Sage Advice

Where does your garden grow?

Callum Halstead

It took four years to finish my first garden— that is, if a garden can ever really be considered ‘finished’. Four years of clearing, planting, pruning, training, moving, replanting— and of course the endless tidying, tweaking and finessing —until finally I felt that it resembled the image I’d been carrying around in my head since the beginning. Not only was this the first garden I had created for myself from scratch, but it was the first that I had created at all; its completion felt like a huge achievement. Having followed the lessons learned over five years of horticultural training, as well as the distilled wisdom of garden writers such as Beth Chatto and Christopher Lloyd, I was not only pleased with how the garden looked, but satisfied that the plants I had selected were appropriate for our local microclimate. Already, they were starting to flourish. With some diligent use of a small growing cabinet and the shelter provided by my front porch, I’d even managed to trick a few plants that weren’t particularly well-suited to the growing conditions into thinking that my garden was exactly where they wanted to be. I will stop being so self-congratulatory in a moment, but these little triumphs proved that I had learned a thing or two about plants and that I could put together a good design for a garden after all.

Then, just as I was getting ready to enjoy my triumphant garden display for a fourth Summer, I received a job offer in a different part of the country. I had applied for the job, of course, but it wasn’t until after I had been accepted for the new role that the implications dawned on me. One implication in particular: I’d have to give up my garden.

If you are a keen gardener, and unless you are already well and truly in your ‘forever home’, the chances are that at some point you will have to leave behind your beloved garden. Some gardeners might find it liberating to start afresh— pastures new, and all that. I recently watched a lecture given by the garden designer Arne Maynard, where he spoke about leaving a garden that he had spent fifteen years crafting; all he took with him was a dark-flowered hellebore and a rhubarb plant given to him by his godmother. But for me, I just couldn’t do it. After pouring so much time, energy and love into my garden, not to mention a fair amount of pocket money, I was not about to simply hand over my beloved plant collection to the next owner of my house. It was time to spring into action and ready myself and my plants for the big move. I hope my advice here will help those of you planning a move in the future to take a little bit more of your garden with you when the time comes.

Should I stay or should I go?

Whatever time of year you up sticks, it will likely be an inconvenient time to move or propagate at least some of the plants in your garden. This was one of the first issues that I encountered, as it was both too late in the year to reliably take root cuttings of some plants, and too early to lift others without risking losing them entirely. It was with regret, therefore, that I let my Baptisia (False Indigo), Eryngium (Sea Holly), and a few other ‘fussier’ plants stay put.

Fortunately, however, many plants can simply be dug up and moved. A word of warning though: having just lifted and potted somewhere in the region of two hundred of my own plants, let me say with some authority that this labour-intensive option is not for the faint-hearted! Additionally, if you do want to dig up a significant number of plants from your garden, make sure that you inform your solicitor as this does need to be clearly stated when your house is put up for sale. Your buyer might be rather shocked and angry to find that the garden— the one that looked so nice in the brochure —looks like the surface of the moon when they arrive with the keys.

Lifting plants during the Spring or Summer is likely to be more traumatic for them than lifting in the Autumn or Winter. If it can’t be avoided, ensure that you dig up as much root as you can for each plant and that you water them regularly to prevent them from getting too stressed out. Most of my plants were lifted at Midsummer— a ‘dangerous’ time —and the signs of stress were clear. However, the vast majority perked up again after a few weeks in their new pots, with only a few casualties. Easier to lift were my Spring bulbs, which I grow in aquatic pots sunk into my flower beds. This helps me to keep track of exactly where they are; when it came time to move, I simply lifted them out ready potted, without disturbing the bulbs too much at all.

Because I had time, I left lifting my Peonies (Paeonia) until just before our move in September. There’s a lot of myths floating around regarding the movement of Peonies; let me tell you now that most of them are complete flannel. Peonies can absolutely be moved and from late-Summer into mid- Autumn, and when the plants start to go dormant is the best time to do it. If your Peony is very well-established, then unless you have a crane at your disposal, you might just have to leave it where it is. I had to do this with one of mine. However, if it’s a relative youngster then the job should be far more manageable. Rather than charging in with your heaviest spade, with Peonies it is better to approach their excavation as you would an archaeological dig. The aim is to get them out of the ground with as much of their spidery root system intact as you can. Imagine a dozen wonky parsnips all glued together at the top— that is what you’re dealing with, and the roots can be brittle. Start wide and work your way in towards the crown of the plant, gradually removing the soil. There will come a point where the tip of each section of root is likely to break, but just try to ensure that this is as far away from the centre of the crown as possible. Whatever you do, try to avoid knocking off any of the fragile pink buds you’ll see dotted around the centre of the crown. These are the growth points for next year’s stems, and they can’t be replaced. Once your plant is out of the ground, you can either pot it up (you’ll need a big pot) or, if you’re going to be able to re-plant it within a week or two, transport it bare rooted to your new garden.

Making the cut

Smaller plants are obviously much easier to move than larger ones, so if you have enough time to plan ahead, it is well worth taking cuttings of the big ones to avoid putting your back out. Propagators and heat mats can speed up the process of rooting cuttings, but yoghurt pots and loo rolls on windowsills can also be effective if they are well looked after. I always use an organic rooting hormone powder to stimulate root growth— this isn’t strictly necessary but, at just a few pounds for a pot that will last for ages, it seems a sensible investment to me. At the very beginning of Summer, I stuffed a single propagator full of cuttings of Aster, Sedum, Linaria, Euphorbia, Agastache and more, watered them in, put the lid on, and left the whole thing under my garden bench for a bit of shelter from direct sunlight. After checking the water level occasionally and removing a Sedum that had started to go a bit mouldy, I was left with over thirty young and healthy plants in a single tray, ready to move with me to Fife— much more manageable than lifting the giant parent plants.

A time to sow Easier still are seeds. The drawback here is that you could have a long wait on your hands to see them emerge into magnificent specimens that are ready to grace your new garden, particularly in the case of some large garden shrubs. However, many herbaceous perennials will not take that long, and in a year or two you could have plenty of new plants to re-establish for very little cost and only a bit of labour. For example, I collected from two lovely ornamental Alliums, Allium cernuum (Nodding Onion) and Allium wallichii (Wallich’s Garlic), both of which I expect to take two or three years from sowing to produce bulbs that are mature enough to flower. I also saved seed from Ligusticum scoticum (Scots Lovage), which I grow for its looks rather than for the table. It seeds itself all over the place and I could have just as easily dug up a few of this year’s seedlings to take away, but the seed gives me the option of growing even more.

One of my favourite perennials for Winter and early Spring is Helleborus foetidus ‘Wester Flisk Group’, a form of Stinking Hellebore selected for its finely dissected foliage and the reddish tint to its stems and the tips of its flowers. It is very easy to grow from seed, and I will be growing a lot more of them in my next garden. Fortunately, unlike a lot of cultivars, ‘Wester Flisk’ comes ‘true’ from seed— meaning that plants grown from seed retain the characteristics of the parent plant. This is important to know, as if you collect seeds from most plants that have a cultivar name (that is, any plant that has a second part of its name written in inverted commas), the seedlings may look very different to the plant that you collected the seeds from. This is because the offspring are genetically different to the parent. A lot of the time, cultivars are not able to produce viable seeds at all, as their breeding has caused infertility. In this case, taking cuttings or divisions from the plant will be the only option for producing clones of the plant that you love.

Growing gifts

Perhaps the easiest way to ensure that you don’t lose a plant is to give some of it away. If you have friends or family members with gardens or allotments of their own, sharing your plants with them can act as something of an insurance policy, just in case you’re not able to spend much time in your garden immediately after your move. This is something you can start doing now, regardless of whether you are thinking of moving or not. Start with the plants that are most important to you and that you would be most upset to lose. When the time does come to move, the more people that you have shared them with, the more people you can call on when it comes to repopulating your new garden. You may wish to leave care instructions if you are sharing anything that is challenging to grow, but it’s for you to decide exactly who you trust with your precious plants.

Relocating yourself, never mind a garden, is never straightforward. I currently find myself in a bit of a halfway-house, looking for somewhere to buy. The garden— more of a nursery at this stage —is full of regimented rows of around four hundred pots, still flowering away and awaiting the next move. At least they’re all ready to go this time.