Home & Garden

from The New Stour & Avon Magazine 13/01/2023

Letters

When this issue comes out it will be January and Friday 13th... swiftly followed by what some have coined ‘Blue Monday’ - the day when supposedly most of us feel at our worst. On that cheery note, let’s have a read of some happy plant talk and problem solving! I have recently removed a dead shrub from our rear border. Not sure what it was but it was about 6 ft tall and had white flowers. Can you suggest what I might plant in it’s place? To the left is a white Rhododendron and to the right is a red Skimmia. In the front of this is a small pear tree. The border faces North with the fence at the rear. A slightly trickier planting dilemma here; the Rhododendron and Skimmia are perfectly placed, but I assume you don’t want another of those. Both look happy though, and you mention you also have a Crinodendron, which suggests your soil is the right type for acid-loving plants. The Crinodendron you mention that could be moved I would suggest you probably wouldn’t like, they are very slow growing and wouldn’t fill the space quickly at all if it did survive the move (they aren’t keen tbh). A Hydrangea paniculata type would fit the bill here, and give you flowers at a different time to the others there (but isn’t evergreen), the size would be kept under control by the annual prune they need anyway. Something smaller would be a deciduous azalea. Alternatively a couple of evergreen options are Sarcocca (winter box), Daphne (gorgeous, expensive, slow growing!) and Skimmia. All of those evergreens will be slightly lower in height than your current shrubs (and the removed shrub) at full height. Of course you could combine 2-3 of the smaller shrubs to give you a

Hannah’s horticulture

n Azalea and, inset,

Clematis

Hannah Hobbs-Chell is a horticulturist and garden designer/consultant. If you have a question for her, email:hannah.hobbschell@ outlook.com including a picture if relevant

fuller border, width permitting. I’ve read so much confusing info about Clematis and pruning, I don’t have a clue when, how and if I should prune – help! Ah yes, Clematis are lovely but they aren’t the easiest to understand and wrongly pruned can lead to a poor flower performance or flowers in the wrong places. I will do my best to make it easy! Us horticulturists have classified clematis into 3 broad groups for the purposes of maintenance, determined by their flowering period: Pruning Group 1: Prune mid- to late spring, after flowering and once the risk of frost has passed – these are all your winter flowering fellows, so if your clematis is flowering with its main flush around about now, this is the group it falls into. You don’t generally need to prune these guys unless you want to thin out or renovate prune. Just remove any spent flower heads if you have the patience! You prune the other 2 groups in February: Pruning Group 2: These guys flower between May and June with large flowers. They generally don’t need much pruning; they flower on short shoots from last year’s growth so prune back to roughly where you want the next flower to be. You can prune after the first flush of flowers too in this manner to extend the flowering season. Pruning Group 3: These guys are your later flowering fellows that bloom on long new shoots from the previous year’s growth. Prune in February down to 30cm. You can also prune back as group 2 if you like too, they will throw out shorter shoots for the second bloom of the year, but still longer that group 2! That’s it from me, and if you need some pure January blues busting, horticultural salaciousness, dive into online and book-based seed catalogues, order those flower show tickets, and take a look at some new design ideas you might like to try!

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If only I had got my ‘mitts’ on the record covers before he threw them out and they got soaked. I know the New Year is the time to get rid of things but I really wanted to do some papier mache with those beautiful old covers. Still, looking on the bright side I still have the vinyl. Scouting on line I see a lot of beautiful and creative possibilities but most of them are too frail for our lively household or involve heating the vinyl or lots of chemicals, of which I steer clear. My attention turned to sourcing a Moon phase calendar for this New Year. The moon planners seemed a trifle expensive but suddenly the two ideas fused! I can make a moon calendar with the old records. Using the online calendars as a guide I simply daubed the vinyl with old paint I found in the garage.

Calendar is on the record

Words and pics by JO BELASCO, a former allotmenteer, forager, amateur herbalist, pickler and jam maker who squeezed her allotment greenery into her tiny garden

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