Writing

It was George II who said in 1730 that an English summer consisted of “3 fine days and a thunderstorm”.  Well 2022 has shown this Hanoverian comment to be slightly ‘off’; not only have we experienced more than 3 ‘fine’ days but several extremely hot days and, as I write this we have not had the thunderstorms – yet.

On the understanding that I am going to repeat the advice given for July as to what to do in the garden in August I would again say, “sit in it”, probably in the shade and water it.  Pots and hanging baskets particularly need thorough soaking at least daily as water will very soon evaporate in the heat.  I have been filling up (and cleaning out in between) the birdbath.  Queues of sparrows form every morning for their turn for a splash around, water being a rare commodity.  Even menacing blackbirds have not been allowed to queue jump!

By the end of the month you should be able to prune summer flowering shrubs and to keep lavender looking neat and tidy and the shape you want; cut it back but not into old wood.  Rambling roses don’t actually need pruning for any other reason than to stop them taking over.  Cut out any damaged or dead branches and cut back to the framework you want, tying in where necessary.  Rambling roses are those which only flower once and are very vigorous such as Wedding day, Rambling Rector, Kiftsgate and the good old-fashioned Dorothy Perkins.  I just remember everybody having a ‘Dorothy Perkins’ rambler when I was a child.  I Googled Dorothy Perkins rambler recently and read that each flower has between 26 and 40 petals.  Why on earth would anyone need to know that?!

Wisteria need pruning twice a year to keep growth under control and improve flowering.  August is the time to cut back all the long whippy stems to 5 or 6 leaves.  When we lived in Georgia, USA, gardeners were horrified to learn we planted Wisteria against houses – there they are planted and allowed to ‘do their thing’ up the tallest trees.  They do look magnificent in flower.  

If you have been waiting to apply a summer feed to the lawn – wait on.  Unless you have been watering your lawn it will now appear yellow and feel crunchy to the touch.  The advice on lawn maintenance websites is to reduce the footfall as much as possible and not put paddling pools on it but what then is the point of having a lawn if the children or grandchildren can’t play on it?  Although grass is not an easy plant to grow, it will recover with a bit of care in the autumn.

Talking of grass here reminds me of ‘lawn-growing’ techniques in Georgia.  To expect to have a lawn in that climate is really hope over expectation.  Ours was a new house and grass had been sown straight on to, what looked like a ploughed front garden and we always had the footprints of a little friend of the girls who had come to play and ignored the drive!  These remained as features of the ‘lawn’.   If you lived in a large, expensive house you had your grass planted in plugs which looked like spiders as they sent out stolons to grow new plants to fill the spaces in between just like strawberries do.  This goes by the endearing name of ‘Bermuda Sod’.  The first winter we were there I was convinced all this grass had died as it turns a vivid yellow in cold weather – very attractive, actually.  It does regrow in spring.

The soil – known as Georgia clay or Georgia dirt is bright, brick red caused by iron oxide  and stains children’s clothing, white socks in particular quickly turn pink.  You can buy products to go in the washing to remove the stains.  I remember once visiting a family who had the most gorgeous, pale apricot-coloured cat.  I said I had never seen one like it and was it a special breed. I was told, “Yes, a white one”!

As I write on a relatively cool day for July I am reminded that this time last year we were experiencing temperatures of 40 degrees C.  as are much of Southern Europe this year.  We may complain – we DO complain – about British weather but there are times when we should be pleased we have some grey days and showers.  Thank goodness to be north of the jet stream!  By this time last year many trees were already losing leaves as have some this year but that is owing to high winds and not drought, leaves on the ground are certainly not dry and crispy

August is a month for ‘management’ – keeping plants flowering as long as possible.  Dead head annuals in pots and hanging baskets by giving them a light trim – shears are fine for this. With plenty of watering they will soon ‘come back’.  Dead head dahlias – remember spent flowers are pointy and new buds are pumpkin-shaped and you won’t cut off the wrong bits!  Now is a good time to collect seed from garden plants or cut back or pull up annuals you do not want to seed around.  You are too late for forget-me-nots but I really like having an early show of blue among spring bulbs.  When you save seed keep them in paper bags or envelopes; plastic bags will probably cause them to rot.

It is a good time to sow hardy annuals directly into the ground – cornflowers, marigolds (Calendula not French or African!) and Californian poppies (Eschscholtzia californica) which are available in a wide range of colours these days, not just the traditional orange.  It is worth remembering that, at this time of year, the water table may be low and the little seedling won’t have very much of a root system so may need watering.  It is also worth planting radishes, lettuces and spinach to take you into autumn.

One group of plants which, deservedly, are becoming very popular are the shrubby salvias often known as Mexican salvias.  On some plant identification websites they are called ‘baby sages’  although I have never come across this term before – I believe it’s an American term.  There are literally hundreds to choose from – Dyson’ Nursery in Kent offers 250 varieties.  They all originate from 2 species, Salvia microphylla growing in high mountainous regions of Mexico (and Arizona apparently) thus being very hardy and Salvia gregii found in lower areas and slightly less hardy.  These naturally hybridise in the wild giving Salvia x jamensii of mixed hardiness.  Of the very hardy varieties the bicolour red/white ‘Hot Lips’ is a favourite though it can sometimes revert to all white.  This has given rise to a ‘Lips’ series with ‘Cherry Lips’ and ‘Amethyst Lips’ and probably more to come.  There is a whole spectrum of colours. ‘Royal Bumble’ is a vivid red, ‘Strawberries and Cream’ and ‘Wine and Roses’ are both bicolours, ‘Nachtvlinder’ is a deep purple, ‘Cool Violet is as the name suggests, ‘Peach Cobbler’ is a peach pink and, I find, a ‘really good doer’.  There are many, many more.  They all like sun and a well-drained, poor soil – if you grow them in pots they benefit from the addition of grit.  They grow from cuttings VERY easily so, it is a good idea to grow on a few ‘just in case’.  

There is another fairly hardy species, Salvia guaranitica  with 2 readily available and gorgeous  varieties,  ‘Amistad’, a dark blue/purple and ‘Black and Blue’ this time with dark stems.  If grown in the garden, it is best to take cuttings and keep frost free although ‘Amistad’ may well ‘come back’ after being cut down to the ground and looking totally dead.  

It is well worth considering some of these salvias in the garden if, with global warming, we are going to experience hotter drier summers.  The great joy of them all is that they provide long lasting colour all the way from May to November or later if the weather is mild.  They are very easy and trouble free.  They can become a bit straggly but respond well to chopping back and then   ……  you’ll have loads of cuttings to share!

Sunday, August 7th 11am.  Another sunny Sunday morning, not a cloud in the sky and not a murmur of a lawnmower!

If, as the meteorologists keep telling us, we are to expect more summers like this one we should be taking stock now of what has done well in the garden in this extraordinary heat and drought and what hasn’t.  I’m sad to say that, in our garden, the list of the latter greatly exceeds the former.  I have to admit to being quite despondent at the moment not really knowing what might spring back into life after rain and what is gone for good. 

 I have several alpine troughs where dwarf conifers have provided height but several of those are crisp and dry and definitely dead.  Walking round the village I have noticed quite a few dead conifers.  What we think of as ‘cottage garden' plants have not fared well either.  The other day I saw what had been a magnificent delphinium with three stems of flowers totally dried up as it stood, the individual flowers had not died off nor produced seed.  Whether that plant will ‘come back’ next year is debatable but, if you have similar plants, do not disturb the roots to look for life as that will certainly kill it off this weather.  Last year I waxed lyrical about ‘novae-angliae’ Michaelmas daisies with jewel colours in early autumn; this year there won’t be any colour – the new stems are brown and frazzled.  All I can do is cut them back and wait and see. The same goes for a perennial sunflower, Helianthus ‘Lemon Queen’.  Will they recover?  It all depends on how long it is before we get enough rain to soak the ground.  The dahlias are OK but the stems are too short for cutting.

I love ferns and appreciate the fact that we don’t exactly live in the right part of the country to grow them easily or well.  In most years I have some success with ones that I’ve grown in the shade for years.  This year they are all very brown and looking as though they’ve just come through a winter rather than a summer.

Enough with all this moaning!  One plant that is just loving the heat is an Oleander (Nerium oleander) in our south-facing front garden.  It has been blooming for over 3 months and still has a way to go.   Thriving in Mediterranean and Middle Eastern gardens and roadsides, it has become huge this year especially as the winter was relatively mild and it wasn’t knocked back.  It has a carpet of dead, yellow leaves underneath but, as an evergreen, this is what evergreens do.  They lose leaves all year round not just in autumn.  This year lots of leaves have fallen because the plant  ‘knows’ exactly how many leaves it can lose to reduce water loss and how many it needs to keep to photosynthesise – high levels of light and heat = smaller leaf area necessary.  Clever things, these plants!

Perennial salvias, those with names such as Peach Cobbler, Royal Bumble, Jezebel, Hot Lips and Moonlight Glimmer have done well this year, flowering over a long period but perhaps coming to an end a little earlier than usual.  Take cuttings now of non-flowering shoots and you’ll have plants to fill in gaps next year.  They root very easily – just stick several around the edge of a pot of well-draining compost (add sand and/or grit).

If you grow root vegetable you will be aware that yields this year are low and individual items small.  As a potato is 80% water and the water just isn’t there, you can’t expect miracles.  I have been reading in the press that many growers, particularly on the east side of the country are not expecting good harvests.  ‘Cheap as chips’ will definitely not apply!

Having said all this, knowing the vagaries of British weather, next summer may well be on the chilly side and the wettest since records began.  Who knows?!

You can almost guarantee that there will be a week or so of warm, verging on hot, dry weather at the beginning of September.  As soon as school autumn term starts the weather will miraculously change into summer mode.  Children will be seen at the end of a day mostly confined indoors with several layers of winter uniform (bought to grow into!) tied around their waists,   This is not, of course, to be confused with St. Luke’s little summer which starts in the middle of October when we traditionally have a spell of unseasonably warm days – whatever ‘unseasonably’ means these days.

September is essentially a ‘preparation month’, looking ahead to winter and, indeed, to next spring. Think about planting up some pots for autumn and winter interest – pansies, heucheras and heathers will provide winter colour.  If you are planting heathers you will need ericaceous compost which, essentially contains no lime to give heathers (Erica sp) an acidic medium which they require to flourish.  John Innes ericaceous compost is soil based and much easier to water than a peat-free one.  Talking of composts, I have bought a few branded peat-free composts recently which are just dreadful – one I bought had the texture of dried lawn clippings, impossible to water and I lost the contents of a couple of summer tubs and a hanging basket before I realised how bad it was. The rest of the contents of the 2 bags I bought will be either used as a mulch (I fear it might blow away!) or dug into a flower bed.     Tip of the month:  Colin from Swines Meadow Farm nursery tells me that a drop of washing up liquid per watering can of water will help to wet peat-free compost.

I would always add a few bulbs to winter pots to give spring interest.  Bulbs are now in garden centres and catalogues but I am very sad to see that two of the small companies I have ordered from for many years have already or will be discontinuing – not because they are struggling financially but the owners simply want to retire.  ‘Miniature and Choice Bulbs’ has already been bought out by ‘Fluwel’ in Holland so you can still order BUT postage costs from Holland have put me off.  Avon Bulbs always produce wonderful, colourful catalogues of a wide range of bulbs and plants but it said in the introduction to the catalogue that it will be the last autumn catalogue  The owner has been trying to find a buyer to take over the business but, as yet, nobody has come forward.  With any luck there will be another spring catalogue with pictures of their remarkable range of snowdrops.  It is worth getting the catalogue just for the pictures.

Now is a very good time to take ‘insurance’ cuttings – those special plants not entirely hardy which you really don’t want to lose in the winter.  Pelargoniums, fuchsias, osteospermums and the salvias I talked about last month will root very quickly while it is still relatively warm.  Just make up a very open compost by adding plenty of grit and/or perlite to a standard compost.  You really don’t need hormone rooting powder or gel for these and certainly not for pelargoniums.  They don’t need it and it can cause the cutting to rot before it has even rooted.  The end of the stem of the cutting needs to callous over before roots are produced.  Don’t cover the pots with a poly bag or close the lid of a  propagator – all this does is to encourage the growth of mildew on the leaves in such a humid atmosphere and you’ll end up with a mush!  Just leave the pot somewhere out of full sun so that the cutting will not lose too much water through transpiration and wilt before roots are formed.

Now is a good time to split up clumps of border perennials to replant somewhere else (or share!) and also to fill in gaps with new plants to give autumn colour.  I know I push these every year but the ‘novae-angliae’ Michaelmas daisies give such a burst of colour in the garden at this time of year in vibrant jewel shades of pink, mauve and purple.  Just to mention a few – Alma Potschke, Barr’s Pink, Violetta and Purple Dome are all great varieties.  These New England asters have the advantage over ‘novae-belgii’ varieties, those we would know as old-fashioned Michaelmas daisies, in that they don’t become mildewed and generally have larger flowers.  Butterflies and bees enjoy them just as much!

Travelling through the Cairngorms national Park in Scotland in late August you cannot help being awestruck by the amazing scenery but what really struck me were the great swathes of colour produced by rosebay willow herb.  Heather on the hills was a dusky pink but these were stunning.  In varying shades of pink, some with silver as seeds were starting to appear.  This pernicious, invasive weed of disturbed soil, abandoned urban sites and railway embankments just looked magnificent in the vast open landscape.  It is described in Gerard’s Herbal (1597) as having ‘brave flowers of great beauty’ and it is said that one plant can produce up to 80,000 seeds!

This reminds me of a book about Yellowstone Park in the USA where, in a list of plants, there was a comment along the lines of ‘if you are lucky you may catch site of exotics such as Taraxacum officonale,’, known to you and me as dandelion!  Here, of course, ‘exotic’ has its true meaning of ‘not native’.

I am not suggesting you grow either rosebay willow herb or dandelions in your garden – that would be a disaster to friendly relations with the neighbours!  I find I am far more tolerant these days of a few ‘weeds’ here and there as food plants for insects.  I think we are all far more aware of the environment and that old-fashioned term ‘the balance of nature’.  Gone or, at least, going is the gardener’s answer to everything - ‘spray it’!    I ‘allow’ a garlic mustard aka jack-by-the-hedge plant (food plants for orange-tip butterflies) to flourish in a corner and a stinging nettle well out of the way at the back of the greenhouse.  Yes, we do have plenty of ‘countryside’ around us for these plants but I do enjoy seeing butterflies and moths in the garden.  Stinging nettles are food plants for comma, painted lady, peacock, small tortoiseshell and red admiral butterflies as well as many species of moths.  By the way, if you keep a bunch of stinging nettles in the kitchen it acts as a very good fly deterrent. As much as I dislike buddleia – I think it’s the smell – I have planted a rather elegant white variety and dwarf varieties for pots or the front of the border are now available.  Buddleia is not called the ‘butterfly bush’ for nothing!  For feeding the birds, grow a teasel plant and the very tall, stately Scotch thistle, Onopordum arabicum or acanthium, a biennial which produces between 8,000 and 40,000 seeds per plant which will feed a battalion of goldfinches!

One of the finest plants for a splash of colour and for attracting butterflies to the garden is Rudbeckia fulgida ‘Goldsturm’.  While many rudbeckias are annual or short lived perennials, this form is longer lived making a good-sized clump of vivid yellow petals and the typical nectar-rich black cone.

A good contrast to the yellow and orange flowers in the garden now – and a very unusual colour at any time of the year is the late flowering Ceratostigma.  C willmottianum produces clear blue flowers on twiggy stems growing to about 1 to 1.5metres tall while C plumbaginoides grows to only 45 cm.  Both produce stunning true blue flowers rich in nectar until the first frosts.  As the temperature drops the leaves turn red.

Now is the time to plant bulbs for spring - but not tulips yet.  Leave those until November or even early December.   You could try ‘layering’ in a large pot – Daffodils/Narcissi in first on a layer of compost, then more compost, add hyacinths, more compost and finish off with crocuses or muscari.  You can pack bulbs in as long as they are not touching.  Poke in 2 or 3 self-seeded forget-me-nots or, for scent, wallflowers.  Leave the pot outside where it will be watered naturally and there you are – another job done.

It’s definitely a bumper season for berries, whether it’s trees, garden or hedgerows.  Rowan, whitebeam, hawthorn and pyracantha are all heavily laden and sloes and blackberries are in abundance.  According to a BBC website the Woodland Trust has been recording data for blackberries for 13 years (don’t quite know how!) and 2023 has the largest harvest so far.  This really has nothing to do with our being in for a hard winter – although if we are, birds and small mammals will have plenty to feed on – but all to do with the weather earlier in spring.  There were perfect conditions for blossom in May and early June, warm enough for the plants to produce plenty of nectar for pollinators and warm enough for the pollinating insects themselves.  Then July saw plenty of rain (didn’t it just!) to plump up the fruit followed by recent warmth for ripening.  Apparently British blueberry growers have also experienced a bumper crop of very sweet fruit.  I did mention earlier small mammals having enough to feed on;  my very, very worst experience blackberrying was reaching up to pick only to find a rat going for the same berry!

As all the seed and plant catalogues have now appeared with all their associated temptations I thought it might be useful to unpick some basic horticultural terminology here.  For example, plants come with labels as annuals, biennials or perennials so it might be useful to see what this implies in terms of what you plant, in what form you plant and when you plant it. Let’s start:

Annuals are those plants which, when sown as seeds, grow, flower and produce seeds all in the same year.  For example, lettuces are annuals and will ‘go to seed’ at the end of the season.  

Hardy annuals are those we can sow directly where they are to flower – Calendula (pot marigolds), cornflowers, larkspur and love-in-a-mist all fall into this category.  These are often sowed in early Autumn as small plants will survive the winter.

Half-hardy annuals all need a bit of help in the way of warmth to get them going early enough to flower in summer in our climate.  Summer bedding such as lobelia, petunias, French and African marigolds fit in here.  If you have space to grow these from seed and a warm place to grow them on, planting seed is the cheapest way of growing these but, especially if you only need a few, you can buy plug plants either to grow on for a while or ready to plant out.

Biennials are plants which need 2 years to flower and produce seed,  Foxgloves fit in here but strange as it may seem, so do many of the plants we grow as vegetables – carrots, parsnips,  beetroot, celery, kale, cabbages, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts to name but a few.  These produce the parts of the plant we eat in the first year after sowing but, if left in the ground over winter, will all produce flowers and seed in their second year.  Sometimes these plants will ‘bolt’ ie produce flowers and seed in their first year owing to unsettled weather with late periods of cold.  There are quite a few ‘bolt-resistant’ varieties available, for instance the ‘Boltardy’ beetroot. 

Perennials are those plants which live for longer than 2 years and are all non-woody so we don’t include trees, shrubs or even bulbs in this group.  Then we have those described as herbaceous perennials where the stems and leaves die back to the ground in winter and you usually tidy away the debris.  Delphiniums, phlox, hostas and peonies are examples of herbaceous perennials.  These are the plants that are often offered as bare roots with no top growth – or very little.   Lawn grasses are perennials but not herbaceous perennials – you really wouldn’t want the lawn to die back to nothing in winter! 

October is a good time to plant shrubs or re-site any which have outgrown their allotted space or are just in the wrong place.  Bare root roses are now available to order from growers and it is a good time to plant these while the soil is still relatively warm.  I overheard a conversation the other day at a local garden centre, where a couple had been looking round the roses.  It went something like this:

Customer:  ‘Isn’t it the right time to plant roses?’

Very Helpful Gentleman Employee:  ‘Well, actually, it is a very good time to plant roses.’  

Customer:  ‘But you don’t seem to have a very good selection here.’

VHGE:  ‘The trouble is we get all our roses in one shipment in spring because most of our customers like to buy them, mainly on impulse, when they are flowering.’

I think there could be a lesson to be learned, and taught, here!

While I wasn’t looking this summer bindweed very stealthily but rapidly completely clad a 15 ft bamboo at the back of a border.  I didn’t realise this was happening until we could see the large, admittedly beautiful, white saucer flowers, so beloved by bees, from the bedroom window!  I admit I didn’t deal with it then as we were about to go on holiday.  The trouble is you cannot dig out bindweed roots especially when they are tangled up with other roots.  If you leave so much as a fraction of an inch behind in the soil this will grow and spread.  So what do you do?  I have snipped off all the stems at ground level and will wait for next spring to give you details of ‘what to do next’- I have a cunning plan!

Talking of twining, the song entitled ‘Misalliance’ by the wonderful Flanders and Swan came into my head:

“The fragrant Honeysuckle spirals clockwise to the sun,
And many other creepers do the same.
But some climb anti-clockwise; the Bindweed does, for one,
Or Convolvulus, to give her proper name.”

Actually, bindweed is not ‘Convolvulus’ but ‘Calystegia’ but that’s another issue.  However, it is true that bindweed always twines anticlockwise as do runner beans but honeysuckle twines clockwise.  Just to confuse the picture, I have read that the Chinese Wisteria sinensis twines anti-clockwise and the Japanese Wisteria floribunda grows clockwise!  These are genetic differences and cannot be changed by different growing conditions nor, as was once thought, whether it is the northern or southern hemisphere!

Fruit crops have general been amazing this year although in some cases individual fruit like apples and pears have been smaller through the lack of water during summer.  Berries are abundant in the hedgerows particularly noticeable on holly and hawthorn.  To dispel a myth here, this has nothing at all to do with ‘we’re in for a hard winter’. We may be – who knows?  What it does tell us is that we had a warm spell in spring encouraging pollinators to be out on the wing when fruit trees were in bloom and so doing what they are best at.

I will here admit my weakness for the many ‘cheap bulbs’ offers which appear every autumn from many bulb companies on the internet.  Yet again, I have ordered some magnificent new tulips which I know will only flower once and disappear into a mass of tiny bulblets after flowering which are no use at all.  It would take many years for these tiny bulblets to become big enough to produce flowers.  If your tulips do this you haven’t done anything wrong – it's just what happens to many of the new varieties and you can’t actually do anything to prevent it.  My excuse for my purchases is they are cheap and will give a lovely display in pots by the front door for a couple of weeks next spring.  Once the bulbs are planted (as deeply as possible) I shall dig up some forget-me-nots which self-seeded where I don’t want them in the garden and add them to the tulip pots.  It does, at least, make the pots look ‘lived in’ over the winter. 

If you want tulips for the garden which will come back year after year you would do well to look at some of the older varieties particularly Darwin hybrids. The variety, Apeldoorn and its offspring are pretty reliable returners but only if they are kept dry in the summer months. If the bulbs become wet they will rot.

Gardening for wildlife

“If anybody else asks me how to make a wildflower meadow I shall scream!”  So said an esteemed nurseryman recently.  This is not a task for most of us in our relatively small plots – apart from the fact it is nearly impossible to do!

But most of us want our garden to be a haven for wildlife.  We like to think of the space being attractive to bees and butterflies, hedgehogs and frogs but you can’t be picky about what wildlife you attract.  If you put out bird food you are likely to attract rats and the mice and voles which eat every crocus corm I ever plant!  Plant a buddleia to attract a variety of butterflies but how about the plants that butterflies need to lay their eggs on and to feed their caterpillars?  Nettles are breeding plants for red admiral, peacock, comma and small tortoiseshell butterflies.  Do you really want a patch of nettles in your garden?  Fortunately, we live in an area where most of our gardens are close enough to wild areas where many of the food plants naturally grow; garlic mustard (jack-by-the-hedge) and cuckoo flower (ladies’ smock) for orange tip butterflies, thistles for painted ladies.  

So what can we do – practically and easily?  Do we really have to grow native plants to attract bees and hoverflies and other pollinators?  The answer is ‘not necessarily’. There was a 4 year research project carried out by the RHS to discover whether gardens with native flowers attract more insects than those with non-natives or a mixture.  The insects did seem to prefer native flowers BUT by prolonging the season of flowers in the garden with non-native species the number of insects over a whole year increased considerably.  The published conclusion is:

“The best strategy for gardeners wanting to support pollinating insects in gardens is to plant a mix of flowering plants”

What else can we do now?    

• Leave seedheads of things like fennel, teasels, Verbena bonariensis, sunflowers and Echinacaea for house sparrows and goldfinches.

• Leave any flowering ivy as it provides nectar for late flying insects and then the berries will provide food for birds in January.  The evergreen foliage can also be shelter for birds and hibernating brimstone butterflies during the winter.

• Plant a few pots of crocuses to provide nectar for early flying insects.  If you have mice or voles put the pots high up out of their reach.  I got caught out last year – I thought a garden seat would be high enough. It wasn’t!

• Discover more single flowers you could plant – daisies of all sorts - single chrysanthemums, dahlias, cosmos, rudbeckias – all nectar rich.

• Clean and stock up bird feeders.  Then there is the question as to whether garden birds are becoming too reliant on our feeding them?  It appears not.  Research done by the BTO  (British Trust for Ornithology) has concluded that feeding garden birds is supplementary to their diet; birds will still forage and in blue tits it was found that, even though it looks as though  individuals are feeding just from feeders, what they are actually taking is only about 20% of their intake.  The RHS has a recipe for fat balls on its website which is simply 1 part lard: 2 parts dry ingredients which consist of crushed peanuts, grated cheese, bits of apple and pear and you could add dried mealworms.  Melt the lard and mix in the other ingredients.  Pack this into yoghurt pots which have a hole in the bottom through which string to hang it is threaded or half coconut shells and leave in the fridge to set.  Either remove the yoghurt pots or hang up the whole thing.  On the website it also suggests adding soaked sultanas or raisins to the mix but be careful here if you have a dog as these are poisonous to dogs – and also hedgehogs.

Just remember this:   27 million gardeners care for an area bigger than all of England’s nature reserves put together.  The more flowers a gardener can offer, the greater the number of pollinators there will be. ……… and this is only the beginning of the story of biodiversity.

We have two yew trees in our garden both fastigiate which means they are columnar in nature with  branches growing more or less parallel to the main trunk.  The one in the front garden, now almost as tall as the house, started off planted in a half barrel.  As the barrel rotted the tree became firmly rooted in the soil so it now has a ‘pretend’ barrel around it to cover the roots and soil that were in the barrel.  This tree produces copious pollen in spring, when I say copious I mean enough to coat our cars and us if we go too close when wheeling out the bins on collection day.  Hence it is a male tree so produces pollen but no berries.  The tree in the back garden, does produce berries and from late October has provided entertainment and hours of frustration to our dog as he watched through the window as the local blackbirds performed their aerial gymnastics hanging upside down eager to get to every berry.  The berries have all gone.

As I said last month, there is a bumper harvest of all sorts of berries this year.  In a local churchyard there are three old holly trees, one is a ‘normal’ prickly variety, one is variegated and the other a smooth leaved, non-prickly sort.  All are thick with berries but it is interesting that every year they are stripped well before Christmas usually following the arrival of fieldfares and redwings to assist local wood pigeons – but always in the same way, tree by tree and in the same order.  One can only imagine that the berries ripen at different times and, perhaps become sweeter in that order every year.

Although December is the darkest month it is not usually the coldest so there is still plenty you can do in the garden.  It is probably the best time to move any shrubs which are just in the ‘wrong’ place. I definitely still need to keep on top of weeds which are sprouting up by the thousand!

It’s also a good time to give herbaceous plants a mulch to give some protection against frost and excessive wet.  Those plants which are not particularly hardy such as dahlias and gingers will definitely appreciate this. Whatever you use, bark or well-rotted leaf mould or compost, don’t be mean with it – 3 inches is a good guide.

There are some lovely winter flowering shrubs and trees which will really liven up a winter garden – Mahonia ‘Charity’ and Viburnum bodnantense to mention two.  Viburnum b. in our front garden has been flowering since late October and will continue until spring and the scent fills the air.  Viburnum b. ‘Dawn’ is a vibrant pink and there are several pure white varieties, too.

A couple you might not have come across are the winter flowering Camellias, not like the blowsy, large flowering spring varieties but much more delicate, often single flowers of Camellia sasanqua which flower in November and December.  There are hundreds of varieties ranging from red to white but all need ericaceous soil so will need to be planted in a pot. Of course, this brings added difficulties if we have more summers like this year.  Another unexpected flowering climber for this time of year is Clematis cirrhosa,  an evergreen with tiny, often freckled flowers.    When I bought mine many, many years ago there was only one available form called – wait for it - Clematis cirrhosa balearica  ‘Freckles’, suggesting its origin, which has green flowers freckled with maroon. Now there are several forms readily available.  Clematis cirrhosa purpurescens ‘Freckles’ is particularly showy as the flowers appear red whilst ‘Wisley Cream’ and ‘Jingle Bells’ are cream/white and not freckled at all.

Mistletoe – nothing says love and romance more than bird poo and poison

There are reportedly over 1,500 species of parasitic plants around the world known as mistletoe.  Our native is Viscum album. Found growing mostly in the Midlands and westwards to east Wales – although I do know where mistletoe is growing in at least 3 places in Stilton – it is found growing mainly on apple, lime and poplar trees but will grow on sycamore, blackthorn, hawthorn, rowan and willow.  

I had always assumed mistletoe was given the name ‘viscum’ because its berries are very sticky – viscous, in fact.  In reality, it is quite the opposite – ‘viscum’ is the Latin term for birdlime, a sticky substance made from mistletoe berries which was (and still is, sadly, in some countries) smeared on branches of trees where small birds perched so they stuck and could be picked off by hand for food. The word ‘viscous’ also comes from this Latin root. ‘album’ simply means ‘white’ – the colour of the fruit of this species.

The word ‘mistletoe’ comes from the Old English ‘misteltan’ where ‘mistel’ refers to dung or filth and ‘tan’ to a twig.  It would then appear that the ‘tan’ bit became confused with the plural of ‘toes’ which was ‘ta’. Poor pronunciation strikes again!

The plant itself is semi-parasitic (sometimes described as hemi-parasitic meaning exactly the same).  It is green so can photosynthesise but takes water and nutrients from the host tree.  A small infestation of mistletoe does little harm to a healthy tree but if there becomes too much then the tree will die.  The whole plant is poisonous but, like many toxic plants has been used by herbalists throughout history. Mistletoe is spread by birds eating the berries and either wiping their beaks on the bark of a tree and, in effect, planting seed or by the seed being excreted on the tree, hence the ‘mistel’ part of the name.  Mistle thrushes and blackcaps are said to be the most effective at spreading mistletoe.   Mistletoe is dioecious which means it needs a male and female plant to produce berries.  It can be ‘planted’ by cutting and lifting a tiny bit of bark and slipping in a ripe berry.  In my teens I was regularly sent up the ancient apple tree, which was in the garden, by my mother at the end of January armed with a kitchen knife and a handful of berries.  It worked once but we never had berries as we only had one mistletoe plant!

I mentioned mistletoe around the world – I have seen it on trees in Australia and around the rim of the Grand Canyon.  The largest parasitic plant in the world is Western Australia’s mungee, known as the Australian Christmas tree which has bright orange flowers and can grow to 10m.  It is semi-parasitic in that its ‘haustoria’ (the part of the plant which takes water and nutrients) acts a bit like secateurs on the roots of other trees. Gaudy flowers of South American ‘mistletoes’ are pollinated by humming birds.

Mistletoe features in Norse and Germanic mythology where Baldur, son of Odin, dreamt that he was going to be killed and became so depressed and obsessed with his demise that his mother, Frigg, made all the plants and animals swear an oath they would not harm him.  Loki, the god of mischief, discovered that Frigg had not included mistletoe in the oath because it was not strong (the fact it is highly poisonous doesn’t seem to have been considered!) so Loki fashioned a spearhead out of mistletoe. He gave the spear to Hodr, Baldur’s blind brother and told him to throw it……..  Mistletoe was then placed in doorways so it would never be overlooked again and became a symbol of love and peace.

Pliny the Elder, in the 1st century AD, described the Celtic Druid ‘Ritual of the Oak and Mistletoe’ where a white-robed Druid chief would climb the tree to cut down mistletoe with a golden sickle. Mistletoe was  a symbol of peace, prosperity and fertility.  In the 13th Century Thomas the Rhymer described the ‘mistletoe oak at Errol’ in Perthshire.  Mistletoe growing on oaks is very rare so such trees were considered sacred.

There are references to mistletoe being used in houses at Christmas.  In ‘The Art of Simpling’, published in 1656 it says:  “It is carryed many miles to set up in houses about Christmas time, when it is adorned with a white glistering berry” and it would also appear to have been used in churches with other evergreens: John Gay (1685–1732) wrote in his poem The Approach of Christmas:

Christmas, the joyous period of the year!

Now with bright Holly all the temples strew,

With Laurel green, and sacred Mistletoe.  

Where kissing under the mistletoe came from is a bit of a mystery but it would appear not to have happened before 1720.  John Colbatch, an English apothecary, wrote two books ‘On the Mistletoe’ but in two long sections about its associated myths and superstitions there is no mention of kissing. What we can be sure of is that Charles Dickens was very aware of the practice as can be seen in his Pickwick Papers:

“Upon seeing the titular Mr. Pickwick lead an old woman underneath the "mystic branch" for the kissing ritual, the young and pretty girls in the room went all aflutter and "screamed and struggled, and ran into corners, and did everything but leave the room, until all at once found it useless to resist any longer and submitted to be kissed with a good grace" after which "faces were in a glow, and curls in a tangle."

Merry Christmas!