Thorny Problems

Back to basics High summer border patrol

This week: Fear not the garden centre, how to catch pesky vine weevils and olive trees

July already. This is when life for your Thorny Problems columnist is normally at its most chaotic, a time of deadheading/mowing between sessions, loading/unloading the washing machine and packing/ unpacking suitcases (for garden tours and various ancillary activities). But this year, my stuffed little garden has been a blissful place in which to potter my way through lockdown. Indeed, it has been hard to force myself indoors to fulfil my weekly Thorny Problems obligation.

I am aware, however, that there must be readers who, when lockdown put the kibosh on everything, were hesitant about buying plants online and reluctant, too, to return to the garden centres when they reopened. So may I offer a little reassurance based on research in my area (the Kent/East Sussex border)? Garden centres and nurseries I have visited have worked really hard to, as the expression goes, get their act together, with one-way systems, plastic screens, hand sanitisers, cleansed trolleys and staff in all the gear. Since most of the action takes place out of doors, a visit to a garden centre is probably as low-risk an event as it gets. And while I personally still shun shops and supermarkets, I quite happily visit my local plant emporia. So, my advice, to those who feel they have “missed the bus” this summer, is to get over it, sharpish. My

“locals”, for example, in addition to still selling some bedding (if that is what you want), have stocked up with some good late-summer-flowering perennials, and it is on these, if you have gaps in your borders, that I think you should focus.

Buy some gorgeous things in flower – colourful salvias, penstemons or heleniums for example, maybe something with which you are unfamiliar: push the boat out a bit.

Transfer them to pots two sizes larger (room for root expansion), using a 50/50 mixture of “soft”, peat-free all-purpose compost and John Innes No3 (a combination that will ease the eventual transfer into garden soil in the autumn), and plop the pots in the border gaps.

Water them, care for them and deadhead for Britain. Observe how they grow, and get to know them, even moving the pots around to see where they fit best. Before being planted in the border they will probably be big enough to split: thus two plants for the price of one.

THE HAMPTON COURT HACK

For those like me, with gardens that are almost overpoweringly full, the time has come to “make space”, to carry out the Hampton Court Hack (the late summer equivalent of the Chelsea Chop: I believe I coined the phrase writing on the BBC blog in 2011, but I won’t fight a duel over it…).

Fill your compost bins with cut-back spent flowers and foliage, assorted prunings and the faded trusses of roses to make sure the plants that will give you the next surge of colour look and give of their very best.