Garden Climbers

CLIMBERS FOR EVERY OCCASION

I first became aware of the possibilities of climbing plants at the beginning of my gardening career when my small council house garden was just not big enough to grow all these plants I was learning about. By utilising all walls and fences I could extend the range.

It soon became clear that there were plants that would enjoy a north facing wall, whereas the more exotic climbers would thrive on a south facing wall.

A new world emerged for the young very keen apprentice gardener who lost no time in covering every available wall and fence space. The house soon blended into the landscape.

Fences erected along property boundaries, or separating garden areas, or creating privacy and shelter around patios would all be enhanced with scented flowers and autumn berries.

Being a fruit lover these walls and fences would provide the correct conditions to grow many fruit trees and bushes where space was at a premium.

As life moves on the garden is now a lot bigger, but so is my knowledge of plants that I want to grow or experiment with. So I am back to the original problem of not having enough room. I need to be quite selective on what plants I choose to grow..

Special needs

My first success was finding plants that would grow on a north facing wall where good sunshine was a problem. To convert a dull dark north wall to one with flowers was a great achievement. Climbing rose Mme Alfred Carrier, or Ena Harkness and  Jasmine are all  good.

Then what about the east wall where early sun would affect any late spring flowers if there was a late frost. Choose something that flowers in summer.

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.

Property security can be improved by planting Pyracantha around any vulnerable windows. They can also thrive on north facing walls and although very vigorous, they adapt very well to spur pruning to keep them close to the wall while retaining their thorny framework and bright autumn berries. Blackbirds just love to nest in them.

Walls and fences are becoming very popular places to plant fruit trees and bushes on as people now want an apple, pear, cherry or peach but normally they would grow quite large, so nurseries now cater for this use. Espalier trained trees, smaller growing stepover trees, and dwarf cherries are all now available. Now cherries grown on the new Gisela 5 rootstock will only grow to six to eight feet tall, so can easily be netted against birds so you get the fruit and not the birds.

Supports

Some plants support themselves and climb using their twining tendrils e.g. vines. Others will twine around any support, e.g. honeysuckle and clematis, some attach themselves with adventitious roots appearing in the shoots, e.g. ivies, but many others require an artificial support to be trained against. Most climbing roses will need support as will Pyracantha, and fruit trees. Wooden fences may give support by way of their construction, but can be enhanced with strong wires stapled firmly along its length. Trellis is very useful as well as six inch weldmesh. Walls can be drilled and vine eyes inserted to hold strong horizontal wires for training. Every situation will be different and each plant will have its own particular needs.

An overgrown leyland cypress hedge can be cut back to ten feet or so and most of the branches removed, just retaining enough to keep them alive and give support to a few climbers. Allow some regrowth, but not too much to create a nuisance. Clematis will thrive here and some climbing roses can be added. In time the clematis will hold onto the climbing rose  and keep it upright.

Soil

Very often there will be a perfect house wall space but totally paved with no soil near it. Most plants only need enough soil to get them started. I have frequently removed a two by two slab against the house wall then excavate ten inches of builders rubble before loosing up a further six inches. Backfill 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 will reach seven feet in height according to the catalogue. However once the roots found the rubble it just grew and grew and now I have had to severely prune it to keep in down to twelve feet.

Seasons

Climbing plants can add interest all year round by using the benefits of each different wall. South facing walls catch the most sunshine so will bring plants on earlier and retain colour longer at the end of the season while north facing walls extend the plant range to those that would otherwise suffer too much sun.

North facing walls are perfect for the yellow winter flowering Jasminum nudiflorum which starts to flower at the beginning of winter and continues for a few months. Camelias on a north wall can follow on into the early spring, and being a woodland fringe plant they do not mind shade as long as they get some sun in summer to ripen up the wood to allow flower buds to develop.

Clematis in its numerous varieties and hybrids will give a display from spring till late summer. 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.

Where scent and flowers are both important go for a honeysuckle. That will take you into summer. Now there are numerous climbers and ramblers to choose from. Roses are very adaptable, but choose a variety that has disease free foliage able to resist black spot, mildew and rust. Chemicals available at garden centres have to be very safe for public use so are usually quite dilute and do not always work effectively unless you spray at fortnightly intervals and each spray does not get washed off with rain soon after application.

My favourite autumn climber for any wall is the Firethorn, Pyracantha Orange Glow, though there are several yellow and orange berried forms.

Fruit bushes

Redcurrants and gooseberries can be trained as cordons on an east or west wall, but keep your south facing walls and fences for those fruit that can benefit from more sunshine.

Apples and pears trained as fans or espaliers thrive on a south wall, but so also do figs, cherries, peaches and the vine Vitis vinifera Brant. The vine needs support for its tendrils to hold onto. It has small but very edible fruit and brilliant autumn colour.

All of the fruit trained against walls require pruning specific to their individual needs to control growth, expose fruit to the sun and ripen up shoots to fruit the following year.

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Ornamental Berries

ORNAMENTAL BERRIES

Beauty in the garden presents itself in numerous ways throughout the year. The impact of bold bright summer flowers is replaced in autumn with brilliant leaf colours as well as berries, fruit and hips. Most plants reproduce and spread by means of seed dispersal and have all developed amazing methods to ensure their success amongst the competition.

Plants need to ensure that their seed is spread well away from the parent plant so some have developed wings e.g. sycamores and maples, some have hooks such as sticky willie, and some open with an explosive power to shoot seeds good distances, e.g. brooms and gorse.

Chestnuts and oaks provide a food source for squirrels who collect the seed and dig holes in the ground to store them for the winter. There is always a good chance that some will survive the ravages from the hungry squirrel and grow into a tree.

The ornamental fruiting trees and shrubs started of as edible fruit for wildlife who travel away from the source eating the fruit on the journey and disperse fertilised seed in their droppings. Humans have played a role in dispersal of apple trees grown from seed along railway embankments as the apple cores were thrown out of the windows from older steam engine trains.

People have grown plants for eating for generations and realise that there is also a visual pleasure in seeing a tree or shrub in full crop with brightly coloured fruits.

Nurseries and plant breeders have taken this a stage further in developing new improved varieties and selecting the best clones to extend the available range of ornamental trees and shrubs with impressive displays of fruit.

Trees

When I was selecting suitable apple trees for my garden in Dundee I decided that they would need to be bright red as well as having excellent eating and storing qualities. Discovery is my early, Red Devil my main season and Fiesta and Red Falstaff my lates for storing, but while on the tree they all provide a fantastic display of bold colour.

Katy and Scrumptious are also very good.

However if a good display is more important than cropping potential try some of the ornamental crab apples such as Malus John Downie or Golden Hornet. After a while if you are tempted to use the fruit they will make an excellent jelly.

For those who are more patriotically Scottish a rowan tree will be high on the list. In past times they were necessary to ward off evil spirits, but old traditions die out and now they are grown in numerous forms for a very wide range of ornamental berries and autumn colour.

The common species, Sorbus aucuparia is grown all over Scotland and has eye catching scarlet foliage in autumn with a huge crop of scarlet berries which dont last too long as the birds just love them. The variety Sheerwater Seedling has been bred for its upright growth making a perfect tree avenue which does not interfere with traffic movement.

The yellow, pink and white berried rowans give a longer display as birds are not in a hurry to devour them like the red fruited types.

Joseph Rock has yellow berries amongst scarlet foliage, Sorbus cashmiriana has white berries and both Sorbus hupehensis and vilmorinii fruits start pink then slowly change to white tinged pink.

The genus Sorbus also includes the whitebeams which have broader grey leaves and scarlet berries which can last a long time. They make very impressive bold trees. The best ones are Sorbus aria lutescens and majestica where the grey summer foliage turns golden in autumn.

Berried Shrubs

Holly grows to a small tree size and is evergreen and will fruit in most years. It is very popular for a festive decoration around the home, is very easy to grow, but is not too fast.

Coming down the scale in size the Cotoneaster genus grows from a small tree such as C. frigidus to ground cover such as C. dammeri. They all get covered in bright red berries that last well into winter. The species C. horizontalis has a herring bone pattern that really excels when frosted. It is very useful for ground cover as is the variety Autumn Fire though it can be quite rampant. Cotoneaster simonsii is a very useful medium sized shrub for screening, but its prolific red berries get eaten and carried by birds all over the garden. It would seem that almost every seed wants to germinate and grow. This can be a problem.

Berries come in all colours from the white snowberry, Symphoricarpos albus, the violet purple Callicarpa bodinieri, the deep blue black Mahonia aquifolium to the bright orange sea buckthorn, Hippophae rhamnoides.

Sea buckthorn fruits are displayed on a silver grey feathery foliage that is great in maritime places as it tolerates sea spray and dry sandy soil conditions. It is a popular plant for vandal prone areas too, as it has a lot of thorns, and its strong root system and ability to sucker makes it useful to stabilise steep slopes and river banks. Breeders have been busy growing plants that can be easily harvested as the edible berries are very healthy once processed into juices and jams and essential oils are extracted from the seeds. It is also used in cosmetics and even in baby foods. The edible berries are very high in vitamin c,  but may have to be cooked in some recipe to get the best flavour from them.

Another excellent evergreen ground cover plant smothered in red, pink, lilac and white berries is the Pernettya. The berries last all winter until they get sweetened up for consumption by birds in late spring when there is precious little else for them to eat

The plants are female so you will need a male pollinator to ensure a good crop of large berries. You may have to order a male plant as they do not have sales potential in nurseries if there are no berries on them. Some species of male Pernettyas do however produce some berries as they may have a slight androgynous tendency.

It doesn't just happen to humans.

There is quite a bit of controversy as to whether the fruit is edible. For some native south American Indians Pernettya fruit was a major food source in summer and winter and different species were reported to have hallucinogenic chemicals or could make you intoxicated. The North Carolina State University studies reported the whole genus highly toxic and warned they may be fatal if eaten.

My local blackbird seems happy to gulp them down every late spring and always flies of in a straight line. He probably hasn't read the report.

Skimmia has always been popular as an evergreen low growing shrub with red berries. It is also dioecious so you need a male pollinator for the berrying female plants.

Roses

It is the common practise to remove the seed heads after flowering to conserve the plants energy for flower production, but some rose types have very attractive large bright red hips.

Do not remove these hips as they will be the attraction well into winter. There are many varieties, but they mostly come from the two species, Rosa, rugosa and Rosa moysii.

Climbers

The Firethorn, Pyracantha comes in many varieties with red, orange and yellow berries. These are produced quite prolifically on tall thorny evergreen bushes which are usually treated by pruning to grow as a wall climber. Birds love the fruit, so although the display is short lived it is quite stunning for a few weeks.

The outdoor ornamental grape vine, Vitis vinifera Brant produces numerous small bunches of black sweet grapes. It is quite vigorous but is easily kept under control with pruning. It is best trained along wires on a south wall. Autumn colour of the large vine leaves is brilliant.

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The Good Life

THE GOOD LIFE

Having an allotment has almost become an essential modern fashion accessory.

We no longer need to dig for victory as supermarkets are overflowing with fruit and vegetables on sale at very reasonable prices. Supermarkets are profit driven so produce often picked before it is ready, comes from all over the world from whoever can supply it at the cheapest cost but with little control over what chemicals could be used for its production. The only way to ensure that food is unaffected with chemicals is to grow your own and in any case most chemicals are no longer available to amateur gardeners so we can only grow organic produce.

Our busy city living has brought on a desire for a healthier lifestyle requiring exercise, fresh air and fresh food. Many modern homes do not have much garden space, so an allotment can provide that opportunity for gentle exercise in fresh air to produce an ample supply of fresh fruit and vegetables plus flowers to brighten the day and allow cut flowers for the home.

Allotment sites are also a great place to meet and mix with like minded gardening people chatting over current affairs, football, religion, sex, music, the neighbours weed problems and even gardening, often at a plot barbecue. The social side of allotment gardening is very important where new friendships are often made.

In the past allotments tended to be predominantly male dominated of an older generation. Today allotments are seen as a social and recreational pursuit with people of all ages including students and young families. A great place to teach the kids about plants and outdoor life.

In Dundee there are private sites (three with 126 plots), and either council run (four with 53 plots), or sites on land leased from the council and managed by existing plot holders (six sites with 422 plots). All have waiting lists that are growing bigger every year.

Dundee city Council opened up a new site in South Road with 20 plots. This site has excellent security fencing, water, paths and sheds and was instantly tenanted from local gardening enthusiasts. You can check out their progress on their website at www.southroadallotments.btik.com

Other good allotment websites include www.nsalg.org.uk and www.sags.org.uk

History

Provision of allotments started hundreds of years ago to allow the poorly paid working classes land to grow food to supplement their diet. More recently the demand grew out of necessity to supply food during our last two wars. Demand after the last war has since gone down but has met with renewed interest recently due to a change in lifestyle living, and now local authorities cannot cope with the demand in some towns where people on waiting lists have to wait many years before they are offered a plot.

The normal allotment size was always about 10 rods, (just over 250 square metres) but it is now quite common to create smaller plots to accommodate more people from waiting lists.

Modern varieties of fruit and vegetables have heavier yields of pest and disease free fruit and vegetables so even the small plot can supply self sufficiency of produce for most of the year.

The allotment has become a pleasant hobby that costs very little money, but which offers huge benefits.

Modern allotments

Local authorities recognise that use of allotments is more of a leisure activity provision, so there has been a need to address safety, security, landscaping, access and rubbish collection.

Provision of toilets is very important as is a secure perimeter fencing and a community hut is also needed to host committee meetings have social events and store composts and fertiliser purchased in bulk for the benefit of members.

In these times of recession and cut backs funding for fence repairs by local authorities is hard to come by. It would help perimeter security if a boundary hedge was established around the outside of the site wherever possible using Pyracantha or Rosa omiensis pteracantha. These two tall growing shrubs are perfect for attracting wildlife, bees love the flowers, and birds love nesting in the security of a very thorny thicket of branches. Both plants provide berries and hips for food in autumn and are very attractive landscape plants, but the thorns are so vicious that they will deter anyone from trespass once they get established.

The new allotment holder

It is preferable to start your tenancy in early winter to allow time organise the site and prepare the ground.

I started my allotment at City Road in November a few years ago. The first task was to clear rubbish, broken glass, brambles and perennial weeds. The social side started immediately as I was made very welcome by friendly neighbours happy to send me home with bags of turnips, potatoes and a cabbage. All this produce and I haven't even bought any seeds yet.

My first concerns were with the design as the paths were in the wrong place and I needed to work out where best to establish my permanent fruit bushes. I needed a patio to relax on, a south facing wall for my fig bush, a convenient spot for my very essential compost heap and an ornamental border for flowers to make the site attractive.

My shed was very dilapidated, leaked badly, and had a broken window but it was home, full of character and did support a few mice and a bees nest. Just exactly what you would expect

Although my plot is quite small with good growing conditions it can be very productive, but that will require a high work commitment. This started with the winter digging. The previous tenant left some compost and this got supplemented with horse manure.

However all the fruit bush rows had to be double dug as well as the sweet pea trench, so extra help from younger family and friends were called in to assist. Payment had to be offered so the first round at the pub was mine, and the second, and a few more.

Always make sure any clay in the lower spit is not brought to the surface when double digging. Deep digging helps the drainage and gives roots a deeper root run. It also breaks up the clay releasing nutrients to the plants.

The fig got special treatment as a pit was excavated two feet deep and lined loosely with slabs to restrict the root run and encourage early fruiting.

Deciding what crops to grow is down to personal choice, but it is always good to build in some rotation system with both vegetables and flowers. I also move my strawberry patch every three years.

Fruit bushes arrived in winter so summer and autumn rasps got planted (in a snow blizzard), but that's dedication, then bramble Helen on the side of my shed, then currants, gooseberries and saskatoons.

City Road Allotment Gardens are having an open day on Sunday 8^th August from 11am to 3pm. Come along and see our plots, have a chat in our cafeteria, and see our fresh produce and plants including saskatoons for sale.

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