Iris unguicularis - too late for Autumn Slaughter!

 

 Well, too late here in Oxfordshire: this Iris, with its ugly unspellable name, is usually known as Algerian Iris, or Winter Iris, for the obvious reason that it flowers from now, mid-late November, right through until early spring, sometimes even as late as March.

 

Last year, I wrote about being just barely in time to give the foliage the late-season chop, in December, but that it was a fiddly job to avoid the flowering shoots, and that I advised the garden owner to cut them right back in October.

This year - in the same garden - I am pleased to report that I did manage to carry out that chop, in late September: ...

 

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Gloves... *singing* “Hands that do dishes, can feel soft as your face....”

Who remembers that jingle? And, even better, who remembers the spoof version by the Goodies?

*singing*

“For hands that wash crocks,

And your old man's socks:

Use wild grey Hairy Liquid!”

Alas, I've searched the internet - well, those parts which I can reach in twenty minutes, having been distracted by the “String” sketch - and can't find any pictures or clips of the sketch, but I seem to remember it was Tim Brooke-Taylor doing the washing up, then peeling off the rubber gloves to reveal a pair of fake monster hands. 

Ah, happy days.

Anyway, on with the plot: today it is In Praise Of Gloves, as I have just taken delivery of a big pack of these Showa Thermo gloves:

 

I really like these gloves, they are my go-to gloves on days when it's a bit cold, but not “that” cold, and a bit wet, but not absolutely sodden: they are the perfect compromise between proper winter gloves - my favourite being these Skytec Argons which are latexed right up to, and just beyond, the back of the knuckles:

 

...and the standard thin latex-ed gardening gloves:

 

... which are, like the Skytec ones, latexed beyond the knuckles, but which - being thin - can be very cold to wear.

So the Showa 451s are ideal: their thermal lining is enough to keep the hands nice and cosy on these “not-really-full-winter-yet” days, when the Skytec ones, with their super-thick fluffy lining, would make the hands sweat, but when it's too cold for the thin ones.

They last pretty well: here's one of my current working pairs:

 

.. and at this time of year, I'll definitely have at least two pairs in my work bag, because if it is moderately wet, well, they do soak up water on the backs of the fingers, so it's good to have a pair to change into. And more pairs at home, to swap in at lunchtime! And that's why I buy them in bulk, so I always have some ready to be brought into circulation, while the first pair(s) are on the drying rack.

Now for a quick unsolicited testimonial: these gloves are available from most garden centres, as well as many on-line suppliers, including the all-encompassing might of Amazon, of course, where they are usually around the £8 a pair mark. I buy mine from safetygloves.co.uk and, once you hit their “free postage” threshold of £40, they are only £4.79 a pair, inc VAT. That means buying 11 pairs at a time, but that's ok with me! They do a whole range of gloves, including the Skytec Argons, so if you get through anywhere as near as many pairs of gloves as I do, it's well worth taking a look at their website.

End of unsolicited testimonial.

At this point, someone usually ask “How long do they last?” and that's not easy to answer, as some pairs seem to last forever, getting grubbier and grubbier - yes, I know that they are technically washable, but I never like to put filthy muddy gloves in the washing machine: I would not want them contaminating my clothes, and I don't run the washing machine for just one or two items, that would be wasteful! So I wash the gloves by running them under the outside tap while I am wearing them, doing the “washing my hands” mime as I do so, and although this gets off the worst of the mud, it doesn't bring them up nice and clean again: but it does at least get them clean enough to continue wearing.

Eventually, though, as with all gloves, they wear through at the finger tips, and once they get holes there, they have to be thrown away as there is not much in life as annoying as having one permanently dirty fingernail. (*laughs*)

Am I the only person who is reluctant to throw out damaged gloves? Do you have anything like this lot, lurking in your hall cupboard?

 

Why do I keep them? Why? Why?

Eventually I gave myself a stern talking-to, and threw out all the damaged ones. But I did keep a selection of the undamaged ones: there is a sort of logic to this, as I'm sure you would agree, because I might later wear out or damage the “other” one... if you see what I mean. But there really is no reason to keep the ones with holes in!! So out they go!!

As you can see, I usually wear out my left-hand gloves, because my right hand is holding the daisy grubber, and the left hand does all the pulling and scraping, so after a while, I end up with a bag of poor little orphans:

 

So sad.

And as a final note on the subject of gloves, I am still looking for a fellow female gardener (ie who wears the same size gloves as me) who wears out all her right-hand gloves, so we can come to some arrangement!

Every cloud has a silver lining...

 

 ... or so I was saying to myself last week, looking dolefully out of the rain-spattered window, having just cancelled all my jobs for the day...

To start the day, I received a series of texts from one of my former students, now a fully-fledged self-employed Gardener: asking if I were working today, ie because of the rain. I should say that this former student's territory is only about 15 miles away, so we generally share the same weather.

This is how the conversation went:

Them: “Are you working today?”

Me: “No... it's pouring down, here. How about you?”

Them: “Likewise, but it has just stopped and I'm feeling guilty about cancelling. The Met Office shows heavy rain all day, though...”

Me: “Well, it's your choice. I hate the guilt, but I also hate working on sodden gardens.”

At this point in the dialogue, I will just interject to point out that I said “sodden” as in “extremely wet”, not “sodding.” Just wanted to make that clear. On with the plot....

 

 

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Time to wave farewell to the Parthenocissus!

 

 

There's something about the name Parthenocissus, I just find it wholly amusing! It starts off sounding all strong and tough, like the Parthenon (famous Greek temple), with an overtone of parthenogenesis (asexual reproduction, as with aphids, many of whom are born female and already pregnant, which continues for generation after generation), then ending with a snake hissing at us.

But in gardening, it's all about climbers, and there are two in particular that are found in many gardens - Virginia Creeper and Boston Ivy, both of which are extremely popular because of their stunning autumn colour:

 

Before we get to why we are waving them goodbye, let's just clarify which is which:

Virginia Creeper - that's the one in the above picture - is Parthenocissus quinquefolia, pronounced sank-ee-foh-lee-er....

 

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How to deal with a pot-bound purchase

 

 

Firstly, what do we mean by pot-bound? This refers to plants - usually perennials, or shrubs - which have been in a pot for so long that their roots are bursting out in frustration.

It can apply to plants we have in decorative pots in our gardens: and it can apply to plants we buy from the garden centre.

Here's a good case of the latter:

 

This was a small shrub which a Client bought, and wanted me to plant. It was clearly a bit pot-bound: we could tell, because those fibrous roots were fighting their way out of the bottom of the plastic pot.

I left one clump of roots to show you, and I'd already snipped off the other four sprouts, from the other drainage holes. There is no point trying to keep them: they were bone dry, and therefore no longer working for the plant. Sometimes, in this situation, if the pot has not been moved for a long time, and has been well watered, the exposed roots will still be moist, in which case you can often gently pull the pot off, and they will slip through the holes, undamaged. But not in this case! So they had to go....

 

 

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Garden Design Question

 

I recently had an email from Linda ("Hi, Linda!") who was interested in my Garden Consultancy service, and was wanting help with a water management problem in her garden - next door's gutter was broken and when it rained, all the water flooded through into her garden, leaving it boggy and killing the plants.

Linda was asking for design advice, particularly with regard to what she could possibly plant, as the lawn had drowned, the Hellebores which replaced the lawn had drowned, and the gravel garden which replaced the Hellebores was just sodden...

So what I gave her was some fairly firm "neighbour interaction advice" because there was no point trying to design around a problem which was a) intermittent, b) utterly destructive, and c) solvable!

She spoke to the neighbour, invited them to see exactly what a mess their broken gutter was making: the gutter was fixed, the problem went away.

Hooray!

Afterwards, she asked a further question: with regard to garden design, "Do you ever have the situation where people haven't got a clue what they want?"

The simple answer is, you will not be surprised to hear....

 

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Hypericum winter pruning - maybe not quite yet?

 Back in January of this year, I wrote a brief article about pruning that most bomb-proof of what I call “builder shrubs”, the Hypericum - variously known as Rose of Sharon (which is pronounced Sha'ron, emphasis on the “ron”, as opposed to Sharrin-to-rhyme-with-Darren), St John's Wort, and so on.

One of my lovely Patrons asked me how it had flowered this year, after being chopped so brutally back in mid winter, so here's an update.

The previous article dealt with the harsh (but necessary) winter prune: this is the original shrub:

 

... which is how it looked last winter, before I took the secateurs to it.

Ten minutes later, this was all that was left:

 

 

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“What did you do, at the weekend, Rachel?”

... said one of my Clients, yesterday. I was a bit nonplussed by this, my Clients don't usually enquire about my out-of-work activities, we normally just talk about their gardens!

But with increasing age - theirs, not mine - I have found that my senior Clients do develop an interest in what their assorted “staff” do in the rest of the week: and I mean people like cleaners, chiropodists (yes, I know they have a funny name now, but they'll always be chiropodists to me), physical therapists, hairdressers - as the Clients are less able to get out of their houses, they become more reliant on “staff” to keep them interested.

In fact, one delightful elderly couple (I was with them for 15 years) used to say that once they were both housebound, they looked forward to my weekly visits with positive excitement, because I would “bring new topics of conversation into the house”. After being together their entire lives, they were running out of things to talk about, they said!

So, in case you are interested, this is what I did last weekend:

 

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“Help! The roses are growing over my window, again!”

“Help! The roses are growing over my window, again!”

That was a plea for help, last week, from one of my “irregular” Clients, I go there about once a month through the summer, and I always have to take my long snippy-snips, because the cottage has a lot of high-level roses which always need dead-heading.

This particular one:

 ... is only a Dog Rose, so the flowers are quite small, and they don't repeat-flower, meaning that only get one flush of flowers and that's it for the year.

However, they do produce rather lovely hips (or is it haws? I can never remember...) which are already forming, as you can see: and they persist right into mid winter, usually - unless the birds get them!

 

 

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Growing older in a garden: de-thorning roses by a door.

 

Recently, I wrote about Growing Older in their Garden, an article about the ways in which we, the professional gardener, can help to make gardens easier for our ageing Clients.

And the other day I was reminded of this small contribution which I made, to help my Client enjoy her garden.

This particular Client lives in a genuine chocolate-box cottage, with roses all round the door, which always sounds lovely - and is, until they start encroaching on the doorway, which these ones were.

Rip!

Snag!

Ouch!

The problem, of course, is the thorns.

Now, at this point I usually become a real botany-nerd, and deliver a lecture about how, despite what Shakespeare said about the rose having thorns only for he who would pluck it, rose don't have thorns, they have prickles. And yes, that means that I should have titled this article “de-prickling” not “de-thorning” but, well, what can I say, de-thorning sounds better.

What's the difference? Thorns are modified stems, they are deeply attached to the plant, and are “living”. Prickles are mere outcrops of epidermis: they have no vascular bundles, which means that they are easily detached, and are like our fingernails, in that they are attached to us, but they are not “alive”. That's a bit of a simplification, but you get the picture.

Does it matter?

In this case, yes: prickles are easy to remove, you just push them over sideways and they snap off, with no damage to the stem, no open wound, no access route for infection.

 And quite often, I will deliberately.......

 

 

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Gardening - like Botany - is not a hard science!

 

Every time I teach a Botany class, whether it's organised adult education, or just me and the Midweek Botany Crew, I always make a point of reminding everyone that Botany is not a hard science.

What does that mean?

It means that it's not black-and-white. Nothing is set in stone. Plants are variable! In fact, when I give them Rachel's Rules, Rule 1 is “usually”. I say to them, “Pretty much everything that I say to you today can, should, and probably will, be prefaced with the word 'usually'. “

And by that, I mean that our reference books - which, these days, also means the internet, and apps, and TV gardening programmes - may well say “height xx cm” but all that means is that the plant in question “usually” grows to that size. It may be bigger. It may be smaller.

This applies just as much to gardening: and I tell all my Students, Trainees, Mentorees (I'm still not sure if that's an actual word) and casual questioners that whatever I tell them is “usually” the right thing to do, “usually” the right time to do it, “usually” the best way to approach it... but is not necessarily the way it's going to happen.

Why are plants so variable, then?

The weather changes things, which I think most people realise, as it's fairly obvious - “it's rained a lot, so the weeds have put on a spurt”, or “it's been hot for three weeks and the grass is not growing at all”.

But there can be less obvious factors: another example is that if we have a long period of cloudy, dull weather, it can be a serious set-back to those plants which need bright sunlight.

Even the days are different lengths, from one end of the country to the other: in the middle of summer, the northern-most parts of the UK can have between 2-4 hours more daylight than the very south of the country. Of course, to counter-balance this, they get correspondingly shorter days in winter, poor things: but....

 

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Watering plants: when to drench.

 I was talking about how to water new planting, in a period of hot dry weather, the other day and, in very much the same vein, a different Client had a question for me this week about watering, which was quite interesting: she said “All the books say,” (I love it when people start a sentence this way) “... that it's better to do a good drenching once or twice a week, rather than little and often, but what exactly IS a good drenching?”

 

This is absolutely true: if you just give your plants a quick sprinkle every day, you are only wetting the top half-inch or so of the soil, so the plants only need shallow roots in order to get it. Then, the minute it gets hot, or the day you forget to water, or go away for the weekend, they wilt, because they don't have any deeper roots.

By drenching once or twice a week, we persuade our plants that it's better to grow those nice deep roots, which gives them stability from wind and from being knocked over by passers-by, and gives them the ability to seek out the water deeper in the ground.

So we had a nice discussion about watering plants in the garden - I explained that ....

 

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Alchemilla - time to cut them back

 We all love Alchemilla mollis:

 

It's a wonderful cottage-garden style filler plant: a billowy mass of tiny yellow flowers through the summer, tough as old boots, and very generous with seeds: and thereby lies the problem.

Alchemilla does rather spread itself.... I don't actually know anyone who's bought it, but if you do, you only buy one plant, and three years later they are everywhere!

They make wonderful edging plants, for “softening the hard landscaping”, as the books always tell us to do: planting a row of them along the edge of a bed or border will quickly hide any hard edging....

 

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Wildflower meadows in a domestic setting

 I know, I know, I'm always going on about this: it is not possible to create a genuine Wildflower Meadow in a domestic setting, for many reasons.

 

Not least being that you need several acres of poor-quality grassland to start with, and you need a regime of grazing animals to be put on it and taken off it at specific times of year.

So if you are starting with a lush domestic lawn, you are never going to be able to create a “proper” wildflower meadow.

“Most people” ie books, magazines, and - these days - the internet, will tell you that you need to drastically weaken or remove your own grass first: and that is never as easy as it sounds. Merely sowing Yellow Rattle won't do it -.......

 

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Parch marks in grass: Hidden Secrets

 

I'm sure many of you are familiar with crop marks: no, not crop circles, but crop marks, where parched (or lusher) marks in areas of grass show where the underlying soil has a different composition from the rest of the area.

This can indicate the presence of, for example old walls: if the bricks or stone were only removed down to ground level, there might be a shallow layer of soil over the remainder, which is enough to allow the grass to grow, but not enough to keep it lush in dry weather.

And in case that doesn't make sense, here's a picture to illustrate how grass can grow with very little soil indeed: when I'm digging, I'm in the habit of stabbing my fork into the grass beside where I'm working, because a) wooden handles don't like lying on damp grass, b) it means no-one can step on it and do that amusing but very painful thing where they tread on the tines and it pings up and slaps them on the leg (I never, ever leave forks, spades - or, in particular, rakes - lying “prong upwards”. Never. And all my students, Trainees, Mentorees and Clients are taught never to do it, either) (Not that I'm bossy. Just very safety-conscious). Where was I? Oh, and c) because then I don't have to bend double to pick it up. Lazy? No! Efficient!

In this particular garden, I stabbed the fork into the grass next to me, and it went “Clang!” and fell over.

Further investigation revealed this:

 

Yup, the lawn was growing over a stone slab patio. Notice how I have cut and rolled the turf back like, well, like a roll of turf!

 

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When NOT to attempt to prune your corkscrew Willow

 Curly or Corkscrew Willow - Salix babylonica, or Salix matsudana, anything with the cultivar name “Tortuosa” - is a delightful, beautiful, ornamental tree: fast growing, but not long-lived:

 .. and generally speaking, they don't need to be pruned - Unlike curly Hazel, it's not particularly important to keep checking the base for non-curly shoots, as these curly Willows are not grafted, which means that they never throw up long straight “reverted” shoots, in the way that curly Hazel do.

They don't need much attention, as they mostly have a fairly upright growth habit, so they don't spread too much, and they are usually problem-free... until they get a bit too big....

 

 

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Scorched grass and hosepipe bans: the silver lining

“What?!” I hear you cry, incredulously: “How you can you find a silver lining in that? My grass looks like the Serengeti (before the rains, obviously), there is a hosepipe ban in place with no end date on it, everything is dreadful!”

OK, I'll grant you that most people are tearing their hair out, at the condition of their grass: but things are not as bad as you might think, because grass is incredibly resilient, and all it will take is a week or so of wet weather - and remember, kiddies, we are in the UK, wet weather won't be far away - and it will green up again.

Remember when it all looked like this?

 

(Sighs of happiness from all around)

In fact, if grass were to be invented now, it would be hailed as a Wonder Ground-Cover: it grows fast, but manageably: all it needs is to have the mower run over it once a week and it looks perfect: it can withstand foot traffic, garden furniture, and barbecues: it's cool to walk on, on a hot day (until it becomes the scorched Serengeti of course, but hey, still better than tarmac or concrete!): if it gets neglected for a few weeks, all you have to do is chop it down again and get back to regular cutting, and in no time it's perfect again: it's a soothing colour to look at (it's not a coincidence that the main ecology action group are called “green” peace) and of course, it is very drought resilient - even though it currently looks like nothing on earth, it will recover without us having to do anything extra to it.

Miraculous!

So, I hear you ask, somewhat sceptically, what's this silver lining, then?

 

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Rose Dieback: what is it, really?

 

Ah, a phrase to strike terror into the heart of most gardeners, especially those of us who were originally RHS trained: rose dieback.

It occurs when roses are badly pruned, and it can be very detrimental to the plant: and when I say “pruned” that also includes “dead headed”, so it's worth knowing about it now, in the middle of summer, when deadheading is a regular occurrence.

So, what do we know about deadheading roses?

When a blossom, or spray of blossoms, has finished, it needs to be removed, otherwise the plant will waste energy making seeds (hips/haws) instead of sending up more flower buds.

An exception to this “rule” would be Rosa glauca:

 .. which we leave, because it produces rather nice shapely hips - or haws, still not sure of the difference - later in the year: plus it only flowers once anyway, so we might just as well leave them.

Otherwise, it's off with their heads!

And most people - well, most/all gardeners, not so many Clients - already know about making a sloping cut, just above an outward facing bud:

 

 

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Salix Kilmarnock: knowing when to call it a day

Now, anyone who follows me for any length of time, or who has spent any time flipping through my archive blog will know that I often write about a particular grafted ornamental weeping tree, generally known just as Salix 'Kilmarnock'. They come in a range of sizes, from tiny little things less than a yard high (1m) which I think look ridiculous, but that's just my opinion - right up to hefty great things whose canopy might be maybe 10' high: but the usual size is about breast or head height, and the whole point of these trees is that they don't get any taller. They just get denser.

This is what they are supposed to look like - this was taken in February, so the weeping branches are bare of leaves, and you can just see the beginnings of catkins, and daffodils:

 

Today I received an email from Mandy, who says

“I cut down my Kilmarnock willow mainly because it was growing at a 45 degree angle. The regrowth is vigorous and upright. How should I maintain it until it starts to eventually droop over?”

And this is the photo which she sent:

 

 

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Wrong plant, wrong place?

 This is a common phrase in gardening: well, the phrase is “right plant, right place” and it means that if you want to succeed with your garden, you need to choose plants which are appropriate for the position in which you want to grow them. Or, if you prefer, when you buy a plant, you need to give it the conditions it requires.

For instance, there is little point putting a plant which requires full sun in deep shade: it will struggle, and will never be glorious. Likewise, a shade-loving plant will wilt and die if planted in a position where it is exposed to the scorching sun all day: that's an example of putting a plant in the wrong place.

And there is no point planting dwarf conifers, if you need a high privacy hedge: that's more a case of buying the wrong plant.

I came across an example of this the other day: I'd been asked to clear a series of rather stylish raised beds, ready for replanting, and when I returned a week later, the owner had started the planting, with this rose:

 

Me: “Oh, that's a lovely rose, is that a temporary planting, until you decide where to put it?”

Client: “No - I thought it would be lovely just there, trailing over the edge.”

Me: (bites lips) “Ummm, it might be just a bit big for that position...”

Client: “Oh, I thought it was just right, look, it's lovely, just trailing over the edge there.”

Me: “Perhaps we could just check the label?”

Client: “Look, it says Wedding Day.”

Now, I'll be perfectly honest with you......

 

 

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Acorn Update: it just gets better!

 Ooh! Ooh! Excitement!

You'll remember I wrote about my second attempt to germinate some Acorns for one of my Clients, which started with just four acorns, some of which were not very promising, last October:

 Then, as though by a miracle - and let's face it, it is a miracle, that a huge oak tree really can from a tiny acorn grow - we had 50% germination:

 

Well, 66% really, as I didn't expect the tiny one to germinate.

And to be honest, I didn't expect the damaged Knopper Gall one to germinate either, so really that makes it 100% germination, yay!

And now, a couple of weeks later......

 

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Ladybirds: a bumper year for them?

Lately, I've heard many people saying things like “Oh dear, I've hardly seen any bees this year” (pause while I flinch away from wading into the Pulmonaria to trim it, deafened by the buzz of pollinating insects) and to be fair, I was walking along a run of flowering Lavender last week, with not a single insect to be seen on it, which was a bit odd.

And then there's the ongoing Ladybird shortage: “The aphids! The aphids! Where are all the ladybirds?”

Good news, cats and kittens, there are plenty of Ladybirds around: well, there will be, shortly.

 Can you see them? Yes, all those weird-looking black and orange things are the larval stage....

 

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June Newsletter

 “June brings tulips, lilies, roses,
Fills the children's hands with posies.”

Tulips? Seriously? Mine are out in the middle of April, and by mid May they are pretty much over, let alone into June! My Lilies, well, yes they did finally open:

 

 .. and as for the roses, they've been going mad since the middle of May, or earlier:

 

Aren't they gorgeous? I am very partial to a yellow rose, but they must be a good strong clear yellow. I have a rose on the side of my house which I grew from a cutting: I call it Megan's Yellow Rose because it came from the garden of a dear, dear lady - called Megan, yes, well done - for whom I worked for something like 14 years: when I first went there, they were a couple, but her husband died five years or so later, so I stayed on with just Megan for a further nine years, before she, too, sadly passed away. During the probate period, while I was maintaining the garden until the grown-up children could sell the house, I took cuttings of my favourite rose from their garden, and it is flourishing with me now.

Well, when new people buy a house, you never know how much they are going to rip out: and of course it is their entire right to do so:

 

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Fascinated by Fasciation: today, Spear Thistle!

 I always seem to be writing about this, but it's a subject which fascinates me - fasciation, or spontaneous mutation.

This caught my eye while I was out walking at the weekend: an arable field, lots of “weeds” around the edges, where the footpath ran, and lots of Spear Thistle (Cirsium vulgare) dotted about. Nothing unusual so far.

But then I saw this one, which was much denser than all the others:

 Intrigued, I went closer, and instead of the usual formation - a branching central stem, long stems with a single flower at the tip - the foliage was all clustered together, and this was the flower......

 

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Building the Rose Tower

 I mentioned the Rose Tower recently, and several people have asked me what it was, and how I made it.

It started when a tree fell over.

It was a very, very old tree....

Many years previously, this had been a real, live tree, growing in a garden, quite happy and content, giving shade to the garden and occasionally producing fruit - I think it was a plum tree, but I'm not totally sure, as this was long before my time.

Over the years, the “leaning out sideways” part got lower and lower, to the point where it was getting difficult for them to mow underneath it, and one sad day, last June, the whole thing fell over.

Oops!

That's the problem with dead trees - they are, by definition, dead, and at some point in their career, they will fall over.

Luckily, it didn't snap off the rose, in fact I think the rose stems prevented it from actually crashing to the ground.

But clearly, something had to be done.......

 

 

 

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Irish Yew: what a terrible thing to do to it!!

 

I was visiting a garden at the weekend: Rodmarton Manor, out by Cirencester. Lovely place, well worth a visit, and I've been there several times over the past few years, which adds another layer of interest for me - how have things changed, what have they done, what new plants have arrived, which old ones have disappeared, what arrangements have “worked”, and which have been less successful, and so on.

Almost the first thing to be seen, on entering the garden, was an old Irish Yew (of which they have many!) which has recently been heartlessly cut back.

 

Now, those of you who have followed me for a while will know that I am usually all in favour of heartlessly cutting back: and anyone who's met me will have heard my little joke about wishing I'd been called Ruth instead of Rachel (both being very biblical names) because then I could have been Ruth the Ruthless Gardener, which I think is hilarious.

So why does this treatment of an old, over-large Irish Yew vex me? ....

 

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It's Ermine moth time again, folks!

 Last June, I wrote about my first encounter with the Apple Ermine Moth, the unpronounceable Yponomeuta malinellus.

 

 

As I said at the time, I have no idea how to pronounce that -

Eee-ponno-mew-ter?

Yuh-poh-know-mew-tah?

Ponno-mute-er? (assuming a silent Y)

However you say it, there were quite horrible: squirmy, wriggly caterpillars which, when disturbed, turned into what looked like a speeded-up film, as they frantically thrashed around, ugh.

 Apparently there are many types of Ermine Moth, and last week I encountered another one......

 

 

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Acorns: One of these Things is Not Like the Others

One of my Clients has a “treasured” Oak tree in the open land beside her garden, and last autumn she asked me if it was possible to take cuttings from it. I replied that it was possible, but not very efficient, and would require some fairly intensive management: unlike Dogwood, it's not as simple as “chop off a bit and shove it in the ground”... more of that, at another date.

Easier, I said, to collect some acorns and grow them on: even easier to check under the tree and around the garden for little seedlings which helpful Cyril the Squirrel (as she calls him, although personally I doubt that she has just “one” squirrel) has buried.

So I went in search of acorns, and this is all I could find:

It's fairly obvious that the bottom two are proper acorns, the third one up is a malformed, teeny tiny acorn, which probably won't succeed: the fourth one up is a bit weird, and what the heck is the top one?

It's not an acorn at all, but I brought it home anyway, to show to you....

 

 

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Salix Kilmarnock - it's in trouble, folks!

Last week I had a plea for help from Georgia (waves: “Hi, Georgia!”) who has a small Salix Kilmarnock which is in a lot of trouble.

Regular readers will know that I write about this particular tree quite a lot, because people are always having problems with them: if you are not familiar with this particular ornamental tree, they are grafted, weeping, deciduous trees which are often grown in pots, often they are very small (not always), ideal for small gardens, and when they are in good condition, are very pretty, especially early in the year when the catkins come out:

 

 

...but alas, they are rarely the “light airy waterfall” that they should be.

Usually the problems are to do with them either...

 

 

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How to re-wet a dried-out tree in a pot

I don't normally encounter this problem until the middle of summer... but this year, we've had the driest April since records began - ok, I may be exaggerating slightly, but you know what I mean, no rain for week after week, a lot of wind (which is very drying) and eventually, some actual sunshine, which was lovely, but which then baked the soil in a manner which we don't normally encounter until at least July.

This is what happens, if you have a few weeks with no rain:

 

As you can see with this large terracotta pot, the soil had dried out so much that it had shrunk away from the sides of the pot, to the point where I could get two fingers into the gap.

Aargh!

And, of course, once the soil does this, there is no point pouring water on the top of the soil, as most of it just runs straight down the huge gap all the way round, and runs out the bottom of the pot, all over your feet.

When this happens, there are two options.......

 

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“Life... will find a way...”

So said Dr Malcolm, in Jurassic Park, and last week I found a nice example which bears out the truth of the statement.

(*laughs*)

Here is a stack of compost bags, in one of “my” gardens: they've been there for a while, because Mr Client likes to order them in, ten at a time, and I work my way through them, as I need them. So these bags, which were at the bottom of the pile, have been there for, ooh, a couple of months at least. Maybe longer... any way, I went to get some compost last week, and look what I saw:

 

Huh?

A Penstemon? What's it doing down there on the plastic bags?

A closer look showed......

 

 

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Grafted Weeping Cherry: all is not lost!

I have just received a question (“Hi, Liz!”) about a rather ugly flowering Cherry: she says they recently moved in, and have this poor thing in the front garden:

 

Aargh!

It ticks every item on the Salix Kilmarnock hit list: it's grafted, it's been neglected, it's had the hedgetrimmers run over it to shorten it, and it has not been properly pruned for some time. Liz tells me the house is a little less than 30 years old, so it is entirely possible that this tree is about the same age: and certainly, the size of the trunk - “stout!” - suggests a tree of about that age.

Liz said in her email that she called in three arborists: and she put the word “arborists” in quotes because she wasn't satisfied with their answers:

“One said he’d come until I sent pictures ( of the tree, I mean, haha!) then ….. silence.

Two others came - one said leave it and see what happens and the other said cut it down ‘cos it’ll never grow properly again!"

The first one, who simply didn't respond after seeing photos: well, probably because this is a gardener's question, not an arborist's question, but it was extremely rude and unprofessional of them not to respond at all.

The second one said to leave it: why? Do they think the dead branches will just fall out by themselves? It needs pruning, and a bit of TLC, the sooner the better.

However, this answer is better than the third arborist, who said cut it down because it will never grow properly again, which shows that they have no idea what they are talking about.

OK, so for the benefit of anyone who hasn't scoured my archive blog for mentions of How To Prune Weeping Trees, notably Salix Kilmarnock and Weeping Pears, here's the low-down....

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Roses against walls: do not tuck them behind the wires!

 Roses grown up on the wall are a lovely sight, and a great way to “manage” them: it keeps them flat, out of the way of passers-by, it allows us to see every single bloom, instead of half of them being hidden by foliage and other blooms: and it makes it easy to keep them open and with good air circulation, which helps to reduce the incidence of pests and diseases.

All round, a good thing, then!

However, it's always best to tie the rose to the wires, rather than tucking the new shoots behind the wires.

Why?

Two reasons:

 

 

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New Edition: Compost and Leaf Mold!

 

Ladies, are you embarrassed by your smelly compost heaps? Gents, are all your trendy friends talking about Leaf Mold, but you have no idea what it is, or how to make it, let alone what to do with it?

Then this is the book  for you: written specifically (on request) for everyone who wants to start right at the beginning, with no foreknowledge of the subject at all. 

 

This is two books for the price of one: the first book is All About Compost with clear and simple descriptions of what happens in a compost heap, how to build them properly, and how to manage them, not forgetting What To Put In, and – just as important – What Not To Put In, with the emphasis on easy care and doing as little work as possible.

The second part is all about Leaf Mold: what it is, how it differs from compost, how to make it, how and why to collect leaves, exactly what to do with them, what to expect, and what to use it for.

The book clearly explains the differences between Compost and Leaf Mold, along with why they need to be treated separately, and the benefits of each.

 

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Hellebore seedlings - not worth the effort

 

I had a question from a member the other day: “My Oriental Hellebores are surrounded by lots of weeds,” they said, “where have they all come from? I don't have any bird feeders nearby?”

This is the photo:

 

Firstly the good news: these are not weeds.

Well, they are, but not from bird feeders:

 

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Apple pruning in winter.

I recently went on a very interesting training day with the WFGA, it was a one-day course on winter pruning of apple trees: so I thought it would be timely to share some information with you, as this is very much a good time to do what I would call late winter pruning.

Which can help to avoid this sort of situation:

 

Oops. Yes, it blew over in a storm.... to be fair, it was a very old tree. But I digress. I just wanted to start off with a picture, and every other picture I have contains fruit, or masses of leaves, or both...

Now, you might be wondering why someone with my experience feels the need to go on courses, or training days, or skills workshops, whatever you care to call them: and the answer is that there is ALWAYS something to learn.

It is true that I felt a bit bad to be sitting there, happily listening to the tutor, Andrew, while all around me were diligently making notes: but I am sufficiently big and ugly that I no longer feel the need to pretend that I don't know something, when I do.

And there were indeed things to learn: one thing in particular was of great interest, because I had never heard of it before.

Oh, I'll just interrupt myself to remind everyone that, when “one” is self-employed, “one” should still undertake what is called Professional Development, which means going on courses, training days, workshops etc. Back when I worked in offices ( the”Dark Ages” as I call them), we were forever being sent on training courses, or those ghastly “team building” sessions, where the management would pretend to be on equal footing with the rest of us, but would still take the lead in every exercise because no-one had the nerve to tell them to stand aside and let someone else have a go.

(Except for one memorable session, when an otherwise very quiet and timid member of the firm suddenly told the Big Boss off, for automatically stepping forward to organise a project to drop eggs from the fire escape without breaking them, or something equally daft. We were all shocked speechless, as was he.)

Where was I? Oh yes, Professional Development is very important, when “one” is self-employed, in fact you could say that it's even more important for us, because we must continue to better ourselves, and without an HR department forcing us to do it, it's easy to let it slip. Not least because training usually costs us double.........

 

 

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Peony buds are bursting forth!

We've had a week of good weather: it's been warmer than Ibiza, apparently, and we have actually seen the sun!! Yes, that bright light in the sky is the sun, something we have barely seen for several months.

And in response to this wonderful and very welcome period of good weather, the Peony buds are swelling:

 

Don't they look plump and healthy?

 

 

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Ground Elder: invasion from next door

 I've had a question from Natalia (“Hi, Natalia!” *waves enthusiastically*) about Ground Elder, which is, as we all know, a bugger to get rid of. Yes, that is a technical term.

 

If it is just in your own garden (“just!”) then it is relatively straightforward to deal with: as with couch grass (I've written a long How-To on that subject, for your delight and delectation), it has to be dug out, with some follow-up attention afterwards, and when I say that, I actually mean “ceaseless vigilance” but we'll get to that in due course.

Ground Elder removal is very similar - in fact, the Big Three garden weeds (Couch Grass, Ground Elder, and Bindweed) are interchangeable as far as removal is concerned.

But when it's sneaking under the fence from next door, that's a whole other problem, and that's where we turn to Natalia's question.....

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Festuca glauca - Blue Grass - did they survive the winter?

 These blue grasses were hugely popular when I first started gardening professionally, which is quite a few years ago - my, doesn't time fly, when you are enjoying yourself!

 

 

They seem to be losing favour recently, and I think it's because they often just can't make it through our damp winters.

Back in the days when I first started, we were having “proper” winters which were cold, frosty, often with snow, but which had a lot of winter sunshine, so plants had a chance to “dry out” during the day.

In recent years, and particularly the last five or ten years.....

 

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Weeds and Willowherbs

 Yes, ok, willowherbs ARE weeds, I agree!

 

 

This article comes from a comment which I received, last week: I was taking advantage of a non-frozen morning to weed one of the borders, and the Client came out for a chat.

Them: “Ah, I see you are weeding this morning.”

Me: (*resisting the urge to be sarkey*) “Yes - lots of little weeds coming up, now is a good time to get them, before they get too well established.”

Them: “It's amazing how you know which ones are the weeds.”

I laughed.....

 

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Online Zoom Seminar for Self-Employed Gardeners

 Whoo hoo! It's Zoom time, again!

As well as doing face-to-face seminars on How To Be A Successful Self-Employed Gardener, which are based around my book of the same name  (relentless plug!), I also do a lot of online Zoom seminars, on behalf of the WFGA (Working For Gardeners Association), for people who are not able to get to one of the face-to-face sessions.

The next one is Saturday April 12^th, and to book, go to the WFGA website.  Look, there's a picture of me, scything at a ridiculous angle! 

 

This is the blurb for it:

“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 seminar 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.

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.

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; un-necessary paperwork; increasing your income; targets and how to use them; dissatisfaction with your Clients and how to deal with them. In the second session, 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; then some pointers on Expanding and Looking Forwards; with questions being asked all along the way.

All delegates can submit questions by email beforehand: and all delegates will receive a pdf version of the two presentations, afterwards

The talk will start at 9:30 via Zoom and with breaks will last approximately 3 hours.

The cost for this on-line event, is £35 per WFGA member, £45 non WFGA member.”

I do love that "appropriately bossy" bit! Anyway, there's your next chance to meet me, live and sort-of in person, so to book a place, go to the WFGA website, and I hope to “meet” you, in April!

February Newsletter

“February brings the rain,Thaws the frozen lake again,” 

 

Or, more typically: 

 

 

Thank you, to several Members, for informing me that the poem is called The Garden Year and was written by Sara Coleridge. Now I know!

And we did indeed have rain in February... rain, rain, grey skies, more rain... oh, and don't forget the frost, ugh!

There was even one day where, having scraped the ice off the windscreen, and sat patiently inside for ten minutes waiting for everything to defrost, demist, and be perfectly clear (I never understand those people who chip out a tiny peephole in the windscreen, then drive off, leaving all the other windows still blanked off with frost on the outside, and mist on the inside....it's against the law, you know, as well as incredibly stupid): err, where was I?

Oh yes, super-cold morning, barely above freezing....

 

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Eranthis: Winter Aconite, one of my favourites!

 I mentioned these in passing, a couple of days ago, and I've had several questions about where to buy them, and how to get the gorgeous bank effect:

 

So, let's start with the basics. The plant in question is Eranthis hyemalis, common name Winter Aconite.

They are NOT part of the Aconite family, and they are NOT poisonous. The common name simply reflects the similarity in the shape of the leaves, to those of Aconitum or Monkshood.

It's a hardy, garden perennial: that means it grows outdoors, and comes back every year.

For some reason, they have a reputation for being difficult to establish.......

 

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