Horticultural

Side passageway at sunset: what no Nicotiana scent?

I like this shot because not only do the big leaves of the Nicotiana sylvestris look good under the light, you can also see the silhouette of the plants on the green roof at the end.

This part of the garden has been an object lesson in the benefits of "backdoor gardening" - because these beds are literally outside my back door, I spend lots of time tending them. It's also interesting to compare this picture with one of the same scene from May.

The only minus is that the nicotiana smells of precisely nothing: I even got the other half and his rather more sensitive nostrils to confirm my fears for me.

On the wall you can see the second of my "controversial" mirrors - safe to say this one's just about as unpopular as the other. It breaks up the fence screening, though, doesn't it?

One thing: where's all the delicious night-time nicotiana scent I was promised? Perhaps this little cold snap means the scent isn't wafting as it should. Oh, who cares, they look great and I have a terrible sense of smell anyway.

 

Chicken keeping: dos, don'ts and should Is?

I’ve been researching chicken keeping for over four years now and I still haven’t taken the plunge.

I could easily buy one of those cheap flatpack coops off the web, or splash out on an Eglu if I’m feeling flush. So what’s holding me back? I’m convinced of the benefits of back garden chickens: endless supplies of rich manure to boost my compost heap, the entertainment of watching the birds, teaching my children the responsibility of looking after animals, and of course the fresh eggs.

It’s the downsides I am worried about - greedy chooks trashing my veg patch, the ever-present threat of fox attacks, and the extra drudge of feeding and coop cleaning on top of the domestic demands of looking after two kids under five, for starters. And the myth that I am going to save money keeping hens is quickly dispelled by adding up the setup costs: hundreds of pounds for a decent coop and run, not to mention the cost of feed. (From my years of research one good piece of advice I’ve often received is this: don’t buy one of those cheap flatpacks - mites love setting up home in the felt roof and they’re far too flimsy.)

Then there’s where to put them. There is an obvious spot in my garden, tucked behind the office in a sheltered corner, at the moment just rough grass in the wake of our building project. But that will mean careful design to make it look good. I guess there's the option of putting them on a putative allotment plot, like Ryan, but I don't think I'd be able to get up there enough to keep them fed and watered (Ryan, how do you do it all - haven't you got a horse too?) And I need to be careful in my choice of breed, too – ideally I want something that won’t be able to negotiate the 1m-tall picket fence into the veg patch. Brahmas, or Buff Orpingtons, maybe? Any other suggestions welcome.

I did take a detour for a few months into the world of quail, after noticing that Omlet, who make the Eglu, also do a version for these tiny birds. But there seemed to be so much contradictory advice out there – some said they’re noisy, some reported them to be quiet as mice. Others warned of cannibalism and other nastiness between birds, but some found they all rubbed along nicely. The main attraction was that unlike chickens they weren’t amenable to free ranging, and they were rather more low maintenance. But the very helpful @Chickenstreet on Twitter persuaded me in the end that if I was going to go for poultry keeping, chickens were far more interesting and rewarding.

Chicken keeping has grown hugely in popularity in the last few years, but are some people leaping into this hobby without fully absorbing how grim they’ll feel getting turfed out of bed at 7am on a rainy Sunday to feed and water their charges?  I’d guess a fair number of the secondhand Eglus for sale on eBay are being sold by people for whom the work involved outweighed the fresh eggs.

And me? I still plan to become a hen keeper, but I think I am going to wait until my toddler has realised that bird poo isn’t one of the major food groups.

I'm in love with a roving sailor: Saxifraga stolonifera ‘Maroon Beauty'

Saxifragas were one of those things that I used to get excited about when perusing my copy of DG Hessayon’s The Houseplant Expert as a kid.*

I’d never thought of them for outdoors, aside from my much-loved (and neglected) Saxifraga x urbium 'Variegata', but when I spotted Saxifraga stolonifera ‘Maroon Beauty’ at the Wrest Park garden show earlier in the year I had one of those “it will be mine!” moments that will be familiar to any plant enthusiast.

It’s a low-ground ground cover plant with fleshy, hairy leaves that likes shady conditions, and the fleshy leaves compare favourably to other foliage plants, heucheras say, for interest. My only concern is hardiness. The woman on the stall – I forget which nursery it was – assured me that hers had bounced back from the harsh winter, resprouting readily in the spring but time will tell.

One of its common names is 'Roving Sailor', because they spread by runners (strictly speaking stoloniferous plantlets, I think): mine’s already made four or five new plants (one is visible in the shot above) from its spot in the side passage with no effort from me, and free plants are always good.

It's a good job that this plant is happy in full shade as my saxifrage is about to be completely covered by the rapidly burgeoning leaves of my soon-to-flower Nicotiana sylvestris - pictured here at half its current size in the bit (not big enough to earn the title of 'border') on the other side of the passage, with Garrya elliptica 'James Roof' and some honeysuckle behind.

I put these in a bit late, really, but they were an impulse buy** having read m'colleague Lia Leendertz’s book The Twilight Garden, in the hope that the scent would mitigate against any potential whiffs emanating from our nearby wheelie bins (they're disguised with a rather stylish wheelie bin cover but that doesn't contain smells).

 

*Talking to James Wong at Chelsea this year, we discovered a mutual childhood enthusiasm for this book – I’m glad I wasn’t the only one with a square pastime aged 10. James used a lot of plants you’d see in The Houseplant Expert in his 2011 show garden, such as pileas. I’ve asked my mum to root out some photos of me with my plants as a kid, as if you need some proof. Stand by for some seriously embarrassing images ...

**From an ebay seller called seed-feeder who I’d highly recommend. They don’t have anything for sale as I type but the large plugs I bought were very healthy and well packaged, and I am kicking myself for not buying several things from them this summer.

 

Sowing flowers from seed: successes and failures

My brain is currently a grab-bag of blogposts: of all sorts of bits and pieces. Blogging's had to take a back seat to all sorts of things, not least changing numerous nappies, replacinga broken dishwasher, fridge and DVD player, reading The Tickle Book over and over and OVER to my 1-year-old, and making lots of jam from my Victoria plums.*

Here's the first brain dump. I wrote a while back about how I've been growing a lot of things from seed to save money, so I thought I'd tell you a bit about what worked and what didn't.

The Cerinthe purpurascens seeds from T&M all germinated with ease and produced attractive plants (pictured left) just right in temperament for my rather dry big border, and loved by the bees - the only wrinkle was the packet was a bit measly, although each seed was huge, almost pea-like. Given that this is a good self-seeder I am hoping it will spread copiously, and I'll probably help it along by saving some of the seed myself to sow next spring.

Another banker has been the verbascums, now settling in nicely to the dry border and destined to provide spires of white blooms ('Snow Maiden') next summer. What's so great about growing verbascum from seed is that ALL of them germinate, so you get hundreds of plants - and they're pretty tough even from a young age so any underwatering is quickly forgiven. Next year I'd like to try a pinky-red one from seed, like 'Cherry Helen', but so far I've had no success finding the seed.

Cenolophium denudatum, on the other hand, was a disaster. Got two seedlings from the whole packet, which when planted out promptly got munched by slugs. Clematis hieraclifolia, courtesy of Everett Leeds of the Clematis Society, so far so good - half a dozen plants from a similar number of seeds, all young plants now in situ(pictured above) and I'm hoping for a good show from this unusual herbaceous clematis. (Never heard of it? It is scented and needs no support, apparently. Will keep you posted).

Honesty seeds collected on my travels and scattered liberally about the garden should fill some more gaps, while I am encouraging my Briza media to self-seed for similar budget-busting gullness. One busted flush was the eryngium seeds I tried - possibly too old, I suspect.

*I wrote about how this tree was sulking after pruning two years ago - the commenters were right, I didn't prune in 2010 and this year it's been happy as larry, producing a top harvest of big, juicy plums.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, are you lovely or actually rather horrible?

Mirrors, the experts advise, are great in gardens. They give the illusion of extra space, bounce light around and add depth. I am not a big fan of the ones that make you think you're looking at an open door or window, but I can see how these acrylic sheets would look great behind trellis.

They're going on the Christmas list, but right now, in the wake of the bank account-draining activities wrought by the building of a garden office and buying lots of plants, it's a question of picking up what I can in junk shops and the like for a few pennies (also greener too, I guess).

This was my first effort - a "fisheye lens"-type mirror bought from a charity shop for a fiver. It was already painted this way, which fits with my colour scheme - perfect! Eventually it should be wreathed in honeysuckle and clematis, but for the moment it's hanging from the trellis reflecting the sweet peas on the other side of the patio. I did buy another one - a Rennie Mackintosh-ish mirror with a stained glass frame, also for a fiver - but it was so gorgeous I have hung it inside. Now I am looking for some full-length mirrors for the side passageway as suggested by the Stopwatch Gardener.

There's one fly in the ointment. My other half hates the above mirro with a passion - before we went on holiday he said he was hoping someone would steal it while we were away. What do you think?

On the verge: why my garden can't possibly live up to the delights of the A421

I am not such a great driver right now. Whenever I am on the road, I keep getting distracted by the verges, like this one on the A421 towards Cambridge.

I could bash on about how nature does it so much better than us, but you've probably heard that all before. It is interesting, though, how similar some road verges are to some of the planting at Chelsea this year, as Alys Fowler pointed out to me when I bumped into her at the show. I keep seeing amazing specimens of milk thistles (I think), but not in places I can stop the car!

It's the fullness, the boldness and the sheer exuberance of the poppies lining this drainage ditch that I want to recreate in my own garden. And on my green - by which I mean still mostly brown - roof. I am hoping that through my complete lack of intervention, something wonderful will happen up there and I'll end up with a lovely motorwy verge-style display to be enjoyed from my bedroom window. Perhaps today's rain will get it on its way. Otherwise I shall have to publish a rather ridiculous thing that's been rattling around my head the last few days, a sort of sub-Muddy Waters number entitled "I Got the Green Roof Blues".

Anyhow. Having long since run out of money for new plants for my still yawningly empty beds, I have resorted to sowing lots of perennial seeds, as I have already said. For some reason that's mainly verbascums right now - who knew they were ridiculously easy to grow? Cenolophium denudatum, on the other hand, scorns me. As does Eryngium bourgatii and some unusual clematis from Everett Leeds of the Clematis Society. Humph.

So the verbascums will have to do for the minute, but I am taking inspiration from the Leeds City Council garden at Chelsea, which featured them along with British native fox and cubs or Pilosella aurantiaca. I've already got P. aurantiaca up on the roof, will have to consult the green roof literature and see if the verbascums will have a chance up there, too...

From gloom to groomed: Side passageway transformation

So, the building work is over, the green roof is up and a transformation has taken place. True, my timing for the new planting that followed couldn’t have been worse – the driest spring on record ain’t great for a new green roof or border. The new widened flower border I’d been so excited about filling still looks drab and half-empty, despite splashing out what felt like a fortune on plants. The plus side of this is that I am enthusiastically embracing the idea of sowing perennials from seed – after all, if I can grow tomatoes, chillis, cardoons and lettuce that way, how much harder can it be to bring up heucheras, verbascums and echinops from seed And even if some of them fail, at £2-£3 a seed packet, it’s no great loss. Slower, yes, but I get more plants for my money, don’t add to my plastic pot collection and save on delivery charges (and transport costs).

So I’ve already pricked out some Verbascum Snow Maiden' for my gravelly front garden, and sowed echinops and cerinthe for the flower border: a packet of Tom Stuart-Smith’s favourite Cenolophium denudatum, plus a mixed packet of heucheras I picked up at Chelsea last year, some sedums for the bare-looking green roof and Verbascum ‘Silver Lining’ for the front garden all await attention.

The one part of the garden that I am most pleased with right now is the side passageway. It’s obvious from the picture below that it was an eyesore: ugly, weedy block paving, a grim fence and gate, and a set of wheelie bins completed the gloomy outlook. I know a lot of people don’t bother with an area like this, seeing it as a utilitarian area for storage, recycling and bikes. But that doesn’t make sense to me: it’s the first thing I see when I open my back door.

So the aims were simple: hide the bins, lighten up and green the space and make room for vertical plants. You can see what you think of the transformation in the pic above. The double wheelie bin cover is brilliant: at only £120 it’s fabulous value for money, and give you excellent access to your bins from the top and front. I stained it in Cuprinol Garden Shades ‘Seagrass’. I covered up the ugly fence and added an extra bit of privacy (who puts an open trellis panel right opposite the neighbour’s back door?) with reed screening from Wickes. The doors at the end lead to a storage space for bikes, DIY stuff, etc: all the stuff I don't want in my shed or in the house, effectively!

My other mission was to cover up as much of the pebbledash as possible (more visible in the pic looking from the other direction, below), so two lots of trellis should soon be covered by Clematis ‘Fragrant Oberon’ (so far, not living up to its name and a bit too understated even for my liking), and ‘Nelly Moser’ (romping away already), and Lonicera henryi. Plant-wise, I am slowly realising that I am no good at colour: or perhaps I should say, I am scared of colour. I chose Dicentra spectabilis ‘alba’ and now realise the carmine form would be far superior, for instance. I am going to steel myself to buy an eye-popping climbing rose for the fence in a bid to put things right – any suggestions? I still need more heucheras as ground cover (hence the sowing, above), and I am impatient for the Garrya elliptica ‘James Roof’ and Phyllostachys glauca to fill out, but the non-plant elements have done a lot to make things brighter.

The other thing I really like – and this is very sad I admit – is my hosepipe holder. Asking for two of these for my birthday confirmed my family’s view that I am irredeemably odd. They came from De Wiltfang and were recommended to me by someone on Twitter (thankyou, whoever you are) and are worth every penny as they are literally the only hosepipe holder I have ever come across that’s not ugly. And it’s these little details that make all the difference. All I need now is a replacement for my leaky dayglo-green hosepipe and cheap plastic fittings ...

Left on my to-do list are vine eyes and wire on the fence for the rose, a blackberry and the honeysuckle I’ve put in (is this a strange combination or a good idea?). I’d also like to have either a little set of white cast iron chairs and a table to go next to the wheelie bins, and if the budget ever allows a big mirror for the wall at the end. So, any thoughts people? All criticism welcome, encouraged, in fact.

Planting up the green roof

Ever since the garden office was finished I've been panicking about planting up the green roof. What to put up there, will it grow, will it leak, will I fall off the roof? I set aside this morning as 'roof time' and offloaded the kids onto my other half so I could dedicate myself to the task without distraction. And I am delighted to say that I survived the experience without any broken bones and hey, I actually enjoyed it!

When it came to what to plant, I'd originally plumped for a fairly dull sedum matting roof, but after consultations with the wonderful and very helpful green roof expert Dusty Gedge I decided to opt for something a bit more interesting. Dusty's the co-author of a superb guide to green roofs which I'd recommend to anyone wanting to undertake their own domestic green roof project. He advised that providing the roof could take the extra weight (which it could), a mix of sedum and wildflower plugs plus a sowing of annual cornfield flowers was a much cheaper and more diverse option than sedum matting. The idea is that the annuals grow up to provide a temporary riot of colour while the other plants settle in.

The plug plants, prepped and ready to go ...

The technical stuff (scroll down for me clonking myself on the head with a ladder)

The substrate - a special lightweight soil designed for green roofs - had already been applied by my builers at a depth of around 70-100mm, and planted into that are two trays' worth of plugs (a total of 208 plants) from British Wildflower Plants*: the money was running out by this point, so I scrabbled together various sedums from plants I had hanging around the place, rather than buying in sedum plugs, and I also dug up a few things from my gravelly front garden, including fox and cubs, some kind of veronica I, erm, foraged from a crack in a wall a while back and some sempervivums; plus some chives (regular and some unusual white ones) from the veg patch. Then there's annual cornfield seed mix from Just Seeds sown in between the plugs. I fully expect to be tweaking the selection of plants up on the roof, removing anything I don't like and possibly introducing new plants as time goes by. From my research, it seems that the key to picking plants for a green roof is to choose things that can get by in tough conditions, without much soil, moisture or fertiliser - which translates to me as stuff that can grow in the cracks of the pavement - yes to chives and Briza media, no to anything with a deep taproot.

So the complete list of plants up there is as follows:

• Sedum album 'Coral Carpet'
• Another sedum I couldn't find the label for
• Allium schoenoprasum
• Allium schoenoprasum Alba 
• Taraxacum officinale (dandelion)
  
• Dianthus deltoides (maiden pink)
• Centaurea nigra (lesser knapweed)
• Festuca arenaria (dune fescue)
• Leucanthemum vulgare (oxeye daisy)
• Briza media (quaking grass)
• Primula vulgaris
• Gallium verum (lady's bedstraw)
• Origanum vulgare (marjoram)
• Geranium pyrenaicum (hedgerow cranesbill)
• Viola tricolor (heartsease)
• Lithospermum officinale (gromwell)
• Centaurea scabiosa (greater knapweed)
• Pilosella aurantiaca (fox &cubs)
• Oenothera biennis (evening primrose)
• Cynosurus cristatus (crested dogstail)
• Hypochaeris radicata (common catsear)
• Dianthus armeria (Deptford pink) (more of which in a future post)
• Armeria arenaria (Jersey thrift)
• Tussilago farfara (coltsfoot)
• Sedum acre (biting stonecrop)
• Lotus corniculatus (bird's foot trefoil)
• Leontodon autumnalis (autumn hawkbit)
• Agrimonia eupatoria (agrimony)
• Silene vulgaris (bladder campion)
• Erigeron acer (blue fleabane)

And so to the ladder....

 When I was at school I remember one report from my maths teacher which read 'Jane understands the theory but tends to rush which causes silly mistakes'. This one phrase pretty much sums me up. Thus it was with the long, heavy ladder I was manoeuvring into position when, in a miscalculation of Benny Hill proportions, I managed to hit myself on the forehead and knock my glasses off. So given my historic clumsiness, my tendency to suffer vertigo at heights, and the recent head injury, maybe I should have avoided the roof, but you know what?  It may have been this head injury, or just the fresh air, or the thrill of being child-free for a morning, but once I got up there, it felt delightful (that may be why I look rather deranged in the photo above). I felt pretty safe, aside from trying to get back down the ladder, which was a bit hairy.

The planting proved a lot more calming than ladder wrangling.  I tried to avoid a boring grid of plants, leaving some areas bare and grouping plants in other areas, and ridging the soil to change the depth here and there. So now it's a question of waiting to see how it evolves. I am aiming to take a weekly photo of the roof and put it on Flickr to show how it changes through the course of the year.

 

*I'd recommend British Wildflower Plants' plug plant selections for green roofs - they were the best value plants I found, and they arrived in good condition. The only downside is you don't quite know what you're getting as you choose between four 'mixes' that include any of a long list of plants, so I ended up with a couple of things I already had, or could have sourced simply for free, such as daisies and fox and cubs.

Crowdsourcing my beds

Just as there is no ideal time to have a baby, there’s no ideal time to get your garden revamped. In the past year, I’ve done both.

In the summer, when I got the back of my garden sorted – new shed, raised beds, picket fence – I was itching to get growing but couldn’t do a huge amount because 'd just given birth. This winter, the bit of the garden closest to the house has been transformed, along with the knocking down of the garage and replacement with a garden office/guest room/bathroom/storage (visible on the left of the picture above). The weather was the problem here, with the builders facing snow, ice, lashing wind and rain with surprising good spirits. Oh, and the aforementioned baby’s had everything from flu to croup via vomiting and eczema, so I’ve been trying to project manage the whole thing while sleep deprived, dishevelled and possibly slightly deranged. No wonder, I guess, I haven’t been particularly on the ball with updating this blog. I’ve been blogging here since 2004, so I think I am allowed the occasional break in service, yes?

But because things are beginning to settle downI am going to get blogging again. So it is with some trepidation that I am posting a picture of the new look to my garden - well, the patio near the house anyway.*

Trepidation? Yes, because a) it’s cost me a lot of money (although the building cost a lot more than the patio) and b) because I designed the patio area and surrounding beds myself (all the money we had went into the architect and the build, no money for a garden designer except, er, me). I already know where I’ve gone wrong in a few respects: the raised brick planters (visible in the foreground of the top picture) have ended up slightly different sizes, and I would have preferred the bed alongside the building to be wider. And I know it's probably also rather boring looking (I had thoughts of Anne Wareham peering over my shoulder the whole time I was sketching plans), but I am hoping the plants will do the talking. A professional garden designer would have undoubtedly done a far better job, but not for the princely sum of zero pounds.

And a lot of things have gone right too. I’ve put beds in the right places for planting up the walls with heaps of climbers, and the steps feel wide enough to double up as a seating area but not too steep for tiny legs. The big windows in the office are designed for an expansive view of the garden, and the plants in the raised beds will eventually form a bit of a screen to help the patio feel separated off from the rest of the garden. I plan to put a big wooden table and chairs on here and eat every meal there when it's not raining. (I haven’t even begun to tell you about the green roof on the garden office, have I? I’ll save that for a separate post.)

Speaking of which, the next big job is sorting what to put in the seven (SEVEN!) beds I have to fill. This seems a less tension-filled task, partly because it’s more my area, and partly because any mistakes I make are fixable – plants in the wrong place can be moved. And, of course, the money squirreled away for plants has gone elsewhere so I’ll have to buy gradually as my purse allows.

Here’s where you come in. I have ideas about what plants I’d like, but I’d like to know what you think. The beds have all been filled with topsoil which I’ll enrich with compost from the heap and wormcasts. I've been working on plans for the dingy side passage pictured, (mostly full shade with a tad of occasional sun at one end first), so here's the plant list so far.

Bed 1, alongside the fence (which I am going to paint pale green to lift the dinginess)

• Skimmia 'Kew Green' for evergreen leaves, winter colour, scent and structure
• Sarcoccca confusa, ditto
• Another Skimmia I can't recall the name of
• Climber Pileostegia viburnoides for the fences to give evergreen colour plus flowers and will cope with the shade: I probably need one other climber for the sunnier end, any suggestions?
• Garrya elliptica 'James Roof' as a wall shrub for beautiful catkins, to screen next door's back door
•  a couple of unidentified deciduous, medium-sized ferns I already had
• Hosta 'Sum and Substance' for its big leaves. I've always had a problem with hostas but this one's supposed to be slug resistant and there's a first time for everything
• Dicentra spectabilis alba for its longlasting white blooms

Bed 2, alongside the house - full shade

• Asarum europaeum
• Polygonatum x hybridum
• Brunnera macrophylla 'Jack Frost'
• Couple of dark-leaved heucheras I already had, possibly 'Silver Scrolls' and 'Obsidian'
• Some kind of climber going up the house wall, not sure what, possibly more P. viburnoides

Bed 3, under the kitchen window - full shade

• Bergenia 'Silberlicht'
• Dryopteris wallichiana

That's it so far - I'll post some more plant lists if I get a good response to this. Let me know what you think of the plant list, and the patio (be kind, though, you wouldn't want to rile a woman who hasn't had a full night's sleep for eight months, would you?).

* For those of you interested in this kind of thing, my builders were the excellent Bedford-based firm ADMC and the patio stones are Marshalls' ethically sourced limestone in ‘Autumn Bronze’.

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Salad blue days: growing potatoes in containers

I don't know if it's because I am often on holiday in June, but my potato plants seem to be doing particularly well this year: possibly because I'm around to tend to their every need. I wrote a piece about the benefits of growing potatoes in pots earlier this year, and I've put my money where my mouth is and planted half a dozen sacks and junk shop pots with different varieties this season. It has been handy to be able to move them around the garden at a time when we've been revamping the plot. Through necessity rather than choice, I've used a mishmash of things as a growing medium - some peat-free multipurpose compost mixed with spent compost from containers, wormcasts from my wormeries and compost from my heap. They've been getting regular feedings with the much-diluted liquid from the wormeries, and it all seems to be paying off.

This year's pleasant surprise is how good the lush foliage and flowers look, even in a rough old builder's bucket. The star of the show is undoubtedly the Salad Blue with its gorgeous pale violet flowers, pictured above. If all goes well I am looking forward to experimenting with blue chips and mash. I can't tell you exactly what other varieties I'm growing, as I've had to hide the labels below soil level to fox my 3-year-old who likes nothing better than mixing them up. 

How are your potatoes doing this year?