Gardening

THE FUTURE’S BRIGHT

Mike Burks, Managing Director, The Gardens Group

February can be a month of optimism but if the weather is against us, it can also be a little frustrating in the garden. It’s the shortest month of course and soon will be over but to keep the gardening juices flowing, and for a little treat, there are some wonderful plants to keep your spirits raised.

I associate the scent of primroses with my mum as she used to grow crops of them in polytunnels when I was growing up. There are an extraordinary rainbow of colours, and they bring hope to the borders in the garden or to pots. In wilder areas in the garden the ordinary primrose is a delight with its purity popping up in places that you’d forgotten about.

The cowslip is also fabulous – it became rare in the 70s and 80s as it’s a victim of indiscriminate use of nitrogen fertilisers which fed the plants around it, whereas cowslips are able to thrive in the poorest of soils. This meant that it was also a difficult plant for nurseries to grow in pots but in recent years the skills have been acquired and we have some wonderful plants available.

Winter pansies and violas too start to come back in force as the days lengthen, sunlight increases and yields a bit of warmth which accelerates their flowering. After a long winter they may benefit from a foliar feed of seaweed fertiliser which will give them a boost. There are some wonderful varieties now including the pansy/ viola cross known as panolas. These have the hardiness of the viola but flower for longer and are even more reliable than their parents.

A traditional early spring bedding plant is the cultivated daisy Bellis perennis. These were a forgotten plant and out of fashion, but some useful breeding work has brought them back. I love the variety Bam Bam, which is a great name and perfectly describes the sophisticated Flintstone impact that the plants have when in flower! They have large, double flowers, a naturally compact habit, and short, robust stems.

Forget Me Nots too have been forgotten… hmm, but again the blue is very cheery and a hopeful colour. They tend to get used in tubs for winter and early spring colour where they hang over the sides and burst into flower just when you aren’t expecting it.

I answered a phone call a year or so ago asking if we had the ‘unusual plant called Aubretia’. We did, of course, and the call was from a new gardener who was blown away by the display of Aubretia and it just reminded me that some ‘ordinary’ plants are quite exceptional and should be spoken about rather than just taken for granted. They creep up on us because there is nothing to see, really, in the winter and then suddenly, a blaze of colour in blues, pinks and purples pop out of stone walls and rockeries. They are very useful in tubs too, as are Arabis with the white a very pleasing and useful addition to any display.

Spring flowering bulbs will be popping up soon especially the early varieties of daffodils and Narcissi. Of course, this happens earlier and earlier probably due to climate change, but they are reliable and look perfect when all around maybe still a bit untidy. As bulbs they are available in the late summer and autumn for planting, but we do have them as plants (in the green) already growing and often with buds and flower too for an instant boost. I’m a fan of the dwarf iris especially the blue varieties which are a joy.

And then some permanent extra interest can be found with a number of superb hellebores particularly the orientalis types also known as the Lenten rose.

The range of colours found in these plants now is quite superb with pinks, purples, whites and (almost) black and there are a number of doubles too including the Credale strain. There are also varieties including ‘Ice and Roses’ collection which have very interesting foliage on which the flowers are offset.

Gardening is good for our physical and our mental health and so even if the weather stops too much physical work in the garden, getting out there to just admire the early spring flowers will give you a shot in the arm – and without having to queue!

thegardensgroup.co.uk

FERNS

Simon Ford, Land and Nature Adviser and Gardener

Writing this article on a cold, wet day with the rain beating down and the countryside looking a little grey and bleak, one group of plants in particular stand out. These are the ferns, which still have vivid green fronds, piercing the sad looking banks of the ancient hollow-ways and woods around Sherborne.

Ferns are one of the most ancient group of plants and are relatively commonly found in the fossil records of rocks dating from as far back as the Jurassic period. In Britain, ferns range in size from a few centimetres to over two metres in height and are surprisingly variable in shape.

The majority of ferns like damp, shady conditions, although some have adapted to much drier and exposed sites. They are unusual in not producing flowers or fruit, but instead reproducing by spores.

Probably the most ubiquitous Pteridophyte is bracken, which can be problematic in some circumstances, such as on moorland and rough grassland, where it can smother other grasses and plants and can be toxic to stock. My archaeologist colleagues also take against bracken as it hides earthworks and historic features if left unmanaged. However, some rare butterflies, such as the fritillaries lay their eggs on violets, which favour the shade of bracken. Another favourite, bluebell, has a symbiotic relationship with bracken, which creates the damp shade that it likes. When I worked in North Cornwall, cliff tops were cloaked in dramatic blue in April, before the bracken fronds unfurled in May, and I have seen similar results in West Dorset.

Walking around Sherborne, it is easy to ignore two rather lovely ferns, which live in the soft lime mortar of ancient stone walls and on garden boundaries. Maidenhair spleenwort, with its tiny clusters or leaves and black stems is one and the other is the aptly named rusty-back fern, with rufous hairs cloaking the back of them. They do no damage and make a stark stone wall look much softer. These ferns can tolerate exposure to

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baking sun and drying winds – despite looking brown, crisp and frazzled in the summer, they quickly appear to come back to life after some rain.

For real diversity, the best places to visit are woodlands and shady quarries and cuttings or stream banks. Although many native wildflowers do not like conifer woodlands, ferns can tolerate the shady conditions and acidic needles and are often one of the few plants (along with mosses and fungi), which grow here.

In the wetter west of Britain, including Devon and Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and western Scotland, our woodlands can rightly be described as ‘temperate rainforests’. The ferns in particular love the cool, humid climate and can look every bit as impressive as more exotic rainforests in the world.

Some of the most beautiful ferns in my opinion are the scaly male ferns and the shield ferns, with their metre-long ‘shuttlecocks’, growing off steep banks. As they begin to unfurl in the spring, the fronds are known as ‘fiddles’, due to their similarity to the head of a violin. These can look as beautiful in a garden situation as in the wild and we have created a little fernery in our garden in Sherborne, using a mix of native species in a shady spot beside a stone wall.

Very common, but perhaps less architectural, is broadbuckler fern, growing on the floor of the woodland. With its dark green glossy leaves, the hart’s tongue fern is one of the most characteristic ferns in the woods and roadsides and there are various non-native Asplenium cousins, planted in shady spots in our gardens.

Some ferns are epiphytic (they use trees to grow on). This includes the Polypody which roots into moss on branches of old oak trees, on fallen trunks and on old stone walls, just as you would expect in a rainforest.

The Victorians particularly loved ferns. (Remember the non-native Aspidistras, so popular in our grandparents houses?!) They also plundered many of our native ferns from the wild. Probably the most spectacular British fern is the well named royal fern, which can grow two or even three metres high and is a staple of stately home gardens around ponds, such as Minterne and Stourhead gardens. This can still occasionally be found in the wild, for instance on Dartmoor, Exmoor and Purbeck, but does get badly nibbled by deer.

Some years ago, I worked for the Australian National Park Service in Victoria and saw tree ferns growing up to four metres in height in deep, shady gullies. It is thought that sailors used their trunks as ballast, when returning home. These then re-sprouted and became one of the ‘must-have’ plants in Cornish gardens such as Trebah, Trengwainton and Heligan. Concerns over exploitation of these antipodean beauties has meant that they must now have their own passport before being sold in our garden centres.

One of the rarest ferns that can occasionally be found in unimproved damp grassland such as at Golden Cap, is the adder’s tongue fern. This doesn’t look like a fern at all and is only a couple of centimetres tall, requiring a sharp eye to see, but is very exciting to find.

There are quite a few other ferns to look out for in our local woods and stream sides, such as lady fern, hard fern, wall rue. They are generally visible throughout the year, unlike most flowering plants, and despite all being various shades of green, I think they are rather attractive.

Have a wander along our local footpaths and byways and see how many different ferns you can find.