A turf professional told me that a springtime sowing would fail and that I was horticulturally unsound
Gardens have had a great year. All I want for 2016 is 2015 with a slight alteration to the weeks from early July until mid-August. Last year was mild and wet, frost-free and benign. Conventional seasons accelerated and became blurred at the edges. For most of the summer there was a heavenly alternation between bouts of sunshine and intervals of cloud. Under monotonous sunlight our gardens glare back at us. When the light is broken and intermittent, they look their best even at 2pm. And in late August mine looked wonderful in 2015.
Throughout the year, flowering times were chaotic. Spring bulbs flowered in February before spring had fully begun. In Oxford, I try to plan tulips for the beginning of the summer term in late April. In 2015 even the late-flowering tulips were over by the third week of April. Readers sent in pictures of their fine climbing roses behaving as if London was Madrid and flowering long before Chelsea Flower Show in mid-May. The usual problem in an early spring is that frosts move in at night-time and brown every flower on a premature magnolia. Last year, trees of Magnolia soulangeana were flowering by mid-March but evening clouds kept the frosts away. I have never seen London gardens look more beautiful than in March to mid-April 2015, especially where good camellias were keeping company with pure white magnolias and pale pink prunus.
April saw my reputation at risk to grass seed. After two years of ruination by building works, my Oxford college cleared out the debris and concrete platforms and needed 3,500 square metres of new lawn to replace them. Managerially minded colleagues wanted instant turf. A young turf professional from the Midlands brought samples of top-class turf from Worcester and regretted that the laying could not be guaranteed against cracks and lumps for longer than six months. Modern rolls of turf have far less depth of soil and roots on them than 40 years ago and I do not trust them in prolonged drought. Quality, flexibility and, above all, cost made seeding my firmly considered decision. It became even more firm when the turf professional told me that a springtime sowing would fail and I was horticulturally unsound. The seed, he believed, would be eaten by pigeons.
If you need a new lawn, sow it, don’t turf it. In a year like 2015, sowing worked in the last week of April, but I admit that a fortnight earlier would have been less risky. Otherwise, sow in late September. Whatever 2016 may throw at us, we enter it with a well-rooted, crack-free surface on which I would be happy to give Kate Winslet a masterclass.
From lawns my attention turned to annuals. The transitional bedding week in late May is a stressful time, but it stayed cool and gave newly planted annuals time to settle in. Two of my successes then flowered in congenial, I promise, shades of orange. Calendula Neon is a double-flowered pot marigold with a dark orange centre to its pretty flowers, while Tagetes Paprika is a superb single-flowered mini-French marigold with flowers of crimson-orange in profusion. Both would be admirable choices for readers with expatriate summer homes.
In mid-December I had new daffodils in flower in the chilly Cotswolds, heads of flower on springtime’s polyantms, mahonias and green-white fatsias have been exceptional. Only six more weeks or so to go, and I will probably be seeing tulips. Thank you, Mother Nature.hus and masses of pink-white flower on the hardy Hebe Nicola’s Blush. Lemon-yellow-flowered Coronilla glauca Citrina is already having a flowery ball.
Viburnu
Gardens have had a great year. All I want for 2016 is 2015 with a slight alteration to the weeks from early July until mid-August. Last year was mild and wet, frost-free and benign. Conventional seasons accelerated and became blurred at the edges. For most of the summer there was a heavenly alternation between bouts of sunshine and intervals of cloud. Under monotonous sunlight our gardens glare back at us. When the light is broken and intermittent, they look their best even at 2pm. And in late August mine looked wonderful in 2015.
Throughout the year, flowering times were chaotic. Spring bulbs flowered in February before spring had fully begun. In Oxford, I try to plan tulips for the beginning of the summer term in late April. In 2015 even the late-flowering tulips were over by the third week of April. Readers sent in pictures of their fine climbing roses behaving as if London was Madrid and flowering long before Chelsea Flower Show in mid-May. The usual problem in an early spring is that frosts move in at night-time and brown every flower on a premature magnolia. Last year, trees of Magnolia soulangeana were flowering by mid-March but evening clouds kept the frosts away. I have never seen London gardens look more beautiful than in March to mid-April 2015, especially where good camellias were keeping company with pure white magnolias and pale pink prunus.
April saw my reputation at risk to grass seed. After two years of ruination by building works, my Oxford college cleared out the debris and concrete platforms and needed 3,500 square metres of new lawn to replace them. Managerially minded colleagues wanted instant turf. A young turf professional from the Midlands brought samples of top-class turf from Worcester and regretted that the laying could not be guaranteed against cracks and lumps for longer than six months. Modern rolls of turf have far less depth of soil and roots on them than 40 years ago and I do not trust them in prolonged drought. Quality, flexibility and, above all, cost made seeding my firmly considered decision. It became even more firm when the turf professional told me that a springtime sowing would fail and I was horticulturally unsound. The seed, he believed, would be eaten by pigeons.
We opted for lawn seed coated with a seaweed-based fertiliser. A few fat pigeons waddled over the sown areas, like stately professors in my youth. There was no need for the Tom Lehrer recipe of peanuts coated in
cyanide. The seaweed coating was sufficiently unpalatable and the volume of seed was too much for them anyway. We had flattened the soil down before sowing by running over it with a rubber-tyred JCB. Lawn seed should not be sown on to the scuffled sort of tilth which suits hardy annuals and vegetables. We added a pre-seeding fertiliser, worth every penny, and finished the job on April 25.
That week, the Oxford cinemas were showing the shortlived film, A Little Chaos, starring Kate Winslet as a figure unknown to history, a female gardener who rose to prominence at Versailles and became the lover and adviser of the great landscaper Andre Le Notre. Winslet, too, sowed a new lawn but, unlike mine, her female rivals tried to flood it. When King Louis XIV came to visit, he looked across the sodden mess and declared: “I see mud, only mud.” By May 8, when the film closed in Oxford, I was seeing green, only green. The coated seed and fertiliser had responded to some welcome rain and led to a swath of grass shoots. Proponents of turf fell silent. By July we had a far better lawn than before, so thick and spongy that even Australia’s star fast bowler, Mitchell Johnson, would not have got a ball to bounce on it above knee height. In late August the annual weeds were weed-killed. The summer school students declined to sunbathe on the new turf. When I asked them why, they replied: “Out of respect.”
cyanide. The seaweed coating was sufficiently unpalatable and the volume of seed was too much for them anyway. We had flattened the soil down before sowing by running over it with a rubber-tyred JCB. Lawn seed should not be sown on to the scuffled sort of tilth which suits hardy annuals and vegetables. We added a pre-seeding fertiliser, worth every penny, and finished the job on April 25.
That week, the Oxford cinemas were showing the shortlived film, A Little Chaos, starring Kate Winslet as a figure unknown to history, a female gardener who rose to prominence at Versailles and became the lover and adviser of the great landscaper Andre Le Notre. Winslet, too, sowed a new lawn but, unlike mine, her female rivals tried to flood it. When King Louis XIV came to visit, he looked across the sodden mess and declared: “I see mud, only mud.” By May 8, when the film closed in Oxford, I was seeing green, only green. The coated seed and fertiliser had responded to some welcome rain and led to a swath of grass shoots. Proponents of turf fell silent. By July we had a far better lawn than before, so thick and spongy that even Australia’s star fast bowler, Mitchell Johnson, would not have got a ball to bounce on it above knee height. In late August the annual weeds were weed-killed. The summer school students declined to sunbathe on the new turf. When I asked them why, they replied: “Out of respect.”
If you need a new lawn, sow it, don’t turf it. In a year like 2015, sowing worked in the last week of April, but I admit that a fortnight earlier would have been less risky. Otherwise, sow in late September. Whatever 2016 may throw at us, we enter it with a well-rooted, crack-free surface on which I would be happy to give Kate Winslet a masterclass.
From lawns my attention turned to annuals. The transitional bedding week in late May is a stressful time, but it stayed cool and gave newly planted annuals time to settle in. Two of my successes then flowered in congenial, I promise, shades of orange. Calendula Neon is a double-flowered pot marigold with a dark orange centre to its pretty flowers, while Tagetes Paprika is a superb single-flowered mini-French marigold with flowers of crimson-orange in profusion. Both would be admirable choices for readers with expatriate summer homes.
For six weeks until mid-August dry weather reminded us all how lucky we had been. Even so, I had winners among the recent forms of well-known summer-flowering perennials, new crocosmias being especially good and new forms of hardy agapanthus doing all that was claimed in the catalogue. For weeks in July I enjoyed the long-flowering, pink-orange Crocosmia Limpopo beside navy blue Agapanthus Jack’s Blue. These families are ones in which breeders and nurserymen have made great advances and in 2016 we
are well advised to keep up with the longer-flowering results.
In July and August I enjoyed two visits to the new double borders at the Hillier gardens in Hampshire, a fine example of thoughtful mixed borders at their best. Now that the lawn is solved, I am tempted by their clever use of well-fed mixed clematises on hidden metal frames. They give the entire length of the borders a tall mass of flowers where I would have used rust-prone hollyhocks, a shorter-flowering option. These recent borders are a riposte to the self-styled “new millennials” who write as if the only way to use perennials nowadays is in great sweeps, or “matrices”, of open ground. The traditional long British border is far from dead.
©Andrea Jones Images/Alamy
Since late September what can I do except smile in wonder? Flower gardens lasted into early November, rewarding those of us who had taken 2014’s hint and planted more for late autumn.
The British apple crop was superb as the blossom had not been troubled by frost in May. Likewise, fruits on every ornamental crab apple have been prolific. Malus Red Sentinel and the indefatigable Malus Evereste have been heavy with fruits until the new year, matched by great crops of berries on shrubby cotoneasters.
are well advised to keep up with the longer-flowering results.
In July and August I enjoyed two visits to the new double borders at the Hillier gardens in Hampshire, a fine example of thoughtful mixed borders at their best. Now that the lawn is solved, I am tempted by their clever use of well-fed mixed clematises on hidden metal frames. They give the entire length of the borders a tall mass of flowers where I would have used rust-prone hollyhocks, a shorter-flowering option. These recent borders are a riposte to the self-styled “new millennials” who write as if the only way to use perennials nowadays is in great sweeps, or “matrices”, of open ground. The traditional long British border is far from dead.
©Andrea Jones Images/Alamy
Since late September what can I do except smile in wonder? Flower gardens lasted into early November, rewarding those of us who had taken 2014’s hint and planted more for late autumn.
The British apple crop was superb as the blossom had not been troubled by frost in May. Likewise, fruits on every ornamental crab apple have been prolific. Malus Red Sentinel and the indefatigable Malus Evereste have been heavy with fruits until the new year, matched by great crops of berries on shrubby cotoneasters.
In mid-December I had new daffodils in flower in the chilly Cotswolds, heads of flower on springtime’s polyantms, mahonias and green-white fatsias have been exceptional. Only six more weeks or so to go, and I will probably be seeing tulips. Thank you, Mother Nature.hus and masses of pink-white flower on the hardy Hebe Nicola’s Blush. Lemon-yellow-flowered Coronilla glauca Citrina is already having a flowery ball.
Viburnu
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