Reversion: Weeping Pear

 

Another Reversion tale today, with a slightly weird twist: so before we start, what, exactly, is "reversion"?

As you can tell from the name, it's to do with going backwards: a plant (usually roses, shrubs or trees) has been changed or altered in some way, generally considered to be an "improvement" on the original, and it is attempting to "revert" back to the original.

Usually it's due to it being grafted, and the lower part of the tree, the rootstock, tries to take over from the top part, the scion.

Here's an absolute classic case, a Contorted Hazel, whose rootstock is shoving up lots of straight shoots:

 (the one on the left is a fallen pruned branch, not a shoot!)

 Sometimes it's the colour: variegated plants - which are not usually grafted, they are usually cloned mutations - will often try to revert to being plain green. Here's a branch of variegated Lonicera nitida, mostly variegated: can you see that naughty little plain green bit?....

 

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Calling all Self-Employed Gardeners!!

 

I'm running another of my my half-day courses on How To Grow and Develop your Self-Employed business (I still think that's a very clunky title, I didn't choose it, honest!) again shortly, so if you have been gardening professionally for a few years, and maybe think you're getting a bit stale, or getting a bit dragged down by the admin, this could be just what you need!

It's not a "how to prune roses" workshop, it deals with the business side of being a professional gardener: here's the course description:

Description

About The Tutor:
Rachel the Gardener is a professional Gardener, Plantsmith, Field Botanist, Consultant Forensic Horticulturalist, gardening Journalist, and Author, having published over two dozen Botany and Gardening books, including How To Be A Successful Self-Employed Gardener, which was written specifically for people just setting out as Gardeners.

About This Workshop:
Once you’ve been a self-employed Gardener for a couple of years or more, it’s easy to get swept up in the seasons, and to lose sight of your initial goals. This Workshop aims to help you take a fresh look at your business, to deal with any problems or issues that might have arisen, and to encourage you to look beyond your current situation.

With a style that has been variously described as “chatty and informal” and “appropriately bossy”, Rachel will take you through the commonest problems and pitfalls: wasting time, unnecessary paperwork, increasing your income, targets and how to use them, dissatisfaction with your clients and how to deal with them.

After a short break, Rachel covers specialising: how to increase and stabilise your hourly rate and why you should do so,  how to deal with late payers and low payers, when and how to ‘sack’ unsatisfactory clients, and how to replace them with better ones. This is followed by some pointers on expanding and looking forwards.

Attendees can submit questions by email beforehand if they wish, as well as asking them throughout the Zoom session: all Attendees will receive a pdf version of the presentation afterwards, along with some additional handouts.

Sounds great, doesn't it?!

It's a Zoom presentation, so you don't even have to leave the house: Sat 14th November, 9.15 to about 12.30 (we usually go on a bit longer, because I won't stop the session until I'm sure that everyone's questions have been answered), bookings via the WFGA (Working For Gardeners Association)

There are still a few places left, book now!

 

Conifer Hedges: when they gotta go, they gotta go!

I received a question the other day: is it possible to do a "substantial trim" on this hedge:

 

Well, the obvious answer is "Sorry, no," because, well, just look at it.

I can't identify the species of conifer from the photo, but I can see that it's not Yew (Taxus baccata) which will recover from almost any degree of slaughter - and thanks, to Ana, for reminding me to point that out!! (waves to Ana).

Instead, it's the classic roadside "conifer hedging" which is usually Leylandii, well known for not "greening up" when cut back hard - and they have certainly cut the end of it back, hard!

They have not long moved in, and have inherited this very overgrown, heavy, conifer hedge, which has obviously been there for quite some time, and has been allowed to get a bit out of hand. You can tell by the thickness of the trunks, in that bare brown end, that's it's a mature hedge, and the older they are, the less easy they are to pull back into a good shape....

 

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Wisteria: How can 10 feet (3m) make such a difference?

I have a Client who wanted to grow Wisteria up the back wall of their house, but they'd had the patio relaid, right up to the wall.

This is the sort of thing they were hoping to achieve:

 

... but how could they get the plants started, with no beds or border?

My suggestion was to ask the builders to lift a couple of slabs by the house, to make small beds for them: and, because my Clients were what I call "Senior Folks", we decided to plant two Wisterias, one either side of the Patio doors, to reduce the length of time it would take them to cover the walls.

I asked them to buy the plants in early spring, to be sure that they were already of flowering size, because Wisteria plants can take six or seven years to reach maturity, which is why we don't bother growing them from seed, despite their prolific seed pod production

 The builders duly arrived, with their stone cutting equipment, and made two beds: and they were quite literally the smallest beds you have ever seen! OK, technically, I had meant for them to remove an entire slab, not just to cut a slot.... but heyho, we do the best with what we have, so I manfully dug out the builder rubble, sand, concrete etc as deep as I could manage, we filled the holes with good topsoil, and planted two Wisteria, one each in what we refer to as the Pocket Beds. Because they are so small....

 

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How to lure the right birds into your garden

 Bird feeders have been in the news a lot this year, with the RSPB firstly telling us to stop feeding them, in order to stop the spread of disease: then being lambasted for continuing to sell bird food on their website: then changing their advice to say that we should not feed them during the summer: then retracting their advice, then re-stating it - it's no wonder we are all confused.

Originally, they said to stop feeding birds until October, and that birds did not need us to give them food through the summer. Then they said to only use hanging feeders, and not the flat platform-type feeders, like my famous (well, famous in South Oxfordshire, at any rate) squirrel-proof bird house:

 

But it wasn't clear if they meant that we were "allowed" to use hanging feeders through summer, or not until autumn. And I put that in quotes, because whatever they say, it is only advice, it's not law.

Well, here we are, very nearly in October, so it's time to think about starting to feed them again: but having taken a break from putting out food, it's a good time to have a think about what we feed, and why.

We all love the idea of having birds in our gardens, but it's not always as easy as it seems:...

 

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Yuckity Yuck - Yucca! Or: How to Tame a Wild One...

 Not my favourite plant... as a gardener, I have strong dislikes (which I try to keep secret from my Clients, for the obvious reason, although most of them can tell that I'm not keen on Euphorbia, by the way I always "happen to mention" that their sap is very toxic and is released not only when cutting them:

 

... but also when merely brushing past them, the slightest damage to a leaf and the sap appears, so they are not really safe to have in a garden which may contain children, pets, innocent visitors, passers-by, stray molecules of air, etc......), most of which are for plants which injure me.

Actually, I think ALL of my professional dislikes are for plants which injure me.... rampant invaders such as Bindweed, Couch Grass and Ground Elder, the Terrible Trio, do at least keep me in paid occupation, but Berberis, Mahonia and Pyracantha (unless I am allowed to prune it as much as I want to...) all get the narrowed eyes and the "I wonder if that bed would look better without that [insert name of stabby scratchy spiky plant] just there?" comment.

 Yucca comes pretty high up that list, along with Pampas Grass - whose scientific name, Cortaderia, apparently means "sword" in Spanish, I rest my case - and the gigantic (and evil) Agave, whose tips are so spiny that a single encounter can leave you with blood running down your forehead. (Catherine, this means you. Get rid of that Agave, or I will not be working in that corner of your garden ever again...) 

 

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Box Moth Caterpillar: there is hope!

 I've written about this devastating little pest several times recently: to remind you, it's not the same as Box Blight, the fungal disease which has killed off a huge number of Box plants, and which typically starts by killing off whole patches of the plants:

 

...and once it starts, it is very difficult to stop, not least because the plants, or parts of plants, which have been killed, are dead. They don't recover.

However, this problem is not a disease, it's a pesky critter, the caterpillars of the Box Moth - as the name suggests - which merely eats the leaves, so there is hope for recovery.

To remind you, the Box Moth Caterpillar Disaster is a man-made one...

 

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Compost: and why the 3-pen system is so important

 "Oh no!" I hear you say: "Not compost, again!!"

Yes! Compost and irrigation, the two watch-words of this year. Both are dear to my heart, as regular readers will know. And today, another word about compost.

Here's the back story:

I set up a lovely 3-pen system for this Client, who has a very large garden which generates a massive amount of material, not least because I am only there every other week, and on those visits, there are two of us - so it's very much feast-and-famine, as far as generating waste goes!

We used to struggle with the composting, because the pens were nowhere near big enough, and there were only two of them:

 ... so, earlier this year, I persuaded the Client to allow us to rip them all apart and build three pens, each double the size of the existing two. Luckily pallets are easily obtainable for free, so we scrounged as many as we could, and used a combination of zip-ties to hold the edges together, and the metal poles from an old heavy-duty gazebo, to hold the pallets in position...

 

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Tools - other than the obvious ones!

I had a question from a Patron the other day ("Hi, Stephen!") about tools: it's obvious that a self-employed gardener will need to have a fork and a spade, secateurs, and a selection of gloves: a couple of small hand tools - I like the Daisy Grubber, as you all know - and of course a plastic tub-trug bucket thing, and so on: but, he asked, what are the less obvious tools, without which I would not work?

Eye Protection

No-one seems to talk about this much, but it's worth a quick word: when working around plants, especially shrubs, you would be well advised to wear eye protection, if you don't already wear spectacles.

I'm sure you've all heard that lovely, callous, phrase “it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick” and I can tell you that getting poked in the eye is painful, and is a regular occurrence when gardening.

I wear cheap, lightweight protective specs:

 

 

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One of these things is not like the others..

Part of the art of being a good professional gardener (is it possible to be a "bad" professional gardener? 

Oh, silly me, of course it is, thinking back to some of the terrible Crimes Against Horticulture I have seen, over the years) is to be able to recognise weeds, and the definition of a weed is - I'm sure you've heard this - merely something growing in the "wrong" place. This includes removing perfectly legitimate plants, which might be popping up in unwanted positions.

Here's a good one - recently, I was dead-heading the climbing rose ("Gertrude Jekyll", very popular and rightly so) on the arch, and at the base, I spotted some leaves which didn't quite look right....

 

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"Climbers don't damage trees"

Oh yes they do!

This is a pet peeve of mine: I really, really hate it when people grow climbers - clematis, roses, honeysuckle etc - up trees.

Yes, I know why they do it: it's vertical gardening, it gets flowers appearing up an otherwise merely green support, it extends the season of interest of the tree in question.

But it leads to conflict: the climber may need to be pruned, which is tricky when it's wrapped around a tree and quite possibly out of reach. And the tree may need attention, which is tricky with a climber wrapped around it.

And, worst of all, the climber might smother the tree, contributing to its decline while also disguising that decline, until it is too late to save the tree.

Here's a classic example, from some years ago:

Beautiful, I know. Mid May, and the Cherry tree - one of a pair - is covered in Clematis blossom.

But, invariably, a couple of years later...

 

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New garden, new gnome...

 

When you move house, "they" always say that you should not make any changes to the garden for a year, because you don't know what is going to pop up, at different seasons.

This is good advice: firstly, there may be many lovely things which only appear in their season, bulbs being the obvious ones. It would be a shame to have grassed over a particular border, or widened the drive to created a parking area, only to have every passer-by tell you that it used to be a glorious mass of Snowdrops - or Daffodil, Gladioli, Schizostylis, Autumn Crocus, Cyclamen or whatever.

 Likewise, it would be very annoying to rush around cutting down the shrubs, only to reveal the unlovely back of next door's tumbledown garage. Or to have an old hedge removed, to then discover why the previous owner planted it:

 

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For 21 Aug

Further to a recent post about restoring a Nitida hedge, I had a question from new Patron Jude (waves enthusiastically) who sent me pictures of the Nitida hedge she has inherited, which is wild and woolly at the top, and rather bare at the bottom.

 As you can see, lots of enthusiastic growth up top, not so much at the base: which is always annoying, as the base is the bit we can all see. And that's where we want the best of the greenery....

 

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This week: Lavender!

 Again!

In the sense that I seem to be always writing about how to prune Lavender, the reason being that people keep on asking the question!

So, Lavender: popular short-lived perennial, ideal for creating the "cottage garden" look, great for edging borders, easy to grow, withstands drought better than many others, available in a variety of heights and colours, and smells nice.

What's not to like?

Easy to maintain, as well, except that people - and by that, I mean Garden Owners - tend to be too soft-hearted with their pruning. Either they don't prune them at all, leaving the flower stalks to go brown and die ("Ugh!"), or they don't prune them hard enough, and after a couple of years, the plants get too big for the space, flopping open in the middle to reveal brown, woody stems:

 

The answer is.....

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July Newsletter

 

OMG! What a scorcher! AGAIN!!

I can't believe I'm writing this - AGAIN!! - but three months running, now, we've had heatwave after heatwave, the grass is well scorched, the water butts are empty, gardeners are sweating, and everyone with an irrigation system is thanking the lord, or me, in some cases, that they took my advice and installed it:

 ... because otherwise we would be getting this sort of thing:

 As you would expect, this month we talked about things dying in hot weather - plants, that is - along with the sort of jobs I have been doing at this time of year, including cutting down the oriental poppies (they've done their job), and pruning apple trees in summer, with a diversion about ermine moth infestations....

 

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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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