February A true plantsman’s

Things to Do FEBRUARY

Keep up to date in the garden with our monthly guide to key gardening tasks

SOW early crops If sown now and protected from the cold, peas, broad beans, spinach, cabbage and some salad crops will give you an early taste of spring

Vegetable seeds should not be sown outdoors too early; sowing directly into the soil at this time of year is a sure-fi re path to disappointment. When the temperatures are low, the seed won’t germinate and will just go to waste. It’s far better to wait until there are signs of life, such as weed seeds germinating, to know that your sowings will thrive.

However, if you’re impatient to get started, you can get a head start by warming up the soil with clear plastic sheets or cloches, ready for sowing in a few weeks’ time. After three to four weeks, rake the soil to a fi ne tilth and use a cane to make drills for sowing. Water and then sow hardy vegetable seeds, such as peas, broad beans and summer cabbage, as thinly as possible, replace the soil and put the cloche back to cover them. When the seedlings are large enough to handle, thin out to the spacing specifi ed on the seed packet.

In a greenhouse, sowings made now can be planted out in a month or so when conditions are warmer. Try sowing peas and hardy salads into lengths of plastic guttering. Make drainage holes in the bottom of the guttering and fi ll with compost. Sow the seeds into the compost and give them a good water. When they’re ready to be transplanted, simply slide the seedlings into a shallow trench in the soil outside and cover with a cloche to protect them until spring has truly sprung.

Checklist

O Use a hoe to work organic fertiliser into the surface of your border soil for a gradual release of nutrients in spring.

O Order compost, pots and seed trays so you’re ready for the busy season ahead.

O Prune late-fl owering shrubs such as hardy fuchsias and Buddleja davidii between now and March. Cut them right down, almost to the ground, feed with organic fertiliser and mulch around the base of the shrub.

O Deadhead winter pansies and violas for continued fl owering throughout spring.

O If you didn’t plant lily bulbs in autumn, pot them up now to plant out later in spring. Lilies need to be planted quite deeply, so use large pots. Keep in a cool greenhouse or coldframe

Daodils, fritillaries and blue anemones in front of the yew topiary in the Pettifers meadow.

PETTIFERS

BOX OF TRICKS

At Pettifers in Oxfordshire Gina Price has created an iconic garden filled with sublime surprises and imbued with a spirit of experimentation

WORDS JACKY HOBBS PHOTOGRAPHS CLIVE NICHOLS

Pettifers is a masterpiece – a one-and-a-half-acre garden enlarged by the surrounding Oxfordshire countryside that envelops it. It is a country garden, but it is neither traditional nor static. It has taken over three decades to perfect and as many plants have been removed as introduced. This is plantswoman Gina Price’s greatest strength: her willingness to embrace change and try new planting, leaving her free to create a unique garden quite unlike most others.

The garden has good structure and geometry, with a central lawn and two large borders either side. Three Irish yews at the end of the lawn seem to signify the boundary, but instead there’s a surprise: a parterre containing yew chimneys and domes of phillyrea and box, totally hidden until you reach the end of the lawn because of the downhill lie of the land. Phillyrea is a historic evergreen used for topiary since Tudor times. There are two kinds, Phillyrea latifolia and Phillyrea angustifolia , the latter with a smaller leaf, but both are resilient and relatively quick growing.

The parterre is reminiscent of the one at Bodysgallen Hall in Llandudno, North Wales. Gina’s great uncle, Ievan Mostyn, whom she had never met, left her Bodysgallen Hall when she was 20. It now belongs to Richard Broyd, and he, in turn, has bequeathed it to The National Trust. The parterre there, while more traditional in design, is similarly obscured by a dramatic drop in level. The sloping aspect of Gina’s garden both conceals and reveals her parterre, creating the surprise she intended, and embodying the spirit of Bodysgallen.

Gina’s gardener, Polly, maintains the parterre’s clean and chiselled lines. The lower box wall is buttressed, visually anchoring it to the slope, and it is planted out in spring with colour-themed Triumphtype tulips, which repeat well, followed by dahlias, “so that it is always a blaze of colour apart from in winter”. This is followed by winter scent from two mounds of Sarcococca confusa .

Gina had never gardened before Pettifers, but explains that: “I felt I could really do something with the space.” She is lucky to have gardening friends, including Sue Dickinson, once described as ‘the best gardener in England’, and Sibylle Kreutzberger of Sissinghurst fame, who encouraged Gina to develop the garden in her own way. “They did not hold back in what they thought,” Gina recalls, “Although Sybille used to say as she was going out the door: ‘Do not forget that it is your garden Gina.’”

She also became good friends with nurseryman Graham Gough of Marchant’s Hardy Plants. Gina first met him while searching for hellebore cultivars to plant in her beds and borders. At the time Graham was working for Elizabeth Strangman, who bred them, so he was able to advise her well. “Hellebores go unnoticed in summertime with so much else going on,” notes Gina, “but they are a really valuable winter plant when they flower for three months.”

Gina regularly visits Graham’s nursery and garden in East Sussex. Around 15 years ago he introduced her to grasses, which led to her changing the whole of her garden from top to bottom. She took out several large shrubs and roses in their favour, although, over time, she has put back some of the roses. “I love Rosa mutabilis, which flowers continuously,” she explains. “And the grasses look good for as long as the roses.”

As Gina freely admits, “making mistakes is the best way to learn”. She is now unafraid to try out new planting ideas and if she does not feel that she has got something right the first time, she keeps on working at it until she is pleased with the result. The

Left An idiosyncratic touch: clipped yew topiary cones have their ‘points’ removed. Below Deep-pink goblets on the bare branches of Magnolia ‘Spectrum’. Below left Striking Narcissus ‘Johann Strauss’ with its egg-yolk coloured trumpet.

garden is continually being evaluated and revised as Gina thinks fit. Plants that are not contributing to the bigger picture or the small detail are removed to make way for improved plantings. Polly, who has been with her for ten years, calls it the most unsentimental garden she knows. Together they debate and discuss the garden and its contents; they don’t always agree but Gina admits that “with Polly’s hard work and knowledge, it is the two of us who have made the garden what it is today”.

The pair of them have ensured that the borders perform from the beginning of April until the end of October. “What is interesting,” notes Gina, “is that from March onwards there is always plenty to see in the garden, with named snowdrops, crocuses, fritillaries and Anemone blanda .” Bob Brown, of Cotswold Garden Flowers, introduced Gina to Anemone blanda ‘Ingramii’ which is a deeper blue and flowers two weeks earlier than other anemones. This succession of spring bulbs is largely planted in the grass below the parterre in the meadow and paddock, although a few varieties are also planted to brighten winter beds near the house.

“In the meadow, everything has been in there long enough to have seeded in a naturalistic way,” explains Gina. Even so, mistakes with the fritillaries were made early on. “The secret with snake’s head fritillaries is not to mow until the seedheads ripen and split open. We nearly lost all of them by mowing too early,” she confesses. They hire an Allen Scythe to cut the long grass, which is usually done in July, and Polly then goes over it with the regular mower. Established drifts of white Narcissus ‘Mount Hood’ followed by late-flowering, scented pheasant’s eye daodils, N. poeticus var. recurvus, and Leucojum vernum also thrive in the longer grassed areas.

There are two stone-edged beds in the Paddock, which Gina calls ‘Pandora’s Box’, brilliant with named snowdrops, primulas, muscari and hellebores. “In February and March they are quite beautiful,” she says. “The star is Paeonia mairei, which is the first peony to flower and was a gift. We divided it in September, and look forward to more of the young coppery foliage, which precedes the pink flowers. The whole circle is a kaleidoscope of colours at a time of year when you really need it.” n

Clockwise from top

Leaves start to open on the spreading branches of Cornus controversa ‘Variegata’; Leucojum aestivum ‘Gravetye Giant’; fabulously-rued Narcissus ‘Tahiti’; plum-striped flowers of tulip ‘Rems Favourite’.

Plants of the Month MARCH

There are masses of magnolias to choose from, many of which are eminently suitable for small gardens – and all have opulent spring blooms

Magnolia ‘Iolanthe’

Delve into the world of magnolias and it won’t be too long before you come across the names of Felix and Mark Jury. Mark is a renowned magnolia breeder, based in New Zealand, who, with his late father Felix, introduced some of the most exceptional magnolia cultivars of recent decades, including ‘Iolanthe’. With its large, cup-shaped, fragrant flowers in a soft shade of palest pink, ‘Iolanthe’ can be grown in most gardens and reaches just 6m tall. It’s hardy across most of the UK, happily withstanding -15°C, but it’s wise to avoid a position where the tree might be exposed to cold winds or frost pockets, to reduce the risk of those beautiful spring flowers turning brown. Give it well-drained, humus-rich soil.

Magnolia ‘Black Tulip’

Another Jury cultivar, this 6m tall magnolia bears cup-shaped flowers that are among the darkest purple magnolia blooms you can grow. They’re also around 15cm across, large flowers being a Jury magnolia trait, so ‘Black Tulip’ makes for a particularly spectacular sight in spring when it blossoms. Try maximising the spring impact by teaming this colourful magnolia with spring flowering bulbs: blue-flowered scillas or swathes of white daŽodils would set oŽ this feature tree with aplomb. It’s always best to give magnolias the space they need so you don’t have to prune them to restrict their size. Keep pruning to a minimum, just removing dead, diseased, dying or crossing branches in summer.

Magnolia stellata

IMAGES

SHUTTERSTOCK; CLIVE NICHOLS This is one of the smaller magnolia species, with distinctive starshaped flowers made up of slender petals that splay open from silky buds in white – or shades of pale pink in the case of M. stellata ‘Rosea’. They’re compact growers, eminently suitable for small gardens, and will even thrive in containers. Since magnolias produce a pan of fleshy roots, they require containers that are wider than they are high – at least 45cm in diameter – so you could try a half-barrel. Use an organic ericaceous compost to fill the container, rather than multipurpose compost, which often contains chalk. Totally hardy, they’ll grow happily across the UK, but give them a site in full sun somewhere with shelter from strong winds to avoid damaging those precious flowers.

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