With much of the nation now on lockdown and spring truly upon us, this is the perfect time to get those gardens blooming, says
Sally Nex
BOUNCE PLANTS BACK INTO GROWTH
Scented-leaf pelargoniums, tender lemon verbena and overwintered rocoto chillies (Capsicum pubescens varieties) need only a little encouragement to burst into exuberant new growth.
Snip back leggy stems, then pot up into fresh compost. Ramp up the watering, move them into light and watch them come back to life.
CATCH A PODCAST
Self isolated indoors? Curl up with a good podcast and you can still enjoy your gardening fix.
The RHS discusses water-wise gardening for its Easter Gardening podcast and the judges of the charity’s photographic competition reveal what makes a good garden photo. Visit rhs.org.uk and search “podcasts”.
On the Ledge is writer Jane Perrone’s friendly, practical houseplant podcast. The Easter episode features Norfolk pines and the very Instagrammable
Philodendron ‘Birkin’. Visit janeperrone.com/on-the-ledge
Gardens, Weeds and Words meanders charmingly between gardening, philosophy and poetry; in the latest edition writer Laetitia Maklouf talks about manageable gardening for the “horticulturally overwhelmed”. Visit gardensweedsandwords.com.
PRUNE LATE-SEASON SHRUBS
Be brave and cut every stem to a 15-25cm stump. It feels drastic, but you’ll be glad you did. Buddleia grow into elegant fountains; colouredstem dogwoods (Cornus spp) and willows produce thickets of vibrant young growth for winter; smoke bush (Cotinus) and paulownia erupt in lush, showy leaves the size of saucepan lids.
SOW ANNUAL RUDBECKIAS
It’s Fleuroselect’s Year of the Rudbeckia so there’s a flurry of new varieties to try. The demonstration display at RHS Garden Wisley includes beauties like semi-double burnt orange R. hirta ‘Cherokee Sunset’ and odd-but-striking ‘Green Wizard’: plant them en masse for a bonfire of late summer colour.
Suppliers: chilternseeds.co.uk and plantsofdistinction.co.uk both offer a good selection of varieties.
PUT UP HOME-GROWN PLANT SUPPORTS
Building plant supports is a pleasing way to spend an Easter afternoon and takes the pressure off at planting time. But there’s no need to buy them: just harvest supplies from your garden.
Twist twiggy birch prunings into lobster pots over sleeping clumps of taller perennials. Cut stems from clump-forming bamboo, like
Chusquea culeou, to lash into trellises.
Build wigwams from hazel sticks interwoven with horizontal bands of flexible willow in burnt red-orange
(Salix alba ‘Britzensis’) or smoky purple (S. myrsinifolia).
Visit YouTube for demonstrations: try “How to make natural plant supports from clippings” by Alexandra Campbell of The Middle-Sized Garden.
CHOP BACK CAMELLIAS
Matthew Pottage, Curator, RHS Garden Wisley, Surrey, says: “Large camellias can outgrow their space and become a dowdy green mass. At Wisley we crown raise them (remove the lower branches) so they resemble a small tree, or hard prune them (coppice) as hard as you like, even down to 30cm. Do it after flowering (now) so the plant has the season to recover and throw down some acidic feed to help it. Don’t expect flowers next year, but the plant will bounce back.”
GROW PERENNIAL VEGETABLES
Step off the annual merry-go-round of sowing, pricking out and planting, and try vegetables which come back year after year. It’s the eco-friendly, and leaves soil undisturbed to nurture a thriving underground ecosystem.
Try Taunton Deane and Daubenton’s kale: cabbagey leaves for five years and more.
‘Nine Star’ broccoli: white
cauliflower-like sprigs every spring if you don’t let it flower.
Babington’s leeks: cut back to a 5cm stump and they resprout every time.
Hopniss (Apios americana): this pretty climber has floury tubers like bean-flavoured potatoes (see top left).
Skirret, scorzonera and salsify: Dig up just a few carrot-like roots and leave the rest to keep growing.
Suppliers include: incredible vegetables.co.uk, otterfarm.co.uk, pennardplants.com.
MAKE A TUSSIE-MUSSIE
Hand-tied mini bouquets, known – for reasons lost in history – as tussie-mussies, have been around for centuries. Young Victorian bucks used them to send coded messages to sweethearts: sweet williams (gallantry) would have set hearts a-flutter, narcissi (egotism) not so much. Nowadays, tussie-mussies are less freighted with meaning, but a delightful way to celebrate seasonal flowers. Wrap herbs such as rosemary, bay or purple sage around pulmonarias, grape hyacinths and narcissi, then tie them with string and decorate with ribbon.
Visit The Gardenettes on YouTube for a tussie-mussie demonstration.
MAKE NEW HERBS
Harness the explosion of spring growth and sort out your herbs: TAKE SOFTWOOD CUTTINGS
This works for: lemon verbena, French
tarragon, and scented-leaf pelargoniums. Snip off 10cm long shoots, trim just below a leaf joint and insert cuttings into pots of gritty compost. DIVIDE CLUMPS
This works for: Mint, marjoram, chives. Dig up the clump, pull or cut it into two or three sections, then replant. TRANSPLANT SEEDLINGS
This works for: Chervil, dill, parsley. Allow your annual herbs to run to seed, then dig up and move the resulting seedlings.
PULL UP PERENNIAL WEEDS
The moment the first tendrils poke above ground, pounce on perennial weeds. Never dig out bindweed, ground elder and couch grass; you just fragment the roots, which then regenerate into thickets of new plants. Instead, grip stems between thumb and forefinger and pull gently to extract top growth plus as much root as will come out.
Hoeing is quicker, but weeds grow back sooner. Weeding by hand takes dedication, but you’ll gradually weaken the weeds and even, after a few years, kill them outright.
LET YOUR LAWN GROW
Let’s face it: nobody wants to spend Saturdays trudging up and down with a rackety old engine. So stop! Let grass grow and biodiversity in your garden will explode. Long grass offers shelter to beetles and food to caterpillars, and every nectar-rich daisy or dandelion attracts crowds of butterflies, bees and hoverflies.
A neat mown path keeps things on the garden side of nature reserve; in August, strim everything short, wait a fortnight for seeds to drop, then rake off the ‘hay’ for compost. It’s the lazy gardener’s way to make a meadow – but the most effective, as it’s how nature would do it herself.
Register your un-mown lawn for Plantlife’s “Every Flower Counts” campaign (plantlife.org.uk/every flowercounts) to discover your “personal nectar score”.
PLANT POTATOES
Lia Leendertz, garden writer, says: “Good Friday has long been the traditional day for planting out your potatoes. There are several possible reasons for this. It is said that when they first arrived from the New World in the 1600s, they were viewed with great suspicion and so were planted on Good Friday as a way of guarding against their possible evil (and then sprinkled with holy water too).
“But it seems just as likely that the tradition evolved because with all the trenching and mounding up required, this is a significant job taking a number of hours, and everyone had a day off work on Good Friday. Clearly it is slightly daft timing-wise, as Good Friday can fall as early as March 20 and as late as April 23, leaving the potential for frosting or planting too late. But this year it falls on April 10, which might be just right.”
The Almanac Journal, by Lia Leendertz (Mitchell Beazley, £14.99).
DISPLAY ORCHIDS
In the wild, orchids live perched in trees, their snaky grey-green aerial roots absorbing moisture and nutrients from the air. So liberate phalaenopsis and dendrobium orchids from their plastic pots and make them feel more at home on a base of driftwood.
Pick out a piece of curved tree bark, knotted deadwood or beach driftwood (search florists’ suppliers online), and collect moss from the garden or buy some sustainably grown sphagnum moss. Tip your orchid out, shake off the compost, and wrap the roots in moss, leaving the big aerial roots free.
Arrange on the wood with the leaves angled downward and tie securely in place with strong cotton or florists’ wire. Orchid sculptures dry out more quickly, so water regularly by dunking it, mount and all, in a bucket of water for 10 minutes.
PLANT TREES
The country is on a massive tree planting binge: up to 30 billion a year, if the Government gets its way. Trees are like giant sponges for carbon dioxide and our best hope for reaching carbon-neutral by 2050; they also add beauty, character and maturity to a garden. Some trees absorb more carbon than others, though, so choose carefully:
Large gardens: English oak, field maple, walnut.
Medium-sized plots: Hazel, crabapple, goat willow.
Small handkerchiefs: Hawthorn, holly, elder.
Suppliers: ashridgetrees.co.uk; perriehale.co.uk; barcham.co.uk.
SLOW WORM WATCH
Look out for slow worms basking in spring sunshine after emerging from hibernation. You’ll sometimes find them piled in iridescent coils in the warm heart of undisturbed compost heaps – these legless lizards are cold-blooded and need heat to kickstart their metabolism before they can get going (we all know how that feels).
Slow worms are harmless and secretive creatures, preferring quiet, sheltered suntraps. Encourage them with heat-absorbing clay roof tiles or sheets of corrugated iron to hide under, and large flat “radiator” stones for sunbathing.
Spot males by their paler, sometimes blue-spotted skin; females are larger, with a dark dorsal stripe.
BRING FLOWERS INSIDE
Matt Keightley, award-winning garden designer and writer says: “There is nothing better than the early signs of spring, with gardens waking up and coming to life once more. Having watched bulbs erupt, magnolias bloom and cherries bare their unrivalled blossom, it’s time to bring some of that joy inside. Simple cut flowers on display indoors will lift spirits, subconsciously connect you with nature and help alleviate (if only for a minute) some of your everyday woes. Try hellebores, daffodils and rosemary, to add an aromatic seasonal display on the window ledge or table centre.”
Your Wellbeing Garden, by Matt Keightley, Alistair Griffiths and Annie Gatti (DK, £16.99)
MAKE A SWALE
Managing the rainwater that falls on your garden has taken on a new urgency since February’s Biblical downpours. Swales absorb floodwater, letting it percolate gradually back into the ground. Choose the lowest point in your garden for your swale – the bit that got soggiest this winter.
Dig a hole about a metre wide and 30cm deep across the slope, mounding the soil on the downhill side into a hummock to keep the water in place. Dense plant cover absorbs more water – but swales are designed to flood and then dry out, so plants must cope with both extremes. Good picks: hardy geraniums, daylilies, purple loosestrife and tough grasses like miscanthus.
TURBO-CHARGE YOUR VEG GARDEN
The sight of empty supermarket shelves, combined with long hours of self-isolation, has given growing your own a new sense of urgency. Easter is right for starting veg gardens – plant clever to bring your harvests forward.
It’s peak plug plant time, so buy courgettes, calabrese, lettuce and chard ready-grown (delfland.co.uk or rocketgardens.co.uk) for a head start and easy growing.
Fast-growing garden crops to pick six to eight weeks from now include baby-leaf salads, rocket, radishes, ‘Tokyo Cross’ turnips and roundrooted ‘Paris Market’ carrots.
Harvest veg while it’s still growing: young beetroot leaves, pea shoots and broad bean tops all make delicious extra pickings.
Dwarf or “patio” varieties mature fast, like runner bean ‘Hestia’, 60cm and loaded in beans all summer.
GO MICRO
Microgreens are ready to eat within a fortnight. Yorkshire-based Wild Greens Farm (wildgreens.co.uk) offers foolproof GYO kits for (among other things) red amaranth, Thai basil and sorrel.