A Contrary Gardener - Annual Frenzy or What Not to Grow!
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I spend the dragging winter months staring out of my windows at sodden black earth and sad rags of leaves, waiting for the first signs of the new growing year. The garden looks empty despite the evergreens which number amongst others, Drimys lanceolata, sarcococca, Olearia solandri and various potted camellias. Then tentatively spring arrives, quietly ushered-in by Galanthus nivalis 'Lady Elphinstone' in the woodland bed. Slowly and always late she appears and how fast she is gone.
Then all around her suddenly there is pushing, poking, heaving, the foliar floodgates have opened. The emergent chicken's feet shoots of the Dicentra formosa appear in new and random places in their forays through the leafmould. The crinkled glaucous leaves of the Stylophorum diphyllum unwrap fast; the deep gold 'poppy' flowers followed by bristly plump seed pods; the whole plant exuding an odd yellow milky sap when cut.
Then comes the rampant advance of the woodruff's [Galium odoratum] expanding whorls taunting me as it rushes along pell-mell underground popping up in the middle of plants and trying to escape the woodbed completely. [By late summer it is starting to look tatty and I wish it back underground as I vainly try to extract at least some of its matting roots from around more precious plants].
The headlong rush of spring becomes demanding, the intensity and the exuberance engender a rising verdant frenzy - Feed me! Prune me! Weed me! The climbers on the fences and walls put out strong, generous sappy shoots. I must catch the thugs early; lopping off beefy twining stems to curtail the Lonicera similis var. delavayi in its insistent rush onto the roof of an adjoining building. The blue flowered Solanum crispum 'Glasnevin' was only put in as a filler and now I haven't the stomach to root it out, but hack it back to a stump nipping at it through the growing season but losing the point of it, which is the scented flowers.
The bronzed questing tendrils of Stauntonia hexaphylla are threatening to engulf the adjacent Azara microphylla 'Variegata'. The airy shape of this tree soon to be lost under the festooning stauntonia, and it too will escape my loppers and shoot out of reach. I assumed that the stauntonia would be a contained and graceful climber, and being unusual would mean it would be difficult to grow; so in my mind's eye I saw the divided evergreen leaves slowly inhabiting their allotted space - not so! Here there and everywhere the tendrils twist out and twine with each other forming twirling green ropes. And am I rewarded for my forgiving nature with abundant clusters of pale green citrus scented flowers in late spring? I am not. It has the temerity to give my neighbours the better show despite their side being north facing.
And whilst we are at this end of the garden, why does Lonicera periclymenum 'Graham Thomas' insist on smothering the myrtle [Myrtus communis] ? She is rescued from under the encroaching foliage numerous times through spring and summer. The honeysuckle flowers are not scented during the heat of the day when I want it most [they are evening and early morning flowers, moth pollinated], and he attracts crowds of leaf hoppers and whitefly which leaves the foliage scurfy and generally unappealing by mid summer. Unlike my stalwart Lonicera japonica 'Halliana' , I do not enjoy his company in this particular garden. Just maybe the dry shade is not particularly to Mr Thomas's liking, so really it is my fault and I should not berate him so!
When planning this small town garden I set myself a rule, a scented garden without roses, not because I don't adore them, but as a challenge. However I sadly weakened and invested in 'Souvenir de Mme Léonie Viennot' a climbing tea rose dating from 1898, 'Duchesse d'Auerstädt', ten years older but from the same stable and the smaller flowered 'Gardenia' dating from 1899. The youthful Léonie is irrepressible, sending out long copper shoots which I cut back and tie-in, turn my back and then she grows, and then I constrain again and still she grows. Why did I not heed the description in my rose book, 'grows to 6 metres' - too late now. Her neighbour the Duchesse is slightly more refined; carrying prim, doubled butter yellow flowers over ruddy foliage. Now settled in, 'Gardenia' sends out robust shoots betraying its R.wichurana parentage, threatening my head as I duck around and under it. Once a year in spring I go out armed with a hard heart, jute string and secateurs and attempt to wrest this rose into flowering positions, the strongest shoots laid horizontally along the trellis to send out shorter flower laden side shoots. As a reward I get one main flowering of the small pale cream-peach blooms and a few fitful ones later in autumn.
Next to R. 'Gardenia' the Ficus carica 'Brunswick' vigorously dominates its section of fence; mops of leaves topping off long, gangly, bare branches. In spring I tentatively lopped a couple of branches back not knowing if this was correct behaviour with figs. And for a while they stayed as bare stumps as the other branches came into leaf and I felt very guilty. By summer all was re-growing vigorously - too vigorously. In retrospect I think I should have stuck with that ubiquitous fig - 'Brown Turkey', although the fruits of 'Brunswick' are larger and juicier I think.
For a while when the first rush of hectic growth abates a calm descends on me and the battles cease. In the still time of a midsummer morning when the city sounds are muted and the rush has yet to start, I sit on the stone seat amongst the ivy, honeysuckle and jasmine and watch and listen and appreciate.
But time moves on, the light changes and the slide into autumn begins. Part of the garden slumps once more into permanent shade and gloom; the garden closes in. Wet foliage hangs heavily and I begin to resent the lack of light. Although it seems obvious now I didn't appreciate how much shade some of my plantings would cast and that the growing conditions in some parts of the garden have now inched into too much permanent shade which was not a problem 6 years ago. Unwittingly at the top of the garden I have been creating a small glade not a sun drenched space for basking iris and lavenders.
With encroaching autumn the frenzy of chopping and tugging starts again. The last of the willing yellow lockets on the Dicentra macrocapnos that have webbed their way up and along the dingy pyracantha all summer are now tinged brown, fleshy stems and leaves sagging. In this town garden Solanum laxum [jasminoides] 'Album' is not the frail maiden of more exposed and colder gardens; although its white flower clusters are welcome in late summer, lighting up a dark space. Now I cut and pull, wrestling the still flowering garlands from the wall - they come showering down around me.
On the trellis the sinuous Passiflora caerulea 'Constance Elliot' now claims full attention having stealthily smothered the jasmines, although the Dregea sinensis next to it is putting up a strong rearguard action. Still Constance puts out exploratory arms across the path, tendrils ready to grab at the unwary - a monstrous twiner! Eagerly awaited when the lightly scented iced white flowers first open in summer but no longer. Her finale is the plumping bright orange fruits which are too gaudy for me, so off with her heads - begone! You have had your time this year.
The lowering golden light catches the west facing honeyed bath stone wall where Léonie and the Duchesse regretfully start dropping their now blackspotted leaves into the galvanised metal trough that serves as a fish tank. The renowned West Country dampness begins to take its toll. In the tank the water lily, its cat tattered leaves a testament to many hours of summer fish watching, starts to moulder alongside the gelid water hawthorn; the sundews [Drosera intermedia] curl into small green claws in the moss, the old prostrated leaves withered and blackened around them; the seldom glimpsed fish retreat to the murky depths once more.
The final disrobing of the garden begins. The shabbiest undresser is Colqhounia coccinea var. 'vestita', big felted leaves fall to lie damply grey around its feet like an old army blanket. Another one I had thought would be contained and fairly neat, but the encroaching shade which it too has contributed to, left it waving 8 foot branches at me this summer which had to go and with them went the promise of the late burnt orange flowers.
Huge rough leaves begin to 'pluff' from the Brunswick fig as I reluctantly tweak the immature figs from the baring branches, my fingers covered in sticky milk. I stop to marvel at the autumn leaves of the shy flowering Schisandra rubriflora, an intense gold, before they drop to reveal shiny gnarly brown stems and the rusty climbing pole beneath. The Hostas that have sturdily survived the ravages of slugs and snails also flare into gold which licks along the leaves before they too collapse rapidly into unsightly heaps - the molluscs are now welcome to dine.
The baring garden starts to reveal its summer secrets, the long green seed pods of the dregea; the extent to which the Akebia quinata has snaked unseen through the flowerbeds [reminding me that I must bury a few sections of the stems to see if they will root]; the newly emerging Cyclamen hederifolium 'Album' rescued from the undergrowth, flowers straining towards the light.
Finally my garden stops demanding, I can turn my back on it - I am tired. I need to pause and catch my breath before the time of impatient waiting begins again.
In spring when I have the energy to bring myself to start re-arranging and uprooting; out will come the Genista aetnensis, too tall for this garden and battered to instability by the southwesterlies; out comes the colqhounia, out comes the Solanum crispum. The roses stay, but I would probably not choose them again as none are heavily scented or real show stoppers. If I was a real perfectionist they too would have been for the chop. The fig will be hard pruned* as will the passion flower and Buddleja 'Nanho Blue'. The Mitraria coccinea will be moved to moister quarters.
[*As of October 16 I have pre-empted myself and have already had a large pair of loppers to the fig, Heptacodium miconioides and Clerodendrum trichotomum as I have decided they will become unstable with the first gales and I wanted to let more light into the garden now the sun is getting appreciably lower].
References:
Shrubs [1989] Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix
Perennials Volume 1 [1991] Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix
Hilliers Manual of Trees and Shrubs
October 2003
[All work on this site appears in draft. Revisions and additions are continually being made to the main areas of the book]
@Kari's garden 2002 - 2003