Heaven Scent

Tags

Dianthus 'Sweet Black Cherry', hanging baskets, Night-scented stock, Plant Me Now, scented flowers

Night-scented stock

A few weeks ago I was asked to come up with a design for a hanging basket for the online plant nursery Plant Me Now. The design had to include a selection of plants which would fit a 30cm rattan basket, there would be no side holes for planting, there should be no more than 7 plants and they had to come from the Plant Me Now bedding plants range or were plants which could be easily sourced.

Oddly, I’ve never made a hanging basket before. I’m not sure why. My neighbour had a beautiful one by her front door this summer and they are an integral part of my village’s Britain in Bloom entry, with shops and pubs producing a spectacular show every year. Because my focus for the last couple of years has been the allotment and the cut flower patch I haven’t even planted containers to have by the front door or on the patio, but this year I did do a few decorative pots for the back garden. The simplest, and what turned out to be the most effective, was a zinc container filled full of night-scented stock. It was one of the first plants I remember growing from seed when I was about seven but for some reason I hadn’t grown them in years. The scent was so fabulous; one pot filled the garden with scent throughout the summer. The fragrance drifted into the house on those warm summer evenings that seem such a distant memory now. It was also so easy to grow from seed and just kept on flowering. I love the element of scent in a garden, something that makes you linger and stops you in your tracks, and that’s where the idea for my summer evening fragrant hanging basket started to form.

I had a quick look around the Plant Me Now website and a few old Gardens Illustrated and Gardeners’ World magazines for inspiration and then set about deciding on the planting criteria for my basket. There would have to be scent obviously, the plants should flower over a long period, they should be compact and there would need to be an element of trailing and tumbling plants to dangle down the sides of the basket.

Dianthus ‘Sweet Black Cherry’

Buying a bunch of sweet Williams from a local cut flower grower at a farmers’ market was one of the reasons why I started growing my own cut flowers. They have an old-fashioned charm, the sort of flowers you remember being given by your granddad when you were a child. Most sweet Williams are biennials so they are often forgotten about, and when you do come to think about adding them to your planting plans you realise it’s too late. That’s why I was so pleased to discover a range of annual sweet Williams. The subtle clove-like fragrance and compact upright habit makes them perfect for planting in the centre of my hanging basket. I chose the gorgeous claret coloured ‘Sweet Black Cherry’.

Nemesia ‘Lady Scented’

Around this central planting I plumped for Nemesia ‘Lady Scented’ with its pretty lilac/pink flowers and its strong fragrance. It forms neat mounds and is very free-flowering.

Petunia tumbelina ‘Melissa’

As this hanging basket has no space for side planting I wanted to include a selection of trailing plants which would tumble out of the top and spill over the sides softening the edges of the basket. Petunia ‘Tumbelina Melissa’ with its frilly, double ivory-coloured flowers fitted this role with the added bonus of scented blooms.

Planted amongst the petunias would be night-scented stock. They have a naturally leggy, sprawling habit perfect for cascading out of a hanging basket. The flowers of night-scented stock open in the evening to release their perfume providing a source of nectar for moths. The flowers aren’t especially showy but I love the pale lilac, pink and white four-petalled blooms for their daintiness. If you would prefer a flower that opens during the day you could grow Virginian stock instead which is scented too.

Verbena ‘Aztec White Magic’

Finally, to add some extra flowery oomph, I plumped for Verbena ‘Aztec White Magic’ as the last addition to the planting. Although not scented it makes up for this with its long season of flower production and it will tumble and trail out of the basket too. Verbenas come in a range of colours but I chose white because I love how white flowers almost ‘glow’ as light fades in the evening.

So that’s my summer evening scented hanging basket. Perfect for hanging by French doors where the scent will waft into the house and linger in the air around an outdoor seating area.

*I received a fee from Plant Me Now for working on this project and I will be donating a proportion of this to the Crisis at Christmas Appeal.

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Scampston Walled Garden

Tags

Chelsea Chop, Pensthorpe, Piet Oudolf, RHS Wisley, Scampston Walled Garden, The High Line

Scampston Walled Garden

I have long been a fan of the garden designer Piet Oudolf. Dutch born Oudolf has championed a new style of planting and landscaping known variously as ‘new European’, ‘new wave’ and ‘new naturalism’. Whatever you want to call it, it has become THE design style of the early 21st century and his ideas of large blocks of perennial planting have captured the imaginations of gardeners, designers and urban landscapers alike. Grasses such as molinias and calamagrostis and rudbeckias, echinacea and heleniums are all classic Oudolf plants. But it’s not just the visual impact of his design and planting style that have made his ideas so popular. His choice of plants, often inspired by the prairies of North America, tend to flower in later summer and autumn. Whereas many of the more traditional English cottage garden plants have given up the ghost by August, gardens planted with these late flowering perennials are just coming into their own. They also leave behind stunning seed heads and skeletons as the garden descends into winter which gave structure and interest. Another attractive feature of these perennials is that they tend to need little attention. Many benefit from the ‘Chelsea chop’ in late May and need dividing every 3 or 4 years but other than that they can be left alone. The other huge plus is that the plants are loved by pollinating insects. In many ways it is a much more sustainable approach to gardening particularly for parks and country houses which used to rely heavily on intensive and expensive bedding schemes.

Piet Oudolf’s style of planting has proved to be hugely popular with urban planners. The mass planting works particularly well on a large-scale where the dramatic effect of large blocks of colour can be seen at their best. Parks and urban areas in Germany, Sweden, the UK and America have all had the Oudolf treatment. Perhaps his most famous and inspirational project to date is the High Line in New York, a public park built on an old railway line raised above the streets of Manhattan.

Painterly planting – Piet Oudolf

There is something painterly about Oudolf’s designs. The blocks of colour created by sedums, eryngiums and eupatoriums make you feel like you’re looking at a work of art. The first Oudolf planting scheme I saw was at RHS Wisley where he had created his own take on the classic English country garden double herbaceous borders. It was an impressive sight but it was his garden at Pensthorpe Wildlife Reserve in Norfolk which really blew me away.

I’ve wanted to visit Scampston Walled Garden for some time now. Scampston is the largest example in the UK of a privately commissioned Piet Oudolf garden. In 1998 the owners decided to transform the derelict 4 acre walled garden and rather than restore it in a historical way they decided to go for something modern. It’s a brave choice to try to combine the old – a late 18th century Regency house and Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown grounds – with something contemporary. For me it worked incredibly well and I loved the combination of old and new.

Katsura Grove

The Piet Oudolf area is contained within the walled garden. A path initially takes you around the edge of the garden. Known as Plantsman’s Walk, the high brick walls on one side and tall beech hedges on the other give the impression you’re walking into a maze. Deep borders are filled with hydrangeas, geraniums and the fabulously red wine coloured leaves of Cercis canadensis ‘Forest Pansy’ and the unusual berried Actaea alba. From here a path leads into a series of ‘rooms’ divided by more beech hedges. I particularly loved the Katsura Grove. I had heard of this mythical tree, whose leaves smell of cinder toffee, from my tutor at college but I have never come across them before. You know when you’ve been told something is fantastic and then when you experience it you wonder what all the fuss was about, well I’m please to report I wasn’t disappointed – they really do smell like toffee. Beds were planted with multi-stemmed Katsuras (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) and underplanted with Aster divaricatus. It was a beautiful combination and both plants have gone straight to the top of my ‘plants to buy for my next garden’ list. From here paths lead off into areas with more traditional style borders backed with beech hedging and planted with late summer flowering perennials and grasses. But it was the central perennial meadow which was the showstopper. Divided into quarters with a circular pool at the centre each section is planted with a rich palette of colours punctuated by swaying, tactile grasses. And it was teeming with bees, butterflies and hoverflies.

Drifts of Grass – Scampston Walled Garden

Currently one end of the garden is boarded off. The old glasshouse, in desperate need of restoration has been removed in sections to be repaired with the help of Lottery funding. It will be an impressive sight once completed looking out on to the hub of the garden. It’s a pity more thought isn’t given to construction work on tourist sites though. I remember as a child my dad complaining that wherever we went on holiday in Europe there would always be scaffolding or a crane spoiling the very view we had travelled so far to see. The Italians though had a very nifty idea. They used to – I don’t know if they still do – hang huge canvasses over the building which is being restored. The canvas would have an artist’s impression of the restored building which would hide the worst of the building work. It wasn’t perfect but vastly superior than a lot of plywood and a big blue lottery sign.

Piet Oudolf planting at Scampston Walled Garden

In contrast to the colour of the perennial meadow the adjoining area consisted of blocks of one type of grass, Molinia caerula ssp caerula ‘Poul Peterson’. It was simple, striking and hugely effective. It was impossible to walk through without stroking the grasses. There are other areas too, a small orchard and kitchen garden and the landscaped grounds which, on this occasion, we didn’t have time to see, but these really are the sideshows to the spectacular centrepiece. Designs, styles and plants come and go in gardening just as they do in fashion and interiors but I think the influence of Oudolf will be around for some time to come. If you can, try to visit one of Piet Oudolf’s gardens or parks – I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Gardening Leave

Tags

Cornish choughs, Cornwall, Garden Gate Flowers, Land's End, Mousehole, Sennen

Mousehole and Mallow

It wasn’t perhaps the best time for a bit of a break but the other week we popped down to Cornwall for a few days. Ideally I wouldn’t leave my plot, garden, greenhouse and ever-growing number of pots in late June, but it was Wellyman’s birthday and we both needed to see the sea.

The rigmarole of making sure everything survives whilst I’m away does sometimes make me wonder whether it’s worth it. I’m reluctant to ask neighbours and friends to look after the plants because I know that can be a bit of a pressure for some, especially if they don’t have ‘green fingers’ or it’s very dry and they have enough of their own plants to cosset. I did once leave lots of emerging seedlings in a friend’s greenhouse but slugs got to some of the plants. I felt bad for my friend who clearly had been worried about the whole thing. She’d rushed out to get organic slug pellets and I think had dreaded my return and having to break the news. Now that I need plants for photo shoots I’d rather leave it up to me, then at least I’ve only got myself to blame if they shrivel and die. It does of course mean trying to make sure everything will get enough water, and it’s surprising how quickly pots and plants on a sunny windowsill can dry out, even if you’re only away for 4 days.

Porthcurno

The prolonged dry spell we’d had prompted us to hunt out the irrigation system gathering dust in a cupboard, which we bought 8 years ago but never got around to using. It’s a straightforward hose with sprinkler attachments and timer on the tap. The fiddly bit is getting the water to soak into the compost and not to spray everything else – greenhouse windows, paving, me. We spent a few days adjusting the settings and initially massively over-estimated how long we’d need to leave the timer on. Bearing in mind the water only trickles out we thought 10 minutes would be about right. It turns out this would have drowned them and 2 minutes was more than sufficient. Pots were gathered together in a shady spot and given a good soaking, windowsill seed trays were given a base of sodden kitchen roll, and the plot and garden were treated to a mammoth watering session.

Ironically by the time we set off it looked like we needn’t have bothered with all the watering. It seemed we’d time our get away with the glorious weather coming to an end as we headed into mist and gloom hanging over Devon and I shivered in my shorts and tshirt. Wellyman, always one to put a positive spin on life, said at least I wouldn’t have to worry about the plants drying out…….

Breaking up the journey we called in to see the lovely Becca and Maz at The Garden Gate Flower Company near Fowey. We met through Twitter and it was lovely to meet them in the flesh. I’m very jealous of their flower farm perched on a hill with the sea only minutes away surrounded by beautiful flowers, incredibly photogenic outbuildings and their polytunnel. After a few hours of wonderful flowery-chat we left them to tend their roses and continued on to the fantastically named Mousehole, pronounced by locals as ‘Mauzal’. It’s a classic Cornish fishing village with whitewashed cottages, tiny narrow lanes and a pretty harbour. And what’s more the sun came out. With all the technology at their finger tips the weather forecasters could have only got our four days in Cornwall more wrong if they had suggested it would snow. As it turned out the predicted four days of rain turned into glorious sunshine from start to finish.

A detour to Constantine Bay, near Padstow, on the way home.

We got to marvel at glistening turquoise waters, white sandy beaches, watched gannets plunge into the Atlantic and were delighted by the seal which popped up at Sennen Cove just as the sun was setting. The water was so clear at St Ives we watched as a seal swam torpedo-like under water to join a group of surfers. We chased it the length of the beach watching it come up with crabs in its mouth. It would disappear for a few minutes and we would scour the surface of the water waiting to see its head bob up again. I’ve seen seals in the past but generally they have been from boat trips to specific seal colonies. Great as these are there’s something much more special about these chance encounters we had.

I have never been to Land’s End, mainland Britain’s most westerly point. We have been close enough before but I’ve always been put off by the visitor attraction which has sprung up on this spot. I’d rather celebrate the dramatic beauty of this coastline by enjoying the peace and tranquility of the place rather than spend it at a petting zoo or being treated to tales of Arthurian legend. Something made me want to see the actual Land’s End though and I’m so glad we did because whether you want to pay to see a 4D movie or stare out to sea for free there’s the space for both types of visitor to co-exist.

Land’s End

We took the coastal path out of Sennen and walked a well trodden path along the cliffs for a few miles. The view was spectacular with the Isles of Scilly just visible on the horizon and the Longships lighthouse a mile out to sea. Sea thrift was fading but wild carrot was putting on an impressive show and there were choughs soaring above us. A red beaked and legged member of the crow family this is a rare bird with, it’s estimated, only 250-350 breeding pairs in the UK . Colonies exist in North Wales and Scotland but it’s with Cornwall that this bird is synonymous, featuring as it does on the county’s coat of arms along with a tin miner and a fisherman. But for nearly 30 years, from the 1970s to the start of the new millennium, choughs were absent from Cornwall – the population whittled down over the centuries by trophy hunters and changes to their habitat until their were none. Then a pair, believed to be from Brittany, set up home in Cornwall in 2001 and successfully bred and choughs returned to Cornwall.

And, of course there were plants but I think I’ll save those for the next post.

Hops, squashes and the final push

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'golden tassels', 'sweet dumpling', coppicing, growing squashes, hops

ripening winter squashes

So September has come and it’s the final push for my finishing my book. The photographs have all been decided and have gone off to the printers to be set and the text has been ‘jiggled’ about to fit. I’m pretty sure jiggled isn’t the technical term and the whole process required much more skill and expertise than that word conjures up, so apologies to the designer if she’s reading this. But I’m still not particularly au fait with the intricacies of the publishing world so jiggling will have to do. The next couple of weeks involve editing the text and proofreading and just when I think I’m finished I remember that there’s an index to do and I mustn’t forget those all important ‘thank yous’.

I do feel slightly like this summer has passed me by. I have got photographic evidence though that I was outdoors and gardening for some of the time at least. Maybe it’s because despite July and August resembling summer for a change that really has been it – just 2 months of decent weather. It’s all too easy to forget we had the coldest spring for 100 years preceded by such a wet 2012. And now we’re heading towards autumn and I don’t feel ready for it. An Indian summer would be nice, not only to give me a chance to get all manner of jobs done that have fallen by the wayside this year but also to ripen my squashes.

Last year was the first time I had grown squashes. I tried a few onion or uchiki kuri squashes and grew them up a wigwam so they didn’t take up much space. They weren’t a great success bearing in mind the rain and cold that was summer 2012 but a few fruit did mature and it was enough to make me want to grow some more this year. Whilst the harvest may not have been huge, growing them vertically worked well. So I came up with a plan for this year’s squashes which involved some coppiced posts, Wellyman, a mallet and some hops.

Hops and squash screen

The idea was to create a screen at one end of my plot, the end which sticks out into the rest of the allotment. Strict rules on the allotments mean we’re all a little limited with the type of structures we can erect and I didn’t want anything that would shade out any neighbouring plots. A green wall of foliage though would make life much easier over the coming months when I was having photographs taken, blocking out any water butts and blue carrot-growing bins.

I’ve always wanted my plot to look pretty. I like the make do and mend philosophy of allotmenteering but sometimes some plots can end up looking like a scrap yard with all manner of pipes, posts and tubing lying around. I wanted something that wasn’t going to break the bank but which looked rustic and natural at the same time. A bundle of coppiced posts from a local coppicer did the job. Tasked with the job Wellyman was in his element with his tape measure and mallet, working out the correct spacings for the posts. What resulted was a simple criss-cross pattern of posts pushed into the ground at an angle along the length of one of my beds. They were then lashed together with twine. At both ends of the screen I planted a hop. I chose the dwarf variety ‘Golden Tassels’ as it is a little less rampant than it’s taller growing cousins. ‘Golden Tassels’ can reach 3-4 metres, non-dwarf varieties can grow up to twice this. It’s also a pretty ornamental variety with lovely golden leaves. The idea wasn’t to harvest our own hops for beer making purposes but to cut down the long stems with their pretty green cones and dry them for decorating at home. The plan was for the hops to meet somewhere in the middle and then in between there would be squashes trailing up the posts too.

Of course, not everything went quite to plan. It turns out hops are prone to aphids and the cold spring meant I didn’t see my first ladybird until August. As a result one of the hop plants was a little stunted by the aphid infestation that took hold and never really recovered enough to reach its true potential. They’re perennial though so I’ll be prepared next year with my garlic spray at the ready. Despite this I’m happy with the overall effect. Hop number two grew as I had hoped, using the posts to climb upwards. The squash too are doing well. There was a point where I wondered if I was going to get anything from them. There were a lot of male flowers and no fruit to be seen. But I have nine fruits now swelling and ripening in the sun. They were meant to be a variety known as ‘Sweet Dumpling’ a winter squash with a creamy coloured skin and distinctive green stripes. Mine for some reason are lacking the green stripes. I could write a whole post about seeds not turning out to be what they should. Maybe I’ll do that next. I’m sure they’ll taste just as good though, whatever variety they are.

Reacquaintance

Tags

tayberry, trachelospermum asiaticum

Ruby coloured tayberries

I thought I might have a bit more time on my hands once I had sent the book off to the publishers but that’s not quite how things have turned out. For a start there’s all the housework that has been a little neglected recently, the mess that is my shed and the area behind it that functions as a general dumping ground for old compost bags, pots with bolted salad leaves and that sort of thing. It has all needed some attention, as has my garden which has had to get on and do its own thing so far this year. So I’ve spent this week reacquainting myself with my borders, plants and paths.

The beautiful summery weather has been bliss. It’s been such a long time since we’ve been drenched in so much warm sunshine after last year’s dismal summer that this has felt like a reacquaintance too. We’re eating outside, the deck chairs have taken up residence and it’s a pleasure to potter about in flip-flops and feel the warmth radiating from every surface.  The heat has meant a change in my gardening routine though. This is by no means a complaint. I would love this weather to continue until October and can’t bear to hear, after such a long, cold winter the person in the queue at the supermarket say after only a few days of sunshine, ‘Oh it’s just too hot’. I sigh inwardly as I remember only a few weeks ago the same person complain that we never get a proper summer. For me, gardening takes place early or late in the day now and I retreat indoors when the heat makes working too uncomfortable. Watering sessions at the allotment take the best part of two hours but I’d rather give everything a good soak every three or four days than have to go there every night.

Sanguisorba

Last year’s cool, dull and wet weather meant my tayberry crop slowly ripened over the course of six weeks providing a regular, and a manageable supply of fruit. This year is completely different. The heat and sun mean the fruits are ripening rapidly and I can’t keep up. And the blackcurrants are dripping in black fruit that need picking too. I think I need to get organised, and quickly, for a mammoth freezing session. Wellyman has been instructed to make some white sourdough bread for a summer fruit pudding and I have plans for some homemade cassis. Maybe we’ve become so used to awful summers but it’s taken me by surprise and I feel completely unprepared.

It also appears that I’m going to be reacquainted with a flower I’ve been eagerly anticipating for some time. About four or five years ago I bought a Trachelospermum asiaticum from a nursery in Cornwall. It was about a foot tall and in flower and it smelt divine. The plan was for it to scramble up the side of my shed and drape itself in a romantic kind of way around my not so romantic looking shed door. I hoped that its deliciously scented, delicate blooms would conjure up images of an idyllic cottage garden retreat rather than my concrete panel constructed shed which I can’t justify the expense of replacing with something much more aesthetically pleasing. Well perhaps I should have done my homework because as I have discovered trachelospermums aren’t the fastest growing of plants. It has taken all that time for it to reach about 5 foot but worse it hasn’t flowered. Nothing, zilch. But then, last night whilst watering, I spotted what looked like flower buds. I’m not getting carried away, I can only see two sets of buds so far, so we’re hardly talking a screen of heavenly jasmine-perfumed flowers but it gives me hope that one day my plan might come to fruition. Although we’ll have probably moved by then.