Garden News February 28

FREE SEEDS FREE ROSE COLLECTION WORTH £33 WORTH £2.39

JUST PAY P&P

February 28, 2015

CAROL KLEIN “How I make colourthemed borders that work”

S D E E S E E FR £2.39! worth

MAKE MORE OF YOUR THYME! Bouquet garni, planted paths, tea and more...

CHRIS BEARDSHAW “Follow my hedge pruning masterclass”

GROW BETTER

BUDDLEIA! How to keep yours in shape this year

BEST EARLY

IRISES

for fowers right now!

Get set for a sunny

summer!

Celebrate the year of the SUNFLOWER Try SA RA H RAVEN'S favourite varieties for cutting Grow a WHOPPER & win prizes worth £100!

Celebrate the year of the SUNFLOWER

Grow a prize-winner from your free seeds!

sUNFLOWER

‘Mongolian Giant

’

Grow a record-break

RRP

2

£ .39

ing whopper!

H

ERE’S YOUR CHANCE to grow a great big sunfower with your free ‘Mongolian Giant’ seeds, and win yourself goodies from Baby Bio®.

So, what are you waiting for? Begin sowing now to be in the running for competition success in September. Absolutely anyone of any age can have a go, even if you’ve never tried growing anything before.

Not only are sunfowers spectacular, they are also surprisingly simple to grow!

To get you of to the best possible start, here are our top tips for growing healthy and strong sunfower specimens.

Sow indoors for a head start

1

2

Fill individual 7.5cm (3in) pots with good quality seed compost.

Make an indent and sow each seed on its side 12mm (½in) deep.

4 tips to help you win!

1

Shu erstock

Choose a sunny position, sheltered from strong winds. Tall plants will be top-heavy so avoid a windy site.

2

Snails, slugs and pigeons are the major threats to sunflower growth. Avoid them by sowing indoors. Use nematodes or Bayer

Garden Slug & Snail Killer to ward off slugs and snails and inspect plants regularly.

3

Firmly support stems with stakes and ties. Do this early on, using strong canes or wooden stakes.

Use soft but strong ties on sunflowers’ bri le stems.

4

For strong growth and maximum height, plants need plenty

How to enter

WHAT YOU’LL WIN We have one prize of £75 worth of garden centre vouchers and £25 worth of Baby Bio® Vitality plant food to give away to the grower of the tallest ‘Mongolian Giant’ sunflower. Two runners-up will each receive £25 worth of Baby Bio® Vitality plant food.

10 Garden News / February 28 2015

Entering couldn’t be easier.

Simply send us a clear, full-length, date-marked, colour photo of your ‘Mongolian Giant’ sunflower against a tape measure (in cm) and state its height ,no later than midnight September 19 2015. The winners will be those judged to be the three tallest sunflowers of all the entries received. If there are more than one entry with identical heights, the winner will be the first one drawn.

Prizes are non-transferable and no cash alternative is offered.

The competition is open to UK

3

Water and keep at 20-25C (68-77F) until seeds germinate.

of fertiliser. Use Bayer Garden’s new Baby Bio® Vitality range. Nip off any unwanted flowers at first to help the plants concentrate their vigour on stem growth and feed with Baby Bio® Top Growth Flowers to produce a whopper of a plant. When the plants are producing lots of flower buds, also add Baby Bio® Top Bloom for brilliant, longer-lasting flowers.

residents, excluding employees of Bauer Media. The winners will be selected at random and notified within 30 days of the closing date.

No correspondence will be entered into.

Send your entry to Victoria Williams, Garden News Sunflower Competition, Bauer Media, Media House, Lynch Wood, Peterborough PE2 6EA. Or email gn.le ers@bauermedia.co.uk For more information on Baby Bio® products, and what they can do for your plants inside and out, visit www.babybio.co.uk

UK digital readers tel: 01733 395076 or email gn.le ers@bauermedia.co.uk to claim your free seeds

Weekly reminders and advice from the GN team Clare Foggett

Greg Loades

Ian Hodgson

Horticulturist Clare’s 50m (165ft) garden is home to fruit, cut flowers and ornamental borders.

Rose specialist and horticulturist with a large allotment that includes lots of roses as well as fruit and veg.

Kew-trained horticulturist and garden designer, who previously worked for the RHS.

If you do one job this week...

Keep buddleia compact so you can view bu erflies easily!

These shrubs can tolerate brutal pruning

Prune buddleia

S

UMMER-FLOWERING BUTTERFLY bushes should be pruned now. This will give the new growth time to mature and flower this year.

You don’t have to prune buddleia, but most Buddleia davidii make large shrubs if you leave them alone – you may just be able to make out the specks of visiting butterflies enjoying the flowers 3m (10ft) up!

Pruning back every year not only keeps your shrub manageable and compact, it also means it will constantly regenerate fresh wood, which will keep it looking good for longer and increase its flower power.

You can cut back almost as hard as you like. Buddleia are vigorous shrubs and can take being pruned right back to the base, which is good to know if you have one that’s out of control. But generally, prune back to a permanent stumpy framework from which the new shoots will spring. You may need a pruning saw on older shrubs.

After pruning, follow up with a feed – work a handful of blood, fish and bone around the base with a fork – and spread a layer of mulch around them to keep weeds away and moisture in. The same pruning technique applies to dwarf-growing buddleia such as ‘Buzz’, just on a smaller scale.

Exceptions to the rule

Photos: Neil Hepworth

Some buddleia species shouldn’t be pruned hard. These include Buddleia alternifolia, the one that has long arching shoots decorated with trails of flowers, B. colvilei, which has magenta flowers that look completely different to the panicles of tiny flowers you might be used to seeing, and B. globosa (right), which has spheres of golden yellow flowers in early summer.

With these, just trim back the flowered shoots to strong buds lower down after the flowers have faded, and every year cut about a quarter of the oldest shoots back to the base to keep it regenerating new ones.

Other shrubs you can prune in the same way as buddleia

Garden World Images

Caryopteris

Hardy fuchsias

Perovskia

12 issues of GN for £12 and get a free gift! Go to www.greatmagazines.co.uk/gn

Spiraea japonica

February 28 2015 / Garden News 25

ories this week The big gardeningEditst ge ed by IAN HODGSON Editor-at-lar

Winning photos announced

O

a dramatic image of autumn in an iconic part of the garden at Great Dixter in Sussex.

A fellow fnalist was Andrea Jones for ‘One Man’s Work’, a startling shot (below) of the garden at Parkhead, near Helensburgh, Scotland, restored by owner Ian McKellar. “It took several visits before I struck lucky,” said Andrea. ● Shortlisted images are on display until April 5 at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. To see them, or enter next year’s competition, visit www. igpoty.com

Magdalena Wasiczek’s one-in-18, winning shot ‘The Balleri 000 nas’

Magdalena Wasiczek

VER 18,000 ENTRIES for this year’s International Garden Photographer of the Year have been whittled down to a handful of fnalists.

The overall winner was Magdalena Wasiczek from Poland, for a study entitled ‘The Ballerinas’ (inset right), picturing the dried fower heads of climber Hydrangea petiolaris. She has now scooped the title twice in three years, bagging the 2012 award with a picture of a brimstone butterfy.

First in the ‘Beautiful Garden’ category was Carol Casselden for ‘Autumn Colour in the Peacock Garden’,

Andrea Jones

Worthy finalist: ‘One Man’s Garden’ by Andrea Jones

38 Garden News / February 28 2015