Innholdsfortegnelse for September 2024 i Garden Answers

BBC GARDENERS’ WORLD AUTUMN SHOW Fri Aug 30–Sun Sept 1, Audley End House & Garden, Saffron Walden Essex CB11 4JF Show gardens, shopping, plants, talks, food market & entertainment. From £15.30 • bbcgardenersworldlive.com HORATIO’S GARDEN OPENING & PLANT SALE Sun Sept 1, 2–5pm, National Spinal Unit, Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, Govan Road, Glasgow, Scotland G51 4TF Woodland garden that supports patients, loved ones and NHS staff. £7 • scotlandsgardens.org DURHAM ORCHID SHOW Sun Sept 1, 10am–4pm, Josephine Butler College, Durham University, Howlands Farm, South Road, Durham DH1 3DF Orchid displays to admire & plants to purchase. Free entry & parking. • northeastofenglandorchidsociety.co.uk RHS GARDEN WISLEY FLOWER SHOW Tues–Sun 3–8 Sept, Woking, Surrey GU23 6QB Displays, stands & talks. Garden entry £18.50 • rhs.org.uk APPLE SUNDAY Sun Sept 15, Mount Ephraim…

Some plants tick so many boxes for the gardener, and star jasmine, as trachelospermum is commonly known, is one of the best. Climber with glossy evergreen foliage: tick. Great for screening and winter interest: tick. Delicious fragrance, flowers for a long period, good in containers, well-behaved: ticks all round. And it’s one of the few climbers that remains well furnished with growth from ground level to top, perfect for high-profile, sheltered, sunny spots. Despite its common name of star jasmine, trachelospermum is unrelated to true jasmine (jasminum), which is highlighted in the species name of T. jasminoides, which translates as ‘jasmine-like’. Other common names include Chinese jasmine and Confederate jasmine – the latter thought to be from the Malay Confederacy, not the United States, as this plant originates in the…

By September, some gardeners are ready to say goodbye to their summer plants. Yet there’s plenty of life left in them if you carry out a few simple tasks. Don’t give up on watering or feeding just yet; keep plants tidy and supported; and have a few dazzlers up your sleeve ready to plunge into any gaps that appear. 1. Mind the gap: As annuals and perennials go over, plug the resulting gaps with pot-grown nerines, Japanese anemones and sedums. 2. Feed and water them: Keep watering plants during sunny spells and provide a rich mulch to suppress weeds. This will all help top up their flower power. 3. Remove brown and ragged leaves: If foliage is looking a little crusty, trim off discoloured or ragged leaves that are spoiling…

Sunglasses are a must if you don’t want to be dazzled by the vibrant sweet shop colours in the summer borders at Norley Bank Farm. Packed with hundreds of different plants all in peak health and flowering their socks off, these herbaceous borders are a masterclass in perennial planting. However, it was five years after Margaret and Neil Holding moved here in 2009 before they set to work planting the garden with their beloved perennials. “We spent three years renovating the house, then Neil worked on the hard landscaping, rebuilding broken sandstone walls and paving the courtyards and pathways,” says Margaret. “The previous owner had included a good backbone of azaleas with plenty of bulbs, but perennials are our favourites and we wanted to include lots of them.” “We packed…

Visit greatmagazines.co.uk/gardenanswers PHONE 01858 438884 QUOTE SM24 At Garden Answers magazine our aim is to help you make the most of your outdoor space by creating your perfect garden – not just for summer, but all year round. Now’s the perfect time to take out a subscription. This rich source of gardening ideas and inspiration can be delivered direct to your door, 13 times a year, with a free packet of seeds with every issue if you choose the Print & Digital Subscription. Or try our Digital Subscription, which allows you to enjoy subscriber-only rewards and discounts. Simply scan the QR code (below on the left hand page) with your smartphone or tablet camera to find out more. SAVE 70% ON SHOP PRICES* Subscribe Get 3 issues for just £5…

Well-rotted bulky organic matter (or BOM), such as garden compost, is absolutely vital for creating and maintaining a good quality soil – and hence strong, healthy plants. It helps to improve soil structure, especially poor soils such as sandy and heavy clay, and with the drainage and water- and nutrient-holding capacities. But it does more than that. It provides the food source for the essential soil microorganisms that create soil fertility. So, recycling and composting any plant waste is good for you (helping to save you money on buying BOM), your garden, and the environment. Well-made garden compost can be used in several ways – as a soil improver, a planting compost when adding new plants and for putting on the soil as a mulch. “Recycling and composting any plant…

300 bulbs for just £14.99 Transform your garden with months of fabulous colour each year – this fantastic offer is less than half the normal price you’d pay for 300 bulbs of this quality! From February to August, you’ll be amazed by a dazzling array of colours and a variety of shapes from these brilliant plants. They are perfect for patio containers and flower borders, and best of all, each looks great naturalising through grass, returning with bigger and better displays for many years to come. These bulbs are guaranteed to bloom, introducing your garden to a minimum of 300 stems of vivid colour through spring and into summer. Included in this pack: • 15 x ‘Triumph’ Tulips Mixed• 15 x Crocus Mix• 15 x Narcissus canaliculatus• 90 x Ipheion Mix•…

Each week during my horticultural studies, our tutor would lead us on a themed plant walk. Winter twigs, spring bulbs, shade-tolerant ground cover, fragrant flowers – whatever the theme, we’d trundle around the college gardens, stopping every now and then to huddle around a perennial and take written, visual and mental notes of these plants, their names, attributes and preferred growing conditions. The following week, we’d be presented with 15 snipped specimens – sometimes just a bare branch – and have to recall the plants’ names (botanical and common) and other salient information. This could be really hard, and many of my course mates dreaded these weekly tests. I don’t blame them. Like learning any new language, botanical (aka Latin) plant names can feel impenetrably intimidating. I must admit though,…

“Planting out biennial wallflowers and sweet Williams that I sowed back in June.” Read Louise Curley on embracing yellow, p14 “Removing every touch of brown to keep the garden in summer mode.” Val Bourne plants late flowers for bees, p22 “Digging and raking an area to sow as a semi-shady lawn in the autumn.” Adrian Thomas talks climate change, p44 “In the kitchen preserving every single tomato I have grown!” Read of Olga Grieves’ allotment bounty, p66 “Revamping a border with new shrubs and perennials.” Read Geoff Hodge’s guide to compost bins, p86 “Getting scratched to pieces as I do battle with a rampant rambling rose.” Dan Masoliver is on p106…

Scientists at the RHS have found that the more sustainably you garden, the better you feel. The research, published in the journal Urban Forestry and Urban Greening, reveals that taking a more sustainable approach to managing your garden not only has a positive impact on the environment but can also make you feel better compared with adopting a less green approach. The charity questioned more than 2,000 people, with 83% of those who gardened considering it a positive effect for their overall health and wellbeing. The greatest benefits were felt for mental health, followed by physical and social health. Those gardeners who said they actively supported wildlife or limited their environmental footprint felt higher overall health and wellbeing benefits from gardening. The most common activities included avoiding the use of…

Yellow is a colour gardeners often shy away from, considering it to be too bold or garish or too difficult to use, but it can be surprisingly versatile. It brings a golden mellow glow to autumn, provides pops of vibrancy during the bleakest winter months, is the colour that heralds spring and in summer it adds energy to borders. A splash of yellow will brighten a shady spot or it can be used to lift deep colours, such as violet, burgundy and maroon so that they don’t become too dark and moody. If vibrant, egg-yolk yellow isn’t your thing then there are a range of more subtle shades to suit your taste and planting palette, from paler lemony tones and buttery hues to zesty yellowy-greens and warmer golds. While yellow…

PLANT OUT BIENNIALS Biennials make great partners for spring-flowering bulbs, and if you sowed some back in midsummer, now’s the time to plant them into their final positions so their roots can get established before winter. Dig holes slightly bigger than their pots and add some well-rotted compost when planting. Pop the young plants in, firm in place and water well. If you didn’t get round to growing your own, don’t despair because garden centres and online nurseries will have lots of biennial plants for sale this month. Look out for sweet Williams, wallflowers and forget-menots. Pot up hyacinths for Christmas Enjoy fragrant hyacinths indoors over the festive period by starting the bulbs into growth now. To get hyacinths to flower for Christmas you’ll need to buy specially prepared bulbs…

There’s a looseness and generosity to September gardens that’s hard not to love. Any early floral reticence has been engulfed by the rush of last-minute divas, the sort that turn up late to your party but are forgiven when they instantly set the atmosphere alight. There’s a sprinkling of red from indispensable late-summer stars such as dahlia, penstemon and zinnia, but it’s the stained-glass-like foliage that really draws the eye. The moody burgundy tinge of both ricinus and canna give the whole planting a sultry tone, but before the scene becomes too dark, the long cream-edged miscanthus leaves lighten the whole picture like the dazzle of a photo flash. As long as you deadhead and water, this border will keep performing right until the frosts. Colour Palette Scarlet, maroon, olive-green,…

As we head towards the autumn equinox, I can’t help but feel that September is like a second spring on my allotment. Warm and colourful, especially after our unpredictable summers, September brings nice, steady temperatures, gorgeous sunsets, and an endless list of tasks! Everything we worked so hard for in spring is now coming to fruition. Lessons have been learned, and resolutions for next year are being made. In my calendar, September marks the beginning of the gardening year. I’m already thinking of bulbs for next spring, planting out June-sown biennials, planning winter projects, and taking stock of my seeds. The most exciting part of September, though, is the harvest, of course. This is the culmination of the growing year. The allotment basket is working overtime, and my evenings are…

WRITE TO US AT Garden Answers, Bauer Media, Media House, Lynch Wood, Peterborough PE2 6EA EMAIL gardenanswers@bauermedia.co.uk WEBSITE gardenanswersmagazine.co.uk Heavenly hollyhocks I’ve been rewilding some land by a local cycle track/footpath and I love hearing comments from people about my amazing hollyhocks as they pass by. Last year I placed the dried harvested seeds in little envelopes with a ‘donation to dementia’ sign and raised almost £200. Julie Greenwood, by email Pretty partners This year my unnamed bargain rose and clematis climbing up the wall flowered together to make a wonderful colour combination. Chris Tait, Fareham Star letter THE PERFECT GUIDE Having bought a new-build house three years ago, thanks to Garden Answers, I’ve managed to transform my garden from a building site into a half-decent garden despite my very…

Free* 100 bulbs worth £20.46 From crocus and pushckina to allium and ixiolirion, this collection will provide swathes of colour before next summer arrives. Bulbs will be supplied from September onwards and you’ll receive: • Crocus ‘Barr’s Purple’ x 15 Beautifully soft purple blooms creating vibrant colour ready for early spring. Perfect for pots, patios & borders. • Puhschkinia libanotica x 20 Few Spring bulbs are as elegant as the Russian snowdrop. The gleaming white blooms are produced in dense clusters, brightly striped with pale blue. • Allium moly x 50 Dense clusters of star-shaped, golden yellow flowers from late spring. • Ixiolirion Mix x 15 Rarely seen in gardens, the stunning flowers of the blue mountain lily appear from May to July in a frenzy of royal blue trumpets carried on…

OCTOBER ISSUE on sale September 11, 2024 INSIDE Discover the best hedging plants for every garden How to use every bit of kitchen and garden waste to create the finest compost Meet the head gardener of Biddulph Grange, in Staffordshire Glory in the wonder of magnificent panicum for autumn texture + ♥ Inspirational reader gardens ♥ Olga’s lovely plot ♥ Expert Q&A ♥ Puzzles & prizes ♥ Jobs for the month…

`Patio project AN INFERNO OF FLOWERS What a fabulous way to fill late summer containers – with warm tones and wonderful textures. This has everything you need for a fantastic patio display, just when you are thinking about autumn and your much-loved plants going over. The fiery blooms of crocosmia ‘Emily McKenzie’ sweep up while its blade-like leaves thrust out, reaching a crescendo at the top as it meets smoke bush ‘Grace’. The large container is also filled with rudbeckia ‘Summerina Electra Shock’, coprosma ‘Inferno’ and heuchera ‘Palace Purple’. The small wicker basket is planted with Stipa tenuissima ‘Pony Tails’, coprosma ‘Eclipse’ and echinacea ‘SunSeekers Salmon’.…

1 You will need strong, flexible wire, cotinus leaves and small apples. 2 Thread the apples carefully onto the wire, making sure not to use fruit that is too ripe. 3 Alternate the apples with cotinus leaves until the wire has been filled. 4 Shape the wire into a heart and then secure the ends by bending them and looping them round each other.…

Right now, bees are foraging for nectar and pollen to top up their stores or build up their bodily reserves before winter descends. Honey bees will be furnishing their hives in autumn, but solitary bees and bumblebees also need late flowers. Many freshly hatched queen bumblebees are in flight now, getting ready to hibernate until next spring, so it’s really important to keep the flowers coming for the next few weeks so they can forage. Later flying bees need to find nectar, the energy drink for flight, and pollen for protein. Fully double flowers aren’t any use to them because the extra petals have replaced the nectaries and stamens. Grow double-flowers in your garden by all means, but make sure that you surround them with plenty of simpler-shaped flowers so…

Create a naturalistic feel by growing spring bulbs in grass or in the dry soil beneath deciduous trees. They’ll add a splash of colour to expanses of grass, driveways and wildflower areas. When growing bulbs in grass, remember the grass can’t be mown until the foliage has died back – about six to eight weeks after flowering. So, make sure to choose a spot where long grass won’t be a problem. For a natural look, scatter the bulbs and plant them where they land. Give them plenty of space so they have room to grow. Either use a trowel or long-handled bulb planter to make holes in the grass about three times the depth of the bulb. Drop a bulb in each hole, backfill with soil and replace the turf.…

Back in late August 2021, I was pottering around my garden (as usual!) when a large dragonfly caught my eye, hanging off a shrub. Call me a romantic, but it had the most beautiful blue eyes! I had never seen a dragonfly quite like it. I managed to grab some photos, allowing me to go back to the internet and discover that it was fittingly called a blue-eyed hawker. It is a dragonfly of the Mediterranean, but, in recent years, there have been increasing influxes into the UK, and it is now thought to be breeding in various places across southern England. The following autumn, I found a bronze-coloured damselfly visiting one of my ponds. That turned out to be a willow emerald damselfly, which colonised the UK in 2009…

1 You will need peat-free potting compost, ‘Serge’ pea shoot seeds, a hanging basket lined with coir, recycled paper or a plastic liner, scissors, an old plant pot and a plant label. 2 Stand the basket on the plant pot to ensure it is held steady while you work. Cut holes in the bottom of the liner for drainage – here we are using an old compost bag. 3 Move the chains to the outside of the basket so they do not get in the way, and push the liner to the edges of the basket to ensure a nice and cosy snug fit. Then fill the liner with peat-free compost. 4 Space the pea shoot seeds on the surface of the compost with about 1cm between each seed. Once…

Q How can I make more of this sunny border? I’d like to hide the fence Fact file • BORDER SIZE 4x2m • SITE Full sun • SOIL Improved clay • EXISTING PLANTS (left to right) Geranium, crocosmia, pelargonium, star jasmine, Californian poppy, orange zinnia, peony foliage, Verbena bonariensis, antirrhinum, pink dahlia, white lily • COLOUR THEME Reds and purples • THE LOOK Suburban jungle This sunny spot is the perfect open location for a late-summer hot border. The existing plants are obviously thriving and a valiant effort has been made to bring the neighbour’s purple buddleja into the planting scheme using flashes of purple Verbena bonariensis along with blue hardy geraniums. For extra depth in the colour scheme I think the border needs a bit of black or purple…

CLUES ACROSS 1 Nocturnal pollinator attracted to honeysuckle and jasmine (4) 3 Variant spelling for genus of shrubs commonly known as meadowsweet (6) 7 Evergreen summer and autumn heather sometimes called ling (7) 8 - - - - - lilies, name given to gladioli (5) 9 Star-shaped, liquorice-flavoured Asian spice also called aniseed (5) 11 Phlox relative of which leptantha is the blue ‘fineflower’ species (5) 13 Broad name for genista genus – yellow pea-flowered moorland plant (5) 15 ‘Mary - - - - - - -’, 1964 Julie Andrews film and orange-red azalea cultivar (7) 16 Achillea millefolium, common perennial herb that can be invasive (6) 17 Garden walkway that might be crazily paved (4) CLUES DOWN 1 Botanical name of mulberry genus (5) 2 Lotus corniculatus, bird’s-foot -…

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