Gardening

NEW VARIETIES CAUSING A BUZZ Mike Burks, Managing Director, The Gardens Group

An important part of our business is that we still grow some of our own plants. Although the majority come from UK-based specialist growers, we still raise a number of crops for our hanging basket service and to sell in our three garden centres.

It’s important to us, in that it keeps us having an understanding of how plants are grown - or as I often put it, it keeps compost under our fingernails! It allows us to try out composts that we sell and as a result, we have been able to move totally over to peatfree composts (Sylvagrow) this year, after successful trials in recent years. This also gives us the knowledge of how to use peat-free composts, so that we can pass this onto gardeners.

Our growing activities keep us in touch with companies such as Ball Colegrave, who are at the cutting edge of plant breeding. They are propagators and growers of young plants that are sold onto nurseries, often as plug plants to be grown on.

Every year, Colegraves hold open days where their trials of new varieties are on show and we were really pleased that this year’s event still took place, despite the challenges of 2020. We were off to North Yorkshire for a few days away, which included our wedding anniversary, and so a small detour saw us arrive at the show grounds near Banbury. I’d arranged it as an anniversary present for Louise and such gifts often see a good deal of flak coming my way from friends, but it’s something she really enjoys and so it had her approval!

The trials are set out in different ways, but the newest varieties of bedding plants and some herbaceous varieties just have a code number and are planted in rows. If they don’t do well, then the plants are left to show that they have failed, so some rows look pretty awful. Others don’t grow evenly as they may be unstable and will need more work, but those that have done well really show up. We were given a slip of paper to vote on our favourites, which wasn’t easy. Elsewhere, new varieties from recent trials were on show, now with actual names rather than numbers, and these were in a variety of tubs, hanging baskets and borders in stunning displays.

It was a glorious day and the insect activity around

the gardens was extraordinary. On some varieties, the bees, hoverflies and butterflies were in huge numbers. We had a long discussion with one of the Colegraves team and he told us that it was something that they noted formally now and was a really important factor in selecting new varieties. Some wildlife experts are evangelical in that we should be encouraging insect activity, and pollinators in particular, using native or wild varieties specifically, but many are now saying that it doesn’t matter what the food source is. Certainly, the bees of Banbury didn’t seem to care!

There are some useful rules though, including that simple, single flowers are much easier for insects to find as their food source. Tubular flowers are often very popular, and this was certainly true with a fabulous range of Lobelia in the trials. These were not the hanging basket or edging varieties of Lobelia but the larger, upright types (similar to Lobelia cardinalis) now in a fabulous range of colours. So, look out for Lobelia Starship Blue in a dark blue/purple.

Also, in our top ten were new varieties of Nemesia, similar to Wisley Vanilla, with an extraordinary scent, including Nemesia Lady Mary. We also loved Nepeta Whispurr Pink – a great name for this Catmint (get it?) with pinky white flowers and again lots of insect activity. And there was a stunning Echinacea called Cheyenne Spirit with huge daisy flowers in different colours on the same plant.

Among those plants not necessarily for the insects were some outrageous Begonias in the Megawatt range. These are like giant bedding begonias and had fabulous foliage colours as well as powerful flowers.

And so to North Yorkshire and Nidderdale, where the woodland, rivers, moors and dales were a huge contrast to the trial grounds, but all in very fine form – very green with moss and ferns with, higher up, heathers and bilberries (as they call them here), and full of wildlife too. Away from the madding crowd, it almost seemed like life was back to normal. We may be struggling, but the insects appear to be enjoying 2020.

Gardening

DIARY OF A FLOWER FARMER Paul Stickland, Black Shed Flowers

It’s difficult to believe that it’s been a month since We’d conditioned them carefully in the cool of the I wrote the last missive from Black Shed. Feels Hunt’s huge barn at Blackmarsh Farm and that care like a couple of weeks. So much is happening in paid off, as they emerged fresh and ready for us to the garden; it’s really difficult to keep up as the garden swing into action. As the housekeeper showed us round, changes gear and roars into autumn. There’s barely time both our eyes were out on stalks at the gorgeous rooms, to think. Perhaps, that’s a good thing… hallways and meandering corridors. We were delighted

We have some very interesting new clients this year. to be able to use the wonderfully cool boot rooms to One in particular is keeping us very busy all on his own. prepare the flowers. Tabitha is a bit of an old hand at Quite how he found us is unclear, but we’ve been asked installs now and soon set to work, filling dozens of fine to fill a rather glorious house with flowers, every week, glass bottles with single stem Dahlias, whilst I created and not always the same one. A dream job in many a dozen very large arrangements. She did a fantastic ways, equally challenging, exhausting and rewarding. job and listening to her singing as she carried her work He’s a true lover of seasonal British flowers and we’ve through the labyrinth of corridors was unforgettable. been given pretty much free reign to experiment with Time was pressing on and we had another house the fantastic bounty that the farm effortlessly provides to fill a good two hours away. This was a different job at this time of year. From a single stem of one of those entirely. Our very generous client asked us to deliver and ‘Amazing Grey’ poppies in a slim glass vase, to a 2m arrange 500 Dahlias to a very well-known actress and her high explosion of burgundy Amaranthus and fiery, family whilst they stayed in yet another ‘holiday home’ – glowing dahlias, it’s been a weekly opportunity to play this time a deliciously faded four square early Georgian with the best of the field. It’s meant that I’ve been gem. I’m not very good at recognising people and have away from the farm a lot though, which puts pressure little interest in films and their stars but there was little on Helen and our trusty team of dedicated volunteers doubt about the identity of the beneficiary. Bemused but it’s great to get out and away from the endless and surprised by the arrival of such a riot of colour in the distractions here. gathering dusk, she soon guessed the benefactor and was

Our last adventure involved flowering a very utterly charming and friendly. Tabitha and I set to work interesting holiday home in Buckinghamshire and and whilst I created some large arrangements, Tabs filled another in Wiltshire. To call them holiday homes was some beautiful vases. Dahlias are not the easiest of things a bit of a misnomer, to put it mildly! Helen was very to arrange on their own, but she did a fabulous job. So, busy on the farm, so I took our daughter Tabitha with when the curious children of the house asked if they me. Luckily, she’s inherited my extreme nosiness gene, could show her around the building and gardens, she so she loves helping out and exploring our clients’ jumped at the chance. houses just as much as I do. So, we packed the van It was a beautiful evening and whilst I finished off in with a couple of thousand stems and set off on the the gathering dark, I could hear them all giggling and hottest day of the year, not knowing what to expect running up and down the stairs, and in and out of the at our destination… extraordinary rooms of the house and gardens, in the still

As we scrunched up the long gravel drive, it soon warmth of the night. It was utterly magical, reminiscent became clear that this ‘holiday home’ was something of the dreamlike party sequence in the book Le Grand really special; a 17th Century brick mansion, all Meaulnes; an experience which I, and I hope Tabitha, Dutch gables, castellations and towers, built around will never forget. Not such a bad job this really! an exquisite courtyard with its own chapel. Nervously opening the van after four and half hours driving in blackshedflowers.blogspot.co.uk 30-degree heat, I was dreading the state of the flowers. @blackshedflowers