With Agnes Stevenson
Agnes Stevenson suggests picking your plants carefully. While some may look the part, they may actually be devils in disguise
On a day when the sun was shining but the ground was still sodden underfoot, I started moving shrubs. I didn’t get very far. Because of the wet conditions I only managed to shift one small, half-dead azalea before admitting defeat.
And so I’ve made a bold decision. Instead of carefully transplanting the large but uninteresting shrubs that are still occupying what I hope will be a flower border, I’m going to chop them down instead.
I’ll still have to dig out the stumps, but this way I’ll be able to sever the roots with a spade and not be faced with trying to move them somewhere else.
In the past I would have fretted about removing something large and healthy but since last year, when we cut down the magnolia in the middle of the lawn, I’ve become bolder about declaring “off with their heads”.
Sometimes you do come across the wrong plant in the wrong place and the best thing you can do is to remove it and plant something else. On most streets you can see good examples of plants that have outlasted their purpose or have grown too big and are now blocking the light from living rooms and from the gardens where they grow.
I’ve become quite militant on this subject and now have a list of plants that should never be grown in captivity. It includes both the Russian vine and the monkey puzzle tree, a mountain giant that will eventually reach more than 100ft in height. Neither of these plants are suitable for the average garden; they are monsters that devour your garden.
Also on the list is a rose called Kiftsgate which, despite its beauty, actually belongs in the Little Shop Of Horrors. I’ve seen the original growing at Kiftsgate Court Gardens in the Cotswolds, where it covers walls and scales tall trees with vigour.
If you have an unsightly barn that you want to camouflage then this is the rose for you. Otherwise avoid it at all costs because no amount of pruning will keep it in check.
Of course when you buy a new plant and it is little more than a twig it can be hard to envisage how tall it will eventually become, but scoff at the information on height and spread carried on the label and you do so at your peril. This is especially true of bamboo, some varieties of which could rapidly turn your garden into a set from Tenko.
When Edinburgh Zoo first took delivery of its pandas they put a call out to gardeners for bamboo shoots to help feed the pair, but you can’t rely on hungry pandas to help keep your plants in check!
If you do want to grow bamboo, do your homework and make sure you select one of the varieties that isn’t going to spread and cause problems in the years ahead.