It's a good thing the snowdrops are there to cheer us up and it just shows the difference between gardening and exhibiting plants. Garden visitors need to be a little more tolerant than Show judges when it comes their critique. There is the great prospect of replanting these areas once cleared of nettles, and at the moment there are already many plants of the deep pink umbel Pimpinella major 'Rosea', which actually make quite a feature of this area in the summer, despite the weeds.
This part of the garden has a few really interesting plants such as an old specimen of Chordospartium stevensonii which came from the great Graham Hutchins of County Park Nursery and a seed raised Cunninghamia lanceolata, which has grown only a couple of metres high in over 20 years. The beckoning plant of Daphne bholua - the hardiest form, 'Gurkha' (we lost all the others in the last two winters) - provides incentive to clear this area in particular; and beneath it is a fine clump of Epimedium wushanense, so a lot to look forward to.
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To give a little balance here are some of the snowdrops, very nearly reaching their peak in flowering and just waiting for the sun's warmth to open their flowers fully.
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How exciting to have such a great planting opportunity Tim, and to reveal those special plants that are already there!
Lovely to see the snowdrops looking so well down there. I have just one small clump of snowdrops, which are kept in a pot because they are the family 'drop rescued from my late grandmother's garden and for which I am now the sole custodian :-\ They are only just starting to push noses above the ground now. Glad to see that spring is not too far away for some of us at least.
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Many thanks Matt! The trouble with gardening down in the south-east is that you have to keep up with the Jones'! The snowdrops have been increasing steadily for about fifteen years or more and at last are really making a feature in the garden. I would love to visit the Northern (or even Western! All the same from here) Isles sometime; a quieter more sensible place.
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I spent most of my life in Essex and Hampshire, before moving to Scotland and then the Western Isles. I'd certainly say that life out here is quieter perhaps, but I'm not sure that it is any more sensible! ;D
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I haven't got used to using the smiley faces (!) but quieter and more sensible are reasonably synonymous I think!
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A few more plants flowering at the moment. The last picture is of Helleborus 'Pamina', a chance seedling that arose from Elizabeth Strangman's breeding programme for primrose hellebores in the 1980's (see 'A Gardener's Guide to Growing Hellebores' by Graham Rice and Elizabeth Strangman). The photo doesn't really do it justice and it is a lovely shade of pinkish-apricot, with faint red-speckling at the base of each tepal inside, and green nectaries. Keeping named varieties like this in cultivation is always going to be problematical, but a few like this and Helen Ballard's famous 'Ballard's Black', keep that connection going with these wonderful gardeners that stimulated so much of the fashion for hellebores that we see today.
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One huge trunk of the eucalyptus blown down at Christmas has remained standing, looming at a 45° angle over the apple trees. At our garden opening a few days ago possibly 90 people walked beneath it(!) and in fact it was very secure, having not moved an iota in the subsequent winds. But how to get it down? Fortunately one of our neighbours is an engineer who has worked in India and the Far East, is very practical, and has a good chainsaw! Rather than taking the tree down slowly from the top (which would have meant climbing it a bit precariously) he persuaded me that we (or actually he) should fell it from a stepladder about 8 or 9 feet up. The idea was to cut 'gently' through with the chain saw until the tree just started to fall, and then stand well back. It worked well and only fell on top of a couple of the orchard trees, making very little damage. I am not sure I would have dared do this on my own and a tree of this size coming down is pretty dramatic. It would have been good to get a time lapse sequence as it fell, but Gillian wasn't quick enough with the camera - so these are just clearing up operations. It's going to take a while to dig it out!! We now have a week or two of shredding and cutting up firewood in between pricking out seedlings and visiting the alpine shows... Hopefully the coming year might prove a little calmer than the last.
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Hi Tim!
Beautifully, that everything ended so well. Still forward successfully.
Best Regards! zvone
http://zvonem.blogspot.si/ (http://zvonem.blogspot.si/)
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Thanks Zvone! Good to see your pictures in the mountains to give us inspiration amongst the much lower hills of Kent. There will be more to come as spring gets going and the nursery begins to fill with plants.
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Thank's Tim!
Also I monitor your walk happily to mountains and beautiful photographs of nature.
Best Regards! zvone
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Tim ,
I have been following your blog with some interest. I too have a large garden to look after and it tends to get a bit unkempt at times. Right mine needs about a weeks serious work with a chainsaw. Your combination of deciduous trees with bulbs and perennials in the same bed seems very successful. I am finding that evergreen trees (NZ natives) and shrubs (Rhododendrons and Camellias) is not the best for underplanting with woodland plants (trilliums) and bulbs as it tends to get too shaded and dry. A more open structure such as you have judging by your pictures seems to work better.
Eucalyptus makes good firewood and should be planted only with that end in mind!
best wishes ,
David
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My thanks David. I became interested in eucalyptus (and S. Hemisphere plants in general) because I worked for six months in Tasmania in the 1980's, but we planted a few too many in the garden, so we should have plenty of firewood for a few years to come! Some of the other woodlanders (such as epimediums and erythroniums) are now beginning to make an appearance, so it will be interesting to watch spring progress.
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A few sunny days, seeds are germinating (including weeds in the garden!), and there is a need for the new set of frames in the nursery to line out young plants. This is the beginning, now almost finished, and gives about 50 feet of frame space. The wood is tanalised timber saved from renovating the old nursery area we used to rent next door but we will need to make new frame lights for next winter - an interesting joinery exercise. Slowly the range of plants propagated is broadening and it is always nice to see serried ranks of young plants lined out in spring.
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Faversham seems to be getting more colourful! This is the market square and Guildhall at the 'Best of Faversham' market yesterday. The local plant trader has a good spot under the Guildhall. Our stand is a little more modest but we made a small display of alpines and bulbs and there was a lot of interest and a good following for the market. The two of us growing plants have such different things that we are not really in competition, and you could say that the 'Bookshop' syndrome might come into play (like at Hay-on-Wye) if even more growers came along too. The market has really perked up the town and is a great credit to the organiser, Grahame, who is up at 5.00am in the morning getting the canopies put up and generally sorting out the layout. We are very grateful.
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There is a lot of imagination and vitality associated with this, like many refreshed enterprises. What is particularly stimulating is how so many traders are selling home produce - it makes the market very genuine - and it also is cosmopolitan, here with Samovar food and two Russian ladies (echoes of the Forum methinks). The local butcher is a touch more interesting than Tesco just around the corner - a good collection of game including pheasant and rabbit (they also make very good pies!). For those with a sweet tooth the spring special from 'Kate Makes Chocolates' is 'Gardener's Delight' (I would send a sample up north but they are full of cream and don't travel well - and anyway I have eaten them all!).
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In the garden spring is really getting going - many plants beginning to flower (so we hope Faversham people might walk up the road to discover us too). These are a few, the last - Adoxa moschatellina - is a fascinating and modest native woodlander which I had from Nigel Rowland (Longacre Plants), definitely one of the very best nurseries for sylvan species and ferns. Primula 'Maisie Michael' was from Aberconwy - a golden version of 'Garryarde Guinevere' and equally appealing.
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For anyone who propagates plants this is an especially busy time as seedlings and cuttings need potting, and the nursery is steadily consolidating in between weeding and shredding after the winter storms. The new nursery frame is rapidly filling up and more space will be needed soon. There is a nice batch of Origanum dictamnus in here, not always so easy to propagate, but perhaps the most striking of the genus?(except maybe for Marcus' great find shown elsewhere on the Forum) The raised bed containing a whole range of stock plants is looking good and really benefitted from its winter cover. One of the most interesting plants on here, just budding up, is Catanache caespitosa, with short stemmed yellow flowers (will show a picture when they open).
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The new Mediterranean bed is growing out nicely but notice the large plant of Sophora tetraptera growing above it! This is spectacular in flower but as it goes over every flower and all the previous year's leaves are steadily dropping onto the bed below (in my defence the sophora was planted a long time after the initial planting of the bed over twenty-five years ago) - we have devised a simple way of overcoming this problem using a fine netting frame that used to cover a seed frame to keep off birds and mice. The yellow shrub at the left-hand end, flowering incredibly freely, is Corokia cotoneaster, a really superb garden plant.
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We have an old 50ft cedar dutch-light house which stupidly used a less rot resistant timber for its base and is in need of quite a bit of repair. For the time being though it gives a good covered area for young plants, and the second picture shows a nice batch of Jeffersonia diphylla seedlings in the foreground (one seedling pot down, three to go). Elsewhere the pile of shreddings resulting mostly from the huge eucalyptus blown down at Christmas is gradually being reduced and is providing nice material to cover the woodland paths.
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No two ways about it in my opinion - a shredder is one of the most useful machines for the garden.
It must be very satisfying for you, Tim, to see all those plants for sale growing along so well.
The problem with the dutch house is a tricky one - wonder if there might be a possibility to jack it up perhaps bit by bit, to replace the under-pinnings? It's the sort of puzzle Ian seems to enjoy contemplating..... don't know why :-\
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Finally a couple of plants to give a little cheer - Edraianthus niveus in a trough - nicely camouflaged against the stones! (my wife didn't even notice it) and the very beautiful double form of Trillium grandiflorum, a hugely generous gift from Sheila Brown (and it will be while before I dare dig this up and divide it!).
It will be very interesting to see the attendance at the new AGS/RHS London Show this coming Sunday, and nice if it stimulates significant new excitement amongst south-eastern gardeners in these plants. We might stop off at the Chelsea Physic Garden too and have a look at the famous 'volcanic rock' garden that dates back to Joseph Banks... and then back home for more work on the nursery.
(Maggi - just seen your reply. The shredder is brilliant, but exhausting, and gloves seem to always disappear when you need them! The greenhouse will need something like jacking up, but step by step as you say, so that the old wood can be removed and fresh properly tanalised wood put in its place - I have various ideas but no time at the moment).
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Super close-up shot of Edraianthus niveus, Tim - showing its fuzzy, cobwebby nature.
ZZ wrote about it in the IRG of August 2011 (http://www.srgc.org.uk/logs/logdir/2011Aug251314305515IRG20August_2011.pdf)
Did you get seed from Mojmír Pavelka or spot the plant in the Czech garden visits after the conference ?
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I think it was seed from Mojmir - I'm trying as many of the genus as I can discover, but couldn't quite go to seed of the true E. owerinianus which was offered earlier this winter! The first time this appears at a Show will be a revelation.
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Very interesting Tim. It shows us just how much work is involved in running a small nursery. I'm pretty sure I couldn't be organised enough to cope with it.
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Now I understand how rare Edraianthus niveus is Maggi - thank you for the link to the IRG. I only have the one plant but will pollinate it and hope to get good seed set, it is certainly very distinctive. There are some beautiful pictures in that edition of the IRG, especially the ice-blue Onosma which is such an interesting and frustrating genus. Some time spent looking more closely at the IRG from when it was started would be well spent!
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Next issue of the IRG, online from late tonight, is number 52 - so quite a bit of reading there for windswept rainy days, Tim.
IRG 52 describes new Crocus species from Janis Ruksans - not to be missed, I think.
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Very interesting Tim. It shows us just how much work is involved in running a small nursery. I'm pretty sure I couldn't be organised enough to cope with it.
Indeed, so little time for so much work. I grow summer flowering bulbs (most of them in pots), so spring is the time for dividing the clumbs of bulbs, repotting them, sowing new bulbs, moving pots from their winter storage in the cellar back outside - and combining that with a full time day job and a vegetable garden that's also crying for attention. I'm not running a nursery, but it's also now in spring that i occasionally go to a plant fair to sell my excess bulbs as I did on Easter Monday. Luckilly, I am the only one selling such bulbs, so i'm a bit sheltered from competition from similar products, but at the same time I think nobody of my customers imagined to buy an Eucomis or Tigridia bulb when going to the plant fair, so basically this is all kind of unplanned impulsive buying. Having great pictures of the flowers really helps to improve sales - in fact an absolute necessity for bulbs. I did not have a very exhilarating picture for one of my species and only sold a few of these, where those with better pictures were sold out or nearly sold out.
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Yes Francosi, this is the great difficulty of growing and selling more unusual plants - there are few people who really know of them and pictures or plants in flower are what really command attention. It surprises me though that more gardeners are not more inquisitive - many will buy quite comprehensive books on plants, very well illustrated, but not actually discover the plants through a more adventurous approach to growing them. And alpines are famous for putting people off because few take the trouble to really experiment with growing conditions.
(David - it may be difficult to run a small nursery, but it was even harder when it was rather larger! Like a farmer said on the box last night you only do this because it's in your blood and there is good sense in growing things).
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Hi Tim,
Nice to see you are growing Sophora tetraptera. Is it regarded a tender in Britain? I have several Sophora species here but not S. tetraptera. The local one is S. microphylla, a really graceful elegant tree but it take 10-15 years to mature and flower so it is not so popular with garden centres. Kowhais are great trees for attracting nectar feeding birds which you do not have in Britain. Your Corokia cotoneaster is flowering more freely than it generally does in the wild. If you can get it Corokia macrocarpa from the Chatham Islands is well worth growing
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Hi David - the prevailing wisdom (Bean) is that Sophora tetraptera is generally hardy against a sunny wall over much of the UK; in Ireland it makes a sizeable tree, though even ours is 12 or 15 feet high and still relatively young! It is a beautiful and amazingly free-flowering plant. I didn't realise that S. microphylla had a long juvenile phase, but we also grow the small cultivar (not sure of its origins?) 'Little Baby' and this flowers well. The whole genus is fascinating - the Chinese S. davidii especially so - and there are a number of N. American species which I could wish were hardy with us but need hotter climes.
The Corokia doesn't always flower so freely and we only have one plant and never get berries - but I think Graham Hutchins used to grow a wider variety and they sound quite striking in fruit as well as flowering. C. cotoneaster is imperturbably hardy with us but we have lost C. virgata and a couple of the more recent foliage variations in cold winters. C. macrocarpa is new to me but I see it is listed by Great Dixter not far from us so we should give it a try!
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Yesterday a friend of mine and i visited Tim's nursery. The garden has a wonderful collection of plants and trees.
(https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-IG43xC3SSoc/U2JPGu4NzrI/AAAAAAAAhRs/AOUP8O5TcoY/s640/P4300866.JPG)
(https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-muhzBdh3axY/U2JPLkrxkUI/AAAAAAAAhR0/eh0tfWXu7Nw/s640/P4300979.JPG)
(https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-dGR6oOXcblU/U2JQucuSH7I/AAAAAAAAhSE/oH37FelA4NI/s640/P4300873.JPG)
We brought home plants in perfect health and well sized, somes are already planted in the rockery.
We had a great time with Tim and Gillian :)
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Lucky you, Yann - you even got a sunny day to enjoy the visit. 8)
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Yes the weather was perfect!!
I'll have to go in the Vercors to shot Ophrys but the weather is very wet. I found the heat in England :o
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Really nice to see those pictures from Yann. At the moment we are continuing to clear the undergrowth in a very overgrown part of the garden to expand the nursery area as we propagate more and more plants. There is the element of 'painting the Forth Bridge' about it, but bit by bit progress is being made.
Here is another view of the alpine house at Godinton Place (that I mentioned in another thread) and which I would like to beam into the garden when we have made space! This mostly has auriculas and succulents growing within it, but nothing like those I will show below...
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The small greenhouses of Godinton have a very special roof vents system, still in function.
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Last Saturday we joined the 'Plants Roadshow' at Telegraph Hill, just off the A2 halfway into London. This event was organised by a group of Kentish nurseries, and in particular by Fiona Wemyss (Blueleaf Plants), who used to live locally in the area. Because she grows such great plants I thought I would just show a selection. The tall Euphorbia trigona in the square metal pot I thought was rather brilliant and my wife didn't like at all (so great minds don't necessarily think alike). Anyway it now sits on our windowsill with a couple of ancient cacti which must be over 40 years old. I think these plants are beautifully and imaginatively presented, and they do compare in the former (but not always the latter) with the way many alpine plants are often grown.
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This was a small plant sale - you could say with a big heart - held in a community hall, and was quite a social occasion for the locals, even if not a brilliant selling venue for the nurseries. It was organised as part of the Chelsea Fringe but you could say was well beyond the 'Fringe' in not such a up market part of the City. A nice day, but we did bring back almost as many plants as we took, so a bit of rethinking might be needed.
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A few final pictures...
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Just looked through the pictures of Chris Johnson's new alpine house at Ardivacher and I've changed my mind - this is what I would like for Christmas! That height and open situation should be great for so many plants. We are visiting Adrian Cooper later in the week, who lives just south of Maidstone and has a similar purpose built alpine house, high up overlooking the Weald of Kent, in which alpines are planted out - will show some pictures later on.
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The generosity of alpine gardeners. A couple of examples of plants we have been given: first a picture of one side of David Hoare's saxifrage house; David has kindly given us some large specimens of saxes no longer any good for showing, for cuttings, plus a nice selection of 'silvers' - it will be good to increase the range of these that we propagate, and the latter are especially suitable for our drier garden where not everything gets the attention it might deserve; and second, two pots of Eucomis vandermerwei - the one on the left a group of seedlings from Darren Sleep which have very bold spotting, and on the right the commercial strain 'Octopus'. These are always so late to appear but it will be very interesting to see how they differ in flower too. (A few nice things that came from Lesley in NZ are also growing well - thanks to all!).
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And a small part of the nursery area filling with plants (the silver foliage is an excellent form of Centaurea cineraria - perhaps similar to 'Colchester White' that Ramparts Nursery sold many years ago), and the next area that needs clearing!
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Our nursery and garden are intimately associated so rebuilding one implies weeding and maintaining the other. This area at the bottom of the garden is devoted to snowdrops and woodlanders and after a good soaking from the recent thunderstorms is getting a top-dressing of garden compost. We have three large insulated compost bins and the one on the right has been emptied into this area, but very rapidly refilled! In a week or so's time this will have dropped to half this height as the temperature of the heap maximises and composting gets into its stride, but we have plenty more to keep filling it up! (I have measured up to 80°C in these heaps when we used to shred and add grass cuttings to it as well, and it stays over 50°C for several weeks, so we can get good compost within 3 or 4 months, and usually pretty weed free). The two right hand bins need emptying too, but barrowing several cubic metres of compost around the garden needs a little time!
The ground under the fruit trees is full of snowdrops and gradually becoming planted up with choice woodlanders and ferns. Initially though we try to keep it free of weeds by mulching with grass cuttings (in the past we used bales of straw from the local farm). The apples this year - which always come too thick and fast - will be crushed and made into fruit juice.
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These pictures show the next row of apples over which is planted up with species such as roscoea, hellebores, many ferns, trilliums, podophyllum, epimediums, arisaemas and hostas. At this time of year their foliage still looks very good even though most flowers have gone over. This is one part of the garden that doesn't dry out too much in the summer so a wider range of such plants are reasonably successful. In winter and spring here is the highlight of the garden. The final picture shows that we are fortunate in our dry summer climate of not getting too much slug damage on hostas (at least for the moment), and also what good flowering plants these are.
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Some great foliage mixes there, Tim. Do you "turn" the compost in the heaps or rely on the heat to do the job?
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I used to turn the compost Maggi but aching limbs have reduced my resolve! It certainly helps in bringing the outer material into the middle and aerating the mix all over again. If I had a small tractor... ;)
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We never turn ours. Our heaps are usually around one cubic metre, to a max of 1.5 metres cubed - and we just pile them and leave them. Never had any problem getting the heat up and making lovely compost that way.
We've always wondered if there truly is any real benefit in turning - some suspicion that it's a hangover idea from the days when gardens had numerous staff who needed to be kept busy.... ::) :-\
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Maggi, You've got me thinking now. My wife is the one who usually mentions it's time for me to turn our heap ;)
Matthew
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Maggi, You've got me thinking now. My wife is the one who usually mentions it's time for me to turn our heap ;)
Matthew
Hmmm...... ::) Let me think........
In which case I am sure that Mrs Studdart must have legitimate concerns that your compost heap is not sufficiently "mixed" in its construction, having too much of one type of component and is thus anerobic and requires turning . 8)
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We never turn ours. Our heaps are usually around one cubic metre, to a max of 1.5 metres cubed - and we just pile them and leave them. Never had any problem getting the heat up and making lovely compost that way.
We've always wondered if there truly is any real benefit in turning - some suspicion that it's a hangover idea from the days when gardens had numerous staff who needed to be kept busy.... ::) :-\
Too much effort to keep turning them. Anything that doesn't break down in mine just gets thrown back in for another go
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It doesn't take long for waste ground to regenerate quite a diverse array of plants. We used to rent part of the field next door to our garden, which included an old (and pretty tumbledown) but extensive dutch light glasshouse which we re-covered with Visqueen. This area enabled us to grow a wide range of perennials and alpines and also to line out and bud fruit trees in great variety (some of these old varieties grown from budwood from Brogdale near us have ended up at Blair Castle in Scotland). After vacating the glasshouse and land the site was eventually cleared...
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Now some four years later the land carries a good crop of free-seeding weeds, from nettles and ragwort, to teasels and willowherb - not always so beneficial to our garden but actually especially attractive and varied this summer probably as a consequence of the very mild and wet winter.
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Now some four years later the land carries a good crop of free-seeding weeds, from nettles and ragwort, to teasels and willowherb - not always so beneficial to our garden but actually especially attractive and varied this summer probably as a consequence of the very mild and wet winter.
And a fantastic resource for all kinds of wildlife that will be living and feeding on those native wildflowers too!
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Thanks Matt - yes you are absolutely right, and in our garden too!
On the other side of the track (this was of great benefit to us before because we could get compost etc. delivered in bulk), and right alongside the M2, a similar field has never been used except as grazing for rabbits and the occasional mowing. This has an even richer mix of plants flowering this summer and steadily a few woody species beginning to establish. One area, in the middle of the field - presumably where the rabbits spend most of their time - has only low plants and a wonderful crop of pink centuary, setting seed now but with a few flowering plants still scattered about.
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In other places denser mixes of ragwort, evening primrose, teasel, vicia, hypericum and seeding hemlock make quite a colourful show. I could imagine a tidy person putting these fields down to grass and grazing horses on them (we have quite a few around us already nearby), but it is rather nice and unusual that these areas have been left alone.
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This may seem hardly a part of 'rebuilding a nursery' but the way this land is regenerating a natural flora year by year, and the diversity of plants is not so different to the fascination of developing and managing the garden and watching how certain species self-seed and intermix. The excitement of the garden is just a great deal more cosmopolitan! We could do with a little less of the seed from nettles and thistles, but in any event a large part of gardening is weeding. What is pleasant is the steady prospect of wilderness reappearing - and relatively quickly too - between us and the nearby motorway, even if it is on the smallest of scales.
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Progress is steadily being made on the nursery itself - cuttings taken and seed sown, the nursery frames filling with plants. Trilliums in the garden now look a little tatty but some have good promise of seed, which is as stimulating to the nurseryman as the garden is to the gardener. Our twenty-five-year-old cedar dutch light greenhouse, which has had problems with the footings rotting, is now half repaired and given a new lick of wood preservative. Taking the glass out has had quite a benefit in this hot summer but encouraged the dog to chase mice amongst the pots, hence the netting!
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And there is just room for a new raised bed using up some old railway sleepers! At the moment this is partly shaded by a Metasequoia but the tree has suffered through previous dry summers so eventually will have to come down. This may be the place to experiment with a dry sand/scoria type bed for those astragalus and oxytropis and lupins I have generally failed with up to now, plus more Mediterranean-climate species. Other parts of the garden are established and looking quite good, and don't need too much care - this shows the entrance to the garden with Hydrangea 'Tricolor', Geranium 'Buxton's Blue', Dryopteris erythrosora, mahonia and cimicifuga, which helps when viewing areas that need more attention! Not everything is 'coming up roses' but enough to feel that some real progress is being made after quite a long haul.
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Those beds full of pots are bursting with planty promise, Tim. I can feel my wallet leaping at the prospect of retail therapy at Copton Ash,even tho' there is little chance of my getting to see it in person. The hard work you and Gillian are putting in is surely paying off when we see these pictures of both nursery beds and garden doing so well.
Have you more Kentish plant fairs etc to attend?
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I'm with Maggi on that, the nursery and garden are looking great Tim. Your posts here have certainly piqued my interest to visit your nursery if I can. I was down south recently, visiting my folks in Essex. My mum and I took a day trip out to Gt. Dixter and I can't help thinking that some of our time would have been better spent perusing your nursery beds instead of sitting in an 8 mile traffic jam on the M25 for 3 1/2 hours! :'( However, Gt. Dixter was splendid. I'll have to get to Copton Ash another time. Those nursery beds are surely full of exciting treasures, most of them probably not suited to my Hebridean climate, but I can have fun buying plants for my mum's warm, sunny, dry garden. :)
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I meant to ask: are you rooting all of your cuttings in pure sand, or is there some form of growing medium under a top dressing?
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Thanks Matt and Maggi - a few plant fairs yes, including Great Dixter this autumn, but there is still a need to educate gardeners about alpines and we are working on that. We should have a great deal more by next spring but need to make more covered areas on the nursery for the choicer plants, so a lot still to do.
The cuttings are just inserted in a layer of sharp sand over a rooting mix of propagation bark and vermiculite, plus a little loam. This summer has become unduly warm so cuttings have the roots 'fair boiled off them'. It would be good to emulate the fine prop. house at Aberconwy and in time this might be possible, but the garden also needs a lot of attention.
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Pleasure to see it Tim. Must be very hard work but tremendously satisfying.
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Impressive array of cuttings and plants. Wish your nursery was near me. Nice to see pictures of future projects - you will never be bored and looking for things to do!
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All work and no play... a bit of Africa, Nuru Kane and the BFG at the Gulbenkian (University of Kent). Real rhythm. Wish I had a picture I could show - a great ensemble of musicians.
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Anne - it would be so nice if your garden was near to us too! It is very stimulating to see the crevice plantings - not too many gardeners here in Kent (if any?) doing this; it is certainly on the agenda in the future. At the moment the nursery is taking precedence and having just received the latest NARGS Quarterly and read Loren Russell's article this is our plan for one area...
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Finding new places for plants, and revamping old ones, is one of the significant aspects of an established garden. This tree house, around an old cherry in the nursery, was made when the children were small but never properly finished (it has no roof!). It seemed a potential place to plant out a few plants that would benefit from a dryish spot and some protection in winter (it could easily be turned into a mini-greenhouse). The winter gales have blown down quite a bit of the nearby hedge and opened this area up to much more light so hopefully these plants will take off. (Really an excuse to put off more of the larger scale weeding and renovation that still needs doing!).
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A few pictures of plants from WHG Mann & Son in Essex, one of the few wholesale alpine nurseries in the country, and who grow an extensive and changing range of plants including many real rarities like Weldenia candida and Anchusa caespitosa, as well as good garden alpines like those pictured. Such an interesting nursery to visit, not least because of the connections to so many great growers of past and present. The first picture shows some nice forms of Saxifraga fortunei, several of which have come from Ray Drew who lives nearby, and like other Essex AGS members (such as Kath Dryden) has always had close links with Mann's - the Group meets just across the road in the local hall and have a fine local show every year in the spring (ref. pictures of Ray's erythroniums that I have shown last year on the Forum).
With the saxifrages is a nice robust form of Gentiana asclepidea (ex. Nymans) and the silver saxifrage cross S. x andrewsii (which Winton Harding praises for its 'really sturdy constitution and sterling merits as a garden plant), and is a good addition to a select range of 'silvers' that we have been kindly given by David Hoare, and aim to build up on the nursery.
The second picture shows some good cushion alpines amongst others, including the super tight growing Delosperma spalmanthoides. We haven't grown many of these relatively hardy succulents in the past, but potentially they suit our conditions well and it is hard not to get a little excited about them when you look across to N. America and Panayoti Kelaidis' and others championing of them at Denver and the challenging climate of parts of the western US.
Thirdly, why not learn to love Silene acaulis again? These are the compact 'Snowdon' form and more robust 'Pedunculata' at Manns - we will try these à la Peter Korn.
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Tim - and others - have written of the seeming lack of interest in rock gardening in some circles - here is a link to an article by Francine Raymond who hopes the tide is turning: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/gardeningequipment/11063964/Why-have-rock-gardens-fallen-out-of-fashion.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/gardeningequipment/11063964/Why-have-rock-gardens-fallen-out-of-fashion.html)
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Yes isn't that nice. Doddington is only just down the road from us and we know it and Amicia quite well over the years - the rock garden is quite extensive and it is quite an exercise to rebuild it like this - more power to their elbow. I'm not so sure about the references to Friar Park and miniature Matterhorns because these show how ridiculous some rock gardens were in the past; the Czech gardens and many British gardens like Branklyn, which we have just visited, show how rock gardens can be true works of art and highly valuable ways of growing these plants extremely successfully, as they are in Japan. Rock gardens don't have to be on this traditional large scale and associated with large gardens, they can be much more intimate and linked to individual discernment by gardeners.
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Though I look at this super thread regularly, I rarely add to it as there's so much happening and I feel I should be doing so much more myself, both to my own seemingly defunct blog but also to my garden and nursery. The weather's perking up some so hopefully I'll be out there for a few more days before the next lot of rain pours in.
Having read the article you linked to above Maggi, I am wondering if the modern writer/presenter hasn't noticed what's happening out there. I have just recently come across Carol Klein in the series about her Devon cottage garden and enjoyed it quite a lot but also in a series called "The Great British Garden Revival." It's been on before but I missed it but just a couple of days ago caught a repeat of the episode which features the "revival" of the great British rock garden. Starting off with a rehash of the huge rock gardens of the Victorians and Edwardians, such as those mentioned in the linked article, she went on to talk some about the Edinburgh BG rock garden and a few others but all, with the exception of a trough which she planted were enormous and if that's the current perception among those who DON'T rock garden, it's no wonder many people are put off. I and many others - all of us in fact who look at the Forum - are aware of a few large ones for sure but there are so many little or even tiny rock gardens which are very much in keeping with modern garden sizes, time available and the calls to other, competing interests and responsibilities. I thought it a shame that Ms Klein didn't mention these at all. Even the alpine house she mentioned - Edinburgh again - was the biggest and best or among them, no mention that just a very few square metres of space under cover can house a fantastic collection of stunning plants. I shouldn't be surprised if many people watching her "revival" thought "Oh well, that's far to big and ambitious for me" instead of seeing that so much can be done with so little.
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Lesley, to me one of the joys of rock gardening is that it can be done within a few square feet.
You don't need a huge space. Larry Thomas, who was a wonderful New York City rock gardener, displayed his alpine plants on his 11th floor terrace in a number of gorgeous pots (which he made himself) and small troughs. He grew wonderful plants. I can think of other rock gardeners who have a few troughs and grow incredible plants in them. It's great to have a site that begs for a rock garden, but what's needed is some sophisticated publicity on how rock gardening can fit into just about anyone's lifestyle.
On the other hand, I don't find "big" and "expensive" at all daunting, but rather a learning experience and a challenge to adapt what you've learned in a way that doesn't make a team of round-the-clock gardeners a necessity
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May be it should be better known that you don't need a rock garden to grow alpines.
Also the popular TV programs don't give much attention to alpines,and even sometimes the presenter makes obvious mistakes.Not the best thing to promote those little jewels!
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A few pictures from the Sussex Prairies Plant & Art Fair last weekend (the garden made by Paul and Pauline McBride). The last picture shows Steve Edney from the Salutation Garden in Sandwich, Kent - a really talented gardener and someone to watch out for. More details for anyone who would like them on my Kent Diary linked to the AGS website (which Maggi has kindly referred to).
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Just had an enjoyable weekend at the Autumn Plant Fair at Great Dixter. I will put together some more pictures and notes in the next few days (and an in depth look at the event on my AGS Diary) but couldn't resist showing these two pictures of some fine gardeners and nursery-people, particularly relevant to the SRGC... there were some pretty interesting plants-people around over the two days and a wonderful variety of nurseries from Sweden to the south of France, and Germany to Scotland! Fergus and his team at Great Dixter did us proud - all thanks to them.
It was delightful also to meet with Ross and Helen and to talk a little about alpines and alpine gardening...
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Fergus looks more and more like a garden gnome!
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I once said this about a good friend in the Kent Hardy Plant Society when we were making a display (based on Margery Fish's garden) at Chelsea. I'm not sure he appreciated it too much but sometimes the words come into your head and you have no control over what you say! I remember Jekka McVicar introducing a gnome into her display at Chelsea a while back, to great consternation, so gnomes perhaps have a good pedigree ;)
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A few more pictures from Great Dixter last weekend. There aren't many gardens like Dixter and perhaps its great appeal is that it is a personal garden. It may be a little exuberant for some but it is not lacking in imagination, colour and stimulation - and the same comes from reading Christopher Lloyd and his writing about the garden. Not a bad place to have a Plant Fair like this with nurseries from across Europe, but on an intimate and friendly basis. As you might imagine it drew plenty of interesting gardeners too. Dixter as a garden is far from the world of alpine and rock plants, but if you read my Kent Diary on the AGS website you will see why I make little distinction between the two.
It is hard not to make a garden around a house like this... and to give autumn flowers their head.
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What was especially nice was that alpine nurseries and growers were represented as well. So opposite our stand was the German alpine specialists Staudengärtnerei Peters. Though they grow a wide range of alpines, they also specialise in certain genera and species such as the woodland saxifrages and hepaticas. Talking to Susanne their aim with the former is to breed for earlier flowering forms more suitable for the garden and 'Ajyhna' is a lovely example. The spring trumpet gentians always throw up a few flowers in autumn too, and they had a range of forms of these that reminded me of how well they grow in the Czech Republic. They don't flower so well in our garden but we need to try more of them and experiment with planting places and conditions (see www.alpine-peters.de (http://www.alpine-peters.de)).
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It was especially nice to meet Peter Korn again, after first going up to Lamberton a few years ago and being astonished at his ways of growing alpines, then listening to him in the Czech Republic in May 2013, and having a Swedish edition of his beautifully illustrated book. What's more he had a whole range of Pulsatilla species for sale, which have caught a little attention elsewhere on this Forum! Peter gave a short talk about his gardening, and there were quite a few visitors with a serious interest in alpines despite the riches of other plants all around.
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The variety of plants and nurseries is what really created such a buzz for anyone who has a general and wide ranging fascination with the plant world. Dino Pellizzaro from the south of France had a unique mix of tender shrubs, pelargonium species, and hardyish bromeliads; Kwekerij Arborealis from the Netherlands, a great variety of woody species including various oaks (I could wish that we had planted some of these in our garden 30 years ago); and there were other pretty well known names from mainland Europe and the UK - even from Scotland. The similarity with the Alpine Shows is that these are all specialist growers with personal interests in particular types of plants, which makes an event unique in its variety and attraction to plants-people. The downside is that such an event doesn't come about so often, though the feel was very like several plant shows we attended in France organised by Jean-Pierre Jolivot (Jardin d'En Face), and not so different from past RHS Shows held at Vincent Square in London, before 'design' became more prominent. Plants and plants-people.
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... 'Ajyhna' is a lovely example...
Great photo, Tim, of a beautiful plant.
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Mouthwateringly good Tim, wish I had been there. Imaginative use of straw bales too .
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The variety of plants and nurseries is what really created such a buzz ... Plants and plants-people.
Even in the short time since I was a lad, I've noticed a huge degradation in the quality of nurseries and the practice of gardening in general. Our local nursery used to also host small independent businesses specialising in bonsai, fuschia etc, but now it's full of mass produced bedding, shrubs etc that you find everywhere. A visit to a GC these days is disappointing, with plants and gardening taking up only a small fraction of the space given over to gifts, clothing, cafe, candles etc. It would be easy to blame this on TV shows that have commodified the garden (i.e. Groundforce), but similar trends are prevalent through organisations such as the RHS, with show gardens and design pushed to the fore whilst plantsmanship seems to come second. Design has it's place, but there is no point if the aesthetic doesn't also create suitable habitat niches for the plants we grow or we're left with the same limited choice of generic species and cultivars. Thank goodness we still have specialist societies such as this and small, independent nurseries such as you feature here! Thanks for sharing, Tim.
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Hear hear! Matt - I couldn't agree more with your comment. Tim's points on these matters seem to me to be spot on. I deeply regret the concentration there is in so many areas of horticulture on "design" - which all too often seems to mean the expensive production of a stage set for those with plenty money and little sense. This was brought home to me all to forcefully when faced with the example of people who, having just completed a"design" course, turned right round to then "teach" the subject. ::)
In some cases it seems that those taking a garden design course are those who, a few years ago, might have been taking a cordon bleue cookery course - as a pastime but now it seems they want to not only take the course but take over the world! Sadly it appears that too great a number of youngster getting into horticulture are being infected with a bug which leads them to think that design is the holy grail and their ambitions seem to be concentrated on emulating "celebrity" designers, with "gardens" at Chelsea and so on. A short sighted and, in my opinion, horribly narrow path to attempt.
*Sigh* - sceptical ( and certainly grumpy) old lady here!
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Even in the short time since I was a lad, I've noticed a huge degradation in the quality of nurseries and the practice of gardening in general. Our local nursery used to also host small independent businesses specialising in bonsai, fuschia etc, but now it's full of mass produced bedding, shrubs etc that you find everywhere. A visit to a GC these days is disappointing, with plants and gardening taking up only a small fraction of the space given over to gifts, clothing, cafe, candles etc. It would be easy to blame this on TV shows that have commodified the garden (i.e. Groundforce), but similar trends are prevalent through organisations such as the RHS, with show gardens and design pushed to the fore whilst plantsmanship seems to come second. Design has it's place, but there is no point if the aesthetic doesn't also create suitable habitat niches for the plants we grow or we're left with the same limited choice of generic species and cultivars. Thank goodness we still have specialist societies such as this and small, independent nurseries such as you feature here! Thanks for sharing, Tim.
We have the same trend here in California, except the situation is even worse! My wife and I often lament the commodification of everything these days. Nothing is loved and nobody seems to care. We call it "moneyocracy" :P
Thank you Tim for sharing the photographs. For me it is an inspiration to see such plants offered at a plant fair. We have nothing like this at all. This seems so strange to me, as California offers so much in the way of climate and opportunities for growing a wide range of interesting plants and creating beautiful gardens. For decades I've tried to offer interesting plants at the farmers' market. For a while it seemed that I was making progress. After the financial dump of 2007 all the plant people seemed to have scattered and are gone. Now all that is left is a horticultural waste land. Somehow I wish to reach the heart and soul of folks to create beauty in their world. I seem more inspired to do this than farm (another set of problems where folks do not seem to care about the quality of their food either), but farming is a must if I am to earn livelihood, at least right now. Thanks again!
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Robert - we share all these pictures of plants on the Forum but, like Gerd, I found your descriptions of looking for violas in the wild even more fascinating. It reminds me a lot of Lester Rowntree's book 'Hardy Californians', and the Californian flora is not especially well known amongst gardeners in the UK compared with the Mediterranean and South Africa. I used to suscribe to 'Pacific Horticulture', and have a few books on using native Californian plants in gardens, and a beautiful description of 'California's Wild Gardens' edited by Phyllis Faber, and thought maybe that there is quite a strong interest in the natural flora amongst gardeners, so it is sad to hear your comments. There is certainly a lot of fine horticultural writing which has come out of N. America. I will look forward to seeing more of your travels in the hills and getting an idea of where particular plants grow.
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There are quite a few videos posted on You Tube from nurseryfolks at the Great Dixter Plant Fair
There are videos from Peter Korn (shown below) and also from Binny Plants, Edulis Plants, Evolution Plants, Crug Farm Old Court to name just a few - a dozen in all from the autumn fair this month - list is here
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdBciiF5O5DM_vo9cs7XXU2il2ikbjjfv (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdBciiF5O5DM_vo9cs7XXU2il2ikbjjfv)
Be aware that there is the ringing of a bell and a very loud shout of "Roll Up Roll Up" announcement at the beginning of the videos
Peter's video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LqhJ1NfEvQ&index=3&list=PLdBciiF5O5DM_vo9cs7XXU2il2ikbjjfv (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LqhJ1NfEvQ&index=3&list=PLdBciiF5O5DM_vo9cs7XXU2il2ikbjjfv)
See the links for other Gt. Dixter videos here : https://www.youtube.com/user/GreatDixterGarden (https://www.youtube.com/user/GreatDixterGarden)
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It was an excellent event; I was there on Sunday but forgot to take any pictures!
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What was especially nice was that alpine nurseries and growers were represented as well. So opposite our stand was the German alpine specialists Staudengärtnerei Peters.
(see www.alpine-peters.de (http://www.alpine-peters.de)).
Get thee behind me Tim Ingram! Having seen this I looked at their website and, on Saturday ordered their selection of mixed hybrids. They have arrived this morning (Friday), beautifully packed and a very nice selection so I am well pleased:
Cho Chang - a white flower
Crazy - which is green
Dendera - Rose
Itoe - Large flowered rose
Moe - a cream/white double
Well worth the carriage as you can see, the hay which they were packed in smelt beautiful!
Seriously though, thanks Tim ;D
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Oh dear, Brian, we can resist everything except temptation, eh?
That's an impressively speedy delivery of nice sized plants.
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Oh dear, Brian, we can resist everything except temptation, eh?
That's an impressively speedy delivery of nice sized plants.
Yep, I decided the cost of going down to Dixter (which wasn't at a time that I could have gone) was worth spending on some plants and postage! I was very impressed with the delivery and the state of the plants on arrival - mindful of another thread which pointed out some bad packaging.
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I've had hellebores from them which were equally good - plants and packaging.
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That is so nice to know Brian and Ralph. The Saturday was quite wet and they were in a shady spot and I don't think sold so many plants. Sunday was a lot better. It's quite an exercise bringing so many plants over from Germany and I would very much like to learn more about the nursery as one of the relatively few that specialise in alpines in Europe.
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Hope you have a good day that the Best of Faversham market tomorrow, Tim
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Not such a busy day at the market down town, and after all Faversham is not Great Dixter! (but it's a lot closer). Autumn is never such a time for alpines but we should work on getting a little more in flower just to show gardeners that there is still a lot going on in the garden in the autumn - so next year more cyclamen, woodland saxifrages, crocus, colchicums and gentians! Actually it is nice to meet that relatively small but knowledgeable group of people who do know a lot about plants, and my wife mentioned one person who looked at the notice board we put up (and the picture of the rock bank at the entrance to the town in the spring) and said that she and others had been planting up various overgrown corners in the town with annuals. Rather more important things were happening later in the afternoon with the crowning of 'Miss Faversham'!
Back in the garden the big autumn clear-up is underway under the apple rows for the snowdrops next February. We don't have many very early forms apart from G. reginae-olgae, but it would be fun to surprise people in town with these in autumn.
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These rows of dwarf apples (there are five altogether) have become a big project in the garden over the past few years. underplanting with woodland perennials, ferns, and snowdrops and small narcissi. By now they need quite of work to clear for next February and I usually do some pruning of the apples to open the trees up and give them a general tidy up (summer pruning would be best but there is never enough time). This is a significant part of the garden when we open through the spring, and the idea is to show visitors what a large of range of woodland plants there are which give interest right through from February well into the summer - plus providing seed and propagating material. When well weeded and after the lawn is cut there is a good feeling of progress.
The first row (on the left in the second picture) has a groundcover of brunnera, Viola odorata, with aquilegias, astrantias and various other plants mixed in, and all the top growth is cut back and cleared away for the bulbs next year. This is a complete carpet of snowdrops in February, and growing these with quite strong perennials in this way hopefully reduces the risk of narcissus fly when they die down in the summer.
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The first two rows are quite heavily planted and our main aim will be to introduce more bulbs, especially narcissi. The snakeshead fritillary self-sows nicely so gradually seed of this is being spread amongst the trees. The third row is steadily being planted up and we will try several of the woodland saxifrages from the Peters nursery here, along with (in this picture) a good form of Gentiana septemfida (Nymans) that came from Manns nursery. Weeding is a problem when there is not a good cover of plants and we have mulched heavily with grass cuttings (of which there is no shortage!). In time the more problematical 'weeds' become plants like aquilegias and the brunnera, as well as purple leaved cow parsley, which can self-seed very freely, but give a great meadow-like flowering in the summer (a bit more care with dead-heading required!).
The enjoyable aspect of these areas is slowly introducing more choice and special plants like Roscoea 'Red Gurkha' and a good form of Clematis heracleifolia, 'Cassandra'. The Persicaria sp. (ex Cally Gardens) has been excellent throughout the autumn and so far not spread as vigorously as other species are liable to. Our relatively dry summers limit growing many of the later flowering woodlanders, but we will certainly aim to try more roscoeas if these look to establish well.
There are two more rows of apples to go - just presently planted at one end - and these will be projects for the next couple of years as the collection of snowdrops continues to grow steadily!
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a good form of Clematis heracleifolia, 'Cassandra'
What a pretty blue - and a great flower form - seems to have ambitions to be a hyacinth! :)
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The bottom corner of the garden, just beyond these apple rows, has been cleared - all the hellebore leaves cut away - and heavily mulched. A range of choice snowdrops that came from the Myddelton House sale in late January have been planted here, along with several witch hazels and corylopsis, and a group of erythronium cultivars from Hartside Nursery (at the Summer Event at Dunblane), so it will be exciting to see this area grow out next spring. It has the feel of woodland but also several more exotic trees such as Azara microphylla which scents the whole area in early spring. Above it the weeds still grow and still a lot more winter work is necessary, with the prospect of renewed plantings next year.
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Hi Tim,
Your combination of apples and other shrubs seems to work very well for underplanting with bulbs and other woodland plants. Evergreen NZ natives do not work in this respect as they create too much shade and tend to dry the ground out too much. I planted a specimen of Pittosporum eugenioides in my woodland bed but it has had a detrimental effect on the trilliums and rhododenrons underneath it.
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Hi David,
I first got fascinated by woodland plantings like this on visiting Knightshayes Court over in the south-west many years ago. There the woodland plants are grown beneath large trees of oaks and pines and mixed in with rhododendrons. The rainfall is probably twice what we get in Kent. But even in dry Essex in Beth Chatto's garden there are wonderful mixes of woodlanders which has encouraged us to work more on them. They also seem very appropriate in smaller gardens under deep rooting and small trees, so the aim of underplanting the apples is to convince visitors how much more you can make of such places in a garden.
I see what you mean about the NZ vegetation. We have an area of the garden that is devoted to these and southern hemisphere plants (or at least was until a couple of hard winters took their toll) and they are quite difficult to underplant (although nettles are doing very well at the moment :() At Wakehurst Place, which has a big collection of such plants on quite acid sandy soil they use heathers and mostly small shrubs and relatively few perennials. This is a part of our garden we want to redevelop over the winter and next year so must think more about a long term sustainable planting.
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Winter work
Early winter so far has been very mild with just a few frosts over the past week, dropping to -3.5°C or so. The soil at depth must still be relatively warm and the snowdrops are showing themselves more and more. The first picture shows a small grouping beneath a large shrub of Rosa moyesii. These are all excellent and distinctive varieties - 'Kite', 'Ransom's Dwarf', 'Gerard Parker', and 'Mrs Thompson'. The first is slow to increase but an especially elegant and fine snowdrop, marked out also for its particularly blue-glaucous leaves. Hopefully this will now increase over the next few years. 'Mrs Thompson', on the right is one of the most showy of all snowdrops on a warm sunny day when the flowers really open because of its tendency to throw blooms with extra petals. I must remember to show the same picture when they are in flower ;) This area was full of weed until a week or so ago. The second picture shows an area beneath cherries and birch a little lower down the garden which is planted with snowdrops, hellebores, erythroniums, trilliums and anemones and is becoming a real delight through early spring. Unfortunately we have foolishly allowed cow parsley to grow and seed here too (it looks very beautiful in May but there is plenty in local hedgerows!) so some particularly rigorous weeding has been necessary to clear the area and there is still as much again to do. The thinking is to introduce a mix of self-seeding but more ornamental perennials into the centre of this bed such as astrantia and Campanula persicifolia, along with thalictrums, epimediums and persicaria which are already there. The areas alongside the path will be kept for the more choice woodlanders.
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In the front garden, after some deliberation and procrastination, we have decided to dig out rather than cut down the hedge stumps alongside our neighbour's. Two down and nine to go - not so easy but a good way of warming up on a cold winter's day, so we should be able to complete this through January and then the aim is to infill with sand and gravel and use this area for a run of troughs. It should be a good spot for those alpines needing a cooler aspect, especially Kabschia saxifrages and also ericaceous species (and autumn gentians?). The prospect of some interesting and useful plants here, rather than the annoying Leyland Cypress hedge is a notable stimulus :D
Finally for now I have at last constructed a new set of dutch-light frames for the nursery and learnt how to use a router and chisel all over again. These are made from tanalised wood so should last well and have led to thoughts of constructing a new dutch-light greenhouse below the present nursery area - a project maybe for next winter :-\
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It is nice to see how the spring advances in your woodland beds beneath the trees and bushes. I like it when the snowdrops increase to form large clumps, that is something to look forward to.
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In the front garden, after some deliberation and procrastination, we have decided to dig out rather than cut down the hedge stumps alongside our neighbour's. Two down and nine to go - not so easy but a good way of warming up on a cold winter's day, so we should be able to complete this through January and then the aim is to infill with sand and gravel and use this area for a run of troughs. It should be a good spot for those alpines needing a cooler aspect, especially Kabschia saxifrages and also ericaceous species (and autumn gentians?). The prospect of some interesting and useful plants here, rather than the annoying Leyland Cypress hedge is a notable stimulus :D
Finally for now I have at last constructed a new set of dutch-light frames for the nursery and learnt how to use a router and chisel all over again. These are made from tanalised wood so should last well and have led to thoughts of constructing a new dutch-light greenhouse below the present nursery area - a project maybe for next winter :-\
Great job, Tim. As you say, the troughs will be so much more rewarding than the hedge !! All the best for the rest of the hard work !
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Good to see some of the specialist nurseries keeping going. I search for those hard to find native alpines, usually without success. Most nurserymen think our own native plants are not worth garden space. Best wishes for the new year.
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Hello Tim great to see you can do some work outside we have been frozen solid over Christmas and New Year with minus 8 c a bit milder the last few days with snowdrops showing well have potted a few for later sales, love the new frames, cheers Ian the Christie kind
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Thanks Luc, Ian & Ian - we are still mild and wet here so will carry on digging out these Leyland stumps. I have been doing a little 'window' shopping for stone troughs :( - for the price of one it would be possible to buy maybe 200 or 300 plants! (or more). Who actually buys these and what do they use them for? Perhaps we need to add the skill of stone masonry to the alpine gardener's repertoire ;) We have been promised a couple of large Butler sinks and have two or three smaller troughs that need replanting so will spend rather less on some seed of choice plants and perusing catalogues from specialist alpine nurseries, and looking back over the trough threads on the Forum here. This should be a great project for the spring. Now what I would really like is this trough from Miroslav Staněk's garden which I have just written about in my Diary for the AGS website... :)
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Tim i know an area where they reduce troughs to dust, trust me or not but that's true!
When i was a young boy it was re-used to support fuel tanker but those days intelligent guys clear old farm, garden of aged people of it and then resell the troughs in urban zone.
Lucrative business isn't it
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Farms are a possible source of old stone troughs, providing Drew Pritchard does not get there first!
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Wonderful troughs in Miroslav Stanek's garden.
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Growing snowdrops - and opening the garden in February - puts the oweness on tidying some of the woodland areas in the garden. The basis of this is the large piles of prunings and weed that tend to build up through the growing season, which every now and again we make a concerted effort to shred and turn into mulch. Quite a proportion of this heap is actually nettles and their roots from a part of the garden which has needed attention for some time. Satisfying to produce something useful from clearing an area like this. The second picture shows a planting under a crab apple, full of woodlanders which start with the snowdrops, cyclamen and hellebores and go on into summer with polygonatums and smilacina. Every two or three years it gets a thorough tidying and topdressing like this. The bed on the other side of the path behind is drier with mostly Geranium phaeum and aquilegias and is more self-supporting, just topdressed with autumn leaves and cut back occasionally.
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On the corner of that bed was this rather fine, but very congested, clump of Galanthus 'Galatea'. This has at last been lifted and divided and some bulbs repotted and a good number more replanted in a new spot. Following the advice of Ian and others who grow bulbs in pots these have been planted in small groups of three or four bulbs rather than individually. Damage to the roots is potentially a risk when lifting snowdrops 'in the green' so we lift a whole clump with as much soil as possible and gently wash this off and separate bulbs under water. Working around the garden and dividing different snowdrops each year steadily allows for bigger drifts to be built up and to distribute them in different places so that the risk of disease or pests is moderated.
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What a fantastic trough you showed from Miroslav Stanek's garden! I hope you will take pictures as you transform the former hedge site into a place for troughs. Will you have a water source nearby or depend on rain? Will your troughs be raised on something or sit in the sand/gravel mix? Lots of questions, sorry.
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Lots of useful questions Anne! I think my model will be these troughs at the Edinburgh Botanic Garden, so slightly raised and fairly widely separated with an underplanting of :-\ and maybe a few small shrubby plants in between. We have got water nearby and it is quite a prime position at the entrance to the garden so we need to make them as striking as possible to attract those who visit to the idea of growing alpines. It will probably also mean we shall have to work a bit harder keeping the front garden tidier, so may need to search for a keen young plants-person with an interest in alpines and rock plants. I will certainly show pictures as we go along - it provides something of a discipline to think more carefully.
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Thanks, Tim. I really look forward to following your progress.
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Hello again Tim I follow your posts with interest good to see you can progress without snow or frost?, weather Baltic here hard frost snow high winds just a normal winter, cheers Ian the Christie kind
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A cold night is forecast (clearing skies) but we have been very mild up to now. It has meant we have been able to continue digging out the conifer stumps - only three more to do! Useful in a way because there has been a lot of weeding to do as well before the snowdrop days in February but we have had those freezing winds and snow and frost regularly through January and February in the past so there is a good chance it will return before long! (Enjoyed seeing the Cruickshank gardeners visiting your nursery Ian and that marvellous tunnel full of Meconopsis! Hope we can organise a long awaited Scottish Tour of Gardens before too long - my daughters are also keen to climb Ben Nevis, and that would be a first for me too).
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A Scottish Garden Tour - sounds like a dream.
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We have plans in our small Alpine group down in Kent of organising a trip to Scottish gardens having had many wonderful talks from Scottish gardeners over the years. Any keen Kentish/south-east gardeners looking in... :) 8)!
Surprisingly with a burst of activity, mostly from Gillian, we have cleared the rest of the Leyland stumps from this narrow strip in the front garden and the prospect of actually using this for troughs and growing more choice plants has really come into focus. We are lucky to have friends who have given us these four old Butler sinks for a start, which will need recovering with a cement/hypertufa mix... and there are Alpine Shows coming up before long ;)... This strip next to the wall is quite shaded by the neighbour's house for about half its length and then much more open at the top (not really visible from the foreshortened photo), so the plan at the moment is to have two groups of troughs separated by a small fastigiate tree against the pillar in the middle of the picture, and with small choice shrubs planted between the troughs. The lower part should be a good spot for small ericaceous species, perhaps autumn gentians, and similar plants which we haven't grown before, and the upper part for saxifrages and cushion plants. These two troughs pictured at an exhibit put on by the local AGS Groups at the Hillside Centre at Wisley in 2012, organised by Jon Evans and others, are a really good inspiration.
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Hello again Tim love the troughs so many uses and easy to move around we hope you do manage a visit to the far north do plan when weather is warmer still more snow last night, cheers Ian The Christie kind
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Following with anticipation, Tim. Those troughs will look great. Have you developed your thinking on what you will use as under/inter-planting a la RBGE? I like the trough you picture with a more 'woodsy' mix of plants, but they both look good. Although the proportions of the trough look a little too deep (aesthetically, I'm sure the plants love the cool root run), Sax's in crevices are always a winner in my book. Respect due to Gillian for shifting those stumps!
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A reminder that Tim and Gillian's garden is open on various dates under the NGS banner - first opening is 15th February - don't miss it!
National Garden Scheme
Open dates for 2015:
Sunday 15th February 12-4 pm
Sunday 15th March 2-5.30 pm
Sunday 5th April 2-5.30 pm
Monday 6th April 2-5.30 pm
Sunday 26th April 2-5.30 pm
Monday 4th May 2-5.30 pm
Sunday 24th May 2-5.30 pm
Monday 25th May 2-5.30 pm
Sunday 14th June 2-5.30 pm
Sunday 19th July 2-5.30 pm
2016:
Sunday 14th February 12-4 pm
More details here : http://www.coptonash.plus.com/coptonash/Home_Page.html (http://www.coptonash.plus.com/coptonash/Home_Page.html)
Directions HERE (http://www.coptonash.plus.com/coptonash/Contact_and_Location.html)
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Maggi - you are very kind. This is a display we made down in the town today trying to show people that there is more about snowdrops than they might think. I should show some more pictures of the other market stalls because there are many impressive people involved and times are not so easy. The second picture is one of a series our daughter has made for an art project which I would like to share as the year progresses. A lot of interest in the snowdrops :) Quite a few people of course wanted to buy the plants on display, but a surprising number did buy the smaller plants for sale despite being a little quizzical about the prices. Snowdrops I think do reflect the 'value' of plants especially because, as a neighbouring stall-holder said, they bring a smile to the face :D. The third picture, for all those chocaholics out there, is an example from 'Kate makes Chocolates' - really a bit special!
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Here are the pictures...
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Love Robyn's 'Winter Scene' - 'Less is More' works for me.
Chris
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Kind of 'Art Nouveau' I think. The other seasons use the same design, but filled in with foliage and flowers and fruits. She made it by cutting the design out from black card and using coloured tissue paper behind, so the picture was taken 'backlit' like coloured glass. Yes less is more - I have asked her if I can use them as introductions to writing about the garden in different seasons.
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Kind of 'Art Nouveau' I think.
Robyn's image is super. Not 'Art Nouveau' though, which is characterised by sinuous lines. This style is more 'Art Deco' in feel with the more stark lines of the 1930s- 40s.
Think Eric Ravilious, who died in 1942 ....
[attachimg=1]
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and it also reminds me of one of my favourite paintings from the Aberdeen Art Gallery collection - Paul Nash, "Wood on the Downs" painted in 1930 (- which I always manage to think of as "Wind on the Downs" :-X )
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A few pictures from the Kent HPS Snowdrop day held at Goodnestone Garden near Canterbury last weekend. Most of the small nurseries involved have been long part of the Kent Specialist Nursery scene and have helped run the local AGS and HPS Groups and we have now come together more under the 'Plant Fairs Roadshow'. A good day for gardeners in East Kent (a few people came along from the Cottage Garden Society too from the previous day) and Val Bourne gave a good talk on the history of growing snowdrops with personal recollections of people and plants.
Hardly comparable with the magnificent displays from nurseries at the February RHS Show that Jon Evans and others have shown but a lot of good garden plants available and many enthusiastic gardeners. We hope that we can grow this following more in the local region with a more imaginative and personal expression of the value we gain from growing and learning about plants. The first 'Roadshow' is at Hall Place, Bexley, close to the A2 in south-east London on Sunday 19th April. Admission FREE. See www.plant-fairs.co.uk (http://www.plant-fairs.co.uk) or follow on Facebook and Twitter. (Future Shows are at Telegraph Hill, New Cross, London; Hall Place again in summer; and at the Salutation Garden, Sandwich in autumn)... interesting plants grown by dedicated growers...
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It's a pity there was a clash between this Snowdrop Day and the 'Snowdrop Sensation' held at Great Comp Gardens. Obviously everyone is free to do their own thing but two snowdrop events on the same day in the same county seems unfortunate. Do you think there is a way this can be avoided in future? The same consideration applies to other events and events celebrating other flowers but there isn't much going on in February so one would think it should be easier to avoid clashes than at other times of year
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It's a pity there was a clash between this Snowdrop Day and the 'Snowdrop Sensation' held at Great Comp Gardens. Obviously everyone is free to do their own thing but two snowdrop events on the same day in the same county seems unfortunate. Do you think there is a way this can be avoided in future? The same consideration applies to other events and events celebrating other flowers but there isn't much going on in February so one would think it should be easier to avoid clashes than at other times of year
These clashes cannot be helped, the snowdrop season is short and to fit things in it is inevitable that there will be some events that you cannot attend, you did do quite well this year!
That is a lovely idea to show the different snowdrop varities in the basket - easily transportable too!
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That is a lovely idea to show the different snowdrop varieties in the basket - easily transportable too!
Yes, I liked that too - practical and attractive.
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I think maybe we will work on the idea of a more integrated event/s in Kent next year if we can. The snowdrop basket came from Sue Martin of Geum fame - a lovely and simple way of displaying them which I must remember for the Best of Faversham market next time!
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A few pictures of the sales at Harlow which I thought I would put here from a nursery perspective. Quite a busy day with plenty of people around. How many visitors know how far some of these specialist nurseries have come from? Slack Top had come for the first time from the Yorkshire Pennines. A four and half hour drive(!) with all the packing up of plants: a fantastic opportunity for those down in the south who are new to alpines to discover a remarkable range of plants. The first picture shows a new generation overlooking the hall ;) but none of them came to the Show itself - a missed opportunity for the school to actually show some of its students some remarkable plants from remarkable places, and notably the exhibit from Kew. The last picture shows Crocus tommasinianus roseus - I've never noticed before how much blue there is in the centre of the flowers, though maybe the lighting added to this?
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Your first pic there, Tim, Harlow 6, shows Jackie Potterton and Lisa manning the Potteron's stall - they had set off the day before and had to have an overnight stay.... all more time and expense for the nursery folk to factor in to attending a show.
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Your first pic there, Tim, Harlow 6, shows Jackie Potterton and Lisa manning the Potteron's stall - they had set off the day before and had to have an overnight stay.... all more time and expense for the nursery folk to factor in to attending a show.
It was very much appreciated by all us southerners who ended the day with empty pockets and full cars ;D
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Tim's picture 9 is, I think, Allison and Michael Mitchell from Slack Top Nursery.
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Noel Kingsbury has a blog entry entitled "Where have all the alpines gone?" (http://noels-garden.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/where-have-all-alpines-gone.html) - where he laments the supposed - and perhaps actual - "disappearance" of many alpine plants from our gardens. He is certainly right about the loss of many specialist nurseries.
He is a tad off the mark in some things though.
Also, he hadn't spotted that Pottertons have been trading under that name since 2002 and I think it was Wiert Nieuman and his team who were responsible for all the innovative planting schemes at Utrecht - fab though Harry Jans and his private garden are!
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That is an interesting blog entry from Noël Kingsbury which I think holds some truths about the seeming 'exclusiveness' of the alpine garden world, which may in part explain 'Where have all the Alpines Gone'. I remember visiting him many years ago when he began his nursery and was growing interesting alpines (and I remember being struck by how good his writing was then), and another well known gardener and landscape designer, Dan Pearson, has also written about the AGS and the influence this had early in his career. Both are really significant gardeners and plantsmen, and the fact that they and so many others have had such formative connections with the (AGS specifically) alpine gardening world has great relevance then and now. To these you can easily add people such as Jim Archibald, Martyn Rix, Brian Mathew, Chris Brickell and many others and so I would relate this to other discussions that have gone on on the SRGC Forum - viz: the Future of Specialist Plant Societies and the concerns about EU Regulations and the impact these have on certain freedoms of expression.
I would return to a point I made about young people having some knowledge of plant diversity, environment and origins, which the Alpine Societies of all champion and celebrate. These are pretty profound things to know and to share with new gardeners even if sometimes they might seem quite academic and rarified.
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Tim, thanks for the pictures of the Harlow sale, which made me pea green with envy! Is that Harlow as in Harlow Carr? Joe and I visited there for a day when we stayed once in York. It was so lovely even in November. I think we took a train and then had a nice walk to the garden ending with tea at Betty's Cafe. Unfortunately, the new Alpine House wasn't opened until the next spring.
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Ann, not wishing to steal Tim's thunder but the town of Harlow (the venue for one of the AGS Shows) is in the County of Essex in South Eastern England.
Incidentally the Harlow parts of both names share the same derivation, from the Old English 'here' meaning army and 'hlaw' meaning mound or small hill. The Carr bit stems from 'oecer', meaning plot of land and gradually developed into the word acre.
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Thanks, David. Really interesting information. Always fun to see how words evolve. Sorry I couldn't be at the sale, wherever it was. But then I'd have to go through the draconian US Customs. When we visited Harlow Carr, I bought some packages of bulbs at the Garden Shop, mostly iris reticulata cultivars not available here - and breezed through Customs forgetting they were in my bag.
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I suppose this may not so directly relate to us personally rebuilding our nursery (though it does in some ways) but it does to some of the wider aspects debated on the Forum here about the Specialist Societies themselves and potential regulations on growing and selling plants: today we had a really good debate in Faversham about the significance of the Magna Carta, historically, now and in the future (Faversham happens to have one of the original copies of the Magna Carta dating from 1300). The panel included academics, an army officer (with wide experience in conflict zones around the world), Rod Liddle, associate editor of 'The Spectator', Munira Mirza, deputy Mayor of London for Education and Culture, and Claire Fox who established the Institute of Ideas. All of them spoke really eloquently from quite different backgrounds and perspectives but highlighting the importance of the individual and freedom of expression. It was just stimulating to be there simply for the value of debate, thought, and a feeling that Faversham was on the map for a moment! The local market we are involved with has arisen from a pretty concerted effort, not always without opposition and obstacles, so not entirely independent of this debate.
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Following the generosity of friends in our local Alpine Groups - Denis Catlin and Mike and Hazel Brett - we now have this wonderful collection of old sinks to use in this narrow strip where the old leyland hedge has been removed. Is there a collective noun for troughs? An alpinarium? The biggest two are around 3ft x 2ft and the smallest about half this size, and all a good depth.
After building the sand bed elsewhere - which although relatively small still involved a good bit of preparation and work and has been a good learning experience and successful for a lot of plants - this will be another very stimulating project, helped by seeing what Mike and Hazel have done in their new garden over the last year or two. We are combining this with a lot more structural work on the nursery itself so these may take a while to be rendered and re-rendered and to find their place, and plantings planned and completed through this spring and summer, but a lot of the inspiration has come from seeing what others do on this Forum so we will show them as they develop.
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For anyone in the south-east this weekend - the 'Plant Fairs Roadshow' are at Hall Place in south-east London on Sunday 19th April from 10am to 3pm. Hall Place is is at Bourne Road, Bexley DA5 1PQ - just off the A2 and a few miles inside the M25.
A good range of plants from small specialist nurseries in an extensive and varied garden which also has an historically interesting and important rock garden on relatively poor stony soil in a dry climate. Admission FREE.
(see www.plant-fairs.co.uk (http://www.plant-fairs.co.uk))
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This is a specific example of rebuilding the nursery, which is taking a while because of the competing demands of maintaining the garden! This area had become overgrown and neglected and we now want to make open but covered standing areas for smaller alpines compared with larger perennials that were grown here in the past. So the old frames and ground-cover have been cleared away and the land leveled, and the purple cherry in the background (damaged in the Christmas gales over 2013/4) removed. The aim now is to make a structure rather like the one Adrian Young uses for the saxifrage collection at Waterperry but with a raised standing bed for plants at waist level. (I wouldn't mind raised beds like these complete with tufa! but that is a dream for the future).
This would double the protected area we have for choice plants needing more care in growing, and the ongoing plan for next year is to repeat the process in the adjacent standing area between the apple and crab-apple cordons. Having got the land cleared and leveled it's now much easier to contemplate building the structure and there is a need as cuttings and seedlings are being potted and grown on!
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A lot of work accomplished already. It's going to be amazing. Please don't forget to photograph the new trough area as you proceed.
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I will Anne! Preparation seems to take forever and then the fun of planting comes - we need to render the troughs and then work out the layout and spacing (and leave a gap for the postman to jump over the wall into the next door neighbour's garden!).
There is so much happening in the garden at the moment, especially woodland plantings under the fruit trees. One of my special interests though is the Umbelliferae/Apiaceae and many of these are emerging - or in the case of the American lomatiums, have been flowering for several weeks. They are such good foliage plants and these are a few examples now:
Peucedanum officinale - 'Hog's Fennel'. This a rare British species only found just north of us at Faversham Creek and eastwards along the coast, and across in Essex. Makes a strong plant flowering in late summer but the new foliage now is attractive.
Thapsia maxima - barely known in cultivation but a really interesting umbel which I must show in flower in the summer. From the Iberian Peninsula, growing in poor sandy soils, and dormant from late summer on like the Giant Fennels. A very striking and tidy foliage plant now, but slow to establish.
Cachrys alpina - just emerging and have yet to see this flower in the garden. We also grow Cachrys trifida and both are going to be exciting to see develop.
Anthriscus sylvestris 'Ravens Wing', growing with Paeonia mascula and Brunnera macrophylla.
(We are growing and propagating many rarely grown umbels and they are so often disregarded as garden plants compared to uses in the herb and vegetable garden, but very worthwhile investigating more. The New World species are hardly known at all in cultivation, except for a few alpine genera. I aim to write more about the family in the next year or two).
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Tim, which lomatiums are you growing?
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Great progress, Tim. This must feel good as a nurseryman and be very exciting!
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I can't help thinking how disciplined you must be to run a nursery Tim. I can never get ahead in coping with an average garden and greenhouse without giving up the whole of my time.
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Anne - we are growing L. columbianum (very early - only a few flowers left now), grayi and dissectum at the moment. I've tried a lot more from seed - and also Cymopterus - especially some of the smaller alpine species but never managed to establish them for very long. Many probably need nearly bulb frame conditions (and are not of much interest to other gardeners). In fact we find a limited but significant and consistent interest amongst keen gardeners in growing some of the more obscure umbels, which is gratifying. I wrote a booklet about the family for the Hardy Plant Society quite a while ago now and discovered how many other plants-people and nurserymen also had a fascination with them, which makes me want to write more about them again. It is a very significant plant family, and one which everyone recognises but few consider growing more as garden plants.
Matt and David - yes and no. The spirit is there but I don't have quite the energy I used to have so there are spells when progress and discipline comes to a stop! I do also have an amazing wife :). Hence this blog and the Kent Diary - they keep me more focussed, and at least are something to look back on and learn as I go. I have always hugely enjoyed growing and propagating plants, but selling them is another matter, and convincing gardeners to be a little more adventurous.
These are pictures of the lomatiums (there are some 90 species in N. America - the largest genus - and plenty that look the same as each other just as in the UK! Not an easy group of plants to identify at times):
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Thought it might be interesting to show this: these are seedlings of Hacquetia epipactis, Lomatium columbianum and Panax trifolius (from Gerd Knoche - thank you Gerd) - and Fritillara pallidiflora on the left - all sown fresh in summer last year and germinating now (the Frit. is two years on). Nothing like growing plants from seed!
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Tim, my favorite is Lomatium martindalii (not sure of that spelling), but it's really difficult in the garden. The one I find very garden worthy is Lomatium grayi. It has great foliage, comes up early, and the seed heads are as decorative as the flowers. Glad to hear you're growing it.
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Not much to do with alpine gardening - but just watched Sting on bbc iplayer: 'When the Last Ship Sails'. Brilliant! Nice to have a change from plants sometimes...
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Just have seen your photos Tim, what a work!
Hope to visit the nursery soon.
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Not much to do with alpine gardening - but just watched Sting on bbc iplayer: 'When the Last Ship Sails'. Brilliant! Nice to have a change from plants sometimes...
I have to agree Tim, I really enjoyed it. I've always thought Sting was too far up his own (as it were!) but this was really good. I sometimes think I would have done better with a small guitar like his rather than struggling to get my strumming arm over my dreadnought.
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Why is it that there is a curious non-linear relationship between the amount of soil you dig out of a hole and the volume of the hole, when you dig it out yourself! Finally got round to removing this annoying tree stump at the end of the area we are going to make a raised standing bed for alpines, having now ordered the materials to go ahead with this project.
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Scientists have indeed been puzzling over this one for a while. It's a complex relationship, other factors including soil type, stubbornness index of the root mass, insolation upon the labourer and frequency of deliveries of thirst-quenching chilled beverages.
If it's any consolation you seem to be making great progress, Tim. Looking forward to seeing the nursery develop this year.
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Tim, have you tried tying the dog to the stump and arranging for a rabbit to pass by in the distance? ::) ;)
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Eventually removed the tree stump! So hopefully now it won't be too long before we can convert this area to a place for bringing on young plants.
It's nice to have stimulation from other things whilst doing these harder jobs and one has been to watch the Kent HPS Chelsea team creating a display over the past week on the Kent HPS website. I have just listened to Colin Moat, who has led the team, being interviewed on Radio Kent by Andy Garland - good interview with a lot to say about the Specialist Plant societies and the friendliness and co-operation between gardeners - and the display looks superb and has created a lot of interest from both the RHS and BBC, so there should be some good coverage on TV I think.
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Would you please post a link to that Kent HPS Chelsea blog, Tim? I found it the other day but cannot seem to do so now.
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Maggi, I like your idea! I have a vision of Max the magnificent chasing the rabbit while dragging the tree stump. He is so incredibly strong.
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Maggi, I like your idea! I have a vision of Max the magnificent chasing the rabbit while dragging the tree stump. He is so incredibly strong.
Max could be multi-tasking on that, eh? It would build his muscles even more!
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Would you please post a link to that Kent HPS Chelsea blog, Tim? I found it the other day but cannot seem to do so now.
Found it! And a link there to the radio piece Tim mentions :
http://www.hpskent.co.uk/blog-posts/ (http://www.hpskent.co.uk/blog-posts/)
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Thanks for giving the link Maggi. Actually I have watched the first couple of Chelsea programmes hoping for a brief glance at the HPS display - there is a nice picture of the team with Rachel de Thame on the blog - but mostly these were about (wait for it) the outdoor Show gardens. Another nine and half hours of programming to go... so at some point they will probably crop up. Both Kevock and Jacques Amand stands were pictured and some pretty nice plants on these :).
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Tonight I've seen Avon Bulbs - with an interview with Alan Street, Harperley Hall Farm's stand and quite a bit about SRGC member Billy Carruthers of Binny Plants - but mostly about their wonderful Paeonias.
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There is so much attention paid to the designers rather than the plants, even when the show gardens are shown on TV and that I find off-putting. It is sad that this should be the case. I've been quite horrified by the tale of the Dan Pearson garden - the one involving 300 tonnes of rock taken to and from Chatsworth. He said he wouldn't return to Chelsea unless it was for a garden that would continue - but at what cost to the environment with all that transportation around the country? Not a very "green2 attitude it is?
This is quite a good blog post ... getting a lot of stick from some circles I believe!
http://pots-and-polytunnels.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/chelsea-is-not-centre-of-world.html (http://pots-and-polytunnels.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/chelsea-is-not-centre-of-world.html)
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I don't know what to say really because I have always enjoyed going to Chelsea when I had the opportunity simply because plants and gardening have been central to my understanding of the world for as long as I remember. I used to go as a student in London when Chelsea was a benefit of RHS membership - now it has become rather expensive, but it is an extraordinary event to bring together and make work. I've never been hugely drawn to the Show gardens because they seem divorced from actually making your own garden and learning about plants; they are more to do with prestige and position - but they can be extremely beautiful and artistically stimulating. Sometimes they seem overly moralistic as if we have to be told something we know already over and over again. We open our garden for charity - have done so for getting on for 30 years even when it was only just being first made - because gardens are about sharing what you do as much as about impressing someone. Fundamentally the Show gardens seem to be about building teams (no bad thing) to work to deadlines (sometimes unreasonable) but this is not what gardening is really about - at least as far as I see it. On the other hand it was hugely enjoyable and stimulating to be involved in making displays at Chelsea and that must be true for everyone, so in that sense it is a great experience and a valuable one. So there is an ambivalence there and quite a lot of this must be the feeling of being part of something and working with other people for your benefit and not necessarily that of everyone else and being judged by others. I will watch the coverage with as much interest as ever and wonder whether rock gardening and plantsman-ship might appear more on the horizon again and a little less of the glitz and glamour.
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Tim, for me your garden is never about impressing anyone. It is a place to learn, while expressing yourself in the way you grow and place the plants you love together. Every longtime gardener has a "friendship" garden - you walk around and remember who gave you this plant or that one or sent you seed. It makes you recall all the gardening friends you have had, and realize that gardening is so much greater when you share what you have built, both with opening your garden to visitors and by giving plants. I live in a country where plant shows are few and far between, but I understand that competitiveness is part of that venue. Anywhere else in the gardening world it seems an oxymoron
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The Kent HPS has won Silver Gilt at Chelsea
http://www.hpskent.co.uk/chelsea-flower-show-2015/ (http://www.hpskent.co.uk/chelsea-flower-show-2015/)
Colin Moat of that team has posted this in Facebook and Twitter
"Delighted that Roy Lancaster, the President of the Hardy Plant Society, was pleased with our Silver Gilt medal at Chelsea. Been a long slog but very proud of the result!"
[attachimg=1]
Kents HPS have done very well
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I don't know what to say really because I have always enjoyed going to Chelsea when I had the opportunity simply because plants and gardening have been central to my understanding of the world for as long as I remember. I used to go as a student in London when Chelsea was a benefit of RHS membership - now it has become rather expensive, but it is an extraordinary event to bring together and make work. I've never been hugely drawn to the Show gardens because they seem divorced from actually making your own garden and learning about plants; they are more to do with prestige and position - but they can be extremely beautiful and artistically stimulating. Sometimes they seem overly moralistic as if we have to be told something we know already over and over again. We open our garden for charity - have done so for getting on for 30 years even when it was only just being first made - because gardens are about sharing what you do as much as about impressing someone. Fundamentally the Show gardens seem to be about building teams (no bad thing) to work to deadlines (sometimes unreasonable) but this is not what gardening is really about - at least as far as I see it. On the other hand it was hugely enjoyable and stimulating to be involved in making displays at Chelsea and that must be true for everyone, so in that sense it is a great experience and a valuable one. So there is an ambivalence there and quite a lot of this must be the feeling of being part of something and working with other people for your benefit and not necessarily that of everyone else and being judged by others. I will watch the coverage with as much interest as ever and wonder whether rock gardening and plantsman-ship might appear more on the horizon again and a little less of the glitz and glamour.
Tim, a very thoughtful reflection on several levels. I've never been to Chelsea, never really felt drawn to all the glitz and showmanship. I can see the attraction,would like to go one day just for the experience .... rather like I have been to Epsom for the Derby and Aintree for the National, but only the once!
Unlike you, I am not a very good gardener, but I think we share the passion for and curiosity about plants and how they grow. Perhaps it is this that needs to be fostered in young and old gardeners alike?
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Tony - I've never really been drawn to the glitz and showmanship, but that might all change if I was involved in making a rock garden at Chelsea ;). When you see something done well it is obvious - not easy to achieve - but doesn't really involve these two words. There is a lot of this - things done well - at Chelsea and all that plantsman-ship and practical skill which underlies everything, but also that concentration on medals which after a while seems unnecessary, and even distorting, because they can lead to unreasonable expectations. It's interesting watching the BBC programmes because you can see the enthusiasm of the young couple who met at Wisley and are growing hardy violas and making their own nursery; the fascinating Islamic Garden which has an intellectual basis drawn from the Natural World and poetry and a different culture (but also it has to be said, wealth), and a good number of gardens with charitable connections. Then there is Dan Pearson's 'garden' which is wonderfully constructed but as he himself described, a herculean effort; as Anne says this the very antithesis of what a garden really is! (I know that the gardens are judged individually against their own brief but it would be disingenuous not to see competition there too). This is surely a result of that judging and emphasis on perfection which is unreal. Rebuilding the nursery here has been a bit like this, because life doesn't always go well, but there is limit to how much pressure you can put on yourself and how much can be imposed by outside expectations.
I don't know if I would agree with you that you are not a very good gardener because people are just as important as plants and can be cared for in similar ways - and curiosity about plants can lead in all sorts of directions.
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Hello, I have visited Chelsea for around 10 years not every year but quite often and despite like other I do not like the showmanship and the over estimated glitz about the show gardens or the Floral hall. I however really look at the plants where I always learn something new with different colours and flowering times we must always keep an open mind to this for me it is very well worth a visit, cheers Ian the Christie kind
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Hello, I have visited Chelsea for around 10 years not every year but quite often and despite like other I do not like the showmanship and the over estimated glitz about the show gardens or the Floral hall. I however really look at the plants where I always learn something new with different colours and flowering times we must always keep an open mind to this for me it is very well worth a visit, cheers Ian the Christie kind
Cheers Ian - I'd certainly come away with many ideas of plants and plantings too ....... then I'd be sure to run into trouble finding a place to grow them ;D
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Tim,
How nice to see that column from you in the RHS magazine, The Garden - June 2015 page 23.
John Grimshaw's article gave some commonsense too - page 19.
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Haven't got my copy yet but I wrote this a year or more ago hoping that alpines would begin to get more coverage in the gardening media. I think if more people write about them in more places and with more imagination there is a good chance that many new and younger gardeners will pick up on successful ways of growing them in the garden (as opposed to just in the alpine house for exhibition) and discover the SRGC and AGS. There was that final comment in passing from Monty Don at Chelsea of 'Alpine Gold' but in general very little if any closer look at them in the BBC coverage, and a fair reason for this is the lack of any gardens at Chelsea really displaying them as you might grow them outside. An outdoor rock/sand/crevice/alpine garden at Chelsea next year would be quite a coup for an ambitious plantsman-oriented designer.
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Ian's copy of The Garden must have arrived early for a change - there is no regular pattern to its arrival here. Sometimes it doesn't come at all!
The results of all efforts being made by SRGC to attract attention to the Grants available to students of horticulture with an interest in alpine type plants suggest that the level of enthusiasm in such students is pretty feeble. It's not a good scenario. Of the really keen young people there is a tendency for them to think that a "media " career gained via garden design is their goal - leaves plantsmanship a poor second in most cases. Thank goodness there are some notable exceptions - those few will have many hopes pinned upon them!
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A great visit with our local village garden club to a friends garden near to us at Painter's Forstal. John and Ruth Moor are long time members of our East Kent AGS Group, but don't really grow alpines: John is a fruit farmer and they live in a wonderful old Elizabethan house surrounded by a jungle of plants, made over probably 50 years or more. It's the sort of place that makes you gasp if you are plantsman - quite a Mediterranean feel in places because they travel to Spain and Portugal a lot - and John grows some fantastic Giant Fennels which sparks my affinity to the Apiaceae (taken me a while to give up on Umbelliferae). Too many plants to describe (and I didn't take a camera). There are grass paths but they gradually disappear into the jungle moving from small clearing to small clearing, and the plants come right up to the house in the most intimate way. One grass really stood out - Ampelodesmos mauritanicus. This is in full flower now and the old flowering heads carry on right through winter, only needing to be removed in the spring just as the new ones emerge. A young plant of Drimys winteri in flower was exceedingly beautiful - the softest of creamy-yellow against apple-green leaves. Another special local gardener, Elizabeth Thomas, has a 30ft tree of this in her garden covered in the embrace, verging on strangle hold, of Akebia - the combination of those two flowers must be wonderful to see. A great inspiration when I look occasionally at an especially overgrown weedy part of our garden which could do with these two plants (not the Akebia), and set off in the same direction as John and Ruth's!
(I haven't dared mention that John also 'specialises' in growing Giant Hogweed, which is a notifiable weed if you allow it to seed out of the garden - here it has to negotiate a 25ft beech hedge and hasn't done so. But what a plant this is! No self-respecting umbelophile would be without it ;))
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....some fantastic Giant Fennels which sparks my affinity to the Apiaceae (taken me a while to give up on Umbelliferae).
I applaud your conversion to use of apiaceae, Tim - I find these things very taxing. My problem with apiaceae is that I keep thinking I should be using it to refer to bee-keeping!
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Too many plants to describe (and I didn't take a camera).
Cardinal sin! Always take a camera - mine is the best aide-memoir I know ....... and it's not fair to tell of such wonders and not show us some pictures :)
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I asked John if I could go back with a camera and a pair of secateurs to take cuttings, and he has given me carte blanche to go anytime... so I will try and repair the omission :). Ruth was a good friend of my mother's (goes back to the local WI market year's ago), and is now quite frail. They both have an open and generous spirit and courtesy in the way they farm and garden.
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I've shown a few of these pictures before but this is the sharp end of rebuilding the nursery, clearing areas that have become overgrown and neglected, and nature quickly asserts herself again as soon as you turn your back! (actually rather nice to know even if sometimes it doesn't feel like that). With our elder daughter's help we started cutting back brambles and removing an old set of frames back in spring 2014. Progress was slowed by having to remove a large purple-leaved cherry planted back in the 1980's when this area was used for lining out budded fruit trees. And now at last the ground has been levelled, new groundcover fabric put down and a new line of frames completed for young seedlings and cuttings of alpines. The next stage will be a covered raised nursery bed for saleable plants in the area to the right of the apple cordons behind this frame, and a couple of polytunnels below where a lot more clearing through the winter will be necessary. Slow but solid progress.
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And the finished frame with glass lights...
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Solid progress indeed Tim - you and the family are doing really well - wish I could visit to see for myself.
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Very dry at the moment - not the best time of year for the nurseryman because plants need looking after but it is not a good time to plant! We have been planting out stock plants in the part of the garden that is slowly being cleared, with regular attention to watering them, and have spent some time making durable labels for the benefit of visitors and ourselves. These are roofing laths cut down to 60cm lengths with one end filed smooth to write on. (They are tanalised and the cut ends treated so should last well and won't get broken by heavy boots stomping on them or foxes chewing off the ends!).
The grass hardly needs or wants cutting so this fine 1991 vintage Ransomes Mower has been cleaned up and sent for a thorough service and blade-sharpening. We haven't used this for several years - using a rotary mower instead - but the lawn would definitely benefit from being cut by a cylinder mower (this is just rather heavy and not so manoeuverable in places).
A party of students coming to see the garden from Hadlow today - they might notice quite a few weeds and work in progress! but hopefully a lot of interesting plants. Last year I asked if anyone belonged to the alpine societies and no one did, but maybe these plants will appear more on the horticultural agenda in the future amongst younger professionals.
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Nice labels, Tim! They certainly look like they'll last and your writing is neat enough for them to be attractive too. My scrawling hand would not do the job at all.
The mower is a thing of beauty too. I always preferred a cylinder, which seems to be a rare thing these days. Most 'mowing' out here is done with a brushcutter! ::)
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Tim,
I am very curious what is considered dry or hot in your part of the world? Even with our heat and dry conditions during the summer, here in Northern California folks still plant in their gardens when the weather is relatively cool (32 C). Nobody wants to get out when it is 40 C ! :P
Slowly lawns are disappearing from California gardens. In general, a lawn is inappropriate for our climate and yet they still persist. I think that it is easy for most home owners to mow a lawn rather than establish other appropriate landscaping. We certainly have our challenges here in our part of the world.
Things are so different in your "neck of the woods". Thank you for sharing.
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I cannot speak for Tim in Kent but the average (1970-2000) rainfall in Cambridge is 557mm, that's 21.8 inches. Unlike California, we get a lot of rainfall in the summer months when the water evaporates off quickly so doesn't do so much good. Anywhere else in the UK will be wetter than this.
The average maximum summer temperature temperature over the same period is 22C = 71.6F, which is reached in July. The average temperature over the entire day is highest in August at 18C = 64F. That must be very cold by California standards.
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Our average rainfall is a bit higher than Cambridge - around 25 inches - but last year we measured 42 inches (more than we have ever recorded before). This year is back on track and this summer very dry. The lawn is browner than usual - normally it does stay green and needs mowing!
Robert - the highest temperature recorded in the UK (in a proper meteorological way - in a Stevenson's screen in the open) was just below 40°C several years ago, close to us at Gravesend, south-east of London. We were actually trying to sell plants on that day in a nearby garden and it felt sweltering just as you say. Above 30°C is fairly unusual but not uncommon (we wouldn't call this cool!). Recent temperatures this year have peaked around 35°C so far from our records. Combine that with little rain and it's pretty difficult for plants to establish in a garden of our size where there is a lot to look after on the nursery. In the typical smaller garden it would be easier with regular watering. We are especially dry, partly because the garden is very mature with many large trees and also because the soil overlies chalk so in the best of times there is not such a high water table. Our biggest problem with 'Mediterranean' species from places such as California is extended periods of cold and wet weather in winter with not much diurnal fluctuation in temperature, just when a lot of these plants should be growing! True Mediterranean species actually seem easier than many Californians - probably because they are much more available. But from what you say it sounds as though many native species with you can be tricky in gardens (eg: Arctostaphylos). This makes it doubly exciting when a plant does do well - we have nice plants of Mahonia haematocarpa and fremontii for example and several of the shrubby lupins. The great thing about plants is that you can keep raising them from seed and cuttings and experiment with different places in the garden, and perseverance often pays off.
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In Aberdeen we've had about a month's worth of July rain in the last couple of days - around 65mm (when the average for July is 60 to 60mm)- there have been flash floods with water swirling nearly 90cms deep in places around the city.
I enclose the weather report included yearly in the Aberdeen Group's newsletters - it is for the year 2014 - it is recorded formally by John Lupton in his garden at Westhill, a satellite town around six miles out of the city of Aberdeen.
[attachurl=1]
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Alan, Tim, and Maggi,
I definitely appreciate the meteorological data! This helps me put your situation into perspective. Tim and Alan, your situation is much warmer and drier during the summer than I first thought. In addition, it appears that the gardening methods in the U.K. can be somewhat different than here in California. In inland California, nobody plants, and then walks away from a new planting without giving considerable attention to watering. This includes wintertime planting. Maybe an exception would be planting during a wintertime rain storm, but then nobody is planting out at this time anyway.
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Alan - I'm surprised at your temps, rather similar in July to ours here on the coast. Right here annually we get a bit more than the city's 56" of rain and well remember 1971 when we got 184.9mm (7.25") in one day Maggi! How much drops from 112 days of fog I guess is unknown.
john - an extremely clammy 19c with drizzle.
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... In inland California, nobody plants, and then walks away from a new planting without giving considerable attention to watering.
There is a minority of plants that you could probably get away without watering after planting out; lavender springs to mind (although I would not risk it). And some plants like hollyhocks seem to be able to seed themselves into very dry poor soil, suffer badly from rust and yet still flower well. On the other hand I planted out five small Betula utilis var. jacquemontii three years ago. I have lost two of these so far and the remaining ones still need water in the summer. But, like Tim, my soil overlies chalk and I inherited some mature trees, both of which factors exacerbate the lack of rainfall.
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Alan,
Good tidbits of information. Here in California, Birch are considered "water hogs" i.e. they will always need regular irrigation during the summer. Root competition from other plants is always a good consideration. Morus alba and Acer saccharinum are two of many trees that come to mind as having greedy, aggressive root systems. Around here they are very difficult to garden under, drawing moisture and nutrients from a wide area.
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A few years earlier my wife took a seedling birch (that came from a tree elsewhere in the garden and had been growing in a pot) and established it in just the vicinity where I subsequently planted my B. utilis. But that was, I think, our native silver birch, Betula pendula. Once or twice it has lost its leaves prematurely after a hot summer but it has managed to keep going without significant extra water. My inherited trees are horse chestnut, Aesculus hippocastanum. There is a time in early June when the spring plants, cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) and any grass growing beneath or close to these trees all die back suddenly and completely, leaving just a few things that will continue to grow. The greater celandine, Chelidonium majus, will grow but I have never yet managed to germinate either of the fancy forms, laciniatum or flore pleno.
Sorry, Tim, I'm hijacking your thread but at least we do seem to garden in somewhat similar circumstances.
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Alan - I don't mind at all you hijacking the thread! I think gardening is all about communication and sharing of experiences and this Forum is rather good at this :). We have several species of birch in the garden and quite a few early woodlanders do reasonably well under them, notably summer dormant plants like cyclamen, erythroniums, even the woodland anemone, some snowdrops and hellebores (which effectively stop growing in the summer and wait for autumn rains and cooler conditions to resume growth), and Geranium phaeum which seeds around in pretty dry spots. I usually weed out chelidonium but perhaps should leave more of this in the future. We do mulch quite heavily every few years with good compost but this rapidly disappears and the soil looks as dry as ever in the summer. At this time of year these areas can/do look dishevelled and weedy (weeds have the capacity to grow with no rain!) but come winter and spring everything comes back wonderfully refreshed.
Or you could always grow birch as a monoculture ;). This is a picture taken in Blean Woods near to Canterbury last autumn, with bracken and chestnut seedlings in the foreground. (Blean, for those who don't know, is a significant area of 'ancient' woodland - which means very long managed over many centuries - very diverse in tree species and with wonderful expanses of anemone and bluebells and other flowers in spring).
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Although I haven't contributed to this thread before I have read it ;)
Much of interest here. I am very impressed by your work Tim! Do you ever have time for a holiday?
You all garden in better climate than I ;) Well, are we ever satisfied with the weather we have? ;D
I am familiar with birches. I have to species in my garden at home (Betula pubescens & pendula). Although we can have very dry spells in summer (when it is impossible to plant anything without watering) they never suffer significantly from draught. I have had to remove some though as they take valuable space and throw too much shade.
On the other hand, at my summerhouse I don't have any mature birches. They are the first to suffer in the summer with prolonged periods without rain. Oaks and rowans are better to cope with drought.
Tim, I wonder about this chalk you have beneath the soil. What is it like? A hard, massive layer without cracks? Where I garden it is usually only a rather thin layer of soil above very hard bedrock almost without cracks.
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Trond - the chalk is quite a way down. We have a deep layer of good loam ('brick earth' - ideal for cherries and fruit trees) which is actually quite neutral - camellias grow well and smaller rhododendrons would if we had more rain). The garden slopes down, and this carries on into a field below us which shows the chalk at the bottom quite clearly when it is ploughed. We have the dry conditions of chalk downland but much more fertility and the chalk is not a massive layer. The land to one side of us was used as a brickworks a century or more ago and much of the soil removed down to a hard pan of subsoil, but even here there is not much sign of chalk and the land grows a good crop of nettles and teasel!
We don't have so much time for holidays - I tend to follow Voltaire's principle: 'One must cultivate letters or/[and] one's garden' - but would love to travel to some of the places you have shown on the NARGS Forum, if and when we get the chance. Meanwhile we travel with others when they give talks to our local alpine group. (We have definite plans sometime to visit Göteborg, and will carry on exploring the near continent, like the recent trip to the Alsace).
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Thanks for your answer, Tim. It is most interesting!
Although it is a lot of different soils in Norway, of course, I have little experience with other kinds than in my garden.
One exception is my parents little garden. We moved when I was a teenager to a new-built townhome in Oslo. The developer had removed and sold all the fertile soil. What was left was stiff blue clay. My father and the neighbours hired heavy machinery to plow and mix in great amounts of sand and peat. But the soil became very productive in a few years!
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This part of the garden has been a major project through the last few very dry weeks. It was full of nettles and brambles and seedling elders and the shrubs and trees planted maybe 15 to 20 years ago needed (need) considerable thinning and pruning. A lower area was cleared last year and is now being replanted mostly with Mediterranean-type species adapted to summer drought. The idea is to continue planting this autumn come rain and cooler conditions (and at last we have had a significant rainfall - 28mm - to enable this to begin and bring up a fresh new crop of weed seedlings! Much hoeing in prospect :( ). We aim to use a lot of southern hemisphere species under the eucalypts that you can see in the pictures, and already there are fine specimens of Azara microphylla and Crinodendron patagua, plus the extraordinary New Zealand Chordospartium stevensonii (apparently this has now migrated into Carmichaelia). Back will go several grevilleas that we lost in one of the coldest winters a few years ago, plus olearias, hebes etc., and plants from California and South Africa. The result should be a very distinct area which will give interest to visitors on into summer (and plenty of propagating material).
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So interesting to see the progress being made, Tim - the result of much hard work, of course.( It's always easier to "watch" others work, even virtually!) This will prove a super area for garden visitors to enjoy, I'm sure - it is already a pleasure to be able to see the lovely trunks of the eucalypts.
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Tim,
This looks like an very exciting spot - and what will be even more exciting in years to come!
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Very nice, Tim, I look forward to seeing it.
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Tim, have you placed the troughs yet (where you had been digging out some trees or hedge)?
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No Anne. We have had a very hot and dry summer until just the last few days - and probably it will return - so a lot of watering and care of plants on the nursery and taking advantage of the lack of rain to clear weeds and get ready for autumn planting in parts of the garden. I still have to render most of the troughs with fresh sand/cement so I don't think we will do much until well into autumn, which would be a good time to plant some of them. (We have an Alpine Show in Kent in late September, so a good opportunity to pick up a wide range of plants). They will become a major occupation next year because we have others that we acquired already planted up that need totally replanting and from having just three or four troughs will end up with around fifteen! I suspect this number will carry on growing :)
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Thanks, Tim. With a couple dozen troughs scattered throughout the garden, I'm always interested to see how people display large collections without their being overwhelming. I've gotten several wonderful ideas through the Forum already.
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Yes, the same way of thinking goes through my mind too Anne because we open the garden regularly and we want to show off alpines more, especially in ways that encourage people to get excited by them. The garden is a collection of plants that we grow for our interest and for propagation material for the nursery, but there is a strong aesthetic element to it as well (and a practical one!).
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Just put these 'Variations on a Cornus' on Facebook, and they seem appropriate here too because with all this major weeding and clearing it is good to look to parts of the garden that have achieved some sort of aesthetic balance. This is such a beautiful tree - Cornus controversa 'Variegata' - in all seasons, and behind it is another - Acer griseum. Rock plants and alpines are very very beautiful but a garden without trees would be no garden at all.
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Rock plants and alpines are very very beautiful but a garden without trees would be no garden at all.
Well, that is very much the case, Tim! Ian and I couldn't agree more!
The 'Variations on a Cornus' photos through the seasons makes a super illustration of its many benefits.
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Not easy in the average suburban garden these days to have trees. I've got one and funnily enough it is Cornus controversa 'Variegata', the Wedding Cake tree. I have a picture of our daughter, aged 11, on the day we moved to this house and she was taller than the tree. Now it's over 20' high and, although you should never disclose a lady's age, she will be 40 at Christmas and still the apple of her Daddy's eye!
Not a very good picture but taken from our bedroom window, the only place where I could get most of it in. More or less impossible to plant under the tree as there are more roots than soil. The bluebells currently under it were originally planted the year after we had moved. A couple of years ago, after some savage work with the mattock, I managed to get a few Cyclamen hederifolium and coum under there and swore never to try again. This year it will benefit from being used as the depository for all my spent bulb compost after repotting and a layer of composted bark.
The next approximation to a tree I have is Daphne bholua 'Jacqueline Postill' (yes, that one!) which grows like Topsy. She is now around 8' high by 4' wide and will surely take over the garden unless she gets a severe haircut when she has finished flowering next year.
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Yes I have to say we are lucky to have space to plant trees David (we've probably planted too many!). There is a lovely smaller 'version' of the Cornus - alternifolia 'Variegata' - which would fit even in smallish gardens. We haven't got much planted underneath it but I aim to try Anemone nemorosa and cyclamen would be good, and your idea of compost and bark sounds a good one, should help in getting things established.
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Bit by bit this part of the garden is being cleared of nettles and brambles. This is one of those situations where having reached a certain point the drive to continue becomes stronger and stronger - but the energy stays the same! None the less concerted effort does pay off. The skill will be to plant and mulch these areas sufficiently to control any regrowth of nettles in particular (our soil is almost too fertile) and these piles of prunings go through the shredder relatively quickly allowing planted parts to be mulched step by step. We want to make a mixed and open planting of shrubs and perennials rather than too much groundcover and may start by planting a wildflower mix for colour next year (after hoeing off weed regrowth) and to act as a green manure, before putting in too many other plants.
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I have a big Cornus alternifolia in my garden also - it is not variegated though. I like it but the down side is that it throw too much shade on my little rockery :(
I have spring bulbs under it but an awful weed (Circaea lutetiana) has infested the lot. I think brambles and nettles are easier to remove ;)
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These are a couple of unadulterated pictures of primrose and cowslip after strimming the long grass in the picture from a couple of entries back. The cowslip self-seeds under the cornus and magnolias and can cope with a good bit of competition from the grasses (and the trees) through the summer after it flowers. In the lightly shaded areas I am also trying primroses and they too can be amazingly tolerant of drought in a grassy sward in summer. (We have them seeding by the thousand in another more cultivated part of the garden so have plenty of material to play with). What they need most is a rich and fertile soil which we have. Here as well are erythroniums, snakeshead fritillary, Fritillaria pallidiflora and pontica, colchicums, and some snowdrops and narcissi. I would like to add a lot more and work on this area to develop more of a flowery meadow into summer.
The second two pictures show the 'False oxlip' (primrose x cowslip) and the woodland anemone and primrose naturalised under trees in a nearby garden, which is what particularly tempts me to try something similar on a smaller scale. These all flower well before the trees leaf out and there is plenty of moisture in the ground. The trees weaken the grass sufficiently that it is not too dense a sward and the grasses left to grow and flower dry the soil out less in summer than when it is continuously mown. This is a sort of ecological gardening which appeals to me more and more as I discover what does succeed and where.
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Hi Tim,
Did your 'False Oxlip' originate as a natural hybrid between P. veris and P. vulgaris in situ or is it a cultivated plant ?
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David - it is in a garden near to us with masses of primroses and cowslips so I suspect it is a natural hybrid, not planted, although I didn't see any more. The true oxlip (P. elatior) has drooping flowers in a one-sided cluster - there is a good dsecription of all of these in 'Flora Britannica' by Richard Mabey. In cultivation all of these can hybridise with each other and with garden forms of the primrose to give all sorts of mixed hybrids! (some of which are really striking).
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After a very hot and dry summer the weather has completely changed and we have had well over 100mm of rain through the latter half of August. Good planting conditions (and good conditions for weeds to proliferate!). Cyclamen hederifolium is just beginning to flower, and in places forms carpets of flowers a little later into autumn. Can never tire of this wonderful plant.
This is a small patch in dryish shade which has been heavily mulched with well-rotted leafmould - a good spot to plant species like Hacquetia epipactis, Anemone nemorosa, erythroniums, maybe hepaticas, Trillium rivale?... and a few other choice woodlanders which have become over-run in other parts of the garden. The narrow 'path' next to the hedge is regularly used by our Jack Russell in his daily perambulation around the perimeter of the garden - one of these days he might be useful and catch a rabbit...
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Around 2 inches of rain here in the last three days too, but a lot of it just ran off.
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I've just put this series of pictures on my Facebook page for those who look on there and use FB - but will show them again here to illustrate how this raised alpine bed has developed over the couple of years since first planted. These are Mediterranean and dryland species - mostly reasonably strong growing - planted as stock for seed and cuttings and for display. The soil is sandy over gritty loam. A few plants are overly vigorous and out competed others but generally it has established well.
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So nice to see the progression. Hard to believe it's only a couple of years away from planting.
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Tim,
I agree, it is all looking very good and very quickly.
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Tim,
that is a beautiful bed and very interesting series of pictures.
I've been wondering don't you get ants in dry raised beds (and troughs)? Here if I leave even a big large pot in the open sun for a week or two there are ants making their home in it (which results in the roots of the plant drying and dyeing) :(
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Leena - yes we do often get ants. They seem to be less of a problem when there is more plant cover and things have become well established but can a real problem with certain genera (dianthus are favourites, and a plant of the rare Geranium farreri has ended up as a pile of fine soil). We also get green woodpeckers on the lawn! so I don't mind the ants too much.
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These are three plants of Paeonia obovata grown from seed probably fifteen years ago. Where they were planted originally has become very shady and dry and though they grow they no longer flower. Clearing and replanting this new area where a large eucalyptus was blown down in winter 2013 gives the opportunity to give them a better site, plus an encouragement to continue developing this part of the garden. Where they were is being planted with cyclamen, snowdrops and other early woodlanders which are dormant through summer and autumn - especially in a year like this one when we had very little rain until recently and temperatures regularly reaching near to and above 30°C. Alongside the peonies are a variety of Bearded Irises bred by a friend in the British Iris Society, new to us and it will be interesting to compare their flowers and assess them in the next few years.
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Tim,
I have been following your garden diary for only a short time now. I have a few questions where the answers will help me understand your situation better.
How large is the garden?
Frequently you mention "dry conditions". Do you irrigate the whole garden during the summer? Only parts? Only when temperatures are high and the weather dry?
Your response as to weather conditions was very helpful. Thank you so much. :)
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Robert - the garden is around 1.5 acres but intensively planted. The soil is a fertile loam - 'brick earth' - and was originally a cherry orchard (always grown on the best soils in Kent). We are dry climatically (for the UK) but even more because of many of the trees planted in the garden, and regularly experience periods of semi-drought in summer so Mediterranean-type plants suit the garden well except in particularly cold wet winters. (The UK has hugely variable and inconsistant weather from and in place to place even without climate change, which, with long gardening tradition, has resulted in an extraordinary range of plants in cultivation - the Plantfinder lists around 70 000 though very many of these of course are man-made hybrids and sports).
No we don't irrigate except for the nursery and new plantings and occasional individual areas where we maintain more choice stock plants; water is metered and quite expensive and very occasionally has been restricted in times of drought - ie: hosepipe bans, though growers are exempt from this). My father actually worked quite extensively on drip and trickle irrigation, mostly of soft fruit crops, and on frost protection using sprinklers, but on the whole our climate is such that these are not so necessary. My interest in plants is much more botanical and small scale by comparison, and we have long been involved in participating and running the local Hardy Plant and Alpine groups so have links with many specialist growers. Members of our AGS group in particular though are very varied - fruit farmers, teachers, engineers, gardeners, doctors: as interesting really as the plants they grow!
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Tim,
Thank you so much for the information. No irrigation - this certainly puts things into perspective for me. This is unthinkable here in interior California for just about everything except the most xeric species (although soil type and exposure is a consideration too). When I write about xeric plants here in California - these are the species that will survive here without irrigation (or almost none), a completely different situation from yours.
Some of our native plants are extremely resistant to drought. I planted some new accessions of Salvia sonomensis this June. They have not only survived but thrived with no irrigation at all except when they were first planted out.
Fantastic progress in your garden! I look forward to your next installment. :)
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Robert - the most famous example of a xeric garden is Beth Chatto's gravel garden in Essex, near to Colchester. Here the annual rainfall is 20 inches or less on average and this particular part of the garden is over very poor sand and gravel, just a thin layer of soil. When this was planted it was watered initially and then mulched heavily with straw (and straw was also rotavated into the ground to retain more moisture). After this initial planting it has received no more irrigation at all! (except presumably as new plants are established). It is one of the finest plantings in the country, full of dryland grasses, euphorbias, cistus, phlomis, verbenas, alliums, yuccas etc, etc. Unlike the Mediterranean or California rain does fall throughout the year - there is not the pronounced summer dry/winter moist dichotomy that you experience, though it has come close this year before heavy rains this August - but even so the conditions must be pretty close to yours a lot of the time. We are not quite as dry as this and have much better soil, but her garden was and is a huge inspiration for what we grow.
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Interesting about climate. It is obvious not only the precipitation which counts but also the evaporation. And the evaporation is depending heavily on the insolation which I suppose is much greater in California than most places in Europe!
The driest place in Norway is Skjåk in Gudbrandsdalen with an annual precipitation of 10 inches and the wettest is Brekke in Sogn with 141 inches :o
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Not sure how much rain some of the peaks in the Lake District get but it must be not far off Brekke! But 10 inches is extraordinary, verging on desert (certainly steppe) conditions - I would not have expected that in Norway. Shoeburyness, near Southend, in south-east Essex is reckoned the driest place in the UK, I think an average of 18 inches annually, not so different to Beth Chatto's garden or the very north-east corner of Kent (Broadstairs).
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Skjåk is circumvented by high mountains! The evaporation is greater than the precipitation but a river, several creeks and man-made water channels make it green. Another place almost as dry (11 inches) is Lom in Gudbrandsdalen.
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Shoeburyness, near Southend, in south-east Essex is reckoned the driest place in the UK, I think an average of 18 inches annually...
A good reason to consider moving back home (I'm Southend born and bred) as my beloved bulbs would just thrive there, but then I would not be able to grow so many of the cool-growing alpines I've come to love and which grow so well here. Not sure I could live without my porophyllum Saxes or Primulas!
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11" of precipitation sounds like the Arctic and Antarctic regions of the world - frozen deserts. From many of the photographs posted by Trond, Arctic conditions in Norway seems very likely especially in the far north of Norway.
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Although it is arctic regions in Norway, Skjåk is not!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skj%C3%A5k#/media/File:Solsida_Skj%C3%A5k_1994_Wikipedia.jpg
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skj%C3%A5k
The valley lies in the rain shadow of high mountains.
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Trond,
Are the Arctic regions of Norway relatively dry? This is generally true in the Arctic regions in Alaska.
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A good reason to consider moving back home (I'm Southend born and bred) as my beloved bulbs would just thrive there, but then I would not be able to grow so many of the cool-growing alpines I've come to love and which grow so well here. Not sure I could live without my porophyllum Saxes or Primulas!
Sounds like a good reason to stay put! You can grow the bulbs in a bulb or alpine house, but nothing
can approximate your cool growing conditions. Think of the plants you would lose or would become a pallid shadow of themselves.
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Sounds like a good reason to stay put! You can grow the bulbs in a bulb or alpine house, but nothing
can approximate your cool growing conditions. Think of the plants you would lose or would become a pallid shadow of themselves.
True Anne, but I already keep my bulbs in a covered frame year-round and some of them are still pallid shadows. :( I particularly struggle to get the likes of Narcissus cantabricus and Sternbergia to perform as there is just so little light in winter. We're on the same latitude as Maggi and Ian in Aberdeen on the east coast, but (on average) they have more sunny days than us. I should learn to only grow and be content with what suits my conditions but I just love the Mediterranean bulbs so much!
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I can certainly relate to that, Matt. I long to grow the alpines that die if they dry out: most of the kabschia saxes, campanulas, Himalayan gentians etc, etc, etc. I've learned to love what will grow well here, after killing a large number of plants first.
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Well we cleared the leyland hedge in the front garden last autumn and will be putting alpine troughs there. On the other side of the drive was an incredibly boring plant of forsythia planted when the house was built in the mid 1970's. We had a little help in the garden today (which makes all the difference) and so decided to remove this too. This a warm and protected spot, so what to plant eventually? I'm thinking a tenderish shrub such as pomegranate or melaleuca or maybe one needing summer heat to ripen the wood - Daphne genkwa? Would be a good spot also for one of the Californian lupins. Good to have a bit of help to open up new possibilities! :)
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Sternbergia would like just such a warm and protected spot... ;) Could be worth underplanting your shrub with a few if you still have the patience. If they're going to grow for anyone in the UK, it's you Tim.
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I am bias.
I would select one of the Silver-Leaf bush Lupines, combined with other appropriate plants. It also looks like there is a bit of an over-hang on the roof that could help protect one from summer rain.
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There is a small plant of Berberis fremontii here at the moment so a lupin would be good.
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Autumn is seed collecting, cleaning and sowing time and these are some examples from a previous year (also on the Seed Photographs thread on the Forum). Because I have always propagated plants and grown a great variety on the nursery I think of seeds as the real heart of the garden from which plants you have lost can be regrown and so many interesting species from around the world can be raised for relatively little cost. Like the root systems of plants that are hidden underground, seeds don't catch the attention of gardeners as much as they should.
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And...
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And... (we must take pictures of the seed we are collecting this year, along with a scale, for the Forum).
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Just a quick question about seed photography... I should (and will) do more of this but always have problems with the light. How are you folks getting such well-lit, bright photos?
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Lori - I did a bit of tweaking with the exposure on the computer, they were quite a bit darker (and in most cases adjusted for the flourescent light temperature). These were in our kitchen which is well lit anyway.
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A very enjoyable and enthusiastic talk to the Kent HPS from Ben Potterton (Blacksmith Cottage Nursery) on late summer perennials - only I am a little cheesed off that it is the monkeys in his garden that everyone comes to see! along with all the birds, and not the plants :-\ Can't imagine what our Jack Russell would make of a monkey - and vice versa - but it would be interesting to watch ;) (I think it wouldn't take long for them to become best friends).
His garden is much wetter than ours, over clay soil, and late perennials look to do really well, but snowdrop aficionados will know that the garden also has a large collection of galanthus. Nice to meet such an enthusiastic and knowledgeable plantsman and zoologist :)
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I thought that would be a good talk, Tim. Ben seems to be a VERY busy fellow - would be super if he would have time to venture north sometime.
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You should ask him Maggi, he's always off somewhere and no doubt heads up to Scotland for red squirrels or something. It's not the monkeys in the garden that take my eye but the retired pelicans which I find fascinating.
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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!
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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...
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My word, those look good , Tim - wish I could be there at the market.
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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. ;D
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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).
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Thank you for the apple information, Tim - adds interest for me for sure.
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Tim,
Yes, thank you for the very interesting information.
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I have D`Arcy Spice growing here, but it hasn`t fruited too well so far.
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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...
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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/ (http://www.alpinegardensociety.net/diaries/Kent/+April+/662/)
Interesting too was Paul Cumbleton's introduction to the Fritillaria Group website: www.fritillaria.org.uk (http://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 (http://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.
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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?).
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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.
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Very good autumn colour, Tim. Those Malus are very well- laden with fruit - a most impressive display!
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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.
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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.suncesrbije.com/en/clanak/medlar-compote/868)
http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2012/11/medlar-jelly-recipe/ (http://www.davidlebovitz.com/2012/11/medlar-jelly-recipe/)
http://www.jamieoliver.com/magazine/blogs.php?title=medlar-jelly-recipe (http://www.jamieoliver.com/magazine/blogs.php?title=medlar-jelly-recipe)
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Arnold/Robert - thanks very much for those links. No we haven't done this properly although the idea of an apple that has gone slightly brown is not so appealing (we have plenty of apples that go slightly brown!!). But I take your point, we should experiment with them. A friend in our local market had some from us last year to make a liqueur with, and she does the same with other fruit - the results are pretty good!
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Tim,
I know what you mean that bletting does not seem very appealing. :P I view the whole idea of bletting in terms of green Hachiya Persimmons. We all know what a "green" Persimmon is like! :P However, after bletting a Hachiya Persimmon is soft as mush and looks very unappealing, but taste divine. :)
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Arnold - just looked at that second reference you gave and couldn't resist this description of medlars :D. Never heard this before, it puts a whole new complexion on the fruit!!
"One of the goofiest fruits I’ve ever come across, they’re a member of the rose family and are prepared similar to rose hips, or 'backside-scratchers', which doesn’t make me want to eat them. And my trusty fruit-searching sidekick made a snide remark about their bilious taste. I think the fruit gets a lot of derision because I’ve been told that in England, they’re referred to as dog’s backsides. (No comment about English humor…although I did read that the French call it cul de chien.) However, I am nothing if not a man of great class and distinction, and I can’t resist free fruit – no matter what it’s called – so I decided to pick a bucket of them and make medlar jelly."
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Here's a couple of the Medlar fruit ready for bletting.
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Arnold,
Nice looking Medlars!
Have you ever tried leaving a few fruit on the trees and let them be frosted like a persimmon?
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I think the cold here is too deep for that and if they drop off very hard to find among the leaf litter.
I blet them indoors they're easier to keep an eye on.
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Arnold,
Thank you for the information. Yes, I guess things are a bit different here in California. We even let the late apples hang on the trees until they get a good frost on them. They become sweeter and have better flavor.
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Tim, don't know if you still have some of those Orleans Reinettes left. But if you do, this is a great recipe for them - Appeltaart (Dutch Apple Tart). My grandmother always used tomake it when we went to visit her in Holland as a child, and I generally make one about this time of year. You need a reasonably firm eating apple that will not turn to mush when cooked - I generally use Egremont Russett as it's usually available in the shops at this time of the year. Coxs may work too.
Appeltaart
About 1kg of firm apples, such as Russetts, sliced.
380g flour
250g butter
175g sugar (can reduce to about 100g for lower sugar version)
Cinnamon
Raisins
A little rum or brandy
Make pastry by mixing flour, sugar and butter. Chill for at least 30min .
Soak the raisins in the rum or brandy.
Preheat oven to 175C, Gas 5. Grease a large cake tin with a removable base. Roll the pastry out and cut out a circle to fit the tin, and strips for the sides. Reserve some pastry for lattice on top.
Slice the apples fairly thinly and arrange in layers in the tin, interspersed with the occasional dusting of cinnamon and some of the raisins. Continue until the tin is full.
Cut the remaining pastry into thin strips and make a lattice on top of the tart.
Cook in the preheated oven for15 min at 175, then turn the oven down to 150C, and cook for an additional hour or until golden brown.
Serve with clotted cream.
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Tristan - many thanks for that recipe; we have plenty of Ashmead's Kernel, which should work well. At last we have a new computer to replace the previous one which had given up after ten years a few weeks ago! Hope this one will do as well.
These are a few highlights from a month or so ago which gave welcome colour and interest until the first and so far only frost we have had a short while ago. The two Impatiens are remarkably hardy given their African homes but are cut down at the first frosts; I. rothii came from Cally Gardens a few years ago and I. tinctoria has made a substantial plant over a decade or so. The saxifrages are from WHG Mann and Son (and originally from Ray Drew); we haven't grown these for long but also have a few nice cultivars bred by the Peters nursery in Germany (when they came to Great Dixter in October 2014). Malcolm McGregor's article in the December 'The Plantsman' suggests more we should try. (They are vulnerable - like heucheras! - to vine weevil in pots, and these were treated with nematodes along with other nursery plants, but might be best planted out in the garden next year). Something rather amazing about having flowers like these so late in the year.
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I think the Saxifraga fortunei cultivars could be addictive Tim. Most of mine came from Edrom, with one from Aberconwy ('Conwy Snow') and one other I can't remember where I got it from. Only yesterday I was looking at Peters Web Site and have listed another a dozen I would like to get.
Some pictures of mine here, replies 67 and 68 http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=12730.msg344070#msg344070 (http://www.srgc.net/forum/index.php?topic=12730.msg344070#msg344070)
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Hi David
I have just been looking at Peters website, ( I have not come across them before :-[) , what a fabulous selection of Saxifrages. Have you ever had mail order plants from them before and if so what are the postage costs like?
Lawrence
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Hi Lawrence, No I haven't ordered from Peters before. Their Web Site only says that mail order costs will be in relation to the quantity of plants ordered. I think, when the time comes, I would email them my order and ask them to indicate mail costs for that order by return.
I'm pretty certain that they attended a plant sale earlier this year somewhere in Tim's neck of the woods. They have a smashing catalogue.
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What is it about a group of gardeners? They work best on the small scale which is why a Forum is more effective than an Encyclopaedia. The reason I say this is because of the Christmas Party our Hardy Plant Group has just had in Kent which seemed a good deal more fun than the wider politics of the gardening world (let alone the world in general!), and was in no way lacking in an understanding of plants!
Rachael Castle probably captured the reason for this best when she talked about Auriculas and the way small groups of 'Florists' (the specialist plant societies of the day) got together in local pubs and shared their passion for this particular group of plants - along with beer and good food - and grew the plants as an extension of their craftsmanship in other ways. Bennett Smith showed the ways - inspired first of all by his parents' garden - that he views gardens and plants as a professional photographer (and taking photographs of plants, rather like botanical art, really makes you look closely and take in plants with both an artistic and scientific eye). And Vera Osbourne and Ginny Oakes, who over the years have given so much to the Kent HPS Group in different ways, satisfied the 'plants-persons' interest by going through a A to Z of favourites in their gardens. Vera was a neighbour of Martyn Rix for many years - and looked after his plants when he was away - and so has many fascinating wild collected species that came from Martyn in her garden. All in all a most enjoyable get together which shows why the HPS Group in Kent has been such a great group of gardeners to belong to for so many years.
And just a final note - amongst all the plants brought along to show was one, (Coleonema), which Roy Lancaster had identified at a meeting Alison Crowe had attended. What I liked though was her comment that 'once she had managed to stop Roy talking, she asked him if he knew the plant'. Of course he did and it had been grown by Hilliers like nearly every other woody plant! Keeping this diverse and informed understanding of the Plant World - and more than anything sharing it - is the very essence of gardening and a sense of conservation. Hence why I think the specialist plant societies are so important.
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Catching the light of winter...
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Well everyone makes a New Year's resolution and ours (I should say mine, because Gillian already has more than enough to do) is to work more on these woodland beds after the discipline of tidying them now in advance of the snowdrop season to come. There are good opportunities to plant more generously in these beds, especially for later into spring and summer, and they do tend to develop a little too many weeds by the autumn! It is exciting to see plants emerging now and the early snowdrops and hellebores flowering. The clump of Galanthus 'Wasp' came from the Myddelton House event only a couple of years ago - very high quality plants, especially if you are a little behind the leading trends as we are!
Good wishes for 2016 to all who view these posts...
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All the very best to you and yours Tim. Always much to see and learn in all your posts.
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Happy New Year to your garden, Tim. I love the look of the woodland part, it is the best part of the year when you can see the plants coming up full of promise. Here it is freezing and the ground is frozen, so spring is still far away.
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Thank you David and Leena. Woodland seems to be the way any garden heads and I find these plants more and more appealing (which is why Ian's Diary is such good fun to follow as well). Lovely to see your garden in Finland Leena - such a different climate from ours but so many plants do equally well in both. This is a picture from January 2013 so our very mild weather this Christmas is pretty unusual.
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Finland - such a different climate from ours but so many plants do equally well in both. .
That is true! Many plants just come up and flower later here, and perhaps also for a shorter time.
Finland is a long country and many plants which flower here in April, flower in more northern Finland in May or even later.
Copton Trym was showing it's nose when the cold came here in Christmas, I could see signs of many snowdrops already then, but also many were still patiently waiting in the ground for warmer weather.
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Best wishes for the New Year Tim!
Seems your plants are far more advanced than mine although we have had very mild weather so far! (But next week we will get very cold weather according to the forecast.)
Any luck with the milkwort?
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Thanks Trond. Yes we potted up the milkwort, so hope it will grow away well next spring. We have early daffodils flowering, as in many other gardens, even a few flowers on Gentiana acaulis, but the weather is getting colder now. Last winter was not so different but 2013 was - not many people in the UK win their bets of snow on Christmas Day!
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Your garden is just beautiful, Tim, and that photo with the snow is enchanting.
I wish you lots of success with your 2016 projects!
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Thank you Anne! Gillian and I visited Heidelberg many many years ago for a Plant Physiology Conference, and I remember it well. If our interest in snowdrops continues to grow ;), we must visit growers on the continent and ask Iris for recommendations!
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This mild winter has advanced the flowering of many snowdrops and hellebores by a month or more and these are examples of some of the more demure species, several of which were kind gifts from David Stephens. Of these, H. multifidis hercogovinus is deciduous but has the most finely cut palmate leaves later - a wonderful foliage plant but not so vigorous or easy in the garden. Near to one plant though we have a strong garden hybrid with green flowers, and developing hellebores with the foliage of H. multifidis but more colourful flowers would be an interesting aim.
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They look so healthy! No sign of fungal disease!
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H.multifidus hybrid leaves looks great, and all very healthy. I sowed H.dumetorum in December, species are interesting though not so spectacular as hybrids.
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Clear and healthy foliage, Tim your Helleborus thrive in your woody land.
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Taking a leaf from Robert and Trond's descriptions of walking in their local environments, these are a few pictures of Perry Woods not too far from Faversham. These are on an uplifted area of acidic sand and gravel, quite unusual for the region (a lot of which is chalky) - one of the highest points around with wonderful views across the farmlands of Kent. The first five pictures were taken in September when we were visited by a Japanese friend; the second five just yesterday in this so far very mild winter. The woods don't have anything of the extensive flora that Robert describes in California, but they are delightful to walk through (and there is a good pub in the middle of them!).
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And...
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My wife and I walked there on Saturday! It is indeed a lovely area, albeit cursed with the invasive Rhododendron x superponticum. The Rose and Crown is a nice pub, but expensive. Friends in the North, are you sitting down? Harveys bitter £4.10 per pint!
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Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ;D
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Friends in the North, are you sitting down? Harveys bitter £4.10 per pint!
Pity the poor southern gardener! - all you Yorkshiremen and canny Scots ;)
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My wife and I walked there on Saturday! It is indeed a lovely area, albeit cursed with the invasive Rhododendron x superponticum. The Rose and Crown is a nice pub, but expensive. Friends in the North, are you sitting down? Harveys bitter £4.10 per pint!
I will sit down! That is cheap by our standards ;)
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Tim,
Perry Woods looks like a place I would have liked to take a walk!
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I will sit down! That is cheap by our standards ;)
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh plus one :D
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Tim,
Your countryside is extremely beautiful. I would enjoy hiking in those woods at any time! Thank you for sharing such beauty.
I have to admit that I am somewhat baffled by a pub out in the woods. ???
I am sure that I am missing something. For me this is nothing new. Kinda' like I am a Thermian. I am sure everyone else understands completely
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Robert, see here: http://whatpub.com/pubs/SWA/4411/rose-crown-perry-wood (http://whatpub.com/pubs/SWA/4411/rose-crown-perry-wood)
It is on a road through the woods, and there are a few houses nearby.
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Some lovely old pics on their website from 'back in the day' where it really does give an impression of a pub in the woods: http://www.roseandcrownperrywood.co.uk/gallery (http://www.roseandcrownperrywood.co.uk/gallery) Such an important part of our heritage and daily life for those working and travelling in the countryside in those days.
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To be honest it still is now Matt. The village of Selling nearby has numerous outlying hamlets (we used to live at Hogben's Hill just down the road from it) and the whole region is a centre of fruit growing with a significant distribution centre on the edge of the village). Nowadays though most of the fruit pickers come over from eastern Europe rather than locally, but we know many of the local people who are and have been involved with fruit growing. Within Perry Woods is 'Longacre', a garden long opened in the past for the NGS, made by Graham and Elizabeth Thomas who have both contributed hugely to the village. Graham worked on hop growing and Elizabeth is one of the most respected of gardeners in Kent, organising garden groups, arranging garden visits, and simply a very remarkable lady. Near to their garden live Judith and John Badmin, and John is an entomologist who worked at Shell at Sittingbourne but has also been a lynchpin of the Kent Field Club and the community of naturalists in Kent. Judith helps run the Selling Gardeners and the local Flower Shows, along with a great deal else. Perry Woods stands very much as a focus of this long tradition of learning about, respecting and working on the land in the local region.
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Robert, see here: http://whatpub.com/pubs/SWA/4411/rose-crown-perry-wood (http://whatpub.com/pubs/SWA/4411/rose-crown-perry-wood)
It is on a road through the woods, and there are a few houses nearby.
Ralph,
If I understand correctly the pub can be reached by auto too - at least now. It seems in a historic context it was used by travelers as a place to rest and refresh on there travels. Now I get it. :) It seems like it could be a fun place to visit - maybe even by someone like me that does not drink alcohol.
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Ralph,
If I understand correctly the pub can be reached by auto too - at least now. It seems in a historic context it was used by travelers as a place to rest and refresh on there travels. Now I get it. :) It seems like it could be a fun place to visit - maybe even by someone like me that does not drink alcohol.
There's a unique quality to the atmosphere you find in old English country pubs, Robert. I've not had to describe it before, so it's hard to define, but for me (and in the good ones) it's a feeling that is full of a sense of history and tradition, welcome, comfort and cosiness, relaxation and retreat as well as joviality, sociality and nourishment. You really don't find it anywhere else and alcohol is not key to its enjoyment.
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alcohol is not key to its enjoyment.
indeed not - especially since some of these places have really good home-cooked food on offer!
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I am sure it is impossible to capture the essence of an old English country pub into words. Most likely one needs to experience it. But......
What a fantastic concept! :)
I far as I can determine there is nothing like this in the U.S.A. It seems as though a good pub can bring a healthy sense of community, something much needed in our part of the U.S.A. Our local "road houses" and bars are generally nasty places that no one would want to visit, at least if one is family or community oriented.
Anyway, maybe someday my wife, Jasmin, (pronounced Yas' meen) and I will visit the U.K. and we can experience such a place. Even better after a hike in the beautiful countryside!
Home cooked meals.... this makes it very tempting. ;D
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To be honest it still is now Matt. The village of Selling nearby has numerous outlying hamlets (we used to live at Hogben's Hill just down the road from it)
There used to be a pub in Hogben's Hill too; closed now like so many pubs, alas.
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Robert - this is another picture of the 'Rose & Crown' taken on Sunday. We walk here regularly so I will aim to show more pictures through the year when I can - it will be a great excuse, if excuse is needed ;) to sample the local ale and game pie!!
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Is towards Ashford?
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Between Ashford and Faversham, Yann, but nearer to Faversham.
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A good idea for next spring walk. Gonna check on a map.
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Robert - this is another picture of the 'Rose & Crown' taken on Sunday. We walk here regularly so I will aim to show more pictures through the year when I can - it will be a great excuse, if excuse is needed ;) to sample the local ale and game pie!!
Tim,
This is fantastic.
I am very curious - not only the plants, but also this pub. Maybe a taste of culture and history for me. I am sure this is very day stuff for you folks but very different for me.
Maybe this only happens in the U.S.A. ??? My wife and I finally were able to visit with our friends - the Tibetan Buddhist Monks. Many years ago we would host them at our house. We lost track of them while care giving my parents. We were so pleased to see them again - and hopefully start hosting them again. :) They say California is known for its "nuts and fruits". Somehow I think this is what they are referring to - not the kind one eats. ::) We are very pleased - the Monks are very pleasant to be around.
Next chance I will ask them about the wild plants in their area (India now, but they are still very connected with Tibet). When I farmed I asked them about their traditional agricultural crops. It was very fascinating. I ended up with some old traditional Tibetan varieties of barley. The Ethiopian varieties do better here. I think that Tibetan barleys would like a cooler climate.
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We have some very old, traditional varieties of six-row barley growing here on the Uists, Robert. They are derived from the old 'bere' barley and have been maintained for generations. They are adapted to our climate as well as low input cultivation practices. However, as a species barley is clearly a long day crop, growing fastest during the long, warm days of summer. In places it is know as the 90 day corn (time from sowing to harvest) and there is an apocryphal story of two sowings and harvests in a single (exceptionally favourable?) season on Tiree. The small (aka black) oats sown alongside the barley do little throughout the summer and only start to grow during the longer, cooler nights of late summer and early autumn.
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Working on the last two rows of apple trees and the compost area/wood pile during these colder wintry days. The long term aim is to underplant the apples with a whole variety of woodland plants, ferns and bulbs - especially a growing collection of snowdrop cultivars (though some of the longer term plantings of these have gone back in the last year or so). The orchard then becomes like a 'mixed farm', providing fruit but also seed and propagating material from the underplanting too.
Starting is the hardest point, and this row of trees had become very weedy so this has been a concerted effort to prepare for underplanting over the next year or two as funds allow. At the same time the trees have been getting a long needed pruning and the piles of material to be shredded and wood to be cut growing! At least we have a good carbon neutral source of fuel for the wood burner.
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Tim, how easy is it to plant under orchard trees? I have no experience of that and so don't know how close to the surface the roots aof the trees might be.
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Tim,
It looks like you are making excellent progress on your project and have a nice stack of fire wood. :)
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Very easy Maggi - apples don't have the greedy surface roots of trees like cherries and birches (or even rhododendrons in a different sort of planting). These trees are also grown on M9 and M27 dwarfing rootstocks which naturally keeps them small. On the other hand this is why the weeds also establish so well :( The ideal for a woodland garden is probably something like the nutwalk at Sissinghurst with trees regularly coppiced and that long accumulation of leafmould.
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It looks like you are making excellent progress on your project and have a nice stack of fire wood. :)
...and at the moment our chainsaw is out of action Robert and all of this is hand cut! Good to keep you warm in winter. It's amazing the productivity of a garden.
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Thanks for the info, Tim .
Very neat wood stack - always make me think of my Grandparent's when I see a nice stack like that - and memories of cosy fires. :)
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Tim,
Nice work!
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...and at the moment our chainsaw is out of action Robert and all of this is hand cut! Good to keep you warm in winter. It's amazing the productivity of a garden.
Tim,
I admire any one "wooding-it" with hand tools. I especially admire the skill it takes to keep blades and axes sharp and working efficiently. Stacking cord wood is a lost art too.
A job well done! 8)
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....The long term aim is to underplant the apples with a whole variety of woodland plants, ferns and bulbs....
Starting is the hardest point, and this row of trees had become very weedy so this has been a concerted effort to prepare for underplanting over the next year or two as funds allow.
Nice to see the progress you are making, Tim.
We have a short row of apples which we are planning to treat in a similar manner, but daffs instead of snowdrops, with liliums at the dripline, where we can keep them watered,
cheers
fermi
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Fermi - I like the idea of the smaller daffs. too, if only I can wean myself off snowdrops!! I have some Lilium martagon and L. monadelphum in a few openings between the trees but lily beetle is a scourge to keep up with! I think some of the easier fritillarys would be good too - F. meleagris is gradually seeding and combines well with everything else.
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............I have some Lilium martagon and L. monadelphum in a few openings between the trees but lily beetle is a scourge to keep up with! I think some of the easier fritillarys would be good too - F. meleagris is gradually seeding and combines well with everything else.
But the lily beetles love Frits too Tim.
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They do David, but because the frits flower earlier on the whole they haven't been a problem - but in summer it's almost impossible to keep up with them on the lilies.
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Every gardener should plant trees but sometimes they need also need pruning or removing. We planted this Metasequoia about thirty years ago and for a long time it grew well with the watering of the surrounding nursery plants. But a series of very dry summers eventually led to its demise. Eventually we decided it was just to big to deal with ourselves and contacted a local tree surgeon to cut it down (Henri Stevens - www.treefolk.co.uk (http://www.treefolk.co.uk)). Unfortunately the winds and rain on Thursday meant it was impossible for Henri to work towards the top of the tree but he made an amazing job of working up three-quarters of the way under such challenging conditions. Hopefully the weather will be calmer when he returns tomorrow to take down the top and work down the trunk.
The world is a friendly place and only a short time before he had had all of his gear (around £10 000's worth) stolen! I would just like to put on record our great appreciation for his highly professional work.
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Oops don't know what happened there - here they are again...
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A large eucalyptus also needed some larger branches removed - a bit easier to deal with - and this has begun a cleaning up of this part of the garden and the prospect of replanting and working into more of the overgrown areas that eventually need to be reclaimed.
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Definitely a time when professional assistance is required, Tim. A sorry tale of the theft of Henri's gear though.
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What a tidy job they've made of it! Getting folk in to do tree work is always a worry in an established garden, but you've found a true professional there.
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These are a couple of pictures of the eucalypt now we've cleared the ivy from its trunk and tidied up around it a bit. A really magnificent tree - this was grown from seed collected in Tasmania back in the early 1980's and planted out as a very small seedling. Amazing to look on now and the idea is to replant around it with cistus, phlomis, salvias, ceanothus etc., etc. (would be wonderful to establish manzanitas here but the soil is probably too rich and summers not 'Mediterranean' enough).
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Like a new tree altogether. Very satisfactory result.
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A great tree! I am envying you ;) My only eucalyptus died many years ago after doing fine for several years :'(
Does it have deep roots or is it greedy? I have read that eucalyptus use a lot of water.
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Trond - our soil is a wonderful deep fertile loam and the tree was planted as a small seedling so it must have got its roots down deep! (Although another big eucalypt we had in the garden was blown down in a gale a couple of winters ago - it had made three large trunks from ground level which must have made it vulnerable). They do dry the soil out, and drop a lot of leaves and twigs, but underplant well with Mediterranean-climate shrubs and perennials - genera such as Euphorbia, Cistus, Phlomis, Coronilla, Salvia and so on, quite a bit of scope.
The real reason for Henri coming was to cut down the Metasequoia and they have just come today to finish this off. These are a couple of pictures. We've left the stump as a seat in the nursery area - counting the rings the tree was planted around 25 years ago.
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(A short excerpt from Facetwit for David ;) :) )
A wonderful talk tonight by Jon Evans to the Mid Kent Alpine Garden Society Group on Robin and Sue White's garden at Blackthorn (Part 2). Not only superbly and sympathetically photographed but putting across the extraordinary skill that Robin and Sue have in growing an unparalleled range of plants, and the way they have introduced so many choice species and cultivars to plants-people around the country. A tour de force, impossible to come away from without new ideas and inspiration.
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I have never had the pleasure to attend a talk by Jon Evans - but I can well believe that he delivers a most excellent presentation. Lucky you to experience it!
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(A short excerpt from Facetwit for David ;) :) )
I'm honoured Tim ;D
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We have that talk making the trip across the Thames later in the year.One to look forward to.
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A month or two ago this part of the garden was badly overgrown with nettles and brambles seeding in (and to the right still is). It is a particularly warm and sheltered corner, really suitable for bulbs and other choice plants with that fertile soil which nettles indicate so well. So this has become a major project this winter/spring, clearing the weed, mulching well with compost and beginning to replant, especially with species of fritillarias, lilies and other geophytes that are good garden-worthy plants, that can be bulked up for the nursery. The wooden edging though tanalised had begun to degrade so has been replaced with plastic edging which should last well and is relatively economical. To the left is one of the old original cherries from the previous orchard on the land, which is underplanted with a mix of snowdrops, cyclamen, epimediums and other woodlanders. The last picture shows clumps of seedling snowdrops resulting from hybridisation between G. plicatus ('Gerard Parker') and G. nivalis. There are some potentially interesting selections amongst these and they will be lifted and distributed in other parts of the garden when they die down later into spring/early summer. Also here is an intriguing seedling clump that looks to be a cross between G. plicatus and G. woronowii.
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Weed has to be the biggest problem with new plantings like this, especially when the ground has been overgrown, so this area has been given a thick mulch of compost. Bulbs actually have a wonderful capacity to tolerate neglect(!) and there are some good clumps, such as Colchicum macrophyllum (grown from seed from Jim and Jenny Archibald) on the right of the first picture, and Arum pictum, which were lost in a sea of nettles for the last couple of years. Even some smaller clumps of fritillarias, narcissus and scillas are re-emerging along the front of the bed - after rigorous weeding - which is nice to see. There are longer established clumps of Scilla greilhuberi, Fritillaria elwesii and the wild Hyacinthus orientalis, mixed with hellebores and snowdrops to the left of the path under the tree where the weeds have been kept more on top of! Following a suggestion from Ron Mudd on Facebook (the International Fritillaria Study Group) we are trying F. raddeana here, and this is an example of the type of choice bulb - especially lilies - which we would like to establish here. The N. American Lilium humboldtii is re-emerging well from amongst the nettles! To provide some more height, and scent, a small plant of Magnolia (Michelia) laevifolia (from Keith and Roz Wiley at the Harlow AGS Show) has been added towards the back of the bed and once the remaining area further down the garden has been cleared we aim to add daphnes and other small shrubs. Hopefully in a year or two's time this part of the garden will have been reclaimed from wilderness and become a great deal more productive. Just across the way, under the first row of apples, Galanthus 'Cicely Hall' is looking magnificent with hellebores at the moment... one of the very best late snowdrops.
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A nurseryman's work is never done Tim. Will you be at Exeter this year?
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(Just getting ready to leave for the Loughborough Show at 3.00am! Yes we will be coming to Exeter David - look forward to meeting you there, we enjoyed the day very much last year and came back, with a long detour, via Waterperry to see the saxifrage colection :)).
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An impressive piece of work, Tim!
Nice to see the advanced spring also. Here the spring is later than what it has usually been the last years :(
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Your new bed looks great and it is interesting to read what you have planted there. :)
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Very nice to be able to put a face to the name at L'Boro' too.
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We've just found these early pictures of the garden at Copton Ash taken by my father from its inception in 1978/9! Gives a bit of perspective on the garden now some 37 years later :). The excavation in the first picture was the result of removing a swimming pool slap bang in the middle of the lawn (with hindsight this would have been a great opportunity to make a pond?). The following pictures show how the garden changed over the next 10 or 12 years, with really quite an impressive alpine bed in 1989 which I've never been able to recreate since (partly because trees now shade the garden much more). The last, rather poor, picture in 1990 (mistake on caption) was during one of the most severe droughts we have ever had when the lawn turned completely brown. Quite a serious time of hosepipe bans and led to improvements in water distribution in the south-east.
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And a little later in 1992 and 1993... A small plant of Acer griseum in the alpine planting is now about 15 to 20 ft high! The apple displays were very popular in late October for quite a few years and we budded a wide range of varieties, often to order after people had tasted the fruit. Now, and for the last few years, the garden has/is needing major clearing and replanting, and in some ways is like starting again (hence 'Rebuilding a nursery'), except at the same time the fabric of the garden has to be maintained as well. Its character has changed to become closer to woodland in many places and with that a change in emphasis on the plants grown, but it would be great to grow Daphne cneorum again as well as it is on that raised bed from 1989! 8).
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Tim i can't recognize your garden, what major change!
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There were more of us involved in those days Yann ;). Now the garden has more of a mind of its own an we follow along trying to keep up!!
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Tim,
Your garden/nursery is extremely impressive and seems as though it has been for a long time too. Clearly much vitality, creativity, and passion has gone into this project. Very 8)
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Robert, I can't remember a time when I haven't been interested in plants - propagating them, learning about them, at one time studying them in considerable scientific detail, and gardening with them. Both my parents worked with plants in different ways, and my grandparents ran a market garden. My father, in particular, was immensely practical and hard working and part of the drive to recover agriculture and stability after the Second World War. So all that is behind the garden has come as much from others, and now from what I see here as well. We don't have those huge landscapes and natural diversity of plants that you have in California so perhaps try to recreate this more in the garden, but it is the world outside the garden that inspires me more than anything else. The other great thing we have here in the UK is the concerted opening of gardens for charity (through the National Gardens Scheme and often just within towns and villages). We've done this for thirty years and it's a good incentive and discipline to get out and mow the lawn and cut the edges ;). I have to say, I do view the garden as very like a farm - a resource of plant material to propagate from and distribute - and can't imagine not having a nursery associated with it, even though the two aspects compete strongly.
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For those who do share experiences on Facebook (and even for David if he may still be contacted there :-\) I have put some pictures of the Easter AGS Show at Sutton Valence under my timeline. This is a very lovely flower arrangement from Lee and Julie Martin which sort of sums up the Show for me! (Julie told us that Lee is the flower arranger, but truth to tell they are both wonderful plantspeople). Facebook does have the advantage of contact with an extraordinary diversity of people, and via this the capacity to make more links to the specialist plant societies such as the SRGC and AGS too, so I do find it a useful place to find stimulation, as well as thoroughly annoying at times! (For example it has allowed me to share the pictures with the Sutton Valence school - and the AGS - and to thank them for the opportunity to use the venue - and just gently to point out that the nurserypeople were very cramped at the Show).
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I hope Tim will not mind me pinching a couple of his pictures of the show to display here for those who have no access to FB - and also to allow a permanent record of the day to be more widely available........
A shot of the show benches
[attachimg=1]
people enjoying the refreshments- with a super photogrpahic display in the background
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a display from RHS Wisley's Alpine Dept.
[attachimg=3]
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Of course not Maggi - this is what the internet is all about...
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Very busy couple of weeks with the Great Dixter Plant Fair at the beginning of April and opening our garden for the National Gardens Scheme last Sunday. Such a lot happening in the garden now, as well as the weeds gathering pace with everything else! Today we took the day off and went to see the anemones and bluebells at The Blean, near to Canterbury. These are a few pictures but they don't really convey how wonderful the woods are at the moment 😊.
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And after a pit stop... there is little variation in either the bluebells or anemones; in some places they grow beautifully together, in others either predominates, and in still others neither occur - but all in all these woods are completely magical at this time.
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The enchanted forest! :)
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Very much so Gabriela! We don't have the diversity of woodland perennials of many other temperate regions but woodlands are pretty enchanted everywhere I think if you search them out.
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Yes, I like that forest! A place I would love to walk if I got the chance :)
Seems the trees are mostly maple?
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A whole mix of trees Trond. This is a link to a really good guide on the woods:
http://www.theblean.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/BBW-web-friendly.pdf (http://www.theblean.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/BBW-web-friendly.pdf)
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Hello Tim, yes, a great time to be out in the woods, especially if they are on limestone. Chiffchaff and willow warbler are here and I heard the first blackcap in a neighbours garden this afternoon. Perhaps other members would show us their spring wildlife photos.
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Ian - we are pretty fed up that planning permission has just been given to build on the highest grade agricultural land opposite us. If it goes ahead it will alter the character of the town completely - just another commuter corridor into London. Having these woods near to us, and the North Kent Marshes, is a real balance to over-development such as this - though for a younger generation the ability to have your own home is so important. More tightening of belts all round and a greater awareness of the environment could do wonders in a time of continuing austerity. There were warblers in the woods but we are not too good at distinguishing between them all at the moment!
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Tim, chiffchaff, in case you don,t know, gets its name from the call it makes. Willow warbler has a call that descends in tone. Blackcap has a varied melodic call. If you go on to the RSPB site and choose a species you can often get the call it makes as well. Could you rally people to object to "development?" I have tried for more than 30 years and as long as homes or jobs are mentioned a "developer" (another name for destroyer) can do what he wants, including ignoring the law.
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Ian, my feeling is that in many places it is re-development which is important, and development within and associated with present towns where the local population has a proper say and contribution. This way towns can become more autonomous, more vibrant, more individual. I don't know if the decision made about this land can be reversed (I hope it can by Judicial review), but Government itself argues and provides for protection of prime agricultural land - ref: 'Safeguarding our Soils. A Strategy for England', a document prepared by DEFRA.
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/69261/pb13297-soil-strategy-090910.pdf (https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/69261/pb13297-soil-strategy-090910.pdf)
This is an extract from the Foreward written by the Minister, Hilary Benn:
'I am always struck by the words of President Franklin D Roosevelt over 70 years ago when, promoting the first measures in the world to protect soil, he said “The Nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.” He understood the value of soil and the importance to economies and societies of protecting it.'
And Paragraph 24: We must ensure that planning decisions take sufficient account of soil quality, particularly when significant areas of the best and most versatile agricultural land are involved. Together with Communities and Local Government (CLG), we will review the effectiveness of existing planning policy to protect important soils and consider whether there is a need to update it.
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Tim, no account of the value of soil was taken in our village. The only policy was build at any cost. Legally protected hedges were bulldozed away to give a clear site for building on. Neither the local authority or national government care what happens to land needed for growing food. I complained to the local authority about the destruction of hedges and the local authority told me "the law is not our concern." I was then advised to speak to the local police wildlife officer. He came and looked but did not say anything to the contractor removing hedges. I was asked to go to the local police station to make a statement outlining the legal protection of hedges. When I did my fingerprints were taken.
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That is dispiriting Ian and may well be the outcome here despite strong and concerted, and informed, opposition by local people. I am at least encouraged by Hilary Benn's words because of his obvious sincerity and statemanship, especially after watching his remarkable speech on the Syrian crisis, which drew applause across parties (including incidentally our local Conservative MP for Faversham and Mid Kent). I think often David is trampled by Goliath. Unfortunately if this development does go ahead it may put pay to our efforts to make a garden and nursery and open it for charity, simply because of greater congestion and restrictions on parking and access.
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A whole mix of trees Trond. This is a link to a really good guide on the woods:
http://www.theblean.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/BBW-web-friendly.pdf (http://www.theblean.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/BBW-web-friendly.pdf)
Thanks Tim! Interesting reading :)
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A lot going on in the garden now as spring really kicks in! These are a few favourite plants: Paeonia tenuifolia just emerging (we haven't had good seed set on this so I shall have to hand pollinate, or is there need of two clones?) - the double flowered plants of this that Billy Carruthers had at Great Dixter were pretty stunning and impressive to produce by division; Tulipa aucheriana, a delightful small tulip which has grown and flowered for many years but not increased significantly - seems to be rarely available (this is nicely pictured on the cover of Jack Elliott's book 'Bulbs for the Rock Garden', a very good read by someone who grew these brilliantly); Helleborus multifidis subsp. hercogovinus, the most striking of all hellebores for foliage that we have - like the peony it just gets better year by year but the mice often snaffle the seed so we must bag the maturing flowers; Trillium, probably kurabayashii (though I'm not sure how you fully distinguish this from chloropetalum?), under the apples; and a bulb bed in the lawn, modelled on the marvellous bulb walk at Sissinghurst but needing more tulips and daffs and pulsatillas (this bed changes tremendously through the year with perennials coming later - would make a good time-lapse film!).
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Last weekend we took plants along to the Plantfairs Roadshow event at Hall Place, Bexley, on the SE. outskirts of London. A few pictures of some youthful gardeners on the day who were particularly inspiring to meet, especially because they were buying alpines! There is a similar Summer Fair here on Sunday 3rd July 2016 with a good range of specialist nurseries (including Steve Law, Brighton Plants, who grows a notably eclectic range of plants - and I thought we did!). Definitely a developing event for those who are really seriously interested in plants.
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And last but not least, some finicky weeding in advance of opening the garden for the National Gardens Scheme this coming Sunday 24th April. Weather forecast not brilliant, but the cakes will be...
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I wish I could visit but I can only send you all my best. You have a wonderful garden, and nursery :)
It seems there is a lot of cake involved in the British gardens/shows events ??? :D
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An army marches on its stomach - and British gardeners function on cake!!
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Thanks Gabriela :). I always secretly hope not too many people come so there is cake left over! Some people are really interested in the plants close up, some just like to wander round the garden but know little about the plants, but almost all I think go for tea and cake!
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Hmmm...yummy!
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Alpines, tea and cake always good value at Jack Drakes as well.
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I wish I could visit but I can only send you all my best. You have a wonderful garden, and nursery :)
It seems there is a lot of cake involved in the British gardens/shows events ??? :D
Gabriela wrote just what I was thinking, it sounds so good! You have such a long gardening tradition in the UK and open gardens.
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As spring turns into summer the rate at which the garden grows can be quite disconcerting! This view from the house is part of the garden which gets regular mowing and edging and weeding, but just around the corner there is a wilderness which hasn't been tamed for five or six years :(. The second picture shows the view looking through into the wild. A friend who came to help us a week or so ago inspired a strong foray into this region to begin the long process of reclaiming this part of the garden. Essentially it needs thorough cutting down of brambles and seedling trees and weeds and then regular strimming and mowing to recover the paths. Quite a bit was started back in early spring so concerted effort should begin to make head-road. Looking back from the wilderness into the garden shows how this could become an interesting clearing again under the eucalyptus, planted with a mix of things to complement the view beyond. This is a warm and sheltered sunny area in the middle of the garden that would be ideal for Mediterranean-type plants and maybe some of the Californian species that Robert describes, and we do have the prospect of more help through the summer with a daughter home from University!
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Along with this major clearing there is also a need to extend the growing area in the nursery and a row of old cordon apples have been removed next to this long frame and the area alongside will now be levelled and used to make new raised capillary beds, specifically for more choice alpines which need more attention. Looking down from here is another part of the wilderness, originally part of the nursery, which will also be cleared this summer to provide a place for new polytunnels and stock beds. Well this is the plan anyway... 8).
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Such a lot of work to do but how worthwhile. ( Heather can escape up here if she needs to, by the way! )
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We are taking a week off soon and coming up to Scotland to climb Ben Nevis Maggi! I want to visit gardens but I think Heather and Robyn (and the dog) will have different ideas.
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Early morning setting up for the Faversham Open Gardens & Garden Market today. Hope there may be a chance to see one or two of the gardens... but also that it will so busy that there may not be the opportunity! Pulls two ways.
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Good day on Sunday - the Faversham Society sold over a thousand tickets for the Open Gardens and raised around £5000. These are a few pictures of the stalls. In order: David Simmons, a local farmer and town (& district) councillor, who is also Chairman of the Faversham Markets Co-operative (very highly respected in the town for his integrity and strength of mind dealing with difficult issues); the regular Market Plant Stall under the Guildhall in the town; ourselves with alpines - quite a bit of interest which is encouraging, does seem to be a growing awareness again of these plants and their diversity; the Abbey Physic Community Garden - close to my heart because it is a garden my mother was strongly involved in proposing and creating for the benefit of the disadvantaged and people who have been hurt by life in different ways; and 'Mighty Fine Things' - Katy Cox (and her partner and young baby!), one of the prime movers of the 'Best of Faversham' Market and the general market in the town.
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Replanting a part of Paul Powis' front garden at Old Wive's Lees in Kent. Amongst the plants are the long lived dwarf specimen conifers; Pinus heldreichii 'Schmidtii' and P. mugo 'Carsten's Wintergold', Daphne retusa; and a variety of alpine species plus a few shorter lived 'filler' plants (a small delphinium hybrid and felicia amongst them). This area is full of crocus - notably the autumn flowering C. speciosus 'Oxonian' - and cyclamen that Rosemary planted many years ago, likely to fill some of the cleared parts with seedlings from the seedbank in the soil! In the autumn a further range of small bulbs will be added and it will be good to watch it develop over the next year or two. (Rosemary was the long time secretary of the East Kent AGS group of gardeners and a close friend. This rock garden that she made - Paul provided help with the initial construction - is a great example of a small rock garden outside the front of their house, and of the effective connection between plant and place which resulted from Rosemary's knowledge of plants combined with her artistic expression).
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A walk in the woods to take a card to a very fine gardener. The woods are 'Perry Woods', near to Selling, a small scattered village south of Faversham in Kent - and the very fine gardener is Elizabeth Thomas, who with her husband Graham (who advised on the cultivation of Hops) made 'Longacre Garden', and also taught gardening and organised tours of gardens for local people and students (and much more). She is one of the most respected and loved of gardeners in Kent, not only a fine gardener but also a fine lady.
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Took a week or so off from the garden to visit the visit the West Highlands of Scotland with Robyn, Heather and Heather's friend George (and our Jack Russell) - the aim, to climb Ben Nevis and explore this wonderful part of the island we live in. A few pictures on the way up and down the highest peak in the UK. Need to do more of this and that skyline (the Mamores) in the last picture is very inviting! And there is a wonderful valley in between - Glen Nevis - that we walked up to see the An Steall waterfall, where the landscape is steadily being managed by the John Muir Trust to help return more of it to its past ecology of vegetation and fauna. A very refreshing place that I hope to write about in more detail in my AGS Kent Diary, especially on the Isle of Skye which we had far too little time to see, but I have to return to in the future! Will show more pictures in the next few days... (Unfortunately the garden doesn't sit still in the summer, so a lot of weeds and grass cutting to deal with now 🙁).
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Looks like you had a great day for it. Are there really steps all the way to the summit?
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The path seems to go on forever. It took me 2 hours and 45 minutes but I was a lot fitter then. Parsley fern seen on the way up.
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That's pretty good going Ian! The general advice is to give around 8 hours for the round trip and we took longer because my younger daughter wasn't too well on the way down - a combination of heat stroke and probably not enough fluids, though we took a lot with us. Coming down was tougher than going up for me but Robyn seemed to recover once we reached the col at about the halfway point. I see now why quite a few walkers use those lightweight sticks!
David, the steps go in sections up to the col. From this point on it's much more rocky and steep and zig-zags. They don't necessarily make it any easier but certainly save a lot of erosion of the lower parts where the slopes are well vegetated. Beyond the col it's virtually all rock so you hop from stone to stone!
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This is the An Steall waterfall at the top of Glen Nevis (it drains a large upland cirque completely surrounded by high peaks). A completely wonderful walk which follows a steadily deepening gorge, reaching a point where the river is held in the narrowest of clefts - the third picture shows the way the rock has been scoured by water which must thunder down here at snowmelt in spring. There are boulders in this section as large as cars or bigger. Just beyond the the river opens out into a wide meadow and the waterfall comes into sight in the distance. A truly magical spot. Below the waterfall is a broad open plain, this gravelled area must be deep in water in spring, now in summer in the evening full of Scottish midges! (Not such a good spot to have a hot chocolate!). Beyond here the path(s) continue into a large expanse of wilderness with no roads and many fine peaks to explore. These upland meadows though have and are being grazed by sheep and deer which have denuded them over centuries of any natural woodland except in inaccessible parts of the gorge and rocky slopes and lower down. The region is being managed by the John Muir Trust with the aim to control grazing and enable regeneration of woodland, at least close to the waterfall. It's good to see this happening in various parts of Scotland, a kind of reversal of the terrible Clearances of earlier times, but the absence of primary predators - and impossibility of really reintroducing them (on any scale anyway) - means that it can only occur in very limited areas and with a lot of input.
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Loving this, Tim. We will be in the Highlands in a month's time, although my knees and age are making the mountains more difficult. We have "bagged" more than 30 Munros but not Ben Nevis, so far. I guess it is a "must do" though. My chances of bagging them all depend on me living to the age of 350 and remaining fit, so probably not! I would be happy to do the most northerly, southerly, westerly and easterly, plus the highest, but so far we have only done the most southerly (Ben Lomond) and the most easterly (Mount Keen).
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It was the Isle of Skye that captured my imagination more than anywhere Ralph. We only had a short time there but drove down to Elgol and saw the Black Cuillins across Loch Scavaig. I'm not sure I would want to climb them(!) but I certainly would like to see Loch Coruisk and a lot lot more of Skye (picked up a wonderful little book at a mountaineering shop in Fort William, 'Tramping in Skye' by B.H.Humble, written in 1933, of a couple of weeks walk around and through the island and its history). Ben Nevis is the only peak I've climbed in Scotland and I think I prefer the idea of walking 'into' the mountains rather than 'up' them that Nan Shepherd describes in 'The Living Mountain' (Robert Macfarlane refers to this in one of his books). My daughters wanted to add Ben Nevis to Snowdon and Scafell Pike. Would love to return, especially to some of the parts really off the beaten track and look in more detail at the plants. Prof. John Birks has co-written 'The Botanist on Skye and Adjacent Islands' and did his PhD on Skye - can't imagine anything more stimulating and giving an excuse to explore (rather like Robert's wonderful adventures in California here on the SRGC Forum, though fewer plants to distract from the views!).
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Interesting landscapes in Glen Nevis, Tim. There is a lot of water coming down the An Steall waterfall. The landscapes remind me of some of our own high country in New Zealand in that the original vegetation has been modified by human activity and livestock grazing and any remaining trees are largely confined to gullies. Of course Britain has had a much longer period of human occupation.
Even though 3000 ft seems modest by our standards the Highlands are rugged and beautiful.
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Seems you had a very nice trip, Tim! The landscape looks very familiar to me :) Not unlike some parts of Norway.
What kind of trees would be natural in the valleys there?
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This is probably the best reference Trond, the Carrifran Wildwood Project: http://www.carrifran.org.uk/about/what-we-have-achieved/silviculture-2/ (http://www.carrifran.org.uk/about/what-we-have-achieved/silviculture-2/) (if by chance you ever look on Facebook there is a detailed photojournal by Stuart Adair of the developing flora of this valley). At Glencoe the National Trust for Scotland are regenerating an area of natural woodland which was previously a Forestry Plantation, building on remnants of native woodland. The trees include alder, downy birch, scots pine, a variety of willows and (rare or very rare), wych elm, sessile oak, bird cherry, rowan, hazel, hawthorn, and holly. This is very early days though and the picture below shows the beginnings of some of the planting. In this reference I found from DEFRA: http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/protectedsites/sacselection/sac.asp?EUCode=UK0012959 (http://jncc.defra.gov.uk/protectedsites/sacselection/sac.asp?EUCode=UK0012959) only about 2% of the valley is wooded, but there are important colonies of herbaceous and alpine species which heighten the conservation value of the Glen and surrounding mountains, and it is the wilder places where grazing is restricted or not possible that provide the basis for wider regeneration. There has to be the will though to put this into practice and monitor it which probably requires a change in the mindset of many landowners if it is to occur more widely.
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Scots pine, bird cherry, rowan, hawthorn and holly are considered undesirable here. It is ironic they are under threat in their homeland.
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Tim,
Thanks for the info. It is the same tree species we have here, although some like the holly grows only at the coast. Wych elm is common in the screes in the valleys along the west coast and often makes pure stands.
In many cases we have the opposite problem: Trees invade the old meadows as the use of modern machinery makes it impossible to harvest the steep and often small meadows here.
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In many cases we have the opposite problem: Trees invade the old meadows as the use of modern machinery makes it impossible to harvest the steep and often small meadows here.
They experience exactly the same problem on the traditional mountain hay meadows in Transylvania.
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Tim, I have an article on mountain plants in the IRG. This might encourage further exploration of our native alpines. Glen Brittle, on Skye, is worth a look at. Follow the path up behind the caravan site.
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Ian, thanks! I will look at this. I've just received the book that describes the vision and making of the Carrifran Wildwood Project - extremely inspiring! It is highly significant and unusual in being an example of grass-roots ecological restoration of a mountain valley from what is described in the Foreward as a "Wet Desert" - in other words an expanse of hillside lacking tree cover and plant diversity, as a consequence (like so much of the Scottish landscape) of hundreds of years of grazing by sheep, and perhaps deer. Here are three quotes from it, starting with one from Prof. Aubrey Manning who wrote the forward:
"This book is a remarkable account of a great adventure, I wouldn't wish to describe it in any other terms. The adventure began with the vision of a few people who were prepared to work enormously hard to achieve something which many people before them have regarded as an impossible dream."
"... since we were determined to avoid getting routine statements of official policies, and instead focus on ambitious visions for the future." [the professional relationship with others that were in positions to advise and help, and support the project].
"This wonderful gesture had a palpable effect on our campaign. It showed us - and all those who heard about it - that this was a project capable of touching a deep chord in people who cared about the world they live in." [this was the gift of a painting by a well known wildlife artist, auctioned early in the campaign to raise funds to buy the land].
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Tim, I have an article on mountain plants in the IRG. This might encourage further exploration of our native alpines. Glen Brittle, on Skye, is worth a look at. Follow the path up behind the caravan site.
IRG issue 78 of June 2016 http://www.srgc.org.uk/logs/logdir/2016Jun231466720211IRG78.pdf (http://www.srgc.org.uk/logs/logdir/2016Jun231466720211IRG78.pdf)
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Thanks Maggi and fascinating article Ian. I wish we were less tied to the garden and a little closer to the Scottish hills! Some very interesting plants there. I have been reading several chapters from 'Mountain Flowers' by John Raven and Max Walters, which has opened my eyes more to these plants, just as your article does, and there is mention of the site for Diapensia lapponica (which we were not far from on one of our walks, but didn't know about). The rock ferns interest me especially. If and when we return to Skye and round about, I will make an itinerary of places to walk to!
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Tim, a good book for Skye is The Botanist in Skye and Adjacent Islands by C.W. Murray and H.J.B. Birks. There are many other areas in Scotland not publicised but very rewarding for botanists.
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Yes, I just got that from John Birks Ian - very helpful and authoritative. The local West Highland Free Press published an excellent magazine on Skye for visitors and the surrounding area (free at the Tourist Information centres) and there was an article that referred to this book. I was struck by the objectivity and journalistic integrity of this Press, which was founded on the Isle of Skye.
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'A clearing in the woodland... and the demise of an Acer'.
Creating a new path through into the wilder overgrown part of the garden. The Acer, A. nikoense, was planted some 25 years ago but has succumbed to a series of very dry summers and removing it has given the incentive to begin clearing into a part of the garden that has not been touched for five or six years and become a wilderness of brambles and nettles. Here grows the beautiful Cornus alternifolia 'Argentea' with Itea ilicifolia, Woodwardia unigemmata and Trochodendron aralioides. There is the potential to metamorphose this part of the garden from a state of 'nature' if the momentum can be maintained (but that 'if' is a big word...). Pictures taken late one evening. The aim is to plant ferns and woodland perennials along this path which are able to tolerate our regular very dry summers, using grass cuttings and compost at first to build up the humus in the soil. In spring this area is a haze of sulphur-yellow from self-sowing Smyrnium perfoliatum. Arum italicum 'Marmoratum' and Cyclamen hederifolium also self-sow, along with hellebores and Brunnera macrophylla.
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The second picture here is the real 'coal face', working into a jungle of brambles, nettles and self-sown sycamore seedlings from a huge hedgerow tree nearby. The third picture is the view diametrically opposed from our kitchen window and the purpose is to unite the two with a new sustainable planting - realistically a project for several years of consolidation. We will have to see if we can generate enough momentum and interest to enable this plan to come to fruition, but a good bit has been done up to now.
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You're making great inroads to the jungle there, Tim - just love the woodland area.
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The big question is whether I will come out the other end Maggi! It is amazing to see how much the garden has changed over some 35 years and in places is becoming woodland. When we get some rain this autumn and winter will be the interesting time, replanting from other places and bringing it more back to life.
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It looks a bit claustrophobic Tim. More open glades needed? Perhaps you could ask for volunteers to join in?
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Ha ha Ian! Definitely more open glades needed and volunteers. We have very fertile soil - excellent for brambles and nettles (and fruit trees) - and the overgrown area is at long last being opened up. I think volunteers are too much to hope for but moral support is always good 🙂. Once the worst of the undergrowth is cleared it should be possible to return quite a bit to grass paths and replant the original beds. In a way this is similar to moving to an overgrown garden left by someone else with the vision that one might have of creating a new planting. Here the cause was quite serious illness and the garden is just the same one. We shall see, but only by looking back can you see how much has been done - the visitor just sees the present moment.
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Watching with interest Tim.
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I have faith in you, Tim!
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Thank you Maggi. The SRGC has given the opportunity to share our desire to rebuild the garden and nursery and that has been important to me. I don't see a garden as a set piece at the Chelsea Show for example, or a perfect specimen of a plant - however stimulating that may be to see - and this is a reason why I have also written in different ways about gardening on the Alpine Garden Society website. The support from other people is very valuable, and conversation 🙂.
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Here in our garden we are seeing the change to a much more wooded garden as years go on. Yes, more work is needed to get us back in better control of what is happening but really the overall ambience of our little space is very pleasant. It is good that so many plants which please us enjoy life under the trees and while our "style" is not to everyone's taste I am sure, it gives us enormous pleasure and sustains our interest and gives a calm and beautiful surrounding for our daily lives - and that, for us , is what it is all about. Much more about a "landscape" really, a habitat rather than a showcase of fancy stuff. We think its working for our "souls"!
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Keep taking "before and after" photos Tim. How large is the garden? Perhaps the younger gardeners could be invited to get some hands on experience towards their CVs?
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Having got the bit between my teeth Ian I am quite excited about how this part of the garden might develop. It gives the opportunity to move plants from elsewhere that need more space, and divide established clumps of snowdrops, anemones, epimediums etc. I will certainly keep a photographic record, and hope this can also become a subject for talks because though we often have travelogues and detailed looks at individual plants we don't so much (very rarely actually) have more practical examples of 'making' a garden in the sort of ongoing way Ian describes in his Bulb Log. When the Alpine Garden Society was somewhat in the doldrums at a previous time one of the stimulants was 'A Handbook of Rock Gardening' (this was published in 1964, edited by Roy Elliott) - everyone was given a copy of this when they joined the Society and plenty more were sold. I don't suppose most people when they first join grow perfect specimens of Dionysias or dream of Farrer Medals (many never will); far more will come into the Society fascinated by 'gardening' with alpines. So it seems hardly surprising that the AGS in particular has rather lost any connection with a younger generation.
Our garden is an acre and a half with perhaps a third of this devoted to the nursery area. Plenty big enough! And we have in the past had some wonderful students helping in the garden, but that was when the nursery was going full pitch and more resources were available to employ them. Hopefully next year will see a consolidation of the growing area and nursery which will make it more viable to employ help.
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Maggi, the ambience of the garden here has certainly changed hugely, and yes it does become a habitat - I think that is very real and personal for anyone who makes a garden (so very different to how gardens are often presented). We've always opened the garden, especially through the winter and spring - which is quite a discipline - and most people who come enjoy the cakes at least ;), I think they enjoy the atmosphere too. Gardening has always worked for my soul ever since I used to mow my parents lawn and propagate plants for the local market - it just becomes ingrained. And I do remember it when we started... and digging out this incongruous swimming pool!
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Gosh, when was that?
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That was Spring 1979 Ralph! I was finishing my degree at Queen Mary College, London, and we (as a family) were just beginning to plant the garden in Kent after my father moved down to become Director of the Fruit Trials and Collection at Brogdale. The swimming pool was a (carbuncle) surrounded by weeds. Along with this the other major excavation was to dig a trench right round the garden for a rabbit fence. I was young and fit! Not that long after we started opening the garden for charity and have done so almost every year since. It just seems the thing to do... In this present drought the view looks brown and sere :(.
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A few pictures from the 'Plant Fairs Roadshow' (http://www.plant-fairs.co.uk/events/ (http://www.plant-fairs.co.uk/events/)) at Knowle Hill Farm last Sunday, which sits up on the escarpment looking down over the Weald of Kent. A warm day - not such a good time to buy plants or think of planting but in other ways 'the time of the perennial', and sometime soon, when we do have prolonged rain down in the south, will be a good time to plant.
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And a few more intimate pictures of plants. The Sphaeralcea (6 & 7) is one to beg cuttings from, perfect for our present weather!
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Some prolonged rain at last :) - only an inch or so but enough to begin to soak into the parched ground and make weeding much easier and the prospect of planting this autumn rather closer. The first really significant rainfall for nearly two months.
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Glad to see you've got some rain at last, Tim! Speaking to my parents last week when it was 34o in Essex it was sounding pretty dire - everything in the garden wilting and looking very sorry. Good summer baking will be appreciated by some plants though. Lucky you only had an inch as Essex was under a deluge and suffering from flooding at the weekend. At least the drop in temperature will spur on the autumn bloomers!
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Making progress step by step, negotiating B****t with the brambles. From in front and behind. And a few of the plants that have survived in the wilderness: Galanthus reginae-olgae with hellebores; Cyclamen coum; and Ophiopogon planiscarpus (which with its fleshy water-storing roots will make good ground-cover here in the future).
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And beginning to plant up this area as the days cool and we have had a little more rain, though the soil is still very dry. A big need to mulch as we go to keep control over weed regrowth, and reliance on more ground-cover species in the brighter areas, ferns in the shadier.
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You make progress, Tim!
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More the result of the garden slowing down than me speeding up Trond! But yes, I hope so.
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What a nice evolution of the family garden for 83', lawn was certainly less work than your actual woodland?
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You are right Yann! But a lawn is not a garden. I think the most significant thing is that we have opened the garden for over 30 years and met many interesting gardeners and generally enjoyed the process over that time. But in terms of the economy and contribution to GDP a garden has no particular value so may not be a feature of B****t negotiations ;) :(. You will understand from this that I value our connection to Europe for the ways it makes us consider the environment and shared scientific understanding of ecology and evolution, and making a garden contributes to this as far as I can see - it opens up an outlook on the world that is so obvious on this Forum. I really hope politics comes to its senses; it is an uncomfortable time at present in the UK.
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Really nice to have been watching the progression of your garden, Tim. All gardens tell a story and often the plot (not meant as a pun) of the story doesn't follow a straight line. You have weather and plant growth changing the story line all the time. Added to these, the expansion of the gardener's knowledge and his introduction to new plants are constantly in the mix. It's wonderful that you are documenting your garden's story.
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Thanks Anne. I am just in the process of finalising a talk on the garden over time for a trip to Ireland next week, so this (blog) has been a useful process to marshall thoughts. After 35 years it is almost like coming into a garden anew with an outlook that has changed. We have always used the garden as a resource for seed and cuttings - and experimenting with plants - but there is an inevitable tension between 'garden' and 'nursery'. Getting this balance right is the aim.
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Seems that the Kent Alpine Show at Sutton Valence went well - some pix pinched from Tim on FB!
The Farrer medal was awarded to a super pot of Crocus banaticus 'Snowdrift' - from Alan Furness. The Alpine Dept. at Wisley put on a good display... and there were clearly many other very good plants on show at an event which also boasted other attractions at the venue as well as the show. Seems these Kentish folk are full of ideas to widen the scope of interest to the event - well done everyone!
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This photo actually of another pan of 'Snowdrif' - not the winning pan!
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Excellent show, came away with several new ideas!
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Very enjoyable day Maggi. I would write about it further but am getting ready to go to Ireland tomorrow. Some more when I get back but I expect there will be pictures appearing here and on the AGS website... Alan Furness is a true master of Alpine Gardening - he also had a number of beautiful Celmisia at the Show, including this potful of varied foliage forms of C. semi-cordata subsp. aurigans. Rather tantalising for those us in the Kentish Riviera, along with autumn gentians, but wonderful to see.
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Have a great trip to Ireland, Tim!
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Really nice to have been watching the progression of your garden, Tim. All gardens tell a story and often the plot (not meant as a pun) of the story doesn't follow a straight line. You have weather and plant growth changing the story line all the time. Added to these, the expansion of the gardener's knowledge and his introduction to new plants are constantly in the mix. It's wonderful that you are documenting your garden's story.
I totally agree with this! I always enjoy your diary, and especially get inspiration on your clearing of the woodland.. I do the same. :)
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Very enjoyable day Maggi. I would write about it further but am getting ready to go to Ireland tomorrow. Some more when I get back but I expect there will be pictures appearing here and on the AGS website... Alan Furness is a true master of Alpine Gardening - he also had a number of beautiful Celmisia at the Show, including this potful of varied foliage forms of C. semi-cordata subsp. aurigans. Rather tantalising for those us in the Kentish Riviera, along with autumn gentians, but wonderful to see.
Hi Tim,
I keep returning to your blog to see if you have written anything lately and keep seeing the pot of C. semicordata ssp aurigans which reminded me of a photo I took in 2009 of a group of C semicordata ssp aurigans growing on Mt Tennyson in the Garvie Mountains. I finally located the image so here they are.
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Fantastic picture David! You've reminded me that I should give an update since October :). The Northern Hemisphere has lost its way recently causing consternation all around... but the garden is waking up into late winter, ready for spring.
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Lovely article about Tim and Gillian's place, prior to their garden open on Sunday 12th -
this from Favershamlife.org -
http://favershamlife.org/snowdrops-copton-ash/ (http://favershamlife.org/snowdrops-copton-ash/)
P.S. Tim - we think you are a stalwart of SRGC , too!
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Fantastic picture David! You've reminded me that I should give an update since October :). The Northern Hemisphere has lost its way recently causing consternation all around... but the garden is waking up into late winter, ready for spring.
Your snowdrops and winter aconite (I presume that is what the yellow flowers are) look splendid - a prelude to spring as I guess February is still very much winter.
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Thank you Maggi :). It's always nice to know you belong to a place, even when it is 500 miles away! I've never been good at long division, much better at integration. There will be many more pictures to show before long, and I might even write a few more Diary entries about Snowdrops and Hellebores on the Alpine Garden Society website, based on a couple of talks lately. The ladies of 'Faversham Life' really give the town substance and it was nice to share our garden with them, just as it always has been here on the SRGC Forum.
Very wintry today David - bitterly cold and snow; not so good for opening the garden tomorrow :(.
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Tim and Gillian's NGS Open Day seemed to be well attended today, despite recent weather. Plants not as well advanced as in previous years of course. Managed to acquire a couple of reasonably priced 'drops!
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This from Tim : "Just beginning to thaw out after opening the garden today for the snowdrops! But a good day with 130 or so visitors - says something for a cold February day in north-east Kent 🙂 - so we raised £500 or so for charity. Many interesting people and some good local friends. After 30 years opening the garden for the National Gardens Scheme maybe the snowdrops are giving us a new incentive for at least another decade or two in these austere times 😉? We are open again for the NGS on Sunday 26th March when more woodland species will be flowering, and then in April and May."
Pretty successful day, I think!
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It was, even though my feet have still yet to thaw! We have a way to go to catch up with Carolyn and John Millen at Spring Platt - hope to visit them during the week, and Elizabeth Cairns at Knowle Hill Farm, which may interest any aficianados of snowdrops looking in later. Some interesting species hellebores flowering too (including several kind gifts from David Stephens), which we took along for a talk from Don Palmer to our local AGS Group in East Kent last Friday.
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In February our thoughts about the garden and nursery turn to snowdrops and rather than repeat much of that here, for anyone who would like to know more please see this and my forthcoming Diary entries on the Alpine Garden Society website: http://www.alpinegardensociety.net/diaries/Kent/+February+/800/. (http://www.alpinegardensociety.net/diaries/Kent/+February+/800/.) The picture is of Galanthus 'Ginns' Imperati', which is memorable for its strong scent of bitter almonds (though I've never really noticed the scent of snowdrops unless they have been in an indoor display). Ron Ginns was a prominent member of the Alpine Garden Society after WWII - he wrote 30 or so articles for the AGS Bulletin - and had a particular interest in hardy Cacti, Succulent plants and Yuccas, but also in a much wider range of alpines. He was a teacher and I am told (because he lived in Desborough in Northamptonshire, where my grandparents happened to run a Market Garden) also had a model railway line in his garden! (One of those relatively insignificant but revealing facts about a fellow alpine and 'rock' gardener...).
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Gardening is a continuum, weeding and pruning tells you that! But there are distinct periods when certain plants dominate. This is a view from above along one of the apple rows now, where Brunnera macrophylla is flowering profusely and has self-seeded - sometimes a bit too much. The second picture is two months ago, when the snowdrops (G. nivalis) were flowering - and at their high point they fill this row, and also self-seed. Later, Anthriscus syvestris 'Ravenswing' comes to dominate. The other rows of apples have a much wider range of woodland perennials - in the last picture. These take a lot more weeding and management to stop plants like Brunnera and Anthriscus becoming dominant, but are visually a great deal more interesting through the spring. Getting ready for opening the garden again for the NGS on Sunday...
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Lovely views under the apple trees. My Brunneras never flower so much, you have a sea of blue. :)
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Hi Tim,
Always a pleasure to see pictures of your garden and how you place plants. Underplanting your (deciduous) apple trees seems to work very well.
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Leena, your little Anemone is flowering under these trees - thank you.
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The less sexy (or should I say artistic) side of gardening - dealing with the prunings and weeds. A mature garden (aka a 'woodland') is highly productive and these piles of prunings can either be left to break down naturally, burnt, or shredded. In the past we made a lot of weed-free compost by mixing grass cuttings and finer shredded material, which enabled it to reach high enough temperatures to kill any seed or pathogens. Now generally we shred woody prunings when the piles begin to become large enough that they can't be ignored! These, and grass cuttings, are used for mulching in different places. The second picture shows this in the newly planted area beneath the eucalypts. Hopefully this will keep weeds in this area at bay for the coming season and allow other parts of the garden to be cleared for replanting through the summer and autumn.
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Prompted by a dig from David Nicholson of spending too much time placing pictures on Facebook :). So I will return to update progress in the garden here in what has been a very dry year until recent storms in July. By now the garden is at its most productive (in terms of weeds!) and runs away from the gardener. These are concerted efforts to rein back on the overgrowth - in particular opening up under trees and pruning the hedge behind the long border.
When you plant trees in the garden (see last picture taken in autumn 1993), and they carry on growing and obscure the view (the third picture of Betula ermanii in full autumn glory in 2015). With the help of a superb extendable Pole Saw made by Silky, the trees have now grown tall enough to open up a view through their canopy and there is that feeling of space again. The downside is aching arms and a good deal of future shredding and log cutting for the wood burner in winter.
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Pruning the beech hedge behind the long border, which has not been pruned for too long and grown too high to be comfortably cut. An alpine gardener after 40 years becomes a forester. Rather than an Ancient Mariner, a woodland philosopher (or perhaps just an old man of the trees... 🤔). Any volunteers to help with the shredding? A good bit more to do around the garden but my daughter Robyn has been helping which has spurred me on. There is that sense that the garden breathes again, but the gardener is more out of breath!
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Big job there, Tim. Lovely pine tree.
We're delighted today that we've got our old shredder back in good order after a trip to the engineers to revive her! So we'll be able to get on with the pruning work that's waiting here.
What a marvelous helper a shredder can be - not as beautiful as a helpful daughter, of course! ;)
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What a marvelous helper a shredder can be - not as beautiful as a helpful daughter, of course! ;)
........but daughters are far more expensive ;) ;D
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........but daughters are far more expensive ;) ;D
Surely not? Anyhow, worth every penny..... ( I speak as a daughter, of course!!)
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The evolution of an alpine trough. The inspiration (and initial plants) for this came from visiting the 2nd International Rock Garden Conference in May 2013 http://czrgs.cz/photogallery.html. (http://czrgs.cz/photogallery.html.) Like many things about gardens the planting changed over time and something was learnt! These two pictures are separated by four years and some of the 'in between' is described in my last AGS Kent Diary entry (plus some references to others who have more experience with troughs :). http://www.alpinegardensociety.net/diaries/Kent/+August+/848/. (http://www.alpinegardensociety.net/diaries/Kent/+August+/848/.) The enthusiasm is now on to work on the row of empty troughs that have been sitting waiting for a couple of years...
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Seems that the Kent Alpine Show at Sutton Valence went well - some pix pinched from Tim on FB!
The Farrer medal was awarded to a super pot of Crocus banaticus 'Snowdrift' - from Alan Furness. The Alpine Dept. at Wisley put on a good display... and there were clearly many other very good plants on show at an event which also boasted other attractions at the venue as well as the show. Seems these Kentish folk are full of ideas to widen the scope of interest to the event - well done everyone!
Seems the time of Sutton Valence is coming round again...... this year 21st October....
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:) As ever you are ahead of the game Maggi! Gearing up for the AGS Show... but before that this weekend is the Autumn Plant Fair at Great Dixter with a certain Alpine Plant Nursery from the neighbourhood of Edinburgh :), and another that grows a smattering of peonies ;). This is the nurseryman Dino Pellizzaro from a couple of years back.
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That will be a great weekend, I don't doubt, Tim - more details here : https://www.greatdixter.co.uk/whats-on/events/great-dixter-autumn-plant-fair/ (https://www.greatdixter.co.uk/whats-on/events/great-dixter-autumn-plant-fair/) and I see that Kevock are attending !
A lot of SRGC/AGS folks will be heading to Ponteland by Newcastle on Saturday, though, (I hope!) for the autumn show there.
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This really is like theatre. It has that same process of organisation and direction... and curtain rising, but so much preparation and 'rehearsal' before that happens. For the 'players' - if you think of the nurseries taking these roles - there is that same involvement as for the venue, and the partnership between the two is what makes these Plant Fairs at Dixter so unique and irresistable.[attachimg=1][attachimg=2][attachimg=3]
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"This is the reason I place the nursery at the heart of the garden... If I visit an Art Gallery I go to view the the results of vision and imagination, and skill. I may buy a book or print (or original) to bring that memory home. But if I visit a garden - and I'm not alone - it is very often the nursery and plants I will look for first, and those hidden practical places where the propagation and cultivation goes on. I'm not ignorant of the artistic skill and vision that has made the garden, but these inform my own garden and that presence or absence of a similar sensibility within myself.
The first of these pictures is what excites me most - the fact that others enjoy this too, and primarily that it is their own gardens that they go back to with renewed enthusiasm. And at Dixter it is the nursery that gives Fergus Garrett and all the students who work with him the material to play their tune. This lies at the heart of my critique of the Alpine Garden Society too, because it is the nurseries attending the various AGS Shows that underpin these events and really maintain that diversity of plants that everyone is fascinated by and grows. So to encourage new visitors the society needs to be more outward in the ways it looks. I suppose you might say that it is 'folk music' I love first and foremost, rather than 'opera'. Similarly I find grand landscape gardens dull by comparison with botanic gardens. And the large RHS Shows (with the exception of Chelsea perhaps) less appealing than smaller more intimate ones. I do see that artistic eye as an essential element of the garden but instead of looking for a Leonardo or Monet, I look to my own patch of ground." (These lines were prompted by Anne Wareham on Facebook, who places emphasis on 'the garden' as a work of Art, rather analagous it seems to me to over-emphasising the exhibition of alpines by comparison with propagating and growing them in the garden. But there is no doubt that viewing gardens as having Artistic value does focus your perspective on them, so the two aspects run together. And to focus attention on alpines as valuable garden plants, and hence Rock Gardens as works of Art, would be no bad thing! Great Dixter is an epitome of this in the wider sense[attachimg=1][attachimg=2][attachimg=3]).
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Another reminder of the AGS Kent Autumn show this coming Saturday - 21st October -
9.00am to 4.00 pm (Show Hall opens at approximately 11.00am after Judging))
at SUTTON VALENCE SCHOOL, NORTH STREET, SUTTON VALENCE, KENT, ME17 3HL
Colourful display of autumn flowering dwarf bulbs and alpines and plants to buy at the plant sales.
Admission £3.00, AGS Members & Children Free. Refreshments, Tombola.
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Shamelessly using the SRGC Forum to advertise our AGS events in Kent - thank you Maggi and everyone 😉[attachimg=1] - this will be a wonderful talk if you are free and not too far from Canterbury on Friday 10th November... Heather Angel has sent me this beautiful image to illustrate Macro lighting of flowers for her talk to us in November - part practical and part looking at the pollination of flowers. If you are in Kent and free that evening, this will be a rare opportunity to learn from one of the foremost Natural History Photographers in the British Isles - and visitors are very welcome.
http://www.alpinegardensociety.net/gro (http://www.alpinegardensociety.net/gro)…/East-Kent/programme/
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It should be a good talk. Heather Angel has long been known as a very good photographer of wild flowers and has written books on the subject. A pity Canterbury is so far away.
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I will aim to write a short description for the AGS website Ian. Many years ago I went on a week's course up on the Scottish West coast, just north of Oban, which Heather Angel taught. This is where I learnt about that versatile Benbo tripod. She is thoroughly inspirational, so I hope we can encourage a good audience of your confrères with a strong interest in Natural History down here in Kent. I am sharing details about the meeting as widely as possible.
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A few pictures of further progress into the overgrown centre of the garden, following on from last year. We have had a little help from several young students prepared to tackle the brambles, and it's surprising how concerted effort has made headway into this area relatively quickly. The aim is to grass this area down when we get some significant autumn rains and then gradually replant, mostly with dryland shrubs and perennials. At the same time we are clearing an area for polytunnels and the nursery. Still a good bit to do but now the paths are close to connecting from the more maintained parts of the garden and winter should allow consolidation as growth slows and less work is needed elsewhere. The second picture is the path made last year which leads into this new clearing. The bramble-covered mound in the third picture is the remains of a large weeping willow blown down in a gale a decade or more ago. Once this has been cleared it will be much easier to envisage how the whole area can be replanted. Maybe the answer will be to replace the brambles with a rambling rose over the old stump ;). This central area is warm and sheltered and gives much of the incentive because of the prospect of how it may develop. Finally the 'coal-face'. Not as bad as it looks because just beyond here I started clearing from the other side over the past couple of years, so progress should speed up! Come back in the spring to see how this might change...
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Hi Tim,
It is a law of nature that a garden is never static but continues to offer challenges to the gardener. My herbaceous border is reverting to forest with all the NZ natives I have planted over the years seeding and growing into it. Time to get out he chainsaw and shredder though there may be something to be said to let it revert to forest and become a carbon sink.
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The best situation is to have a garden that either merges into natural woodland or slowly becomes woodland I think, because steadily it forms that balance of different plants guided by the seasons and light and climate. The trouble is that the 'woodland' developing here is all seeding elders and sycamores, and a rather large willow, coming from the surrounding hedges, plus brambles! Good wildlife territory, but not so good when we open the garden for visitors. But in the long term, yes, I'm with you with creating a carbon sink and that heading towards a climax vegetation, and from a field of old cherry trees 40 years ago the garden is definitely doing this! I'm just too keen to grow too many unusual plants in it!! The winter helps to see it differently as it stops growing for a while, and the winter and early spring flowers are a real delight.
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Very enjoyable day at Wisley with the Fritillaria Group today. Two really illuminating and stimulating talks from Robert and Rannveig Wallis on the Fritillarias - but also many other plants - of Central Asia and the drama of travelling in these regions, plus the artistic wonder of Samarkand. And some tulips too.
http://www.fritillaria.org.uk/meetings.html (http://www.fritillaria.org.uk/meetings.html) (And the opportunity to rejoin the Cyclamen Society).[attachimg=1][attachimg=2][attachimg=3]
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It's remarkable how certain plants can persist for many years hidden under brambles and seeding elders! Here there are hellebores, Cyclamen coum, snowdrops, brunnera, and arums and Ophiopogon planiscarpus 'Nigrescens' in pretty dry soil in the centre part of the garden we are just clearing. To perk them up after this long period of neglect this area is getting a good topdressing of compost. There were originally many more choice woodland species here, such as corydalis, several fritillarias and Scoliopus bigelovii, so it would be exciting (but probably hopeful!) that some of these might reappear. [attachimg=1]
In the middle here are the remains of a large weeping willow blown down a decade or more ago in a gale and having cleared around a good part of this we have planted a small specimen of the Californian buckeye, Aesculus californica, as a kind of focus for the planting to come. This has striking white candles of flowers and can have distinctive white bark, good in winter.[attachimg=2]
We still await significant autumn/winter rains and the soil is very dry, but in time the ophiopogon in the foreground of this picture - which tolerates severe periods of drought - will be split up and spread to make groundcover around the buckeye and perhaps interplanted with Californian bulbs such as Triteleia. The theme will be Californian/Mediterranean running around ultimately to a very large Eucalyptus gunnii and established plantings. [attachimg=3]
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Crack on with it while you can Tim. It really is quite remarkable how quickly time begins to catch up with you and the back becomes a bit of a problem and the knees are not as flexible as they used to be!
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The big thing is having had some help. Not that much because it was/is only a few days, but it sets things in motion and the support motivates me to crack on. So far the worse thing is that hole in one finger of the gloves which keeps getting caught by the brambles! I don't want to have to repeat all this in a hurry so need to make sure we plant it up well. This picture was around the same time last year when it really was more in hope than expectation! The wilderness was daunting. Now there is that exciting prospect of replanting, and it will be interesting to see what people make of it when we open for the NGS next year.
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I don't have a weatherproof camera that can be left in situ and enable me to take a 'time-lapse' film of the garden changing through the year, so my 'early-day' New Year Resolution is to take weekly photographs of specific parts of the garden from the same viewpoints and post them here (and elsewhere), in contradistinction to the present political malaise, and as a way of finding the value in the changing face of 'the garden'.
Here are the first two - alternative viewpoints - of the 'bottom corner', cleared in preparation for the emerging snowdrops and hellebores of winter.
(This is a project, partly encouraged, but partly reacting to, the Social Media, and taking inspiration from the other blogs here on the Forum which relate the changing nature of the natural world with the garden).[attachimg=1][attachimg=2]
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I'm catching up on forum posts and I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed and agree with you October 11 post. Small gardens and nurseries are so much more enjoyable than the big display gardens.
Jan
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Tim, it looks like you are making good progress. How did the Heather Angel talk go?
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Thanks Jan. Have some good connections here and on Facebook with gardeners in America and in the NARGS. I like that International nature of gardening, it goes with my scientific mind and background which crosses boundaries. Hope to show much more through this spring. There is an article coming up on our garden later in the spring as well - photographed last April, which is quite encouraging to work on it now for 2018.
Ian, Heather Angel's talk was superb! I've posted a short description on my Kent Diary http://www.alpinegardensociety.net/diaries/Kent/+January+/875/. (http://www.alpinegardensociety.net/diaries/Kent/+January+/875/.) The only problem is really learning from her photographic skills - I now need a good Macro lens and much more time and patience. We advertised the talk widely and doubled our normal audience which gave a real buzz to the evening. She stayed with us so I also had a good opportunity to speak with her before and after her talk; she is a very remarkable lady.[attachimg=1][attachimg=2][attachimg=3]
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Tim, it looks like you had a good meeting from your report. I don,t think I fall into any category regarding plants. I am not a scientist and not a very good gardener. My plant photos. are what could be described at best as "record photos." I have looked for wild flowers for many years and if I find a rare species I wonder why it is growing in that place and not other places. I have quite a collection of flower photos. but doubt if any would be up to the standard of being published. I don,t take the time to compose the photo. People like Heather Angel must take a long time to get everything just right before pressing the shutter, I envy their skill and commitment.
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In March issue of RHS magazine The Garden - article by Rachel de Thame on Tim and Gillian Ingram's garden at Copton Ash ......
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Not great shots, just quick snaps to give you the idea!
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Still a little while to go before the real glories of spring flowering like those in Bennet Smith's photographs in that article, but it's wonderful watching everything emerging now, and most of these plants were nicely covered in snow during the arctic blast of weather we have just had. Looking forward to spring. A few nice things here in the foreground from Choice Landscapes and Hartside Nursery at Alpine Garden Society Shows. There may be more at the South West AGS Show at Rosemoor tomorrow - especially from Keith and Ros Wiley at Wildside.[attachimg=1]
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Looking forward to read it! I have saved it to the holidays next week :) (We are expecting the third blast of arctic weather in 4 weeks)
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Another diary of sense from Tim - http://www.alpinegardensociety.net/diaries/Kent/+April+/894/ (http://www.alpinegardensociety.net/diaries/Kent/+April+/894/) including images of many old specialist nurery catalogues which will bring memories for many of us.
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For the true plantsman/geek. The diminutive flowers of a Penstemon, aff. grinnellii (RMB 551), ex. seed from Robert Barnard. This is growing in a narrow sand bed next to our neighbours which previously was an ugly Leylandii hedge. There are some other oddities here including a couple of umbels from Steve Law at Brighton plants, Heracleum stevenii and Thapsia garganica, which I will picture anon. The second picture shows the shrubby Scabiosa cretica and a couple of Sideritis species, surprisingly not cut back by the arctic weather in March, along with Veronica thymoides and Lithodora oleifolia (just beginning to flower).
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Readers will be aware both of Tim's championing of his local district, and his agreement with so many of us that television treats "alpine and rock gardening" rather poorly - so it was good to read this ....
Tim Ingram
Well would you know (Margaret Young, Paddy and Ben Parmee, Adrian Young, Cliff Booker and anyone else who champions rock gardening and alpine plants). The Faversham Rock Garden is on Gardener's World this Friday... and it is a pretty good example - a real feature of the town. See the very end of my Diary Entry from last summer http://www.alpinegardensociety.net/diaries/Kent/+June+/835/ (http://www.alpinegardensociety.net/diaries/Kent/+June+/835/)
Sandra Todd
re: Blooming Marvelous Gardening Faversham
This may be of interest to some of you, BBC Gardeners World film unit was in Faversham a couple of weeks ago. They were doing a piece on the volunteers and Abel’s Acre ( Forbes Road rockery), anyway it’s going to be shown on Friday 8th June.
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A reminder that Tim's diaries are available on the AGS website : http://www.alpinegardensociety.net/diaries/Kent/#top (http://www.alpinegardensociety.net/diaries/Kent/#top)
I commend them to readers. 8)
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Tim and Gillian's garden at Copton Ash near Faversham has various open days for the National Garden Scheme in 2020 .... https://ngs.org.uk/view-garden/9253/?fbclid=IwAR2m4i82OchMgJgp3HRB9OSW-gLXCkZs2KxB3xgoeANy0Xlmc9uzQtouqpg for all details
Tim wrote on Facebook : The final touches before the weather inevitably sympathises and breaks down for the weekend. If you like the bracing climate of North Kent and want to blow away the cobwebs there will be warm soup and good company. Even owls are welcome 😉.
https://ngs.org.uk/view-garden/9253/
(Note: parking may be difficult outside the garden on the A251 Ashford Road due to the imminent gas pipeline repairs. There is walking access to the A251 from Salters Lane (parallel to the A251) via the small private lane close to the motorway bridge)
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Tim continues his Diary of a Kent Gardener on the AGS website .... this is the link to one from 2017 ...
http://archive.alpinegardensociety.net/diaries/Kent/%20June%20/830/?fbclid=IwAR3IziUPZZcKgq1y8RxYLyCAAofiqhTZWfIo4B-juSBXeYRUKLOyAFRjDPg (http://archive.alpinegardensociety.net/diaries/Kent/%20June%20/830/?fbclid=IwAR3IziUPZZcKgq1y8RxYLyCAAofiqhTZWfIo4B-juSBXeYRUKLOyAFRjDPg)