Forest FM's Gardening Guru
Sue Watts-Cutler
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Ornamental Berries and Fruit
Nature supplies an abundance of tasty and colourful berries and fruits to feed the feathered and furry creatures of the wild. Without these creatures our gardens would be sterile and lifeless and it's rewarding to incorporate fruiting ornamental plants simply to attract them in to feed. However, it is also rather pleasing to have some ornamental berries and fruit which won't be devoured when the colder winter weather sets in and whose colours will last on into the winter for our enjoyment too. These berries and fruit will, of course, eventually biodegrade from age and weather – but this can take some months and it is usually possible to enjoy many of them into at least January.
Red is traditionally the most tasty-looking colour for wild creatures, yet the very hard, shiny, clustered crab apples of Malus ‘Red Sentinel'often provide a scarlet spectacle which persists for months.
A darker raspberry-red can be provided by the large, waxy berries of the ‘Prickly Heaths', or Gaultheria (formerly called Pernettaya) borne amongst evergreen foliage.
A low growing relative, Gaultheria Procumbens ( the north American ‘Wintergreen') bears scarlet berries with an antiseptic taste amongst red tinged evergreen leaves and the odd white bell shaped flower. It can look stunning in winter tubs and baskets where it is raised off the ground for better viewing.
The ornamental Mountain Ash trees can provide hanging bunches of white berries, replacing the fallen leaves with a new winter décor. My own favourite is Sorbus Vilmourinii, a small ferny leaved form whose cherry red berries in Autumn turn first pink then white into winter. S. ‘Pink Pergoda' turns from pink to white, and S. Cashmirinana has straightforward white berries on pink stems.
For pink berries that stay pink, try the Gaultherias again , the multiple shades of the spiny shrub Berberis Wilsonii, or members of the ‘Snowberry' family such as Symphoricarpos ‘ Mother of Pearl'. As the name suggests, other Symphoricarpos forms have persistent white berries.
Black berries are less showy but the blue-black fruit of Viburnum Davidii and V.Tinus (which flowers through the winter too) can be effective.
The prize for distinctive berries however, has got to go to Callicarpa ‘Profusion', whose massed berries . bright violet in colour, adorn its bare stems after the leaves have fallen.
Here's wishing you a colourful winter!
Sue Watts-Cutler.
Winter Flowering Bulbs
Flowering bulbs are usually associated with spring, yet in fact there are outdoor bulbs which bloom most months of the year. The season when they are most welcome is winter, when there are fewer flowering plants around them to compete with their bright beauty . Although flowers tend to be small ( a defence against a harsh weather ), when planted in masse in the garden , winter bulbs can be a truly stunning addition. What's more, they take up little space, can be planted amongst other perennial plants and will often continue to multiply by themselves (‘naturalise') if happy over the years.
If bought in a packet, flower bulbs will need to be planted well in advance of their flowering time, so winter flowering types should be planted as soon as you can this month. Sometimes you find them offered for sale in pots at flowering time but this is a more expensive way of buying them.
Here are some of my recommended favourites:
Winter flowering Cyclamen (Cyclamen couum) flowers January – February. Delightful, low growing dwarf cyclamen in shades from bright pink to white. A carpet of these in winter sunshine is a sight to behold. Best in sun but will take semi-shade. Well drained soil. These are tough, hardy species types, not to be confused with larger flowered hybid cyclamen sold as bedding plants in Autumn.
Winter Aconites. (eranthis hymalis). Flowers January-February. Around 52 (12.5cm) high, these have bright yellow, globular flowers with prominent central stamens, and a ‘ruff' of soft leaves around the base. Plant in a well drained position in sun or part shade. They often do well under deciduous trees.
Wood Anemone (anemone blanda). Flowers February onwards. Starry flowers of blue, white or pink open when the wind blows (this is a pollination ploy), giving them the nickname of ‘Wind Flower'. Foliage is ferny. Imitate a woodland floor with well drained soil rich in organic matter and they will make a charming carpet. Sun or semi-shade.
Dwarf Iris (iris reticulate/dnafordiae). Flowers in February. Particularly gorgeous in tubs and rockeries, with bright, miniature iris blooms of golden yellow or purple shades with orange or yellow throat markings. The blue reticulate is scented. The foliage is grassy and upright. Well drained, sunny site.
Snowdrops (galanthus nivalis). Flowers January – February – even if snowy! Graceful yet tough and hardy, their nodding white flowers can be single or double according to variety. Single flowered types tend to naturalize better. Over estimate the number of bulbs you need if you buy them dried in packs – usually a percentage don't show. Ideally, they are better transplanted after flowering as plants. Ask for nursery grown bulbs to protect our woodland stocks.
Start your Hyacinth bulbs off now for Christmas !
September may seem a long way from Christmas but the new season's bulbs are becoming available in the shops now and as it will take about three months to bring the Hyacinths to the indoor flowering stage, now is the time to start them off. Growing them on yourself means that you can choose the biggest bulbs containing the best flowers in a wider choice of colours.
Hyacinths bulbs are available in two broad categories; ‘prepared' and ‘ unprepared' (the latter sometimes just labelled ‘garden hyacinths'). It is the former type , which have been specially heat treated to prompt them to flower more quickly, which you will need for indoor Christmas flowers.
Place the bulbs in a pot on a thin layer of damp bulb fibre compost. Fill the container so that there is a gap of about ½” (1.2cm) between the soil surface and the pot rim and the tips of the bulbs are protruding slightly.
The pot must now be kept dark and cool (aim for around 40 degrees F) for 6-10 weeks. A popular way of doing this is to buy the pot in a shady place outside, covered with a 4” (10cm) layer of coir , bark or peat. A cool cellar would be even better. Check regularly to ensure that the pot doesn't dry out or become water logged.
When the pale, greeny-yellow shoots are 1-2” (2-4.5m) high, move the pot indoors to a cool, unheated room, firstly in a dark corner for a few days, then nearer the window. At this stage, it is vital that the temperature is kept low or the leaves will go for the sky and hide the emerging flower from view.
When the leaves have turned green and the greenish flower spike begins to push its way up through the centre, move the pot to its final flowering position – ideally well away from radiators and heaters, in a light , but not sunny position – in a temperature zone between 60 and 70 degrees F.
No need to waste your Hyacinths after flowering either. Gradually reacclimatise your spent bulbs to colder outdoor temperatures and replant them in the garden. They will usually return as fragrant Spring blooms in subsequent years.
Sue Watts-Cutler
A Touch of the Tropics
Can't spare the time for a quick week in Barbados ? Find the Middle East a little hot? Take heart – it's actually quite easy to give that tropical look to your own southern English garden with a hardy palm tree.
Given a well-drained soil in a sunny spot sheltered from cold winter winds, a number of hardy palm tress will thrive in this area. Here are some of them:
‘The Torquay Palm'. (Cordyline Australis) A nice bit of marketing form the tourist board! This palm is actually from Australia . It's fairly fast growing and pretty hardy. The head is a clump of strap-like leaves. The trunk often divides after the tree has produced its first bunches of sweetly scented white flowers.
Coloured leaf forms (dark re, stripy variegated, bronze centred0 are now also available but these are less reliably hardy than the green form if the winter is harsher than average.
‘The Chusan, or Fan, palm' (Trachycarpus Fortunei). As its name suggests, its leaves are stiff and fan shaped. The Chusan palm slowly grows to form a tall tree with a Hessian-look trunk but it could take 150 years to match those sedate Victorian specimens. Keep this one sheltered from strong winds which could lead to the leaves thrashing around and becoming damaged. It's pretty hardy and will tolerate part or light shade.
The Mediterranean Bush Palm (Chamaerops Humilis) Slightly less hardy than the two above, this slow growing palm looks very similar to the Chusan Palm but with smaller leaves, saw-like serrated stems and multiple trunks. It forms an attractive shrub or pot specimen for a number of years. Palms in post are best lagged (or moved under fromt-free cover)in winter.
The Canary Island Date Palm ( Phoenix Canariensis). Immensely popular in Spain (where it will produce dates) it is perhaps wise to consider this palm as half hardy in this country. It forms a stiff goblet-shaped bush in its early years, eventually forming an upright trunk but it needs an exceptionally sheltered site for this. Its architectural shape makes it a popular garden specimen but watch out for the spike leaves! Best given plenty of lateral space and lagged (or moved under frost free cover) in winter.
Happy gardening
Sue Watts-Cutler
August 2009
The ever delightful Lavender
Looking at their most gorgeous right now, with their wafting fragrance a magnet to bees and butterflies, the Lavenders are one of the most perfect of the English cottage garden plants.
There are many different types of garden Lavender although all are strongly aromatic and flower for months. Blue and purple-mauve flowers predominate, but you can also grow white flowered, pink flowered and even green flowered forms well in southern England . The group known as the ‘English Lavenders' offer a wide range of hybrids, with flower shades which can be darker or more bluer than the basic form, or pink or white.
Some have been bred to be more compact or dwarfed in habit (for instance the popular ‘Munstead' or ‘Hidcote.') At the other end of the spectrum, the tall growing ‘Dutch Lavender' (lavender 'Vera') makes a good low hedge up to 3-4 feet (1m) high for a sheltered, sunny site. Then there are the distinctive, pine cone shaped flowers of the French Stoechas type Lavenders with protruding vertical columns of petals, often described by children as ‘rabbits ears.' These are slightly less hardy then the English types but highly aromatic. The Stoechas type, ‘Viridis' produces green flowers.
All lavenders should be pruned twice each year to prevent them getting drawn up and ‘leggy' with continuous flowering: in mid-spring cut the fairly hard back all over (although not hard into old wood.) Then, in July give them a lighter ‘haircut' to just below the base of the flower spikes. This will mean cutting off many of the current flowers but fear not: they will soon return to bloom on into he Autumn on a better shaped plant, which, in addition, will be more resilient to breakage from winter weather, too. Because cottage garden plants were grown to be useful as well as pretty, you might also like to benefit from some of Lavender's medicinal and domestic properties: dried Lavender in a wardrobe or drawers repels insects such as moths.
In your pillow, its soothing scent calms and helps relieve insomnia. It is also antiseptic, and as been shown to kill a range of common bacteria - needless to say, it smells much nicer than disinfectant too!
The Butterfly Friendly Garden
Butterfly numbers have been steadily declining for many years now, mainly because of chemical sprays and the loss of their countryside breeding habitats, and they have come to rely more and more on private gardens for their survival.
The gardener can help provide a sanctuary for these delightful creatures in tow ways, by providing nectar-rich food plants for them and by getting them to breed in your garden. The latter is particularly important because food plants alone will not produce a butterfly population.
Butterflies begin life as caterpillars, of course which can sometimes provoke gardeners' paranoia. However, there is no need to worry that these will attack and eat your prized shrubs; caterpillars are very specific about which plants they will eat. What most of them require is an un-trampled sunny patch of such natives as wild grasses (for the brown butterflies), perennial nettles (for the Comma, Small Tortoiseshell, Peacock and Red Admiral) holy and ivy together (for the Holly Blue), hedge mustard (for the Orange Tip), or wild thistles (for the Painted Lady). The Cabbage Whites, with their appetite for your brassicas, are the exception rather than the norm and the caterpillars which attack you gooseberries are no the larvae of butterflies.
Nectar producing feeding flowers should cover the period from March to October, and , like the breeding plants, should be grown in sheltered, sunny areas of the garden.
Good spring flowering plants, for butterflies would include Aubretia, wild Primrose and Sweet Rocket. Later flowering summer favourites include: Lavender, Buddleia (wild seedlings are best), Marjoram, Thyme, Scabious, Echinops or the bedding plants, Lantana and Heliotrope. In late summer and Autumn, try Centranthus, Sedum spectabile (pale pink forms), Asters, or Verbana bonariensis, with its tall stems topped with violet-purple flower clusters.
One important point to bear in mind is that any chemical garden spray designed to kill insect pests will also kill your butterflies, and the butterfly will face the same extinction threat as it would on intensively farmed agricultural land. Use only organis methods of pest control with discretion.
Sue Watts-Cutler June 2009
Clematis: The ‘Queen of Climbers'
Clematis are perhaps our most exotic-looking flowering climbers, with so many types available that together they can provide flower colour from late Winter, right through the growing season and into late Autumn. In addition, the range of flower shapes and forms varies so much that that the layman would never guess that many of them are related at all.
Perhaps the most popular and well known types are the Summer flowering clematis hybrids, with their large, star shaped flowers in colours such as white, blues, cherry reds, pinks and velvety dark purples and burgundy - some of these flowers are double 9for instance the lovely ‘Multi Blue') and some are striped one colour over another, for instance the pink and white flowers of ‘Dr. Ruppel' or the carmine and blue combination of ‘ Barbara Jackman'
In late Winter, the evergreen Clematis Cirrhosa types produce primrose yellow bells, sometimes red spotted, like Cirrhosa ‘ Freckles'. Then in Spring, there are the nodding bells of the Alpina types in pink, white or purple, followed by fluffy seed heads. For Autumn and Summer, mix in the orange-yellow lanterns of Orientalis or Tangutica, the perfume of Flammula, or the masses of tiny, fragrant flowers in magenta and white of Triternata ‘Rubromarginata' which look like pretty swarms of tiny bees, hovering in the breeze.
Different types of Clematis do best on different aspects, so do match the direction you wall or fence faces to an appropriate Clematis. All are greedy feeders, so mix garden compost and a little bonemeal into the hole when planting and also sink the plant about 4” (10cm) deeper into the ground than it was in its pot. (This unusual procedure protects the root from harm if the fungal disease ‘Clematis wilt' should ever affect the top growth.)
If you need to plant a Clematis in a pot, use a good sized one not much shallower that 2ft deep 960cm) and of a similar diameter. Choose in a pot growing variety which will be full grown at 6-8ft.(2-2.5cm) and use a soil based compost such as John Innes No3.
Position the pot in shade to keep the roots cool. With a few wires or an open trellis to twine around your Clematis will rapidly grow to delight you with blooms which justify its titles as ‘Queen of Climbers'.
It's Spring - feed me!
Whilst plants are sleeping over winter, fertilizers are wasted. The plant doesn't use them and they generally just wash away in the rain and snow.
However, now that spring is here and plants are going flat out to produce new leaves, flowers and roots, help is often beneficial.
This is most true of plants grown in containers. Here, they are in an artificial environment with no access to living soil with all its natural nutrient manufacturing, and are essentially on la life support system when if comes to feeding.
There are two main types of fertilizer for containers – a solid form involving some sort of slow release (perhaps the best being the tiny Osmacote-type round balls which are activated to release their food over several months by warmth and moisture) and those mixed into a solution and applied with watering. The latter has the advantage that they act very rapidly and can be partially absorbed through the leaves as well as the roots. However, they are short lived and often need to be re-applied every 2-3 weeks. Examples would be liquid seaweed (which I've found good for cucumbers and herbs in particular), Tomorite (my recommendation for flowering pot plants such as chrysanthemums and fuchsias) and Miracle Gro (for considerable leafiness as well as flower, such as summer bedding plants). Plant feeding echoes human nutrition in that a plant needs around 12 nutrients and an excess of one can prevent the uptake of another, or become toxic. So always follow the recommended dosage on the packet – more fertilizer is definitely not ‘better'!
A few fertilizers (such as calcified seaweed) contain most or all of these nutrients. Generally, however, there is a bias towards stimulating the aspect of the plant you want to perform well.
With regard to plants in the open ground, green leafy plants, (lawn, hedges, leaf veg.) respond to high nitrogen feeds such as ‘Growmore', lawn fertilizers or chicken manure which forces green growth at the expense of root, fruit or flower.
Root crops and flower bulbs respond to bone-meal; whilst flowering , leafy plants (such as roses or perennials) like farmyard manure, tomato fertilizer or rose feeds. Woody, fruiting plants seem to respond best to general purpose fertilizers such as ‘Vitax Q4', fish blood and bone or calcified seaweed.
Although most fertilizers are flexibly interchangeable amongst plants, there are some plants which have special food requirements. Here I suggest sticking to fertilizers specifically recommended for them eg. ‘ericaceous' fertilizers (for acid loving plants such as rhododendrons and azaleas), ‘citrus fertilizers' (for lemons and oranges), or African Violet and Orchid feeds for these plants.
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Why grow your own vegetable and fruit?
There are many advantages in setting aside a port of your garden for growing edible crops, some of them tangible, others just ‘feel good' reasons. There really is, for example, a great sense of achievement in eating and sharing food which wouldn't have been there if you hadn't nurtured it yourself. What's more, in doing so you've benefited from the health fresh air and accompanying aerobic exercise, learned new skills and achieved a rejuvenating sense of connection to nature.
There are also more practical advantages: you know where the food's come from and what, if any toxic spray residues it might contain.
It's also likely to taste better than bought, commercially produced, produce. This is partly because the flavour of many vegetables and fruit is influenced by the growing conditions they were raised under. Even the same variety of a crop such as strawberries, for instance, will taste far better raised in your nurtured allotment than from an indoor grow-bag equivalent in a commercial polythene tunnel. However, there is also another aspect to this: you can choose the varieties on other criteria, such as appearance, uniformity or firmness for transport and storage purposes. This means varieties are limited. Not only can you choose other varieties from the commercial seed catalogues, you can even go further and choose some of the yesteryear.
See www.daughterofthesoil.com for more details.
Is it cheaper to grow you own? Not necessarily if you are going to stick to common mainstream varieties of potato and carrot – although they may taste better. However, grow organically, or choose crops which are usually expensive to buy such as raspberries, mange tout peas, purple sprouting broccoli, artichokes or French beans, and the answer will be ‘yes!'
Sue Watts-Cutler (February 2009)
Grow your own Tree Fruit
With food prices ever rising and the often indifferent taste of shop-bought produce, there's never been a better time to grow really tasty home-raised fruit for yourself.
Nursery growers, well aware that domestic gardens are getting smaller these days, have been working on ways to make it easier to accommodate tree fruit for some years. The huge thirty foot Victorian monsters, which required a ladder and considerable bravery to scale to pick the fruit, have now been reduced to small, accessible ‘bush' trees these days, thanks to the development of dwarf rootstocks. For apples, this can mean a tree as small as 6 feet (1.8 m), and for pears, plums and cherries about 18 feet (5m).
If this is still a little large for you, there are other ruses: apples, pears plums cherries, figs and peaches can all be trained to grow flat against a wall, fence or on wires, in formations such as ‘fans', or in addition for apples and pears, in ‘espaliers' of horizontal, spaced branches, or in a line of forty five degree plants pruned close to the main trunk known as ‘cordons'.
Traditionally, most pears, apples, plums and cherries required adjacent pollinating trees (a different, compatible cultivar of the same fruit) which meant that two trees were needed but even this is often no longer necessary, as many fruit trees will now set fruit by themselves if you choose a ‘self fertile type.
Garden a little shady? Try the shade tolerant cherries ‘Nabella' or ‘Morello' which will produce fruit without the sun which most fruit needs.
For the next few weeks or so, it is possible to buy your fruit trees ‘bare root' – dug straight out of a field. As this saves the nurseryman years of labour-intensive potting and care, bare root trees tend to be much better value for their size. Plant them as soon as you can at a time when the ground is neither frozen nor waterlogged, and always support free-standing trees with a stake.
Happy gardening!
Sue Watts-Cutler Jan.2009