Secrets of a Head Gardener
Roses are an English obsession! One way to guarantee great blooms and healthy plants is to select and plant disease-resistant varieties, such as my favourite, pale pink ‘Félicité Parmentier’. Pruning is another key to success, making sure the bush has an open centre and balanced framework, enabling good air circulation circulation.
Tender perennials create flower power and drama for the whole summer right until the first frosts. Originating from warmer countries, they should be propagated from cuttings taken in late summer. Great plants to use include pelargoniums (commonly called geraniums) from South Africa and vibrant South American gazanias and salvias for height and colour.
Reduce your time spent cutting lawns by turning over some areas to meadows. Creating a natural look around fruit trees helps encourage pollinators to visit, which can increase your harvest. Start by sowing yellow rattle in September, which bonds with the grass and decreases its vigour by suppressing its growth. You’ll be surprised what wildflowers then appear of their own accord.
A key to improving plant displays is to step back and see how your garden looks throughout the gardening year and how your plants perform, in terms of flower power and with each other. Take notes in a diary with photographs because it’s easy to forget as the season moves on.
When the time is right, dig plants up, cut them back, divide them or add to the displays – whatever changes are needed to make a difference.
Fruit can be grown even in the smallest space. Our apples in large pots are grown on a rootstock such as M9, which is dwarfing but still has vigour. We’ve also been trialling strawberries in hanging baskets, which works well and gets them away from the dreaded slugs, but remember to protect them from birds!