Once upon a time, I had a Client with a stately Holly tree in their front garden.
It wasn't really a garden, as such: it was just a small triangle of land on the front of their property, but it separated them from the footpath, and it contained a large clipped Holly tree, so they felt a certain responsibility for it......
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To me, the outstanding memory of this year - assuming I want to remember it, that is - is how weird the weather has been. And how wet, miserable and grey the latter half of the year was.
And, no, it's not just one of those "oh, the days were sunnier when we were young, the summers were long and hot, the winters were bright and crisp" feelings: I looked it up, and October 2023 is the wettest month since 1838.
Alongside that, September 2023 was the warmest September on record.
March of 2023 was the wettest in 40 years across England, after the driest February in 30 years.
All of which is very unsettling for our plants (I have no idea how the farmers are coping....) and pretty unsettling for those of us who are self-employed and who work outdoors, as bad weather has a big impact on how many hours we can work, and therefore on our earnings.
Back in 2014, my garage flooded (it's in a block, away from the house, luckily) for the first time, due to a combination of insufficient drainage and a lot of rain. It was only about an inch deep, but it was very messy, and took a long time to dry out.
It happened again in 2016, left: then again in 2018, and I realised that it was going to become a regular event, so I took action and dug a drainage channel, to get the water away from the building.
This helped, but the garage was flooded again in 2019, and again in 2020.
This year, 2023, the garage had flooded four times by June, and I'd stopped making a note of it after that, because now it floods - despite my drainage channel - every time we have heavy rain.
And yet, back in 2018, it was so hot and dry that I was writing article after article about how to cope with drought, how to water pots, how to resuscitate plants which had dried right out... seems incredible now, doesn't it?
All of which seems to show that yes, climate change is a very real thing, although not quite in the way we'd imagined it would be.
The official position is that climate change is linked to global warming, and we all assumed it was going to be hot and dry: but that turns out not to be the case. The climate might be getting warmer, but the weather is getting worse - and that's the difference between them. Climate "is", if you like: but weather "might be". The climate is getting warmer, there's no doubt about that, on a world-wide scale: but the actual weather, the stuff we deal with every day, is not getting warmer, as such: it's getting wetter, wilder, less predictable, less regular, less seasonal.
In fact, in 2020 I wrote an ironic article about climate change, where I went through an article from a gardening magazine, from ten years earlier, and commented on how wrong the predictions within it had been: they thought we'd all have astro-turf (because it would be too hot and dry for grass) and prairie planting with drought-tolerant plants.... well, that turned out to be a bit off the mark, didn't it!
Although the astro-turf thing is sort of coming true: I'm seeing a lot of artificial grass these days, especially in tiny new-build gardens. I can't really blame them: the sort of people who buy new builds are mostly young families, or working professionals, who don't know much about gardening and who don't have time for them anyway.
The gardens are so small that there isn't room for a shed for the mower, and besides, the lawns are so small that it's barely worth getting a mower out anyway. And the houses are so small that an "outdoor room" has become a necessity rather than a luxury, and there's no point having an outside space that you can't use because it's muddy, or gets your shoes wet: so out goes the grass, and in comes the hard landscaping and the dreaded plastic grass.
"Not."
Sterile. But practical, if this is all the outside space you have, you poor things.
Oh, to be fair, I should also mention that most new builds don't have "soil" in the designated "garden" areas, they have subsoil and building rubble, compacted to a rock-like consistency, with no drainage and not much chance of anything growing in it, without expensive and messy remedial work beforehand.
So it is a lot easier to just scrape off the top layer of weeds, and throw down the plastic grass.
So what can we hope for, in 2024?
More of the same, I suspect! Unpredictable weather, plants flowering at the wrong time, late frosts, early heatwaves, miserable summers and milder winters, which sounds like a good thing, but to be honest, wouldn't you rather have a couple of weeks of cold-but-bright weather, rather than this relentless mild-but-dirty-grey stuff?
After all, most plants are not that worried by the snow, and it is awfully pretty to look at!
So there you have it, 2023 is nearly over, the day are starting to get longer again - yay! - and we are heading uphill to spring.
You may also have noticed a change on my blog: from now on, I'll be creating the new articles over on my Patreon page, on a weekly basis, with just one post a month on here, to keep you in touch.
But you are most welcome to trawl through the past posts on this blog, of course - and there are plenty to keep you occupied!
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All the gardening articles - in books, and particularly on the internet - bang on about leaving dead perennials standing through the autumn, rather than cutting them down as soon as they die, in order to allow the "frost display".
This is the sort of thing they mean:
Ethereal shades of pink, green, beige, silver, gold... lovely.
Who could resist?
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This is the time of year - early winter, at the time of writing - when our ferns are starting to look brown and revolting, so now is the time to get out there and cut off all the dying foliage.
Here's a typical example - left: the ends of the fronds are black, and they have flopped down to the ground, exhausted, and longing to be taken away to a place where they can lay down and quietly decompose.
Let's put them out of their misery, and cut them off, then.
Out with the secateurs, and off we go!
Now, at this point, I always instruct people to cut the dead or dying fronds off as low down as they can, not to leave stumps.
This is the same clump as in the photo above: all the fronds have been cut off, and I've take the opportunity to remove the Lamium that was creeping all around the fern base, as well.
Sometimes, students will ask "what if some of the fronds are still quite green and nice?" and my answer is that once you start cutting them off, it's best to cut the whole lot off, otherwise you may find that the remaining fronds won't stand upright without the dead ones underneath.
Also, you could look on it this way: if most of the fronds have reached the wilting point, then the others are going to be there pretty soon, and you are just making two jobs for yourself, instead of doing it all in one go.
Conversely, of course, if only one or two fronds have gone brown or black, then carefully snip those few out, and leave the rest until they have reached the stage of "not looking nice any more".
Regardless of when you cut them, the important part is how to cut them - and that is, right down to the base.
This is definitely how not to do it!
No! No!
What is that??
Why did you cut off the top, and leave the brown stem behind??
It looks ridiculous!
And it won't improve - those brown bits will stay like that, or at best they'll partially snap at the base, or bend over, and then they will lie on the ground, looking up at you, accusingly.
In the meantime, they will catch every fallen leaf, every bit of wind-blown debris or litter: yes, it could be said that they are creating micro-climates and/or wildlife habitats, but honestly, there are acres, miles, of untended land all around us: road verges, railway embankments, canals, walks, footpaths, backs-of-industrial-areas, neglected areas, hedgerows, junctions of back-to-back gardens: all these places provide plenty of micro climates and wildlife habitats, so there really is no need to allow your precious garden to become over-run with weeds.
So you might as well do a proper job the first time: cut them off flush with the tightly furled new fronds (technical term: croziers) (which still sounds like "croupiers" to me) so that they end up looking more like this:
... a collection of round, light green knobbles.
You can now clear a space around the fern, and if time allows, you can also clear away some of the moss and other debris which has found its way in amongst the knobbles.
This is now all set for the winter: and come spring, you will be able to see the first signs of those new croziers, as they start to unfold!
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Many people have Hellebores in their garden - usually the fabulous Oriental Hellebore:
OK not the most glorious of photos, but it's a real photo of a real garden, not something pinched off the internet, which has been filtered, tweaked, sharpened, and generally faked...
Here we have a rather nice cascade of purple ones, Helleborus orientalis, and because this is one of "my" gardens, I have removed the majority of the old leaves, so that we can see the flowers properly.
Not everyone likes to do this: some people prefer to leave the leaves, if you see what I mean.
But I prefer to remove them, for reasons which have been covered in several other articles - just type "Hellebores" into the Search box, top left - not least being to reduce Hellebore Leaf Spot disease.
Here - right - is a clump of Hellebores in a different garden, and you can see the brown blotches on the older, yellowing leaves.
Pretty unpleasant, aren't they? I really don't see any reason to leave them on the plant: and as for that old wives' tale about "the leaves protect the tender new flowering stems and/or tender new leaves from frost," well, that's simply not the case, because I have been chopping off old leaves in autumn for over twenty years now, and I have yet to see a denuded Hellebore suffering any damage from frost, or snow, or anything else which the British winter can throw at them.
An additional advantage of removing all the old leaves before flowering is that you can see whether or not you have a thick clump of tiny seedlings around the base of the mature plants.
Now, if you read any of those other articles, you will also have learnt that I am in the habit of dead-heading like a demon, once the flowers are over, precisely to prevent the Hellebores from setting seed, and creating those vast numbers of seedlings.
"But surely, this is a good thing?" I hear you ask (Gary, this means you!), "Because then I'll have lots of free Hellebores, and I can pot them up and sell them?"
Alas, they may seed themselves freely, but the seedlings don't "come true", so you are unlikely to get the same desirable colours as they ones which you bought, unless the original ones are all the same colour.. and unless you can prevent any cross-pollination with other colours. Also, it takes between three and five years for seedlings to achieve flowering size. (Sorry, Gary!)
So if you leave them - as anyone with Hellebores in their garden will know - you get a dense clump of seedlings all around the base of the parent plant, like this:
What's wrong with this?
Well, those hungry little seedlings are gobbling up all the goodness from the soil, depriving the adult plant of nutrition: and congestion is never a good thing in a garden, because it leads to mildew and other diseases, especially over the winter.
At the very least, it means you can't see the emerging flowers for the vigorous leaves of the seedling, so it's best to weed the seedlings out as soon as you see them.
The trick is to avoid damaging the parent plant, especially at this time of year when the new flowers are just starting to emerge, so you will need to be careful.
And it's a much easier job if the seedlings are still tiny, as in this photo (above), because they have not yet developed the long, wiry roots which make them hard to remove. Of course, it's even easier if you can weed them out over the summer, before there is any risk of damaging the flower shoots, but let's be honest, there are usually more important jobs to do through the summer, and weeding the Hellebores is one of those jobs which often gets put off until winter.
So there's a nice job for a winter's day: remove the old leaves from your Oriental Hellebores, and while you are at it, winkle out all those tiny little seedlings, carefully and gently: then you can sit back and wait for the flowers!
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I was working with one of my students, the other day, and we were potting on some plants: this means that they had outgrown their pots - the plants, not the student - and needed to be "potted on" into larger ones.
This activity requires larger pots, and a decent amount of additional potting medium, to fill up the gaps in the pots. This "medium" can be multi-purpose compost, "organic matter" (which I always have to put in quotes, because it's the fancy PC name for farmyard manure, also known as cow poo), or topsoil, or even soil from your own garden.
I say "even soil from your own garden" because using garden soil - or "earth", as we know it! - is not necessarily the best things for plants in pots: garden soil usually contains weed seeds, and often contains quite a few bugs, worms, creepy crawlies, etc, which can be a problem for plants-in-pots.
So it's usually best to use the pretty-much-sterile bagged stuff.
The Client produced a couple of old bags of assorted stuff: one was bone dry and dusty, one was lumpy and hard, one had a lot of mushroom-type white filaments growing on it, and the last one appeared to be garden soil.
We decided to mix them all up together, in the hopes that the deficiencies would cancel each other out, so the first job was to find an empty wheelbarrow.
We started with the worst one, the bone-dry commercial multi-purpose compost. It's always best to "wet" this sort of compost
first, before doing anything with it: as you will know if you grown things in pots, it is well-nigh impossible to re-wet commercial multi-purpose compost, once it has dried out: just adding water doesn't do it, the water runs off and through the dry compost, in a very annoying manner, so it needs a bit of special treatment.
This next part, by the way, also applies to newly-opened bags of commercial multi-purpose compost as well: always check it, before you use it.
How to check it? Apply the "fist" test: take a big handful and gently squeeze it: open your hand, and if you can just see your finger-ridges in the clod of compost, it's perfect.
Now, that's a bit of a tricky concept to explain in words, so I have just popped outside and taken some photos for you, to illustrate the process.
It's been in the tray for a couple of days, so it's dried out: multi-purpose compost dries out really quickly, so I try to only sieve as much as I am going to need on that day. But there's usually a bit left over, and it's not a problem, as long as you remember to re-wet it before using it.
This batch is clearly too dry - I can tell by looking at it, by the colour of it, but let's apply the fist test anyway.
I take a fistful of the compost, and squeeze it in my hand.
Then I hold my hand where it is, and open my fingers:
Look what happens - the dry compost just falls back into my hand, and some of it falls through my fingers.
This is Too Dry.
If your compost is like this (and ours certainly was!) then put some of it in a bucket or a potting-up tray, add water, and rub it through your hands as though making crumble, until it is just damp enough. If you don't know how to rub up a crumble mix, then shame on you *laughs*, just mix it around with your hands, rubbing it and stirring it until all the water is absorbed.
It's no good just pouring water on top of it - the water will "sit" in globules, rather like when they used to let us play with mercury at school. (Do they still do that? Are they allowed to?) So you have to work the water in, manually.
Here is my potting tray, I have added water, and rubbed it in, and in fact, if you look closely, you can see that I didn't bother to do the outer edges, because I just wanted enough to get a photo of it, to show you all: can you see how the far left and far right of the tray are lighter in colour, and dusty-looking?
That is the original dry compost. The slightly darker, lumpier-looking stuff in the middle is the area which received the water.
Now I apply the fist test again: and in case you are wondering, the sun went in, which is why this photo is a different colour from the above!
But you can still see the darker compost in the middle, and the lighter compost to the far left and far right.
There is no trickery here, this is the same compost, honest!
When I open my hand, the compost stays on the palm of my hand, and you can clearly see the ridges where my fingers were.
This shows that my compost is damp enough.
Having rubbed in some water to your compost, how do you know if you've made it "damp enough", exactly?
Do the fist test again: if it drips all over your leg, it's too wet: if it all falls apart in your hand, it's still too dry, add more water.
Keep working more water in, until you get to that perfect dampness, where you can just see those finger-ridges.
Right, end of demonstration, and back to the plot: having made the multi-purpose compost into something usable, we then added the other material.
The garden soil one, we tipped through a sieve first, to remove stones and other unwanted lumps.
The lumpy, rock-hard one was also tipped through the sieve, and the lumps were crushed in our hands: any which refused to be crushed were put aside. The mouldy stuff, well, that's nothing to worry about, a lot of commercially-produced compost will produce what appears to be disastrous amounts of mould, or fungus, and although it may be scary looking, it's perfectly normal, as fungus grows when things are dark and moist, ie the inside of a black plastic bag. Spores are pretty much everywhere, they are in the air all around us, so a bit of "mould" in a bag of compost is nothing to be alarmed about.
Having mixed it all together (at this point, there may or may not have been a couple of choruses of "you put de lime in de coconut, and mix dem all up"), we applied the fist test again, and decided that it was still a bit too dry, so we stirred in some more water, until we were happy with it.
Why go to all this trouble? Well, I'm sure you've heard all those nice little aphorisms about "you can't build a castle on shaky foundations", or "forewarned is forearmed", or "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure", although that one ought to be "a gram of preparation is worth a kilo of cure" in these modern, decimal times.
The point is, if you try to pot on, or pot up, with dry, horrible compost (I use the word "compost" now, because it takes too long to write out the description of "potting medium" every time) then you will struggle: if the compost is bone dry, you won't be able to pack it firmly but gently around the plant, you will find yourself ramming it in, in order to hold the plant upright. This damages the delicate roots: and as soon as you try to water it, the compost will "boil" in the pot, and will froth up and bubble over the sides, while the water then leaps straight through and out, all over your feet.
But if you get your compost just right, before you start - ah, that's when potting up, or potting on, becomes pleasurable, because it is easy. End of lecture.
So there we were, with a wheelbarrow full of good "stuff": well mixed, and perfectly acceptable for potting up, potting on, and for top-dressing any pots whose soil level was getting a bit low. We had also made use of four half-bags of otherwise wasted material, which is ecologically sound: we'd cleared out four dirty, cobwebby, messy bags from behind the shed: and now we could instruct the Client to buy in half a dozen new bags, ready for use.
And the re-potted plants were very happy!
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I always instruct Clients, Trainees, Students - and anyone with even a passing interest in compost - to stack their compost pens in such a way that there is a depression in the centre of each pen, and not to pile things in a sort of cone shape.
This is all to do with water retention: far more compost pens fail from being too dry, than from being too wet.
If you pile everything up in to a cone in the centre of the pen, the rainwater, dew, etc will roll off and out the sides.
If you make a depression in the middle, the water will soak into the pen's contents.
It really is that simple.
Here's the compost pen of a well-trained Client:
Perfect!
That's not a lid, by the way - those slats of wood on the top were just sitting there temporarily.
So these Clients get top marks, and - more to the point - they get excellent compost.
Now, I have a student who didn't really believe the whole Anti-Cone philosophy: we were working together in a large garden a couple of weeks back, and our tasks produced a huge volume of garden waste, far more that you would normally expect to find. We tied some pallets into open-fronted pens, and piled in the waste.
Both pens were piled higher than the pallets. The student piled theirs in a cone, whereas I piled mine in a flat-topped, push-it-into-the-corners arrangement.
One week later:
Can you see the difference?
My pen, flat on top, has sunk down a considerable amount. It was level with the top of the pallet at the back, but now it's a good three to four slats lower, especially in the middle.
Whereas the student's pen is still a cone, and is still very nearly as high as when it was built.
Conclusive proof, they agreed!
So, dear listener, when piling up material which you hope will rot down, don't make it into a cone, make it into a flat-top shape.
I rest my case!
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Why are the stones in groups after rain?
Have you ever noticed this?
If your garden soil is stony, then after a while you find that the stones have arranged themselves into small groups.
In this case, I know that the garden owner is not able to do any gardening herself, so I know that no-one has disturbed the soil, other than me, the birds, the wind and the weather.
I've seen it time and time again, and I've often idly wondered why, but I've never really tried to find out what's going on, until one of my Clients spotted it in her own garden, and asked me what was going on.
I already know that small stones come to the surface in garden beds: annoyingly! No matter how many you rake off, more will always come to the surface.
This is an easy phenomenon to explain, it's exactly the same as when you shake a bowl of any dry materials, ie cake mix after you've rubbed in the fat, the lumps come to the top.
When potting up at home, I see the same thing: if you shake a tray or bucket of compost, the lumps come to the top.
And if you can imagine it, the whole planet is being “shaken” by geological stress, by gravity, by rotation, etc etc etc, so although we feel that the ground is pretty solid, it's actually being constantly shaken - in slow motion.
This explains why small stones are constantly working their way up through the soil to the surface. Nothing to do with worms pushing them up, as I heard one person say!
But why, once they are on the surface, do they congregate in small clumps? (Not because “the worms push them into heaps” as I heard a different person say...)
I did some research, asked around - yes, other people have noticed it, too - and the best answer I've found so far is that when it rains heavily, the big droplets push the smallest stones to one side or the other. They continue to be moved about by the rain, until they find themselves bumping up against a slightly larger stone, which is too big to be moved by the rain.
So, over the course of several hours/days/weeks of rain, each slightly bigger stone will accumulate a halo of smaller stones around it.
If I had all the time in the world, and enough money not to have to go out to work, I'd like to set up a research bed with cameras to take photos every day, to see just how long this actually takes - wouldn't that be interesting? And can you imagine watching the film afterwards, with the stones invisibly moving into clumps?
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... "But in my heart, it's spring!"
And according to the daffodils in "my" gardens, it may still be early November, but as far as they are concerned, it's nearly spring.
Look!
There they are, poking their noses above ground already.
Anyone would think that it's nearly spring, and yet we haven't had a proper winter yet. In fact, it's been surprisingly mild, I've been working in a t-shirt for most of this week so far. Yes, trousers as well *sigh*, not just a t-shirt... *rolls eyes*
Anyway, here we are in November, trying to catch up with all the usual autumn slaughter jobs - cutting down perennials, general trimming and tidying - and now we also have to watch where we are putting our feet.
I'm often asked when, as a professional gardener, is it best to start working for a new Client, and I have to say that it's a lot easier to start in spring, because then you can see where all the bulbs are.
Which saves you from that heart-wrenching moment when you feel their crisp new shoots crunch and shatter under an unwary boot. Oops.
So, even though it's winter, the daffs think it's nearly spring, so be careful where you put your feet, when weeding or cutting back the beds and borders.
Not that there's been much opportunity to get onto the beds and borders, as this has to have been the wettest summer/autumn since - well, since the last one, ha ha. The wettest for some time, surely? (*hasty googling*) Well, what do you know, it's the wettest since 2006 (and the year has not ended yet!) and it is the seventh wettest year since records began.
I rest my case, m'lud.
When it's been raining, I try to stay off the soil as much as possible, as stomping all over wet beds ruins the soil structure, not to mention leaving wet muddy footprints all over the grass, and treading mud all over the paths, patio etc, so it's a lucky escape for the new daffodils.
And there's always a lifting of the spirits that appears when you see the first daffodil noses peeking out of the soil - and so I sing, "but in my heart it's spring!"
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I often come across odd things in "my" gardens, and this one always makes me smile.
It's a small outbuilding, which appears to have a section of old walling erupting from it, in "Alien" chest-burster fashion.
This has lead to many minutes of happy speculation, while I've been weeding or working around it: it's clear that the back wall of the brick outbuilding, the face on the right, is stone, rather than brick.
So there must have been a stone building there, and the red brick was added on, using the existing wall as one of its four walls.
But did the stone building continue to our left? Or was it abutting an older stone wall - judging by the size of the stones projecting, which would appear to be larger than the stones used in the wall.
Was there originally a massive old wall, which then had a stone building attached to it, which then had the red brick outhouse built onto it, but then the original wall fell down?
Or maybe the original wall formed part of the stone building, but when the stone building was taken down - all apart from this one wall, which was by then part of the red brick outhouse - the wall was removed as well, but they found they couldn't get it all out without destroying the outhouse.
You think they would have tried to make a slightly neater job of it, either way. I don't suppose I will ever know, because the current owner has no information about it.
So the remaining question is:
Is this a wall-eating building?
Or a wall, eating a building?
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I wrote about this subject Cruelty to Trees: Pots and again in a recent article about Salix Kilmarnock and, as a few people have asked about it, there are a couple of points I'd like to add.
Soil: I'm often asked what soil should be used when putting trees in pots.
First rule - don't use multi-purpose compost, bought in a bag from the garden centre. It's too "light": it won't hold the tree firmly in place, and it certainly does not hold water well. If it once dries out, you will really struggle to re-wet the compost.
Don't use garden soil, it's too heavy and will be full of bugs and - in particular - worms. It will tend to become waterlogged in winter, and although it might seem like a good idea to have living organisms in the pot, worms will tunnel around and create air gaps, which will be detrimental to the roots of the tree. You might think about picking out any worms before you use the soil, but there will, of course, be lots of worm eggs, which you won't spot....
What about home made compost, then? The problem with home-made compost is that it's invariably full of weed seeds: domestic composting simply doesn't get hot enough to kill the seeds. You can still use it: but you must be prepared to weed it, and keep on weeding it.
Best option? Use bought-in topsoil, soil from a loam stack, or bought-in organic matter, ie farmyard manure, which should be pretty much sterile.
Don't add water retaining granules - just use good quality planting material.
Top dress once a year:- this means, gently scrape off the very top layer and top it up with fresh. Add a small fistful of granulated feed, if you have any.
Feed regularly: liquid feed, maybe once a month. Growmore is fine, tomato feed is fine, my personal favourite is Liquid Seaweed: they are all much of a muchness, but I feel that the seaweed is the most natural product, and it certainly works.
Keep the ants out: ants ruin the roots of trees in pots, because they mine and tunnel through the rootball. Air on the small feeder roots will kill them, and eventually kill the tree. Plus, ants will "farm" aphids, so any aphid infestation will become a major problem if you have ants in your pants - err, sorry, in your pots - because the ants will defend the aphids from all predators.
I have two methods for keeping ants out of pots: firstly, when I am planting the pot, I line the very bottom of the pot with a piece of horticultural fleece before I start adding the compost. Secondly, I put my pots up on feet, which can be lovely decorative ceramic things, or just blocks of wood: even old bricks would do, but they are not particularly pretty to look at.
Another reason why I always advise standing pots up on feet, is to prevent the tree rooting through the central hole.
And it helps with drainage in winter... however...
Watering:
The drawback of pots-on-feet is that you have to water them more often.
If the compost dries out, it's really hard to re-wet it: see this article on Hot Weather Watering for details on how to deal with dried out compost in pots. You'll know if your compost has dried out, because the water will run straight through the pot and out of the bottom.
This is a bad thing.
Not only is the water not staying in the pot, it is washing out what few nutrients remain in the soil, so it must be dealt with. As per the article about Hot Weather Watering, the best way to re-wet a potted plant is to plunge the entire thing underwater. But this can be tricky, if it's a big heavy pot, or if you don't have a sufficiently large bucket. An alternative is to stand the pot on a large "saucer" which can be terracotta, ceramic, or plastic - it really doesn't matter. This will catch the water which runs through, and hold it just below the pot, so that the pot can soak it back up, slowly.
It's a bit catch-22: in winter, you need the pots up on feet for drainage, to prevent the pots getting waterlogged: this also reduces the risk of frost damage to the pot, where waterlogged soil expands as the water freezes, and bursts the pot.
But in summer, you need them in saucers, to retain the water and prevent them drying out.
What are we to do? (*laughs*)
The answer is, you keep an eye on them. If they start to dry out too much - if we have a spell of very hot and/or windy weather, for example, or if you are going away for a few days - then take them off the feet and put them on saucers. Likewise, if when watering them, you spot that the water is running straight through, then put them on saucers for a few days, until the water stays inside the pot as you add it.
This is not as onerous as it sounds: in many ways, it's nice to have to keep checking on your trees in pots (and other plants in pots, as well) because it gives you the opportunity to look at them, to admire them, to enjoy them.
And I do like people to enjoy their trees!
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Well, I never thought I would say these words, but the other day I found a Willowherb which was, for once, more than just a weed.
Here it is:
Can you see all those scoopy round holes in the leaves?
Those are from Leaf Cutter Bees, a subject about which I have written, some years back: solitary bees who replicate by burying their eggs individually, inside tidy little cocoons made from circles cut from leaves: each egg gets a store of pollen, and a secure little pod in which to grow and develop, safe from predators.
Previously, I have noticed this damage mostly on Rose leaves: occasionally on other garden plants, but mostly on Roses.
So it was quite a surprise to find a nasty old Willowherb showing the same holes in the leaves.
Alas, this damage is only cosmetic and does not harm the plant, so I had to weed out the Willowherb anyway... but it's nice to know that someone finds them useful!
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Every so often I get all excited about a new example of fasciation, a subject with which I am fascinated, as regular readers will know....
This one cropped up at the beginning of May, but I've only just got around to writing about it - I had a few days' holiday in the Peak District, and on one walk, I spotted some Petasites growing alongside the track.
This is Petasites hybridus, common name, hilariously, Butterbur. Very Harry Potter, don't you think?
It's one of those plants which may well have a place in a woodland glade, but isn't really sufficiently interesting to allow into your garden, particularly as it is a rampant spreader.
There is a "garden" species, Petasites fragrans (common name Winter Heliotrope) which, allegedly, smells of cherry pie. It's not a native, it was imported in the late C19th, and unfortunately it has also proved to be a rampant spreader, having escaped into the wild, and is now cheerfully making a bid to take over the south of the UK.
Interestingly, though, all the Winter Heliotrope, and most of the Butterbur, are male plants: they spread by underground rhizomes rather than by seed. Probably a good thing, bearing how invasive they are, merely from spreading sideways...
So, on balance, not something I would want to plant in any of "my" gardens, but it was quite nice to see a long stretch of it growing out in the wild, as it were.
And then...
I noticed....
Fasciation!
Fasciation really is all around us: once you start looking for it.
If you want to read more about it, just type the word into the Search box, top left of the screen....
On this example, you can see that the individual flowers have fused together to make one flat plate of a flower.
Very strange!
As I've said before, it's a spontaneous mutation, it's not infectious, it's purely cosmetic, it won't harm the plant, or affect its continued prosperity - it just looks a bit weird!
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The other day, I had a question arrive in my inbox ("Hi, Corine!" *waves enthusiastically* ) asking about the danger or otherwise of Aconites.
Aconitum - proper summer Aconite, or Monkshood - is one of those much-maligned flowers which gets a lot of bad publicity for no real reason.
Yes, it has toxic/poisonous capabilities, but so do many other plants (daffodil bulbs will kill you if you accidentally eat them): I think that Aconite has such a stigma because it, like Foxglove, and Hemlock, is one of those plants which was famously used as a poison in "olden days" so everyone knows about it.
This is the plant which are we talking about today:
Aconite is a perennial, so it comes back year after year: it grows to about waist height, it has flowering stems with a column of usually blue flowers: it spreads moderately slowly by just enlarging the clump, and it also spreads by seed, which can easily be prevented by dead-heading early, if you want to control it.
When talking about "poisonous Aconites" it's important not to be confused with Winter Aconite, proper name Eranthis hyamelis, which is an adorable little plant, with a bright yellow flower, which appears in winter, as the name would suggest - right.
Winter Aconites are only called "aconites" because their foliage is somewhat similar to that of the big blue Aconite... they are not related in any way, and Winter Aconites are not poisonous.
This is a perfect example of the importance of learning the proper names of plants, and not relying on the common names... I have encountered any number of people who have hysterically demanded the removal of these inoffensive little plants "because they are poisonous". They are not.
Proper Aconite, however, is indeed poisonous/toxic: especially if you eat it. So don't eat it!! The stories of people dying from Aconite poisoning fall, if you take the trouble to read them properly, into two categories: accidental eating, or deliberate murder.
Accidental occurs where someone has mistaken the root for something edible: there is a story (unsubstantiated) of a Canadian on a camping trip mistaking an aconite root for wild parsnip: they ate it, they died. Now, I have dug up a lot of Aconites over the years, and there is no way I would ever have mistaken the knobbly, gnarled root for the smooth tapered fatness of a parsnip... but the lesson here is, don't forage unless you are very sure what you are dealing with. And don't eat the roots of anything if you can't observe the foliage. The other story is described as "an older case" which could be fifty years ago, of the root being mistaken for horseradish. Again, the lesson has to be said, don't eat things unless you know what they are.
I suppose I would add, at this point, don't mix flowers and veg. I know there is a trend for making veg patches "pretty", and using companion planting to deter harmful bugs, but honestly, there is a reason why allotments and veg plots are tucked away out of sight: they are not supposed to be "pretty" they are supposed to be functional and efficient, and that means keeping the flowers in the flower garden. End of lecture. (*laughs*)
And as for the murder part: well, yes, people have used Aconite root in the past for poisoning other people, which is lamentable but not exactly the fault of the plant.
A side issue is the "contact" aspect: most sources will state that Aconite foliage is also toxic, but brushing up against the plant is unlikely to cause you any problems: partly because such contact would be fleeting, and partly because the roots are the really toxic part: according to the pfaf.org website - a very reputable source of properly-researched information - "Simple skin contact with the plant has caused numbness in some people". Not in everyone, you note, just "some people" and numbness, whilst worrying, is not exactly the same as being poisoned. And they go on to state that 90% of the toxicity is in the roots.
Personally I have spent 23 years handling Aconite plants: digging them up, moving them, planting them, splitting them, admiring them, dead-heading them, and they have never so much as brought me up in a rash. But you have to consider that many people are "sensitive to" or "allergic to" things which other people are not: so I can't make a blanket statement saying that it's fine to work around it with no precautions at all.
At home I deal with Aconites in my own garden bare-handed with no ill effect: at work, I always wear gloves anyway (because of broken glass, pottery, sharp stones, animal poo, slime mould, squishy slugs, you name it!), and eye protection (that callous expression, "better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick" might have been created for gardeners), but other than that, I don't wear long sleeves or cover my face, or anything like that: to me, Aconite is just another perennial, and one which I much prefer to Delphiniums because it looks just as lovely, and does not have to be staked.
I suspect that the current concern about plant poisoning in general is due to sheer ignorance: we now have a generation of children who know absolutely nothing about nature and plants: and they can't ask their parents, because their parents are the ones who weren't allowed to go on nature rambles because of health & safely rules for schools.
And their grandparents, who might be called on, are probably out climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, or abseiling down the Empire State Building, or whatever exciting things grandparents do these days: and of course they probably live miles away, so these split generations don't get to spend time together, as they used to.
This is such a worrying trend that I wrote an entire eBook about it (brace for shameless plug) called The Horrors of the Hedgerow:
... which specifically explains, with photos, the commonest toxic and/or poisonous plants which you are likely to encounter in the UK while out for a walk.
But those are mostly what you might call "weeds", and Aconites are a garden plant, and I might well say at this point that the list of toxic and/or poisonous garden plants is very long indeed!
So why is there so much concern over Aconite, specifically?
It could well be due to a much-publicised story from a few years back when someone's gardener keeled over and died in their garden, and he had been moving Aconites, so they were blamed for his sudden demise.
The story made headlines, but there was never a follow-up: the results of the autopsy were never publicised, nor was his medical history, so we still don't really know why he tragically died, but Aconites got the blame.
It is possible that he was one of those people who were extremely sensitive to this particular plant, but it is also possible that he had an underlying medical condition that was not related to it at all - we simply don't know.
My personal opinion on that sad episode is that anyone who is a professional gardener for more than a year will KNOW what they are allergic to, because they will have encountered it: so they would take precautions when working closely with something which they know could harm them.
Personally I am a little bit sensitive to working with a particular conifer, it brings my bare arms up in a slight rash, so if I'm pulling ivy out of one, or carrying out a task which means that I have to push my arms into the foliage, I either wear long sleeves, or mutter curses and put up with a bit of itching later.
So, is it "safe" to grow Aconites in your own garden, then?
Just look at those beautiful flowers! Bumble bees love them, as they are large enough for the bees to clamber inside them. And ooh, look, there I am, touching them bare-handed! Ooh! (*laughs*)
There are ways to make it safer, if you are concerned, so here are some suggestions.
Aconites within a garden don't need a lot of care: unlike Delphiniums, they don't need staking, so you don't have to have much contact with them, you can just let them get on with flowering. All you have to do is dead-head them after flowering if you want them to flower again, and then to cut down the foliage at year end, as you do with all perennials.Wear gloves when you do it, and you should be fine.
If you concerned, I would suggest ensuring the Aconites are in clumps rather than dotted around the garden, so that they are easier to avoid: and are the back of borders rather than the front, so that sensitive souls don't brush up against them by accident.
I would keep a small zone around them clear of other plants, so that you can access them to weed, without having to push them about too much: I would certainly suggest dead-heading as soon as they have finished flowering, to remove the seeds (just to be super-careful, don't compost them, put them in the council green waste bin if there is one) and then do the autumn cutting-down sooner rather than later, ie as soon as the foliage starts to look tatty, chop it right off.
In my opinion it's ok to compost the foliage, but you might prefer to put that foliage in the council waste bin as well.
Personally I would happily have a garden full of Aconites, but I would exclude each and every Euphorbia, which I would condemn to the fires of hell! But that's just my opinion!
.
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Does September count as autumn? Yes, I think it does: of course, the actual weather makes a difference, and we've had quite a mixed batch of weather lately, to the point where sometimes it's hard to know how many layers of clothing to put on in the mornings: for the last week or so I've been going out in shorts, fleece and sleeveless jacket, wondering if I ought to go to "longs" - but by mid morning I have been sweating, and glad to peel off a couple of layers!
Some years, the Siberian Iris look spectacular well into winter, but this year, they are already starting to look very tatty.
"What do we do with them?" one of my Patrons pleaded: "They look terrible!"
Firstly, let's look at what we are talking about. Iris sibirica is the fellow, and Siberian Iris, or Flag Iris, are two of the common names. And this is another moment to make that point about using "proper" names, because Flag Iris is usually taken to mean those very large yellow iris which you find growing in the water, along rivers, and sometimes in ponds: proper name Iris pseudocorus. It's a gorgeous thing, but, being a water-dwelling species, it would not do well in your well-drained garden bed. ("Unless it was an island bed, ha ha") (sorry...)
They are usually blue: and because they flower so early, we usually dead-head them, otherwise they spoil the look of the bed, quite apart from them spending a lot of energy making seed, which is quite unnecessary because they spread quite rapidly into good sturdy clumps.
However, in some years, the stems stay very straight, and the seed pods turn a smooth black, and they actually look quite attractive... typically, I can't find a photo to show that! In which case, you can put off cutting them back until such time as they no longer look attractive.
So there are two phases of maintenance for this plant: as soon as they have finished flowering, cut back each flowered stem right down to the ground (unless they are very straight and tidy). Leave the leaves (? always looks odd, writing that!) because they need to feed up the rhizomes for next year.
But by late summer/early autumn, those leaves are pretty much done, and are turning brown. Not so pretty! So now it is time to cut them back.
Here's a fairly typical example, left: not very appetising, is it?
The leaves are lank and flopped over, and you can see by the colour - pale green turning to brown - that they are no longer actively photosynthesising.
This year, the flowering stems have not turned a nice, glossy dark brown or black - instead they are merely brown, which is a bit disappointing: but at least they are still standing up straight.
My first pass, for plants like these, is to rake out the dead material by running my gloved hand through the clump.
Often, that can freshen up the appearance quite considerably.
Next job is to cut back the foliage to just a few inches, for tidiness: as I said, it's not photosynthesising any more, but I never like to cut this material right down to the ground, partly because then I might forget that the plant is there, and accidentally trample all over them while weeding.
Here we are - right: all the dead material has been raked out, and all of the foliage has been cut right back, to just a couple of inches, leaving the stiffly upright stems.
This allows me to do a further raking, to ensure all dead material is out: then I can see if there are weeds infiltrating the clump and, if so, remove them.
I can also then assess the clump, to see if it is getting over-crowded, and in need of division: in this case, not so much, because as you can see, it's a healthy, vigorous clump.
The flowering stems can be allowed to stand as a display until either they flop over, or until we get tired of looking at them.
So there you have it, easy peasy ways to tidy up your herbaceous perennial beds, in the middle of summer!
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"Everyone always says" that nature cannot produce a right angle.
Gentle curves - all day long. Sharp bends? Well, yes, we've all seen a few of those, but never right angles. Not geometrically precise right angles.
Exhibit A, m'lud:
What's that, if not a right angle!
(*laughs*)
This is a Hollyhock (Alcea) which had grown at least 7' tall, then flopped over on to the ground, and then carried on growing upwards.
Spiffing, eh? (*laughs again*)
I would call that a right angle, wouldn't you?
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One of my Clients had a pair of lovely old Cherry trees, each of which had been underplanted with a Clematis montana.
Here's one of them, in its full glory:
Everyone who saw them said "Wow!"
And yes, they were very much "Wow!".
Right up to the day that this one just fell over... because the tree underneath it had died, without us knowing that it was in trouble.
The Client asked me if the Clematis had killed the tree, and I replied Yes, I think so.
He looked at me. "You are going to say 'I warned you!', aren't you?" he said.
"Well," I replied, "I hate to say it, but yes, I did warn you that this was a possibility."
I had actually warned him several times, every year, that I felt the Clematis was getting too big and should be cut back. Why? Because with such a dense covering, we couldn't see what was going on underneath it.
The Client then asked if the climber had "strangled" the tree: no, Clematis is not a strangler, but the thick canopy of leaves and flowers - beautiful though it is - would have prevented light from getting to the tree's leaves, which would have caused it to struggle.
Without sunlight on the leaves, little photosynthesis would occur.
Then, such a thick covering of foliage kept the tree inside it very damp - I was shocked at the amount of soggy debris which was piled up in every fork and crotch of the dead, fallen, tree. This leads to rot, mould, fungus, you name it. All things which are not good for trees.
And - my main objection to growing climbers like this up trees - we were unable to see what the tree was doing, because it was completely covered. So we didn't see early signs of distress, such as dead foliage, lack of foliage, partial death of branches, etc.
OK, it is possible that the Cherry was in decline anyway, and its demise was only hastened by the Clematis: but my thought is that the two trees (the other one is just out of sight) were probably planted at the same time - as this was a formal arrangement - so if one was at the end of its life, the other one would also be in decline. But the other tree was perfectly healthy.
And, "just saying", as they say, the other tree's Clematis was no-where near as dense as this one. In fact, I used to check the other tree, and regularly remove dead branches, which were visible from the ground: whereas this one was so dense that I couldn't see inside it at all.
Now, I know that many of you really like the idea of a flowering climber scrambling up a tree - it has overtones of lovely old country gardens: but I'm not keen, and this is precisely why.
So my advice would be: if you really, really want to train a climber up a tree, then don't let the climber get too big: be prepared to cut it right down every few years - and when I say "right down" I mean right down to knee height. Then it can grow back, and the tree gets a chance to have fresh air all over it, and to be inspected for any problems.
Before it just falls over!
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Yes, it's time to get that Oregano under control - it's great for the bees, but it will take over the border if you give it half a chance.
This - left - is an example: there was originally a line of Oregano along the middle of the border, but now it has merged into one enormous amorphous blob, which has consumed nearly all the other plants.
It is also heading out into the lawn!
Big clumps like this are prone to ant invasion, so in amongst the flowers are a mass of ant hills, making it almost impossible to cut it back: and as many of them (in this garden) were red ants, that made it quite unpleasant for the poor gardener (ie me) who does not enjoy the painful bite of a red ant!
To avoid this sort of mess, start early, start when the plants are young, and don't let them get too big for their boots.
Here's the sort of thing which you might find:
It's now early September, the flowers have mostly gone over, so instead of the usual purple (or sometimes, white) flowers, there is a haze of mostly grey, spent, flowers.
This clump is starting to get too big: it's swamping the Lamium to the right, and it is also starting to smother the patio rose behind it.
Now is the time to cut it back!
If you "part" the upper foliage, you will find a dense mass of small new leaves at the base of the plant - in this photo, left, you can see those wiry brown stems, which lead up to the now-going-grey spent flowers. I have pushed them to each side, so that you can see it more clearly.
Take your secateurs, and cut off all those wiry brown stems, as low down as you reasonably can.
Don't cut them off a couple of inches clear of the new foliage, leaving a strange hedgehog-like creation: clip them closely down to the new leaves.
This leaves you with something more like this, right: quite a difference!
Once you get rid of all the top foliage, you can also see how far your original plant is spreading out sideways, rooting as it goes, so now is a good time to go round the edges of the clump, pulling up and cutting off the excess growth.
If you want more Oregano, you can take the pieces which you have pulled up, pot them up and water them, and in no time at all you will have a batch of strong new plants.
And in the meantime you will have saved your border from being swamped!
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