12 FESTIVE FUN! PAGES OF
Monster Christmas Q uiz
50 "I never knew that" gardening facts! December 23, 2014
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Carol Klein
“The plants that bring back my Christmas memories”
Cut fower
CLEMATIS Discover the varieties
perfect for flower arranging
istletoe m n w o r u o y w o S isses! for Christmas k for forcing Pot up rhubarb prouts Keep Brussels s ger cropping for lon
GET AHEAD!
Have a
white
is l l y r a Gro w your best-ever am s roses happy! a
Sow onions in 3 quick steps
m How to keep Christ
WINTER-GREEN PERENNIALS Brilliant plants for leafy interest now!
Devon-based TV presenter and author who really knows her plants!
Carol Klein This week at
GLEBE COTTAGE Carol recalls the Christmas her grandad’s trousers caught fre!
ECALLING HAPPY TIMES is part of Christmas. We’ve spent 35 Christmases at Glebe Cottage, all of them full of joy. This one is going to be a bit odd though. We’re right in the midst of trying to renovate the house and all those jobs you hoped would be a thing of the past are still projects of the present – and in some cases, plans of the future! Regardless of the state of the surroundings, the time of year itself summons up so many memories. We weren’t always vegetarian and Cissie Tapp, a neighbour a few fields away, used to supply us with our Christmas goose. We avoided getting to know any of the geese personally and only met them plucked and prepared. One year, when the girls were
R
Garden World Images
Helleborus niger is part of the centrepiece of Carol’s Christmas table
14 Garden News / December 27 2014
very small and my mum was spending Christmas with us, my husband Neil wended his way up to the farm to pick up the main constituent of our Christmas dinner. Plants in the garden were so much smaller and the trees and hedges were short then. Looking out of the bedroom window, we could see him coming back in his great big brown overcoat with the goose-shaped parcel over his shoulder and the snowflakes falling thick and fast. It must have been that year too that we pulled our first parsnips. The ground was cold, but not frozen, although we’d had a few sharp frosts before that. In went the fork and out came these long, white roots. We washed them and baked them whole in the AGA, basting them with butter. Each time we pulled out their tray, they were more and more golden. We saved the goose fat for the
spuds – ‘King Edwards’ we’d grown ourselves. After a frost, the starch in parsnips turns to sugar, which is why they taste so sweet. Before sugar was introduced, they were sometimes used as a sweetener. In the middle of our Christmas table there is an arrangement and we try to make sure there are always a few Christmas roses at its heart. They are from a plant that my grandad passed on to my mum, which he was initially given when he worked as a garden boy at a big house before he took up his cabinet maker’s apprenticeship. My mum gave me a plant and it flowers every year. Helleborus niger can be a temperamental plant so it’s very rewarding to see it enjoying itself here. It’s planted in what we call ‘Jeannie’s garden’ along from the acer ‘Osakazuki’ she gave us. Its crimson leaves have long since
My ga rdenin g dia ry
WHAT’S LOOKING GOOD NOW Skimmias are great to add to your Christmas decorations
ster Our Vitis coignetiae has reached mon its in ent nific mag ed proportions and although it look ever y hot colour autumn garb – the huge leaves turn d now! han in ng taki s you can imagine – it need
Monda y
Tu esda y
Jonathan Buckley
Most of the leaves have been and borders now and the beds lifted from e made can be spread. we’v ld mou old leaf e is It’s much prettier when the whole plac t grea it’s covered with golden leaves, but ks! to get it done. It will take wee
Christmas Eve
Dashing about like the rest of ow ledges and the world. Trying to festoon the wind greenery. It’s trim the window frames with assorted e. insid so lovely to have some of the outside,
Christmas Day
Perhaps because we don’t have lots of evergreens here in our garden, those we do have are valued more. This year our skimmias, which grow together in a very shady, unpropitious place, are coming into flower early. Skimmia ‘Rubella’ in particular is doing well, with dark almost crimson leaves. Skimmia ‘Temptation’ is a recently introduced self-fertile variety of this popular shrub. It is one of the few hermaphrodite varieties producing both male and female flowers. The white
fallen by Christmas, but we try to press a few earlier then arrange them on the table, so we feel both Jeannie and my grandad are around through the leaves and flowers. My grandad loved Christmas and I can remember him standing with his back to the open fire that was integrated with a range alongside it. For Christmas, it was important to have a good blaze so the oven stayed hot. One year my
GAP Photos
Sweet home-grown parsnips are a Christmas essential
Garden World Images
Skimmia ‘Kew Green’
flowers it produces through the winter are followed by brilliant red berries. It stays compact and thrives even in dense shade. Skimmia confusa ‘Kew Green’ is tough. This hybrid inherits the aromatic foliage and yellowgreen flowers of Skimmia anquetilia, one of its parents. The other, Skimmia japonica, contributes rich green, glossy foliage. Their progeny is a bright yet subtle shrub, at its best in February. All of them are great in Christmas decorations.
grandad’s trousers caught fire! He ran outside where fortunately he was able to sit in the snow and douse the flames. I think they were smouldering rather than downright burning, but thank goodness for a white Christmas that year! A proper holly wreath has been part of our tradition here since I was taught to make them by the ladies in Barnstaple’s Pannier market, where I used to sell a lot of them each December. They were all assembled on the kitchen table – lots of late nights and sore fingers. One day, the production line was at full steam when there was a bang on the door – the tax men cometh! Unfortunately, I couldn’t invite them to take a seat as all the chairs were strewn with prickly holly. On second thoughts… Hope you all have a happy Christmas and New Year. Happy gardening to all of you!
Thought I’d mistimed it with ering for weeks our paperwhites. They’ve been flow nhouse, gree cold the but, having been out in and Paperwhite narcissi rich is t scen ir The they’re just perfect. add rich scent to I’ve ume perf the than er exotic, even bett Christmas Day! just opened! as Settling down with my best Christm e). hom at Neil and ie Ann e, present (apart from having Alic Hardy’s Return of The It’s a special edition, 1929, of Thomas e Leighton, who is the Native, with original woodcuts by Clar . What a treat. best wood-engraving illustrator ever
Boxing Day
Satu rday
ing This year our hellebore leaves are look a but , ever than ner fresher and gree To s. spot dark have them of few be on the safe side, we’re taking all the leaves away, either cutting them close to the ground or preferably pulling them away. It’s quite a task because there must be more than 100 plants.
Su nday
Looking at potatoes and sweet potatoes in the catalogues. Nothing beats digging your first new potatoes – veggie members of and the taste is beyond compare. But aubergines and s, atoe the solanum family – spuds, tom e, so I’m wors ritis peppers – are said to make arth them for grow to have still I’ll considering alternatives. everyone else though.
Hellebore leaves are removed to make way for new flowers
It’s a great time to browse the catalogues
Me r r y h C r ist m a s !
December 27 2014 / Garden News 15
ON YOUR FRUIT & VEG
PLOT
Sow onion seed indoors It’s the traditional time to start them off from seed, says Greg
B
OXING DAY IS traditionally when many gardeners start their onion seed, particularly if they’re planning on having a go at growing for a show. At this time of year they can be sown indoors, hardened of in March and then transplanted into their permanent growing position in April. By spring, sets (small, immature onion bulbs) are also available in garden centres to plant directly in the ground, but you won’t get such a wide range of varieties to choose from than if you start your own from seed. Onions need soil that is welldrained and fertile so plan ahead for when they do go out on the plot and make sure the soil where they’re to grow is cultivated in the right way. Dig it over and incorporate some well-rotted organic matter, such as homemade garden compost, well in advance. Don’t plant onions into freshly-manured ground, because this will make them grow too ‘soft’, and they’ll be more prone to diseases. They also need an open site so they can get plenty of air. If onions are grown in still, humid conditions they are much more likely to be afected by horrible fungal diseases such as white rot and neck rot, which will reduce your yield and afect the storing qualities of the crop.
Start off next year’s onion crop
Try a red onion with mild flavour, such as ‘Red Baron’
26 Garden News / December 27 2014
Fill a half seed tray with multi-purpose or seed sowing compost and level the surface with a presser board or the bo om of another tray.
2
Sca er your onion seed across the surface of the compost, trying to spread it evenly and not sow too thickly.
3
Cover the seed with more compost or a layer of Vermiculite, water and keep in the greenhouse until germination (usually around 21 days).
Photos: Neil Hepworth
1
ories this week The big gardeningEditst ge ed by IAN HODGSON Editor-at-lar
All photos: Royal Botanic Gardens Kew
Maintaining Grade I listed buildings is a significant financial problem
Streamline or close!
Director Richard Deverell
Aid for Kew as MPs investigate
K
EW DIRECTOR RICHARD Deverell has warned MPs he will have to: ‘restructure, or face closing the gardens for part of the year’. The nine-member cross-party Parliamentary Select Committee convened a public meeting at Kew last week to investigate the background to the establishment’s £5 million funding shortfall and whether it could still fulfill statutory duties given the level of redundancy. A ‘surprise’ injection of £2.3 million from the treasury was announced the day before the meeting to help the beleaguered institution ‘balance the books’. It had already received £1.5 million in September to help fund operations until April 2015.
Kew science: urgent need to maintain world-class standard s The institution said it had saved £800,000 through the measures spending £8 million annually to by streamlining operations and maintain all its Grade I-listed removing duplication of posts and buildings, as well as supporting its work in its various departments. world-famous plant collections and Staff numbers dropped from 730 scientific research. “The Palm House to 630 as a consequence. is covered with algae and rust you Refuting allegations of a loss of should not see,” said Mr Deverell. capability in some plant sciences, Kew management acknowledged especially pollen and fungal that it was struggling in some areas, specialists, Director of Science and although ‘visitors were at a Professor Kathy Willis said: “We six-year low’, the independent can’t go any further, we’re at the bare charity was confident of raising bones and must develop from here.” more of its own income, ‘planning A major issue for the World to break even by 2017’. Heritage site was the restrictive The committee chair Andrew funding received from agri-body Miller also acknowledged wide DEFRA, who imposed the cut, ‘parliamentary support to find with Kew, as a World Heritage Site,
28 Garden News / December 27 2014
Professor Kathy Willis
a fundamental long term solution for Kew’. “Reducing costs is only an element of what we want to achieve,” said Mr Deverell. “We need a simple streamlined structure and take our own future in our own hands. This is the biggest change in a century. We have to rejuvenate our operations, making Kew more effective, improving our horticulture and improving the contribution of Kew in terms of its work and global strategy.” • Kew is to publish its new six-theme science strategy in February 2015.