Magnolia Elizabeth

Magnolias are always a bit of a gamble in our climate;  their flowers are fried by sub-zero temperatures, but emerge long before the danger of frost has passed.   So every year we find ourselves holding our breath while they flower, in the hope that the weather remains frost free long enough for us to enjoy their display.

It’s been a good season for them this year.  They’ve been flowering in gardens around here for several weeks, and the weather has been remarkably benign.    The earliest flowerers are getting towards the end of their display without a single frost-browned petal.

And the later flowerers are hoping they’ll enjoy the same balmy conditions.

Our picture shows a newly emerged flower on one of the Magnolia Elizabeth we have on our sales area, which we’re hoping will be flowering frost-free for the next several weeks.

M. Elizabeth was introduced in 1977, and was a chance seedling from a cross between M. denudata and M. acuminata at the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens, New York.   It’s primrose yellow flowers set it apart from the more typical white and pink colourways in the magnolia family, and its slightly later flowering season gives it a better chance of avoiding frost damage.   It will grow (eventually) to maybe 30 feet tall, so it needs a bit of space – but it will be quite a spectacle in flower won’t it!

World's largest oxslip?

Other than being careful not to decapitate it with the hoe, we’ve done nothing to this oxslip (Primula elatior). We didn’t even plant it – the seed must have arrived in some compost we used to mulch under our beech hedge a few years ago. And it’s sown itself in probably the least hospitable spot in the garden (if you’re an oxslip anyway) – south facing, baking hot sun in summer, and on very poor, free draining sandy soil.

Which just goes to show how fickle plants can be – give them what the encyclopedias tell you is ideal conditions, and they should thrive – but sometimes they’ll turn conventional wisdom on its head, and thrive anyway.

The hellebores just outside our back door have eliminated any room for doubt that we’re well into the headlong charge towards spring……

Helleborus Pink Lady

Barbarea vulgaris variegata

We started growing Barbarea vulgaris ‘variegata’ this year as an ornamental groundcover plant – its attractive variegation and dense low growth make it an interesting and unusual plant for the front of a herbaceous border.   But knowing that its leaves are also edible, we added a few to our potager to see how they’d perform as a salad plant.

And so far, they’ve proved very worthwhile – we’ve had several pickings from the plants for salad leaves, and they’ve added a very striking splash of colour to the plot.   They were looking a bit tired by the autumn, so we cut them hard back, and they’ve now recovered to rosettes like the one in the photo.   We reckon we’ll get another picking or two off them before winter sets in (when we think they’ll retreat underground – some catalogues list them as herbaceous, some as evergreen!).

They are also listed as both perennial and biennial in different seed catalogues, so we’re interested to see what they do next spring – if they prove to be reliably perennial, they’ll be a very easy and worthwhile addition to the veg garden.   And if they prove to be only biennial, they’ll still be worth growing – we’ve been picking leaves since late spring so they have a good long growing season, they have a lovely peppery water cress flavour, and they look nice (in the garden and on a plate!).

Photinia Red Robin

It’s nice to be taken by surprise every now and again isn’t it?

There probably isn’t a garden centre in the country that doesn’t have Photinia ‘Red Robin’ on its sales benches;  there surely can’t be many gardens in the country that don’t have one growing somewhere can there?   It’s the most ubiquitous of shrubs – not just in domestic gardens, but in any number of amenity planting schemes in any number of car parks…

We have a couple in our garden, and most of the year they just get on with filling their space at the back of the borders. But twice a year, when there’s newly emerged red foliage on the plants they stop us in our tracks, and we’re reminded that they’re popular with good reason.

The one in the picture is right outside our front window, and as the sun sinks low on autumn afternoons, the foliage lights up beautifully.

Photinia will grow pretty much anywhere except deep shade, with no special care required. We’d recommend you prune them more than you’ll feel inclined to (”it’s a shame to cut off all that lovely foliage”) because their one fault in our opinion is their tendency to get a bit tall and sparse.  Regular light pruning will keep them compact and bushy.

Blueberry autumn foliage

We thought Blueberry bushes were quite expensive when we first started to stock them – around £11 for a decent sized specimen in a 4lt pot put them a good couple of price points above your average soft fruit bush, and we couldn’t help but worry that their price was being driven more by media superfood hype than genuine value.

How wrong we were!   We always like to trial plants in our garden if we can, and it soon became apparent that these guys were going to pay for themselves very quickly.   Blueberries are extraordinarily expensive in the shops, so you don’t need a huge crop to get a payback, but we found they paid for themselves several times over even in their first year.

The plants get quite large eventually, so we can imagine that in future years we’ll be able to pick enough to get heartily sick of them!

And if sheer weight of crop isn’t enough for you, their final flourish of autumn colour will surely pursuade you that they’re garden worthy. Ours are right outside our (east facing) kitchen window, so in recent days when the autumn sun has been shining low through their foliage, they’ve added a striking ornamemtal feature to our potager.

You need at least a neutral soil for them to crop well (our soil is dead neutral, they’d be happier if it was acid) and two or more bushes will ensure better pollination and a heavier crop than a solitary specimen.  If you’ve only got room for one, the “self-fertile” varieties will yield worthwhile pickings.   And you need to net them when the fruit is ripe or the blackbirds will get them before you do; other than that they’re an easy, productive (and good looking!) crop.

Stuffed, souped, stewed....

With a few frosts under our belts already, and the plant’s foliage frazzled, we thought we’d better get the butternut squash into storage before a serious frost did them some damage; and so this season’s haul is now safely gathered in.

This time last year we were bemoaning the dreadful yield we’d got – this year it’s rather better, and more consistent, as you can see. Water, water, water seems to be the key to success!

But worth growing?   Even with this improved yield it still seems an unreasonably space hungry crop – probably 12 square metres of garden (3 plants) to get the 27 squashes in the picture (plus 2 which were sped away to the soup pot before the camera got to them). So fine for the moment, but definitely on the “review” list when space starts to get tight.

The good news is that they store for months, and are absolutely delicious stuffed, and in soups and stews. Proper winter store cupboard veggies!

Good to look at, and to eat

This is only the second year we’ve grown peppers, but we’re starting to think that there’s potential for them to replace some of the ornamental plants that adorn patio pots and planters around the country.

The pepper in the photo is just as attractive as a Geranium isn’t it?   We think it’s rather better looking actually, but we’re not going to push our luck so early in our campaign…

Not all pepper plants look this good it has to be said – normal sweet peppers are probably best left to do their thing in the greenhouse, but these chillis look to us as if they deserve a wider audience.    Even if you don’t want to start a zero food miles chilli powder line, they’re good looking enough just to be grown as ornamental plants aren’t they?

The plant pictured is Capsicum frutescens, grown from seed sown in spring (probably a little later than it ought to have been) and photographed today. We’ll leave it to grow until it looks as if the frosts are going to see it off, then we’ll pick the fruits, dry them, and have our very own home grown chilli powder! And judging by the number of fruits on this plant (we also have 2 others) we’ll be supplying the neighbourhood too.

Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’

They don’t call it Autumn Joy for nothing – well, actually, it doesn’t seem to be called Autumn Joy at all any more, it’s just us old fashioned pair who are hanging on to the name we’ve always known it by;  according to those august folk at the RHS the preferred name is Sedum ‘Herbstfreude’.   But don’t get us started on plant name changes….

Autumn Joy, surely?

We’ve always known this as S. ‘Autumn Joy’ and the picture, taken on the nursery this afternoon, shows why it got its name. 

It’s not unusual, in fact it’s dead common – it’s used extensively in amenity planting schemes in Holland (and increasingly here in the UK) – but it’s no less garden worthy for that;  it’s a dead simple, does-what-it-says-on-the-tin border perennial.   And mostly what it says on the tin is “looks fantastic in October”.   With a sub-clause saying “lovely clumps of glaucous leaves through spring and summer”.

It’s got the RHS Award of Garden Merit, meaning it’s an all round general good do-er in the garden, and needs no particular attention or care (except for the Chelsea Chop in late May). It needs a reasonably sunny spot, is very drought tolerant, and is happy in pretty much any soil (except very wet).

If you’ve got a spot in the garden needing a bit of autumn cheer, this here’s the fella.

With the equinox passed, the evenings drawing in to the point where after-tea gardening is nearly impractical, and some distinctly autumnal numbers showing up on the overnight temperature charts, the gardening year is almost done.

Except, of course, for mother nature’s last hurrah….while most of our trees are still clad in their summer green finery, the early-adopters are out there strutting their autumn season colours, tantalising us with tasters of the glories to come :

First out of the blocks, Koelreuteria paniculata

....followed closely by Rhus typhinia disecta....

....and his slightly more restrained cousin, Rhus typhinia....

....while Quercus rubra is starting to live up to it's name....

....and Acer ginnala puts down a marker for the rest of his family (who are still waiting in the wings)....

It’s rained and rained and rained today, but tomorrow it’s forecast to be fine and sunny….and the trees are going to look absolutely glorious!