WINTER GARDEN

WINTER GARDEN

We generally plan our gardens for spring and summer colour, then enjoy
the autumn as leaves take on the golds, orange and red hues, but as winter approaches and the weather becomes colder we are less inclined to wander around enjoying the garden. Garden tasks however continue with winter digging, pruning, repairing fences, planting trees and shrubs and hedges and moving plants indoors or under shelter to give them some winter protection. We also have to clear paths of snow, sprinkle salt on drives, and on a sunny day there is always a few remaining leaves to sweet up. To keep our spirits raised on these cold days outdoors it is a good idea to establish a winter garden that will have its days of impact during the winter months. There are a lot of plants that have very attractive variegated foliage such as the gold and silver Euonymus, or the yellow edged Elaeagnus and even the black grass, Ophiogogon now gets some attention without having to compete with spring and summer flowers. Then of course there are a lot of shrubs with highly coloured stems such as the Cornus, (dorwoods with red, orange and black stems) the salix, (willow with red, orange and grey stems,) Kerria japonica with green stems and Rubus with stems covered in a white bloom. To create impact, grow these shrubs together in a drift against a dark green hedge or some Rhododendrons and Camellias. Although these can grow quite tall, most get pruned right back to stumps at ground level in spring so do not interfere with the Rhododendrons or camellias in flower in April.

Flowering plants can also be found in mid winter. Both the scented Viburnum Dawn shrub and yellow climber Jasminum nudiflorum will continue to flower all winter provided they get a few sunny days together.

To add a bit of height to the border there are plenty of taller shrubs such as the coral bark maple Acer sangokaku and a few smaller trees well worth a place for their winter bark. The white stemmed Betula jaquemontia

is a must have if you can afford the space as it is a real show stopper all year round. The list grows longer if you have room for more small trees as several more maples and Prunus (cherries) have ornamental variegated or peeling bark. Eucalyptus can also be used as it has very attractive smooth bark in shades of warm greys and the foliage is always a lovely blue grey colour. However it is a forest tree which needs a lot of room, so keep it down to a reasonable size by cutting back in late winter.

The front of the border is the place for a few drifts of Calluna heathers with yellow and bronze evergreen foliage that brightens up after a bit of frost. The black grass is another ideal plant for the front of the border and if you plant snowdrops underneath it you will create a very modern attractive show in February when the pristine snowdrops open above the black ground cover of the Ophiopogon grass. I tend to use the winter border to extend the show into spring by under planting the whole area with snowdrops, aconites, and crocus, as these flower immediately you have pruned back all the shrubs in March. However do not prune the Kerria till after it has flowered in late spring and only cut back some of the old flowering shoots to ground level, leaving all the fresh green shoots to flower the next year. The display of bulbs can continue with both daffodils and tulips and even the taller summer flowering oriental lilies can be found a spot as they will just grow through the growing shrubs quite happily.

Wee jobs around the garden

Unheated greenhouses still house and grow plants right through the winter. I overwinter my fuchsias, outdoor chrysanthemum stools, many recently propagated shrubs in small pots and spring flowering hanging baskets full of pansies. I also grow some spring onions, winter lettuce and many other salads. It is a good idea to give these plants some extra protection by lining the glass with a layer of bubble polythene. You can get special clips to hold it in place so there is an air gap between the polythene and the glass, to help the insulation. If you have a grape vine try to keep this on the outside of the insulation as they benefit from a winter chill.

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FESTIVE THOUGHTS

FESTIVE THOUGHTS

As the festive season draws ever so near we begin the wind down, putting essential gardening tasks on the back burner, and in any case recent storms, flooding, and the memory of a rotten summer brings in the need for a wee bit of festive cheer. While I always try to get all my digging done before the end of the year, the continual rains have made the soil surface too wet to walk on so digging will be delayed till it dries up a wee bit or we get some light surface frosts.
My most essential task has been making sure I have some two year old Saskatoon wine bottled up, as well as my red currant, grape and apple wine. Trips to the allotment plot are mostly to pick parsnips, carrots, sprouts, cabbage, kale, beetroot and leeks. Though when you get a few dry sunny days I go for the other healthy option and bring back my salad range of winter lettuce, spring onion, rocket, mizuna and mustard, all still growing happily. Back home we still have plenty spuds, onions, pumpkins and apples in store. I keep checking apples and remove any going soft or brown. These get cut in half and left outside for the blackbirds which seem to enjoy them just fine.

Early December is the time for putting up the Christmas tree, checking that last years lights are still working. This decorating task is very important and a very serious operation taking care to ensure the loaded tree does not fall over. However to steady my nerves a bottle of vintage Saskatoon wine is never far away.

The weather the last few weeks has been quite predictable; we get gales and storms one day, followed by a calm sunny

day next and occasion the sun stays out for two days. This gives us the chance to wander around the garden, and be amazed at just how much flowers we still have putting on a display. We either grow or buy in flowers to decorate the tables over the festive season, as the garden is usually bare. This year most plants missed out on summer so they are trying to make up for lost time taking advantage of every sunny day. Fuchsia Mrs Popple has been unbelievable as it is still covered in flowers in mid December. Mahonia Charity flowers in mid winter, but some flowered last October. Snowdrops are again just itching to start the winter flowering season, though my drift are at the bottom of a warm sunny south facing wall. Two tubs of polyanthus have never stopped flowering since I planted then in October.

Back indoors things are a bit mixed. I keep my stock of geraniums going from year to year by taking cutting in autumn and over wintering them on a windowsill. Other geraniums got lifted whole, slightly trimmed and then potted up. They are now a mass of colour. Impatiens were propagated from cuttings quite successfully then potted up. However they got infected by red spider, and though I sprayed them and killed a few, the plants never recovered.
At this time of year I always have my Christmas cactus (Zygocactus) full of pink flowers. Last year it flowered twice, but must have exhausted itself as it has refused to flower this year.

One plant that I don’t grow, but always buy in is the Poinsettia. They are not expensive, so easy to grow and being quite big really make a bright splash of colour. Some people tell me they find them difficult, but this may be due to over or under watering, draughts or too close to a radiator.

Another excellent plant for this time of year in the winter cherry, but look around for a good one.

 Wee jobs to do this week

Winter is the time for pruning shrubs and fruit trees and bushes. It is quite pleasant doing this task on a sunny but cold day as we are usually well wrapped up, and a wee bit of outdoor activity is good for you. However keep the momentum going as the prunings have to be disposed off. If you are able to burn then a wee controlled bonfire will dispose of prunings quickly and leave you with some high potash wood ash fertiliser, but it is very soluble so get it bagged and under cover as soon as it is cold enough. For the rest of us a shredder is the next option, which again is a pleasant task, gets rid of all your wood prunings and leaves you with a pile of shreddings to add to your compost heap or used as mulch under some fruit bushes.

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GRAPES FOR SCOTTISH GARDENS

GRAPES FOR SCOTTISH GARDENS

As an apprentice gardener way back in the mists of time we were trained in propagation of grape vines, and told how to grow them, but I don’t recall ever seeing one actually grown. To own a grape vine then, you had to be very clever or wealthy. It was another twenty years later before I got my first grape vine. However it was essential to have a greenhouse, as no-one ever considered growing them outdoors. Black Hamburg was the only one around for unheated greenhouses, but if you had heat you could grow Muscat of Alexandria. Today we have moved on and the choice of vines for both indoor and outdoor is quite extensive. Both Black Hamburg and Muscat of Alexandria are excellent grapes for the greenhouse, but they both have pips and today nobody wants grapes with pips. However if you grow them for the health benefits, I am told it is the pips that are the healthy part. Supermarkets demand seedless grapes, so now we buy vines with grapes that have no pips. This brings in another wee problem as we discover our seedless grapes are smaller than normal. It is the pips, or seeds that produce the growth hormones to make the grapes swell up. Commercial growers get round this problem by spraying the growing vines with several sprays of the growth promoting hormone gibberellic acid. We amateur gardeners do not have access to this chemical so we grow smaller grapes, but so much more healthy without covering the skins with chemicals. Thompson Seedless grapes are very popular in USA, but the markets demand really big grapes so the vines get large doses of this hormone.

In Scotland I have tried the white seedless grape Perlette and red seedless Flame, both needing the protection and warmth of a greenhouse. After several very successful years the weather changed resulting in very poor ripening of growth in autumn so the following year the vines produced very few bunches. I am now trying Seigerrebe which has a Muscat flavour and a few pips, so time will tell how it performs in my cold greenhouse.

We all love to experiment so I have planted a few outdoor grapes to see if there is any merit in hoping that global warming could be on our side way up north. We do know that to be successful, sun and warmth are needed to ripen up growth in autumn to help initiate fruiting buds the following year and also to ripen up the grapes. The sugar content of the grapes at harvest is totally dependant on getting plenty sun in summer and autumn. This year our Scottish summer was not at its best, but we had plenty of rain to encourage growth. I have been trying out several grapes with varying degrees of success. Both Rondo and Regent produced a few bunches of decent grapes, but Phoenix was outstanding giving me about thirty bunches. If the autumn had been better this would have been my success story. Solaris has a good reputation as the grape for the north, but I have not been impressed so far.

The ornamental variety Brant produces over a hundred bunches, which always ripen up, but they are very small. This year I put all my indoor and outdoor grapes together for a batch of home brew wine, but the low sugar content (specific gravity of 64) was only going to give 8% alcohol strength so it was necessary to add some grape concentrate, and a bit of sugar.

All my outdoor grapes have the benefit of a south slope and south facing walls and fences, so I will continue with a few more varieties, (Polo Muscat and Muscat Bleu both show a lot of promise) in the hope that one decent summer will give me a vintage year.

Wee jobs to do this week

Now that lawns have had their last cut this is a good time to carry out any renovation work. Spiking to aerate the lawn and scarifying to remove moss and thatch is usually done in late autumn followed by top dressing with sterilised soil and slow release fertiliser, but worn patches and broken edges can be repaired now. It is too late to oversow with seed but fresh turf can be used to repair damaged edges. Remove old turf and soil to same depth as thickness of new turf and lay and firm in carefully to maintain the same levels.

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GARDEN CLIMBERS

GARDEN CLIMBERS

In my early training days in gardening, the only way to find out about plants was to grow them, so I created a wee rock garden, a rose garden, flower beds, herbaceous border, heather garden, got a greenhouse and cold frame, then a fruit and vegetable patch. There was always more plants to discover so every available space had to be utilised. House walls, fences and pergolas all played their part, so I began to experiment with climbers. Problems soon appeared with the need for support, and soil where none existed, then I had to get a grasp of training systems, before sorting out the best plants for walls facing north, east, west and south. A few years later when I found fruit growing to be just as important as flowers, I had to choose exactly what suited my needs as the choice of plants for covering walls is huge.

Climbing rose Dublin Bay

My first success was finding plants that would grow on a north facing wall where good sunshine was a problem. Climbing rose Mme Alfred Carrier, or Ena Harkness and  Jasmine and Hydrangea petiolaris are all  good, and although Camellias are not climbers, they can be trained up a north facing just fine. Property security can be improved by planting Pyracantha around any vulnerable windows. This firethorn has real vicious thorns but also orange, red and yellow berries all autumn and into winter, and blackbirds just love to nest in them.

I placed a great value on walls next to main front doors. These needed scented flowers to enhance the feel good factor for anyone going into the house.  Climbing rose Zephirine Drouhin and Gertrude Jekyll are both perfect pinks for this spot, and honeysuckle is another favourite.

Walls and fences are becoming very popular places to plant fruit trees and bushes on as people want an apple, pear, cherry or peach but normally they would grow quite large, so nurseries now cater for this use. Espaliers, cordons and fan trained trees, and dwarf cherries are all available. Now cherries grown on the new Gisela 5 rootstock will only grow to six to eight feet tall, so they are easy to net against birds. Figs are very successful on a south facing wall and easily pruned to prevent it taking over the garden. Grape vines are also easy to grow, but need pruning to induce fruiting and restrict excessive growth. They are not self clinging so will need a strong support, or a tall fence.

Another great climber that does very well on tall fences is the clematis in many different forms.

Clematis montana rubens may be very common, but it is one of the best for a mass display of pink flowers. It is very reliable, quite vigorous and loves to scramble into old trees, over sheds, tall fences, conifers, etc.

Most climbers against house walls only need enough decent soil to get them established in the first couple of years, and then they can look after themselves.

Very often there will be a perfect house wall space but totally paved with no soil near it. I have frequently removed a two by two paving slab against the house wall then excavate ten inches of builders rubble before loosing up a further six inches. Backfill the hole with some decent top soil, adding a bit of compost and some fertiliser to the pit. Keep any new plant well watered till it gets established. It will soon find spaces to grow in the builders rubble and be perfectly happy. My climbing rose Dublin Bay has to be severely pruned in winter to keep in down to twelve feet.

Wee jobs to do this week

This is a good time to put up the bird table and feeders as a lot of winter berries, apart from the cotoneasters, have now been used up, and it is the smaller birds that benefit. I have rebuilt my bird table to prevent seagulls and pigeons hovering up all the seeds leaving nothing for the robin, bluetits, chaffinch and sparrows. The blackbirds get a few chopped apples from store after cutting off any brown bits.

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Winter Pictures of Tayside

 Having a wee rest from gardening while my winter landscape paintings of snow scenes around Tayside and Scotland is on display in my art exhibition in my studio in Dundee.

Visitors are very welcome to pop in from 11am to 5pm from Saturday 5th December and running every day till Sunday 13th December 2015. 

 My studio is at 17a Menzieshill Road, Dundee, DD2 1PS