Garden News March 28

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MAKE THE MOST OF SPRING BLOSSOM! Your guide to forcing branches indoors March 28, 2015

Carol Klein

"Four fantastic ferns to start a leafy collection!"

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CHRIS BEARDSHAW

“Why meadow fowers make the perfect stop-gap”

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plug plants Get a colourful garden quickly with

Weekly reminders and advice from the GN team Clare Foggett

Ian Hodgson

Victoria Williams

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

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

A keen new gardener who is hoping to get her first allotment soon.

Her first loves are cacti and succulents.

Photos: Ma hew Roberts

If you do one job this week...

Get your weeding regime underway!

Make sure you prise out every scrap of root

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T

HIS TIME OF year is exciting: the ground and weather are warming up, gradually waking plants after their winter dormancy.

Unfortunately, they’re not the only things waking up.

Weeding season is about to start.

There will always be weeds. The trick is to keep on top of them and adopt tactics to deal with your most troublesome invaders in the least onerous way. The advantage of starting early is that newly germinated weed seedlings are much easier to pull out than the deep-rooted adult versions.

Regular weeding forays now will stop many weeds ever reaching monstrous proportions.

Whipping them out before they have a chance to set seed will also help minimise future problems – it’s amazing how many weeds can still set seed, even at this time of year.

Hand weeding is the way to go now. Weeds need to be in active growth for weedkillers to work most effectively, so wait a month before applying sprays.

Lever out perennial weeds, such as dandelions, thistles and dock, with a hand fork, or border fork for deeper-rooted specimens. Make sure all of their root comes out or it will re-grow. Check the surface of compost in containers as well as empty ground in borders and veg patches for annual weeds.

Annuals, such as hairy bittercress and chickweed, can usually be pulled out by hand. Divide your garden up into manageable sections so you don’t feel overwhelmed tackling the whole thing in one go. Often working along a border one way and then making a second pass in the opposite direction reveals weeds you missed the first time!

Tease annual weed seedlings out of container compost

March 28 2015 / Garden News 19

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

Pride of Derbyshire

R

ENISHAW HALL AND Gardens have been honoured with the 2015 Garden of The Year Award from the Historic Houses Association, sponsored by auctioneers Christies.

Located between Sheffield and Chesterfield, the classically-styled Italianate 2.8ha (7 acre) gardens are bounded by clipped yew hedges and spectacular borders set in 4.5ha (10 acres) of parkland, with woods and lakes.

Home to the Sitwell family for nearly 400

years, the formal gardens were created by 4th baronet Sir George Sitwell between 1886 and 1936. Restored and partially redesigned by his grandson the late Sir Rearsby and his wife Lady Sitwell, the meticulously maintained gardens are now run by his great-granddaughter Alexandra Hayward.

Besides notable herbaceous and mixed borders, the gardens contain an array of tender and unusual plants, a productive vineyard (once the most northerly in the UK) and the

National Plant Collection of Yucca, with nearly 40 species and varieties represented.

“When my mother and father took on Renishaw Hall and its grounds, they worked tirelessly on the restoration and redesign to bring them back to their original glory,” said Alexandra. “A prestigious national award such as this is testament to their hard work and that of the gardening team here.” ● Tel: 01246 432310 or visit: www.renishaw-hall.co.uk

Classic view – the swimming pool and fountain at Renishaw Alamy

40 Garden News / March 28 2015

Author and journalist who has been watching wildlife since the age of three

Julian Rollins

Julian’s watching out for busy nest-builders in his spring garden Young lapwings start life in a scrape in the ground and have to be ready to run for their lives almost as soon as they’re out of the egg.

Help the nestbuilding effort

Photos: Shutterstock

A female blackbird gathers perfect nest-building material ÕM WATCHING A sparrow coming and going to our eaves with bits of grass and straw.

Everything has a value, whether it’s a few strands of animal hair caught on a barbed wire fence, a bit of dry moss or just a handysized twig. The pressure is on to get nests ship-shape, and materials are in demand.

The urgency is because eggs need to be laid, with the first nestlings of the year soon following. Exactly when that happens depends on where you live. It’s a little earlier in the south and west than the north and east.

Blackbird, house sparrow and robin chicks will demand to be fed from around mid-April. For starlings and wrens it’s a week or two later.

From wrens to magpies, and starlings to swifts, many different species choose to raise their young in gardens. If they can get in, sparrows and swifts will take up residence in the roof over your head. Leave your shed door open and there’s a good chance that robins will build in there.

Most bird species, however, prefer a bit more distance.

Blackbirds use gardens the most,

I

closely followed by blue tits and house sparrows. The most popular garden nesting location is a manmade nest box, which is especially popular with blue tits. Another

● Provide building materials that birds need somewhere off the ground to minimise the risk of cat ambush. I put it in our firewood shelter, which has a roof but no walls. ● Different species take different materials – dry straw or grass and scraps of wool, hair or fur will all get used. Our Jack Russell has to be brushed daily and her short, wiry hairs go to the wood store and are soon relocated to house sparrow nests nearby. ● In a very dry spring, mud can be hard to find. You can create an artificial mud hole by tipping buckets of water onto the soil somewhere in the garden.

favourite is the hedge, especially dense, prickly ones that are catand weather-proof.

Not all birds build a nest.

A perfectly round cup nest is a feat of weaving skill

Nest construction Nest-users are either cavity nesters, who build inside a space, such as a hole in a tree, cliff face or nest box, or cup nest specialists.

Cup nests are incredible, sophisticated, freestanding structures, balanced in a hedge or tree in a way that defies gravity – and constructed with incredible care.

Weaving together grasses and hairs with a beak is a real feat, and responsibility for the work varies from species to species. The female blackbird constructs her nest, turning again and again so that the structure fits her perfectly.

However, male wrens take charge of nestbuilding, constructing up to six nests around his territory, from which the female chooses her favourite.

Building the perfect cup nest can call for special materials. It’s all about stickiness. Wrens, chaffinches and goldcrests collect spiders’ webs to anchor their nest’s base in place on a tree branch. Robins, blackbirds and thrushes use a dollop or two of mud to add solidity to their intricate cup nests of grasses, twigs and moss.

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However, the song thrush is probably the master craftsman among mud users. From beginning to end, the building process takes the female three weeks and involves weaving together twigs, grasses and moss to form a neat cup. Lastly, in goes a layer of mud and dung.

If you keep a close eye on birds that nest in your garden, you could feed information into a national survey run by the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO). You don’t have to be an expert to participate in the Nest Record Scheme, and can start by monitoring just one nest.

Find out more in the ‘volunteer surveys’ section of the BTO’s website at www.bto.org

March 28 2015 / Garden News 53

THEQUESTION

GN readers have over a MILLION years’ gardening experience between them, and we’re tapping into it every week!

What’s the best way to get children into gardening?

Going pro My 12-year-old niece helped me sow cucumbers and sunflowers this year and potted up tomato seedlings before telling me the next day she wouldn’t mind being a gardener as a career. Result!

Laura Thomas

Water often

Let them own it Give them their own patch of garden. Start with easy to grow flowers and vegetables.

My grandson James started like this at about two and this year (now aged 5) has started off raspberries, gooseberries, blueberries and blackcurrants.

Anne Booth

Water, water everywhere!

Shu erstock

My grandchildren started to help water the garden, now weeding is my granddaughter’s job. They love to see the fruit and tomatoes growing, knowing they can pick and eat them. I’m so proud to say she is now waiting for a spare space at her school to help in the school gardens with their head teacher, every week after school for a hour. She’s so excited. Hopefully following in her Nana’s footsteps!

Diana Eastwood

My two year old has a mini wheelbarrow I remember from my own childhood and garden tools set. He loves to copy me the excitement from soaking a conker digging, but his favourite thing is watering the in water, and then seeing it grow in a plants, although I normally get watered too! He plant pot. I planted it outside quite also loves following me around with the near the outside wall of the council wheelbarrow, too. I’ve started him early so house we lived in. Wonder how it is hopefully he will continue to love the now some 60 years later! Seemed like outdoors and get interested in magic then and I am sure it would still gardening. seem like magic to a child of today.

Leanne Parker-Osbon Jill Whitfield

A seed planted long ago Let them help sowing seeds and watching them grow, especially if they grow something big like a marrow or giant sunflower. Keep thinking of ways to keep them interested, watering is always fun. I remember being allowed to water perpetual carnations and loved the perfume from them.

Almost 70 years on, I still love growing carnations, one of my favourite flowers.

George Redpath

A Christmas tradition I’ve been buying my granddaughter (five years old) an amaryllis bulb every Christmas. She loves the way it rockets up and produces a huge colourful flower.

Hoping to move on to beans and nasturtiums this year!

Christine Hughes

Don’t forget the teens

Love conkers all

Involved at every stage Get them sowing seeds, and checking daily to see if they’ve germinated. Something simple and quick to germinate and grow. Sunflowers and courgettes, pumpkins, marrows or tomatoes have all been popular with my grandchildren.

They enjoy getting involved in the sowing, pricking out, potting on, planting out and nurturing all in one season and even eating some of the produce. They love it and so do I! Wilf Watson

Teenagers respond well to blue potato varieties, hot chillies, Melianthus major (it smells of peanut butter), Cercidiphyllum japonicum (burnt sugar), sundews, dragon arums, fast bamboos at Kew, henna tattoos, Mimosa pudica...

Michael Gerrard

Gardening on their stomachs Giving them tomatoes and mini cucumbers to eat straight off the plants, and peas straight from the pod are the best motivators. Growing the tallest sunflower from seed is also good because kids need things that grow quite quickly to keep them interested as their attention span is very short.

Last year they really enjoyed the golden pineapple berries, so we saved seeds and guess what they are trying this year?

Phil Cazanne

Quick quotes My daughter likes digging in the baby plants and then the picking. Her

favorite is peas Diana Elaine Herniman Square foot gardening because it’s manageable and great to grow fast food ( lettuce, radish, peas & beans) Eve Brady Competing with friends, brothers and sisters or maybe parents to grow a particular vegetable or flower, with a small prize to the winner would probably be an incentive John Bocking Give them a patch of GOOD soil, not the spare bit you don’t know what to do with, and child-sized tools of their own Diana Hudson Growing the tallest sunflower competition alway got my children into gardening Ellen Marshall

JOIN IN! Coming questions: What’s going to be YOUR highlight of the year? ● What are the best rules for running a happy community of allotments?

Go to www.facebook.com/GardenNewsOfficial, click ‘Like’ and post your comment in one of our Questions of the Week, OR email gn.letters@bauermedia.co.uk, with ‘The Question’ in the subject line. You could win free plants just by having your say!

66 Garden News / March 28 2015