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.

What’s survived the worst winter in 30 years in the veg garden

-10C, 300m up, snow off and on for 3 months



Kale – Ragged Jack/Red Russian
rubbish, totally dead

Kale – Darkibor
poor, but will recover for spring greens

Cabbage - red Huzaro
poor, several rotted off

Cabbage - savoy Tarvoy
very good

Leeks - Sultan, Flextan
very good

Pak Choi – Joy Choi
very good (surprisingly)

Mizuna
mush

Swiss chard
mush

The goat-chewed steppe

Didn’t quite know what to expect from the Atlas mountains, where we recently went, more in the search for somewhere to get away from during the truly dismal period that is a British February, than anything seriously botanical or horticultural. First impression is that, being dry and high altitude, it is a bit like the short-grass prairie on the Colorado/Wyoming border Scott Ogden took me around back in October – all short grasses (Festuca mairei) and spiny little shrubbettes. The reason for the predominance of the spiny species is of course the goats, the curse of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern habitats, at least where poverty still encourages goats and overgrazing – I can’t remember what language this is from – “My great-grandfather had trees, my grandfather sheep, my father goats… I have nothing”. Only richer countries are able to appreciate just what an eco-crime goat-possession is.

Funny thing is though, that at slightly lower altitudes (1000-1500m), is the presence of ivy and brambles, two absolutely quintessentially British wild plants, which are not a particular feature of the European mainland. It is that Atlantic climate I suppose, I can imagine that there is a real connection between the floras of North Africa, the Iberian peninsula and the British Isles; in addition we all have species of bluebell (Hyacinthus). It would be interesting to come again, further north, where they have more rain and see what else we have in common.

What is it about heritage seeds?

 

Or as you would say in North America – heirloom seeds?

I’ve just been on a British radio show – The Food Programme – the tone was set by a recording taken at heritage seed swap and ended up with a recording of my fellow interviewee collecting traditional varieties in India (chap called Geoff Tansey - nice enough guy, I'm just glad he's no-one's Minister of Ag.) . I can’t help feeling I had been shipped in to provide a kind of scapegoat. Scowls from the presenter made me realise that my suggestion that modern vegetable and crop seed varieties are better was definitely 'a failure to tow the party line’.

           

It can be fun growing heritage varieties, the feeling that you are growing something that people grew a hundred or so years ago. But I have never been very convinced that they are in any way better than modern ones – I mean if the old ones are so good, why aren’t we still growing them?  The fact that they taste better is often given as a reason for growing old-fashioned vegetables. Not in my experience. Sometimes quite the opposite. I once grew ‘Nero de Toscana’ kale, now a very trendy plant amongst heritage veg growers. Its tough leathery leaves were greatly inferior to any other kale I’ve ever grown, old or new. I have tried some of the blue/purple potatoes currently being touted in vegetable catalogues; they have a distinct flavour all right –  ‘astringent’ was the first word that came to my mind, ‘horrible’ was another I heard around the dinner table.

Preserving genetic diversity is often advanced as a reason for us to grow heritage veg. Diversity is important for the  breeder, and it is vital that old varieties are preserved in (publicly-owned)seed banks and research stations, so that their genes are available to future breeders. But diversity per se is not of much use to the gardener at home. Far more important are factors such ease of growth, productivity and disease resistance. For these, modern varieties nearly always win hands down. The reason so many old varieties have died out is simply that people have stopped growing them because more recently bred ones  were better.

            ‘F₁’ varieties are particularly despised by the vegetable luddites. They are the result of two very distinct varieties being combined,  in order to produce plants which bring together good growing qualities and uniformity. Nearly all are produced for commercial growers, which can sometimes be a disadvantage; having peas or broccoli which all produce at once is very useful for a farmer who wants to harvest a whole field at once, but not much good for us, who want to harvest over a period. However with vegetables which are harvested over many months: carrots, leeks, cabbages, etc. F₁ hybrids have huge advantages. Particularly for gardeners with small plots, who need consistently vigorous, predictable, healthy and high-yielding  plants – which is just what F₁s give you.

            It is something of an irony that many of the people most interested in heritage veg are organic, but then logic has never been a part of the organic philosophy. Much of the thrust of modern plant breeding is towards the production of pest and disease resistant varieties, which minimise or eliminate the need for pesticides. Amongst the varieties recently made available to British gardeners are carrot-fly resistant carrots ‘Resistafly F₁’  and ‘Flyaway F₁’, and blight-resistant tomato ‘Fernline F₁’.

            The future in the veg plot could be really exciting, especially if we drop our ill-founded suspicion of genetically-modified crops. Who knows what the future may hold: Chinese cabbage which won’t bolt, aubergines you can grow outside in the Welsh border, really tasty high vitamin tomatoes, even hardy rice?

Growing perennials in grass

A question at a public lecture at the University of Gloucestershire (bet you didn’t know that Glos. had a Uni. …. well you do now!) last night made me think I should write this up from my PhD. A long time ago (late 1990s) I decided I would run a small-scale experiment on growing perennials in rough grass. I wanted to see if it was possible to create a ‘perennial meadow’, where the grass was cut only once a year. Around the same time James Hitchmough (now at the Uni. of Sheffield) had a similar idea. He, needless to say, was larger-scale and more scientific. Our hope was that we could come up with an alternative to just boring mown grass or long shaggy, but rather untidy grass.

Not actually a great success, but not without some hope.

Problem is, nearly all ornamental perennials have a dormant season, during which our native grasses (which makes up both lawns and pasture) and pasture forbs (like dear old creeping buttercup) are growing, give ‘em a mild winter and the things will grow for 365 days a year. So, perennials are immediately out-competed. This is why you get (or one reason why) you get such fab wildflower meadows in places with freezing winters where nothing can grow Oct/Nov to April, like the Alps, eastern Europe etc. – everything here starts off on a level playing field. Our British/NW European long growing season is just too grass/creeping buttercup+other winter-green forb – friendly.

So, we sprayed off (with Roudup) or dug out circles of grass and planted and watched results. Almost inevitably, both James and I found that plants in year 2 and onwards were so much smaller than we were used to seeing them in borders, out-competed and weakened by the grasses. Very few were able to survive and prosper. My conclusions in my thesis say:

• Effective basal cover, combined strongly with:
• Early emergence
• At least some ability to effective spread by ramets, (ie. new shoots)
• Root competition may also play a part – further research is indicated.

Which means geraniums, especially G. endressii, G. versicolor, G. x oxonianum types,(see pic at top) big inulas (e.g. I. racemosa - see pic below), Rudbeckia laciniata and that's about it. Asters did ok for a few years then got slugged. Euphorbia cyparissias did ok with its manic runner production. Meanwhile James found that Lychnis chalcedonica and Papaver orientale did respectably well too.

Those on planet Academia can check out these:
Hitchmough, J.D. (2000) Establishment of cultivated herbaceous perennials in purpose sown native wildflower meadows in south west Scotland. Landscape and Urban Planning. 714, 1-15

Woudstra, J. and Hitchmough, J.D. (2000) The enamelled mead: History and practice of exotic perennials grown in grassy swards. Landscape Research. 25,1, 29-47

Hitchmough, J. and Woudstra, J. (1999) The ecology of exotic herbaceous perennials grown in managed native grassy vegetation in urban landscapes. Landscape and Urban Planning. 45, 107-121