Archive for January, 2010

Container gardening.

Friday, January 29th, 2010

The very first garden that I was able to call my own was not located in the most promising site – a small, rather shady yard (courtyard would be way too grand a term) bounded by ageing wooden fences and with a solid concrete floor. Over a period of a few years I filled this little space with many dozens (possibly hundreds) of different plants that together created a little green oasis that carpeted the floor and covered the fences.

Massed containers create a dense green wall.

That garden was in East London, and, although I didn’t know it at the time, I was one of many gardeners worldwide who were exploring the limits of both their site and their plants by container gardening.

In theory you can grow literally any plant in a container.

Having seen Italian nurseries pot-growing full size, mature trees, many decades old and of many species, I can testify that the only limits are those imposed by the grower, rather than the plants – in other words, if you’re going to grow a 50 year old Magnolia in a giant barrel then you need to accept that it’s going to take some looking after.

Literally any space can be greened.

The benefits of container growing, on any scale, are considerable. For starters you can grow all manner of plants that would otherwise be unsuitable for your garden soil (assuming you have any). Want a Rhododendron collection but garden on chalk? No problem with containers. Want to grow Mediterranean herbs but have a cold, damp site? Again, it’s containers to the rescue.

Many urban gardens – like my old site – have no soil at all, and so containers can bring flowers and greenery to the most unlikely sites. Even those living in flats can use balconies, rooftops and window-boxes to green things up. The sky is quite literally the limit.

Silver, with black and blue, works well in a contemporary urban setting.

Even if you have a perfectly acceptable garden with lovely soil and a decent aspect, then containers still have much to offer. They allow you to bring plants up close to the house when they are at their flowering peak, and then rotate them away once they have passed. All manner of bright annuals can be used for temporary displays of colour, if that’s your thing, and you can endlessly rearrange your displays as if you were dressing a stage set.

Containers are also perfect for growing semi-hardy or even entirely tropical plants outdoors whilst the weather allows it, and those same plants can then be spirited away to the cosseting warmth of a greenhouse, or even indoors, when things start to cool off. Container growing is not just about ornament though, almost all herbs, vegetables, and some fruits can also been easily pot-grown, and in many cases actually provide for easier, less maintenance intensive cultivation too.  The key word is definitely versatility. Containers allow you to grown far more, for far longer, in far more places, than would even otherwise be possible.

A perfect carrot crop from a terracotta pot.

As far as the containers themselves go, again, the only limits are those of your imagination. Traditional pots come in three basic types – plastic, terracotta and fired/glazed clay. But of course there are also many purpose made metal pots, not to mention wooden barrels and even stoneware available these days. You can, of course, recycle pretty much any receptacle that takes your fancy – old basins and baths are popular choices, but, again, there are no real limits, and remember you can always paint, mosaic or otherwise decorate your chosen container if the shape is right but the colour is wrong.

From a practical point of view there are a few key things to consider when deciding on containers. First off is drainage. I have, on many occasions, come across plants grown in containers with absolutely no drainage holes in the bottom. It sounds obvious perhaps, but not all “pots” come with drainage. Unless you’re planning a bog garden in a pot (which is quite possible, of course) then no plant wants to be sitting in water, and you absolutely must make sure there are good, large drainage holes in your container, which may well mean enlarging upon the holes that are already there.

Ultra chic - architectural Restios.

Secondly think about the stability of your container and the plants you intent to grow. Plastic pots are very lightweight and easily blown over, particularly when they’re housing tall, top-heavy plants. At best this can simply be an annoyance, but at worst you may wake to find your favourite container plant has been smashed to bits in a gale. Taller plants often need additional support, regardless of the weight of the container they are in, so you might want to position near a wall or fence.

As to the compost in the pot, the two key factors are drainage (once again) and body. Different plants will, of course, require rather different recipes of compost, grit, bark chip etc., but in general drainage in any container is much worse than in the open ground, so most plants will require a relatively open compost with fairly large sized particles. This is why clay-based garden soil is not a great choice for a pot – try to water the plant and the whole thing turns into a sludgy mush.

Alpines in an weathered metal trough.

Which brings me to the one downside of container gardening – to have any hope of doing well plants in pots need a whole lot more attention than they do in the ground.

On a hot day in summer containers may well need to be watered twice a day, and even through the rest of the year, including winter, they will need to be kept moist. Rainfall, no matter how heavy, is no substitute for a good soak with a hose or can. You can reduce these watering needs by using a simple automatic watering system, and also by incorporating water-retaining granules into the compost mix.

Proprietary potting composts only have 1 to 2 months food supply built in, so after that it’s all up to you, and most plants will require fortnightly feeding throughout the growing season if they are not to start to look sulky and impoverished. Again, this can be reduced if you incorporate slow release fertiliser granules in the compost mix, but even they will only last for one season, and unless you’re growing annuals then you will eventually have to start a liquid feeding regime – comfrey juice is ideal for veg and many herbaceous plants too.

Plastic sacks make unconventional but effective containers.

The other main factors to consider are about protection, from pests and from the weather.

All of the usual range of garden pests and diseases are equally likely to occur in container grown plants, and a few – notably of the mollusc and vine weevil variety – can be more problematic. Natural slug and snail deterrents consisting of sharp shards can by easily employed on the compost surface in pots and provide an effective barrier. It’s also worth checking under the containers themselves, where you’re likely to find all of the above mentioned little critters will have set up home.

Plants in pots are always going to be more vulnerable to extremes of weather, from hot and dry to cold and wet. Of course the advantage of a container is that often you can simply relocate it to a more hospitable location when weather threatens, but the largest containers may well have to stay put. In winter consider insulating pots with fleece or bubblewrap and, depending on what you’re growing, the plants themselves may require the protection of hessian or fleece tied around them.

Exotica like these tender Cannas make for perfect container subjects.

Heat can be just as damaging, and a dark coloured pot (particularly a black plastic pot) can heat up in full summer sun to the extent that the roots of the plant contained within are cooked and killed. Teracotta is breathable, and provides a much more stable temperature, but even so you may want to consider relocating or shading certain plants and containers for a time.

On balance, though, unless you’re container gardening on an industrial scale, the huge benefits greatly outweigh the maintenance efforts required.

From herbs and fresh fruit right outside the kitchen door, to barrel-fulls of bright seasonal annuals, to tropical wonders on rooftops, to wall-clothing Wisterias and evergreen Clematis on patios, containers are the answer.


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Border patrol.

Monday, January 25th, 2010

As the very first signs of new garden life are beginning to push into growth in the form of Snowdrops and Witch Hazels, now seems like the ideal time to consider the borders. If yours were disappointing last year, or maybe had a quick blast of wow-zinginess before rapidly fading to bare earth and leafless branches, then some of these ideas might help spruce things up in the coming season and beyond…and since everyone loves a top 10 list, here are my tips on maximising a borders potential.

1. Seasons

The traditional English border was very much a summer fancy, and typically lay dormant or even completely empty for almost half of the year. That’s all very well if you garden on a country-estate, but most gardeners should want their border to provide year round interest. Try to incorporate at least one or two flowering elements for each season, and for trees and shrubs try to choose from those that give the most bang for their buck – not just seasonal flowers but colourful bark, attractive, possibly evergreen foliage, fruit and berries. Smaller herbaceous plants can be multi-season too, with seed heads following flowers and evergreen grasses looking more dramatic when frosted in winter than they do glinting in the summer sun.

2. Wildlife

Sedum - one of the ultimate bee attracting plants.

As I’ve mentioned on my last blog entry, bringing wildlife into a garden adds a whole new dimension of interest, and it’s a year-round thing too. From butterflies, bees and the like in summer, to flocks of feeding birds in winter, they’re all out there waiting for an invitation, you just have to send the right garden signals. Having a garden attractive to wildlife doesn’t mean that you have to have borders filled with nettles and brambles, there are a huge array of highly ornamental plants which will do the job just as well. Top herbaceous bee attracting plants include the likes of Sedum, Ajuga, Echium, & Verbena bonariensis. Butterflies thrive on Lavender, Lunaria annua (Honesty), Hesperis matronalis (Sweet Rocket), Centranthus ruber (Valerian) and of course Buddleja, to name just a few. Birds will initially be attracted into gardens that provide them with shelter, from which they can scope out potential meals. Good seed and fruit bearing plants for birds include Blueberry, Elderberry, Crabapple, and Cotoneaster.

3. Soil

There’s a lot of truth in the maxim that you only get out what you put in, and nowhere more so than in the garden. Borders tend to have a pretty high appetite, and with a mass of plants competing for food and water resources the soil can quickly become leached of nutrients, particularly in gardens where fallen leaves and general garden debris are tidied away. To keep plants performing well for you year in year out it’s crucial to give them something they can sink their roots into. By far the best way to do this is by mulching to a minimum depth of 3 to 4 inches throughout the entire border, ideally in late autumn or early winter. This will provide food and structure to the soil, as well as help reduce watering, and the microbes and worms will do the rest for you.

4. Arrangements

If your border is to have long-lasting and season-round appeal then you’re going to need several different elements. There needs to be a permanent skeleton – these would be the trees and shrubs – some of which should ideally either be evergreen or at least have year-round interest. The smaller growing plants, be they woody or herbaceous, perennials or bulbs, then form the flesh on the bones. Although it’s appealing to buy 1 of everything to try to grow as many different plants as your space allows, this never makes for a very good border arrangement. Much better to plant in 3’s 5’s or 7’s and to plant the groups together rather than spread them around, this way you mimic how plants would be found in the wild, as well as create much a stronger visual impact.

5. Colours

Yellow & purple complimenting one another.

It really is a good idea to have a colour scheme in mind, if not for the whole border then at least for sub-sections of it. Planting a whole variety of colours together can lead to some nasty combinations that do nobody any favours; a little forward planning will see harmony restored. If you do want lots of different colours, or want to grow particular plants that would clash with one another, then use foliage plants in between them to give a green breathing space. Think of the border – including all the foliage – as being like a giant flower arrangement.

It’s often best to go with two or three colours and plant accordingly. These can be contrasting and opposites – orange and blue, yellow and purple etc. – or harmonious – blue and white, yellow, orange and red, and so on. It’s fun to find as many different plants as you can that fit into your colour scheme and then play around with them in your space

6. Hights

The “normal” way to plant a border is to arrange the larger plants at the back, perhaps with a fence or hedge as a backdrop, have the medium sized in the middle and the low growers in the foreground. Personally, I’m not crazy about this arrangement if it’s applied too rigidly; it all looks a bit too much like a still life for my liking. Whilst it’s true that low growing plants do need to be near the front of a border if they’re going to be seen and receive enough light, the same doesn’t apply to other sizes, and it’s much more fun – not to mention more naturalistic – to mix and match. A few tall plants near the front of a border can provide a great foil for ground-huggers beneath them, and tall growing seasonal bulbs like lilies can also work well near the front, particularly if they are scented.

7. Spacings

It’s important to consider the ultimate size of trees and shrubs before using them in the border, something that, in my experience, very few gardeners ever do! These larger beasts of the border need to be arranged to allow room for growth and for their companion plants not to be blocked from view or shaded from light. I’ve come across many older borders where all you can see is a wall of shrubby foliage right at the front, whilst the back is hidden and bare. Perennials, though, should be planted closely to minimise the amount of bare soil on view. This not only looks more attractive, but also helps to reduce evaporation (and so watering) as well as helping to prevent weeds from taking hold. In new borders wildflower seeds can be scattered amongst the plantings to create a quick seasonal fill-in, far better than rows of disposable garden-centre annuals.

8. Senses

Miscanthus for movement, texture and colour, here paired with Asters.

It’s a common mistake when planting a border to think primarily in one dimension, and focus entirely on the visual, or even just on the colours. Consider instead how much richer a border can be if you also plant for your nose – fragrant flowers and leaves too; for your ears – grasses, bamboos and other plants that rustle in the breeze; and for your touch – all manner of different textures can be selected, from shiny bark to velvety leaves.

9. Contrasts

The best borders are full of little tensions and visual contrasts. Large leaves look best beside smaller, delicate cut leaves, rather than next to other large leaves, for example, and tall works best against low, rounded beside spiky and lance-shaped etc. Follow this principle and you’ll find that plants compliment one another rather than compete for attention. You can go one step further in you incorporate colour, by having plants with contrasting shapes and textures but with similar colours. Bold, bronzy red foliage can be mirrored by small flowers that draw from the same palette, and the same goes for silver, white, green, and yellow, even blue.

10. Features

Even after you’ve carefully planned your plantings for height, colour and space you might find that there’s a lack of focal point in the border. This is particularly common in cottage garden type plantings, where the emphasis is generally on non-structural herbaceous plants. This doesn’t mean to say that you have to stick an evergreen shrub in the middle of your wallflowers and roses, all sorts of objects can provide a focal feature to draw the eye. Options might include a small pergola or climbing frame, a bird-bath or feeding station, or any wooden/metal/stone object that takes your fancy and around which you can plant. Reclamation yards are great for finding all sorts of inspiration.


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Encouraging wildlife in the garden.

Friday, January 22nd, 2010

A fabulous little shield bug nymph that also happens to dine on aphids.

Down here in deepest rural Devon I’m lucky enough to garden on a piece of land that has never been cultivated or intensively worked before, let alone been bombarded with pesticides.

As a result the variety and sheer numbers of wild animals that live in the garden is a constant source of amazement to me, and the diversity of insect life in particular is especially remarkable, with new jewelled beetle, bee and dragonfly species seeming to appear each year.

But no matter where your garden is located, be it a city rooftop, a suburban terrace or a wild moor, the benefits of attracting and keeping wildlife in the garden are the same. If we grow plants and maintain gardens in order to have somewhere interesting and attractive to spend time, then when those same gardens are teeming with wildlife you’ve adding a whole other dimension of interest. It’s the difference between viewing a still life and 3D cinemascope.

Toad - natural slug killer par exellance.

But wildlife in the garden is not just ornamental. All gardens are, to one extent or another a war zone, with an array of slugs, caterpillars, weevils and other little pests just waiting till your back is turned before planning their next raid on your leafy lovelies.

By encouraging wildlife – be they birds, predatory insects or mammals – you are also recruiting foot soldiers to do your pest control work for you. Definitely what you’d call a win/win scenario.

Even more importantly though, from Honey Bees to House Sparrows to Small Tortoiseshells, our native wildlife continues to decline through habitat loss and by creating the right mini-environments and feeding points in your garden you can help to tip the balance back in their favour.

Southern Hawker - one of the first dragonflies to arrive at new urban ponds.

There’s no doubt that the single most important thing you can do for wildlife in any garden is to build a pond. Once established ponds become the centre of the garden as far as wildlife is concerned and you’ll see a big increase in the variety of animals visiting.

Toads and frogs will quickly set up base in even very small bodies of water and will repay you the favour by wolfing down large numbers of slugs and snails. Other natural slug killers that will likely visit a pond are hedgehogs together with an array of birds that will drink and bathe in shallow pond margins.

Along with being beautiful and fascinating to watch in action dragonflies and damselflies are also voracious predators of smaller insects. These miniature winged marvels disperse over huge distances and are adept at locating water bodies, with a few species specialising in colonising new ponds. The larger and deeper the pond the more species it will attract, but even the tiniest are wildlife magnets.

Throughout the rest of the garden animals will be looking for habitats to shelter and breed in, as well as food sources for themselves and their offspring. Trees can house huge communities of wildlife, and natives like Oak, Hazel, Willow and Hawthorn in particular are invaluable to birds, mammals and insects alike. Fruit trees – especially apple –  are also much loved by blackbirds and many others through autumn.

Flowering Ivy - a vital food source in late autumn.

Shrubs too are essential shelter habitats for wildlife, and a mixture of deciduous and evergreen plantings will encourage smaller birds including wrens and dunnocks, as well as providing winter accommodation for hedgehogs.

Flowering climbers and shrubs are also vital food sources for pollen and nectar-eating insects, especially butterflies, beetles and bees.

Flowering very late in the season, Ivy can be positively smothered with feeding insects like hoverflies come November and those same hoverflies will have spent their summers hoovering up aphids from the rest of your garden.

Of course all flowering plants, down to the smallest clovers, are also highly beneficial to feeding insects, and these will in turn attract larger predatory insects and birds.

Silver-Washed Fritillary feeding on bramble flowers.

A good diversity of flowering plants, with selections that flower throughout the year is the best wildlife recipe, whilst seed heads should, wherever possible, be left to provide essential winter food for birds and shelter for over-wintering insects.

Native species like foxgloves and primroses are particularly beneficial. If you can try to leave some nettles, thistles, brambles or vetch in a hidden and unused corner of the garden and watch the butterfly population boom.

Small log heaps will support a huge array of insect life, most of which, like slug-eating ground beetles, are highly beneficial whilst the warmth of compost heaps may, if you’re lucky attract slow-worms, wonderful legless lizards that will dispatch large numbers of slugs and snails. Nestboxes, not just for birds, but also for bees and ladybirds, are now readily available or easily built, and of course every garden should have at least one bird feeding station.

Blue tit - a feathered pest-control unit.

Providing peanuts and sunflower seeds through winter will literally mean the difference between life and death for the likes of Blue & Great tits, which are unable to forage effectively in frozen conditions.

Those same birds will then spend the following season searching your garden for caterpillars to feed their young.

One final thought, don’t be too tidy. Leaving things a little ragged, a little more natural will help to create a rich ecosystem of wildlife in your garden.


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Garden Tips

Thursday, January 21st, 2010

I always do a tour of the garden looking at it with fresh eyes as soon as I have finished juggling sprouts behind steamy windows and have stowed all the Christmas paraphernalia.  As their new flower buds are starting to emerge through the soil, it is a good time to cut down all the old leaves of Oriental Hybrid hellebores and mulch around their crowns with year-old, half-ready leafmould.   The flowers look much more spectacular powering upwards during the next few weeks if they are divested of all last years messy stuff.  On mild days I have a bit of a tidy-up, open up cold frames and greenhouse doors, inspect the plants within and remove yellowing leaves.

As I write this we are having our first frosty spell of the winter in the South East.  For those elsewhere who have escaped thus far, may I remind you to fleece up or move to shelter all those tender things in pots that might be harmed.  The next few weeks are likely to be the really bleak, icy ones and – remembering last year’s minus 11 degrees – anything can happen with the weather, anywhere, with little warning.  Take comfort in the fact, however, that the days start to lengthen noticeably by the second half of the month.  Meanwhile, if it is too horrid to garden, just enjoy doing a little forward planning:  sit around in your socks leafing through seed catalogues.  Happy New Year.


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The fine art of composting.

Monday, January 18th, 2010

No matter what kind of garden you have, so long as soil features somewhere in the layout, there’s one essential feature that you can’t possibly do without, and that’s a compost heap.

The archetypal garden compost heap - big and steamy.

There are some pretty compelling reasons why every garden and gardener should get with the compost. Firstly it considerably reduces the amount of waste that your friendly bin-men have to cart off to the landfill site, and almost completely eliminates the organic part of that waste. This is crucial because, whilst plastics make up the largest bulk of landfill, it’s the rotting organic stuff that gives off substantial volumes of greenhouse gas in the form of methane.

Secondly having a well-managed compost area will provide you with an ongoing supply of lovely crumbly goodness to put back into your garden.

This will in turn feed and enrich your soil as well as improve its texture and quality, particularly if you garden on sandy or clay soils.

Of course self-produced compost also reduces or, if you really go for it, completely removes the need to buy in expensive (and often environmentally suspect) composts. Many small to medium sized gardens are somewhat over-managed, with fallen leaves and green waste whisked away ASAP in a bid to keep things neat and tidy…. which is fine, but if you then throw those leaves away then you’re breaking the natural cycle of decay and rejuvenation of the soil. Solving two problems with one solution, home composting makes common sense really, and is perhaps the ultimate in local recycling.

One of the other beauties is that composters do far more than digest fallen leaves; indeed leaves on their own tend not to produce very good compost. Aside from hefty chunks of wood pretty much any vegetable derived material can and should be composted. So we’re talking about lawn mowings and kitchen scraps like veg peelings, which are pretty obvious candidates perhaps, but also tissue, newspaper and cardboard along with all plant prunings and cut-down herbaceous material from the course of the year. It’s a good idea to keep something like a hessian sack to hand to collect all of your composting material ready for the heap. The only things you can’t effectively compost are animal derived materials, aside from egg shells – so no bones, meat leftovers or animal waste.

The process that miraculously transforms so much waste into wonderful, rich dark compost is aerobic digestion. Bacteria, munch their way through your cast offs feeding on carbon and nitrogen whilst using oxygen and water to fuel their feast. All four of these elements (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen and water) are needed for the decomposition process to work properly.

Wire compost bin - Simple but effective.

Different types of material contribute different elements to the compost. Grass clippings and kitchen waste provide nitrogen, whilst newspaper and fallen leaves provide carbon, so it’s important to layer the different types of material as you add to your composter – alternate clippings, say, with newspaper, or autumn leaves with kitchen waste etc.

As for the composters themselves, there are, of course, a variety of plastic Dalek-alikes readily available, but it’s much cheaper, and certainly not rocket science to make your own.

Pallet composter, with carpet roof for insulation.

For the smallest gardens a simple upright ring of heavy-duty meshed chicken wire will do the job, although they can also be insulated with old carpet for warmer, faster results.

Alternatively bang four posts into the ground and attach fencing or wood pallets onto all four sides, to create a box unit.

The front panel needs to be open-able or removable for access and turning of the compost, but otherwise you can use this basic principle to build to any scale that you want.

For the largest gardens with the greatest compost input/output then a series of two or three wooden panel bins (ideally with wire sides to allow for good oxygenation) will work best.

The grandaddy of composters - the 3-bin.

In this system you move and turn the compost from one bin into it’s neighbour every 3 to 6 months allowing for a succession of compost at different stages of completion.

Composters should be kept moist but never allowed to get truly wet. In summer, in particular, it pays to keep an eye on your compost and water it if it seems to be on the dry side whilst in winter, when the composting process slows down considerably, you might need to cover with sheeting to prevent water-logging. Turning your compost regularly will allow for good oxygenation and mixing of materials and will considerably speed up the whole composting process.

The Wormery - an earthworm hotel.

There is a tendency to tuck compost heaps and bins into the farthest, darkest and gloomiest reaches of the garden, but the microbes that are doing all the hard work also need warmth – the warmer the site the faster the composting process – so try to situate somewhere that receives at least a little sunlight and consider insulating with carpet.

Another great option is the wormery. Wormeries are small-scale enclosed box structures, generally made of wood, which serve and board and lodgings for an extended family of gardeners-best-friends.

The worms rapidly digest all of the same materials that would be suitable for composting and the end product is leachate, an extremely powerful and useful liquid fertiliser, along with small volumes of very high quality worm-cast compost.


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Making a new garden.

Friday, January 15th, 2010

One of the key things about being a gardener through winter is that, frankly, there’s not that much action. The grass and hedges aren’t in growth, there are no new weeds springing up in your beds, and there are generally fewer flowers to admire too. All in all there’s much more time to plan and consider what you might want to do in the year ahead.

If you’re thinking of starting a new garden, or a new area within your existing plot, then now is definitely the time to get stuck in to figure out what you want to achieve and how best to go about getting it.

Being faced with a whole new patch of ground to work can be daunting, so, for simplicities sake, I’ve broken down the key areas to consider into handy bite-sized chunks. Work through these in order and you’ll soon be on your way to achieving your goals.

1. The Site

It’s fair to say that many gardeners, expert and novice alike, often tend to put the plant cart before the garden horse when it comes planning to a new garden. Which is to say that it’s easy to draw up a list of great looking plants that you’ve admired in gardens, books and catalogues and then try to build something out of them. Unless you’re a specialist/collector, then don’t even think of coming up with a planting list until you’ve given full consideration to the plot itself. Before you do anything you must know the answers to four key questions:

1)      What is your soil type, acid/alkaline, sandy/clay etc.

2)      How much sunlight does your plot receive, and at what time of the day.

3)      What’s the drainage like – no use planning for a Mediterranean garden if your site turns into a swamp for half the year.

4)      What’s the exposure – where does the wind come from, and how strongly does it blow; what are the typical winter temperature lows.

2. The Style

Informal, naturalistic plantings of wildflowers are increasingly popular.

OK, so now you’ve got the broad limits that may dictate what type of garden and plants you can expect to succeed on your site. So next up consider what you want from your garden. Are you looking for lots of flowers and colour, or are architectural shapes more important, do you want a relaxed, naturalistic garden with native plants and wildflowers or something more formal? Do you want lots of space to romp in or relax on sunny days, or something more intimate and enclosed? Crucially, consider also how much time can you dedicate to maintenance of the finished article. Do you want or need a lawn or would hard or semi-hard surfaced walkways be more practical in the long-term? Do you want to incorporate a vegetable plot – if you don’t already have one then your surely should – if so you’ll want to dedicate your sunniest corner to the plants that will provide for the kitchen. Finally don’t forget to create a space for the compost heap – the engine of your future garden.

3. The Clearance

Back to the basics.

Whatever and wherever your new garden will be there’s bound to be areas that need to be cleared, weeded, stripped of grass or paving, so the next step is to get back to the basic “bare canvas” as I like to call it.

You’ll almost certainly discover things about your plot as you go – hidden stumps or stones just under the surface for instance, and all manner of obstacles and oddities turn up in urban plots where buildings have previously stood.

4. The Shapes

Once you know broadly what type of garden you can and should be aiming for and you’ve got back to the bare bones of the plot then you can start planning the actual design. Measure out your space and try out some shapes on a piece of paper to see what looks appealing – you don’t have to be an artist to get a good idea of layout and balance. You can also try out shapes on the ground itself using string & bamboo canes, or a garden hose, or a trickle of sand from a bag to create borders, beds & paths to be.

5. The Hard stuff

Next up you can finally start assembling your new creation. Head to your chosen garden supplies outlet and get ready all the tools and materials that you’ll need. Start with all the hard landscaping, if there is to be any. This includes gravel, rocks, paving, brick, wood-work, metal, anything and everything that you have in mind for the finished scheme.

6. The Dig

Then dig over the planting areas, loosening any big clumps of soil and removing any larger stones. If you are planning to have beds of plants – and most gardens do – then this is also the time to improve the soil. If your new bed was formerly an old lawn or patch of weeds then chances are the ground will be compacted and nutrient poor. Lots of compost is the order of the day, as well as gravel or sharp sand in heavy soils. Grass is a plant too, and the proper preparation of ground for lawns is crucial. This is physically the toughest part of the whole process, but it’s also one of the most important, so don’t be tempted to skip it and just dig little planting holes for each plant, believe me, things simply won’t succeed that way.

7. The Plants

Now the fun really starts. You should by now have an intimate knowledge of your plot along with its strengths & weaknesses, and a clear idea of what you’re aiming to create. Consider what your garden will look like throughout the whole year, and the relationships of plants to their neighbours in terms of size, colour & season. Keeping that firmly in mind you can set about hitting the catalogues, nurseries & websites – as well as friends and gardening neighbours – and draw up a list to source your new green babies.

8. The Planting

Look for healthy plants that aren’t showing signs of stress or disease, and ones that haven’t gotten root bound from sitting in a pot for the last 3 years. Soak them whilst still in their pots, and loosen the soil from the root systems – with larger plants you can simply shake some of the soil away. The aim is to open the roots up slightly, without damaging them, so that they can easily get established into the newly prepared ground. Plant with the stem at the same depth as it was in the pot. Stake and/or tie taller plants and climbers – consider how they might be rocked in high winds, and water everything in very thoroughly, even if it’s raining!

9. The Final Touch

Mulch, glorious mulch...

Mulch everything to a depth of 3 inches, keeping the stems of trees and large shrubs clear. You’d be amazed what a huge difference it makes, especially in terms of establishing a new garden.

Organic mulches will keep moisture in the soil as well as help regulate temperature, whilst worms will drag the material down and improve soil texture and fertility.

You might also consider labelling or recording your plantings, so you can follow their progress over the coming years.


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Maintaining indoor plants through winter.

Monday, January 11th, 2010

When it’s snowing or hailing or pouring with rain, or just plain dark-all-the-time, it’s easy to forget all about the garden and be cut off from the green world altogether, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Many folks are tempted into buying an endless succession of cut flowers or disposable instant-bloom pot-plants to bring a splash of colour to their homes in winter. Neither of these options last long, though, and the air miles and carbon food-print of most cut flowers is pretty tough to justify for such an ephemeral display. Much better to grow “real” indoor plants, and then, even if you can’t quite manage make it out to the garden very often, you can still get a dose of leafy therapy.

Phalaenopsis - one of the most popular indoor plants.

Indoor plants can roughly be divided into two types, and, through winter at least, each needs somewhat different treatment. First off are your traditional house plants. These are, for the most part tropical imports that hail from the dark understories of forests. For many the big leafy Cheese Plants and Philodendrons are forever linked with the ‘70’s and it’s actually quite tough to find them for sale these days. Moth Orchids – Phalaenopsis – on the other hand, are deemed essential indoor accessories and pop up just about everywhere. Various bromeliads and carnivorous exotica like pitcher plants are also super fashionable right now, whilst old favourites like Christmas Cactus and African Violets are also offered for their seasonal blooms

All of these house plants grow successfully in our homes because the warmth and relatively low light levels mimic what they would have in the wild. Trouble is they are also used to close to 100% humidity in their native habitats, and when the central heating goes on in winter the air in our homes dries out to a potential dangerous extent.

Another big issue they face is sudden changes in temperature, and in particular cold drafts, something that no rainforest dweller would ever be exposed to. Just like their outdoor cousins house plants do have winter a dormant period too. Although they may not look much different to the casual glance they do (or at least they should) stop growing and take up far less water and almost no nutrients.

So, if these are the problems, what are the solutions? First off think of where your  plants are positioned in your home. Can you give them more light without exposing them to drafts? A west or south facing window can be are ideal, but keep house plants away from the glass itself where temps can plunge at night, and definitely well away from the icy blasts of doors.

Automatic plant watering system.

Keep watering to an absolute minimum. House plants should never be allowed to sit in water over winter and should be kept on the dry side all season, so no daily hovering with a watering can. An automatic plant watering system is an ideal way to provide just the right amount of moisture to the roots. No feed should be given either – you don’t want to suddenly wake them into growth when the light levels are too low to support new shoots. Equally important, though, is humidity at the leaves. Bathrooms and kitchens – the steamier rooms of the house – can provide better winter quarters for house plants, but only if they’re also light enough. Daily spraying of leaves (ideally with rain water) works well, as does placing the pot in a tray filled with pebbles and water, and letting natural evaporation do the rest.

The second group of winter indoor plants are actually hardy garden plants. Your job is to fool them into thinking that it’s already spring. If you succeed – and frankly, it’s not that hard – then they’ll reward you with a display of flowers, foliage or edible shoots that should definitely put a zing back into the dark months.

Helleborus niger makes a great seasonal houseplant.

The two keys to growing Spring flowering garden plants indoors are light and heat.  You need to find as bright a position as possible, but also one that’s relatively cool. All you’re trying to do is nudge the plants forward a month or two, not plunge them into a balmy August. Feed and water well, and success should be yours.

Shorter growing plants work best as taller specimens can easily get drawn and leggy in the low winter light. One of the best to try is Helleborus niger, the so-called Christmas Rose, actually a buttercup relative that flowers outdoors from late Feb, but delivers the goods indoors during December. Evergreen Azaleas, which these days come in a dazzling array of colours, and all manner of Spring flowering bulbs also work well. Narcissus, Hyacinths, Crocus, Chionodoxa, Iris, Muscari  and, for the more ambitious, smaller species and varieties of Lilium can all be readily forced, i.e. encouraged to flower early indoors.

Indoor herbs grown from seed.

Finally one of the most fashionable, not to say useful groups of winter indoor plants are the herbs. These can prove more challenging since they are essentially Mediterranean natives that prefer basking in sunshine, so lots of light, together with a decent feeding and watering regimen is the order of the day. Basil, Chervil, Dill, Coriander and Parsley can all be grown from seeds on a south-facing windowsill, whilst plants of Bay, Oregano, Tarragon & Thyme can be transferred from the garden or bought in specially. Give them a few weeks in a transition zone – an unheated porch for example – before moving plants into their heated quarters, and they’ll provide winter-long tasty results direct into the kitchen.

The big advantage of all of these outdoor/indoor plants is that, once they’ve finished doing their thing indoors they can take up permanent residence in your garden, in effect giving you two uses from one plant – who could ask for more!?


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New House – New EcoCharlie Garden!

Sunday, January 10th, 2010

Well the Christmas decorations have been taken down and we are frozen into our new house.  We must have moved in the coldest weather ever. Our removal men did so well to get us here to West Sussex.  All my garden paraphernalia survived even if I did bring along some of the frozen soil from the old garden.  I now have the pleasurable job of placing all my pots and arranging the new potting shed although given the conditions this will have to wait for the warmer weather.   As it is so cold all I have managed to do is to make sure the birds are feed and watered.

The country house where the new EcoCharlie Garden is being set up

New house where the EcoCharlie garde nis being set up

I have found that by melting some lard and adding bird seed and any scraps left over from toast etc then putting the whole mixture into a bowl I can take out the food in the morning and then bring in the old bowl to replenish in the evening.  I have also ventured out to knock the snow from the conifers before the snow breaks any branches.  As the sun is shining today I am off to take some pictures of my beautiful area.


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Top 10 winter garden jobs.

Saturday, January 9th, 2010

Winter may not be the favourite time of year for most gardeners, but with just a little work you can have your plot looking spick and span through the chilly months. I’ve put together the top 10 essential Winter tasks that will also help get your garden ready to make the most of the coming Spring.

1.Weather watch

British winters are often rather schizophrenic – one day sunny and mild, the next everything covered with a foot of snow – so it’s pretty essential to keep an eye on the forecast to know what’s likely to be heading our way.

Hessian bags - essential winter wear for tender plants.

Just like many of us some of the more tender plants prefer to spend their entire winters snuggled under a decent duvet. Exotics like Palms, Bananas and Tree-Ferns definitely some winter-long extra help in all but the mildest regions, but even hardier evergreens, including Bamboos and Rhododendrons, are at risk when temps take a sudden plunge.

Amongst the best of the garden supplies plant protection options are versatile and breathable hessian sacks which can be wrapped and then tied around larger plants, or slipped over your vulnerable babies when hard frosts threaten and then removed again when temps rise. When and if heavy snow does fall don’t let it sit on branches or the foliage of large leafed evergreens, in particular, or the extra weight might lead to nasty damage.

2. Be kind to your compost.

Compost heaps need to keep working through the winter too, and they can only do that if they have enough heat to digest all your garden & kitchen goodies. Straw or hay bales are ideal to use as protecting walls for larger heaps and old carpet can be placed over the top, whilst smaller bins can be partly buried. Remember that your compost also needs air to keep on working away, so don’t smother the whole thing or be tempted to over-fill a bin in winter.

3. Tidy your bed.

Whip out any lingering summer annuals that won’t make it through the cold months and cut back untidy herbaceous plants. Don’t be too brutal though – old stems provide vital winter homes for essential garden beasties like Ladybirds and Lacewings. Leave any seed heads that take your fancy for winter interest – a frosted Sedum seed-head, for example, is a thing of great beauty – and the birds will thank you too.

4. Remove damaged/dead branches from trees and shrubs.

Coral Spot fungus - not for composting.

Winter’s not the time for major pruning, but with the leaves gone dead branches are easier both to spot and to take out. Autumn storms often leave a few hanging and tattered limbs too, so get them down before they tear off into the trunk.

All but the chunkiest can go onto the compost heap, but be careful not to compost anything that has fungal disease like coral spot or leaf spot.

5. Trim evergreen hedges.

So long as temperatures remain the right side of freezing then winter is the ideal time to give the likes of privet, conifer and holly hedges a short back and sides. Holly and Ivy make handy and long lasting seasonal decorations, all the softer stuff can be composted and woody material shredded.

6. Leaf tidy.

Make sure to collect up the last of the fallen leaves from lawns, paths & ponds – ideal for composting or mulching, but watch out for slugs that also like to get cosy in winter leaf piles.

7. Weeding.

As the perennials fade and trees and shrubs drop their leaves have a look out for weeds that went un-noticed earlier in the year, they’ll suddenly be revealed lurking in beds and borders. Again, everything can go straight onto the compost aside from thick rooted perennial weeds, which are best shredded or left to dry out and then composted.

8. Divide snowdrops.

Snowdrops - no winter garden is complete without them.

Snowdrops (closely followed by primroses) are the earliest wildflowers to appear, gererally sometime during January, and there’s no better sight for driving away those winter-garden-blues. The old advice about planting snowdrops when they’re in the green still holds good, but equally now is the time to split up big clumps of bulbs that are getting overcrowded.

Move them when they’re just coming into bud, so long as the ground is unfrozen, replant with some fresh garden compost and they’ll soon romp away.

9. Mulch, Mulch, Mulch.

After all the beds, trees and shrubs are in shape then apply a thick mulch to the soil. Leaves or your own garden compost both makes ideal mulches, and don’t be stingy, we’re talking 3 to 4 inches minimum depth here. Particularly important around newly planted trees and shrubs mulching provides plant protection in the coldest weather and, once those worms get to work, will also add useful bulk to your soil.

10. Put tools to bed.

Hessian Storage Hamper.

Finally, once all those other winter jobs are sorted, it’s well worth heading to the shed to give the garden tools & mower a quick once over to keep them clean and dry and perhaps make use of a few hessian storage hampers to ensure that everything’s where you need it to be come spring time.

Greenhouse windows can accumulate quite a layer of dirt and algae through the year and should be cleaned off too, especially if you are over-wintering plants in there – with the shorter daylight hours they’ll will need as much light as they can get.


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Winter garden wonders.

Monday, January 4th, 2010

In times gone by the deepest darkest months of Winter were seen by gardeners as fit only for leafing through catalogues of seeds, preferably by some form of open fire, whilst green fingered urges were met by watering the house plants and admiring seasonal indoor plants. These days, though, most folks want their gardens to deliver for them all year round, and whole plots and entire books are devoted to groups of garden plants that are at their prime in January and February.

Hamamelis - Witch hazel flowers open even when encrusted with ice and snow.

You certainly don’t have to go as far as dedicating all of your growing space to a single season to reap the rewards of winter gardening. There’s definitely a special kind of satisfaction that comes from seeing a blazing red Witch Hazel bursting improbably through snow and ice, or from having the heady perfume of a Viburnum waft gently through the air. What’s more, the addition of a few select seasonal gems into a garden will encourage you off the Christmas sofa to get out and about to investigate their progress.

There aren’t too many pollinating insects around in January so a common feature of lots of winter flowering shrubs is small flowers with a powerful perfume to entice those bees brave enough to take to the wing. Low-growing Sarcococca (Christmas Box) is so non-descript in flower you might well tread on it were it not for the knock-your-socks-off fragrance that demands your attention. Lonicera x purpusii ‘Winter Beauty’ is a  popular shrubby Honeysuckle with small white flowers that also pack a powerful scent and is pretty much foolproof to grow in almost any situation.

Chimonanthus praecox - a sublime gem for the winter garden.

With it’s pretty lantern-like hanging flowers of primrose and burgundy the medium-sized shrubby Magnolia relative Chimonanthus praecox (Wintersweet) is rather more sophisticated and also provides a delicious perfume. Although it’s not often seen outside of big gardens it’s readily available and should be grown far more often than it is.

The image of Mahonias has become a bit tarnished lately, mainly due to their use in virtually every municipal park planting throughout the northern hemisphere. Still, there’s a good reason why they are so widely grown – dramatic, large, spiky, evergreen foliage, a tolerance for shade and the production of large racemes of very fragrant, canary-yellow flowers in Winter. In many ways these are the perfect shrubs for town gardens.  Viburnums are almost as popular, and the best of the winter flowering varieties, such as V. farreri, and V.x bodnantense ‘Dawn’ never fail to please with their clusters of pinky-white fragrant flowers.

If you have a wall that you’d like to see come alive in winter then Clematis cirrhosa is probably the number one choice. This moderately strong climber has delicate, fern-like evergreen foliage and really pretty, cream-coloured bell-shaped flowers that have a delicate scent. A number of forms are widely available, I particularly like ‘Freckles’ which has petals splashed with crimson on their inner surface.

Daphne mezereum - one of the finest native wild flowers for fragrance.

One of our more unusual wild flowers, Daphne mezereum is a British that thrives on chalky soils. This is one small shrub that delivers big time in winter with beautiful flowers of purple or pure white that have the most intoxicating fragrance.

Possibly my personal favourite winter shrub of all though is a Daphne relative from China – Edgeworthia chrysantha, the Paper Bush. The flexible bark of this beauty was traditionally made into bank notes, but unless you’re planning your own small-scale printing operation, you, like me, will be more drawn to the tubular, fragrant flowers of pale yellow. The form ‘Red Dragon’, if you can find it, is even more beautiful with impossibly exotic bright red flowers that, on a sunny winters day (and possibly depending on what you’ve been drinking the night before) might just convince you that you’re in the Caribbean.

Hamamelis (Witch Hazels) are firm favourites that can be found in most larger gardens. The old hybrid ‘Pallida’ is still hard to beat on the scent front, but there are a range of new-ish hybrids arriving from breeders in Belgium that deliver much larger flowers with the same awesome perfume. Colours vary from pale yellow through copper orange to blood red. ‘Nina’ is the finest of all the yellows and I particularly love the dramatic, large burnt orange flowers of recently introduced ‘Aurora’ and ‘Aphrodite.’

All of these shrubs work hard to drive away the winter cold and also serve as handy a reminder that Spring is just around the corner, but some trees are also at their best at this time of year. Birches can be rather understated small trees for much of the year but the best of them really come alive in winter. Then, with the leaves long since disappeared, the colours and textures of their often-fabulous bark are fully revealed. I’ve become a huge fan of Betula albosinensis, in particular, and seeing the low winter sun illuminate the peeling deep scarlet and bright pinky-orange bark of the many different forms is without doubt the highlight of my own garden in winter.

Betula albosinensis - a great centrepiece for any winter garden.

Of course none of these winter wonders should be planted in winter itself, but by checking out what’s looking good now it’s easy to plan ahead for a Spring planting. Unless your soil is truly dismal, then the best advice for planting all trees and large shrubs is simple: the only garden supplies you need are a spade, a fork, a short sturdy stake + tie, if your plant is tall or top heavy, and a willing digger-of the-soil…that would be you or a trusty assistant.

All of your planting time and efforts should be focussed on making a wide planting hole and breaking all of the soil into small, crumbly pieces, this way your new plantings will be able to get their roots out into the soil easily and will establish quickly.  DO NOT add compost into the hole, this damages the natural bacterial balance and can easily lead to root rot, as well as slowing down the progress of the plant into the soil where it will, after all, be spending the rest of it’s life. Instead mulch well on top of the planting, but don’t cover the stem of the plant, and the worms will do the rest.


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