Gardening Advice

Growing Pyracanthas

Pyracanthas, also known as firethorns, are attractive shrubs with profuse sprays of small, white flowers, alive with bees in spring, and brilliant berries, good winter feed for birds.  Their dense, glossy leaves and thorny growth make a good nesting site. It’s also useful; as it’s so thorny, it’s a burglar and stock deterrent. It can be grown as a shrub, as hedging or trained against a wall. They can even be espaliered.

Perennials and grasses for early autumn colour

Choosing and growing hydrangeas

Some people feel that hydrangeas are rather old-fashioned, having encountered them in their grandparents’ gardens, but think again! Hydrangeas are wonderfully generous plants, leafing out early in the year and suppressing weeds with their handsome leaves; they flower for months, usually from midsummer, often changing colour as they age. The leaves of these deciduous shrubs often colour well in autumn. The climbing varieties are self-clinging, so there is no need for supports. Macrophylla hydrangeas tolerate coastal exposure, too.

Hydrangea flowers are good for cutting, and also for drying for winter. The smaller ones are good in soil-based compost in large containers, which looks really wonderful if the same cultivar is planted in a row of identical pots, in a courtyard or formal garden.

Choosing and growing hardy geraniums

Hardy geraniums, also known as cranesbills for their long beak-like seed-pods, are brilliant plants for the garden. They are different from, though distantly related to, pelargoniums, commonly, but wrongly, called geraniums – lovely plants, but tender, so are used for summer bedding, window boxes and pots.

Hardy geraniums are very obliging plants, reliable and easy to grow. They are herbaceous perennials, dying back in winter but putting out fresh new growth quite early in spring. Their deeply cut leaves are very attractive, many colouring well in autumn, and some, like Geranium renardii, are virtually evergreen. They are very good for pollinators, like bees and hoverflies.

Growing Primulas

Primulas are a joy in the spring garden, and some will continue through the summer and into early autumn. They are herbaceous perennials, much more refined than the bedding polyanthuses, and when in the conditions they like will come back for many years.

Native primulas are very easy-going, and lovely in wild gardens, woodlands and meadows. The Asiatic primulas are fussier, liking reliably damp, acid to neutral soil; they are good in bog gardens, or on stream or pond banks, and are brilliant for bringing rich colour to a shady area. There are other lovely primulas, too, good in borders, and all love a deep, humus-rich, reliably moist, even wet, usually acid to neutral soil – a treat for those whose soil lies heavy and wet, and who sigh when ‘well-drained soil’ pops up on the website. All the ones discussed below are fully or very hardy.

Magnolias

Magnolias are beautiful, glamorous plants, with their tulip-shaped, goblet-shaped or strap-petalled flowers. They are also very ancient; one of the first flowering plants on earth, they pre-date bees and their open flowers are pollinated by beetles. Some are deciduous; these are mainly spring-flowering, usually on the shapely, open, bare branches, a glorious sight to behold in the spring garden. Evergreen magnolias usually flower in summer, including the beautiful, cream-flowered bull-bay, M. grandiflora, best trained on a warm wall.

There are several myths about magnolias. One is that they grow very large, and you would certainly need a big garden to grow M. campbellii at 50’/15m, but there are many, many, smaller cultivars or species ideal for smaller gardens, like M. stellata with starry white flowers, or the ‘Little Girl’ series, perhaps the best of which is ‘Susan’, with narrow, tulip-shaped crimson petals, paler within. And there are magnolias, like Fairy Blush and Fairy White, which are small enough to be grown in large containers, as can M. stellata.