Flattened, elongated shoots and flower heads that look like many stems compressed together are called fasciation. This strange-looking problem may be ugly or attractive, but is always interesting. The Forsythia in the garden, hacked last year, to within and inch of it’s life has produced 3 fasciated stems covered in blossom.
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The joy of a Qualified Gardener
Reading this article (below) had me nodding and agreeing in the most part. I come up against the same issue time and again, in the occasional garden that I am asked to manage and in ensuring that gardens I have designed, once built develop as the client expects and reach their full potential. http://www.theoutdoorcooperative.com/design/advice-using-a-qualified-horticulturist/ Gardens…
Continue ReadingTODOS – May
Yet another frantic month, but soon we can sit back with a glass of something cool and admire the results of the last couple of back breaking months. May however is not that month…. Even though a tad on the chilly side this month is a frenzy of annual flower seed planting and planting out…
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TODOS March
I hope your February was as busy as mine? pruning Wisteria, completing winter prunes on the Apple and Pear family, including quinces there. Chopping back herbaceous perennials that withstood the winter weather. Asters, hardy Fuschia, ornamental grasses, taking a weeping Caryopteris back to the bone, Ceratostigma to the ground, tidying the Helleborus orientalis leaves, I…
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Growing a Cutting Garden – WK4 Arranging
On paper, having grown enough flowers to fill several small shops we now need to know what to do with them. This for me has always been one of the hardest jobs, I love flowers and the house is full of bunches through spring and summer but artfully arranging them?, well that’s quite another thing….
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Growing a Cutting Garden – WK3 Maintenance
The most challenging week of the course so far. Maintenance and planning are crucial to this type of gardening. Miss a sowing period and in some cases you’ve had it for that year. Interesting to find out that most of us start too early, I am guilty of this in my enthusiasm to get going…
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Growing a Cutting Garden – WK2 Plant Palettes
I had forgotten how much time these information packed courses demand if one is to make the absolute most of the teacher and their time. Unplanned interruptions for me in week 2 made it a rush to complete in the given timescale, although Charlie is so charming going over a few days wouldn’t be a…
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Growing a Cutting Garden – WK1 Planning
Week one of the The Cutting Garden course from My-Garden-School went well. I find I am working for myself, out on a freezing morning surveying my current plots. Being a designer is a bit like being the cobblers children (no shoes!). You almost never have time to plan, in entirety, your own plot. Sections yes…
Continue Reading Cut Flower gardening
Keeping to the ‘Slight Edge‘ approach, continual study, expansion of personal experience and knowledge is vital as a designer. This January I’ve been asked to follow, and blog about, another great course from the My Garden School Team Growing a Cutting Garden. I experimented a good deal last year with a dedicated patch for growing…
Continue ReadingFebruary and Hippeastrum
I am feeling slightly flat today having missed posting yesterday. ‘One a month’ was the original mantra, I missed Jan 2013 by a whisker of activity. Ho Hum, not going to give myself a hard time about it but ho hum! So Hippeastrum…You’re probably wondering why on earth I would be writing about this rather…
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