Editor’s letter
R oses start setting their hips early in the season but it is only once the temperature drops that they start to show their colour. All roses produce hips but we don’t typically see them as often as we do the flowers because, as gardeners, we tend to remove the spent blooms. Troy Scott Smith, head gardener at Sissinghurst Castle Garden where the rose is perhaps their most iconic flower, shares with us his selection of the best roses to grow for the brilliance of their hips. The list includes glossy orange Rosa ‘Meg’, inky black Rosa spinosissima and the hedgerow rose, Rosa rugosa, which has big, round, scarlet hips. Troy’s cultivation notes for hips and flowers include tying stems horizontally to encourage more flowers and later a timely retreat with the secateurs.
The gentle blue-greens of eucalyptus are wonderful for decorating the house for Christmas, and freshly picked sprigs have a bright, camphorous scent. Historically, eucalypts have a reputation for being huge plants with limited hardiness but it is now understood that it is the provenance of the seed – the geographical location of the parent plant as much as the species – that determines the hardiness of the final plant. Grafton Nursery in Worcestershire is a small, specialist nursery growing 59 hardy eucalyptus species and cultivars using seed collected from the highest altitudes. From Eucalyptus gregsoniana, with pretty, elongated, pale-green foliage, to the silver-blue leaves of Eucalyptus gunnii ‘France Bleu’ there’s a eucalyptus for every garden.
With Christmas swiftly approaching this issue also includes our favourite presents for gardeners to make Christmas shopping for the gardener in your life a pleasure.
I hope you enjoy the issue, and wish you a very happy Christmas,