Garden News June 6

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N E OK LO

FRrthE£E SEEDS

June 6, 2015

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

10

Super-healthy fruit and veg for home grown vitamins!

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✔ Plan ahead and sow spring bedding ✔ Make more pinks with simple cuttings ✔ Prune box to keep hedges smart

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TRY ALPINE OXALIS

Smothered with blooms and perfect for rockeries!

NEW POTATOES Tasty recipes for your first harvest!

How to grow tomatoes in baskets

Carol Klein “My favourite plants for highimpact foliage”

Summer beauties!

Gorgeous oriental poppies for wow-factor borders right now

LONG-LASTING FRAGRANCE

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AboutNOW Garden visiting is to be boosted Alamy

T

he ornamental horticultural trade has unveiled a plan to press for a raft of change and spearhead new initiatives, to help secure the future of the industry.

Uniquely, the multi-sector approach – the first of its kind – will target a broad spectrum of topics to provide a much-needed injection of political interest and support for the £10.4 billion-ayear industry.

Moves include: ● Gardening becoming a bona fide treatment on the NHS ● An international garden expo to showcase UK horticulture ● Incentive for public bodies and publicly funded works to use UK plants ● Introduction of improved apprenticeships to address skills shortages ● Horticulture on the national curriculum ● Enhanced promotion of garden tourism

Be er apprenticeships (above) and gardening on the curriculum Shu erstock

Government to be lobbied with 12-point plan Words Ian Hodgson

Alamy

Gardening industry demands change ● A plant health and national pollinator strategy ● A review of the Sunday Trading Act ● Improved greening of towns and cities Partners in the initiative include trade bodies the National Farmers’ Union (NFU), The Horticultural Trades Association (HTA), the Chartered Institute of Horticulture and the RHS. Launching the initiative, Lord Michael Heseltine said: “Horticulture has an important

role, not just at the community level, but also across education, training, housing, health, business and employment.

By drawing these areas together in a coherent strategy, we can harness the great potential of the ornamental horticulture sector.”

Lord Heseltine was instrumental in launching the garden festival movement in the 1980’s.

Representatives from the horticultural sector will lead and drive the 12 challenge areas via a steering group.

Alnwick is away with the fairies

V

Fantasy becomes reality at Alnwick

Alnwick Gardens

4 Garden News / June 6 2015

isitors to Northumberland’s Alnwick Garden can now indulge childhood dreams. A new venture, ‘A Garden of Fairy Tales’ allows visitors young and old to dress up and take part in a garden trail themed around fairy tales. But, being Alnwick, they’ve taken it one step further by employing actors to enact various characters, such as the Wicked Queen and Sleeping Beauty.

Adventures include interactive experiences, such as a garden bench

that sings when you hold hands, secret doors, magic mirrors, clouds of fairies and a talking frog prince. Children can choose a fairy-tale outfit to dress up in on arrival, or come ready dressed as their favourite character.

“We are aiming to encourage children to leave their computer games, televisions and iPads for a chance to star in their own fairy-tale experience,” said Alnwick’s Lindsay Gill. ● Tel: 01665 511350; or visit www.alnwickgarden.com

Plant

Fa ct

OF THE WEEK

After flowering, the foliage dies away completely – a property that promotes survival during the summer droughts in their native central Asia that usually scatter seed all around the garden.

Keep them happy

Shu erstock

Oriental poppies!

Slow to unfurl, these beauties are well worth the wait

O

riental poppies bloom from early to mid summer, and bees adore the huge flowers that are tantalisingly slow to reveal themselves, sometimes taking days to fully escape from their tight, bristly buds. But they are worth waiting for! Each petal

unfurls like crinkled silk, in colours from pristine white to salmon, scarlet and plum, with prominent blue-black stamens and black basal blotches.

Salmon pink ‘Marcus Perry’ is an exception, while some, such as scarlet ‘Türkenlouis’ or coral pink ‘Hula Hula’,

also have attractively fringed petals. The Goliath group tower above a border. The mid-to dark-green foliage is deeply toothed and bristly, easy to distinguish from the blue-green leaves of annual opium poppies.

Oriental poppies also tend to stay put, unlike opium poppies

Plant Oriental poppies in deep, rich soil in a sunny position.

Support them to stop the stems of tall varieties from flopping – put canes in early. Unfortunately, slugs and snails also enjoy these plants, so scatter pellets or water in nematodes to deter them.

Give poppies adequate water and plenty of room for air to circulate. Commercial breeders report that downy mildew is an increasing problem, so it’s important we keep growing plants in gardens so varieties are not lost.

When flowering is finished, shear over the leaves and stems to encourage a new flush of healthy foliage to appear. Take root cuttings immediately after flowering to make more plants. ● The Beth Chatto Gardens, tel: 01206 822007; www.bethchatto.co.uk

Six oriental poppies for vibrant summer colour

Shu erstock

Garden Worl;d Images

‘Beauty of Livermere’

‘Safron’

‘Patty’s Plum’

Tall stems topped with pillar-box red fowers are among the frst to fower.

Height 1.2m (4ft).

The traditional bright orange fowers and black-blotched centres epitomise the cottage garden poppy. Height: 90cm (3ft).

Buy this poppy in fower to make sure of getting blooms in the best plum shades!

Height 90cm (3ft).

Shu erstock

Beth Cha o

Beth Cha o

‘Sultana’

‘Hula Hula’

‘Black and White’

Rose-coloured petals look sensational with blue delphiniums. Deadhead to prolong fowering. Height: 90cm (3ft).

Deeply fringed salmon-pink petals contrast with dark centres to make an impact in the border. Height: 90cm (3ft).

White tissue paper fowers light up the garden. ‘Royal Wedding’ and ‘Perry’s White’ are similar. Height: 1m (3ft 3in).

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June 6 2015 / Garden News 5

what to do Meet the tea m

Clare Foggett

Ian Hodgson

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

Kew-trained horticulturist and garden designer. Previously with the RHS, Ian is interested in all aspects of gardening.

This Week

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

If y o u d o ju st o n e jo b...

Time to cut back the season’s shaggy new growth

Prune box hedging Make sure your shears are sharp and pick a dull day

H

St e p by st e p

1

Neil Hepworth

orticultural legend has it that box should be pruned on Derby Day, which this year is on June 6.

Back in the day when gardeners were supposed to not even be seen (let alone heard), this was the one day over the summer when the lords and ladies were all away at the races and the gardeners could get on in peace, uninterrupted.

Luckily for most of us, scurrying out of sight of the landed gentry is hardly our most pressing concern when it comes to timing our hedge trimming, but Derby Day still serves as a useful guide. By this time of year, box has made its first flush of growth, so hedges and topiary will be beginning to lack definition and appear rather shaggy.

There are two things to remember when trimming box. Firstly, make sure your shears or hedge trimmers are sharp – blunt blades will tear the leaves, and as they heal they’ll have unsightly white marks. Secondly, try to pick a dull day for pruning. Strong sunlight

can cause the newly-cut foliage to scorch, giving it an unattractive yellow-brown tinge.

For an exactly level cut, put up a string line along the length of the hedge to help you trim to the right height all the way along.

Place canes in the ground every metre or so and tightly loop the string around each one at the desired height.

For perfectly round box balls and uniform

pyramids, you can also cheat and make a template. Make a ring of wire to the desired diameter and move it over the ball as you trim. For pyramids, push four canes into the ground at each corner and tie them at the top, then use this frame as a cutting guide.

And remember, the trick to cutting topiary is knowing when to stop, so take plenty of breaks to stand back and assess as you go!

Pruning box plants by their age

Young plants – cut back by about a third to encourage bushy growth from the base that will soon fill out hedges or shapes.

2

Established hedges and topiary – trim lightly now, and again before the end of August for a crisp winter outline.

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Overgrown plants – if your hedge is old and gappy, it can be cut down to around 20cm (8in) now, to encourage growth.

June 6 2015 / Garden News 33

MARTIN FISH

Te undercover

GARDENER Former head gardener, TV and radio broadcaster and RHS judge

Moth orchids get some TLC

Orchids are po ed into a mix of clay granules and bark

My frst job is to remove the old fowering stems down to the leaves

I

light to the roots, but the majority of plants then get put in a decorative pot cover so I just use ordinary plastic pots with drainage holes.

When potting orchids it’s important to use the correct compost. Never use multipurpose compost, because the roots will simply rot off. I’m using Seramis Orchid Mix, which is a special mix of Seramis clay granules and selected pine bark.

This loose, open structure will give anchorage to the plants and retain some moisture, while also being free draining.

Potting is very simple. A small amount of the mix is added to the base of a new pot, I then stand the root ball in the pot and trickle more of the mix down the side. Then I water the compost and stand the plants on the bench, where they are shaded from hot sun.

Photos: Martin Fish

grow several phalaenopsis orchids, many of which I’ve had for several years.

They stand on a windowsill at the back of the house, which faces north, and they seem to do very well and flower each year through the winter months.

The last of the flowers have just about finished, so the plants can now be moved out to the greenhouse for the summer and given a little TLC! The first job is to remove the old flowering stems right down to the rosette of leaves.

This will encourage the plants to make new foliage through the summer and initiate new flowering shoots for autumn and winter.

As some of the plants have been in the same pots for years, I’m re-potting a couple into larger pots. Traditionally, moth orchids are potted into clear pots to allow

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Jo b s to do now

Grafted cucumber delivery

Pot on vine cuttings

Feed fowering plants

I’ve just taken a delivery of some grafted cucumbers from Mr Fothergill’s, which is excellent timing because I’ve just lost a cucumber to wilt as a result of the recent cold nights.

In late winter I took several vine cu ings from prunings and they have rooted well in pots. Although they’re now in leaf, I’m carefully separating the cu ings and po ing them up individually.

As plants start to make good growth and produce flowers, I’m feeding weekly with Richard Jackson’s Flower Power high-potash food.

Subscribe now for £1 an issue! Go to www.greatmagazines.co.uk/gn

g in s t lan per P k: pep e we and t ex lons N June 6 2015 e / Garden News 37 m