This month can be a challenge for gardeners & plants
May is a challenging month for gardeners and plants alike. On one hand we have the surge of hardy perennial growth outdoors which needs attention, on the other, a host of tender plants marking time safe from frost in the greenhouse or polytunnel.
This is a good time to prune certain garden shrubs that have flowered in winter/early spring e.g. viburnum, jasmine, mahonia and forsythia.
Also, any broad-leaved evergreen types whose growth is getting out of hand.
This was the case last week with a variegated Elaeagnus whose colourful, year-round presence did not excuse spreading from a mixed border onto the lawn.
Perennial weeds that threaten to take over the mixed borders need a determined effort to halt their progress at the outset of a growing season, and using a herbicide is not the answer. It’s therefore down to the gardener, fork in hand, to remove them.
For this fellow, that entails several sessions of donning the knee pads and advancing systematically throughout the borders.
I’m currently on the case of a patch of ground elder (Aegopodium podagraria) which, in keeping with couch grass (Elytrigia repens) and dandelion (Taraxacum sp.) can regenerate if the smallest piece of root is left in the soil.
But it’s not only so-called weeds that need curtailing. Many cultivated plants have an invasive tendency, either self-sowing or spreading through an underground rhizomatous root system.
Aquilegia (columbine) looks attractive, but it self-sets rapidly from seed, each plant forming a deep tap root that won’t budge.
Orange berries of Arum italicum “Marmoratum” are taken by blackbirds and the seeds are deposited everywhere.
Resultant plants form a deeply rooted storage organ that must be located and removed.
Euphorbia cultivars are worthy of a spot in the border for their form, but remember they have an invasive army of rhizomes on the march underground – Euphorbia “Robbiae” especially.
Many of our cultivated ornamental plants have a territorial tendency but that can have a positive outcome.
As spring approaches, we round up the young outlying foxgloves which have formed a rosette of leaves, and plant them in groups for floral effect.