Sunday 30 September 2018

Which garden tree is absolutely perfect for you?

How to choose the right garden tree?

I think we all dither over this because trees seem like such a big purchase. More like buying a sofa than buying a vase, for example.

My favourite garden trees

My three favourite trees – the yellow leaves are Robinia frisia (False acacia), the red is Cotinus coggyria ‘Grace’ and the on the right is a Silver Birch ‘Jacquemontii’. They are all quite tall, so they give a ‘middle-sized’ garden a sense of proportion. However, if I had a different garden, I wouldn’t necessarily choose these three.

So we turn to the lists – the 8 perfect-for-privacy garden trees, for example. But these don’t always take into account your soil or situation. However, they’re a good start…note down any tree that appeals to you, but carry on with the research.

Choosing the perfect garden tree

You need to ask yourself – and/or a qualified gardener, tree grower or other professional – three questions. Firstly, what trees will grow well in your climate and soil? If your area is particularly dry, wet or windy, these factors will really affect which trees will do well.

Secondly, how big do you want the tree to grow?

Trees in pots

Trees in pots at Hilliers Nurseries in Hampshire. Tree growing nurseries are an excellent place to find advice on which tree is right for you. Visit or talk to several!

Thirdly, do you want an evergreen tree or would you prefer the glorious changes of colour you get with trees that shed their leaves in autumn?

You can answer the second and third questions yourself, but the first will mean looking at neighbours’ gardens and doing an internet search for ‘tree nursery near me’. Ring them up or drop in. There’s nothing like an actual conversation with a real person to give you an idea of what your options are.

Do some research first

Your perfect tree isn’t the same as my perfect tree. So it is worth doing the research rather than making an instant decision. You’ll probably find that the same few tree recommendations pop up several times. So that will be your shortlist – it’s easier to choose from three or four tree varieties than hundreds.

I have bought quite a few trees since moving to this garden fifteen years ago. They haven’t all been successful. I think that’s because I originally made quick decisions from Top 10 lists or the first recommendation I got rather than doing proper research.

For example, acers always feature on the top 10 best trees for small gardens – but I’ve had four acers die in this garden.

Autumn colour trees

Autumn colour. The small tree in the foreground is a paperbark maple (acer griseum) in the middlesized garden. Beautiful colouring but it always struggled to do well and eventually turned into a brown twig.

Online tree specialists

Many online tree companies have good advice on choosing trees.  Barchams have a ‘Tree Finder’.

Hilliers have lists of trees recommended for specific situations, such as ‘car park trees’, ‘drought-tolerant trees’ and ‘narrow crown street trees.’

Practicality Brown also have a tree finder. And the Woodland Trust have a useful listing of garden trees, with their characteristics, including how many centimetres they grow a year.

And even if your particular situation isn’t on the website, you should be able to contact a good tree company by email or phone to ask for advice on a tree for your garden.

If you go to a garden centre or nursery, and they can’t tell you much more than what’s on the label, try somewhere else. Label information is useful but usually too generic.

Buy locally grown garden trees

In the UK we’ve had Dutch elm disease, then ash dieback and now oak processionary moth. Box blight, box tree caterpillar moth and more…they are all consequences of our poor bio-security. Pests and diseases travel easily these days.

Exotic garden trees

These are New Zealand cordylines growing amongst European pine and fir trees in Australia. They were imported in Victorian times, but bio-security is now very tight.

When I go to Australia the bio-security is extremely tight. You’re not even allowed to bring in muddy boots, let alone plants or uneaten sandwiches or anything that could be called ‘alive.’

In the UK and Europe there are far fewer safeguards. If you live in a country with poor bio-security, buy a tree that hasn’t travelled very far. The RHS now has a list of seven types of plants which can’t be used at its shows unless they are UK grown because they are liable to spread pests or diseases.

And if your tree has been grown close to home, it’ll probably also be more used to your climate and soil. Win, win.

So should I buy ‘native’ garden trees?

‘Native’ trees are not the same as ‘locally grown’ trees. You could buy a Dicksonia tree palm grown locally in Kent, but it doesn’t make it a ‘native’ tree. Silver birch, on the other hand, is a native tree.

Garden trees to support wildlife and diversity

An avenue of silver birches at Doddington Place Gardens on a frosty morning. Silver birches are ‘native’ and the top UK trees for supporting diversity and wildlife.

The definition of a ‘native tree’ is one that colonised the UK immediately after the ice age (10,000 years ago) before we were cut off from Europe by the English Channel. These include alder, ash, common beech, blackthorn, hawthorn, hazel and holly, plus many more.

Trees brought in by early settlers (from around 8,000 years ago up to present day) are ‘non-native’. They include Douglas fir, London plane, apple and pear trees and holm oaks, along with many more.

There has been lots of research by the RHS and others as to whether ‘native’ plants and trees are better for wildlife than those which originated elsewhere. Unsurprisingly, the results aren’t entirely clear. The best trees for wildlife and diversity in the UK are silver birch and hawthorn, which are both natives. But most non-native trees are also good.

The important thing, say researchers, is to plant trees. Any tree is better for wildlife than no tree at all.

Can I buy a large garden tree for instant coverage?

A larger, mature tree will have more trouble getting established. A small, young tree may outstrip it over just a couple of years, depending on how good you are at planting a tree properly.

I bought a 3.5 metre Liquidambar styraciflua three years ago. And 1.5 metre Silver birch two years ago. They are now the same size. The liquidambar has been pushed over by the wind several times, so it doesn’t seem to have rooted properly. It’s not looking entirely happy. The silver birch is flourishing.

Buy trees small

The Liquidambar styraciflua (with the mid-green leaves) has been blown over to the left. We added more staking (it already had three stakes and a pole). It then blew over to the right. It was too tall, and had too big a leaf canopy for the root system. I wish I’d bought one half the size (and price).

A large, mature tree will cost more and has less chance of success. My Liquidambar cost me £149 (I’m so glad Mr Middlesize doesn’t read this blog). The silver birch cost £39.

And if you buy a large tree, you need to invest in a proper tree staking kit, too.

However, specialist tree companies, such as Barcham Trees and Practicality Brown have ways of planting mature trees that gives them a much better chance of survival.

If you want a large, instant mature tree, pay an expert to plant it. Otherwise buy small, young trees.

The best time to plant trees is between October and March.

How much do trees cost?

I did some research on the cost of a silver birch. You can buy a 40-60cm high silver birch from Tree-shop for less than £3 or one that’s 150-180cm high for £31.

If you want a larger tree, you can get a 3-4.5 metre silver birch from Ornamental Trees for £159. More unusual mature trees can cost several hundred – or even thousands – of pounds.

Not all trees survive, however carefully you choose. It may be worth planting two or three smaller trees, with a view to taking one or more out when they get bigger.

Monkey puzzle tree

This monkey puzzle tree is about 7ft high. My friends Anne and Mark grew it from seed, and had it in a pot for 2-3 years. It’s now about five years old. A 60-90cm tree would cost around £100 from a shop, so this would be several hundred.

See trees in video

I’ve made a video about choosing your garden tree. It has a tour of the trees in my garden, how we chose them and what we did right or – more often – wrong.

It may help you when deciding on which tree to choose, or you may find that you already have your perfect garden tree if you cut it into shape. Some of the points made in this post are repeated at the beginning of the video, so if you want to skip to the garden tree tour, then fast forward to 2 minutes, 38 seconds.

Let me know what your best and worst garden tree experiences have been, either in the comments below or on Twitter or Facebook. And if you love trees, do share this – we need as many gardens to grow trees as possible. Thank you!

Pin for reference:

How to find out which garden tree is perfect for your garden.

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from The Middle-Sized Garden https://www.themiddlesizedgarden.co.uk/which-garden-tree-is-absolutely-perfect-for-you/

Saturday 22 September 2018

Do you make these September garden mistakes?

I sense that the September garden isn’t anyone’s favourite.

Vita Sackville-West abandoned Sissinghurst for the Mediterranean in September. Alan Titchmarsh refers to ‘the depths of September and October’. There’s a distinct drop in the number of gardens open via the NGS. And so on.

But is the September garden intrinsically difficult? Or is it just too far away from the excitement of spring, early summer and the big flower shows? Then we go on holiday, and when we come back…

The September garden

The Middlesized Garden in September. The main colour border is on the right, with dahlias.

But one of the great pluses of doing a garden tour – in blog, video or personal diary – is that it makes you focus on what’s really going on now. And now is almost the end of September.

So let’s have a tour of my September garden mistakes. They may help you too.

Mistake 1 – made last autumn!

You can’t fault September gardens on colour. I’m passionate about dahlias, and they are at their best now. But this year I have learned very useful lessons about them this year.

Dahlia 'Con Amore' in the September garden

Dahlia ‘Con Amore’. It was mulched last winter. I think it’s planning to take over the world. Dahlias are at the heart of my September garden but perhaps I should go for a wider colour range?

We’re in Kent, which is roughly a USA hardiness zone 8b. So I don’t dig up dahlias. I cut them down and mulch them. However last year I got distracted halfway through and only mulched half of them.

The mulched dahlias survived, bigger and better than ever. The dahlias that weren’t mulched either died or emerged late, looking very much smaller. After I talked about this on my August garden video tour, several fellow bloggers commented that their dahlias had also suffered from the nine-week drought through the summer.

Healthy plants which have been mulched or fed survive drought better than those which are a bit underfed. It stands to reason, doesn’t it?

But it was clearly a double whammy for the un-mulched dahlias in this year’s September garden. Last year I had a bed packed with dahlias of varying but roughly equal heights. Now I have a bed of very large and very small dahlias. And the small dahlias are in the middle of the bed, ringed by the large ones. It looks like a collapsed souffle.

Mistake 2 – not re-thinking colour regularly

Video-ing and photographing the garden on a month-by-month basis also helps me focus on how colour is working. I have dark red ‘Rip City’ dahlias, hot pink ‘Con Amore’ and an orange dahlia that no-one seems to be able to identify. The orange one is very vigorous. I do wonder if it’s accidentally regressed from something else. It is currently rioting around the main border, swamping all other plants.

Unknown orange dahlia in the Middlesized Garden

Unknown but vigorous orange dahlia. I put it on Twitter asking for ID and everyone was super-helpful about retweeting it (thank you!) but nobody seems to know.

However, looking at the photographs,  I think that red, orange and pink is beginning to look a bit heavy. Next year’s September garden would benefit from some of the shot-silk and sunset patterned dahlias I’ve seen in gardens like The Salutation. I do have the very beautiful coral-peach ‘Henriette’ but it is one of the ones suffering from lack of mulch and is very small this year.

Dahlia 'Henriette'

This photo of dahlia ‘Henriette’ standing proud in 2017 really underlines how much this plant has suffered from the 2018 freeze and drought. This year it is barely a foot or so off the ground. I haven’t been able to take any photos of it, because the flowers themselves look a bit ragged.

Mistake 3 – not trying anything new

I’ve relied almost wholly on dahlias for my September garden colour. But I can see that I need to expand my planting horizons. recently visited Borde Hill gardens for inspiration on late season planting. I was impressed by Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’, which flourished in several very different areas of the garden.

Rudbeckias for September colour

Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’ in a herbaceous border at Borde Hill Gardens. ‘Goldsturm’ was also happy in a patch of shady woodland, in an exotic area and amongst perennial grasses. So versatile!

Rudbeckias in shady woodland.

Rudbeckia ‘Goldsturm’ in shady woodland at Borde Hill.

I’d also like to try cannas and persicaria.

Mistake 4 – not taking advice seriously

Back to the Middlesized Garden again. I do take advice. Honestly. But I’ve decided that advice falls into three categories. There’s advice you simply have to take. If you don’t, it doesn’t work. Whatever it is (gardening, blogging, marathon running…)

Then there’s advice that is basically a counsel of perfection. You should take it, but lots of people manage to muddle along without doing so.

And there is advice that might have worked once, and has become enshrined in folklore. But eventually someone does some proper testing on it, and decides that even if it mattered once it doesn’t any more. I am thinking of the tests ‘Which Magazine’ ran on whether you really need crocks in the bottom of pots, for example. They discovered it made no difference.

So it can be difficult to decide which advice to take. Now I have discovered that ‘squash doesn’t like root distubance’ is  ‘first category’ advice. I planted two ‘Black Futsu’ squash seeds, then realised they were too close together. But how does a squash know it’s being moved? If I’m very careful? I moved it, trying to persuade the squash that absolutely nothing was happening…

When gardening advice really works...

The mound of leaves in the foreground is ‘Black Futsu’ squash. A few feet away is its much smaller twin, literally a third of the size.

Ha! The squash left in its original place is more than three times the size of the one I moved three feet away. If the seed packet says a ‘curcubit’ (squash, cucumber, courgette) doesn’t like root disturbance, it really means it.

And should you clip roses with shears or prune with secateurs?

This isn’t so much a mistake as a choice. I have a row of ‘Cecile Brunner’ roses. They are quite time-consuming to dead-head so I did one side with secateurs, tackling each stem individually. On the other side, I clipped everything briskly off with shears.

Cecile Brunner roses pruned with secateurs and shears

A row of ‘Cecile Brunner’ roses. I clipped the ones to the right of the bird feeder pole with shears. The ones on the left were individually cut with secateurs. That was six weeks ago.

The side that was carefully pruned with secateurs has come back into flower several weeks’ earlier. And it’s a more airy shape. The clipped side, however, has just as many buds – it’s just taking it longer to get there. I suppose it’s a question of what you prefer.

I checked these results with a rosarian. He agreed that roses will come back, whether you prune them with clippers or secateurs. However, he pointed out that if you’re pruning alot of roses, it isn’t necessarily quicker to use shears, because you have to clear up all the fallen rose heads afterwards. ‘When you prune one by one, you throw the discarded heads away as you go.’

Mistake 5 – neglecting your September garden topiary

I actually haven’t made this mistake, as we do sharpen up our topiary around this time every year.

Jake Hobson of Niwaki spoke about pruning topiary at The Landscape Show. While different plants need topiary pruning at different times, he advises sharpening it all up in September. These shapes are so important for the winter.

Topiarised holm oak and holly 'Golden King' in the Middlesized Garden

Holly ‘Golden King’ and one of the topiarised holm oaks. They are now about 12ft and 16ft tall respectively.

We planted two holm oaks in 2010. They were just young whips and cost £50 each. It took about 5-6 years to get them into a good topiary shape. And this year (Year 7) is their best cut ever.

We get Salvatore, a topiary expert, to give our trees their hair cut. He has also carved a ‘wedding cake’ shape out of a lump of Holly ‘Golden King.’ It took about 2 years to get this cut crisp, as Salvatore cut it out of a mature bush, and the shape won’t be perfect to start with.

Mistake 6 – forgetting about foliage

It depends on the weather, but on the whole we don’t get those glorious leaf-changing displays in the September garden. But the foliage still has a huge role to play. But if you have neglected garden chores, such as dead-heading, then plants grown mainly for their foliage can really save the day.

If I had some good foliage plants in the main border, then the dahlia problems wouldn’t have looked as bad.

I can’t claim to have planned it, but I do love this shady north-facing border (below) and its foliage contrasts. Personally, I think shady borders are much easier than sunny ones, because they grow so much more slowly, have fewer weeds and are generally less trouble. Once a plant is happy there, I find I barely have to touch it.

Beautiful leaves for the September garden

There’s still lots of green in September – I particularly love this combination of leaf shape and colour in my ‘shady’ bed. Clockwise from top: liquidambar, rosa glauca, crocosmia, hydrangeas ‘Hot Chocolate’ then ‘Annabelle’. It’s pyracantha in the background. I didn’t plan it – it evolved over years. If a plant is happy in a shady north-facing border, then it seems to be very little trouble.

Mistake no 7 – not understanding what the specific plants need

We don’t all have to be experts, but if there’s a particular type of plant you love, then it’s worth finding out more about it. Labels on plants are often fairly cursory and general.  Sometimes plants are more flexible than the label suggests and will thrive in a wider variety of conditions. Sometimes not.

So, if you love dahlias, I can recommend Naomi Slade’s book Dahlias, published by Pavilion Books. Learning more about where a plant has come from and how it’s developed really does help in understanding where and how it will do well in your garden. It also has inspiring photos of particularly beautiful dahlia varieties, taken by Georgianna Lane.

( Note: you can buy Dahlias online via this link. Links to Amazon are affiliate links so I may get a small fee if you buy. But it doesn’t affect the price you pay. Other links are not affiliate.)

A new home-made table

Enough of the self-flagellating mistakes for a while. Let’s celebrate what we’re really enjoying in the September garden. Mr Middlesize has made us a new table for the pergola.

Last year, we roofed the pergola with corrugated iron to make it an all-weather space, but couldn’t find the right size table for it.

A home-made pergola and table to go with it

We can now seat 8 under the corrugated iron roof of the pergola. The table is painted in Farrow & Ball’s Black Blue, to match our front door, back door, log store, bin store and shed.

So Mr Middlesize made one with a ply top and trestle legs (he did make the legs in order to get the proportions exactly right). I thought of doing a ‘how-to’ but it’s more complicated than it sounds. You need DIY skills. And if you have those, you probably know of better ‘how to’ carpentry sources than a gardening blog.

But it may be useful to know that he used high quality marine-grade 12mm ply, so that the table wouldn’t bend or buckle. To make the trestle legs, he used ‘two-by-one’ pine battens (because they measure 2″x 1″ or, more correctly, 21mm x 44mm). Sometimes called PSE (Planed Square Edge). The total cost was around £40-50, but it took Mr M around three days.

We had two sets of garden chairs, one in Farrow & Ball’s Hardwick White and the other in standard garden-centre green. So I painted the green ones in Hardwick White to match them all up.

Salvias are a garden saviour

Salvia Love & Wishes in the September garden

Salvia ‘Love & Wishes’ is now planted, and has a wonderful second flush of flowers.The small white roses in the foreground are ‘Cecile Brunner’ (the secateur pruned side).

I haven’t grown many salvias before, but they really earn their place in the September garden. I bought these three pots of Salvia ‘Love & Wishes’ to cheer up my display of pots when we were open for Faversham Open Gardens in June. They spent two months in their pots, then I clipped back their flowers and planted them in the border. (Subsequently, I read that you shouldn’t dead-head salvias – or am I dreaming that?)

I’d been warned that you can plant perennials at almost any time, but if you plant them in summer, then you really do have to water them as if they were still in pots. I suspect that’s another piece of gardening advice that can never be ignored – especially this summer. I watered regularly and they have rewarded me with a truly wonderful second flowering.

In the background you can see the low blue mounds of clipped lavender. We pruned it in late July this year, but in other years, I’ve left it as late as early October. The advantage with a late July pruning is that we have the lovely blue leaf colour. Last year’s late-pruned lavender was brown until March (here’s why lavender can be pruned ‘into the brown’).

More September garden in the video

There’s a full tour of the garden in this video, as well as a look at Naomi Slade’s ‘Dahlias’,

Pin for reference

Do you make these 7 mistakes in your September garden?

The post Do you make these September garden mistakes? appeared first on The Middle-Sized Garden.



from The Middle-Sized Garden https://www.themiddlesizedgarden.co.uk/do-you-make-these-september-garden-mistakes/

Saturday 15 September 2018

The top 2019 garden trends from GLEE

What do the 2019 garden trends mean for your garden?

I’ve just visited GLEE, the horticultural trades show in Birmingham. The future is looking good for us ‘middle-sized’ gardeners.

The urban garden is top of the 2019 garden trends

The age of the urban garden has arrived.

Products are being launched to make gardening easier.

But, above all, the age of the urban garden has arrived. The average size of garden in the UK is fifty feet long, but new build houses will have much smaller gardens. The gardening industry is responding with new products and plants.

Starring the urban garden

Fifteen years ago, when we first got a garden, the trends were driven by the large country gardens. Gardening advice to a newbie gardener might have included tips such as ‘no matter how small your estate, it’s essential to have at least three acres of woodland.’ (I’m not being quite fair, as that is from a very old book, but you get the idea…)

And I went to a lecture given by a top head gardener who referred to her own personal garden (one-third of an acre) as ‘absolutely tiny.’ That was almost twice the size of our garden which, at the time, looked worryingly big to me.

outdoor room and indoor garden

2019 garden trends: the outdoor room meets the indoor garden. Courtyards, terraces, outdoor rooms, patios…

Even five years ago, I did a media training workshop with a group of garden designers who were very reluctant to admit publicly that they mainly worked in small urban gardens. They seemed to fear that they wouldn’t be taken seriously unless they worked in large country gardens.

Garden pot inspiration

The countryside comes to town…

That is no longer the case.  The urban garden and all its quirks are at the heart of the 2019 garden trends. The words ‘vista’, ‘drifts’ and ‘double borders’ have been replaced by pots, table planters, automated irrigation, robot mowers and smaller varieties of plants.

Pot, pots and more pots

I spotted Burgon & Ball’s contemporary hanging pots, Laura Ashley and Sophie Conran’s designer pots, retro pots and recyclable pots (still not enough of these). There were pots as room dividers, country pots, traditional pots and more.

Hanging planters - 2019 garden trends

The hanging basket grows up and gets sophisticated….hanging planters from Stewart at GLEE.

When you buy plants from the nurseries in black plastic pots, they aren’t recyclable because of the black pigment. So there was a range of taupe pots on sale, which are being adopted by Hilliers, Waitrose and more. Haxnicks also displayed recyclable bamboo pots. They gave journalists a recyclable bamboo travel mug, which won’t, I hope, recycle itself while full of tea.

Burgon & Ball contemporary hanging pots.

Burgon & Ball hanging pots. Very pretty.

Ingenious ways of growing things

There were a number of table planters at the show, and this can only be good news for anyone wanting to grow salads on their balcony or terrace. Some have easy take-on-take-off cloche covers, which makes me want them in my own garden in order to keep the pigeons off the spinach.

The Veg Trug at GLEE

The Veg Trug table planter at GLEE

I was interested, however, to see very few vertical ‘green walls’. Did I miss them at the show or has this been a very short-lived trend? I do like seeing plants grown up the sides of buildings (Stratford International Station has a good one). But I have my doubts as to how easy green walls are to look after.

(note: links to Amazon are affiliate links, which means I may get a small fee if you buy, but it won’t affect the price you pay. Other links are not affiliate.)

Vegebox, with an easy, lift-off cloche cover

And the Vegepod, another table planter, with an easy, lift-off cloche cover. Available from Marshalls.

There were also ordinary-style raised beds with mini polytunnel-type cloche covers. You need to be careful about size with these. Smaller isn’t always better.

For example, I bought a reduced-size (4ftx 6ft) polytunnel a few years ago. I’ve found it infuriating because it’s very difficult to access when the plants are fully grown, so it just turned into a mess. My advice is either to buy a polytunnel you can walk into or a small enough cloche to remove easily. ‘Middle-sized’ does not work when it comes to cloches and polytunnels.

Although do feel free to contradict me.

2019 garden trends in plants

I spoke to Wyevale Garden centres, who said that the top trend is for bee and pollinator-friendly ‘cottage garden’ plants. But as gardens are so much smaller, they’re selling dwarf versions of popular plants. That includes Allium ‘Millenium’, which is almost as diminutive as chives.

‘Patio fruits’ are a big new trend. I like the idea of dwarf mulberries and blackberries. But I saw a couple of multi-fruit ‘patio’ bushes on a stand (I can’t remember which). I’m a little doubtful about this trend, as I’m not sure whether a fruit tree with three different kinds of fruit on the same rootstock will actually deliver flavour and a decent harvest. But maybe I’ll be proved wrong.

Plant foliage has been big in the world of garden bloggers for a while. And this trend is now ‘trickling down’ to the ordinary gardener. This is where the great country gardens do still lead the way. Head gardeners (see Philip Oostenbrink’s garden here) are developing, experimenting with and championing plants with distinctive shaped and coloured foliage.

2019 garden trends - dramatic foliage plants

Dramatic foliage is a big trend for 2019 and beyond.

The result is that when you and I go to the nursery or garden centre, we feel an irrestistible desire to buy phormiums. I know. I did it just recently. It was as if an alien had taken over my credit card. But when I got home, it seemed so right. That’s fashion for you. Even if you think you’re immune, you’re not.

Foragers’ cocktails and home-made tea

Romeo Sommers, the creative director of GLEE, identified a real expansion of grow-your-own in the 2019 garden trends. He predicts that we’ll be growing our own tea. That’s not just dipping some mint in hot water, but actually growing tea plants for our own home-grown green tea.

He said that restaurants will make an increasing point of growing their own ingredients, and telling diners about it.

And then there are herbs in cocktails. I love the idea of his phrase ‘foragers’ cocktails’, but even if you’re not brave enough to forage, you can pop sprigs of rosemary into your gin-and-tonic. My best gin-and-tonic this year had lovage in it.

And, of course, edible flowers are still big, big, big. Botanist James Wong sometimes fumes on Twitter that too many Instagrammers are using non-edible flowers on food and that someone will be poisoned one day.

Natural dyes from plants - a future trend for gardners

Natural dyes from garden plants – Yasmin Hossain of Juniper & Bliss dyed these napkins at home with her home-made dye from avocado skins.

Romeo Sommers also mentioned a growing trend for home dyeing fabrics using plants from your garden. I’ve written two posts about dyeing from plants here, but I think it’s a trend that has alot further to go. It’s perfect for anyone who enjoys sewing, crochet or knitting and who also loves their garden.

Gardens for relaxation – gardening goes high-tech

The small and middle-sized garden of tomorrow is for relaxing in, according to the research. So technology is automating garden jobs. The top two tech gadgets are automated irrigation systems and robot lawn mowers. Both can now be controlled from mobile phones. And both are more suited to smaller urban gardens rather than estates with three acres of woodland.

And eco-friendly…

As well as the recyclable pots, there were several new peat-free composts (the RHS endorses the Melcourt range) and also glyphosate-free weedkillers from Evergreen, SBM, Assured Products, Neudorff and more. Solar lighting can now be controlled from a smart-phone, and it’s more practical – Duracell say their best-seller in solar lighting is solar security lighting because people can install it without having to drill through a wall for cabling.

And colourful…

Small and middle-sized gardens can be easily seen from the house, and may partly be ‘outdoor rooms.’ So the idea of accessorising gardens with coloured furniture, fences, pergolas etc is growing. And Romeo Sommers believes more of us will extend our interior decorating themes out into the garden.

Vibrant colour in gardens

A vibrant shelf of pots as a room divider -but is that on a terrace, patio or inside? It doesn’t matter any more.

Garden furniture ranges used to be ranges of wood, plastic or metal in natural shades, green or white. Now you can get chairs and benches in pastel pinks, citrus yellows and greens and more. Or you could paint your garden furniture yourself.

Add colour with garden furniture

Pastel pink retro garden chairs from Premier’s Outdoor Living collection.

And of course Instagram…

Instagram has done a huge amount to publicise gardening and plants, particularly in urban gardens. It’s hugely influential in promoting dramatic foliage, houseplants and beautiful gardens. That seems set to continue. If you haven’t joined it yet, it only works from a smartphone. Get the Instagram app, sign in (it’s easy), then start following people (@the_middlesized_garden_blog, for example!)

Enjoy a video tour of GLEE’s 2019 garden trends here

 Pin for reference:

2019 garden trends from GLEE, the insider's garden trade show

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Saturday 8 September 2018

The best professional tips for late summer garden colour

Have you run out of gardening steam by the time you get to the late summer garden?

I know I do, which is why it’s so inspiring to visit a top professional garden, such as The Salutation in Sandwich. And here head gardener Steven Edney shares his tips for late summer garden colour with The Middlesized Garden.

Dahlias in the late summer garden at The Salutation.

One of Steven Edney’s favourite dahlias – Dahlia ‘Pink Pat and Perc’ at the Salutation. I’d love to know why it’s called that – was it developed by a couple called Patricia and Percy? If you know, do tell.

Firstly, when does a late summer garden start and end? My definition is that it starts with the first dahlia opening (usually around mid-July). It ends with the first frosts, when the dahlia foliage collapses into a blackened heap. The Salutation has over 400 different dahlia varieties, and holds an annual Dahlia Festival in the middle of September (15th/16th in 2018).

So the ‘late summer garden’ equates to ‘the dahlia season’ in my opinion, although Gardeners’ World defines it as September and October. I visited the Salutation in early September, and it was glorious. There’s clearly no excuse for saying that ‘the garden is over’ at this time of year.

Which dahlias for your garden?

Steven says that single dahlias are the easiest to grow. ‘They don’t need staking, and they’re more drought tolerant.’ As most of the UK had a nine-week drought this summer, this is worth knowing. The Salutation is particularly famous for its dark-leaved dahlias, such as this beautiful ‘Hadrian’s Sunlight’ dahlia below.

Dahlia 'Hadrian's Sunlight' - dark leafed, single dahlia at The Salutation

Another of Steven’s favourite dahlias – the single-flowered ‘Hadrian’s Sunlight’, which has an RHS Award of Garden Merit. ‘It’s available from Halls of Heddon, which are in the Scottish Borders,’ says Steven. ‘So it can withstand growing quite far North. I think the foliage is particularly lovely as it’s matt.’

However if you want to grow dahlias as cut flowers, the showier double, pom-pom, cactus and other varieties last better in water, he says.

To find out more about dahlias, their history, classification and how to grow them, I can recommend Dahlias, a beautiful book by Naomi Slade, with stunningly beautiful photographs by Georgianna Lane. It features several hundred different dahlias, in glorious colour. Just as seeing a plant in its natural habitat can teach you how to grow it better, finding out more about your favourite plant also helps you understand it.

(note: links to Amazon are affiliate links, which means I may get a small fee if you buy, but it won’t affect the price you pay. Other links are not affiliate.)

But the late summer garden is more than dahlias

I’ve always relied on lots of dahlias to carry a late summer garden off. However, visiting the Salutation has opened my eyes to the other dramatic plants available around now.

Late summer garden colour - ginger lily and helenium

I really love this combination of ginger lily (Hedychium) and Helenium with the large leaves of Melianthus.

The Salutation house and garden were designed together by Edwin Lutyens in 1912, and much of his original layout remains. Although he was famous for his partnership with Gertrude Jekyll, this is one of the few houses and gardens completely designed by Lutyens himself. Restoring a historic garden isn’t like renovating a period house. Gardens grow and plants change, as does the weather, pests and diseases. So head gardeners try to carry on with the spirit of the original garden designer rather than planting exactly the same plants he or she planted.

The Salutation gardens, designed by Lutyens

There would have been herbaceous borders in Lutyens’ time, too, but many of today’s plants are different.

Steven and The Salutation’s interpretation of Lutyens’ spirit is that he was always innovative and open to new ideas. So Steven has introduced unusual varieties of common plants. And he’s also created some exotic areas. Ginger lilies, cannas and large-leaved plants give shape as well as colour to the late summer garden at The Salutation.

Why unusual varieties?

Most professional gardeners today would like us amateurs to buy more unusual plants. It’s important for diversity. And I see complaints on Twitter that too many ‘top 10 plants for…’ lists reduces the popularity of otherwise excellent plants that don’t happen to make the list. If people don’t buy a wide range of plants, then growers don’t grow a wide range of plants. Everyone gets less choice in the end.

Cosmos 'Cupcake' - grown at the Salutation

Cosmos is another good late-season flower. This is ‘Cupcake’, growing at The Salutation – I would call it ‘unusual’, but Steven says that it is fast growing very popular!

But it’s not just about having more choice. There are lots of unusual varieties at The Salutation, such as Canna ‘Bethany’ (see further down this post). That’s partly because Salutation is in a particularly dry area and is almost coastal. So Steven needs plants that will grow well in such conditions, as well as heritage varieties. He says that people can be frightened off by the label ‘unusual’ or ‘rare’ because they assume that it means ‘difficult to grow.’ In fact, rare plants are no more likely to be ‘difficult’ than their common cousins. ‘We now label plants as “seldom grown”, rather than “rare”‘ he says.

(Read Australian gardening expert Stephen Ryan on buying and growing rare plants if you want to know more about having unusual varieties.)

Cannas are easier than you think

Exotic, colourful and sculptural, cannas are getting fashionable. But many people worry about their hardiness. Steven says that if you live in the milder parts of the UK, you should be able to leave them in the ground over winter. ‘Once the foliage has collapsed with the frost, we fold it over the plant to help protect it, then we pile mulch on top.’

Grow cannas for late season colour

With exotic orange flowers,dramatic structure and stripey green/yellow leaves, Canna ‘Bethany’ is a show-stopper for this time of year, especially planted with a low-growing variegated leaf trim.

The main problem with cannas, according to Steven, is that they are ‘quite greedy’. They need an extra thick pile of manure as mulch and lots of water. ‘If people have trouble with their cannas,’ he says, ‘it usually boils down to feed or water.’

He says that they are mainly sun-loving plants, but will often grow in light shade. ‘If the shade is too heavy, they may not flower,’ he adds. ‘Although you’ll still have the foliage.’

Steven also uses cannas as a summer hedge, creating private spaces in the gardens with a row of cannas that grow to around 6ft high. In winter, the foliage dies down so you get the light. It looks wonderful. Now where can I grow a row of cannas…???

Remember the shape, structure and foliage

‘Think about the shape of the flower and the foliage when planning for late summer garden colour’, says Steven. ‘You’re going to live with the leaves for months, while most flowers only last a few weeks.’ That’s what makes cannas such a great plant. He says he’d still grow them for their wonderful leaf patterns even if they never flowered.

Canna Bethany - late season colour at the Salutation

Canna ‘Bethany’ close up – I don’t think I could forgo those flowers, however beautiful the leaves!

Tall red amaranth and frothy panicum

Shape and structure – as well as colour. Tall amaranth (an unknown seedling) with Panicum ‘Frosted Sensation’ frothing around its base. Beautiful!

Iresine grown outside for its late summer foliage

This red foliage is Iresine, which is usually grown as a house plant. However, it can be grown outside in summer in sheltered, warmer parts of the UK. Steven says it’s too big to take indoors in the winter, so he takes cuttings every year.

Contrast leaf shape and shade

A wonderful contrast of leaf shapes and shades of green in a foliage-only part of the ‘jungle garden.’

Persicarias are another good late summer garden plant

Persicarias are good as a contrast to the vivid colours and showy shapes of dahlias and cannas. Steven considers persicaria to be an excellent late summer garden plant – he describes it as ‘wispy, elegant and bombproof’. It’s another plant that’s growing in popularity, and there are RHS trials due from next year.

Exotic colours and shapes - persicaria at the Salutation

Persicaria’s slim upright red spikes and mounds of low-growing leaves provide a good contrast to the larger leaves of ginger lily and ricinus in this bed at The Salutation.

‘Persicarias will cope with temperatures down to minus 20 celsius, with full sun, with light shade and a range of soils from heavy, wet clays through to light, sandy or silty soils,’ says Steven.

More glorious late summer garden here:

Take a stroll around The Salutation in this video – it really is looking beautiful.

The Salutation hotel and gardens are open every day of the year (gardens from 10am-5pm). There are also gardening events and workshops, such as the Dahlia Festival (15th/16th September 2018). And you can also see head gardener Steven Edney’s own garden with his partner Lou Dowle, when it’s open for the NGS on 30th Sept 2018 – it’s a wonderful tropical garden in East Kent.

Also open at the same is Canterbury Cathedral head gardener Philip Oostenbrink’s garden, which featured in The Middlesized Garden’s Why a Successful Small Garden Needs a Big Idea.

Pin for reference:

Professional tips for late summer garden colour

 

 

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from The Middle-Sized Garden https://www.themiddlesizedgarden.co.uk/the-best-professional-tips-for-late-summer-garden-colour/

Saturday 1 September 2018

No dig flower borders – easy, weed-free and brilliant

I’ve always wondered about ‘no dig flower borders’ for annuals, shrubs and perennials.

Not that I ever do much digging. But I wondered if the principles of no dig veg and no dig flower borders were the same. Was I doing the right thing by mulching my borders but not digging it in? What else do I need to know about no dig borders?

So I visited Charles Dowding, no dig guru and author of many books, including Organic Gardening, the Natural No Dig Way (pub by Green Books).

Charles Dowding and Alexandra Campbell talking about no dig borders in middlesized gardens.

Visiting Charles Dowding to find out more about ‘no dig borders’ for flowers in middle-sized gardens.

Charles is known for his trials, carried out over around thirty years, comparing yields of dig and no dig vegetable beds. He runs workshops, writes books and has a fantastically successful YouTube channel. It’s all based at Homeacres, a three-quarters of an acre in Somerset.

No dig vs dig veg growing by Charles Dowding

Charles always has a couple of ‘dig vs no dig’ beds. He grows exactly the same plants at the same time, and measures their yields. He also assesses how many weeds they have and how healthy they are. In this trial, the dug bed has far more weeds than the ‘no dig’ bed.

The basic principle of no dig gardening

Charles maintains that digging the soil destroys its structure. If you lay a few inches of compost or manure on top of the soil once a year, the worms and micro-organisms will dig it in naturally, he explains. He weeds manually or with a hoe, just on the top inch or so of earth. For perennial weeds, such as bindweed or couch grass, he covers the whole bed in light-excluding mulch so that the roots die.

The principles are the same for no dig flower borders as they are for no dig veg beds.

He plants seedlings with a dibber, dropping them straight into the hole without disturbing the soil around them.  His trials show that undisturbed soil, which is fed with compost, will be firm, easy to plant into, will have fewer weeds and better yields of vegetables.

No dig tomatoes at Homeacres

Charles’ extraordinarily healthy no dig tomatoes, growing in his greenhouse where they are underplanted with marigolds.

It is a simple and easy way to garden – you can find out more about it in Organic Gardening – The No Dig Way. You’ll find lots of useful information about when and how to plant each different vegetable. And it also helps you make the most of a small plot by inter-cropping and successional cropping.

I was sent a review copy by the publishers, and can highly recommend it. It’s packed with useful growing information, how to deal with pests and diseases and the results of Charles’ experiments. This is not only about ‘no dig’ but also about whether you really need to do crop rotation, and other aspects of growing veg.

(note: Links to Amazon are affiliate links. If you buy, I may get a small fee but it won’t affect the price you pay. Other links are not affiliate.)

No dig for flower borders

And he says the same principles apply to no dig flower borders with annuals, perennials and shrubs. At Homeacres there are flowers everywhere, from ‘companion plantings’ of marigolds to purely ornamental cosmos, zinnias and roses.

‘The main difference between no dig flower borders and no dig vegetable borders is that vegetables are very hungry feeders,’ he says. ‘So I’d use less compost when mulching a border with shrubs and perennials. And in a vegetable garden or allotment, you may be growing more than one crop, which you won’t do in a flower border with perennials and shrubs.’

No dig flower borders work on the same principle as 'no dig' veg beds

No dig flower borders are brilliantly healthy – zinnias and marigolds amongst the lettuces at Homeacres.

I asked him if annual flowers might use up more nutrients in the soil than perennials? After all, they are dead-headed to produce more flowers and they can be grown successionally.

‘It’s a fair point,’ he says. ‘But even annual flowers won’t need as much compost as vegetables, because they are usually smaller and their growth is less strong.’

Some people think that no dig means using more compost, and that it will be ‘too rich’ for flowers. But Charles says that it doesn’t. ‘People only think it’s more because they can see the compost lying on top. In the UK, there are now huge numbers of professional no dig flower growers. I’ve never heard any of them comment that the no dig method makes it too rich for flowers.’

Clearing no dig flower borders with bad perennial weeds

What if you have a border that is really badly affected by perennial weeds?

Charles uses the no dig method to clear borders of perennial weeds, such as couch grass, bindweed and ground elder. He advises starting around February. Dig up your plants and pot the ones you want to keep, carefully picking all the strands of perennial weed root out of their root ball.

Once the bed is clear, cover it with a light-excluding mulch. First add a layer of compost, then add horticultural plastic or cardboard on top. If you use cardboard, it will rot down and curl up, so you’ll need to replace it from time to time. (Some people use old carpet.)

By about the end of June, some perennial weeds, such as marestail, will have given up trying to grow. If you’re prepared to lose one bed for a whole summer, keep it covered until August to get rid of couch grass weeds.

No dig veg in a small garden

Charles Dowding has a 25 sq metre/270 sq ft patch, where he trials growing veg in a typical small garden. It’s divided into three beds, each cropping an average of four different vegetables, plus some flowers.

Then keep a watchful eye

However, it takes bindweed roots several years to die, he explains. As it’s unlikely you’ll want to keep your border covered for that long, he advises checking it once a week after re-planting for any emerging bindweed. Carefully pull out as much as possible with a trowel. Roots do come out more easily in a well-mulched border. He has completely rid a large bed of bindweed in this way.

I have one large bed that is heavily infested with bindweed. So I’m thinking of doing exactly this. I won’t even have to dig up any plants as they have been completely smothered by the fiendish vine. But I’ll mulch it and cover it with plastic until the end of next summer. It’s at the back of the garden, so I won’t miss it as much as I would miss the main big bed in front of the kitchen window.

Annual weeds and no dig flower borders

‘You want to be weeding out annual weeds almost before you see them,’ he says. That means starting to look out for the very first weed seeds emerging in February. Don’t wait until you feel overwhelmed by weeds. The fact that weeds are growing is also a sign that you can start planting seeds, too.

To weed without disturbing the soil, Charles runs a hoe lightly over the surface. This breaks off the emerging leaves from their roots. The weed seedlings die on the surface of the bed. There isn’t even any no need to dispose of them.

See this on video:

You can see how Charles plants, hoes and more views of Homeacres on this video:

One of the main benefits of ‘no dig’ is that you get fewer annual weeds. When you turn the soil, weed seeds are brought to the surface and they germinate. If you don’t dig the soil, the weed seeds stay underground. And if you can get rid of the annual weeds that do grow, early enough in their cycle, you will soon have surprisingly weed-free soil.

Charles says the main difference between his current ‘no dig’ and ‘dig’ bed is that the ‘no dig’ bed has far fewer weeds. He uses a Dutch oscillating stirrup hoe (see the video).

I rely on self-seeding plants in my borders, so I will have to balance my love of these with my desire to be more weed-free. After all, weeds are just self-seeding plants that you don’t want.

Don’t disturb the soil when planting

I watched Charles plant out a tray of spinach seedlings. He made holes with a dibber, and dropped the seedlings straight into the hole. He finds seedlings are more likely to succeed than sowing seed into the soil. I agree – I have almost never managed to grow anything from seed when sown directly into the soil. Plant seed in trays or modules first, then transfer once the first secondary leaves have emerged.

The same principle applies to annual flower seeds, such as cosmos, zinnias and sunflowers, in no dig flower borders. Grow your seeds in modules or trays, then plant out with a dibber.

No dig planting with a dibber

Charles using a wooden dibber to make holes that are exactly the size of seedling roots. You can plant annual flower seedlings into borders in exactly the same way.

If you are planting shrubs or perennials in no dig flower borders, Charles advises digging a hole big enough to hold the rootball of the plant ‘but no bigger’. He doesn’t think that loosening the soil around the area helps the plant grow at all. He believes plants grow better in firm soil.

Can you walk on no dig borders?

I am always diving into my borders to dead-head or pull out a weed. So I was worried that I was damaging the soil structure. But Charles says not: ‘Healthy soil is firm enough to walk on. One of the beauties of no dig gardening is that you can walk onto your beds to work without damaging the soil structure.’

In fact, we were even told to park on the grass when we arrived. And when we left, Mr Middlesize asked Charles if he could guide us out when reversing. ‘Oh, just drive across the lawn,’ said Charles. Mr Middlesize was quite traumatised. ‘I’ve never met anyone who let you drive across the lawn before,’ he said, as he did a three-point-turn on the grass. I explained that firm, healthy soil could cope with it.

Charles Dowding’s courses and books

You can learn more about no dig gardening with Charles Dowding’s courses, talks and books, including Organic Gardening, The Natural No Dig Way. Books can be bought online, in bookshops or from charlesdowding.co.uk

Or catch up with his excellent YouTube channel on growing organic no dig vegetables. It’s a very clear and informative YouTube channel, and I’ve often consulted it to find out more about how to grow veg.

While you’re there – do subscribe to the Middlesized Garden YouTube channel too. My ambition is to be equally clear and informative about gardening in a middle-sized garden, with tips, ideas and inspiration for those of us whose gardens are…well, not very big.

And join us every Sunday morning on The Middlesized Garden blog. Just fill in your email on the top right of this page and we will whizz into your inbox when the sun comes up. Thank you!

Pin for reference

No dig flower borders are easy, weed-free and brilliantly colourful

 

The post No dig flower borders – easy, weed-free and brilliant appeared first on The Middle-Sized Garden.



from The Middle-Sized Garden https://www.themiddlesizedgarden.co.uk/no-dig-flower-borders-easy-weed-free-and-brilliant/