Snowdrops - time to enjoy them.

I'm always writing about Snowdrops, among other things - and occasionally, it's nice to just stop and admire them.

There! 

Isn't that lovely?

Particularly nice, I thought, with the pale winter sun making bold shadows of the trees.

These were all Galanthus nivalis, which is what you might call "common snowdrop", as it's the one you are most likely to find while out walking, ie not in someone's cultivated garden.

There are only three species of Galanthus which you would encounter in the wild, as it were: these ones, G. nivalis (which always makes me think of Nivea), G. plicata, and G. elwesii.

If you'd like to know the difference, you can't do much better than to download my Field Guide on the subject:

 ...and if you have Kindle Unlimited, it's free!

Free!

All that work, for free!

(and if you don't have Kindle Unlimited, it's only a couple of quid, go on, buy it, go on, go on!)

I love the way that we can only have Snowdrops now, in late winter: unlike buying out-of-season fruit and veg all year round in the supermarket, we can only admire these delicate beauties on their own terms.

And it always lifts my spirits, because whenever you see a drift of "wild" snowdrops, out there in woodland, or alongside footpaths, or on verges: always, there is the thought that someone, some day, planted the original clump, and then left them there to multiply, so that everyone walking past can enjoy them.

Community spirit, at its best!

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Moving a Monkey Puzzle Tree - more info!

Some years ago, I wrote about moving a Monkey Puzzle tree, and the other day I had a question: or rather, one enquiry with several follow-up questions!

Barbara asked:  is there any special way of digging it out so as to not kill it? Is there a time when it could only be dug up? Also can it be put into any pot, or must it be plastic, or stone? What kind of soil should we put it in, or will the earth be OK?

Here - left - to remind you, is Spiny Norman, the one which I successfully dug up, moved across three counties, potted up, crown-lifted, kept for several years and then finally sold, when it became too big to keep.

So, let's run through Barbara's questions.

1) is there any special way of digging it out so as to not kill it? 

Not any "special" way, no: as per the other article - which I recommend you read, before trying it for yourself! -  the first job is to tie the branches up, to make the tree as vertically narrow as possible, otherwise you can't get close enough to dig it up at all!

Next, as with digging up any shrub or tree,  insert a garden fork all the way round the base of the tree, at a distance of at least a foot (30cm) from the trunk, and gently lever upwards. Just to loosen the soil, just to see how firmly rooted it is, just to see if it is going to come out easily, or will it put up a fight. 

I always go in with the fork first, because the tines of a fork slide between and around the roots: if you go in with a spade, you will simply chop through all of them, which might make it quick and easy to get it out, but can damage the roots beyond survival.

So, exploratory work with a fork first - not really with the intention of lifting the tree, but of loosening the soil.

Next, I go in on hands and knees, and feel around in the loosened soil for the main roots. Often, you will find quite stout roots, radiating outwards, which you can pull out of the surrounding soil without breaking them. If they are too long or stout to pull out. then they will have to be cut: use sharp secateurs and cut them neatly,  as "long" as  you can. 

Having severed the roots, the whole thing should now come out of the ground: aim to keep a solid rootball of soil around the base of the tree, but don't worry if you have a few of those longer, bigger roots flapping about in mid-air.

How big a rootball? Depends on the size of the tree. Barbara's one is, she says, about a yard/metre in height, so it's very similar to Spiny Norman. His rootball was about the size of a football, with a couple of big roots, which I'd had to cut.

Next question:

2) Is there a time when it could only be dug up? 

 No, you can do this at any time of year, as long as the ground is not frozen. It's a horrible messy job to do, if it has been raining for weeks... but that need not stop you doing it. If we've had weeks of drought and baking sunshine then the ground might be rock-hard, in which case you might struggle to get the fork into it. But there is no "wrong" time.

3) can it be put into any pot, or must it be plastic, or stone? 

Any pot will do.  Spiny Norman lived in a plastic plant pot for several years. If you intend to keep it in a pot, then a solid pot would be much better: it's better insulation for the roots against heat and cold, as plastic plant pots are thin and don't offer much protection. 

For more information about growing trees in pots, check out this post:  Cruelty to Trees: Pots.

Final question: 

4)  What kind of soil should we put it in, or will the earth be OK?

Yes, earth will be ok.  "Earth" contains a whole microcosm of bugs, worms, etc, a whole little ecosystem, which is more natural, if you like.  But if you don't have enough spare earth to fill the pot, you can use compost, topsoil, organic matter: anything, really.

If you are not sure about the differences between the various potting mediums, then check out this helpful and very informative *laughs* article about the relative merits of compost, manure, etc.

So there we go, hopefully I've answered Barbara's questions fully and comprehensively: and I would also add the usual reminder about aftercare: keep the newly-potted tree well watered, but not soggy: and you will need to remember to feed it, now that it's no longer in the ground.

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Early spring Primrose tidying

It's spring! (well, nearly...) 

The daffodils are shooting up, the snowdrops are already doing their thing, and what about the Primroses?

Yes, they are now flowering, but in many gardens they are not looking their best because they still have a frill of last year's leaves, which are now very large, very brown, and rather ugly. 

Like this lot - left.

So is it time to get out there and rip them all off? 

Yes! 

Except that instead of ripping them off, just snip them off, as close to the base of the plant as you can get, with either secateurs or scissors. 

Why snip, not rip?

Because each leaf has a tough fibrous midrib, and if you just pull off the leaves, you will leave behind the stringy central ribs, which look dreadful, and make a mockery of the time you spent in pulling them off....  so, out with the scissors, or sharp secateurs, and off you go!

Does this seem like a bit of a faff? 

Well, yes, but the results are well worth it: getting rid of all the ugly old leaves shows off the flowers to their best advantage, against a background of nice fresh green leaves: and often, removing the long old leaves will reveal a small border of bare soil (where the weeds have been suppressed by the dying leaves) - right - which makes the flowers stand out even more clearly.

Also, dead and dying leaves are a sort of running buffet for slugs and snails, not to mention being perfect hiding places from predators - and although all of nature is wonderful (I am rolling my eyes as I say it), there are some aspects of nature which simply don't need feeding or encouraging!

This is a nice, simple quick job, to encourage you to get out in your garden and enjoy some fresh, so I hope you are now inspired to go round your garden, snipping and neatening!

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The Art of Potting On

I'm sure you've read that phrase time and again: start small plants or seedlings off in a small pot, “... then pot them on, as they grow.” 

Ever wondered what it means, and why we do it?

“Potting on” means starting the seedling or small plant in a small pot, one which is only just big enough for the roots that it has. Then, when the roots reach the edge of the pot, we take the plant out and put it in the next size up, adding some fresh compost to make it fit. This can be repeated four or five times as the plant grows, and I've often been asked why we have to bother with it, and wouldn't it be easier to just pop the seedling in a big pot to start with?

The main reason we do this “potting on” procedure is to prevent the soil from becoming sour - but what do we mean by sour soil?

In a pot, the soil is completely isolated from the natural world: no worms or beetles move around below the surface, churning up the soil to aerate it, and often it gets less natural rainwater and more “watering can” water than plants which grow out in the garden.

This can easily lead to a potful of compacted soil which is lacking in nutrients, particularly if the water comes from the tap, rather than the water-butt: and even water-butt water can be quite nasty, if it has run off a house roof. Also, most commercial composts only contain nutrients for about six weeks (I'm not kidding! Read the back of the pack!) so after that time, the plant can struggle to put on new growth.

Potting on prevents this from occurring: disturbing the roots and adding fresh compost allows air into the soil, and every time we pot on, the plant gets a fresh supply of nutrients. I should say at this point that “air in the soil” does not mean having great big gaping cavities, which are very bad for roots: it means that the soil is not a solid clump, but has some degree of “crumbliness” about it. 

I seem to remember from my RHS Level 2 certificate, all those years ago, that the perfect soil was made up of 25% air, 25% water, 45% organic matter (ie dead bugs, decaying foliage etc) and just 5% actual solids, ie rock, stone and sand particles. Yes! Perfect soil is only 5% actual solid matter!

Once you get to a certain size of pot - I'd say about a 2 litre pot, but I'd be interested to hear your views - then things are not so critical: more rain water can reach the surface, there is a larger volume of soil available, and by the time you have potted on to that size, there may well be a few harmless creepy-crawlies working their way around inside the rootball, aerating as they go.

But small, new plants need all the help we can give them, hence this strange “potting on” regime, which seems like a lot of make-work but is actually very sensible.

And how do we know when to do it? Answer, when the roots have reached the edge of the pot, or are starting to make a break for it through the bottom. 

Many people will tip the plant out, to check on the roots, but this can cause damage to the plant, so I prefer to just lift the pot above my head and look for any visible roots starting to come through the bottom of the pot. If I can't see any, I put it back! 

Here - left - is a nice example of a pot of Galanthus (Snowdrips) (No, Snordrops.) (Try again - Snowdrops. That's better) which are well rooted, but not yet pot bound. 

They are in a 3½" pot (9cm) which is proportionally about right for small plants. I would either  pot this one up into a bigger pot, or split it in two, and put each half back into a fresh 3½" pot.

(Ok, in real life, I'd plant them out in the ground somewhere, this is just to show you the condition of the roots.)

There are some good strong new roots, the white bits: and they are just starting to push out of the bottom of the pot (which I removed to show you) as you can see by the little fringe of white roots at the base.
 

This one - right - is a pot of Fritillery meleagris, also in a 3½" pot, and you can see in this one that the white roots are starting to form dense masses.

Definitely time to pot this one one!

You can see that the roots have grown as far as they can in this small pot, and have started coiling themselves round - never a good sign.

However, here's an example which is horrifying in the degree of pot-bound-ness: it's a small conifer,  a Spruce, in a decorative plastic planter, which has been undisturbed for several years.

I rather think it was a former Christmas tree, which was bought with roots on, and which the owner put into a pot, intending to bring it back into the house year after year.

However, it was struggling: the foliage was yellow, and sparse, and the owner asked me how they could make it lush and green again, in time for Christmas. (This was mid summer)

When I de-potted it, well, it was clear to see: "There's your problem!" as they say on Mythbusters.

It was well past the "time to re-pot it" stage, and was into the "it's going to die soon, if you don't help it!" situation!

But that's a story for another day!

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Snowdrops: Now Is The Time!

The time to what? The time to move them, and/or the time to buy and plant them.

Everyone seems to know that Snowdrops should only be moved “in the green” but many people are not quite sure what that means. 

 It means that – cruel as it sounds – the best time to move them is right now, late winter or early spring, when they are either still flowering, about to flower (best of all) or have just finished: while the stems are still, literally, “green”. 

The worst time to move (and particularly, the worst time to buy) Snowdrops, is in the middle of summer when all you get is a handful of small, shrivelled, dry brown bulbs, which are almost guaranteed not to grow.

(I'm sure that people who sell dry bulbs only get away with it because they think the purchaser will have forgotten where they bought them, by the time they fail to grow.)

I am not a big fan of people buying snowdrops, particularly from the internet, as they often arrive in a pretty poor state, all dry and limp, having probably been dug up a couple of weeks earlier and left languishing in an office somewhere, before being packed up and posted. 

If you have to buy them, at least buy pot-grown ones like these, left: when they are cheerfully and happily growing in a pot, you know that they will easily transfer into  your garden.

(The yellow ones are not snowdrops, obviously, they're Eranthis, or Winter Aconite, one of my favourite flowers. )

Far better is to find someone locally, one of your friends or neighbours, who has a good show of Snowdrops, and ask them if they would be kind enough to give you a clump or two. Most people are happy to share, and just one or two biggish clumps can be enough to get you started. - plus you know that they are "local" plants, so they are already comfortable in your regional soil and conditions. And they're free!

The trick to digging up Snowdrops is to insert a fork vertically next to the clump, go deeper than you think you need to, then lever up the entire clump in one go. Once it is out of the ground, shake off the excess soil – back into the hole from which they came – and once you can see all the bulbs, grasp the clump gently but firmly, and pull it apart from the bottom. Don't ever try to pull it apart by tugging on the leaves, you will just break them: always work from below.

You will be surprised how many bulbs there are in one congested clump, and usually you will be able to split the clump into five or six decent handfuls. These can then be planted out, not in neat rows, but in a pleasantly random fashion.

This photo - left is an exception to this, as the Client specifically wanted a row of them under the hedge...

The best situation for Snowdrops is under trees, or naturalized in grass, as long as you are able to put off mowing until the foliage has died right down.

To plant them, dig a hole about the size of your fist, and as deep as you reasonably can: the commonest mistake is to plant them too shallowly, so I always go the full depth of the trowel, even if it does take a bit of time. 

Look at the stems of the ones you are planting – it is essential that all the pale, whitish part of the stem is underground again. 

Make sure to shake off all the soil from below the bulbs: you don't want soil under them, you want soil on top of them! I usually line them up in my hand, bulbs down and leaves upwards (don't laugh, I've seen people just thrust a tangled handful into the ground and expect them to sort themselves out) then insert it into the hole, holding the stems together with one hand, while I push the loose soil down into the hole, making sure the bulbs are right at the bottom, and are firmly contacting the soil. Then fill the hole up to the top, and by holding the stems all together, they should be able to stand up by themselves once you have finished.

Leave the stems and flowers, don't cut any of it back after planting, even if they look quite sad and wilted: just water them well, and maybe give them some liquid feed – a balanced feed such as Growmore, or some liquid seaweed fertiliser will be fine. This helps them to settle in and make good fat bulbs ready for flowering next year. 

Best of all, the ones which have finished flowering will be setting seed, so you are already well on the way to establishing your new colony!

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Putting ash on the garden - should you? Shouldn't you?

For some reason, I thought I'd already written about this topic, but I received a couple of questions last week regarding using ash on the garden, and when I searched my archive - oops! Lots of articles involving Ash trees, but not a lot about using ash in the garden.

Apart from this one, which starts off with the proper disposal of  Hellebore leaves ("Burn them! Burn them!") and then segues into using the resultant ash in a sensible way.

Why is there a sudden interest in this topic? I'm guessing it's for a very simple and obvious reason: with the current increases in fuel prices, more people are turning to open fires and wood burning stoves, and therefore there is an upsurge in interest in how to get rid of the waste product, ie the ash, and can it be used as fertiliser, on the soil. 

They're asking when, where, how - all the usual questions!

So let's start with a quick look at the various types of ash -  woodburner ash, bonfire ash, and coal fire ash.

Dealing with the last one first: ash from coal fires is no use to the gardener at all. Whether it's old-fashioned coal (do they still sell it?), coke, briquettes, smokeless fuel: anything that's black and burns well, is not good for the garden. It contains a whole heap of nasty stuff, which can include iron, lead, zinc, aluminium, cadmium, even arsenic!

So don't spread that on your garden.

 

Ash from fires which have only burned wood is better: but with both wood-burning stoves, and open fires, be aware that the sort of wood you burn is what you might call "big chunks" of wood, split trunks of trees, so it contains a lot of heartwood. 

This is not much use for the garden: the heartwood is the "dead" part of the tree, so it contains very little in the way of nutrients.

Tree ash is also somewhat alkaline, so applying it to your garden will change the pH of the soil: not by much, but it might be enough to make a difference to how your plants grow, if they are finicky about the pH they require to flourish. 

In addition, too much ash in any one place - for instance, if you pile it up in one corner of the garden, until you are ready to use it - will effectively sterilise the soil. 

Rainwater will also wash any nutrients out of the ash, which has a double effect - not only will the ash then be useless as fertiliser, by the time you come to apply it, but those nutrients will have washed down into the soil, which might threaten surface water quality elsewhere, if you are near to streams or springs.

And, of course, you can only use the ash from your woodburner, or open fire, if you absolutely DO NOT also burn coal/coke etc on it.

Bonfire ash has slightly more value as it is mostly brash, ie smaller branches, twiggy stuff, etc, which contains some potassium (hence pot-ash) and it is not quite as alkaline as indoor wood fire ash.

So a little of this, on the garden, can be beneficial,  but applying too much ash to the plants can be detrimental: excessive amounts of ash can lead to nutrient toxicity and/or nutrient deficiency issues in plants.

And how much, I hear you ask, is "too much"?

On the rare occasions where I've applied it, I've taken up a fistful at a time, and scattered it quite thinly. But I have seen other people throw on great spadefuls of the stuff, which I felt was wrong, not least because a thick layer of ash can form a pan, or crust, on top of the soil. This is bad!

Bonfire ash tends to be comprised of "large" particles - it feels gritty, due to the mixed origins of the bonfire heap, which contains not just branches but perennial weeds, soil, roots, goodness knows what: so it's fairly easy to spread it thinly.

Woodburner ash, however, is soft and powdery, and tends to turn to slime, when it gets wet. Another good reason for not applying woodburner or open fire ash, to your garden!

So, getting back to "how much is too much?", I did a bit of research, and it's surprising just how little ash can safely be applied to a garden. 

I found a University site, whose horticulture department had done some studies on using ash in the garden, and they said "Applications of wood ash are generally limited to a maximum of 15 to 20 pounds (approximately a five gallon pail) per 1000 sq. ft., per year."

1000 sq ft  equates to about 90 sq m, which is an area about 9 metres by 10 meters. It was surprisingly hard to work out what that means in real terms, but a handy website offered these suggestions:

- About one third the size of a tennis court.

- Six times as big as a parking space (apparently normally 15 sq meters, although I'd debate that, looking at the way my local supermarket mark out their parking spaces, and how often cars get dinged and dented there...)

- About 85 times the size of a bath towel (!).

For comparison, a standard allotment is about 250 square meters: that's the original full size allotment, not the cut-down towny versions. So this 90 square meters area is, say, a third of an allotment.

So if you can now visualise any or all of those images, that's the area which can accept ONE BUCKET of wood ash, in ONE YEAR.

Not a lot. You can see that there's not much point saving up your bonfire ash to use on the garden!

Two other points, before we leave this topic: don't use the ash from your bonfire if you burn cardboard on it: most cardboard, especially the corrugated stuff, contains things like Boron and other chemicals in the glues, which are not good for your garden. Oh, except for Mal, and his desperate attempts to encourage his under-performing cauliflowers... (*laughs*) but generally speaking, the fewer chemicals you put on your garden, the better.

And finally, bear in mind that when wood ash combines with water it forms lye. Wood-ash lye is debatably a little less caustic than the commercial lye that is used in dyeing, and in drain and oven cleaners.... so if you leave a pile of wood ash out in the rain, you are likely to end up with a puddle of caustic lye underneath it, which might account for the whole "it will effectively sterilise the soil" thing...

..and this is definitely not something which you would want in your garden!

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How to: make good use of the cuttings from your Conifer hedge: yes, even Leylandii!

Next time you are clipping your Leylandii, or other Conifer, hedge, don't stuff your car with the waste, and make six trips to the dump: instead, push them through a shredder and use them as mulch.

"No!" you cry, "It will make poisonous acid mulch and will kill all my plants!"

Not true. Simply not true. Many years ago, I was asked the question, "Can I use Leylandii clippings to make the soil more acidic for my acid-loving plants?"  At that time, I didn't know the answer: so I did some research, and found that there were a lot of sites on the internet which stated that conifers poisoned the ground underneath them, because rain washed the "acid" off their foliage, thus making the soil beneath them very acidic.

This would seem to indicate that the clippings, ie the foliage, would be acidic and that using them as a mulch would indeed lower the pH of the soil, making it more acidic.

However, something struck me about all these websites: they all used the same words. The same phrases. The EXACT same wording. They were all, in fact, cutting and pasting from each other, which is a phenomenon which used to be called "plagiarising", back in the days when reading material was printed on paper: but which now seems to be perfectly acceptable - the users of the internet don't seem to see it, or recognise it. And even if they do, even if the original author finds it, there's nothing that can be done about it.

I have even encountered this myself: I've found articles on the internet which have been lifted word for word from articles which I have written: even articles here, on this blog, have found their way around the internet, with other people's names attached to them! And no, I don't even attempt to sue them - as I said, there is pretty much nothing "one" can do about having your content stolen: anyone who puts anything up on the internet has to accept that it can easily be stolen and re-used. 

I try to see it as flattery, although it's always vexing to think that someone else is making money from something which I create and put up here for free: with thanks to those of you lovely readers out there, who support me via Donations or via Patreon - thank you! Thank you!

Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, researching acidic conifer foliage. I tried to find the original article, which I expected to be some sort of report, a scientific journal, perhaps? A learned dissertation in an obscure RHS publication? Nope, couldn't find anything.

That left me with the option to try it out for myself, so I roped in a co-operative Garden Owner, and did an experiment to see if the soil below various conifers was more acidic than the soil elsewhere in the garden, the theory being, as mentioned, that rain washes the acid off the leaves and into the soil below.

It turned out not to be the case.

Bizarrely, I did not write an article about it - or, at least, I can't find it... but the results were a resounding "no", and conifers do NOT drip, exude or spread acid around themselves. The soil below a variety of conifers turned out to be no more, or less, acidic, than the soil elsewhere in that garden.

So no, using Leylandii clippings will not make an acidic mulch which might be beneficial for acid-loving plants. 

But this also means that yes, Leylandii clippings CAN be used as a mulch!

Time for another experiment: last autumn, we clipped a long run of Leylandii and Lawson Cypress hedging, put all the cuttings through the chipper, then  - with permission from the owner, of course - spread them out as mulch along the bed on the other side of the drive. This bed contained mostly biggish shrubs, with a few Hellebores,  but was infested with ivy, and various small weeds.

 At first the chippings were green and fragrant, in a rather "car air freshener" sort of way. All was well.

Then, after a few weeks, they went black and looked, well, not very nice.

But a month later, I popped back to check up on them:

They had changed from yucky black to a more placid, regular dark grey in colour, and they were indeed smothering the weeds, rather successfully.

Not so much impact on the ivy... although it takes a long time for ivy to die, or show signs of distress, so there may be hope  yet.

I was back there again the following March, and I was delighted to see that the Hellebores were fine, as you can see: they were pushing their way up through the mulch with no difficulty at all.

And the various bulbs were doing likewise -  these are the Autumn Crocus (Colchicum autumnale, to give them their proper name) which were pushing up their leaves in spring, to make the energy to put up their strangely naked flowers, much later in the year.

You can see that, as suspected, the much had not had much effect on the ivy, which was starting to re-colonise the mulched areas.

But generally speaking, the mulch was a great success: minor weeds were smothered, bulbs were unaffected, shrubs were unaffected, Hellebores were unaffected.

We were back there again last month, re-clipping the same Leylandii and Lawson Cypress hedging, and the owner asked up to chip the clippings again, to top up the mulch, which is a sure indication that it was successful.

And there you have it: next time you clip your conifers, shove them through the shredder, and use them as mulch on your shrubberies!

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Pollarding and Coppicing - what is the difference?

I keep getting questions on this theme! 

So here's a brief overview of what they are, and what the difference is. 

Pollarding and Coppicing

Why am I getting questions now, in the middle of winter? Because this is the time of year to pollard or coppice those shrubs that really benefit from this specialised pruning: and this is the time of year when people tend to look at their wild, scraggly, overgrown shrubs, and wonder what can be done about them!

If you're not familiar with those terms, then, they both mean the same thing: cutting off all the minor stems of a tree or shrub to a certain point, all at the same time, on a regular cycle. 

 The most familiar ones are those street trees that you see, the ones that are savagely cut back by the council every few years, until they are just a trunk with a bunch of knobbles on the top. 

That's pollarding. 

Here - left - are some Lime trees which have just been pollarded, and yes, I know it looks brutal, but it keeps the tree down to a manageable height, and I promise  you it does not harm the tree at all.

In fact, it has been proven that pollarding extends the life of a tree: and in the case of coppicing, it can extend it almost indefinitely! There are Hazel coppices which are estimated to be hundreds of years old, and yet the normal lifespan of a Hazel is only 70-80 years.

Amazing.

Coppicing, then, is exactly the same as pollarding, but at ankle height:  and when walking on footpaths through scrappy old bits of woodland, you may well have seen Hazel trees, growing as a mad tuft of straight stems which sprout from ground level, instead of growing like a tree, with one stem. That's the remains of an overgrown coppice. 

 

Since time immemorial, coppicing was used to force trees such as Hazel, Willow, and Sweet Chestnut to give up the single-stem "trunk" life, and go for the multi-stem style. 

The reason? 

To produce a crop - materials which can be cut and used for making fences ("hurdles"), for making charcoal, for weaving into baskets, for producing fodder, for using as firewood ("faggots" which are just bundles of twigs tied tightly together, much as we make newspaper "logs" these days), and for many other uses. 

There is no difference, between pollarding and coppicing, other than the height of the cut, and that depends on what product is needed, what species the tree is, and what animals are grazing in the area - because when a tree is coppiced, they produce a large number of tender new shoots the following spring, which are ripe for being eaten. 

So if there are deer in the area, the trees would be coppiced/pollarded at about head height. Cattle, same thing. Horses, they'd be cut higher, because horses have longer necks. Hazel tends to be done at ankle height because the coppices were often fenced against grazing animals, and cutting as low as possible made it easy to re-coppice them, as well as giving the longest possible new growth.

Hazel coppice is usually done on a 7-year cycle, a Hazel woodland would be divided into seven parts, and every year, one section, in rotation, was coppiced. This ensured a steady flow of material, year after year, and gave the plants time to grow back to the required size before being cut again.

We do this in the garden as well, usually annually: Dogwoods (Cornus) with bright winter-colour stems look best if they are coppiced - cut down annually to ankle or knee height. This allows them to produce a new batch of long, straight stems every year, which have great colour the following winter. 

Un-coppiced Dogwoods are usually sad brown gnarly things with a small outer fringe of bright colour, so it's well worth undertaking a regular hard prune of them.

And when I say "hard prune", this is what I mean - left: this is a red-stemmed Dogwood (Cornus) which I prune back to practically nothing, every year, usually in late Feb or March, before they start sprouting.

(Side note: this year, after the weird weather we've been having lately, I would not be surprised to find them already in flower by then!)

Every year, it rewards me by pushing out a mass of new growth, which is leafy and fluffy all through the summer, then in autumn, the leaves drop, and the stems take on their winter colour.

You could almost say that we pollard our Wisteria: to get the best flowers, we cut them back really hard every year, to a framework of the oldest wood, and in effect, that's pollarding, as is the annual Buddleia slaughtering: as with the Dogwoods, it prevents them getting too big, getting too gnarly, and getting top-heavy. 

Another reason for pollarding - or coppicing - is to encourage the plant to produce better foliage. 

Many shrubs, and several trees (Eucalyptus, and Catalpa, and Paulownia for starters) produce enormous leaves, if they are pollarded: and this also has the benefit of bringing the foliage down to a height where we can see it, rather than it being wasted 40' up in the air.

A great example is the lovely Cotinus coggygria, or Smoke Bush, right: to get the best foliage from them, they should be cut back hard every year, and they suit the head-height pollarding as well. 

It has the added benefit that it stops them getting too large for the space, as well! 

I wrote about Cotinus pollarding at length, with pictures, so please feel free to head over to that article, for more information on how and when to pollard your garden shrubs.

 

And there you have it: pollarding and coppicing are indeed the same thing, just occurring at different heights: they are a specialised pruning method, formerly used to produce a crop, but these days, mostly used to keep garden shrubs (and trees) to a reasonable size, or to force them to produce extravagant foliage for our delight!

 

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