Horticultural

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?

Shed chic

     As may have become clear from my last shed post, I don't want a shed that's purely functional - it's got to be picturesque, not least because although in a corner it's not exactly tucked away in my garden, but also because I am planning to spend as much time as possible in and around it.

Given that I can't do anything much about the colour of the exterior right now, I am thinking about how to make the interior work from a practical point of view, in terms of storage and easy access to tools etc, but also capture that "shed chic" vibe that Deb of the blog Carrots and Kids detected in the greenhouses on display at Chelsea. So far there's not much to show for my efforts: a couple of jumbo gravel trays from Garland filled with, er, gravel are keeping water off the wooden floor, and an old Ikea Billy bookcase exiled from the office to store pots and the like. An old galvanised watering can I have got around to de-gunking is going to store bamboo canes and brooms in the corner, and I may even get around to painting the interior a soothing shade at some point too.

But in the current hot weather there are more pressing issues. Given the shed is south-facing and meant for duel use as a greenhouse/shed, I really need to think about shading. My sister suggested net curtains, possibly ironically, in the comments on my last post, but maybe this isn't such a bad idea - they offer a bit of shade and are easy to pull into position when they're needed. But I am such a greenhouse newbie I have no idea if that'll work. A quick scan through this thread on the Grow Your Own mag forum suggests that it doesn't matter much what you use, provided you use it. Time to get down the junk shop and see if they have any old nets I can buy. 

Foxgloves and other flowers from seed

I don't tend to grow many flowers from seed, partly because I haven't had the space or facilities up until now, and partly because as regular readers will know, I am a bit of a vegetable growing enthusiast - give me a choice of edible or ornamental and I'll opt for the plants that can end up in my gob!

But I did sow these white foxgloves from a packet of seeds that came free on the front of Gardens Illustrated back in autumn 2008. And now they've finally flowered: it seems like they've taken forever to get to this point, possibly through my completely rubbish "nurturing", but they do look rather lovely now. These definitely won't be ending up in my gob, given that foxgloves are poisonous, or as Amy Stewart notes in her book Wicked Plants, ingesting digitalis is like putting your heart on steroids. 

I'd like some other suggestions for flower seeds to sow this autumn for a low-cost boost to my (newly expanded) borders: now I have my potting shed (did I mention my new potting shed?!), a whole new world of possibilities has opened up to me. Just add your thoughts in the comments below. And if you too sowed these GI seeds, when did yours flower - were mine as sluggish as they felt, or was I just being impatient as usual?

A post in which I achieve a lifelong goal: becoming a sheddie

I have been promising pictures of my new shed for days now, and finally, here they are. It's a funny old time at Perrone Towers - I am due to give birth to child no 2 any time now, yet my mind is somewhat preoccupied with the changes taking place in the garden: no bad thing, I figure, as lots of heavily pregnant women drive themselves (and their families) crazy getting angsty about when they're going to pop, so this is a welcome distraction. In case my mother in law is reading this, yes, I am getting lots of rest and no, I am not overdoing it (I'm paying someone else to do the heavy labour).

As you can see, not only have I got a new shed (a 10ft x 6ft half glazed apex roof potting shed from Addison Ousebank, if you're a person who cares about that kind of thing) but the back end of the garden is undergoing a major transformation - two 2.4m sq timber raised beds from Harrod Horticultural have been put up in front of the shed, in what will eventually be either side of a brick-style path. The area around the beds will be laid with heavy duty landscape fabric and bark chips, then there'll be a little picket fence to cordon this rear "business end" of the garden off from the rest. 

 I've also pimped my compost bin: well, I stained it, after Rick emptied its contents into a rubble sack for me. It used to be a bit of a disgrace - left untreated it looked ugly and bad management meant it was overflowing and desperately needed turning. A coat of Cuprinol Garden Shades in 'Seagrass' did the trick, and it was promptly refilled with the right proportion of browns and greens. Now it's going like the clappers, giving my two wormeries a chance to catch up. It's amazing how making something in the garden look good encourages me to take better care of it.

The raised beds, the picket fence, the boundary fences and the shed will also get pimped: in fact the compost bin was a bit of a trial run colour-wise. I like this shade of green but think it's a bit too strong for the shed etc - sage green with cream accents will probably be the order of the day for them.

I've learned a lot as a newbie sheddie: apparently I can't just slap on a tin of water-based colour like Garden Shades - I need to wait a year (A YEAR!) until the wood weathers. I don't think I'll be able to hold off that long, but maybe until next spring. I also need advice re tool racks and shed storage, but I'll save that for another post.

This is another view of the raised beds, partly showing the motley collection of shrubs in the brick raised bed in the opposite corner of the garden to the shed. Current plan - as when time and newborn baby allows - is to whip out the prostrate conifer (ugh), variegated euonymous (double ugh) and dark-leaved hebe (ugh etc) at the front, at the very least, and maybe leave the photinia and spruce behind them. Suggestions for replacements welcome. The ornamental quince 'Geisha Girl' and Osmanthus x burkwoodii to the right of the shed (but not in the brick raised bed) will stay for the moment, and will hopefully thrive once freed from the grip of the hideous conifer.

Herons, sheds, and other works in progress

(Let me say, before we go any further, that the willow sculpture you see here is a heron. A HERON. Not a giraffe.)

I made this chap at a willow sculpture workshop taught by Hazel Godfrey at Albion Arts in Harpenden a few weeks back. I don't know what you think of my efforts, but I was rather pleased with him. My friend Sarah also did the course at the same time and  made a heron, which you can see below. It was interesting how everyone in the group followed exactly the same instructions, yet everyone's sculpture came out different. Sarah's heron looks more realistic than mine - mine looks a bit, well, shocked, whereas hers is more naturalistic.

It was enlightening working with willow - the wood has to be soaked for a day per foot to make it supple, then the work of bending it to your will is all down to the strength of your hands. It definitely inspired me to make some willow obelisks for my garden as and when I have the time and materials - they're ridiculously expensive to buy and now I've made a heron, I can make an obelisk, surely?! I just need to lay my hands on some willow. Hazel said she gets most of hers from the wild, so I just need to scope out some harvesting spots ou in the countryside.

My heron - who may well end up being called Horace - is about the only point of interest in my increasingly bare garden right now. Rick kindly got rid of the mostly dead but huge ceanothus bush, a rogue forsythia and a suckered lilac to free up a huge space for my not-yet-bought potting shed. I would've done it myself, but just under 6 months pregnant I've been banned from heavy work in the garden. With any luck by the summer I should have a new shed, possibly a new patio and with any luck, foundations for the garden office, oh, and a new baby. The latter may mean the garden office will take a little longer to get around to, but just getting rid of the algified ice rink that is the decking will be a great relief.

Inspired to garden: The Morville Hours and a visit to Kathy Brown's garden

I am currently reading - and adoring - The Morville Hours by Katherine Swift. It's a book about the creation of a garden in Shropshire, but so much more than that: astronomy, agriculture, history, geology and countless other areas of knowledge feed into Swift's description of turning a bare field into a series of gardens inspired by former residents of Morville. (This woman's learned, writes beautifully and created a huge, wonderful garden, Yes, I want to be her.)

This book has thrown up a hundred different trains of thought in my mind, but the current one is the different forms of inspiration for creating gardens. Swift's garden conjures up an imagined place inhabited by different characters from the past: but others seek inspiration in eveything from quantum physics to the music of Bach. Last Sunday I visited a garden inspired by art: not individual paintings, but the style of an artist.

I think my favourite part of Kathy Brown's garden in Stevington, Bedfordshire was the Barbara Hepworth garden (pictured above), which was sparkling in the September sun. I don't know much about Hepworth but this garden certainly made me want to learn more, which was perhaps part of the point. There were other gardens inspired by Kandinsky, Mondrian, Monet, Hokusai and Rothko, plus French parterres, a cottage garden and an orchard: I'll try to upload a gallery of more images later in the week: in the meantime visit Kathy's blog and site for more info.

The other wonderful thing about Kathy's garden was its playfulness - which was handy as I took my two-year-old daughter along. She adored the playhouse and the tyre swing. She insisted on stroking a huge bumblebee resting (along with dozens of honey bees) on the Sedum spectabile 'Autumn Joy' but fortunately it didn't sting her. She also loved the shells in the Hepworth garden and the Humpty Dumpty figure on top of the Mondrian-esque wall (just visible in the picture above). And the squash and chocolate sponge at the church hall afterwards went down very well, too.

Anyway, this garden, along with the Morville Hours, led me to thinking about the inspiration for my garden revamp (which I am hoping to get under way next year, building work allowing). Up until now I've been lusting over individual plants, planning shapes of borders, mulling over shades of patio stone and whether a pergola or an arch would be best. But perhaps there should be something more cerebral behind the pretty flowers? A overarching concept, a theme? Or is that a tad prententious for a 70ft garden on the back of a 30s semi? I wouldn't want anyone to think I was taking myself too seriously, after all. Advice welcome, in the usual way below.

Did I kill Victoria with kindness?

I took this photo of the Victoria plum tree in my garden yesterday. As you can see, it's not exactly a picture of health. There's a few sad leaves clinging on, rusty and crumpled, and some fruits - just starting to shrivel - left on the tree.

When we moved to this house and garden a year ago, I realised the tree had been badly pruned in the past - some branches carelessly lopped, the water shoots that followed left to form a mass of whippy replacements and protrusion with sheared-off, jagged edges like an open door to pests and diseases.

I read up on plum pruning and did what I thought was best, following the received wisdom, leaving the job until the sap was on the move in May or June to try to prevent the disease silverleaf taking a foothold. I didn't tackle all the pruning in one go, planning a phased programme over three years. I used a sharp saw, made judicious cuts, took my time.

First to go were the three "d"s - dead, diseased, and damaged. Then branches that crossed with other branches or were rubbing against the fence. I didn't attempt much more than that for year one.

But from the look of the tree now, it seems pretty poorly (click on the pic to the left and you can see a close-up on the leaves): is it the dreaded silverleaf (which enters through pruning wounds) or something else? Was it my fault for attempting to sort out the mess someone else had made? Perhaps I should have just left well alone?

On the plus side, this tree's  still a prolific fruiter, so I shall wait and see what transpires next year. I'd appreciate advice from anyone who can give me a diagnosis, too.

The path that leads back to Horticultural

It's been a while, I admit, but it's time to bring my personal blog out of cold storage.

Why? I did an interview about blogging the other day in which I was asked for my advice to other bloggers, and one of the things I said was "keep blogging". I stopped blogging here for a number of reasons, mainly because the new Guardian gardening blog, set up in January, ate up all my blogging mojo. The other reason was not much was going on for me garden-wise - we moved house a year ago, and there was a lot to do inside before I could tackle the garden. it's hard to keep the blogging momentum going when all you're feeling is frustration that you can't do any gardening while waiting for the plaster to dry.

Now things are getting easier at home, the garden revamp is on the horizon, the fruit trees are heavy with fruit and I have stuff to blog about again. So I am making like Robbie Williams and staging a comeback.

So what's happening around these parts? Well, I am in full preserves mode, making good use of my two fruit trees - a Victoria plum and an as yet unidentified early pear tree*. My tomatoes have seen off a touch of blight and romped through to a successful harvest - I'll post soon about my favourites from the varieties I tried this year. But pretty they ain't. The plants look a complete mess, due to a staking disaster, again, more of which later. And I've been experimenting with various houseplant planting schemes which I'm looking forward to sharing with you too.

In the meantime enjoy this rather mysterious pic above, which really is the path to Horticultural - well kinda. It's the footpath from my old house to my allotment-as-was. It's looking pristine-ish here, but it always used to amaze me that people in the houses backing onto the alley chucked their garden waste over the fence as if no one would notice. People sometimes as if I miss having an allotment - the answer is yes, sometimes, but now I have a 70ft garden I don't have the energy or time for both. But I do hope I've got the energy for two blogs.

*I suspect it's Jargonelle or Onward - if you have either, please take a look at this pic of a slightly underripe specimen and tell me if I am right