THE CHILDREN'S GARDEN

THE CHILDREN'S GARDEN

The world today is vastly different from our world when we were kids. As people moved away from city centre slums to the new housing estates around the town periphery, everyone suddenly had a garden, and soon learned about growing a few vegetables. As this was a source of cheap food, every family got involved including the kids. It was our job to do the digging and weeding as well as watering. However we soon reaped the rewards as the first radish were quick to appear, followed by early pea pods. In autumn we chose the biggest swede for our Halloween lantern as pumpkins hadn’t been invented for that task. As we grew up we started adult life with an understanding about

Sophie weeding the tub with fuchsia

gardening and a love of outdoor activities. Today electronic gadgets have taken over our kid’s lives and very few kids go outdoors to play thus knowledge of nature is being lost. This is a recognised problem, so now many adults and schools are taking steps to get our kids involved in nature and gardening. Kids love to be involved in seed sowing, planting and watching their own plants grow. My kids wanted to grow their own apple trees, so after eating an apple they kept the seeds and sowed them in pots. They got a dozen apple seedlings which they then planted on my allotment. Realising it would take about fifteen years for them to mature and fruit, I quietly grafted some shoots of Cox, Laxtons Superb and Worcester Pearmain onto them in spring. They all fruited two years later and my kids were really chuffed.

We just love the tulips

Some quick growing plants are great for the kid’s garden as they see results soon. Radish, lettuce, peas, rocket and beans are all favourites and the runner beans let them see how plants can grow tall quite quickly, but for a really tall plant give them some sun flower seeds.

Pumpkins are another favourite to see how big they can grow them, and then they get the biggest for their Halloween lantern. To carve a scary lantern is another skill to master.

To get them involved in cooking the produce, rhubarb picking for a crumble fits the bill. It is easy to grow, easy to pick and the crumble is delicious. Another summer favourite for kids is strawberry picking, but try to stop them eating them all before you get them home.

Even garden pests can prove attractive to kids as they search the cabbages for a pet caterpillar to take home in a ventilated jar and feed it up with fresh cabbage leaves. Then patience is required when it forms into a chrysalis and hibernates over winter before the butterfly emerges in spring.

Garden birds can be encouraged with feeders well stocked up, and kids can learn to identify all the different types.

Smith family planting pumpkins

Another good idea is to get kids to plant up a scented garden of herbs and flowers to see the variety of scented leaves and flowers that also attract butterflies and bees. Lavender is perfect for bees.

Although there is a massive range of different flowers, they are all involved to seed production, so it is a good idea to let children study and draw the different parts of the flower and the function they perform. This also involves the flowers of trees that are wind pollinated. Kids find this knowledge fascinating. This can also involve collecting leaves in the autumn for plant identification, as well as seeds and pods. Many plants will come true from home saved seed, so the kids can grow plants from their own seed collections.

Back at home the windowsill is a perfect place for a small cactus collection, many of which will flower if they face south and kept on the dry side.

Wee jobs around the garden

The war on garden pests continues, and with recent wet weather the slugs and snails are very active. I use slug pellets for lettuce, strawberries, cabbage, cauliflower and Kale and French marigold flowers which they seem to just love.
Greenfly are also breeding in plague proportions so an insecticide spray should sort them out.

The same spray will work on scale on the undersides of rhododendrons, which is becoming a new problem.

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Figurative oil painting, Waiting Patiently

My figurative oil painting of "Waiting Patiently"can be seen in my studio in Dundee.

Waiting Patiently is a figurative oil painting

A FEW FAVOURITES

A FEW FAVOURITES

Gardening is a year round activity with flowers, fruit, vegetables, plants and flowers for the house, winter landscaping and digging and trying out new plants and ideas. I grow a very wide range of plants and am often asked, “What is my favourite plant”. I suppose everyone has their favourites, but I like so many that I cannot single out just one, so I thought I would look at those that have the biggest impact on me throughout the seasons. I try to create a garden that has at least one area of impact for a couple of weeks or so then another area has its day. This means bringing together plants that flower at the same time, rather than have them scattered around the garden.

Betula jacquemontii

Winter

There is a distinct lack of flowers in the garden from November to the end of February when the snowdrops appear and indicate that winter is coming to an end. Though the last few years, with mild winters, the snowdrops have been coming into flower from December onwards. My winter border has Kerria, Japanese maples, cornus and other coloured stemmed shrubs that brighten up the dark winter days, with my favourite, white stemmed birch tree, Betula jacquemontia. The main trunk is a brilliant white and on a clear day with blue skies it is very dramatic.

Spring

Once the warmer weather comes along there are numerous plants all competing for their two to three weeks of glory. At ground level the crocus can make a great show followed by daffodils then tulips in late spring, but this is also the time for rhododendrons, azaleas and camellias to flower as well as the flowering cherries. It is very hard to pick a favourite as each group can make a bright splash of colour in their own time before the next one has its turn. Last year my favourite would have been my red Camellia Adolph

Doronicum with tulip Negrita

Audusson, but this year the biggest impact was from a large group of yellow Doronicums which I had underplanted with a purple tulip all flowering at the same time.

Summers

This year after a long cool spring summer arrived and lasted a lot longer than we could have hoped for so the garden just burst into flower. Summer colour usually belongs to the roses, but before they came into flower I got a fantastic show from my oriental poppies, flag iris and Euphorbia polychrome.

Climbing rose Dublin Bay

Then at ground level my deep pink phlox and bright yellow Delosperma were outstanding and both came with a fantastic perfume. By mid summer my red climbing rose Dublin Bay stole the show as it covers the front of the house from ground level right up to the roof. Just a pity it has no scent, but for sheer impact it has to be the favourite.

Autumn

Fuchsia Mrs Popple

As summer fades and autumn takes over the dazzling colours of deciduous trees and shrubs will brighten up most gardens with my maple Sangokaku hard to beat, but Fuchsia Mrs Popple comes into flower from mid summer and last year continued till the first frosts arrived. It was definitely the favourite with the added bonus that the mass of flowers all produced a wealth of edible fruit. These all got picked and put into the juicer for a delightful and very different drink.

Wee jobs to do this week

The allotment has benefitted from great growing conditions, but now many rows of radish, lettuce, dwarf French beans, beetroot, chard, turnip, Swedes and parsnips are all needing thinned out. I usually do this in two operations with the first to remove weeds and give the seedlings room to develop, then the final thinning is to select the strongest plants and thinned to the desired spacing.

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Lady in Red project

Lady in Red in the High Street

Lady in Red is my latest art project painting in oils on board and canvas. The lady in Red is seen in many iconic locations around Dundee City Centre, including the McManus Gallery, Mercat Cross, town centre, Tay Bridge, beside the Bandstand at Magdalen Green and outside the Trades Bar and the Bank Bar in Union Street.

Lady in Red has a Night Out

Lady in Red goes Shopping

Lady in Red in the Rain

SUMMER HAS ARRIVED

SUMMER HAS ARRIVED

Summer has made a very welcome return to the Tayside region, and unusually the west of Scotland including Glasgow is properly tropical. It has been too hot to garden except early mornings and evenings and the hose pipe has been in constant use. Garden plants are just loving this weather. Rhododendrons, azaleas, ceanothus, viburnum mareisii, laburnum trees, phlox subulata and Iceland poppies are running the show, but roses and flag iris are not far behind.

Tubs, pots and hanging baskets have now all been planted up with geraniums, fuchsias, begonias, marigolds and other summer flowering bedding plants. The pansies removed from them still had flowers on them so they got planted in a spare patch of border, and after watering them in, they are now putting on a great display.

Mixed Azaleas

However this weather is also perfect for greenfly now breeding in plague proportions on roses, lilies, gooseberries and my young lettuce, but this is good weather for spraying in the evening.

Delosperma nubigenum

My first few strawberries got picked in mid May and serious picking began at the end of May from Elsanto grown under low polythene tunnels. Fresh strawberries for breakfast and lunch; now you know summer is here, and added to the pleasure of summer strawberries is the summer scents around the garden. I never really thought that Phlox subulata was scented, maybe it is just the right weather, but it has been outstanding and the ground hugging Delosperma nubigenum smothered in yellow daisy like flowers is positively exotic with a heady perfume. Then of course the azaleas are also well scented in my heather garden and near the entrance my blue petunias in tubs and baskets have always added perfume to all who enter.

This is the time for healthy eating with lettuce, radish, spring onion, baby beet and rocket all ready together, and rhubarb is throwing up healthy stems faster than we can pick them. Space in the freezer has been created for the spare crops as they come in, and I will be getting some demijohns ready as the Saskatoon berries will be ready for picking in mid July.

Most other fruit crops are showing a massive potential of crop, especially apples, currants, gooseberries, blueberries, chokeberries, strawberries and grapes. However apple Fiesta had a great year last year and has a biennial tendency so it looks like this could be its “off” year.

Phlox subulata

Raspberries also look good, but too early to assess at this stage. Though not everything is looking rosy as my pear tree with four different varieties on it produced plenty of flowers but I only see a handful of pears.

In the greenhouse full ventilation is essential with windows fully open and doors open while the heat wave continues. Tomatoes are now flowering on the third truss and looking very strong, even though I have only just started to feed them.

Black Hamburg grapes look brilliant, and my new Siegerrebe vine is just a mass of fruit, so I hope it produces more foliage to support this heavy crop which looks like it may need to be thinned out later on. Outdoors all my vines are looking good, but Rondo is ahead with Regent not far behind. Solaris and Phoenix are trailing but may just be late starters. If this weather continues it could be the vintage year our grapes require so they can produce enough sugar in the berry to produce a wine with at least 10% potential alcohol or higher. Last year my grapes only achieved 8% potential alcohol so to make a decent brew I had to add some wine concentrate and sugar. While this is fine for the home brewer it is not commercially acceptable, so Scotland’s potential for vineyards is still in the experimental stages.

Wee jobs around the garden

Herbaceous perennials are now putting on plenty of growth so make sure the taller ones such as peonies, oriental poppies and delphiniums are well supported as many have large flower heads.

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FLOWER SHOWS

FLOWER SHOWS

Flower shows have played a very important role in most gardeners’ lives. This is the place where plants can be seen at their best, new landscape design from professionals and colleges is on display and new plants appear so we can try out something different. The competitive gardener can also compete with others to see who can grow the best plants in the show. The shows are a meeting place for gardening friends, and now come with a huge range of other entertaining events including food, drink, forestry, art, live bands and dancers. There are so many plants of every description grown to perfection on display and for sale that it is impossible to leave the show without at least one must have essential plant. Most shows have a sell off on the last hour of the last day when bargain hunters have a field day, and traders try to reduce their stock as they really do not want to take it all back home. Even composts, fertiliser, rock dust, hanging baskets and large specimen plants are all there for the taking at hugely reduced costs. The mass exodus of people and plants leaving at the end of a show with a smile on their face and struggling home with huge plants is a very entertaining sight. My first flower show was in the Dundee Ice Rink over fifty years ago, and I have been going to one or other show ever since. Although I go as a visitor, I have attended many shows as a trader.

Anna with white clematis

I had three years displaying paintings in the art marquee at Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, then several years selling a range of plants including saskatoons at Ingliston in Edinburgh and Camperdown Park in Dundee. Traders are a very friendly and helpful group and friendships are made at every event.

One year at Ingliston I found my onion hoe in constant use ever since, plus a bag of rock dust and a bag of compost made from sheep wool and bracken and Anna got her Peonia Doreen, then the next year at Camperdown I think Anna got the national collection of Heucheras which she just could not resist. The shows always leave you with great memories of the plants you find, the people you meet and for me one great afternoon at Ingliston was hearing the Red Hot Chilli Pipers playing Snow Patrols Chasing Cars. Fantastic music on a lovely summer’s day.

Camperdown Park hosts our local food and flower show in early September and further afield at Ingliston in Edinburgh Gardening Scotland has a massive show on now from 3^rd to 5^th June 2016, then in August the Southport Flower show is on from 18^th to 21^st August 2016.

In the Midlands in rural Malvern the RHS put on a spring festival in May then an autumn show at the end of September at the Three Counties show ground.

Peonia Doreen

For those visiting London a visit to see the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show from 5^th to 10^th July 2016 is an unmissable experience. Although I attended three shows as a trader, I still had plenty time to see the show as fellow traders looked after my stand as I took a wee break.

However it is the Chelsea Flower Show held at the end of last month that has the most prestige. It is not the biggest show, but held in the highest regard. Exhibiting with the RHS at Chelsea would be most exhibitors dream. Chelsea is where you can see Royals and celebrities from the gardening world as well as entertainers, past and present, and the countries best garden designers will create a modern vision of how a garden can look. As a gardener it is always the use of plants that has the biggest impact for me, but the creative use of hard landscaping, integrating the house into the outdoor environment has been really outstanding.

Visitors to Kew Gardens

The Royal family gives great support to this show and look out for Mr Motivator, Twiggy, Dame Judi Dench and Jeremy Paxman and a host of other very famous faces from the world of entertainment.

Wee jobs around the garden

Lift young leek plants grown from seed in an outdoor drill and after a gentle top and tail transplant them into dibbled holes about six inches deep, spacing them six inches apart. Water them in to secure them.

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