My very own green shoots
The garden is still a building site and the modest greenhouse, full of plant detritus and dessicated geraniums, needs an overhaul. The builders are working on the exterior of the house now, and it is encased in scaffolding poles. Temporary paths around its perimeter have crushed even the most persistent bulbs. As I wait to clear the garden and shape it slowly over the next few years, my reliance will be on pots for a while.
Every garden, vast or minute, should, I think, have a few pots. They can line the steps to a front door, or create a meadow or a herb garden on a window sill. Lettuces, particularly the ones with red tipped leaves, like ‘Amaze’, a ‘Little Gem’ type, compact and quick to mature, with a crunchy texture, will grow happily in a well-watered window box. Early in the year, I always sow some delicious little ‘Tom Thumb’ lettuces in Jiffy 7s on a warm windowsill, planting them out, three to a 9in pot with a plastic cloche on top to protect them from frost. Each tight-hearted little lettuce makes a perfect salad for one.
At the grandest end of the plants in pots scale is a typically striking feature at Christopher Lloyd’s Great Dixter: the rotational displays of pots in front of the porch from March to October. They appear in Adventurous Gardener, in which, wrote the author, he discusses ‘some of my preoccupations and prejudices’. The book contains a small but precious collection of photographs, among them a single image of a group of pots taken towards the end of the season. They include the long white trumpets of Lilium formosanum, described as ‘deliciously scented at night, when earwigs come out to feed on its pollen’ and a tall Begonia haageana, the Elephant’s Ear begonia, which, he says, ‘develops a pink leaf colour if starved’.
More modest, but delighting the observant passer-by, are several hanging baskets outside a small house in Faversham’s beautiful Abbey Street. They are planted with tiny succulents. Although only minimally protected by the eaves, these jewel-like little plants have come through the wettest winter in English history. One plant or a single variety massed in a pot, in the Great Dixter manner, make it easy to create an ever-changing display in a small space. The attentive gardener can also provide optimum growing conditions by moving plants to a sunny spot or into shade or providing protection from winds or rain according to requirements.
From the huddle of pots brought from my last garden I have extracted a Moroccan daisy, Rhodanthemum hosmariense (see Plant Of The Week) and given it a temporary home on the low brick wall of the half-demolished conservatory where it gladdens my eye as I potter in the kitchen. Several specimens of this charming Moroccan daisy failed to survive wet winters in the border but I now grow them successfully in pots in good quality multi-purpose compost with lots of added coarse gravel. If your soil is alkaline, pots are also the answer for acid-loving plants such as camellias, rhododendrons and blueberries.
The conventional wisdom is that pots need stones or pottery shards at the bottom to assist drainage. ‘Untrue’ writes organic expert Charles Dowding in his new book Gardening Myths And Misconceptions. He explains how these materials actually impede drainage and may cause a waterlogged area above them. They restrict growth by reducing the amount of compost the container can hold, which means less nutrient content. Less compost makes it even harder to provide enough water without waterlogging. Quite satisfying to see a deep-rooted myth despatched so effectively, like a tenacious weed.
Gardening Myths And Misconceptions by Charles Dowding, published by Green Books, £9.99: www.greenbooks.co.uk
Every garden, vast or minute, should, I think, have a few pots. They can line the steps to a front door, or create a meadow or a herb garden on a window sill. Lettuces, particularly the ones with red tipped leaves, like ‘Amaze’, a ‘Little Gem’ type, compact and quick to mature, with a crunchy texture, will grow happily in a well-watered window box. Early in the year, I always sow some delicious little ‘Tom Thumb’ lettuces in Jiffy 7s on a warm windowsill, planting them out, three to a 9in pot with a plastic cloche on top to protect them from frost. Each tight-hearted little lettuce makes a perfect salad for one.
At the grandest end of the plants in pots scale is a typically striking feature at Christopher Lloyd’s Great Dixter: the rotational displays of pots in front of the porch from March to October. They appear in Adventurous Gardener, in which, wrote the author, he discusses ‘some of my preoccupations and prejudices’. The book contains a small but precious collection of photographs, among them a single image of a group of pots taken towards the end of the season. They include the long white trumpets of Lilium formosanum, described as ‘deliciously scented at night, when earwigs come out to feed on its pollen’ and a tall Begonia haageana, the Elephant’s Ear begonia, which, he says, ‘develops a pink leaf colour if starved’.
More modest, but delighting the observant passer-by, are several hanging baskets outside a small house in Faversham’s beautiful Abbey Street. They are planted with tiny succulents. Although only minimally protected by the eaves, these jewel-like little plants have come through the wettest winter in English history. One plant or a single variety massed in a pot, in the Great Dixter manner, make it easy to create an ever-changing display in a small space. The attentive gardener can also provide optimum growing conditions by moving plants to a sunny spot or into shade or providing protection from winds or rain according to requirements.
From the huddle of pots brought from my last garden I have extracted a Moroccan daisy, Rhodanthemum hosmariense (see Plant Of The Week) and given it a temporary home on the low brick wall of the half-demolished conservatory where it gladdens my eye as I potter in the kitchen. Several specimens of this charming Moroccan daisy failed to survive wet winters in the border but I now grow them successfully in pots in good quality multi-purpose compost with lots of added coarse gravel. If your soil is alkaline, pots are also the answer for acid-loving plants such as camellias, rhododendrons and blueberries.
The conventional wisdom is that pots need stones or pottery shards at the bottom to assist drainage. ‘Untrue’ writes organic expert Charles Dowding in his new book Gardening Myths And Misconceptions. He explains how these materials actually impede drainage and may cause a waterlogged area above them. They restrict growth by reducing the amount of compost the container can hold, which means less nutrient content. Less compost makes it even harder to provide enough water without waterlogging. Quite satisfying to see a deep-rooted myth despatched so effectively, like a tenacious weed.
Gardening Myths And Misconceptions by Charles Dowding, published by Green Books, £9.99: www.greenbooks.co.uk