Garden News June 27

EE S! R F ED SE

I CAROL KLEIN

June 27 2015

SPECIAL ISSUE!

B rit a in'sed st m o st t ru in vo ice g a rd e n in g

7

Shrubs with amazing foliage AND fantastic fowers

✔ Discover Carol's favourite fowers now ✔ Meet her horticultural heroes ✔ Try her 10 top tips for a great garden

FREE SEEDS! £1.59 Worth

GIVE BLUE POPPIES A GO!

Our guide to success with Himalayan meconopsis

Grow w your y own dri drinks! ink nks!

Teas, cordials & cocktails

TURN UP THE HEAT! Try exotic pond plants

Longer-lasting

dahlias

How to keep blooms coming

H A PPY

BI RTH DA Y

Ca ro l!

Carol Klein GUEST EDITOR

shares her secrets!

PLANT A SUMMER

R E IN A T N O C Get patio colour quick!

AboutNOW Handkerchief tree, Davidia involucrata

Warren House

Norman receives his iris from Barry Emmerson

Ultimate plant honour for veteran tutor Andrew Fisher Tomlin

Garden is on the site of the old Veitch nursery

Garden salutes plant hunters of old

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garden reflecting plants introduced by a famous nursery has opened to visitors. The new Veitch Heritage Garden at Warren House near Kingston-onThames – now a hotel – reflects the endeavours of plant hunters such as E H Wilson and Frank Kingdon Ward, who worked for the nursery firm of Veitch at the turn of the 19th century. Sir Harry Veitch helped found the Chelsea Flower Show.

Many of the plants introduced by collectors, such as the handkerchief tree Davidia involucrata and paper bark maple Acer griseum, have become treasured garden plants. Part of the site on which the garden stands was known as Coombe Wood, the

one-time 13ha (32 acre) nursery ground where plants from various expeditions were trialled. Designed by RHS gold-medal winner and garden judge Andrew Fisher Tomlin, the garden contains a large collection of magnolias, a grove of 50 paper bark maples, a handkerchief tree, a spring-flowering meadow and extensive perennial borders.

Tours of the garden: Weds June 1 and Thurs June 2, 6:30pm to 8:30pm, including refreshments.

Price £12.50. To book, email veitch@warrenhouse.com More tours will be organised at a later date.

Namesake iris celebrates Norman’s 40-year career

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98-year old horticulturalist has received the ultimate accolade and had a plant named after him.

Norman Smith, who taught horticultural and rural studies at Farlingaye High School for 40 years, now lives at a care home in Woodbridge, Suffolk. Norman recently received his namesake tall bearded iris from top breeder Barry Emmerson, who is also president of the British Iris Society.

Barry had previously presented him with membership of the BIS, making him the society’s oldest member. But Norman is not one to sit idle – he also gardens in the grounds, freely sharing his knowledge with others. “I really enjoyed spending my time working with students. I think it’s really important for young people to have an understanding about nature and plants. Horticulture is what I have always loved and to have this special iris named after me is a great honour,” he added. Barry now plans to have 100 plants of the iris ready for Norman’s 100th birthday.

Shu erstock

Butterfy bonanza

6 Garden News / June 27 2015

Painted Lady

Bu erfly Conservation

Britain is about to succumb to a vast alien invasion, but thank goodness they’re only Painted Lady butterflies. Charity Butterfly Conservation (BC) is predicting that millions are heading our way after massing in southern Europe. In 2009, 11 million Painted Ladies descended on the UK, even reaching the most northerly parts of Scotland. After breeding over summer, more than 26 million returned south in the autumn, a phenomenal 9,000-mile round trip to tropical Africa. “The Painted Lady migration is one of the real wonders of the natural world,” said BC’s Richard Fox. “These fragile insects travel at speeds of up to 30 mph.”

To record your sightings of Painted Lady butterflies, visit www.butterflyconservation.org/612/migrantwatch.html

Words: Melissa Mabbi Photos: Bauer, unless stated

“There isn’t anybody I’d rather choose than one of my favourite people in gardening”

Delicate hepatica flowers

MY LIFE In Plants John Massey, 66

John Massey

A young John, second from right

Owner of Ashwood Nurseries Lives: Kingswinford Gardening type: Plant breeder and collector

“I’m besotted with hepaticas!”

The first plant I ever grew It was the runner bean ‘Scarlet Emperor’.

I used to have a competition with the gardener of our neighbour, Mr Hawkins, to see who could get the first meal of beans.

He used to start his beans in pots in a greenhouse, then plant them out, whereas I used to soak them for 24 hours in a jam jar then direct sow in the ground, two seeds per cane. Amazingly, most years it was a dead heat!

The plant that changed my life Lewisia cotyledon were the first plants we ever showed. We made our first displays at The Alpine Garden Society Shows at Solihull and Nottingham. Later we put on displays at RHS shows, all helping to spread the name of Ashwood Nurseries and build up our reputation. These shows were a huge learning curve, meeting lots of exciting and very knowledgeable people, including Roy Lancaster, Christopher Lloyd and Kath Dryden. They were so encouraging and helpful, it was thrilling. All this enabled Ashwood Nurseries to increase its range of plants and open a tearoom and gift shop. Now we have visitors from all over Great Britain!

The plant that shaped the gardener I am today Hellebores turned out to be another Ashwood speciality, and ours have become internationally renowned. I also met my best friend Veronica Cross through her interest in hellebores. She introduced me to the late Princess Sturdza of Romania, who was also mad on hellebores, and had the best garden I have ever seen – Le Vasterival, at Varengeville sur Mer in France. She taught me how to garden and I would never have started a garden if I hadn’t had the privilege to meet her.

My favourite plant in the world Hepaticas are my favourite plant in all the world – you could say I’m besotted with them. I have travelled to Europe, North America and Canada, Japan, Korea, China and Kyrgyzstan to see them growing in the wild. In fact, I wouldn’t dream of going to a country where they didn’t grow.

The plant that’s made me work the hardest Hepaticas are also the plants that make me work hardest. It takes me three hours to water each pot individually in my cold

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Another of John’s specialities: hybrid hellebores

greenhouse, and repotting takes about a month, even with lots of excellent help.

The plant I’d love to grow more of I would love to grow more of lots of plants, including cowslips, foxgloves, hardy cyclamen, lilies and species peonies.

The plant I miss most when I’m away Hepaticas again! I must admit, I am trying to write a book on them, and they seem to occupy most of my thoughts.

The plant I am in human form This has to be the hardest of all the questions – I’d love to throw it back at Carol and see what she thinks! If I have to answer, I think I ‘d be a dwarf conifer, such as Abies nordmanniana ‘Golden Spreader’, because I’d want to be able to create year-round interest, I like a sunny position, have a healthy disposition with no known pests, am getting a bit broader in the beam, and am not fussy about my type of soil, as long as it is not waterlogged. Although I know a lot of people I know will find me totally boring!

● Tel: 01384 401996; www.ashwoodnurseries.com

June 27 2015 / Garden News 7

CAROL KLEIN

Tis week

AT GLEBE COTTAGE

Taking a moment to enjoy the garden under Pyrus salicifolia

35 years in our

Devon garden Carol spends her birthday refecting on the garden she’s created

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omorrow will be my 70th birthday. I realise that I’ve gardened here at Glebe Cottage for more than half my life. Our eldest daughter Annie will be 35 in five days’ time – so I’m twice as old as her. She and Alice, our youngest (who has just had her 33rd birthday), were brought up here, and the garden played an important part in their early lives.

28 Garden News / June 27 2015

They still love to be here and when they visit, after initial hugs and greetings, they both enjoy wandering around outside, making a bee-line for their own ‘gardens’. They both have their own designated space within the bigger garden, and it’s thrilling that they love the natural world and have a real empathy with plants. There must have been times when plants seemed to

have too much importance – waiting for your dinner while your mum pots up a batch of cuttings or loads a lorry for a show must be irksome – but we’ve survived to tell the tale!

For the whole family, this has to be our favourite time of year in the garden. There is still the feeling of freshness that came with May, but now it combines with a rush of growth and the

start of the flowery season.

Leading the show are astrantias, our ‘Plant of the week’. They’ve never been better than they are this year. In Alice’s garden, where the soil is heavy but very fertile, there are masses of Astrantia major – everything from flowers of deepest, darkest crimson to large, pale pink pincushions. They are one of the groups of plants that seem totally

It’s a favourite time of the year, when astrantias flower

about what different plants need and how to propagate them. The first few times I tried to grow astrantia from seed it didn’t work, then I took to leaving the seed trays they were sown in, outside for the winter – what joy to see all those little seedlings germinate. Very handy too, when you’re running a nursery, as we did for 30 years.

It has been part of the reality for the whole family for a long time – it was our bread and butter, and everyone was affected by it, whether they liked it or not. It was alright for me because I was lucky enough to be doing what I most enjoyed. Not many people have the privilege of doing work they truly love.

Moving into writing and television has been an extension of what I love best – gardening itself. I remember being asked to write for Garden News for the first time and being thrilled though over-awed. That first column was written in France, where I was staying with my nurseryman friend John Hoyland. I seem to remember writing about how semi-tropical plants could bring a sizzling climax to late-summer borders.

Even though I was writing from a faraway venue, I still wrote from my own experience. That informs everything I write.

Although I’m happy standing in front of the cameras or sitting

tapping away at a keyboard, I always have an overwhelming desire to get outside amongst plants, with my hands in the soil. Gardening fills me with a sense of joy and satisfaction. It is craft, science and art, and involves so many different disciplines, all of which have to come together in the making of a garden. How could anyone ever be bored with it?

All gardening is subject to natural laws and, although it is an artificial process, it is still subject to those laws and we disobey them at our peril. That sounds a bit frightening – it’s not meant to – it simply means you shouldn’t plant bulbs upside down, and that it’s daft to expect plants from arid, sun-baked mountainsides to thrive in a shady bog. The greatest gift any an gardener can have is common sense and the ability to observe observ and apply those observations to how they garden.

It’s one thing to say it and another to practice what you preach. Seeds need to be sown at the right time, yet here I am thinking about sowing more cosmos – of course, they won’t work. There’s so much I get wrong yet there are successes, successes too, new techniques and new plants to experiment with. We’re We introduced to some of them in the pages of Garden News.

Right from the start we kne knew

Heavenly crops from the vegetable patch When we started to garden at Glebe Cottage, we had little or no experience. Determined to try our hand at growing vegetables, we turned over a few square yards of our neglected plot to planting peas and marrows. When the peas failed to germinate we enrolled the services of our neighbour, the local vicar. We weren’t expecting him to enlist the almighty’s help, it was just that he was a great gardener.

Approaching the problem pea plot, to my

amazement and delight we saw rows of tiny green shoots that had sprung up overnight.

Oh ye of little faith!

The marrows did the opposite. We’d grown a trailing variety and when eventually we finally went out to gather the crop, some of the stems were yards long and covered fat marrows. We had to make extra shelves in the pantry for our harvest. We still grow our own veg, but with a little more circumspection nowadays.

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we wanted to grow organically, though it was tempting at first to reach for the bug spray at any outbreak of aphids. Eventually the garden has achieved its own balance between pests and predators. When Jonathan, who takes all the lovely shots of my garden, took a beautiful picture of an autumnal leaf from our Prunus padus, you could clearly see tiny aphids on it. That’s why it’s a go-to destination for gangs of chattering long-tailed tits.

As soon as I’ve finished this, my first and probably my last time guest-editing Garden News, it’s away to the garden to sit amongst clouds of meadow cranesbill, potter amongst my pots and clear the dishevelled leaves from Allium schubertii.

Jonath than an Buckley

Jonathan Buckley

at home here. Apart from astrantia ‘Roma’, a pink sterile hybrid that we are constantly dividing, they were all grown from seed.

One of the joys of being here for such a long time is learning

Carol’s first GN column, in 1999

Sweetcorn plants go into the plot in blocks

June 27 2015 / Garden News 29