Edinburgh & Lothians Greenspace Trust has been helping Pilton Equalities Project to create a new Health & Wellbeing community garden at their West Pilton base, and the new garden is getting into good shape after a series of planting and growing sessions. Continue reading PEP community garden takes shape for summer
A fabulous winter bloomer…
Continue reading Garden plant of the month: Erica
We have long known the Spruce is the most popular Christmas tree. With its fine, slightly prickly needles it takes pride of place in many a living room. But the Spruce is also a popular evergreen conifer in the garden. Its attractive shape means that the Garden Plant of the Month for December can shape the whole look of the garden combined with other shrubs and conifers.
From big to small!
The Spruce (Picea) is a hardy needle conifer that ranges in size from 50cm up to 50m. For those that produce cones, these will hang at the ends of the branches. This garden plant is often supplied without roots, and therefore needs to be placed on a wooden cross or metal stand. Increasingly we are seeing Christmas trees with rootballs and even miniature Spruces with an attractive conical form – Picea glauca ‘Conica’. The decorative value is determined by the arrangement of the branches bearing the needles (actually the leaves) and the tree’s shape. By placing the spruce in water, you can help prevent needle shed. The Spruce definitely shapes the look of a garden so it’s a good idea to plant a solitary tree which has room to grow.
Caring for the Spruce
Follow a couple of simple tips to keep the Spruce healthy and looking its best. Plant in a damp, moderately nutrient-rich, somewhat acidic soil – the Spruce can tolerate both shade and full sun.
Replanting a Spruce with roots in the garden requires some care. When buying the Spruce, check that there is a sufficiently large rootball at the bottom of the tree, and preferably place the tree on a Christmas tree stand containing water and shrub food. Because the plants have been standing indoors in the warmth for three weeks, the transition outdoors is not always easy. A frost-free period is therefore important in order to allow the plant to root properly in the garden. Caring for miniature Christmas trees in the home is often much easier as long as you water the plant regularly and place it in a light spot. The cooler the spot, the longer the plant will continue to flourish.
Spruce pruning tips
With most Spruces, particularly the dwarf varieties, there’s no need to prune. If a larger Spruce is getting too big or too bare, prune the plant ideally in spring (April, May). Use ordinary hedge clippers for this and snip a few centimetres off the ends of the branches. This will keep the shape nicely symmetrical and bulk out the spindles.
More information about Spruce and other garden plants can be found at Thejoyofplants.co.uk.
Young entrants to Edinburgh’s Green Pencil Award were immersed in their subject matter at the launch of the annual writing competition yesterday. Preston Street Primary School pupils explored the competition’s theme, Scotland’s Glorious Gardens, during a visit to Princes Street Gardens. Continue reading Children’s writing competition: green fingers required!
There are few plants that attract butterflies like the Butterfly Bush (Buddleia). With its long plumes of flowers in fabulous colours, the Butterfly Bush is a real treasure in the garden. This garden plant also blooms up until early autumn, so keeps the garden looking colourful for longer.
A fantastic display of colour on and around the plant
The Butterfly Bush or Buddleia is an eye-catching deciduous shrub that flowers from July to October. The range of Butterfly Bushes is extensive, with fascinating colours in white, blue, pink or lilac. The size of the flowers range from 10 to 30cm, whilst the height varies from 0.50cm to over 4m! It’s handy to know this before planting in the garden.
One thing that all varieties have in common is that – as the name suggests – they all attract colourful butterflies, which are drawn by the flowers’ honey fragrance. Who doesn’t want butterflies in their garden? It provides the ultimate ‘garden feeling’ for both adults and children. Butterfly Bushes can be planted either in the soil or in pots and containers.
Care
A couple of simple tips will keep the Butterfly Bush healthy and beautiful:
Pruning tips
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Essential: Wintergreen’s a seasonal favourite Continue reading November plant of the month: Wintergreen
More than a green leaf
The bay laurel, “laurus noblis”, is also commonly known as a bay tree, sweet bay, true laurel and Grecian laurel. It is a superbly fragrant evergreen tree/shrub that originates in the Mediterranean region and its glossy green leaves can be clipped into stunning shapes to add dignity to your doorsteps and panache to your patios. The bay tree is also incredibly easy to grow and October is the ideal month to give it a place in your garden which is why the bay tree is Thejoyofplants.co.uk‘s Garden Plant of the Month of October.
Leaf, flower and berry
Glossy green, stately shape: Laurus nobilis lives up to its name. The strongest feature of the bay tree is its dark green, pointed oval leaves. In May, it produces cream-coloured flowers and in autumn it produces glossy black oval fruit. If you leave the bay tree to its own devices, it can grow up to 40 metres tall and will look strong and ruggedly beautiful, however it is more commonly used in topiary and can be clipped into a variety of wonderful shapes.
Flavour
The bay leaf adds extra flavour to many different dishes such as goulashes, stews, soups, casseroles, marinades and pickling juices and is also a great addition to a Bloody Mary!
Interesting Facts
Historically, the bay tree has been used as both an antiseptic and a digestive and it has also been placed in food jars to deter weevils.
Mice are not bay tree fans so scatter bay leaves in your pantry to deter these furry visitors from your home.
Oil from bay leaves is used in massage products to relieve arthritis and rheumatism and in aromatherapy to treat high blood pressure and earache.
The laurel symbolises high status, prosperity and fame and in Christianity it also symbolised the resurrection of Christ.
Easy
You do not require green fingers to grow the bay tree – indeed, under ideal conditions, it can live for as long as a hundred years. The bay will thrive in containers, particularly if it is watered regularly and placed in a sheltered, sunny or partially shaded position. Feed your plants every two weeks during May and June and ideally re-pot every two years in the spring. Bay trees can withstand cold temperatures but frosts and extreme cold will damage them so they should be covered when the mercury drops or put in your garage or any other frost-free outbuilding.
Here’s to the Hebe
Fancy giving your summer garden or terrace a boost? The Hebe is definitely the plant for you as it will introduce some sensational colour back into your garden. The Hebe, named after the Greek Goddess of Youth who served nectar and ambrosia to the gods, is deliciously versatile and is also incredibly popular, with gardeners and butterflies alike!
For this reason, Thejoyofplants.co.uk Garden Plant for the Month of August is the Hebe.
Cheerful butterflies
The Hebe is the ideal candidate to cover any dull spots in your summer garden and it will replace them with some much needed colour and vitality. The Hebe’s heavenly blooms will also keep your garden looking richer all the way through the summer months and well into October, enticing butterflies from far and wide to sample their stunning array of nectar filled flowers.
Plant with effect
The evergreen Hebe has numerous different species and their wide range of colourful flowers and decorative leaves will all add a great atmosphere and vivacity to your garden. You can create all kinds of interesting looks with Hebes – Why don’t you combine some white-flowered, shiny leaved Hebes with some paniculata hydrangeas in metallic containers to give that expensive, luxurious feel to your garden, or, if you would prefer to go for the untamed, wild effect, try planting a mixture of blue, violet and deep green Hebes into a variety of wooden pots and weathered containers.
Stay Green
Hebes are wonderfully easy to grow and maintain and they will thrive in most soil types. Their supreme versatility means that they can be planted almost anywhere, in containers, borders, and rockeries, and they will also grow in both sunny and shady areas. But most importantly of all, the enchanting evergreen Hebe will create interest and colour in your garden all year round.
Caerhays Castle project shows the virtue of patience
Planning is often a thorny issue. Planning applications, large and small, are often high on the agenda of community councils across the country and many community groups bemoan the pace of change when dealing with planning issues.
Locally, both the Friends of Granton Castle Walled Garden and Granton Improvement Society have recently been critical of how long it takes to get decisions made and that’s particularly frustrating when you are eager to get to work to improve your environment.
Patience is certainly required when dealing with bureaucracy – a quality, incidentally, gardeners have in abundance – and sometimes good things come to those who wait. I saw this good news story from faraway Cornwall and immediately thought of our local groups:
A fifteen year restoration project is finally reaching completion at Caerhays Castle.
A new collection of wild-collected Rhododendrons, originating from the same species of Chinese seed that was first collected by plant hunters Ernest Wilson and George Forrest,has just been planted on the estate as the culmination of a 15 year project to restore the Caerhays Rhododendron Collection to its former glory.
The new planting setting out to replace many of the original Caerhays Rhododendrons which were lost when they matured and began dying out in the 1960’s.
The life span of taller growing Rhododendron species is a maximum of 60-80 years with smaller growing species dying in a much shorter timescale. Caerhays historic Rhododendrons dated back to 1905 when seed from China was brought over from plant hunting expeditions, so plants were not easily replaced.
The solution to the decline of Rhododendrons in the gardens was to go back to China to re-obtain wild collected seeds from the species which had died out. So in 1999 Caerhays started contributing to Alan Clark’s field trips to Yunnan, Sichuan, North Vietnam and North India in return for a selection of his wild collected Rhododendron seed.
After Clark’s successful trips, a selection of seed lists was drawn up to try to reintroduce the specific species of Rhododendrons known to have been lost since the 1960s. By 2013 vanloads of young Rhododendron species (three of most species) arrived at Caerhays and were grown on and nurtured in nursery beds at the castle until ready for planting.
The woodland garden was extensively cleared and in spring 2015 the new collection of around 60 wild collected Rhododendron species was finally transplanted into the 25 acre garden in Old Park Wood.
The new Rhododendron species are located in a prime position in the centre of the wood with dappled shade where the soil is richest and where wind damage is least likely. So, barring climatic disasters, the Rhododendron species collection should soon be restored to its former glory.
Jaimie Parsons, head gardener, said: “The excitement of growing on these species for myself and the team has matched the excitement of gardeners at Caerhays over 100 years ago seeing these new plants from China grow and flower for the first time.”
So, patience and perseverance … maybe there’s time yet to see Granton Castle’s Walled Garden restored to it’s former glory, or a glorious Flower Festival lighting up currently neglected brownfield site land …
