Weeding the Web

The snakeshead fritillary checks back in

I thought I’d lost mine. They were barely there anyway, as the enormous number of snakeshead fritillary bulbs bought from the local market turned out to be an enormous number of grape hyacinths, with a few fritillaries thrown in. One spreads like a weed; the other doesn’t. Guess which?

Their numbers dwindled annually (from four to one) and they didn’t appear at all last year. Which is when I used their space next to the fence to site tomato plants in bottomless pots. This year I’ve had a (near) explosion – six fritillaries coyly preen themselves in the long grass, like teenage girls done up to the nines, but lacking the self-confidence to look you in the eye.

So why have they returned? Well, the spot where I put them used to be under a sycamore. Bit shady, but retaining some moisture. When the sycamore fell down, they suddenly found themselves dry and sun-baked, a definite no-no for this fritillary, which thrives in water meadows.

Good plants, bad gardeners

The horticultural equivalent of having eyes bigger than your stomach is buying a plant more suitable for a large estate than the small patch of green outside your back door. This is exactly what I did last week.

While so many nurseries have monstered into garden centres, with their detritus of "decorative" items and unrelated books, Farm Lane Nursery in Ashtead, Surrey, has stuck to what it does best for 35 years.  It seems tiny, but a visit that looks as if it will take all of five minutes easily turns into an hour, as you browse the rows of plants, nearly all homegrown, the "Bygones", which could make interesting additions to a garden, old tools, and stoneware. That temptation is a post for another day.

My last-minute purchase, grabbed from beside the payment hut, like a chocolate bar from a check-out, was Lonicera fragrantissima, in full bloom and smelling sweetly gorgeous. It's also only about 18 inches high. The owner made a shrewd assessment of me, and kindly explained that it was easy to keep in check at about 4ft if I pruned it before it got too big.

Hanging baskets for spring

Last August I wrote about Dr Foster's Plant Containers, designed by Alan Larwood. Well, Alan has been in touch recently, given my remarks about his website, to let me know that it's been updated and now contains much more information.

It certainly looks a lot better and is easier to navigate but, more to the point, has some lovely pictures of his hanging baskets planted up. They've even won a prize: Mrs Frances Beeton won silver from Bury [St Edmunds] in Bloom competition with hanging baskets trailing into Alan's two-tier planters.

And no, it's not too early to think about Spring baskets. Pansies, primroses, tete-a-tete daffodils and ivy all combine to make a spirit-lifting display. And the daffodils can easily be replaced when they fade, as long as you've planted them in the top. Have a browse round his site for more baskets planted in other seasons. 

You never know where life will lead.  Alan has recently gained his US patent while doing a nice line in hanging baskets for his local shops. And there's a chap who just wanted to please his wife!

My personal favourite is his suggestion of planting a basket with nothing but violas, which if put in now should flourish until May, and only cost a pittance.

Will standard roses become standard again?

I predict a new trend. And I sense a growing interest. For some time I’ve been wondering what happened to standard roses.

Watching The Long Arm recently — the last film from Ealing Studios, a police procedural starring Jack Hawkins — I felt a jolt of recognition as he turned into his front garden and passed standard roses guarding the path. The film was released in 1956 and these roses were a “standard” for front gardens for many years. Indeed, I can just remember them from my childhood.

Why did they fall out of favour? Well, all things do, if only because a new generation of gardeners and designers have to justify their existence by eschewing the established and bringing in the new. And while roses of any sort are poorly suited to the ultra-low maintenance deserts that make up so many front gardens, these also require staking. But I'm not alone in thinking they deserve more attention.

Robin Hood, Robin Hood, glowing cherry-red...

Russell Crowe will pound across cinema screens from tomorrow in the guise of Robin Hood, and with a whole new backstory (and main story) unrecognisable to those of us who have grown up with the legend (and, indeed, the unsurpassable Errol Flynn version).

Having seen a trailer, which prominently reminds us that the director Ridley Scott was also responsible for Gladiator, I’d say we’re in for more of the same — lots of murky forest, wide CGI vistas and a strange predilection for making every scene dreary with a blue or brown filter. Still, I could be wrong.

So, in celebration of (OK, and protest at) this latest reincarnation of one of our most English heroes, I thought I’d ferret out a connection with that most English flower, the rose.

What happens when you plant tulips (too) late?

How many of you have just rifled through the shed and found the bulbs that you meant to plant last autumn?

If you’re wondering what will happen if you put them in now, here’s what happened to me last year, when I found a pristine packet of tulips that I’d bought at Wisley the previous autumn.

Heck, I thought, I’ll put them in now (it was March) and I’ll just get late tulips. Well, no. Instead of emerging much later, they shot into action. Leaves emerged within a couple of weeks.

One bulb proudly displayed a full grown flower. The rest just couldn’t muster the energy to grow any bigger and I had a collection of miniature blooms.

Let’s hope they’ve recovered for a better display this year.

Gardening by the Sea

Far more of us are holidaying in Britain this year, so we’re told.

If you’re off to the seaside it’s a great chance to see how people garden in the extreme conditions. If you’re trying to identify any of the plants you’ve seen then look at Gardening by the Sea for a plant database dedicated to salt-tolerant plants.