Whether you are looking for Berkshire automated garage doors or any other style, we will be only too happy to help you in the process. Our team are helpful and friendly and happy to assist with any questions you have. They all have expert knowledge regarding garage doors, so let them help you make the process of choosing your new door easier.
The challenge from #wildflowerhour this week is to find a member of the Borage family.
The Boraginaceae are characterised by having hairy or bristly-stems. An exception to this being the uncommon Oysterplant, Mertensia maritima, which is hairless.
The leaves are arranged alternately up the stem. The distinctive pink/blue five-petalled flowers usually have five stamens and are arranged in a curved or forked cyme which resembles a fiddle-neck.
This can be seen clearly in the image below of Viper’s-bugloss, Echium vulgare, as can the characteristic of the flowers opening at the base of the cyme and finishing at the terminal flower bud.
Like the Deadnettle family, the Borage family has fruits comprised of four nutlets. However as mentioned earlier the leaves in the Boraginaceae are arranged alternately whilst in the Laminaceae they are opposite.
Examples of the Boraginaceae family which flower in the spring include Lungwort, Pulmonaria officinalis. This lovely example was photographed by wildflowerhour member @sconzani
Green Alkanet, Pentaglottis sempervirens pictured below can also be found flowering early in the year.
As can some of the forget-me-not’s. The image below is Water Forget-me-not, Myosotis scorpioides.
Some other members of the Boraginaceae to look out for later in the season, include Comfrey, Borage, Hound’s Tongue, the Gromwell’s and the rare Common Fiddleneck, which unusually for this family has yellow flowers.
Post your planty pics for #wildflowerhour on Sunday 1st April between 8-9pm on Twitter, Instagram or in our Facebook group using the hashtag #boragechallenge.
Well done to everyone who took part in tonight’s #wildflowerhour! So many wonderful plants and a lovely sense of community, with people helping one another out.
Tonight’s star image comes from the Berks, Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trust:
Flowers of the week are pineapple weed and squill (tucked into a drystone wall on the dales) and for the leaf challenge, himalayan balsam, mallow and willowherb... See MoreSee Less
Our latest podcast is live! In this episode of the Wild Flower (Half) Hour, Isabel Hardman interviews Peter Creed from NatureBureau about his love of small, overlooked plants, learns how to make a wild flower meadow in your back garden from Cumbria Wildlife Trust’s Neil Harnott, and hears from Kevin Widdowson about how to identify the flowers in our latest #wildflowerhour challenge:
You can listen to this podcast on iTunes, Acast, Stitcher, Spotify and all other good podcast platforms. Just let us know if it doesn’t turn up on yours and we’ll add our feed. Please also considering leaving a review of the show as it helps other people find it more easily which means that more people will learn about how amazing the native flowers of Britain and Ireland really are.
from #wildflowerhour http://www.wildflowerhour.co.uk/blog/2018/03/25/podcast-make-your-own-wild-flower-meadow/
As usual for this week we would like you to find wild plants in bloom. However, we would also like you to zoom in and take a close look at the leaves.
Leaves are a vital part of plant identification and they come in many different shapes and sizes!
In botany each distinctive leaf shape has a name. You may find these described in the glossary of a wildflower guide or there maybe a chart displaying the different shapes.
For example the wrinkled leaves of the Common Primrose, Primula vulgaris are obovate to spoon-shaped.
The leaves of the Common Snowdrop, Galanthus nivalis are linear.
Whilst those of Cow Parsley, Anthriscus sylvestris are compound and 2-3 times pinnate.
Don’t worry if you manage to find some completely unfathomable leaves. Our lovely wildflowerhour community will be on standby to help.
Some leaves have surprising undersides. So have a good look at what lies beneath and take a pic. Take one of the upper side too!
Also make a note of how the leaves are arranged on the stem. For example are they alternate, opposite, arranged singly or in leaflets.
Post your pics on Twitter, Instagram or in our Facebook group for #wildflowerhour on Sunday 25th March 8-9pm using the hashtag #lookattheleaves.
Our latest podcast is live! In this episode, Isabel Hardman finds out about floodplain meadows, and why they are such an important habitat for wild flowers, and hears about the starved wood sedge (and what it is).
The Species Recovery Trust have agreed to be a #wildflowerhour partner, which means we will work with them and promote their work. They do fantastic work, and it’s not just in saving the Starved Wood Sedge. Here’s their website and here is a factsheet on the Starved Wood Sedge.
The Floodplain Meadows Partnership works to manage, restore and research these habitats and you can read more about their work here. Isabel refers to a tweet by Guardian columnist George Monbiot, which caused some controversy: you should read that thread here.
You can listen to this podcast on iTunes, Acast, Stitcher, Spotify and all other good podcast platforms. Just let us know if it doesn’t turn up on yours and we’ll add our feed. Please also considering leaving a review of the show as it helps other people find it more easily which means that more people will learn about how amazing the native flowers of Britain and Ireland really are.
from #wildflowerhour http://www.wildflowerhour.co.uk/blog/2018/03/18/podcast-floodplain-meadows/
For this weeks #wildflowerhour challenge we are asking you to find a member of the Brassicaceae or cabbage family. Many members of this large family such as mustard, cress, water-cress, cabbage, turnip and horse-radish are very familiar to us.
Happily the flowers of the cabbage family are easily recognisable owing to their distinctive cross-shaped arrangement.
Each flower is usually made up of four green sepals, four equally sized petals and six stamens. The stamens are arranged around a central ovary, usually the inner four are longer and the two outer stamens are shorter. An exception to this Hairy Bitter-cress, Cardamine hirsuta pictured below, is readily identifiable by having only four stamens.
As usual with #wildflowerhour you don’t have to be able to identify plants, just be able to find them.
So be brave! Go out and look for the distinctive four petalled, cross-shape flowers. If you can’t work out what they are, take a picture of the leaves and also look for fruits. As you may have heard on the latest podcast, the fruits in this family are very variable and are important in identification.
Then post your pics on Twitter, Instagram or in our Facebook group using #cabbagechallenge for #wildflowerhour on Sunday 18th March 8-9pm. Our lovely friendly wildflower hour community will then do the rest and help you identify them.
In the latest episode of the #wildflowerhour podcast, Isabel Hardman finds out about our most important network of nature reserves: roadside verges.
Mark Schofield works for the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust and waxes lyrical about the importance of these scraps of land in saving wild flowers. We also learn about the Brassicaceae, or cabbage, family, which is the topic of this week’s challenge, with some tips from expert botanist Tim Rich. You can buy his handbook on identifying this plant family here.
Thank you all so much for taking part in this week’s challenge #pavementplants. We asked you to look closely at the plants growing in the pavement cracks and you did not disappoint! Here are some highlights.
A stunning image of Erophila verna from @granthamecology
This lovely image of Sweet Violet from @StephenLoweWatson
Often overlooked a lovely image of the humble Daisy from @KateGold24
You can see the rest of your wonderful pavement finds below. Thanks for joining in!
Thank you all so much for taking part in this week’s challenge #pavementplants. Here are some of your highlights.
One of my favourite #pavementplants which always brighten up the concrete and tarmac in March – just when you need it most – these beautiful little Whitlow grass found in #Grantham this week #wildflowerhour
The best of this week’s #pavementplants: Daisies colonising the gaps in the tarmac at Plumpton village hall. Almost enough for a daisy chain! #wildflowerhour
Sweet violets by a roadside in Lewes, Sussex #pavementplants #wildflowerhour
Cochlearia danica (Danish Scurvygrass) is a common street weed in many of the towns in Pembrokeshire this year. @BSBIbotany
I’ve seen other people make natural plant supports from clippings. But not being a very handy person, I hadn’t thought of actually trying it myself.
However, I can now reveal – it is really easy. Even if you’re someone who can barely change a light bulb, then you can make natural plant supports out of birch, hazel or willow twigs.
The border in summer – I have a selection of metal supports, but it does look cluttered until all the plants are in bloom. Natural plant supports seem to ‘disappear’ more.
We recently had our silver birch tree pruned, so we had lots of wood clippings. And even if you don’t have a birch tree, there are lots of silver birch in most parts of Britain. They shed their twiggy branches regularly, so keep an eye out.
Cutting the clippings
I cut most of the clippings to approximately the length of a garden fork. Choose – or cut – small branches that have at least 6″-9″ of fairly firm wood that you can jam into the soil.
It’s not very easy to see twigs in gardens – which is why twig plant supports are so great. But if you peer at this picture, you can just see what I mean by 6″-9″ of wood, and then the bendy, twiggy bits…
The rest of the birch cutting needs to be bendy and flexible.
I cut a neat pile of silver birch clippings so I could make plant supports. When my back was turned, Mr Middlesize took them away to burn them. I got them back just in time…sense of humour failure all round.
Next steps…
Most gardeners make their plant supports in late April or early May, when the perennials have begun to spring out of the ground. However, I know where my dahlias are because I protect them over winter with a pile of mulch, marked with a stick.
Jam the sticks around the plant in a circle, wedging them firmly into the ground. Then bend some of the twigs over the top of the plant, weaving them together.
The starting position – around 6 silver birch clippings wedged into the soil in a circle around the plant.
Then gently twist, poke and ease the twiggy ends around each other, fixing each branch by weaving it into the next one (or the opposite one when you’re going over the top).
Wind, bend, ease, tease…until all the tendrils are wrapped around each other, locking it all into place.
Carry on until you have a birch twig cage over where your plant will be.
I added some extra twigs lower down as my first plant support cage looked a bit high. Plant supports should be about three quarters of the eventual height of the plant.
It’s quick, easy and free…
What more can I say? Except that you can see more about how it’s done in this video:
These were literally the first natural plant supports I’d ever made. They’re not perfect, but they’ll do the job of supporting the plants, and I’ll get better at it.
My first ever home-made natural plant support – and it only took about 20 minutes to do.
I’ve always envied the well supported borders of professional gardens. Now I’m cautiously hopeful that there will be fewer flattened blooms in the Middlesized Garden next summer.
I’ll report back, so do subscribe (enter your email address in the box top right). We publish every Sunday morning.
After a slight delay, we’re so pleased to have our March #herbologyhunt spotter sheets live!
You can download the sheet for free here, or if you want your child to join the Wild Flower Society as a #HerbologyHunt member, then they’ll get printed copies of the spotter sheets, along with a free hand lens. More details on how to join here.
Click on the image below to download the spotter sheet.
One of the reasons for the delay is that our team of volunteers working on #herbologyhunt is still very small, and a holiday or an illness means everything gets thrown up in the air. We would really love some more help: if you think you might be able to give a couple of hours here and there, please get in touch.
from #wildflowerhour http://www.wildflowerhour.co.uk/blog/2018/03/09/march-spotter-sheets/
The theme for this weeks challenge is #pavementplants and you won’t need to do anymore than go for a walk along the roadside near your home or your workplace and see what is growing there.
It is amazing how many plants are able to eke out a living where they were never invited. Growing in seemingly inhospitable cracks and crevices, thriving where there is little soil, these tough little plants are often overlooked. Which is such a pity, as plants such as Procumbent Pearlwort have lovely tiny, pearly, green flowers and possess a unique beauty.
For this challenge we are asking you to have a really good long look to see what is growing in the pavement cracks! Photograph your finds and then post your planty pics on Twitter, Instagram or in our Facebook group using the hashtags #wildflowerhour and #pavementplants on Sunday 11th March between 8-9pm.
Thank you so much for taking part in the first #wildflowerhour challenge of 2018. You braved the snow and sub-zero temperatures to find many interesting plant rosettes. The featured image is of a superb Early Purple Orchid, Orchid mascula found by #wildflowerhour member @moiravelli
Of course you love wild flowers, but did you have any idea how much bugs love them too? In the latest Wild Flower (Half) Hour podcast, Isabel Hardman finds out how urban wild flowers are saving our bugs and bees with Nick Packham from Buglife’s Urban Buzz project, introduces the latest challenge, which is to find wild flowers growing on the pavement, and hears about the joy of monads (and what they are).
from #wildflowerhour http://www.wildflowerhour.co.uk/blog/2018/03/04/podcast-blooms-for-bugs-and-the-joy-of-monads/
I’ve always been slightly nervous of buying ‘unusual plants.’
Maybe they’re just for expert gardeners? More demanding? Difficult to grow?
Nandina domestica ‘Richmond’ is a variant that has berries on it all year round, making it a wonderful garden plant, says Stephen Ryan. Nandinas have slightly fewer berries when grown in Britain, but are fine in US hardiness zones 6-10 (South East England would be considered approximately a US hardiness zone 8).
If you’re new to gardening, you will often be advised to ‘go round your neighbourhood, see what grows well, and plant that.’ It’s very good advice. But it is a trifle dull. And what if you don’t have the same taste as your neighbours?
What are the advantages of growing unusual plants?
Unusual plants start a conversation. Australian TV and radio gardening personality Stephen Ryan, who also sells rare plants, says that if your garden only has iceberg roses and box hedging in it, ‘the most people can say is that it looks neat. But if you have unusual plants, then people will ask what they are.’
If you prefer to watch a video rather than read a blog, you can hear what Stephen says about buying unusual plants here.
This is an unusual variety of a well-known plant – Abutilon megapotamicum variegata seems to dance in the breeze. It’s at the entrance to Dicksonia Rare Plants and people always ask ‘What’s that?’
He also says that plant diversity is being lost because just a few varieties of some popular plants are being wholesaled in large quantities into garden centres. In the days when most people bought from small nurseries around the country, you could expect to find different varieties as a matter of course.
So how to buy unusual plants?
I asked him for tips on buying unusual plants.
‘Go to a plant nursery and talk to the nurseryman (or woman),’ he says. There’s a British directory of local independent nurseries or you can usually find specialist growers at the various flowers shows and big fairs.
Stephen’s nursery is called Dicksonia Rare Plants, and is in Mount Macedon, near Melbourne, Australia. He says that the best approach is to talk to the nurseryman (or woman) and see if they seem to know the plants well. ‘If they can’t tell you much more than what’s on the label, that’s no good.’
But assuming you find someone knowledgeable, Stephen advises you to tell them about your garden, what plants you like, what you’re hoping to achieve and what your level of gardening expertise or ambition. Show them photos of your house and garden, too.
The less common variegated Fatsia brightens a shady wall, next to Pieris ‘Forest Fire’ which has unusual sprays of flowers and turns a wonderful autumn red.
When I first had a tiny garden in London, I went to a nursery (which shall remain nameless). I asked for recommendations of ‘easy care plants’.
‘Well, I don’t know why you’re bothering to garden at all if you’re not prepared to make an effort to look after the plants,’ grumbled the nurseryman. What I’d meant was that my garden was small, shady and populated by voracious snails, so I needed indestructible plants.
Most plant growers are not like Mr Grumpy. And I could also have been a bit clearer about what I meant by ‘easy-care’.
Then make a leap of faith…
Once you’ve established a rapport with a good plantsperson, then take their advice on what plant to buy.
‘One of the problems with some unusual plants is that they don’t look special in the pot. There are a huge number of plants that are getting quite rare because they don’t look good in pots when you buy them,’ says Stephen.
His Abutilon megapotamicum is one of those, but people buy it because they see it growing at his gate. However, it’s not possible to grow everything in a nursery, so there will be some stunning plants you simply won’t notice unless you ask for advice.
Even newbies can grow unusual plants
Growing unusual plants doesn’t have to mean buying something you’ve never heard of. Stephen points out that you can have an unusual variety of a common, easy-to-grow species. One of his specialities is canna lilies: ‘Why not have an unusual canna, instead of the ones that are widely available at the garden centre?’ he says. ‘They won’t be any harder to grow, and they’ll start a conversation.’
Canna ‘Torch Song’ from Dicksonia Rare Plants.
Canna lilies can be frost tender, so protect them in winter, with a thick layer of mulch or even some horticultural fleece. But otherwise, they’re relatively easy to grow and fast coming back into fashion.
Stephen stocks the less common varieties of well known plants, such as variegated Fatsia and interesting versions of Viburnum opulus and Pieris, along with many more.
Do you need to know alot of Latin names?
If you want unusual plants, you’re probably going to have to see a few Latin names. But you don’t need to be an expert. Stephen thinks some nurseries play fast and loose with plant names, partly because some are unpronounceable, and therefore less likely to sell. So plants get re-named.
If the plant experts aren’t being all that careful with names, then I don’t think we should get too worried about it. If it’s a good plant, it doesn’t matter what it’s called. Make a note of the name somewhere, and soon it’ll be familiar.
This is a ‘species’ Canna ‘Warszewieczii’ at Dicksonia Rare Plants. Stephen thinks that it’s unlikely to become popular with such an unprounceable name.
There are thousands of different kinds of succulents, such as echevarias, sempervivums, crassula and more, but most people sell them under the blanket name ‘succulents.’ Some of Stephen’s came from one of the UK National Collections in Devon.
What’s the difference between an unusual plant and a rare plant?
A plant may be unusual to your area. For example, I fell in love with a Viburnum opulus ‘Notcutts Variety’ outside Dicksonia Rare Plants. It had the most glorious red berries, unlike the sterile form of the guelder rose you normally see in gardens. Its white flowers are less showy – but oh, those berries!
It was bred at Notcutts in Britain. In fact, it’s so rare in Australia that some people think that ‘Notcutts’ means that you can’t prune it.
It was too windy to photograph it, but you can see it in this video of my interview with Stephen.
A rare plant, however, is difficult to find anywhere. Stephen’s rarest is a kauri pine called Agathis montana from New Caledonia. It doesn’t look at all like a pine, and Stephen thinks that his may be the only one in a commercial plant nursery in Australia.
Would you believe that this is a member of the pine family? Agathis montana is a genuinely rare plant.
By an odd coincidence, I was staying in a house where the walls were lined with Kauri pine. It was built in the Victorian era, when the tree was less rare. And that’s another reason why you should encourage diversity in your garden. If we garden-lovers buy and grow unusual plants, we’ll be less likely to lose plants that we may find useful, either for their wood, medicinal properties, for food or many other uses.
The wooden boards in the background are Kauri pine, while the plant is a Wollemi pine. It’s the most ancient plant on earth, and comes from the time of the dinosaurs. There’s a song that says you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone – gardeners can help diversity hugely by growing unusual plants.
What if my unusual plant dies?
Every gardening expert I’ve ever met – Monty Don, James Wong, Uncle Tom Cobley and all – stress that they have killed ‘thousands of plants.’
The unusual plants probably won’t die any more often than the common ones. Not all the plants you buy will survive. That doesn’t mean you’re a terrible gardener. It just means you’re a gardener.
