Wordless Wednesday 27th March 2019: Hepatica nobilis 'Cobalt Blue'

A cut flower garden - a few notes from a talk by florist Jonathan Moseley

This post isn’t a ‘how to make’ a cut flower garden, rather it’s tips that Jonathan shared at a South Pennine Hardy Plant Society talk, 6th March 2019, based on his over 20 years experience.

My first attempt of some cut flowers from my garden using this small flower display stand.
The dark purple flowers areHelleborus x hybridus Harvington dusky,
and the white with orange trumpets are Narcissus 'Cragford'.
The foliage, which you cannot hardly see(!), is Oregano.

Tips I picked up from Jonathan's talk

When picking flowers, bring along a bucket and put each flower you pick in water immediately. This helps retain their freshness and longevity. The general rule is, cut Narcissi (daffodils) ‘on the flat’, meaning a straight cut, and everything else, at a 45 degree angle.

Some people make the mistake of not picking in their cut flower garden because they loose sight of the reason they planted it, and think cutting it will spoil it. No – keep cutting and the plants will keep producing more flowers! Sweet peas are an excellent example of this: if you don’t cut them, it will stop producing and go to seed very quickly.

Use foliage first as a framework. 80% foliage, the rest flowers.

A great cut flower are Astrantias. After they finish flowering, cut them hard, to the ground, and you will get a 2^nd flush of flowers in about 6 weeks. I checked about the cutting hard part and he said yes, try it!

If you want to have Hellebores are cut flowers, score the stem down 2 sides with a sharp knife and they will last longer.

A wonderful winter cut flower is Lonicera fragrantissima which flowers in winter and spring. I can add Lonicera x purpusii 'Winter Beauty' to this. For both, the fragrance is wonderful.

He uses Ivy a lot in his floral arrangements and loves it. He says, despite the bad press ivy gets, it's not definitive as to whether ivy can actually kill trees. I did some research into this after the talk. I found that the general view appears to be that its presence on a tree trunk is not damaging, and where it grows into the crown this is usually only because the trees are already in decline, or are diseased and slowly dying. See https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=192 for more info on ivy and when you do need to control it.

Another good evergreen foliage plant is Choisya ternata 'Sundance', where the tops of each stem are flushed yellow and slowly fade to green.

When tying up your bunch of flowers/foliage, tie it where you were holding it.

 

Spray the arrangement morning and evening with a mister, such as in the photo below.

 

He highly recommends the RHS Cardiff flower show as a great Spring event for getting ideas for your garden.

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Jonathan said more than this and also did several demonstrations on creating cut flower posies and displays, but I wasn't able to capture everything! He was a great speaker and a font of knowledge. If you get the chance to hear him talk, I highly recommend it.

Creating a mini forest garden border

For some years I've been enamoured of the idea to create a forest garden, an edible and fairly low maintenance way to grow food. It's only with this garden that I realised that I had the right conditions to finally create my own mini forest garden border.

Martin Crawford's book (right) is the seminal text for learning about forest gardening, and it was a rare occasion where I read a gardening book from cover to cover. It just has so much information that was written in a straight forward tone, following each step of the process, and offering a large range of suggestions of what plants can be grown in each layer that will suit a range of climates.

My intention here is to show you how you can use the principles of creating a forest garden on a small urban garden scale. I aim to create a space that offers food for myself and for pollinators, that works within my health limitations (I have the chronic illness, ME), and that adds beauty to my small garden, whilst also being low maintenance.

The space that will become my Forest Garden Border

First up, I measured out the space and plotted this onto a base map, including the direction of North. I had previously done a soil test so I knew that my soil is acid clay. Apart from digging the holes for plants, I use the no-dig method. I plan on adding compost and mulch each time a key plant is planted, and will continue to add some each autumn to the whole border and I'll let the worms do the work to loosen up the soil, and release the nutrients that are locked up in clay soil.

I had spent a few months surveying the space and the way light and shadow moved across it and added a sun map on top of the base map. The border has one south-facing side and one west facing side and the arrows show how the sun moves across the garden during the day, moving from the top arrow, down. Plotting this and the base may measurements out was important for helping me decide how many trees, and what type, I could include in my design.

For example, the Amelanchier, which is shown on the Sun Map, is in a raised border off to the right. Though it will cast a small amount of shade a certain times of day when in leaf, because of it's height, and the height of the sun from April to September, this will be quite minimal and won't impact on the amount of light plants like the rhubarb and apple trees will get. And in winter it's deciduous so the forest garden border will benefit from all light available during this period. The greengage is in the South-West corner, and won't be casting an shade at all on the plants below as the sun is always moving in front of it. I do need to ensure I keep it pruned so that it doesn't get to big and block a neighbour's garden though.

Now we come to the layout map. Here I have plotted out all the key plants, A - N, and worked out their ultimate size and placed each onto the map. The ground cover plants will be slotted in here and there as space allows.

See the full list of plants below

Drawing circles is not my strong point(!). But I've been able to map out the maximum size of each plant so I'm clear what can fit in. It will still look a little bare for the first couple of years whilst the plants start filling out, so I'll have to be strong and not add any more, only to have to remove them later because the other plants have grown to their full width and height.

A forest garden has 3 layers, though I've broken them down below into 4 (separating out the Perennial and Ground Cover layers), as I found this more helpful for my planning.

Tree canopy layer: This includes small as well as large trees. These are A, H and N on my plan, a greengage and two apple trees.There is also the Amlanchier tree off to the right of the actual border, that I consider a part of my forest garden. Whilst it looks like they will be crowding the plants next to them, they won't because they will all have trunks with the first branches growing above the plants below in the Shrub and Perennial layers.

Shrub layer: Because my soil is acid clay, it made sense to add in fruit that grows well in acid soil. So cranberry and blueberries have been chosen. One of the blueberry varieties, Hortblue Petite, crops at least twice a year, and it is a nectar source for bees and other beneficial insects.

Perennial layer: This is going to be a mix of edible plants, such as the sorrel and rhubarb, and plants for pollinators, such as the comfrey. The comfrey is the 'Bocking 14' variety, which doesn't self seed. Comfrey, with it's deep roots, is an excellent nutrient and mineral accumulating plant, particularly of potassium. If you plant comfrey near fruiting trees and shrubs, they benefit from the minerals the comfrey has accumulated. This is why the two comfrey plants are on either side of the greengage tree and not far from the cranberry and blueberries. Comfrey leaves can also be used as a mulch, and of course, to make comfrey liquid feed.

Ground level layer: This is also a mix of edibles, such as the sweet violets, strawberries and ramsons, and plants for pollinators. Eventually there should be no bare soil showing, which should limit annual weeds from germinating.

Two Blueberries and some violas waiting to be planted out into the Forest Garden Border

I want the border to be low maintenance, in particular because I have so little energy to undertake tasks in the garden. The main maintenance tasks will be pruning the fruit trees, summer for the greengage, winter for the apple trees, and cutting back dead foliage of the perennials in early spring. At this stage the soil is mostly bare, so there may be some weeding required, but hopefully the ground cover plants will do their job and make weeding minimal in the future.

I took time in planning the border. This is in part because of my health, but mainly because good permaculture practice is to take time to observe the space, ideally over a year. This helps you spot issues that might not show to start with. Although my garden is relatively flat, careful observation showed me that this part of the garden is the highest, but another area is lower and I discovered it could be prone to some flooding, mainly water sitting on top of the soil/grass. Water flows from the Forest Garden Border area down, so hopefully as mulching over time loosens the soil, it will also drain better so it doesn't all flow down to the lower part of the garden.

It was also important to really think through what I wanted to grow and why. Each plant I've chosen suits my taste, skill, and health limitations, and is also suitable for the space where I'm creating the Forest Garden Border. I'll continue to observe how the border grows, and adapt, if needed, over time. For now, I'm excited to put the plan into action; I'll finally have my own (mini) Forest Garden Border!

Andrea, my gardener, will be helping get the blueberries and other plants into the ground next week, and I'll choose two apple trees in the autumn. I'll post follow-up in the summer, so you can see how it's coming along.

I inherited the rhubarb with the garden, and it's now ready for my first harvest of the year.

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PLANT LIST
Canopy layer
A: Greengage, Prunus domestica 'Golden Transparent'
H & N: Apple trees, to be chosen. They will be on a dwarfing or semi-dwarfing rootstock.
K: Akebia quinata, also known as the chocolate vine. Although the fruit is edible, I'm predominately growing it for the flowers and to allow it to grow all over the wall as it's an evergreen. I'm hoping that, along with the ivy that's already growing on the wall from a neighbours garden, that it will offer a further habitat for small insects and pollinators. 

Also, just off to the right of the top border is an Amelanchier x grandiflora 'Ballerina', also known as  Juneberry or Apple serviceberry tree. This has the most edible of all Amelanchier fruits and I consider it part of the forest garden, though it sits outside the border.

Shrub layer
E: Cranberry (variety unknown)
F: Azalea (variety unknown). It's here because had it, and it's happy in acid soil. The flowers are good for pollinators.
I: Blueberry, Vaccinium corymbosum 'Hortblue Petite'
J: Blueberry, Vaccinium corymbosum 'Bluecrop'

Perennial layer
B: Rhubarb (variety unknown)
C & D: Sorrel, Rumex acetosa (non-flowering variety)
G: Golden oregano, Origanum vulgare 'Aureum'
L & M: Comfrey 'Bocking 14'

Ground cover (plants mixed all around the border)
*Strawberry, Fragaria x ananassa 'Samba'. This is a smaller sized strawberry, but is made up for in the fact that it fruits from May until November.
*Sweet violets, Viola odorata 'Queen Charlotte'. Edible flowers and good for pollinators.
*Ramsons, Allium ursinum. Also known as wild garlic. Edible stalks and leaves and good for pollinators.
*Ajuga reptans 'atropurpurea'. A good evergreen ground cover plant. Helps cover bare soil so there are less weeds.
*Primula vulgaris. Good for pollinators and will self seed and help cover bare soil.
*Phacelia tanacetifolia. This is an annual that will self seed. It is known as a green manure and is excellent for pollinators.

I will also add a mix of early flowering spring bulbs this autumn to help early pollinators such as solitary bees, and to add further interest and beauty.

Martin Crawford's book, Creating a Forest Garden, was pivotal in helping me understand what should go where and why. I highly recommend it, and because it's been around for some years, it can be found in libraries too.

Wordless Wednesday 27th February 2019: Crocus 'Spring Beauty'

Plants for pollinators in late Winter

Having visited Hodsock Priory on the weekend (mid February), where they not only have a woodland carpeted with snowdrops, but also an ornamental garden, it reminded me of just how many plants are flowering in late winter. So I thought I'd share photos of these, plus some from my own garden, to help give people more idea of what you can plant to help pollinators at this time of the year.

Note, this has been a milder winter. In colder ones such as 2017/18, the plants could flower later.  Unless otherwise noted, these will grow on all soil types (acid, neutral and alkaline). These plants all grow in a temperate climate, in the UK down to hardiness zone H5, circa -15 celsuis, and USDA zones 7 and 8.

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First of all, there are snowdrops (Galanthus). Here's a selection from Hodsock.

 

One of my favourite flowering cherries, Prunus Mume, which has an almond-like fragrance to go with the stunning, stops you in your tracks, pink flower.

Winter flowering honeysuckle, such as the shrub Lonicera fragrantissima, which is indeed incredibly fragrant.

Winter aconite, Eranthis hyemalis, which seems to prefer neutral to alkaline soil. I found it can flower on acid soil, but is less likely.

Here are Witch hazel (Hamamelis, top left) which is also fragrant, large bushy Lonicera fragrantissima, Eranthus and Galanthus.

Hellebores, which in fact flower all through mild winters.

Iris, the first from Hodsock (unknown variety), the second, Iris histroides 'Lady Beatrix Stanley', from my garden.

Sarcococca, also known as sweet box or Christmas box, another wonderful winter fragrant shrub. The first is Sarcococca confusa from Hodsock, the second is Sarcococca hookeriana var. digyna 'Purple Stem' from my garden.

Earlier flowering crocuses, such as the purple one below from Hodsock, probably a C. tommasinianus variety, and Crocus 'Gipsy Girl' from my garden.

Cyclamen, which flowered in February during last years hard winter.

Not forgetting Violas.

And of course, Daffodils, seen here in front of Hodsock Priory itself.

Other plants to add not listed above: Clematis cirrhosa Freckles, which flowers throughout winter, and Mahonia, Willow, Muscari, and Camelias. 

Are any of these late winter flowering plants new to you? Do you have any to add to this list? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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Update 21st Feb: Pauline (below) has also suggested the following - chaenomeles, anemone blanda, scilla sibirica, erica, iris unguicularis, primroses and camellia. Which reminds me that another factor may be where you live. So the further south, the more plants that will be available to pollinators in late winter, whereas this will reduce the further north you go.