HEAD
Gardener’s NOTES
Andy Eddy, Head Gardener at Osterley Park & House, writes “One of the main ways that I add colour – if colour is what you desire – to our Ornamental Vegetable Garden is with tender perennials that can be left in the ground to over winter. These plants such as dahlias and cannas, if mulched well with a deep layer of compost, will happily survive quite cold temperatures and frosty weather and with the hope of a warm autumn should keep flowering right through until November. As these are two of our productive plots we grow winter harvesting kale through them with their leaves acting as a foil to the candy coloured flowers but also providing for tasty produce for our café. Along with the perennial plants that we leave in the ground there are a lot of self-sown annuals that we carefully leave
when we are weeding such as the tall, purple leaved and flowered amaranth which is in fact Quinoa, the grain that we use for cooking. As well as the selfsown annuals we also grow a quantity to plant out such as zinnias, cleome and a tall variety of African marigold. These are weaved through the display to add final punches of colour for a late season burst of flowering that always leaves our visitors speechless that such a huge amount of flower has grown up so quickly when the beds were flat and empty only a few months before! Of course all of these ideas can be incorporated into any size of garden or allotment and even on a balcony in pots so get going next summer and liven up your productive area with some added colour.”
www.nationaltrust.org.uk/osterley-park-and-house
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