Eccentrics

Really this is the kind of post you’d expect in the dead of winter when there is little gardening to be done, but when you see a bargain, you’ve got to go for it. My wife saw a couple of books in a local charity shop, bought one for me and I had to go back later to get hold of the other. First there’s my most abiding inspiration, a book i’ve borrowed from the library many a time:

There are lots of things I like about this book. Famously, Christopher Lloyd tore the roses out of the rose garden at his home, Great Dixter, and planted something that amounted to a slap in the face instead. I like to think that he knew he was being a bit naughty, growing all these exotic, attention seeking plants together en masse.

The other book combines two of my favourite things: exotic plants and tales of Edwardian derring-do along the lines of Palin and Jones’ Ripping Yarns.

To me, this sort of thing is inevitably humourous. There are the obligatory crates of champagne being carried through the steaming jungles of Burma by an army of hired labour.

The medical comforts included a case of non-vintage champagne and two cases of Jamaica rum

The ‘natives’ are stereotyped as either savage warriors or placid, docile hired help.

These Hkanungs are a simple and pleasant folk, rather timid, short and sturdy and gifted with great staying power. This is probably due to practice from childhood in lifting heavy weights

One wonders if Ikea do a bookcase called Hkanung. If so, perhaps Mr. Ward would have trouble distinguishing the tribe from the furniture.

Of course, conservation is not in these chaps’ lexicon. Mr. Ward, the plant hunter, is accompanied by a character called Cranbrook whose sole character trait seems to be a mania for shooting things.

Ba Kai trapped some mice, and Cranbrook shot a chicken

Cranbrook had shot a squirrel

Cranbrook went out shooting every day

One day I surprised five jungle fowl. I sent back news of this flock to Cranbrook, who came back in time to bag one

Cranbrook was as successful among birds and beasts as I was among the flowers. He trapped rats and shrews and shot a red-headed trogon

Bless him, blazing away at all and sundry. I once heard it said that for someone to be a true English eccentric, he or she must think themselves extremely normal. There’s plenty of mileage in that, i’d say.

The large dry bed – getting ready for the season

There was supposed to be a blue theme to this bed, but it’s gone to pot a bit. Mingling succulents and grasses works well though, I feel.

This agave is the largest I have. It suffers from a fungal infection, like most of them. Hence the spots. Not sure what I can do about that, except move somewhere drier. The soil in the pot was pretty much bone dry when I took it out, which must have helped it. I should use hydroleca or perlite instead of grit in the pots, as grit makes them incredibly heavy.

I moved a few things about, this euphorbia included. Happily it didn’t mind being moved from the desert, which it had outgrown, and is now in full flower. Not everything liked being moved: I now have a dead grevillea on my hands. The Montezuma pine hasn’t produced any signs of new growth yet. A long Winter has seen to that.

The ‘sheepkiller’, Puya berteroniana. This is one of three i’ve grown from seed. Putting your hand into that rosette would be easy. Getting it out again would involve PAIN.

The Crown Imperials, Fritillaria imperialis. These are in no way blue, or even arid looking, but I am loath to disturb them. They have a hard enough life as it is.

The bed as a whole. See that wall? One of these days you won’t be able to see it for a sea of foliage. The banana overwintered very well in the garage with no light, no heat, no water, just a sheet of bubble wrap wrapped around it.

Grasses and agave, beautiful see? This look reminds me how much inspiration I get from following American arid gardeners. “Plagiarism is the most sincere form of flattery.” – Oscar Wilde. The green, green grass in the foreground is Deschampsia flexuosa ‘Tatra Gold’, which is perfectly hardy with me. Not many of my favoured plants are. The tassels belong to Helictotrichon sempervirens, Blue Oat Grass.

This agave still suffers from my misguided attempt at propagation – I chopped off too many of it’s offsets and left the mother plant with too few roots. It’s since shrunk and suffers worse than the others with the fungal infection blighting the leaves.

I still have plenty of smaller elements to add – fifteen black aeoniums, a half dozen blue Senecio mandraliscae, ten baby agaves, cuttings of Lotus berthelotii, some echeverias, some chocolate coloured aloes, so on and so forth. I was stocking up on Echeveria glauca, the colour is so good, but Winter wet killed a dozen of them. I’ll wait a little longer before I risk them outside in the open. The nights are still cool and the ground is still cold after the Spring we haven’t had, though there’s no frost forecast for the foreseeable future. This the best time of the year to garden – deciding where things go afresh, buying in new things. Readers in temperate climates, I hope you are enjoying re-installing tender things outside and reclaiming your garden from the Winter. I love doing this!

The Desert’s Planted Out

As it says . . .

What is it they say in the acting profession? Never work with animals or children? Reuben helped by whacking Agave parryi with a shovel, while Arthurius decided lots of spiky things would be good to sit on. The scarring on the tall columnar cactus, psychotropic Trichocereus bridgesii, is due to last Summer’s wet weather. The Aloe striatula would be a lot taller, but again the rain rotted the main stem. But it’s ok folks, now we have a ROOF. I’m very pleased with it.

This year’s growing season is getting into its stride.

Symbiosis

I found this when looking through Feuilleton, a favourite blog of mine. In my imagination, the philodendron and dress speak to each other of an other-worldly glamour. You might call it a kind of symbiosis.

The model is Tilda Swinton.

True facts

1) We all know that over-wintered tender plants look sad this time of year. But enjoy them! They will look a lot sadder and smaller once you’ve planted them in that waiting expanse of bare soil out there.

2) So your children snapped off a flower that you’d been waiting four years to see again. Never mind, who’d have known your five year old son had a latent talent for flower arranging?

3) That plant you want isn’t expensive. As I say to my customers, “with the use you will get out of it, it’s a bargain.” So, just keep on staring at that plant. After a while it will start to seem cheap.

Another Garden

There’s one more thing left from the weekend to post about. It’s a garden on a steep, south-west facing slope overlooking the sea. There’s not much soil above the limestone bedrock it sits on. It’s my Mum’s place. The larger plants were there before she moved in, in amongst a sea of wild garlic (Allium ursinum). The garlic has been weeded out now.
Starting at the bottom of the slope, working up, here’s a nice coral-bark maple, Acer palmatum ‘Sango-Kaku’ and some big variegated phormiums

Phormiums again, looking up at the house. These survived the recent bad winters just fine. The slope and its orientation help a good deal.

The euphorbias are a bit ahead of mine.

A well established Yucca gloriosa, (Spanish Dagger). The original landscaping makes a nod towards the Mediterranean.

The view from the house over Morecambe Bay is lovely, and ever-changing. That bare tree in the neighbour’s garden is a Catalpa.

This patio is new. The colocasia is gifted from me. It’s in better shape than mine, I like to imagine that is down to me having a dozen competing for my attention.

Though we differ in our taste in plants, we do overlap at times. This group includes Embothrium coccineum and Crinodendron hookerianum, and what looks like a typically colourful selection of Sorbus

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Today was a good day. I’ve toasted some soil by way of sterilising it, and sown Asphodeline lutea, Cassia alata and Datisca cannabina.

I panicked a bit when Reuben, who’s two, disappeared only for me to realise that he’d pushed his way through the brambles (he’s that kind of child) into next door’s garden. Our neighbour and I cut them away so our children could play together. Now, Gianni’s kids aren’t used to either spiky or delicate plants so I was a bit concerned when his eldest wandered into the greenhouse, but he just looked around in wonder and said “there are lots of beautiful things in here” bless

In which I become an artist

Putting my sales assistant head on, I could point out the many features and benefits of Echium pininana. Unfortunately none of them involve the flowers, which are as rare as hen’s teeth here. But still, think of the following-
*It has nice big leaves, looking good in the garden
*When the climate here inevitably wipes them out in January, you can dig them up, snap the roots and marvel at the turquoise ooze that comes out
*Or leave them in the ground. The growing point will be stone dead, but the stem remains green for a while, so strip the (now crispy) leaves off and impress young children with “Green Alien Fingers”
*Dig up the remains, leave for a couple of years to bleach in the sun so they look like pieces of driftwood, stick them upside down and you’ve got garden art
*Wave the above remains about, pretending you are Gandalf
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The flowering aloe is coming on well. It’s by far my favourite thing in the garden at the moment. Also, I have an I.D. for it: Aloe x spinosissima