As we enter the first month of the winter, as I wrote last month, I am trying very hard to concentrate on the best things that the month has to offer and to ignore the long nights and all too often damp, dreary days! So, as I look out of the window I am focussing on the beautiful, yellow flower spikes on our Mahonia and ignoring the rain and all the fallen leaves!
Looking back through past December blogs I find that in 2020 I was firstly admiring those plants which dare to produce flowers this month including Mahonia, Jasminium nudiflorum and Viburnum x bodnantense. I was also enjoying the flower buds with all their promise on such plants as Hamamelis, Magnolia, Cornus mas, Sarcococca, Skimmia and Camellia. But, of course, interest in the winter comes not only from flowers and flower buds, there is also much to admire in the colour and patterns on stems and bark, possibly some remaining foliage colour, still attractive seed heads, the wonderful tracery of bare branches and twigs, not forgetting the backbones of any garden, the evergreens. This 2020 blog also contained a section on pruning deciduous trees and shrubs during their period of winter dormancy. In 2021 the blog contained a brief look at some of the plants in our own garden in West Wales as a combination of a bad back and the first storm of the winter had prevented Teresa and I from visiting the gardens at Aberglasney. In 2022 I was singing the praises of five very different plants which all add their own particular charm to the festive season- Christmas Box, Rose, Trees, Cacti and Peppers! In 2023 I was concentrating on three native plants which we all associate with Christmas- Holly (Ilex), Ivy (Hedera) and Mistletoe (Viscum album). In 2024 in ‘Rounding off the Year’, I had a look back at the topics covered during the blogs and talks of 2024 including- Taking Cuttings, Pruning, Lawn care, Soil and related topics, Plant based topics and a rather mixed group on ‘Making Gardens more Weather Resistant’, ‘ Making Gardens more Bird Friendly’, the ‘Health Benefits of Gardening’, ‘Getting on Top of Weeds’ and ‘Creating Ponds’ all of which are still available on the ORL website under either ‘Monthly Guides’ or ‘Gardening Tips’. This blog ended with a section on the winter pruning of small trees, shrubs, fruit trees and fruit bushes and canes.
Recently I came across two separate articles both concerned with the changing styles and tastes affecting our gardens today. The first in the Daily Telegraph on Saturday, October 26th by Val Bourne came from the National Trust garden at Clivedon, Buckinghamshire where they have recently given the 200 metre long, twin borders of the famous ‘Long Garden’ a revamp. This had been designed in the 1930’s by Norah Lindsay in her famous country-house style but, over the years, most of the original planting had been replaced by colourful bedding plants. These, of course, might be a feast for the eyes over the summer period but were also high-maintenance plants, needing lots of water in the summer and greenhouse space and heat in the winter and spring. They also had to be removed once winter approached and bare soil in the winter doesn’t sustain wildlife, delight the eye or help the planet! In the light of this the gardening team in 2023 decided to change their gardening approach and ‘to work with their available resources and the changing climate’. As a result, Jamie Scott, the award-winning designer was asked to redesign the borders with sustainability and wildlife in mind which resulted in a biodiverse mixture of shrubs, perennials and grasses interspersed with domed, Yew ‘pin-cushions’ and Beech ‘bee-hives’ which reflected Norah Lindsay’s use of topiary in the original design. The shrubs included the species rose, Rosa glauca, with its bird-friendly, orange-red hips during autumn and winter, grey-green foliage and single pink flowers in summer. As for perennials, the tall and pollinator-friendly yellow daisy, Rudbeckia lacinata ‘Herbstonne’ and the violet-blue to pinkish-purple spikes of Verbena hastata give both height and colour. Lower perennials include the dark-leaved sedum, Hylotelephium telephium ‘Karfunkelstein’, Stachys officinalis (Betony) and now renamed Betonica officinalis ‘Hummelo’, with its bee-magnet, magenta-pink flowers in summer, various catmints including Nepeta ‘Walkers Low’ which offer months of lavender-blue, bee-friendly flowers although not as ‘low’ as the name suggests and, for spring, the acid-yellow arching heads of Euphorbia characias subsp. characias ‘Humpty Dumpty’ supported by grey-green rosettes of evergreen foliage which is highly favoured by ladybirds for over-wintering! The third component of the new planting scheme are the late-season grasses which play a vital role in this naturalistic style of planting. They not only provide drama, movement and winter interest but their foliage is also an important refuge for hibernating insects and small mammals. The planting list includes several varieties of Miscanthus, some of which rise to heights of six feet (1.8m) or more. The borders also contain some smaller grasses such as the knee-high, hardy Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Cassian’s Choice’. Its golden, autumn foliage beautifully sets off the dusky bottlebrush heads which in winter turn almost translucent. In addition, the feathery heads of Calamagrostis x arcutiflora ‘Walderbuch’ provide a taller screen and the upright stems move and shimmer in the breeze.
The borders, planted only two years ago, have already successfully endured a record-breaking, hot and dry summer and have certainly delivered in terms of supporting more wildlife, in particular attracting a wider range of pollinators including the fascinating hummingbird hawk moth. When it comes to maintenance the gardening team leaves everything intact for as long as possible as the seed heads and stems add winter interest for visitors as well as providing shelter and food for many insects during the bleaker months. The team has also introduced a no-dig and no-chemical approach to reduce soil disturbance and to lock in carbon and, interestingly, fewer weeds germinate when the soil is left undisturbed. Compost, made in the garden, is applied as a moisture-retentive, nutritious top dressing every second year (I imagine that they would do so every year if they had sufficient compost!) either in winter or early spring.
The second article also came from the Daily Telegraph, this time from Saturday 22nd. February, 2025.In it the author, Matthew Appleby, looked at some of our changing choices of garden plants- the decline of some of our old favourites and the rise of lower-maintenance, more sustainable options. He writes that bedding plants, in particular, are falling out of favour due to cost and environmental reasons as they had found at Clivedon. ‘Bedding’ was undoubtedly the mainstay of British gardens from the 19th century up to the 1970’s. Plants such as Begonias, Busy lizzies, Lobelia and Pelargoniums are still colourful features in many gardens, particularly in containers, but the days of rows or formal beds of such plants have long gone. Bedding still has its seasonal sales window in May when the sun shines but as Guy Barter, the RHS’s chief horticulturalist says, more long-lived and less thirsty plants such as Salvias, Heathers and Dahlias ‘requiring little maintenance but providing the same sought-after pops of colour and pollinator appeal’ have begun to take over. Having said that, spring and summer bedding still has a place in our gardens as well as its strong supporters such as Alan Titchmarsh. Bedding can be good value if it keeps flowering for many months (as does our favourite, Begonia sempervirens), provides almost instant colour and cuts out the hard work for some people of growing from seed.
However, changing tastes in gardening is not just about bedding plants. Roses, for example, are now seen by some gardeners to be too much like hard work in terms of pruning, feeding and spraying (certainly not by me though!) and as a result rose sales have declined from 65 million a year in the 1960’s to just 5 million today! In contrast, plants which have made a come back more recently are the old-fashioned, cottage garden, herbaceous perennial favourites such as Japanese Anemones, Delphiniums, Lupins and Foxgloves. Also, Lavender is a ‘top five’ plant which has stood the test of time thanks to its hardiness, liking for hot, dry conditions and year-round interest. Another big trend is that because new-build houses tend to have smaller gardens, smaller trees and shrubs are now more desirable. For example, Pampas Grass much used (some would say over-used!) in the 1960’s and 70’s has largely been replaced by smaller and more subtle grasses such as Miscanthus, Festuca and Carex. Also, particularly in our crowded cities, front ‘gardens’ are now little more than parking places for cars and planting may be just confined to a few specimen plants in pots. Other changes have been brought about by pests, diseases, weather extremes and invasiveness. Downey mildew, for example, has seriously affected the use of Busy Lizzies in recent years and we all remember the use of conifers and heathers in the 1970’s, the fashion for bamboo in the 1990’s and grasses in the 2000’s. However, the passage of time has largely seen off invasive bamboo, the grasses which ‘seed everywhere’, heathers that get woody and manky with age and so-called ‘dwarf’ conifers which often outgrow their spaces! Also, due to box tree moths and blight other plants are now increasingly used for low hedging including the Japanese Holly, Ilex crenata ‘Jenny’. Once fashionable Leylandii, according to one grower, needs to be treated like small children and dogs- disciplined when small! The grower in question used to grow 250,000 leylandii plants a year and now grows none! Once popular plants such as Cordylines and Tree Ferns have also suffered in recent winters and many gardeners have switched to more resilient plants such as bombproof Skimmias and hardy ferns.
At this time of year when gardeners’ thoughts turn to planning for the year ahead this is as good a time as any to look at our own gardens to see which plants are doing well or not and which suit our levels of skill or fitness and the amount of time we have available with a view to making some changes over the year to come.
Well, that’s all for this month but I will be back on the first day of the new year, hopefully full of enthusiasm and optimism for the year to come! Until then, Teresa and I wish you all a very happy, healthy and enjoyable festive Christmas period.
Keith.