The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Saturday
Light bulb moment: the hyacinths of West Dean
A trial at West Dean Gardens aimed to create a spectacular display for early spring, and different varieties yielded striking results. By Sarah Raven
You may think a hyacinth is a hyacinth and, apart from colour, they all look much the same. However, according to a trial I visited at West Dean in Sussex last spring, it turns out that this is not the case. There are dumpy hyacinths that have overpacked flowers on the stem, and there are airy ones, with elegant, well-spaced spires that you can see the light between.
There are truly fragrant ones (the blues) and others (the pinks), with less intense perfume, and there are earlies and lates. They don’t all come into flower at the same time, some are fully over just as others are emerging.
Tom Brown, the head gardener at West Dean, wanted to jazz up the spectacular greenhouses during a usually colourless time of year, so a hyacinth display and trial was his chosen theme for February and March last year.
He grew 16 different varieties in a 9.5m by 3m raised bed, in one of the largest peach houses on the estate, and for a six-week stretch the hyacinths delivered just what he wanted – a bonanza of colour, with the place looking like a circus had just rolled in.
Brilliant stripes of pink sat next to deep blue; pale sea-blue next to cream, and purple beside primrose. Over the heads of this flower carpet, hanging baskets were also packed with hyacinths – and Brown also included a marching row of three whopper terracotta pots to give architecture amid the hundreds-and-thousands coloured sea. It was a joyful sight just as our first lockdown was about to hit. And the scent – we can all imagine it.
THE TRIAL – AND TIPS
In terms of practicalities, the trial was pretty straightforward. When the bulbs first arrived (in early October), each one was planted in peat-free compost into its own individual 9cm square pot.
There’s a tip here for us hyacinth home-growers. I often find when I have a pot of several hyacinths planted together, they tend not to all come up at the same time, with one or two not growing as well, or at least sprouting at a different time.
Hyacinths are apparently famous for this. Grown as individuals and then planted for final effect into a bed or bowl, you avoid this common problem. With each one on its own, if any don’t grow well, or if they start to shoot at different rates, you can just select the best at the same stage to plant in their final position. That’s exactly what Brown did, in early February: all the individuals were planted together en masse into the greenhouse beds and pots.
That’s one useful tip and here is another: most of us gardeners know that to force good hyacinths, the bulbs need to be kept as cool as possible, so they start to develop their roots well before the flowers emerge. Without this root system, the flower spike can hardly push out from the bulb and is often choked by the leaves. With little root system developed, the bulbs also tend to topple over.
Forced hyacinths (typically grown in forcing jars) need dark for the same reason. Being grown under cover mimics winter, and then, when brought into the light early, the bulb is fooled into thinking that it’s spring, so up comes the flower. At West Dean, the cold frames were covered with a sheet of fabric for a couple of months (October and November) to keep the plants dark, and this was removed once the flower spikes started to emerge in December.
For me, tip three, which I’ve been getting wrong for years, is over-watering. Repeatedly, some of my hyacinths seem to rot rather than grow, or even more often, a few individual flowers on a spike turn brown as they open, ruining an otherwise lovely flower spike.
It turns out this is another common problem. Hyacinths have a tendency to suffer botrytis, encouraged by damp in the neck of the bulb and over-watering. This also extends the stem more than you’d ever see in the garden, so the flowers start to flop about.
You need to keep your hyacinths as dry as possible for their whole growing season. Brown advises watering after planting and then not again.
That’s one of the things I love about gardening – 30 years on, there’s still so much to learn.
It’s been less than two years since digging my garden pond, and I think I’m about to get my first blob of frogspawn. For the past week or so (albeit with a week-long frozen pause), I’ve counted three male frogs and one female sitting in the shallows, waiting for the right time to spawn. I put the trail cameras out at night and watch them by day, marvelling at their bright eyes reflected in the camera’s infrared glow. They’re easy to count – they always duck beneath the surface when a fox trots past.
Last night I counted two individuals and one pair in amplexus (the mating position). Could tonight be the night they spawn?
I’m obsessed with frogspawn at this time of year. Every February, I change my usual running route from Brighton seafront to the parks, allotments and community gardens of Brighton and Hove. This year I’m mindful of lockdown restrictions, but I can take in four ponds in one short run, more if I’m feeling adventurous.
I head out in the rain, my waterproof jacket zipped as tightly as it can go, and run into the cold streets, stopping off at local parks and finishing up at my allotment. These four ponds gradually, over that beautiful transition from winter to spring, fill up with masses of horny amphibians. I love it.
I do this every year, counting down “frogspawn week” from Christmas. It helps me get through January, through bleak cloud-filled days and endless darkness. In a mild winter, Cornish frogs may have spawned by Christmas Day, but they usually start a couple of weeks later. Gradually, blobs appear across the country in a north-easterly direction.
After Cornwall and Devon, frogs start spawning in South Wales and Hampshire, arriving in Brighton in the second week of February, ahead of the Midlands, the North and finally Scotland in April. In 2019, I saw my first clump on Feb 18, last year the 13th. It’s a bit late this year but, by the time these words are published, I’m hoping to have spotted a fair few clumps.
My allotment pond is a great frog pond, even if I say so myself. I dug it three years ago and it took just 14 months for the frogs to find it. It’s nice and shallow, with gentle sloping sides and little strips of wildflower meadow planted around the edge.
In 2019 we had a dry spring, so the frogs all spawned together when the rains came. I arrived one day and found four blobs in the shallows. Last
‘I take in four ponds in one run, stopping off at local parks, finishing at my allotment’ ‘Toads are fussier than frogs and more likely to return to their ancestral mating grounds’
year it was wet and the frogs took their time. First there was one clump, followed by three more 10 days later. Two more appeared in late March. I rescued some more blobs from a neighbouring pond that had been filled in, so ended up with 10 blobs. I think I’ll have more than that this year.
My favourite public pond is at The Rockery opposite Brighton’s Preston Park, which is home to thousands of frogs. Each year, I sit at the edge and watch it boil with enormous writhing mating balls, as the croaking of frogs almost drown out the sound of the traffic from the road. There’s always masses of frogspawn. As far as the eye can see.
There’s another pond I visit that has a good population of toads. According to Froglife, the common toad has declined by 68 per cent in Britain in the past 30 years, so it’s wonderful to see them thriving in the city. It’s thought their demise could be down to a perfect storm of habitat loss and fragmentation, climate change and pollution.
Toads are fussier than frogs. They seem to prefer spawning in larger ponds and are more likely to return to their ancestral mating grounds, while frogs will take a chance on a new patch of water if it suits them.
But, with dew ponds and other habitats being lost from the countryside, they’re both slowly disappearing. It’s therefore so important that we create habitats for amphibians at home
– our gardens and parks can provide a lifeline for them.
The toads always spawn a couple of weeks after the frogs. Last year they were early, spawning in the last week of February. They lay their spawn in ribbons, rather than clumps, trailing it around the submerged stems of pond plants such as marsh marigold. I love watching them, coupled up in amplexus waiting for the fun to start. You can tell the difference between frogs and toads in several ways. Toads crawl, while frogs hop. Toads squeak, while frogs croak. Toads have dry, warty skin; frogs have wet smooth skin. Toads have beautiful amber eyes, while frogs have beautiful golden eyes. Toads are slightly poisonous – if your dog picks up or licks a toad, it might foam at the mouth. Frogs, along with their spawn and tadpoles, are eaten by almost everything. I’m happy that the frogs have found my garden pond, but I won’t neglect my obsessive duties, watching (and tweeting about) the ponds of Brighton and Hove. Digging a pond remains one of the most fun things you can do for yourself and wildlife in your garden. If you didn’t dig one during the first two lockdowns, there’s still time to dig one now.