Carol Klein gets excited about planning the Glebe Co age garden for 2021
It’s great mental exercise to try and imagine the effect different plants would create...
Surely putting plants together is one of the greatest joys of gardening, and yet it’s an area that prompts self-doubt even among the most competent and knowledgeable of gardeners. There are so many factors to consider – the conditions plants need, their physical qualities – stature and form, colour of flowers and foliage, texture and time of flowering – it can seem daunting and yet isn’t this what gardening is all about? This is the creative, the adventurous side. There are no rules, no rights or wrongs, it’s all about experiment.
The only proviso, and rather than being a dampener it just exercises our beleaguered lockdown minds even more, is that we’re prepared to work things out in advance. It’s great mental exercise hand over to think fist about the qualities of different plants and to try and imagine the effect they would create.
One of the other consequences of the pandemic is that most of us have less money to splash out. I’m all for supporting the nursery trade and buying new plants but they have to be the right plants – there are usually lots of right plants! Nowadays more of us are propagating our own plants and this gives us opportunities to be more ambitious with our plans. It’s a joy to think of planting five heucheras or a swathe of geraniums to enable you to bring your ideas to life in a big way.
This is an excellent time of year to split many plants, especially those that flowered earlier in the year. Divisions can be transplanted directly into their final positions or can be potted up in decent proprietary compost to grow on with some shelter through winter and planted out in spring. It’s not too late to take cuttings, especially from salvias, phygelius or fuchsias.
We’ve just been returning some of our bigger salvias, all grown from cuttings during this summer, to the tunnel, and having cut off many of the terminal flowers we’re hoping this will encourage sideshoots to grow more rapidly, making perfect cutting material. As long as you have shelter – anywhere from a fully-fledged greenhouse to a bright kitchen windowsill, cuttings should thrive.
My mum had to give potted cuttings away hand over fist just to make room for the next batch that were coming along in her lean-to porch and on the kitchen windowsill. She loved giving plants away just as much as she loved growing them in the first place. Propagating is addictive but it’s a good addiction, and what could be more positive than giving plants away?
For those of us with established gardens, it may seem irrelevant to talk about planning and planting. Yet I’m finding that, having been at Glebe Cottage for 42 years, there are plenty of places ready for a complete overhaul. When it comes to shrubs and trees, the great majority of these ‘backbone’ plants need to stay where they are, perhaps with editing here and there, a branch that needs taking out or old wood that needs removing. It’s very liberating to take out perennials and grasses, even bulbs that have lived in the same spot for years, to divide them, retain some of them and add new plants.
Meanwhile as plans are laid out on paper, soil can be refreshed with organic matter, preferably home-made compost, and plants returned to create exciting new pictures in the coming year.
‘There are no rules, no rights or wrongs; it’s all about experiment’