Geranium pyrenaicum Bill Wallis - a charming thug

Cleve West included it in his Gold Medal, Best in Show garden at Chelsea this year;  he mentioned this in the BBC’s Chelsea show coverage on Sunday, so we weren’t surprised to see a spike in internet searches for it over the last couple of days.   People want to grow it!

But beware!  It’s a plant with world domination in its heart.  It wants to spread.  It’s fecund with a vengeance.

Think Dandelion. Hairy Bittercress. Welsh Poppy. They’re not in the same league. Geranium Bill Wallis seeds like its life depends on it*.  Everywhere.

We liked it enough to put 3 plants in our herbaceous border a few years ago.   When we realised that those 3 had multiplied to a couple of hundred the next year, we pulled them all out and consigned them to the compost heap.   The next year we pulled out a few hundred more.   This spring we pulled out another 40-50.

And they don’t let go easily.   They have tough, deep roots that hang on tight;  in our sandy soil they do at least let go, in heavier soil they’d be a nightmare.

Even now we have Geranium ‘Bill Wallis’ on the nursery – not in pots of course, but in gravel paths, cracks between the paving, the tiniest crevices in the mypex;  and typically, hundreds of yards from where any of the parent plants were ever sited.

So grow it at your own risk.   If you have  a tough area (under a hedge perhaps) and want rampant ground cover, G. ‘Bill Wallis’ is the boy.   But if you have a “normal” garden, and would like to maintain anything approaching a degree of control over it, give this fella a wide berth.

*Actually it’s life does seem to depend it;  although it’s always described as perennial, we don’t find it to be reliably so.

Sungold – orange, cherry sized. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s favourite tomato!
Floridity F1 – red, mini plum. RHS/Raymond Blanc taste test winners
Roma – full size, red Italian plum. Bland raw, but spectacular when cooked
Sun Belle – yellow, mini plum, very firm flesh, very sweet
Gardeners Delight – medium size, red, long-time growers favourite
Tumbling Tom yellow – trailing, yellow, cherry (for hanging baskets or tubs) sweet, and prolific

Salad days

Then we agonised through several weeks of post-prune angst as we contemplated a trio of distinctly lifeless looking stumps.

And finally this week, just as the books told us it would happen, there’s life:

New beginnings...

All those dormant buds that had been quietly biding their time under the bark got the signal to grow, and now we have the prospect of a positive forest of new shoots.

How tall will they grow? Will we get any sort of weather to give them a chance? Will our little Salix once again fool visitors into thinking we have a triffid bamboo in the garden?

Watch this space!

But every now and again its nice to be able to rest your eyes on something a bit more subtle – so we also grow Geum Lemon Drops, just to remind ourselves that not all Geums are LOUD!

On the sales bench....

It forms a low and dense mat of foliage; the flowers, a soft primrose yellow, stand maybe 6 inches above the leaves

..up close...

Its the sort of plant you need to spend time with, preferably up close and personal, so you can appreciate its subtle charms

...and closer still

If you get really close, you can enjoy the delicate detailing inside the flowers!

Geum Lemon Drops prefers a reasonably moist soil (although it seems to thrive in our very free draining sand) and likes a bit of sun. Other than that, it requires no special care, and is pretty much trouble free.

* Geum ‘Prinses Juliana’ is a dutch hybrid, and hence retains the dutch spelling of its name.

If all the flowers turn to cherries, it’s going to be a stonking year!

Pure white blossom, for deep red cherries

Cornflower - common for a reason!

It’s pretty much indestructible, grows to an imposing clump if it’s happy, and will spread seed generously too (though we wouldn’t describe it as invasive). No self respecting cottage gardener should be without (at least) one!

Berberis Rosy Glow and Sorbaria sorbifolia 'Sem'

These are both “specimen” size plants (pot sizes 5 – 10 lts) pictured in our shade tunnel earlier this week.

We also have stocks in smaller pots (usually 3lts).

Dicentra spectabilis in our shade tunnel today

They’re cracking plants, in 3lt deep pots; they’re happy in full sun or part shade, in pretty much any reasonably moist soil, except really heavy clay. They’ll be about 60 cms tall at full height, and will look after themselves in the garden for years. Easy, but spectacular!

At least it was dry – the wind was still strong and gusty, so we spent some time waiting for a moment of calm before we could get a picture.

Against the odds...

The weather today has been every bit as wet and windy as it was forecast to be, but there’s always a silver lining – the environment agency graph showing the water level in our aquifer now has a tiny upward kink! Small mercies!

Having wondered at the judgement of the Goldfinches nesting in our beech hedge, we should perhaps have been less surprised when we were watering one of our parent plants and a Robin emerged, somewhat flustered, from within the foliage.

But we were surprised – when you’re minding your own business, pointing a watering wand into a plant, you don’t want to find yourself re-enacting a scene from The Birds, even if the bird in question is only a Robin.

This is a Penstemon parent plant - it is not a nesting site

So we put the hose down, and found we’d just watered a Robin (obviously) her nest, and her clutch of eggs.

Tiny eggs, but six of them, must have been a real effort for a bird that isn't much bigger than a golf ball

It’s difficult to imagine that there’s much chance of this clutch of eggs being lucky enough to get to fledging, but we didn’t want to be responsible for their demise, so we left the scene as promptly as we could, and checked back later….

The mother returned to her nest after her soaking - but she does look a bit cross doesn't she?

All we have to do now is devise a means of watering the plant next time without drenching the nest or spooking the bird…