The Wild Garden - June 2010

Here are some pics of our wild garden, early June. Click below:


photos

Cow Parsley gardening

    

        This year’s Chelsea Flower Show seemed to mark a return to horticulture, rather a relief after the show becoming increasingly dominated by sculptural assemblages (I’m trying to be polite here) or flocks of statuary. A lot of the gardens were just well planted, with a refreshing lack of pretentiousness. Andy Sturgeon’s winning Mediterranean Garden (for The Daily Telegraph) was a model of all that is best about British garden design – the classic balance between strong structures and exuberant planting – but all in a very contemporary style.

            No cow parsley though. I’d like to put in a bid to do a cow parsley garden. Queen Anne’s Lace to American readers (I think). This cream-white flowered umbelliferous plant dominates a vast proportion of British roadsides, seemingly able to compete with the grasses which, fed on nitrogen pollution, more or less suffocate the rest of our limited wildflower flora. In my last garden, I conducted an experiment in letting it seed one year, and then controlling by pulling up after flowering. It worked, in that I got a respectable amount of cow parsley but without it competing with anything else. So, now I’m repeating the experiment here.

            What I like about cow-parsley is the delicate flowers and, because it is such a common element of the British countryside, brings the landscape into the garden. The colour is also a buffer, toning down and blending the brighter colours of border plants. In theory I’d be quite happy for the stuff to distribute itself  around the garden, but only if it isn’t going to become a weed and out-compete my border plants.

            Cow parsley (Anthriscus sylvestris) is a biennial which survives year to year by seeding and apparently (though I have not verified this myself) by the production of bulbils at the base of the plant. It has a very narrow profile, doesn’t spread sideways or sprawl about, and dies from July onwards. Not something which could become a major problem then, and its reproduction can be controlled by pulling out before it seeds. Welcome to the naturalistic border!

The Rabbit's Eye View

                                                                                                    

  Doing a lot of teaching this spring. Groups of keen gardeners, garden design students or practising designers. English Gardening School, Society of Garden Designers regional groups, that sort of thing. Great fun, and terrific response from students. I love it. As for “teaching”, anyone who has to face a class of 30 inner-city kids five days a week is entitled to turn around and ask me to use a different verb – everyone is so keen and so appreciative. And always learn stuff from my groups as well.
    I’m currently pushing what I call the “rabbit’s eye view”, getting people down on their hands and knees looking at plants, really closely, trying to observe things they might not have seen before. It’s my belief that it is possible to predict how a plant will perform (spread, longevity, drought tolerance etc) from looking at key features of its shape, form, etc, and especially the bit where the stems join the roots. I try to pass this ‘reading the plant’ onto my students. Its about relating
    But they’ve got to get onto their hands and knees. You can’t observe plants from standing up. At the Hillier Arboretum, I have divided a group of 30+ up into groups of 4/5 to select plants to describe in their immensely long Centennial Border, “get on your hands and knees” I have to shout at some of them – this is where the sensible types get sorted out from those who brought unsuitable shoes or are afraid of tearing their tights. At least British students will work in groups. Did that with a group of mostly Chinese at Sheffield University once; as soon as you go to talk to one group they all sneak up behind you, and you turn around to see the entire class – ‘the teacher as the fount of all knowledge’ is so fundamental to them, which it isn’t to us.
    I studied adult education when I was teaching English as a Second Language back in the 1980s. The current dogma then was that a much as possible should come from the students, which is actually good, as it empowers classes and makes for a good interactive atmosphere. You don’t get a chance to nod off in my classes, there’s too much expected of you.
Photos Annie Guilfoyle, at West Dean, July 2009

Timelessly wandering in Spetchley Park

Cyclamen repandum and cowslips in grass by the lake at Spetchley

I’ve only recently got to know this delightful garden, www.spetchleygardens.co.uk

and will try to make repeat visits through the year. It’s one of those places which feels timeless: lots of big old trees, walled gardens, box-lined beds and paths which lead through a pleasantly bewildering variety of spaces, just full of wonderful plants. This is the perfect ‘plantsman’s garden’, lots of rarities, often very well-established, and very thorough labelling. You can just wander around, at random, crossing and re-crossing your previous routes through, getting different perspectives through the trees, continously finding little nooks and crannies. It is something of a miracle how the staff of four keep on top of it all, and it has to be said that a bit of an atmosphere of faded grandeur is all part of its very characteristic feel.

Owner John Berkeley was one of my customers when I had my nursery north of Bristol many years ago, as head gardener Kate Portman said to me, “I think he knows every nursery in the country”. There are some wonderful plants here, and some lovely combinations. What is particularly interesting is seeing sizable and very well-established examples of garden plants, the most spectacular being what must hundreds of square metres of partially-shaded lawn invaded by self-sowing Lilium martagon.

A total absence of modern design ideas or self-conscious fashion gives this place real character, and a very restful feel. Just as well, as any plant-conscious gardener is also going to be very excited by so much of what is growing here.

More Chinese travels

            Just come back from a two week trip to China, leading a Gardens Ilustrated tour group with a colleague from Sheffield, Lei Gao. I went to China last year (see blog **), so we re-visited all those places, but added a few more. One was the new city museum in Suzhou, designed by I.M.Pei – the central courtyard lake was stunning, especially this backdrop ‘rock garden’.

            Had a proper look this time at ‘Viewing Fish at Flowering Harbour’, though very crowded (a weekend), a park in Hangzhou by the Western Lake, designed by Sun Xiaoxing, China’s first really-acclaimed park since 1949, built in the mid-1950s to incorporate western and Chinese elements. Struck by how good the planting design was, a mix of unclipped and clipped shrubs largely.

  


The Western Lake at Hangzhou is really beautiful, but to appreciate it you need to be on the eastern built-up side, not the greener and much nicer western side. You could be on Lake Geneva, all very smart lakeside; you look across to the mountains with the clouds drifting between them. The Hangzhou Botanic Gardens include some good 1960s design, framed garden vignettes, between various buildings and walkways. Modern, but still invoking so much of the traditional approach to combining inside and outside.

            High point was going to Anhui. Lei’s home province. So green and lush. Mount Huang Shan was stunning although overrun with tour groups. Everyone in our group I think understood just where Chinese aesthetics comes from: the naturally bonsai pines, the dramatic rockfaces, the clouds. We were familiar enough now with Chinese landscape painting to feel that we had finally walked into the painting.

            Also in Anhui, we went to a couple of UNESCO heritage villages: Hongcun and Xidi, with some exquisite little gardens, all owned by local people (i.e. not Shanghai yuppies), some now run as B&Bs or restaurants, others were people Lei knew from research here years ago. Genuinely vernacular and made the famous Suzhou gardens look like museum pieces. 


 

SPRING IS KINDOF HERE

Spring is slowly happening. Hellebores been out for several weeks now, but so much later than normal. In this garden every seed which hits the ground grows, so unlike my last garden, even though the soil was so similar (slightly sticky red sandstone). So 2 years ago we dug up loads of seedlings and planted them out in nursery beds, thinking I might use them in a planting to raise the tone of some of the public borders I do in Bristol. But the city seem to have run out of dosh for public planting and have just beheaded the chief of parks, or something along those lines, so the good burghers of the city will have to do without my hellebores. Anyway I did not expect them to be as ‘good’ as the parents (Ashwood Nurseries) but to my surprise they were. No really good dark ones, but lots good reds and spotties and this picotee.


Interesting to see an obvious genetic linkage between vigour and flower. The picotee are slow, rather weak plants, the reds very vigorous. The most vigorous is a double, which I am pretty sure I got from Wendy Perry at Bosvigo. Probably sterile as no sign of seedlings.

Lots of Barnhaven polyanthus flowering. Such wonderful deep colours or unusual and sophisticated tones. The story is well-known – they were bred by a lady in British Columbia (Canada) in the 1930s, but seed is now available from a nursery in France. www.barnhavenprimroses.com

The seed is hand-pollinated and jolly expensive, but they all seem to grow. The contrast with the offerings from the garden centres and the big money breeding programmes is total. Modern polyanthus seem to get more hideous by the year, as flowers progressively more enormous and colours cruder. I should imagine the breeders are investing in the latest everything-but-GM breeding technologies. The results are truly hideous. Let's save modern genetics for stuff we can eat shall we?

One relatively modern hybrid which is fantastic is Narcissus 'Tete a tete' which is a cross-sectional hybrid, so doesn't fit into the various classes which daff-folk have divided the genus. Its incredibly prolific and early and tough and just comes up to brighten the dreariest post - winter border. It is one of those plants which is so easy and now so commercial that some are already turning their noses up at it. But me, I'm going to buy a sack of them for next autumn and stick them in everywhere.

Also on daff-talk, I see some seedlings of the wild Narcissus pseudonarcissus from the famous wild daffodil area of Newent in Glos. flowered for the first time this year - five years from seed. That's the quickest any daffodil seems to take.


Just had to share this. It's from Tony Avent’s website, he of Plant Delights nursery in North Carolina. I once got an award for an entertaining catalogue when I had my nursery but this is far better, laugh out loud at your desk stuff:
www.plantdelights.com/New/bad.html

INVADERS FROM THE EAST?

A recent news item confirms what has been in the pipeline for some time, that a bug, of Japanese origin is about to be released in carefully-selected sites in the UK, to control Japanese knotweed. A friend in Japan tells me it has been collected in her area, Kumamoto, right on the southern tip of Kyushu. Here’s a local newspaper story:http://www.47news.jp/CN/201003/CN2010030901000230.html
Given the disasterous history of introducing predators of pests (like Australias’ cane-toad problem) some have expressed alarm at introducing the insect. This does sound like it has been thoroughly researched though, apparently for several years, to ensure that the bug doesn’t affect native flora - so let’s stop worrying and get on with it.
Knotweed is a magnificent plant, which is why the Victorians introduced it - William Robinson in The Wild Garden suggests planting in ‘the pleasure ground’ and by the waterside. Maybe we should blame him? Call it ‘Robinson’s knotweed’ instead of blaming the Japanese.
The press of course love Japanese knotweed. They love stories about foreign exotics causing trouble generally. Something about the triffid nature of the story appeals to that elemental need for journalists to frighten people. And of course an excuse for a bit of subliminal racism - have you noticed that the country origin of these scare-plants or pathogens is always emphasized: Spanish bluebells, Dutch elm disease etc. By the way, if you ever see buddleia being called ‘Chinese buddleia’ then you can be sure that someone has decided its a bad thing and is to added to the list of proscribed plants.
Japanese knotweed is undeniably a huge problem in a few areas, and an irritant in many more. It is not going to take over the country any more than the entire population is going to be eating raw fish for breakfast, or even spreading miso on toast like I do. There is an unattractive eco-fascist tendency which tends to see all non-native plants as problems waiting to happen, and the knotweed as simply the tip of an iceburg. Some ecologists however have pointed out that some spring wildflowers like wood anemones are able to co-exist happily with knotweed and others that growing alongside rivers it is very good otter habitat.
The spread of knotweed since its introduction in the latter 19th century is of course a warning to all in horticulture, that we do need to be responsible with what we grow and where we plant it, but the reality is that the problems we have with invasive aliens is pretty minimal compared to those faced in many other countries. Our long growing season which enables our aggressive grass flora to make vigorous growth for most of the year sees off most potential invaders. And some others, like buddleia, are a positive benefit.
I’d be quite happy to see knotweed as yet another part of our flora, kept well in check by the little Kumamoto-bugs or whatever they are called, just popping up now and again by the waterside, just like William Robinson would have intended.