Friday 26 January 2024

Wisteria: flowers, pruning, and other myths

Some time ago, I had a question from a lady in London: it was about her Wisteria, which had failed to flower for the past 20 years. This is quite a common question, along with "How and when do I prune it?" so I thought I'd repeat and expand my answer to her. 

 

Firstly, there are three reasons why Wisteria refuse to flower: lack of sun, incorrect pruning, and lack of nutrition. 

Well, four, if you include........

 

 

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Friday 19 January 2024

Now is the season... to plan!

Well, the holidays are over, the shortest day is over, and we are heading uphill to spring - Yay! - and this is the time to reflect on how the previous year went, and what new projects we plan to tackle this year. 

I always encourage my Clients (and students) to take photos of their gardens at intervals, and to make notes in their Garden Journal about what worked well, what was a bit of a flop, any noticeable gaps in the garden and so on, on the grounds that.....

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Friday 12 January 2024

Winter cut-back:

Also known as "Autumn Slaughter". 


 

This is my name for the early-winter tidy-up of the garden. I try not to use this expression in front of Clients, but sometimes it just slips out, oops! 

They usually say things like “putting the garden to bed for the winter,” but in my head, it's always Autumn Slaughter... It refers to that time of year when we are cutting down all the deal perennials, clearing away the debris, taking the opportunity to remove weeds which are thereby revealed (those cunning little devils are often to be found hiding underneath a sheltering blanket of dead foliage), and generally making the garden look tidy for the winter. ....

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Friday 5 January 2024

Walnuts and Weirdness

Walnuts - I know, not a subject that normally lends itself to weirdness - but a while back, I received an email from Howard (*waves*), along with a photo of a double walnut which he had found:

Cute, eh?

He reminded me that some years back, I'd written an article about malformed walnuts.

This led to me wondering.....

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