Ask Agnes! Awful weather gives me the chance to dig into your mailbag
Greenfingered agony aunt Agnes Stevenson has been sifting through readers’ letters and emails. And there are certain queries that crop up time and time again
Frequent heavy rain has made any sort of outdoor gardening tricky over the last few weeks. I’ve been using the time I should have spent digging and sorting out to review some of the many letters that have arrived in the Potting Shed over the last year.
Among the many varied requests, there are some topics that crop up time and again and so to anyone with mophead hydrangeas who is thinking about pruning them back I’ll simply say “don’t”, not if you don’t want to lose all of next year’s flowers.
If your hydrangea is getting too big, then cut out a third of the stems at the base, but otherwise leave the plant untouched.
Another recurring theme has been cordylines, or “cabbage palms” as they are frequently known.
For John and Jennifer Macmillan in Aberdeen the dilemma was what to do with cordylines that were dying from the top down, while for Jean Thomson, who contacted me by email, there was a query about how to treat one that was sprouting from the bottom.
The answer for John and Jennifer was to cut off the weather-damaged stems and wait for the plants to regrow from the base, while to Jean I was able to give some advice about taking a cutting.
The only advice I could give David Hotchkies from Beith about his non-fruiting plum tree was “patience”.
At just three years old, David’s tree is only just reaching the stage where it is mature enough to start flowering and it might be a couple of years yet before he can pick fruits from it.
Jim Mellie, like a lot of other readers, got in touch to ask why the camellias he bought in full flower three years ago have never flowered since, and
I was able to tell him that’s because they were varieties of Camellia japonica, when the only camellias that will flower reliably in Scotland are the ‘williamsii’ hybrids.
Camellia season is still some way off, but when it arrives remember to check the label on those tempting plants you see in the garden centre before you become seduced by one with gorgeous flowers that won’t perform once you’ve planted it in your garden.
And during my Potting Shed session, it was good to hear again from Margaret Stewart, who wrote to me some time back asking for help with identifying a plant that she had spotted in a hedgerow... a hypericum.
Margaret got back in touch to tell me that she has taken cuttings from the original plant and is looking forward to enjoying the hypericum’s yellow flowers and autumn berries in her own garden.
If you have a gardening query that you’d like me to answer, then please get in touch.