3 minute read

MEDIUM SUDOKU

from Trade Locally Issue 84

by Ian Thirlwall

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Divide And Conquer

As a canny Yorkshireman, I like nothing more than finding a bargain and saving some cash (and a little bit of the planet) - especially so amid a cost of living crisis. As no one has yet invented the charity shop version of a garden centre, whenever I make one of my regular forays to the rather lovely horticultural emporiums in the area, I’m always on the lookout for plants with ‘investment opportunities.’ This involves a careful scope of all the plants of a particular variety on display and choosing the plant with the most ‘growth’ potential, which is more about shoots and roots than a billowing display of flowers. I know this sounds a little bit too ‘Yorkshire’ for most sane readers of this magazine but, trust me, with a bit of horticultural wizardry you could soon be earning a return of up to 300% on your original stake (and a lot more bounteous flowering border) if you follow some simple advice.

Let’s take an easy and obvious example – snowdrops and other plants that have storage organs such as bulbs or rhizomes. If you’ve enjoyed a display of snowdrops or aconites this spring or if you have recently bought a potful of them, then it’s a simple job to split up the clumps (while they are still in leaf) and replant the smaller portions around the garden. Old clumps of bearded irises need to be divided once they’ve flowered in midsummer, but if you’ve got a really tired old plant that hardly ever flowers, then you might as well dig it up now and give it a new lease of life. I would cut off a few of the newer growths with some finger length portions of the old rhizomes and replant in fresh soil in a sunny spot – I’ve done this many times and even had a few flowers in the first season, which is a bonus.

A great favourite, which is ripe for a bit of judicious dividing and conquering, is the Agapanthus – a wonderful plant that looks fantastic in pots or in the border, and is now available in a huge variety of colours and forms. I have a lovely dwarf double white variety, which I bought many moons ago from the bargain basement area of a garden centre, that has been dug up and divided so many times that friends and family can always guess what they are going to get for pressies. Recently I splashed out on a bare root crown of a lovely variety called Windsor Grey, which was the cost a of a good bottle of single malt. On the face of it this is a steep price to pay for a lump of tangled roots, but the promise of an amazing display and the fact that I could probably tease 2 or

3 new plants out of it made my purchase a no brainer – even though the scotch option was sorely tempting!

It obviously doesn’t have to be just garden centre finds that you should be looking to divide up - if you’ve got an established flower border, now is a great time to get your hands dirty and burn off some winter padding whilst increasing the stocks of your favourites. I’m a habitual digger – I love excavating a whole border at this time of the year and seeing which plants need the division treatment and then replanting in a fresh new design. This process is so physically and mentally uplifting that I’m afraid there is no way that I could be a member of the ‘no dig’ fraternity! What’s more, it’s also a great tonic for the plants themselves –by replanting the fresh new divisions in a reinvigorated soil you are guaranteed a far better display along with the smug satisfaction of knowing that your horticultural investments are maturing nicely.