Suddenly the air outside feels gentle. I took a stroll round the garden counting my losses, after the cold spell. The leaves on the poor little Phlomis italica growing in the gravel are shrivelled, and I think I'm going to lose the top growth, but it will probably shoot from the base. It did last spring, and the plant is larger and more established now than it was then, and this cold spell was shorter and less severe. The leaves on the olive tree look utterly unaffected so far, and I wonder whether the lack of cold wind helped it survive this time round. The operative phrase in the last sentence is 'so far', since evergreens have a disconcerting habit of looking OK immediately after being hit by cold, and then dropping their leaves later, like somebody who initially seems to have survived their paracetamol overdose, only to die of liver failure after three days. The leaves on my nice new Pittosporum tenuifolium 'Wrinkled Blue', that was making such good progress last year, have turned a suspicious colour, and I'm worried about that. Pittosporum tenuifolium varieties that were hit last year but not killed outright have made little recovery since, though the drought may not have helped them.
The open flowers on the two Daphne bholua varieties are spoilt, burned to a dingy shade of brown. There are still buds, so it's a case of waiting to see if these open normally. The leaves on the evergreen Michelia doltsopa, that was turned out of the conservatory to take its chances at the edge of the wood, have gone brown round the edges and the plant looks distressed, but as long as the shoots haven't been injured my money's on it flushing new leaves in spring. It has managed to pull off that trick in the conservatory, after red spider mite attack plus whatever else it was that it disliked about conditions in the conservatory had defoliated it.
The display of snowdrops is disappointing, after the quantity I planted two and three years ago. Maybe the cold weather has held them back, and they'll look better in another couple of days, but I fear that some of the places I tried them, coupled with the very dry weather last spring and this winter, have not suited them. The shortage of crocus I put down to some bastard small rodent eating the corms.
Still, it was very nice to be able to work outside in comfort. When I investigated what it was like yesterday the wind felt so raw and cold that I merely watered the conservatory and greenhouse and scuttled inside again, but today felt positively inviting. I've been digging over the area where the Rosa rugosa used to be, and forking in mushroom compost, so by the weekend it should be ready to receive the new shrubs and the Ashwood's hellebores and Hepatica. I made encouraging noises to the cats to come out too, and Our Ginger and the big tabby came and ran about a bit. They could do with the exercise, especially Our Ginger. (His diet is not going very well, since the big tabby is still upset and refusing to eat, so we end up having to leave food down for him. Alternatively he will eat if one of us stands by him making encouraging noises. It isn't very convenient).
Addendum The newspapers and Radio 4 have finally caught up with the idea that we are facing a serious drought in the southern and eastern counties, now that Caroline Spelman has been having meetings about it. It has been blindingly obvious for weeks to anyone who listens to the farming programme, or just notices how much it rains, that trouble is brewing.
Showing posts with label Daphne bholua. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daphne bholua. Show all posts
Thursday, 16 February 2012
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
the sweet delights of winter flowers
It was so murky this morning that I couldn't even see the wind turbine from the bathroom window, but the rain had passed. The still, damp, not too cold air provided perfect conditions to actually be able to smell the witch hazels in the back garden. On very cold days, or when there's a stiff breeze, their scent can be pretty elusive, but there was no missing it today. Above the spicy tang of the Hamamelis drifted the insistent, sweet fragrance of Daphne bholua 'Jacqueline Postill'. The bush has thrown up more suckers since I potted the last lot up, and one of them is blooming. I saw to my pleasure that the flowers were the same as on the rest of the plant, meaning that the original wasn't grafted. I didn't think it was, as I never saw any signs of the graft, and you usually can if you look closely, but it's nice to have confirmation that my two spare plants in pots in the greenhouse are 'Jacqueline Postill' and not a nameless and inferior rootstock.
I put canes along the edge of the wood to mark the spot where they will go in a month or so, once the risk of a freezing blast in February is over. The parent plant has come through two severe winters here, but small, newly planted specimens can be vulnerable, and they have spent all winter in the greenhouse and never yet experienced a frost in their lives. I planted the Oemleria cerasiformis, and surrounded it with a wire netting cage to try and keep the rabbits and muntjac off it until it has had time to get established. It is a suckering shrub, and the boss gives its ultimate dimensions as 2.5m tall by 4m across, so once it gets going I don't think the rabbits will make much of an impact. Surveying the small tuft of sticks that is all the Oemleria runs to at the moment, and the two bamboo canes standing in for the Daphne, I tried to visualise their full spread at maturity and wondered hopefully if there was space for the plum red flowering Hamamelis x intermedia 'Livia', which we have started stocking for the first time this year. It is very handsome, and in a different part of the red spectrum to the others, and I should dearly like to grow it, but I had to admit that there probably wasn't room for one, or at least not anywhere where it would get enough light. If we have any left at work come the weekend then I may yet talk myself into the contrary position.
Daphne bholua 'Alba' is out as well. It is a pretty thing, which has only grown to half the height of 'Jacqueline Postill', and so far is not suckering at all, so could be a good choice for a small space. The wintersweet, Chimonanthus praecox, is blooming. I bought mine as the pure yellow form, but the flowers have a definite smudge of purple on the inside. It has been quite slow growing in its early years. The scent of Daphne bholua was so strong that it was difficult to detect whether the wintersweet smelt of anything or not. It is certainly supposed to. Further up the garden, Prunus mume 'Beni-chidori' has suddenly opened. The flowers are single, about the size of a penny or a little larger, in a good, clear, strong shade of dark pink. They have no scent, and nor has the lovely Lonicera 'Elisae', which is just opening its slender, tubular flowers in a delicate, tantalising shade of very pale melon pink.
After sorting out the Oemleria, I re-potted my three Acer palmatum. One existing pot had fractured and partially delaminated due to frost. I'd made temporary repairs with glue, but knew it was only a matter of time before I went out into the back garden and discovered the root ball of my poor Acer exposed to the elements, with bits of disintegrated pot scattered around it. It needed more root space anyway. I decided to re-pot the other two while I was at it, partly because they needed potting on, one badly so, and partly because I wanted to standardise on the same design of pot for purely aesthetic reasons.
I have seen the light when it comes to pot design. After a flirtation with egg shaped pots, very trendy in the early part of the new century and now so horribly last decade, I have come to appreciate the enormous, practical virtues of the traditional flower pot shaped pot, one whose diameter expands steadily from the base upwards. The design I have fixed on, with minor variations depending on the manufacturer, is the classic camellia pot, a thick walled, sloping sided pot with a couple of horizontal ribs round the outside. I presume that these evolved to strengthen the walls of the pot, as well as for ornament. The camellia pot is a design classic which has remained essentially unchanged since the Renaissance, because nobody has been able to improve on it in hundreds of years. You can see the same pots scattered through the illustrations to Monty Don's Great Gardens of Italy.
The trouble with egg shaped pots is that the diameter at the top is narrower than the widest part of the root ball. Getting an established shrub out, let alone one that has been allowed to become at all pot-bound, is a brutal job. I had to get the Systems Administrator to pull from above at the Acer that was still in an egg pot, while I scrabbled at the edges of the root system, scraping off compost until I'd narrowed the root ball down enough for us to drag it out of the pot (the alternative is to smash the pot with a lump hammer). Getting a shrub out of a flared flower pot is a comparative doddle. Once you've broken the surface connection between the mass of roots and compost and the inside of the pot, and got the root ball to slide even a couple of millimetres, the rest is easy. I did ask for help lifting a big Acer that was going from one camellia pot into a larger one, but that was a question of bulk and gravity, not pot design.
I put canes along the edge of the wood to mark the spot where they will go in a month or so, once the risk of a freezing blast in February is over. The parent plant has come through two severe winters here, but small, newly planted specimens can be vulnerable, and they have spent all winter in the greenhouse and never yet experienced a frost in their lives. I planted the Oemleria cerasiformis, and surrounded it with a wire netting cage to try and keep the rabbits and muntjac off it until it has had time to get established. It is a suckering shrub, and the boss gives its ultimate dimensions as 2.5m tall by 4m across, so once it gets going I don't think the rabbits will make much of an impact. Surveying the small tuft of sticks that is all the Oemleria runs to at the moment, and the two bamboo canes standing in for the Daphne, I tried to visualise their full spread at maturity and wondered hopefully if there was space for the plum red flowering Hamamelis x intermedia 'Livia', which we have started stocking for the first time this year. It is very handsome, and in a different part of the red spectrum to the others, and I should dearly like to grow it, but I had to admit that there probably wasn't room for one, or at least not anywhere where it would get enough light. If we have any left at work come the weekend then I may yet talk myself into the contrary position.
Daphne bholua 'Alba' is out as well. It is a pretty thing, which has only grown to half the height of 'Jacqueline Postill', and so far is not suckering at all, so could be a good choice for a small space. The wintersweet, Chimonanthus praecox, is blooming. I bought mine as the pure yellow form, but the flowers have a definite smudge of purple on the inside. It has been quite slow growing in its early years. The scent of Daphne bholua was so strong that it was difficult to detect whether the wintersweet smelt of anything or not. It is certainly supposed to. Further up the garden, Prunus mume 'Beni-chidori' has suddenly opened. The flowers are single, about the size of a penny or a little larger, in a good, clear, strong shade of dark pink. They have no scent, and nor has the lovely Lonicera 'Elisae', which is just opening its slender, tubular flowers in a delicate, tantalising shade of very pale melon pink.
After sorting out the Oemleria, I re-potted my three Acer palmatum. One existing pot had fractured and partially delaminated due to frost. I'd made temporary repairs with glue, but knew it was only a matter of time before I went out into the back garden and discovered the root ball of my poor Acer exposed to the elements, with bits of disintegrated pot scattered around it. It needed more root space anyway. I decided to re-pot the other two while I was at it, partly because they needed potting on, one badly so, and partly because I wanted to standardise on the same design of pot for purely aesthetic reasons.
I have seen the light when it comes to pot design. After a flirtation with egg shaped pots, very trendy in the early part of the new century and now so horribly last decade, I have come to appreciate the enormous, practical virtues of the traditional flower pot shaped pot, one whose diameter expands steadily from the base upwards. The design I have fixed on, with minor variations depending on the manufacturer, is the classic camellia pot, a thick walled, sloping sided pot with a couple of horizontal ribs round the outside. I presume that these evolved to strengthen the walls of the pot, as well as for ornament. The camellia pot is a design classic which has remained essentially unchanged since the Renaissance, because nobody has been able to improve on it in hundreds of years. You can see the same pots scattered through the illustrations to Monty Don's Great Gardens of Italy.
The trouble with egg shaped pots is that the diameter at the top is narrower than the widest part of the root ball. Getting an established shrub out, let alone one that has been allowed to become at all pot-bound, is a brutal job. I had to get the Systems Administrator to pull from above at the Acer that was still in an egg pot, while I scrabbled at the edges of the root system, scraping off compost until I'd narrowed the root ball down enough for us to drag it out of the pot (the alternative is to smash the pot with a lump hammer). Getting a shrub out of a flared flower pot is a comparative doddle. Once you've broken the surface connection between the mass of roots and compost and the inside of the pot, and got the root ball to slide even a couple of millimetres, the rest is easy. I did ask for help lifting a big Acer that was going from one camellia pot into a larger one, but that was a question of bulk and gravity, not pot design.
Friday, 23 December 2011
stumps (day two)
The forecast rain didn't arrive until after dark. We do need rain. Down in Sussex they have a drought order, but when I read the tips on how to save water they were all the things that we do as a matter of course anyway. Don't run the tap while you brush your teeth. I haven't done that for about thirty years. Take a shower instead of a bath. Always do, and I turn off the shower after the initial wetting while I soap myself. Don't wash your car with a hosepipe. I go one up on that, which is not to wash my car. Well, maybe once a year, at winter's end to get the salt off.
As it wasn't raining I returned to the stumps. One big rhododendron finally came out, when I managed to find the last buried root that was holding it and saw through it. It is a satisfying moment, when you work out why a stump won't shift, and conquer the last point of resistance. A lesser stump came out fairly easily, but a large elder root is proving intractable. I could leave that where it is, except that there is a great deal of elder in the wood in toto, and I want the space close to the house for exotics. Don't tell the Essex Wildlife Trust. One of the things I want to plant is a couple of pots of Daphne bholua 'Jacqueline Postill', which are rooted suckers from my original plant. Bees love it, and it flowers very early on in the season, so it has some benefits for wildlife even though it does come from the Himalayas.
I planted out the Michelia doltsopa 'Silver Cloud' that has been sitting in its pot by the entrance to the wood all summer since being evicted from the conservatory. It was looking rather sorry for itself, and on tipping it carefully out of the pot the rootball was far from solid. It ought to find the soil in the wood to its liking, and I hope it manages to get going. I have no idea how the gardeners at The Savill Garden keep their plant under glass looking so healthy, as mine was a constant martyr to red spider mite no matter what I did.
There will be space for an Oemleria cerasiformis, a large suckering shrub from North America with scented white flowers in late winter, which I have long coveted but lacked anywhere suitable to put one. I think I am far enough along with clearing the ground to be safe buying one the next time I'm at work. I try nowadays not to buy things unless the site is ready, as it's so easy to believe that it will soon be clear, and then it isn't for one reason or another, and the plant sits around in its pot for months or even years, degenerating. Burncoose rates Oemleria as hardy down to minus fifteen degrees celsius, so I'd probably be OK planting it now. Its common names include Oso berry, Oregon plum and Indian plum, but to get the fruits you need male and female plants, and I don't have room for more than one, and plants offered for sale don't seem to be sexed anyway. I don't mind about the fruit, it's the flowers that do it for me.
As the Oemleria, the Daphne and the Michelia will all be close under our bedroom window, I hope that their scents will drift in. Behind them, eventually, we should see the gigantic pink flowers of Magnolia campbellii 'Charles Rafill', but that is one of those magnolias that doesn't flower at a young age, and although mine was planted in November 2003 and must now be a good 4-5m tall, it is quite devoid of flower buds again this winter. There is a story in the garden guide for Caerhayes (one of the very great Cornish gardens) that they bought a magnolia from the Hilliers nursery, waited many years for it to flower, and when it finally did it was the wrong variety. Hilliers refunded the original purchase price. I hope mine will not turn out to be the wrong thing. If it is straight M. campbellii then it might not flower at all until about the time that we're ready to move to the retirement bungalow. The ground drops away from the house to the wood, and if all goes according to plan then the huge pink flowers should be at the same height as the bedroom window. There is a plant of flowering age at the Blakenham Woodland Gardens, and it is a beautiful thing, very exciting.
As it wasn't raining I returned to the stumps. One big rhododendron finally came out, when I managed to find the last buried root that was holding it and saw through it. It is a satisfying moment, when you work out why a stump won't shift, and conquer the last point of resistance. A lesser stump came out fairly easily, but a large elder root is proving intractable. I could leave that where it is, except that there is a great deal of elder in the wood in toto, and I want the space close to the house for exotics. Don't tell the Essex Wildlife Trust. One of the things I want to plant is a couple of pots of Daphne bholua 'Jacqueline Postill', which are rooted suckers from my original plant. Bees love it, and it flowers very early on in the season, so it has some benefits for wildlife even though it does come from the Himalayas.
I planted out the Michelia doltsopa 'Silver Cloud' that has been sitting in its pot by the entrance to the wood all summer since being evicted from the conservatory. It was looking rather sorry for itself, and on tipping it carefully out of the pot the rootball was far from solid. It ought to find the soil in the wood to its liking, and I hope it manages to get going. I have no idea how the gardeners at The Savill Garden keep their plant under glass looking so healthy, as mine was a constant martyr to red spider mite no matter what I did.
There will be space for an Oemleria cerasiformis, a large suckering shrub from North America with scented white flowers in late winter, which I have long coveted but lacked anywhere suitable to put one. I think I am far enough along with clearing the ground to be safe buying one the next time I'm at work. I try nowadays not to buy things unless the site is ready, as it's so easy to believe that it will soon be clear, and then it isn't for one reason or another, and the plant sits around in its pot for months or even years, degenerating. Burncoose rates Oemleria as hardy down to minus fifteen degrees celsius, so I'd probably be OK planting it now. Its common names include Oso berry, Oregon plum and Indian plum, but to get the fruits you need male and female plants, and I don't have room for more than one, and plants offered for sale don't seem to be sexed anyway. I don't mind about the fruit, it's the flowers that do it for me.
As the Oemleria, the Daphne and the Michelia will all be close under our bedroom window, I hope that their scents will drift in. Behind them, eventually, we should see the gigantic pink flowers of Magnolia campbellii 'Charles Rafill', but that is one of those magnolias that doesn't flower at a young age, and although mine was planted in November 2003 and must now be a good 4-5m tall, it is quite devoid of flower buds again this winter. There is a story in the garden guide for Caerhayes (one of the very great Cornish gardens) that they bought a magnolia from the Hilliers nursery, waited many years for it to flower, and when it finally did it was the wrong variety. Hilliers refunded the original purchase price. I hope mine will not turn out to be the wrong thing. If it is straight M. campbellii then it might not flower at all until about the time that we're ready to move to the retirement bungalow. The ground drops away from the house to the wood, and if all goes according to plan then the huge pink flowers should be at the same height as the bedroom window. There is a plant of flowering age at the Blakenham Woodland Gardens, and it is a beautiful thing, very exciting.
Tuesday, 1 March 2011
some March flowers
I've just taken a stroll round the garden to see what's blooming. It's drizzling and 4.0 degrees C outside, and most of them look as if they wish they hadn't bothered.
The display of Hamamelis x intermedia is coming to an end. The red ones are lasting later than the orange and yellow, having opened after them, with the variety 'Rubin' the last. The hazels are showing what genetic variation there is in the wild population, as some still have bright yellow catkins while others are going brown and shrivelled. Daphne bholua 'Jacqueline Postill' still has plenty of buds, and the white form hasn't really got going at all yet. The Viburnum x bodnantense 'Charles Lamont' has flowers open, but the overall effect is a bit pink and brown. The Ribes laurifolium is still blooming, but I think that whatever animal is terrorising the back garden has had a chew at it. Mahonia japonica is flowering quietly in its corner. It got rather overshadowed last year by a rambling rose that is supposed to be growing up a tree, but instead flopped around and over the mahonia. I have a feeling I shall be returning to the question of training roses up trees.
Shrubs that are new blog entries for March include Corylopsis sinensis var. sinensis, whose yellow flowers are just opening. This suffered dieback last winter, but seems untouched so far this one, despite it being colder. Maybe the fact that the deepest frosts came before Christmas this winter helped, if it is less vulnerable to cold damage when still tightly in bud than when the sap is rising. I think it is going to be far too large for the space where I have put it, and I wonder if I can trim the tips back after flowering. I don't think the books recommend this treatment, but Chris Lane says it works for witch hazels, which are not supposed to like being pruned. We visited Cornwall a few years ago, and I noticed how many of the gardens had terribly tall specimens of Corylopsis, with bare trunks at eye level and the flowers carried way above our heads, so some pruning to keep new growth coming low down might be a good idea.
There are a few flowers on the winter flowering cherry, but I'm sure that when it comes into leaf there will be a mass of dieback. The water table has risen under it and it's sitting far too wet. I've been eyeing up possible spaces for a replacement in the front garden. Pieris 'Katsura' is opening its dusky pink buds like giant heather bells as if nothing had happened, which is surprising and delightful after the winter weather. I've a feeling the frost danger for pieris is to the emerging leaves more than the flowers, and the flowers were still in very tight bud when the worst of the weather came. No flowers on the Edgeworthia, though.
At ground level the hellebores are looking good, the Lady series and their offspring in the front garden and assorted hybridus forms and their seedlings in the back. A yellow form that has not been so vigorous is doing quite well this year, with several nice solid butter-yellow flowers. H. x ericsmithii is flowering profusely, with petals of yellowish cream with pale plum backs. 'Pirouette' was a new purchase last year, and has made a chunky plant so perhaps it is a good doer. It is a pinky plum with a formal double centre, and I planted it partly for its own sake, because it is very pretty, and in the hopes of some exotic babies in that part of the garden. It got rather shaded last summer as a shrub rose leant all over it, but seems none the worse for the experience. New hellebore varieties are so tempting, but not cheap, so I tend to try just one the first year and see whether they seem to have a robust constitution in a garden setting.
The primroses and polyanthus are starting to get going. I love the wild yellow primroses, but like the pink ones too, and the more highly bred polyanthus, which I have in soft and strong yellow, and all shades of pink from pale and grubby to magenta and purple. Some were from an alleged woodland walk seed mix, which came less true to description than any other seed I've grown, and some particularly vigorous yellow ones in a good clean shade of dark lemon were half price at B&Q. The violets are starting bloom under the roses, my ambition being to cover the ground entirely with them and other ground cover so that there's no room for weed seedlings at all. The white bergenia has two flowers on it, and not as many leaves as it should have, so something is eating it. Driving back from Colchester today we passed a mass of a pink flowered variety, which reminded me how full and lush bergenia should be looking at this time of the year, if it is happy. There are a few pulmonaria flowers out, in mid blue, bricky red, and a good red-blue with bright violet and purple overtones. The pulmonarias started out as named varieties, but over the years self-seeding and the destructive effects of birds and animals on stick-in labels means that I don't know what most of them are.
The snowdrops still look good from a distance, but close up you see that they are starting to go over. There are some flowers of Cyclamen coum, but not great sheets as I would like. I plant a few more each year and they gradually spread and bulk up. Something has dug up the majority of the crocus bulbs from the borders, though not so far from the grass. I need to go over the borders and smooth down every last hole and scuffled area, then inspect them daily for fresh signs of digging to work out how often whatever it is comes. We tried the trail camera on one badly affected bit of border one night, but didn't photograph anything. It has been set up on that area again for tonight, and we'll see what we get.
The dwarf iris have just gone over, but Iris unguicularis is still sending up new flowers.
The display of Hamamelis x intermedia is coming to an end. The red ones are lasting later than the orange and yellow, having opened after them, with the variety 'Rubin' the last. The hazels are showing what genetic variation there is in the wild population, as some still have bright yellow catkins while others are going brown and shrivelled. Daphne bholua 'Jacqueline Postill' still has plenty of buds, and the white form hasn't really got going at all yet. The Viburnum x bodnantense 'Charles Lamont' has flowers open, but the overall effect is a bit pink and brown. The Ribes laurifolium is still blooming, but I think that whatever animal is terrorising the back garden has had a chew at it. Mahonia japonica is flowering quietly in its corner. It got rather overshadowed last year by a rambling rose that is supposed to be growing up a tree, but instead flopped around and over the mahonia. I have a feeling I shall be returning to the question of training roses up trees.
Shrubs that are new blog entries for March include Corylopsis sinensis var. sinensis, whose yellow flowers are just opening. This suffered dieback last winter, but seems untouched so far this one, despite it being colder. Maybe the fact that the deepest frosts came before Christmas this winter helped, if it is less vulnerable to cold damage when still tightly in bud than when the sap is rising. I think it is going to be far too large for the space where I have put it, and I wonder if I can trim the tips back after flowering. I don't think the books recommend this treatment, but Chris Lane says it works for witch hazels, which are not supposed to like being pruned. We visited Cornwall a few years ago, and I noticed how many of the gardens had terribly tall specimens of Corylopsis, with bare trunks at eye level and the flowers carried way above our heads, so some pruning to keep new growth coming low down might be a good idea.
There are a few flowers on the winter flowering cherry, but I'm sure that when it comes into leaf there will be a mass of dieback. The water table has risen under it and it's sitting far too wet. I've been eyeing up possible spaces for a replacement in the front garden. Pieris 'Katsura' is opening its dusky pink buds like giant heather bells as if nothing had happened, which is surprising and delightful after the winter weather. I've a feeling the frost danger for pieris is to the emerging leaves more than the flowers, and the flowers were still in very tight bud when the worst of the weather came. No flowers on the Edgeworthia, though.
At ground level the hellebores are looking good, the Lady series and their offspring in the front garden and assorted hybridus forms and their seedlings in the back. A yellow form that has not been so vigorous is doing quite well this year, with several nice solid butter-yellow flowers. H. x ericsmithii is flowering profusely, with petals of yellowish cream with pale plum backs. 'Pirouette' was a new purchase last year, and has made a chunky plant so perhaps it is a good doer. It is a pinky plum with a formal double centre, and I planted it partly for its own sake, because it is very pretty, and in the hopes of some exotic babies in that part of the garden. It got rather shaded last summer as a shrub rose leant all over it, but seems none the worse for the experience. New hellebore varieties are so tempting, but not cheap, so I tend to try just one the first year and see whether they seem to have a robust constitution in a garden setting.
The primroses and polyanthus are starting to get going. I love the wild yellow primroses, but like the pink ones too, and the more highly bred polyanthus, which I have in soft and strong yellow, and all shades of pink from pale and grubby to magenta and purple. Some were from an alleged woodland walk seed mix, which came less true to description than any other seed I've grown, and some particularly vigorous yellow ones in a good clean shade of dark lemon were half price at B&Q. The violets are starting bloom under the roses, my ambition being to cover the ground entirely with them and other ground cover so that there's no room for weed seedlings at all. The white bergenia has two flowers on it, and not as many leaves as it should have, so something is eating it. Driving back from Colchester today we passed a mass of a pink flowered variety, which reminded me how full and lush bergenia should be looking at this time of the year, if it is happy. There are a few pulmonaria flowers out, in mid blue, bricky red, and a good red-blue with bright violet and purple overtones. The pulmonarias started out as named varieties, but over the years self-seeding and the destructive effects of birds and animals on stick-in labels means that I don't know what most of them are.
The snowdrops still look good from a distance, but close up you see that they are starting to go over. There are some flowers of Cyclamen coum, but not great sheets as I would like. I plant a few more each year and they gradually spread and bulk up. Something has dug up the majority of the crocus bulbs from the borders, though not so far from the grass. I need to go over the borders and smooth down every last hole and scuffled area, then inspect them daily for fresh signs of digging to work out how often whatever it is comes. We tried the trail camera on one badly affected bit of border one night, but didn't photograph anything. It has been set up on that area again for tonight, and we'll see what we get.
The dwarf iris have just gone over, but Iris unguicularis is still sending up new flowers.
Thursday, 17 February 2011
Daphne bholua
The flowers on the Daphne bholua 'Jacqueline Postill' are opening. I'm pleased about this after the cold weather, as it provides proof that the shrub is still alive, and anyway I shouldn't have liked to miss them. The buds are held in clusters at the end of fairly stout twigs. They are a middling shade of mauvy pink, opening to pale pinky mauve, darker on the reverse. The four petals are quite fleshy, and glisten slightly, their texture reminding me of African violets. 'Jacqueline Postill' is generous with her flowers, not one of those plants where you have to peer deep into the depths to discover one or two blooms, so the overall effect is quite showy. Best of all is the scent, rich, penetratingly sweet and carrying far from the source so that you get wafts of it while working in other parts of the garden.
The habit of growth is strongly upright. Mine after several years is over two metres tall, but less than that across. Books give the ultimate height as up to 3m or more. It does sucker, so unless you removed the suckers it would get wider in time. I succeeded in potting some up couple of years ago, but am not entirely sure if the parent plant was grafted, in which case they would be straight D. bholua and not the named form. I couldn't see any traces of a graft, but they haven't yet flowered and shown what they're capable of.
I also have the white form, D. bholua 'Alba' (Latin shouldn't strictly be used as a variety name, so this must have been named a long time ago, although the species was only introduced to Western horticulture in the mid part of the twentieth century). So far it seems slower growing than 'J. Postill'. The latter is a more popular variety, to judge from the number of suppliers listed in the RHS Plantfinder, and the relative number of enquiries I get at work. 'Jacqueline Postill' has been championed by Roy Lancaster, someone whose opinions on the worth of a shrub I take very seriously, and it is the only D. bholua form to hold the RHS Award of Garden Merit. I don't know if 'Alba' is difficult to propagate, or if there is just less call for it, but at the plant centre we haven't been able to source any so far this season.
The daphnes grow in the lower part of the garden, where the soil is a mix of sand and silt and the water table is high enough that creeping buttercup grows enthusiastically in the lawn. The contitions might even be described as moist but well drained, circumstances that are not often easy to arrange in a part of the world where rainfall averages about 525mm (21 inches). They get sun for all but the first part of the day, and are fairly well sheltered from the wind. They seem happy so far, and 'Jacqueline Postill' in the first few years put on growth quickly. This is my second attempt at growing it. The first plant was positioned further up the garden in sandier soil and exposed to more wind. It died.
According to W.J.Bean's 'Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles' the bark of D. bholua is used for making paper in its native Himalaya. Maybe fibrous bark is characteristic of its family, the Thymelaeaceae, as the bark of daphne relative Edgeworthia chrysantha was traditionally used for the same purpose in Japan. In Greek myth Daphne was a nymph who, to escape the pursuit of Apollo, was turned into a tree, but rather confusingly for us now that was into a laurel, not a daphne.
The habit of growth is strongly upright. Mine after several years is over two metres tall, but less than that across. Books give the ultimate height as up to 3m or more. It does sucker, so unless you removed the suckers it would get wider in time. I succeeded in potting some up couple of years ago, but am not entirely sure if the parent plant was grafted, in which case they would be straight D. bholua and not the named form. I couldn't see any traces of a graft, but they haven't yet flowered and shown what they're capable of.
I also have the white form, D. bholua 'Alba' (Latin shouldn't strictly be used as a variety name, so this must have been named a long time ago, although the species was only introduced to Western horticulture in the mid part of the twentieth century). So far it seems slower growing than 'J. Postill'. The latter is a more popular variety, to judge from the number of suppliers listed in the RHS Plantfinder, and the relative number of enquiries I get at work. 'Jacqueline Postill' has been championed by Roy Lancaster, someone whose opinions on the worth of a shrub I take very seriously, and it is the only D. bholua form to hold the RHS Award of Garden Merit. I don't know if 'Alba' is difficult to propagate, or if there is just less call for it, but at the plant centre we haven't been able to source any so far this season.
The daphnes grow in the lower part of the garden, where the soil is a mix of sand and silt and the water table is high enough that creeping buttercup grows enthusiastically in the lawn. The contitions might even be described as moist but well drained, circumstances that are not often easy to arrange in a part of the world where rainfall averages about 525mm (21 inches). They get sun for all but the first part of the day, and are fairly well sheltered from the wind. They seem happy so far, and 'Jacqueline Postill' in the first few years put on growth quickly. This is my second attempt at growing it. The first plant was positioned further up the garden in sandier soil and exposed to more wind. It died.
According to W.J.Bean's 'Trees and Shrubs Hardy in the British Isles' the bark of D. bholua is used for making paper in its native Himalaya. Maybe fibrous bark is characteristic of its family, the Thymelaeaceae, as the bark of daphne relative Edgeworthia chrysantha was traditionally used for the same purpose in Japan. In Greek myth Daphne was a nymph who, to escape the pursuit of Apollo, was turned into a tree, but rather confusingly for us now that was into a laurel, not a daphne.
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