April 2019
Jennifer Wright
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| Yellow Magnolia flowering near the entrance @TGardenHouse ©JWright |
Spring has sprung with a surprise heatwave just in time for
Easter. I don’t know about you but I have had a great weekend in the sun and
the plants in the garden have truly benefited from the sunshine, especially,
after the cold snap at the start of the month.
As part of our PGG traineeship, in our 2nd year
we are asked to take part in a study trip to Portugal at the end of March. It
was my turn this year, our other trainee went last year and assured me that I
would have an amazing time. She was right, I did. I spent two weeks in
Portugal. The first week I spent time working as an intern at Monserrate
Gardens in Sintra, here we worked in the fern valley to terrace an area. We
planted Bromeliads, Orchids, Tree Ferns and Gingers. All of which I have seen
as houseplants or glasshouse plants here at home but it was wonderful to see
them growing outside so happily. It is good to know, that weeds are universal
problem including brambles! In my 2nd week, myself and the other 2nd
year trainees joined the Mediterranean Gardening Association on their
pre-conference tour in the Algarve. The pre-tour brought people together from
all around the world with a passion for Mediterranean plants. We visited areas
of horticultural interest all over the Algarve including travelling to the top
of Monchique Mountain to see dreaded Rhododendron
ponticum which is so rare there but such a menace back home. I will freely
admit that Mediterranean plants aren’t to my taste but I learnt so much from
those two weeks. I was truly inspired to be working with people that knew so
much and were happy to share. It was an experience that I would be happy to
repeat in the future.
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| Borders in front of Monserrate Palace ©JWright |
Now that I am back to work, spring has commenced. The plants
are finally moving again and green is filling the garden. This new green world
tells us that it is time to start sowing seed so we have. Here at the Garden
House, we sow annuals, biennials and perennials every spring and some we do in
the autumn. Some seeds need a period of what we call stratification, this means
they need a period of cold which can be anywhere from a few days to a few
months before they will germinate. Annuals have a life cycle of around 1 year,
they begin life in the spring, flower and then die in the autumn and winter.
Quite often you come across the term half-hardy annuals on the side of seed
packets. Half hardy annuals are tender plants, this means that they cannot
withstand frost so need to be planted out once any risk of frost has passed.
Sometimes, half hardy annuals are actually perennial plants in their native
regions but die here when the days and nights grow cold. Biennials have a life
cycle of two years. In the first year, the plant makes vegetative growth
(leaves) and then in the 2nd year will flower in the spring or
summer, produce seed and then die. Our native Foxglove, Digitalis purpurea, is an example of a biennial plant with gorgeous
purple flowers in the summer that is well worth the space in a garden. Watch
out though! It is poisonous and can be an issue in the front of borders if you
have children or pets. Perennial is a catch all term for a plant which lives 3
or more years, this includes herbaceous plants, shrubs and trees and seed from
these, especially trees, can occasionally take a whole lot of time and
encouragement to germinate.
Back to the point, earlier in the year we began by sowing
older seed. Our head gardener found a stash of interesting seeds in the back of
a cupboard leading to Narnia, including Davidia
involucrata or the Handkerchief tree. These seeds are varying ages and may
not germinate. The viability of seeds
drops for every year they are in a packet so it is always best to sow packet
seed the same year you bought them. Trees, for instance oaks, lose viability
very quickly and if they dry out are unlikely ever to germinate. We sowed the
seed hoping that something would find its way into the light and amazingly,
little gems are appearing on the surface of our seed trays. At the start of
this month, the real work began when we started sowing annuals and biennials to
plant out later in the year. Annuals are only a small part of the summer
display here but find themselves everywhere in the garden from the Walled
Garden, to the borders around the house and even out near Birch wood. Not by
any stretch of imagination, I can remember every type of seed sown but I do
remember some striking ones – Mina lobata
or firecracker vine is spray of flowers which start red but fade to cream at
the base. Mina lobata is one of those
half hardy annuals which is actually a perennial native to Mexico.
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| Preparing Cleome seedlings for potting on. ©JWright |
Once the seed are sown, we put them in our poly tunnels.
This is where, once they have germinated, they will be pricked out of their
seed trays and then potted on. They will live their lives for a couple more
weeks in the poly tunnels to grow up and then be put outside and the poly
tunnels doors will be left open for longer every day for the rest. This will harden them off, plants which are
put outside directly from the glasshouse house into the ground suffer the same
as we do. You know that feeling when you come back home after being on holiday
for a couple of weeks, you step off the plane and suddenly you are freezing
cold. Well, this is the same feeling for plants but they can suffer a bit more
because they can’t pull their jacket out of their suitcase which they haven’t
worn in 2 weeks but brought anyway because it was cold when you left even
though it’s summer. When they are ready, we will plant them out into the garden
and they will enhance what is already there.
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| Tree planting in the arboretum @TGardenHouse ©JWright |
As part of our yearly cycle to make space for the plants
being brought on from seed, the poly tunnels are combed through and any plants
which are ready to go out or have been propagated over the winter months are
planted out in new homes. That is what Jen and I have been working on for the
last week. Our head gardener places them on the ground where he would like them
planted then it is our task to find and record each of these new plantings. Our
records tell us the name of the plants, where they came from, what bed we put
them in and how many went in. This is so that our bed lists can be updated
regularly for our peace of mind and when visitors inevitably ask a question
about that one plant you don’t know, we can find the information for them
quickly. It also helps us to know if we have something in the garden already
for future planting projects.
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| Chaenomeles speciosa 'Geisha Girl' near the entrance @TGardenHouse ©JWright |
So, what’s looking good in the garden? Spring is my
favourite time of year for flowers because it’s cold, grey and wet and then
suddenly the balance tips and it is spring, colour exploding everywhere. From
one blink to the next, new plants are in flower and the previous ones are gone.
Right now, the Japanese Cherries in the garden are in full swing, a springtime
classic. While the canopy is full of pinks and creams the shrubs below are
awash with pink or red Rhododendron,
peach Chaenomeles and orange Berberis. It is the undergrowth below
that blows me away. Erythroniums,
Dicentra, Bluebells and Fritillaries have carpeted the ground. The wildflower
meadow is full of flowering fritillaries, bluebells, daffodils, and Cardamine. Orange tip butterflies (Anthocharis cardamines) have been
spotted in the garden; this good sign is partly due to the encouragement of Cardamine pratensis growing in the lawns.
These butterflies use Cardamine to
breed so the abundance of flowers here will hopefully mean we see a growth in
the numbers of orange tips in the future. Finally, I hope you all had a great
Easter weekend, I hope to see you in the future around the garden. Don’t
hesitate to ask me or any of the other members of staff questions, we are happy
to help.
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| Orange tip resting on Forget-Me-Not in the cottage garden @TGardenHouse ©JSaywell |
