Wisteria in flower again!

 Yes, that well-known spring-flowering climber, beloved of country cottages, is at it again:

 

What is going on with our gardens these days? Is it climate change? Are the seasons really no longer predictable and "set", as they used to be?

Or are we just remembering things incorrectly, in the same way that we all look back to our childhoods and remember long hot summers, when it didn't rain... oh hang on, that's what we're suffering with now, isn't it?

Well, actually, I think that the gardens really are changing -....

 

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Poppies: Off With Their Heads!

 Yes, it's that time again: we have enjoyed the beautiful flamboyant Opium Poppies - Papavar somniferum:

 

... but they have had their day, and now they are over, it's time to remove them.

As they are annuals, there is no point in keeping any of the "plant" part: they won't grow back from that root, next year. But they set seed very generously, so you are pretty much guaranteed to have them in your garden for evermore, even if you don't specifically try!

I usually cut them back as soon as the foliage starts to look tatty, and usually the garden owner will tell me that they want to keep the seeds, so I ask for a paper bag, and go round looking for the ones which are ripe.

How do I tell?

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Buying plants from Supermarkets and the “sheds”

 

I'm often asked about where to buy plants: is it necessary, Clients ask me, to go to a proper Garden Centre, or can we take advantage of the very cheap plants which they sell at the “sheds” such as B&Q and Homebase and, increasingly, our local supermarkets?

On the face of it, it seems like an excellent idea: they are close to home, you were going there anyway, the plants are cheap and look very cheerful, and big shops like that would not want to sell duff plants, would they? They know they need to keep their shoppers coming back.

However, I would say that "buyer beware" is the phase you need: you (“one”) can get excellent bargains, but on the other hand, supermarkets and “sheds” are famous for not watering the plants until they are on the verge of death.

This means that often, you buy a plant that looks fine, but has been repeatedly stressed, to the point where it fails to flourish once planted out.

Also, they usually import their stock, so it is not fully hardened off to our climate - often you will notice that the "garden" section is at least partially roofed, and often, the plants are stacked on wheeled trolleys. This means that you will have to take care to harden off any plants for a week or so, before planting them out.

So, how do you ensure that you get the true bargains?

 

 

 

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Sempervivum - flowering!

 

If you've only ever seen Hen and Chicks being rosettes, you might not know that they do, from time to time, produce flowers!

This is what they normally look like: evergreen, never changing:

 

 

...in fact, that's what their genus name means: Semper is from the Latin relating to time, ongoing, long stretches of: and vivum relates to "being alive", which is probably where the word vivacious originates.

So Sempervivum means "always living". Or, in everyday gardening terms, "jolly hard to kill, no matter how much you neglect them". Also known as "perfect for the forgetful gardener."

Most of the time, they just sit there, being green and somewhat spiky round the edges, but occasionally they produce sudden, upright, sprouts:

 

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And the prize for Most Patronising Comment Of The Day goes to....

 

As it's Friday, here's what I hope will be a mildly amusing, short, article.

I am often astonished/amused/horrified at some of the comments I get, while working. I mean, the insults. I don't mind compliments about how nice the garden is looking:

 

 

... or about how hard I am working. No, it's the insults that astonish, amuse and horrify me.

For many years, I was a member of the Professional Gardeners' Guild, and it was always interesting, for me, to observe the differences between us self-employed gardeners, and the PGG members who work in what I call "estate" gardens - you know, NT places, or private posh big places where you pay to go in.

So I asked them what comment(s) they had received, which were high up on the "gobsmacked" scale.

Would you like to hear some of them?

 

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