Innholdsfortegnelse for 30-Jul-2022 i Amateur Gardening

“We often talk about planting for wildlife and how important that is, yet whilst this is true I also think that we should plant for ourselves. I refer to AG reader Geoff Barry’s letter on page 55, in which he says: “At times, it feels as though we have to apologise for growing plants just for the sake of growing plants (their beauty, their ability to delight, and the satisfaction it gives to nurture a living thing). Rather, we are expected to grow plants only based on their utility to other species (for example, as food plants for insects)”. Of course there is no reason why we can’t do both. Everything, as my mother would say, in moderation.”…

I LOVE Echinaceas but always have problems growing them from tubers – they start off well, then mysteriously fall by the wayside. Next spring I will start them in pots rather than the soil, but until then I have several healthy seedlings to look after. They were grown from AG free seeds and are now large enough to be potted up into larger containers of multi purpose compost. I’ll keep them in a cold frame or greenhouse through winter and then plant them out next spring when the soil warms up again. Echinaceas originate from the American prairies and while they can tolerate the cold they don’t like our relatively mild, wet winters. They do best on free draining soil so if your garden has heavy clay you may have…

Hibiscus ‘Woodbridge’ Bring a taste of paradise to your garden this year with this stunning, giant-flowered Hibiscus ‘Woodbridge’. Also known as the tree Hollyhock or the Rose Mallow, large, bright pink blooms cover this award-winning shrub from July - not stopping until all buds have opened, sometimes right into autumn. ONLY £9.99 SAVE £5.00! Established Plant in a 3L Pot - ITEM: 500074 Hibiscus ‘Marina Blue’ Create a fabulous exotic look to your garden or patio, with our glorious hardy Hibiscus ‘Marina Blue’ standard lollipop from tree - years of fabulous late Summer floral displays from this ever so easy to grow tree. Despite looking very exotic, with the huge blue flowers, they are very tough and hardy indeed. ONLY £24.99 SAVE £5.00! 90cm Tall Standard in a 3L Pot-ITEM:…

THE diverse group of plants known as anemones is made up of species that differ significantly in their size, in the garden situations they prefer and in their native habitats. All have in common saucer or cup-shaped flowers with up to about 20 petals in almost every colour of the rainbow. A few have extra petals creating a double flower. The petals are arranged in rings around a dusty cluster of stamens carrying colourful pollen in a range of different shades, including yellow, white and blue. The result is flowers that look a little like daisies or wild roses, and the combination of the variety of petal colours and the range of pollen colour provides us with some delightful flowers. Spoilt for choice Anemones vary in height from a few…

This week it’s: Plants and cats! We look at the effects cats have on our gardens THIS Friday, 29 July, is International Tiger Day – a day designated by the World Wide Fund for Nature to bring to our attention the plight of tigers in the wild. Their numbers have dropped by more than 95% since the beginning of the 20th century. Reading about this got me thinking about all the big cats, then my mind drifted to the smaller domestic cats – and then to the impact they have (good or bad) on our gardens. Lions hunt in prides, but tigers hunt alone… like the domestic cat. In its solitary quest for food – whether it’s hungry or not – it needs cover to stalk, freedom to roam, and…

BY this point in the summer, our gardens should be growing well and many plants can pretty much be left to get on with growing and flowering. The early summer bloomers have passed the baton to varieties that flower in the later weeks and through the autumn, while last year’s sown biennials and the hardy annuals started earlier this year will be shining through. For the next few weeks your chief concerns should be maintaining the garden’s health and appearance by keeping up with the deadheading, weeding, watering and feeding. Other jobs include supporting tall plants as they grow and cutting back and feeding perennials that have already flowered – if the conditions are right they might give you another burst of colour. Look after your lawn too, because grass…

SIBERIAN irises are smaller and less flouncy, but no less attractive, than their cousin, the bearded iris. Their delicate flowers that usually bloom in shades of purple or mauve, and slim blade-like leaves, add colour to the garden in late spring and early summer. If grown in a spot that they favour, as marginal plants by the side of ponds, in a bog garden, or in a bed with full sun or partial shade in enriched, moisture-retentive soil, they will soon form an attractive clump. However, if left alone too long these clumps have a tendency to outgrow their spot. When this happens, new shoots appear around the edge of the original clump which eventually develops a unsightly bare centre. You can counteract this and keep plants tidy and rich…

MANY of us who like to raise our own plants have been suffering compost woes, whether we’re trying to go peat-free or not! This year many of my plants failed to thrive: they developed chlorotic (or yellowing foliage) and withered away. At first, I put this down to the cool temperatures of spring, but they failed to recover once the nights and days warmed up. I have to deduce that the compost is probably to blame. Much of the compost I’ve used this year is not encouraging growth as it should. The final indignity came when one batch of very smelly compost (at £6.95 a bag) killed my plants overnight. I potted up ten dahlias, some home-grown Tithonia rotundifolia plugs and pricked out some strong Verbena bonariensis seedlings. They looked…

How can I brighten up a new patio? Q I have a new patio and am planning to break up the edges with containers and pots. What plants would be best for this? David Bellairs (via email) A I suggest that you combine a selection of low-growing evergreen shrubs with radiant summer-bedding plants. The following will be ideal: ■ Choice evergreens Lavender ‘Hidcote’: Silvery leaves and blue flowers; summer. Cotton lavender (Santolina chamaecyparissus): Filigree of silvery foliage and yellow buttons; summer. Mexican orange (Choisya ternata Sundance): Golden foliage and scented white blossom in spring and autumn. Ceanothus ‘Blue Mound’: Massed blue flowers in spring and late summer. Cistus x purpureus ‘Alan Fradd’: White chocolate-blotched flowers all summer. Hebe ‘Great Orme’: Cones of bright-pink blossom in summer. Pieris ‘Flaming Silver’: Silver-variegated…

MANY bulbs are only truly dormant for about six weeks, so it is important that they build up their resources while they can. The period as the leaves die down after flowering is when the food store is built up for flowering next time. Deadheading saves the bulb wasting energy producing seed, so remove the spent bloom just below the flowerhead, rather than cutting off the whole stem (which makes food in the same way as the leaves). Dying down Leave the foliage to die down completely, because while it is still green it will continue to manufacture food, that is stored in the bulb. As the foliage turns yellow, remaining nutrients in the leaves are drawn back down into the bulb. Only when this is complete will the leaves…

I know I seem to get very excited about almost every week’s free seeds, but this week I am really pleased with our choice Gaillardias are jolly perennials that grow to 18in (45cm) tall and repeat-flower all through summer into autumn. They grow into bushy plants that are covered in large, vibrant flowers with red centres fading outwards to yellow. Originally from the USA, they are also known as blanket flowers, possibly because the gold-and-red boss at their centre is reminiscent of blankets woven by some Native American tribes. Gaillardia are tough characters and thrive in poor soils – too many nutrients and they produce lots of bushy leaves at the expense of the flowers. You can either sow the feathery seeds in the soil where you want them to…

I’VE never been a snobbish gardener. Ask anyone. Well, anyone who matters. But there is a plant that I’ve been irrationally snooty about since the 1990s when the ‘new black’ was low-maintenance gardening. Heather was top of the shrub list and became so ubiquitous that self-styled fashionable gardeners (count me in) became bored of the neat heather garden ‘look’ and snubbed the plants. Back then, flowers that burgeoned in the spring, bloomed during summer and went to ground, leaving tawny frost-catching stems for winter, always turned my head. So compared to vibrant herbaceous aster or phlomis that ‘did something’, heathers had all the dynamism of a scatter cushion. But on a walk across our nearby heath, I noticed something that wasn’t apparent when winter-flowering erica and summer calluna were teamed…