winter preparations

I went on stacking the heated tunnel today.  In went Olearia, Osmanthus, and Oxydendron.  Selected Prunus and Salix, Sorbaria and Tamarix, Pachysandra and Liriope followed.

The Olearia are daisy bushes, shrubby members of the vast family of Compositeae.  They are jolly plants, tolerant of sea winds, though some are only so-so hardy.  Olearia nummulifolia is one of the hardier, slow growing, with tiny fleshy round green leaves, almost like a succulent.  The name means 'leaves like coins'.  Folia is clearly something to do with leaves (foliage) and nummarius is the Latin for coin, hence numismatics, the study or collection of currency.  There, you could have worked that out.  Olearia x haastii is another reasonably hardy one, making a medium sized shrub with small oval leaves in a fetching shade of greenish grey.  It is not such a slow grower as the first, but responds well to hard renewal pruning if it is exceeding its allotted space, or getting straggly.  Olearia macrodonta has large, toothed leaves reminiscent of a grey holly, but less shiny.  It is definitely less hardy than the first two, and last winter mine was cut almost to the ground.  They are happy on light soil in full sun.

The Osmanthus section started with O. x burkwoodii, which has moderately small, dark green leaves and sweetly scented white flowers in late spring, and progressed to one of its parents, O. delavayi, which has smaller leaves and is a rather desperately slow grower in its early years, but makes a more elegant plant.  Later came several forms of O. heterophyllus.  These have prickly leaves that could be superficially mistaken for holly, and there are several variegated forms, quite showy if you like that sort of thing.  Look carefully at an Osmanthus and you will see that the leaves are held in opposite pairs, unlike holly whose leaves alternate up the stem.  Osmanthus heterophyllus does not develop such good architecture as a mature holly, and I would stick with the latter.

The only willow that gets the protection of the heated tunnel is Salix fargesii.  This has stout mahogony twigs with, at this time of the year, large leaf buds in a beautiful shade of lipstick red.  It makes a largish shrub, and I have never found the space for it, but I should love to grow it.

During one of my stints on the till I discovered a bird food catalogue.  The covering letter to one of the co-owners addressed her as 'Birdcare Buyer'.  I suppose that she is the Birdcare Buyer, in much the same way as she is Chief Financial Officer, Head of Human Resources, Chief Media Buyer, Catering Manager, and the Fire Officer.  She really is the Fire Officer.  The certificate is hanging up in the office.  The catalogue cover said that it was for 'Birdcare Power Brands', and the covering letter was so OTT that I copied it out specially for use in the blog.  It read as follows:

At long last...it's finally getting colder!  Now's the perfect time to tempt your customers with some exciting ideas from the world's finest birdcare collection.

Available now, [product name] is one of this year's most eagerly awaited product innovations.  Reflecting the new trend in premium feeding, it's a brilliant new twist on this popular product category and a guaranteed attention-grabber in store.

One of this year's most eagerly awaited product innovations?  Really?  Forget the new i-phone, the latest Wii, the promising new cancer drug and the solution to the Eurozone crisis.  What people have been waiting for is a new moist, high calorie bird food for robins.  What I want to know is, do the people that write this stuff actually believe their own hyperbole, in which case they need help, or are their tongues firmly in their cheeks?  If the latter, do they believe that their customers (my employer) are idiots?  There are times when I am so, so glad I don't work in marketing.

more weeding, more flowers

I spent today in the back garden, weeding, before the ground gets too dry to stick a trowel in, and acutely aware of how far behind I am with normal maintenance after losing so many working days to the snow and the cold.  We went to get another 20 bags of mushroom compost earlier in the week, and I've already used 6 bags of it, teasing it carefully around the primulas then romping across the blank spaces between shrubs.  The Pittosporum tobira has definitely had it, stone dead after the cold weather, another set of roots to pickaxe out.  I should mention one impressive survivor, a narrow leafed form of common bay that I got from the Architectural Plants nursery.  Many of our customers at work have sad stories of bay cut to the ground, but this one is looking only slightly burnt in a few places.  It makes a tall, narrow shrub, and is a fine plant.  The Architectural Plants catalogue said it was hardier than the usual bay, and I once tried to interest the boss at work in stocking it, but he didn't sound impressed.  I try to clip mine to a neat cone, which would be easier if it weren't planted on a steepish slope surrounded by other shrubs.

There are plenty of flowers to look at while weeding, apart from the primulas.  Osmanthus delavayi is just opening.  This is a lovely, slow growing evergreen shrub, with small, matt, dark green leaves, and small scented white flowers.  Left unclipped it will form quite an open bush, and I've seen it in woodland gardens in light shade from the surrounding trees, but in full sun and clipped over after flowering it forms a dense bush.  I've got it at the corner of a bed, an idea I'm pretty sure I copied from one of Christopher Lloyd's books.  There is a hybrid with larger leaves which is more vigorous, Osmanthus x burkwoodii, but O. delavayi is more elegant.  Good things are worth waiting for.

Among the polyanthus, and in the same rich pink part of the colour spectrum, is the pink form of Japanese quince that used to be called 'Appleblossom' and is now properly 'Moerloosei'.  It flowers late, for a Chaenomeles.  My shrub suffers from something knawing its bark in the winter months, I suspect voles or other small rodents, but has survived.  It has lost some vigour in the past couple of years, and I feel it will appreciate some nice mushroom compost, topped off with a dusting of fish, blood and bone.

The double gean is opening, Prunus avium 'Plena'.  This is always some days behind the single form in flowering, and will eventually make a huge tree, though not in my time.  In front of it is Exochorda x macrantha 'The Bride', which is well named.  As you would expect it has white flowers, looking very fresh against mid green leaves, but in addition it has a train-like habit, as the branches sweep downwards and cascade out across the ground.  I have learnt from experience that it requires its own space.  If any other shrub is allowed to grow into it the Exochorda will respond by developing a dead, bald spot, which takes a while to grow out when the interloper is tidied back within bounds.  Slightly squeezed into a space at the back of the bed, Exochorda serratifolia is making surprisingly good growth, given it is supposed to require full sun, but is on the north side of a tall hedge with other shrubs around.  That also has white flowers, held in more vertical sprays than 'The Bride', which I bought because I liked it so much, without proper thought as to where I could put it (a bad habit I have partly learnt to curb).  It ended up in a sort of gap where I wanted to thicken up the planting between us and the neighbours.  This seems a cavalier use for a fine shrub, but it has fighting spirit and is coping so far.