Rebuilding a nursery - Copton Ash

[Tim Ingram]

Haven't got my copy yet but I wrote this a year or more ago hoping that alpines would begin to get more coverage in the gardening media. I think if more people write about them in more places and with more imagination there is a good chance that many new and younger gardeners will pick up on successful ways of growing them in the garden (as opposed to just in the alpine house for exhibition) and discover the SRGC and AGS. There was that final comment in passing from Monty Don at Chelsea of 'Alpine Gold' but in general very little if any closer look at them in the BBC coverage, and a fair reason for this is the lack of any gardens at Chelsea really displaying them as you might grow them outside. An outdoor rock/sand/crevice/alpine garden at Chelsea next year would be quite a coup for an ambitious plantsman-oriented designer.

[Maggi Young]

Ian's copy of The Garden must have arrived early for a change - there is no regular pattern to its arrival here. Sometimes it doesn't come at all!

The  results of all efforts being made by SRGC to attract attention to the Grants available  to students of horticulture with an interest in alpine type plants suggest that the level of enthusiasm in such students is pretty feeble. It's not a good scenario. Of the really keen young people there is a tendency for them to think that a  "media " career gained via garden design is their goal - leaves plantsmanship a poor second in most cases.  Thank goodness there are some notable exceptions - those few will have many hopes pinned upon them!

[Tim Ingram]

A great visit with our local village garden club to a friends garden near to us at Painter's Forstal. John and Ruth Moor are long time members of our East Kent AGS Group, but don't really grow alpines: John is a fruit farmer and they live in a wonderful old Elizabethan house surrounded by a jungle of plants, made over probably 50 years or more. It's the sort of place that makes you gasp if you are plantsman - quite a Mediterranean feel in places because they travel to Spain and Portugal a lot - and John grows some fantastic Giant Fennels which sparks my affinity to the Apiaceae (taken me a while to give up on Umbelliferae). Too many plants to describe (and I didn't take a camera). There are grass paths but they gradually disappear into the jungle moving from small clearing to small clearing, and the plants come right up to the house in the most intimate way. One grass really stood out - Ampelodesmos mauritanicus. This is in full flower now and the old flowering heads carry on right through winter, only needing to be removed in the spring just as the new ones emerge. A young plant of Drimys winteri in flower was exceedingly beautiful - the softest of creamy-yellow against apple-green leaves. Another special local gardener, Elizabeth Thomas, has a 30ft tree of this in her garden covered in the embrace, verging on strangle hold, of Akebia - the combination of those two flowers must be wonderful to see. A great inspiration when I look occasionally at an especially overgrown weedy part of our garden which could do with these two plants (not the Akebia), and set off in the same direction as John and Ruth's!

(I haven't dared mention that John also 'specialises' in growing Giant Hogweed, which is a notifiable weed if you allow it to seed out of the garden - here it has to negotiate a 25ft beech hedge and hasn't done so. But what a plant this is! No self-respecting umbelophile would be without it )

[Maggi Young]

 ....some fantastic Giant Fennels which sparks my affinity to the Apiaceae (taken me a while to give up on Umbelliferae).

I applaud your conversion to use of apiaceae, Tim - I  find these things very taxing.  My problem with apiaceae is that I keep thinking I should be using it to refer to bee-keeping!

[tonyg]

Too many plants to describe (and I didn't take a camera).

Cardinal sin!  Always take a camera - mine is the best aide-memoir I know ....... and it's not fair to tell of such wonders and not show us some pictures 

[Tim Ingram]

I asked John if I could go back with a camera and a pair of secateurs to take cuttings, and he has given me carte blanche to go anytime... so I will try and repair the omission . Ruth was a good friend of my mother's (goes back to the local WI market year's ago), and is now quite frail. They both have an open and generous spirit and courtesy in the way they farm and garden.

[Tim Ingram]

I've shown a few of these pictures before but this is the sharp end of rebuilding the nursery, clearing areas that have become overgrown and neglected, and nature quickly asserts herself again as soon as you turn your back! (actually rather nice to know even if sometimes it doesn't feel like that). With our elder daughter's help we started cutting back brambles and removing an old set of frames back in spring 2014. Progress was slowed by having to remove a large purple-leaved cherry planted back in the 1980's when this area was used for lining out budded fruit trees. And now at last the ground has been levelled, new groundcover fabric put down and a new line of frames completed for young seedlings and cuttings of alpines. The next stage will be a covered raised nursery bed for saleable plants in the area to the right of the apple cordons behind this frame, and a couple of polytunnels below where a lot more clearing through the winter will be necessary. Slow but solid progress.

[Tim Ingram]

And the finished frame with glass lights...

[Maggi Young]

Solid progress indeed Tim - you and the family are doing really well - wish I could visit to see for myself.

[Tim Ingram]

Very dry at the moment - not the best time of year for the nurseryman because plants need looking after but it is not a good time to plant! We have been planting out stock plants in the part of the garden that is slowly being cleared, with regular attention to watering them, and have spent some time making durable labels for the benefit of visitors and ourselves. These are roofing laths cut down to 60cm lengths with one end filed smooth to write on. (They are tanalised and the cut ends treated so should last well and won't get broken by heavy boots stomping on them or foxes chewing off the ends!).

The grass hardly needs or wants cutting so this fine 1991 vintage Ransomes Mower has been cleaned up and sent for a thorough service and blade-sharpening. We haven't used this for several years - using a rotary mower instead - but the lawn would definitely benefit from being cut by a cylinder mower (this is just rather heavy and not so manoeuverable in places).

A party of students coming to see the garden from Hadlow today - they might notice quite a few weeds and work in progress! but hopefully a lot of interesting plants. Last year I asked if anyone belonged to the alpine societies and no one did, but maybe these plants will appear more on the horticultural agenda in the future amongst younger professionals.

[Matt T]

Nice labels, Tim! They certainly look like they'll last and your writing is neat enough for them to be attractive too. My scrawling hand would not do the job at all.

The mower is a thing of beauty too. I always preferred a cylinder, which seems to be a rare thing these days. Most 'mowing' out here is done with a brushcutter! 

[Robert]

Tim,

I am very curious what is considered dry or hot in your part of the world? Even with our heat and dry conditions during the summer, here in Northern California folks still plant in their gardens when the weather is relatively cool (32 C). Nobody wants to get out when it is 40 C !   

Slowly lawns are disappearing from California gardens. In general, a lawn is inappropriate for our climate and yet they still persist. I think that it is easy for most home owners to mow a lawn rather than establish other appropriate landscaping. We certainly have our challenges here in our part of the world.

Things are so different in your "neck of the woods". Thank you for sharing.

[Alan_b]

I cannot speak for Tim in Kent but the average (1970-2000) rainfall in Cambridge is 557mm, that's 21.8 inches.  Unlike California, we get a lot of rainfall in the summer months when the water evaporates off quickly so doesn't do so much good.  Anywhere else in the UK will be wetter than this.

The average maximum summer temperature temperature over the same period is 22C = 71.6F, which is reached in July.  The average temperature over the entire day is highest in August at 18C = 64F.  That must be very cold by California standards.

 

[Tim Ingram]

Our average rainfall is a bit higher than Cambridge - around 25 inches - but last year we measured 42 inches (more than we have ever recorded before). This year is back on track and this summer very dry. The lawn is browner than usual - normally it does stay green and needs mowing!

Robert - the highest temperature recorded in the UK  (in a proper meteorological way - in a Stevenson's screen in the open) was just below 40°C several years ago, close to us at Gravesend, south-east of London. We were actually trying to sell plants on that day in a nearby garden and it felt sweltering just as you say. Above 30°C is fairly unusual but not uncommon (we wouldn't call this cool!). Recent temperatures this year have peaked around 35°C so far from our records. Combine that with little rain and it's pretty difficult for plants to establish in a garden of our size where there is a lot to look after on the nursery. In the typical smaller garden it would be easier with regular watering. We are especially dry, partly because the garden is very mature with many large trees and also because the soil overlies chalk so in the best of times there is not such a high water table. Our biggest problem with 'Mediterranean' species from places such as California is extended periods of cold and wet weather in winter with not much diurnal fluctuation in temperature, just when a lot of these plants should be growing! True Mediterranean species actually seem easier than many Californians - probably because they are much more available. But from what you say it sounds as though many native species with you can be tricky in gardens (eg: Arctostaphylos). This makes it doubly exciting when a plant does do well - we have nice plants of Mahonia haematocarpa and fremontii for example and several of the shrubby lupins. The great thing about plants is that you can keep raising them from seed and cuttings and experiment with different places in the garden, and perseverance often pays off.

[Maggi Young]

In Aberdeen we've had about a month's worth of July rain in the last couple of days - around 65mm (when the average for July is 60 to 60mm)- there have been flash floods with water swirling  nearly 90cms deep in places around the city.

I enclose the weather report included yearly in the Aberdeen Group's newsletters - it is for the year 2014 - it is recorded formally by John Lupton in his garden at Westhill,  a satellite town around six miles out of the city of Aberdeen.

 wweatherApril14NL.pdf (70.99 kB - downloaded 94 times.)