Planting 101

Finally, over the last couple of days, the weather has cooled off and we have even had a bit of rain. The forecast is for milder temperatures, for a while at least, so on Sunday I decided to plant one of the trees I bought a few weeks ago from Guildford Town Garden Centre.

Today’s plant is a Chinese crab apple ‘Plena’ which I am planting to give extra shade to a spot that gets badly scorched in summer. It will make for a crowded area but I intend to prune it to keep it fairly small. All this makes it sound like it was a planned buy but it was actually a spur of the moment purchase, one where you think to yourself “I’ll buy it and I’ll make it fit”, well I darn well will. The garden centre has one planted as a display and I saw it in flower last spring – beautiful. Plus my Gardening Neighbour has a pile of crab apple trees and he swears by their drought tolerance.

So I’m now going to pass on my tips and techniques for planting:

1.    Run the gauntlet past the paper wasps who have built a nest in the shed to get the spade out.

2.    Dig the hole and put aside sand for later use to build castle.

3.    Drop in dead rat kindly gifted by anonymous benefactor and left on the back lawn overnight.

4.    Add mushroom compost and tree. Mushroom compost is my soil improver of choice. Eventually the plant has to be able to survive in sand but this gives it a booming start. You can use it to plant or mulch and I have slathered it all over the planted areas including under the lawn. Plus there’s the added bonus of the occasional mushroom.

5.    Remember that you have forgotten to add slow release fertiliser and scrape bits out so you can put it in as an afterthought.

6.    Water well and add more mushroom compost as required when it compacts.

7.    Shoo small lizard out of bucket of woodchips and use them to mulch.

Aaah, gardening…it’s the feeling of harmony with nature I love. Happy planting!

My Most Photogenic Roses

Today, while I’m waiting for the weather to finally cool off and autumn to kick in, I’m going to show you some of my most eye-catching roses.

 From the breeders of Pierre de Ronsard (Eden) rose, this is Red Pierre.

This is Julia’s Rose. Those colours, those stamens…

The beautiful English rose, Belle Story. I’m a sucker for exposed stamens.

 And this one is prolific old garden climber, Lamarque.

And last but not least. These are the autumn colours of David Austin rose, Jubilee Celebration.

Snowflake Hibiscus

This is one great plant. It has variegated leaves that light up this spot when it’s shaded and they’re not variegated like normal, in that yellow and green way. They’re white and green so they really shine.

I had two of these that I bought when I was selling my previous home. What was supposed to happen was that they would be planted in the ground to fill the space where my big birds nest fern had been. I dug the birds nest fern up for two reasons, one, so I could bring it with me, and two, because it was difficult to open the back door because it was so big. After looking at the plants for a couple of days I decided I was going to keep them as well, so they didn’t ever get planted. Hey, the house sold eventually.

The other one died, not because it’s too delicate, it’s a hibiscus so it’s tough. I originally had it planted in a spot that was too shaded and so I decided to move it into a better spot, and *hey presto!* it up and died over the summer in spite of my best efforts. I’ve seen them around in nurseries and bought another one a couple of years ago under a slightly different name.

It has red hibiscus flowers that last only one day. And being a hibiscus it’s deciduous as well, dropping its leaves in late winter. It’s supposed to grow to about 1.5 metres (5 feet) high but it’s been pretty slow and after 7 years it’s about 1.2 metres (4 feet) high.