Over the FENCE
Spring shows its signs of life
Ican’t believe it’s a year ago since we started isolating at home to protect my 93-year-old mother. The garden and plants have been my real saviour throughout. But the last few weeks have been so cold and grey, meaning not much time has been spent outdoors. Let’s hope that will change this month, with spring on the way.
Throughout winter I store a lot of plants from the garden in the front porch. It’s just had a make-over. I had to move all the furniture and plants to the dining room and have just redecorated the space and refilled with plants, making it a lovely area to sit and overlook the beach garden.
The garden has almost 12,000 followers on Twitter and last autumn a follower along the coast from me sent me some Echium pininana. She, too, has a coastal plot and found they were thriving. The ones she sent me are doing really well, potted up in the greenhouse at the moment. I’m just waiting for the right time to place them in the beach garden at the front of the house. It’ll be difficult to find a sheltered spot, but they came from an exposed location, too, so hopefully they’ll thrive and create some drama at the front. Spring is almost here and many bulbs are shooting up, but no flowers as yet. Hyacinths are about to burst forth and I’m sure there'll be many daffodils and tulips following. Camellias have hundreds of buds ready to flower and a few have already blossomed. With the warm temperature I’ve been maintaining in the greenhouse there’s already a great deal of growth in there. Many plants are looking healthy and desperate to get back out in the garden, but I think they have a few weeks to wait yet! I've a large jade plant (Crassula ovata) that was given to me a few years ago. They’re common houseplants and easy to grow successfully. I've some in
the house and some in larger containers which go in the garden in summer and the heated greenhouse for the winter. The largest specimen is blooming in the greenhouse now. Experts say that getting one to flower requires mimicking its native growing conditions. Lack of water, cool nights and bright days, which encourage the plant to form buds and finally flowers. It’s a bit of a trick, but you can fool your plant into producing pretty little, starry white- pink flowers in spring. I reckon in my case there’s a great deal of luck involved!
Read more about Geoff’s garden at www.driftwoodbysea.co.uk.