In the Wild Garden in 2014

The Wild Garden suffered this past winter during heavy gales. Several months ago we lost both a beautiful rambling rose and a walnut tree, which collapsed over an old Viburnum (and hundreds of snowdrops). All of this needs to be cleared away. Meanwhile I'm researching flowering crab apples and cherry trees to replant in the area. 

All this has rather distracted me from the main task of clearing around the pond. Last year we cleared the self-seeded Salix which sat in the middle of the pond, and two large clumps of dead bamboo. This has allowed light into the pond and surrounding banks, and a few beauties have emerged - a little drift of purple Muscari armeniacumbrightening up one mossy bank. 

Clearing the Salix and bamboo has also made it easier to remove some of the other overgrowth around the pond. Brambles, euphorbia, ground elder, nettles, and self-seeded Syacmores are crowding the banks. We've begun to clear these so that we can move around without prickles - and replant with more interesting plants!

In the meantime, though, we have had some new visitors to the garden - wild ducks exploring the pond. Fingers crossed they may return again. 

Walking around the Wild Garden this winter, I noticed that the tall, mature Magnolia grandiflora appeared to be suffering badly from lime-induced chlorosis. 


Iron is not mobile in plants, so new leaves, which lack the iron required for chlorophyll production, appear yellow, whereas older leaves, which were created when iron was present and hence chlorophyll could be produced, are green.

Magnolia grandifloras are meant to tolerate dry, alkaline soil, which is what we have at Neats Home Garden, but I think it may have reached the end of its tolerance. Last summer's long dry months may also have stressed and weakened it. 

Very few products seem to be available to the amateur gardener for treating mature trees. But I have found one which I am going to try, produced by a company called Solufeed. It's a chelated iron formulation meant to be used for the rapid correction of iron deficiency in most plants. You mix the powder in water, and add it to rainwater, and water in.

After clearing the weeds from under the tree, I’ve treated the tree with Solufeed three times now, and will repeat the application regularly throughout the spring. I will also mulch it heavily with well-rotted horse manure, once I can lay my hands on some. Fingers crossed this combined treatment will help it recover over this year or so.

This spring has been relatively mild and wet, with only the occasional frosty night. It's may be partly down to these mild conditions that my red Camellia is flowering so beautifully. 

Its position also helps: placed against a warm house wall, in a heavily shaded but relatively sheltered part of the garden. I also gave it a light prune in mid summer, to reduce its size, so that it would less likely to tip over during winter gales. 

I have also been feeding it regularly. Earlier in the season I used a domestic product for ericaceous plants. More recently I've dosed it with Solufeed, a specialist powder that you mix with water, to treat lime-induced chlorosis. This treatment - and position - seems to have worked well. After its flowered, I'll repot it with fresh ericaceous compost and some controlled-release fertiliser granules so that it does well next year too. 

Also keeping me happy are some other scarlet beauties - some early flowering Tulips (tulips from early March! amazing!) and two stellar Hippeastrum 'Royal Velvet' (Amaryllis) bulbs. 

The latter I initially positioned incorrectly, in a well-lit but cool room, and they did next to nothing for several months. They actually need warmth as well as light. Once I realised this, and brought them into a warmer room, they started into growth. They have now been flowering for three months, on successive stalks. A big, showy bulb, to be sure, but they did the job and brightened up my winter. I shall be practising my propagation skills on them once they've finally finished flowering.

Sowing has been going on in earnest for some time, but finally it's warm enough, and there's enough light, for serious seed sowing.

Having grown sweet peas and broad beans last autumn, and planted them out, I've now cleared space for some annual flowers (cosmos, eeee) as well as some more unusual veg, such as Black Salsify, Cardoon 'Bianco Avorio,' both Violet as well as Green Globe Artichokes, Oca 'Orange' and 'Dylan Keating', Field Beans 'Wizard', Cimi de Rapa (Turnip Tops), and Agretto.

I've also bought a large number of strawberries from a wholesaler and have potted them up. I chose Trailing Red Cascade and Senga Gigana. This year I'll probably grow them all in pots, since I'm out of bed space, but next year I hope to have a large bed dedicated to these tasty beauties. 

The greenhouse is also housing my tomato seedlings ('Green Zebra', which the Real Seed Co claims is one of the tastiest ever bred... we'll see!... as well as 'Di Parma' and Fiorentino' from Franchi). 

So far all the tomatoes have evidenced excellent germination rates. The Field Beans, after a slow start, are also doing well, as are both Artichokes. The Agretto, predictably, is doing diddly squat, so I'm going to sow it again in April - ditto the Cardoon and Salsify, which germinated but the seedlings were too etiolated for my liking.

More reports coming soon... 

This season I'm planting Yacon... 

As some readers will know, last year my garden was host to an enormous potato plantation, and we still making our way through the crop. I'm keen to avoid another such glut, particularly since I'm not actually a potato fan, so I thought I'd try Yacon as an interesting alternative. 

It is meant to have a crunchy texture and a slightly fruity / chestnut taste. Here is how the Real Seed Catalogue describes it:

"Yacon is a large plant from South America, distantly related to sunflowers, and it has huge, attractive fuzzy green leaves. It has very pretty little yellow flowers at the top of each stalk.

The plants are very easy to grow and seem to thrive in almost any soil or climate. Underground, it grows a bit like a dahlia.. At the end of the season you dig it all up and the storage tubers are the bit you eat - they are really sweet and crunchy. The knobbly growing tips you divide and replant, so you don't need to keep buying it." 

Reading that it contains inulin (like Jerusalem Artichokes) makes me a teeny bit concerned that it may prove, like them, to taste delicious but have unfortunate gastric impact! We'll see. In the meantime, it is potted up in the greenhouse waiting to be planted out once the weather improves. 

If you're interested in learning more, The Guardian also has a nice article on Yacon here. 

Rambling sailboats
Neats Home Garden has some lovely old rambling roses. One of them, possibly Paul's Himalyan Musk, hangs off our one surviving Robinia tree, flowering in late spring in a cloud of fragrant pale pink blossoms. However, that same scented beauty also acts as a huge sail. The rose stems and branches are so thick and heavy that they made the tree "swing" in heavy winds. 

What survived...
We had already lost our other Robinia tree two years ago in heavy gales, and I didn't want to lose the remaining one. So a few months ago I asked a tree surgeon to give it a hefty prune. This was timely work indeed. Both rose and Robinia have survived the recent winds and rain unscathed.

... and what did not
Not so, however, the other rambling rose in the Wild Garden. This one, which produces lovely apricot-coloured blossom, had rambled so far that it hung in a thicket, not a cloud, over three trees - a walnut, crab apple, and magnolia. The walnut was so swamped by the rose, and also by the overgrown Viburnum shrubs which had grown up around it, that it split and fell during the recent gales. 

I kicked myself for failing to realise that this rose was also a danger. Those trees weren't even half the height of the Rubinia, but the rose was still too great a weight for them. 

So out we went, Mr. P and I, armed with chainsaw and hedge-trimmer, and cut back that rose and Viburnums from the two surviving threes. I painstakingly stripped it off the magnolia, trying to avoid damaging the already weakened branches. 

Smothered skeleton 
Three hours later the poor magnolia was revealed to be a thin skeleton of only three branches - the rose had so smothered it that it had stopped developing strong side-branches. Hopefully, now that it's clear of that weight, and will benefit from some sunlight (and some top dressing), it might recover its strength and flower vigorously next spring. 

No more ramblers for the moment
I had planned to plant more rambling roses around the Garden. But now I think I won't. Trees are too precious. The Robinia tree, for instance, has a lovely fragrant flower - as does the magnolia. The crab apple produces a delicious crop. Rambling roses are glorious, but I can do without their beauty if instead my trees flourish and prosper. 

The online gardener
I often buy gardening items online. It's convenient and reliable, and although I often visit garden centres searching for plants and tools, I'm frequently disappointed by their narrow range of stock, leading me to turn online. Recently, though, I've had a few bad experiences shopping online that have changed my mind. 

Railway Sleepers
I bought 30 railway sleepers from a well-known online timber supplier, and paid in advance. I based my entire design for the Kitchen Garden around their advertised length of 2.6m. However, every sleeper that the company delivered was 2.5m, not 2.6m long. After much wrangling and chasing, they eventually exchanged some of them for sleepers that were... once again... 2.5m long. 

Fruit Trees
I also sourced some mulberries and apricot trees, which can be difficult to find, from what was meant to be a reputable specialist. When they arrived I was shocked to see how badly the trees had been packed. Many of the main stems were twisted and damaged. This particular nursery guarantees their plants "until the spring." However, I'll only see how the trees fare over the course of the summer and autumn, so the supposed "guarantee" is useless. My follow-up questions to them about how best to prune them were answered unintelligibly. Customer service is also not their strong-point.  

Buy local or ask for recommendations
All in all, a warning. If you have time to hunt around and buy locally then that's a good bet. If you can't find what you want and do need to buy online, then choose a company recommended by gardening pals. I'm happy to let you know the names of the companies that I'd recommend - as well as those I'd never buy from again.  

Although it's exceptionally wet at the moment, the temperature is not too cold to plant up next year's garden. If you are fortunate enough to have sandy or loamy soil you can plant now, while plants are dormant, and benefit from sales at garden centres or online nurseries. 

When we think about the garden, we often focus on spring colour and summer brilliance. I've come to appreciate, though, how important it is to plan for autumn and winter colour. These can be quiet months in the garden. So here are some of my favourite plants that add colour and interest during autumn in particular. 

Choisya ternata
Chief amongst them is Choisya ternata. This shrub is meant to favour full sun in a sheltered position. In Neats Home Garden it survives in fairly shaded spots, but is a little leggy as a result, so I've tried to revive it with some careful pruning. Choisya ternata flowers in late October, bearing small scented white blossoms, and can continue to do so for several more months.

Crocus kotschyanus
These bulbs are lovely and are a great choice for instant impact. I bought some of these from J Parkers Wholesale in late September, planted them in early October, and they flowered a few weeks later. The flowers are pale lilac and creamy white. I've planted mine at the front of a sunny border, but they also look lovely naturalised under trees.

Pyracantha and Cotoneaster
I used to turn up my nose at these shrubs. In London and other cities they're a common choice, mainly because they're tough, evergreen, and tolerate pollution. 

But recently I've come to value them for their colourful autumn and winter berries. They are perfect for a wildlife copse and for edging a boundary wall. They also mix well with other attractive evergreen shrubs like Ilex aquifolium and Taxus baccata. 

Local gardeners around us grow Pyracantha in espalier form in front of brick walls, and this image from Crocus shows how stunning they can look as a clipped hedge. So I've ditched my snobbery and embraced these enthusiastically - albeit with a thick pair of gloves!

Aegopodium podagraria
Ground elder (Aegopodium podagraria) is a pernicious weed, which spreads quickly via a network of rhizomes underground. 

An unwelcome discovery
Shortly after we moved into Neats Home Garden, my mother-in-law informed me that we 'had ground elder.' I soon realised that all the beds were infested with it, and that it was entangled in the main roots of many plants, making it incredibly difficult to split and lift them without spreading it even further. 

Napalm...?
I realised that I had to tackle the ground elder before I could start replanting. Initially Mr. P persuaded me to use Roundup, which we did twice. However I was very reluctant to use it. I noticed that in other areas, where Mr. P used it to reduce the nettles, the ground looked like it had been napalmed. Moreover, to get rid of the nettles permanently, I still had to dig down and remove the roots after it had died back.

... or labour?
So I abandoned chemicals in preference for old-fashioned labour. Hand-weeding, several times a season, has reduced the infestation to a lurking presence. Introducing other ground-cover plants, like Lamium maculatum 'White Nancy,' Origanum marjorana, and hardy geraniums, has also helped, since they fight the ground elder by spreading themselves. We have also applied a thick mulch of bark chippings twice a year to weaken the weed's root structure, and I do think this has helped, even if opinion is divided on its aesthetic appeal.

We will never 'get rid' of the ground elder- the only way to do that would be to dig out the soil and plants, and start afresh with sterile compost. But we are now able to keep it at bay with some regular weeding without resorting to napalm.