Get ready for fall

Donna Balzer, CanWest News Service
Published: Saturday, August 23, 2008
Just as gardeners get things right and ready, it seems the evenings cool and systems start to fail. If you've been away, you know there's some work to do when you arrive home, but even if you are at home it can be a certainty to walk out in the garden one morning to the sinking feeling that things have changed.

Just before I took off last week for a little beach time, I noticed things beginning to falter and took some action by cutting back certain plants.

First off we had hail. This isn't by itself troublesome for plants, although it does create a bit of a mess. After cutting back annual flower stems that were stripped of blooms and leaves I then started randomly cutting back perennials. Luckily I didn't get the kind of hail damage that dents cars and pierces tree bark. When that happens, it could mean trouble because the pierced bark is open to infection and invites fungal and insect problems.

A tree with this kind of hail damage can only be watched -- rather than pruned -- because we just don't know where or when it will start attracting pests or diseases. Any leaves remaining on a hail-affected tree should be left in place and not reduced further with additional pruning.

RATTY PERENNIALS

But back to the ratty perennials. Yes, there were a few perennials damaged by hail, but others were simply and suddenly less than appealing to me. As I was removing hail damage, I started removing perfectly good plants that had just worn out their welcome. Some very tall tarragon that I had previously used to flavour soup suddenly seemed tall and weedy. And my oregano had reseeded everywhere while I wasn't looking, so I decided to leave one or two small seedlings, but the main plant had to go.

In a very tiny yard, plants that aren't useful for more than one thing in more than one season can't be justified.

Meanwhile, people have been phoning me during my CBC radio show about early signs of powdery mildew on their plants. I looked extra hard but didn't see the telltale signs of this fungus on any of my plants.

If you notice white spots on caragana leaves, it's likely a fungus commonly called powdery mildew.

Early studies have shown that aerated compost tea applied regularly before any signs of fungus appear can reduce or eliminate damage, but once the signs of fungus are noticed, it is too late to do anything.

Suddenly, older lower leaves are black and hanging on but are obviously distressed.

Because there are no easy organic options effective in controlling mildew once it is showing, most gardeners use the old school cutting back method.

With the sexual stage suddenly right around the bend with its small black fruiting bodies on the leaves, it is good to cut the plants back now. If left in the garden once the spore stage is obvious, the fungus over-winters.

In our climate, gardeners with early signs of mildew might want to remove leaves affected as they work in their garden this month.

Yes, the trouble will go away once our first frost comes but if there are signs of fruiting bodies, the disease will be back in full force next summer.

In other words, it's time to get out the shears to removed hail damage and fungal damage and just plain old ugly plant damage.

ON THE WEB

- Excellent information about powdery mildew from the University of Guelph can be found at uoguelph.ca

- For more about aerated compost tea: check out soilfoodweb.com or healthycalgary.ca

How to grow: Scabiosa caucasica

The large, lavender-blue flowers of the Caucasian scabious (S. caucasica) have been a cut-flower staple for 150 years or more. But I value these frilly flowers for the contribution they make in the garden rather than the vase. These silver-washed beauties shine in July, August and September, when sunny yellows and oranges dominate. Their delicate presence is a gentle relic of a summer almost gone.

Scabiosa caucasica was introduced into Britain in 1803 after seed collected from the Caucasus was sent to the Hackney nurseryman George Loddiges. In the wild it is found in cool meadows and in the garden this plant seems to peak once the heat of summer starts to wane.

'Clive Greaves' is a selected seedling originally grown by market gardener James House, who ran a successful nursery near Bristol. The House family had previously dubbed a white form 'Miss Willmott' in honour of Ellen Willmott who gardened at Warley Place in Essex. They also developed their own seed strain, usually known as House's hybrids, which are still available from Thompson & Morgan as young plants and seed (01473 695225; www. thompson-morgan.com).

'Clive Greaves', launched in 1929, has outperformed the others thanks to its strong constitution and free-flowering habit and has never been bettered. The real Clive Greaves was a racy young salesman who worked for Hewitt's Nursery in Solihull. He promised to sell any plant named after him in huge quantities - and succeeded. But if the teetotal James House had realised how good a plant 'Clive Greaves' was, he would never have named it after a man reputedly fond of wine, women and song.

However, the lavender-blue 'Clive Greaves' became popular quickly and has survived for nearly 80 years. Admittedly, there are more striking blue selections of S. caucasica. 'Fama' is an intense purple-blue with a silvery centre and 'Stafa' is a light-centred darker blue. But both are less floriferous and harder to place than 'Clive Greaves'.

All scabious are highly attractive to bees and butterflies. Our summer-flowering native, Scabiosa columbaria, is a compact, filigree-leaved plant with wiry stems topped by tiny Cambridge-blue pincushions. But perhaps the best small-flowered scabious of all is the sterile hybrid 'Butterfly Blue' - sometimes wrongly sold as 'Irish Perpetual'. It will flower continually from June until late autumn, whether dead-headed or not. This first-rate perennial is often sold in bright pink pots that doesn't exactly encourage the serious gardener. But I'm glad I overcame my prejudice. However, the pink-flowered version ('Pink Mist') is not as good - stragglier in habit and very prone to mildew.

The first scabious ever introduced was the small-flowered S. atropurpurea in 1591. This species comes from warmer areas of southern Europe. Often sultry and dark, it was given the common name "mournful widow". Although it is technically listed as a short-lived perennial, few survive my Cotswold winters so I have to treat it as an annual. Seed companies often sell mixtures of white and dark, or plummy forms under names such as 'Musical Score' and 'Beaujolais Bonnets'. There is also 'Chile Black'; these atropurpurea types often have clean white stamens that embroider their dark pincushions.

Other good garden scabious include the exuberant and man-high June-flowering Cephalaria gigantea. Long-stemmed, lemon-yellow pincushions emerge from green buds that are diamond-patterned in black - wonderful if you have enough room. I also much admire the wine-red buttons of Knautia macedonica that billow out from June onwards, getting tinier and airier as the season wears on.

How to grow

All scabious prefer well-drained soil and a sunny position. They dislike cold, wet winters. A top dressing of grit in October will aid surface drainage. However they also hate hot, humid weather and do best in temperate conditions.

S. caucasica has long stems that initially produce one large flower. But if you snip the dying flower stem back to the lowest buds, halfway down, two slightly shorter-stemmed flowers will spring from the bud axils.

Deadheading encourages plants to flower on and on. But many scabious (and related genera) set seed prolifically if left. Seeds can be collected in autumn, dried and sown the following spring without losing viability.

Both S. caucasica and S. atropurpurea will flower in their first year if sown by March; the seeds germinate easily. Pot up individual seedlings into small pots and plant out by May. Selected forms like 'Clive Greaves' need to be divided to remain true to type as any seedlings are likely to be variable. Division can be done in spring but only once the plant has begun to grow away.

Good companions

Scabious are excellent support acts for late-flowering roses. The lavender-blue flowers of 'Clive Greaves' highlight any cream and apricot roses. They also make excellent subjects for a cutting garden. Darker, dainty-flowered penstemons work well with 'Clive Greaves'; the dark 'Blackbird' or 'Evelyn' (a mid-pink with deep magenta markings) contrast well.

Soft blue also looks stunning against dark purple foliage, so growing an upright sedum like 'Purple Emperor', 'Xenox' or 'Karfunkelstein' with scabious will enhance both.

Where to buy

Hopleys Plants, Much Hadham, Hertfordshire (01279 842509; www.hopleys.co.uk).

Farmyard Nurseries, Llandysul, Carmarthenshire (01559 363389; www.farmyardnurseries.co.uk).

Macplants, Pencaitland, East Lothian (01875 341179; www.macplants.co.uk). More reader offers online telegraph.co.uk/gardening Reader offer

Reader offer

Buy six Scabiosa caucasica 'Clive Greaves' for £8.95 or 12 for £17.90 and get a further six free. Also available is S. caucasica 'Miss Willmott: buy six for £8.95 or 12 for £17.90 and get six free. Send cheques made payable to Telegraph Garden to Dept. TL735, 14 Hadfield Street, Old Trafford, Manchester, M16 9FG, or call 0161 848 1106 for debit/credit card orders, quoting ref. TL735. Module grown plants supplied. No delivery to Channel Islands or Southern Ireland. Delivery October.

Forget the calendar: spring's here

When it comes to horticulture, spring has already sprung in many Australian cities.

So you can ignore the formal start of the season on September 1 and get stuck into your spring gardening now if you want the biggest, brightest, most fragrant blooms in your street.

Most Australians tend to associate spring with the three month period starting from September, says Dr Tim Entwisle, executive director of Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens Trust. But it effectively starts a month earlier in cities with mild winters such as Sydney, Perth and Brisbane.
Dr Entwisle says many native plants start flowering in Sydney in late July, but September is the best month for other types of flowers, so there's still plenty of time to prepare your garden.

"In Sydney, if you go up into the mountains, you get a whole different climate and spring starts a month or two later than in the city," he says.

"In Melbourne, Hobart and Adelaide, wattles start in August but a lot of the spring flowering is best in September.

"Darwin doesn't really have spring: it really only has the dry and the wet.
"The start of spring varies greatly in a country as huge as Australia."

So how do you know if it is spring yet where you live? It's simple, he says: be observant and note when the first blooms appear.

"Don't get hung up on a season - you'll notice changes," he says.

"Get in tune with the seasons. Also, don't get select plants that struggle to grow in your area. Look around your neighbourhood and see what is going well.

"And no matter where you are, use lots of compost and a well mulched soil, which helps with the water restrictions that are in place across much of Australia.''

Dr Entwisle says a visit to your city's botanic gardens can provide inspiration for gardeners seeking the best flowering plants for their climate.

"Wisteria perform well - sometimes too well in Sydney - and are vigorous climbers that need training and pruning.

"However, in the right spot, they're tough and rewarding, and provide a two week window of seasonal bliss with their joyous colour. Some of the most durable flowers we've planted at the Sydney gardens include pansies, primulas and snowflakes, and shrubs such as spiraea, rondeletia, brunfelsia, heliotrope and loropetalum.

"These would grow well in most southern parts of Australia and they're flowering now."

Dr Entwisle says roses aren't suited to central Sydney and prefer drier climates such as Perth, where native paper daisies flourish, providing a riot of spring colour.

"Roses and camellias don't require a lot of water - they're tough."

Boronias, wax flowers and wattles (acacia) are out in force in August across Australia, particularly in Melbourne and Hobart, he says.

"Someone once said there is a wattle in flower somewhere in Australia at any time and that's probably true.

"Some people have a problem with hay fever but I particularly enjoy the smell of wattle - it brings back childhood memories. Also, sweet pittosporum can be weedy but it smells fantastic."

Beware with the latter species: sweet pittosporum, which is sometimes called mock orange, is considered a weed outside its native New South Wales.

Dr Entwisle says bulbs such as jonquils and tulips are coming up in Australia's southern cities. Tulips require more care than other flowering plants but are well worth it, he says.

"Here at the gardens, we keep tulip bulbs in the crisper of the fridge for between four-to-six weeks after they arrive to us from Tasmania.

"This both initiates flowering in the bulbs and improves size and quality of blooms.

"After planting the tulips, they're relatively easy to care for with few pest problems and low water requirements if they're planted in rich, improved soil."

Gardeners who want to attract birds to their garden would probably already know that grevillea does a fine job, but Dr Entwisle warns the genus could sometimes attract "pest birds".

"Indian mynas are a pest bird around Sydney that like grevillias but can take over from fairy wrens and robins," he says. "Banksias can provide a good habitat for birds, providing a tangled bush where they can hide from predators."

Gardening: Pretty in pinks

We're a fickle bunch when it comes to flowers. Styles come and go, with hybrid tea roses and dahlias among the many blooms that have risen and fallen in favour over the years - and, in some cases, risen again. One of the latest to make a comeback is the old-fashioned English pink, lovely in our gardens now in all shades of pink, red and white, with the characteristic frilly (or "pinked") edging to the petals.

Pinks have been grown in Britain for centuries. Dianthus plumarius was probably brought over by Norman monks in the 11th century and can still be found growing around ancient ruins. Widely cultivated in Elizabethan times for their sweet, spicy scent, which masks a multitude of other less lovely smells, pinks grew in popularity until by the 19th century there were hundreds of varieties. Many were raised by John Thomas Sinkins, master of the Slough Workhouse, after whose wife the beautiful double white 'Mrs Sinkins', still popular today, was named.

The main problem with the old-fashioned pinks was their short flowering period. Around the turn of the 20th century, a Sussex nurseryman, Montagu Allwood, bred the first of many modern pinks by crossing the old varieties with a perpetual-flowering carnation.

The offspring, which include the pink and dark crimson 'Doris', bright pink 'Bovey Belle' and fragrant double-lavender 'Lily the Pink', tend to have longer stems as well as more frequent flushes of flowers, making them enormously valuable for cutting.

Ironically, if the carnation helped swell the popularity of pinks, it also contributed to their downfall. Larger, showier and with longer, stronger stems, border carnations soon overtook pinks as florists' favourites. By the mid-1990s, you hardly ever saw pinks for sale as cut flowers and they were rarely, if ever, promoted at garden centres. To cap it all, as carnations became ever-more ubiquitous, their bright colours and long vase life made them the definitive supermarket or garage forecourt flower and the image of pinks began to suffer by association.

Thankfully, all that is changing. Championed at this year's Chelsea Flower Show, and now stocked by the likes of Sarah Raven (0870 1913430, www.sarahraven.com), pinks are very much back in style - from small native species such as the 'Cheddar pink' (Dianthus gratianopolitanus), with its loose mats of flat, pale pink flowers, to the fancy "laced" varieties with their contrasting edgings, to modern types in bold shades. I love to see a mixture of them, in both the vase and the border, the more intricate patterns and colour combinations alternated with pure whites, pale pinks or the odd red or purple.

The classic way to grow them is in bands edging a path, where passers-by can revel in their fragrance.

Pinks have few requirements but one of them is an alkaline, well-drained soil. If you do not have such terrain at your disposal, it might be advisable to plant in pots where you can mix in lime, grit and gravel.

For a contemporary look, try growing them in salvaged galvanized tubs and buckets; the matt silvery grey of the metal is a great foil for the grey-green leaves and shows off the range of colours to perfection. 'Gran's Favourite' - with raspberry-ripple edging to the pure white flowers - is one of the most decorative.

The boom in British-grown cut flowers has also played a part in the revival of pinks, with Waitrose selling the flowers again for the first time in a decade. The supermarket is working with a specialist grower in Lincolnshire to supply them with a range of varieties including 'Gran's Favourite', 'Bright Eyes' and 'Lily the Pink'. For the chance to win a large bunch of Waitrose pinks and a case of pink wine from the Chapel Down Winery in Kent, see our competition in the panel on this page.

Win pinks and a case of rosé

Waitrose is giving away a large bunch of deliciously scented English pinks along with a case of English rosé (Chapel Down's 'English Rose') to five lucky Sunday Telegraph readers.

To enter, simply answer the question: In which English county are Waitrose pinks grown?

Send your answer, with your name, address and telephone number to Waitrose Pinks Competition, Press Office, Waitrose Ltd, Southern Industrial Area, Bracknell, Berks, RG12 8YA, to arrive by Aug 17.

For more details of Waitrose's support of British growers, visit www.waitrose.com/blossomandbloom.

Growing colorful clematis in smaller gardens

Clematis has been a garden favorite for centuries. By the end of the 1800s, in fact, there were more than 500 clematis cultivars available for garden use.

Of these classics, nearly 50 are still marketed, including the 1858 'Jackmanii' cultivar. Beautiful alone on a support or as a companion for roses, this antique hybrid with purple-blue flowers remains today's most popular clematis cultivar.

British nurseryman George Jackman, who introduced this large-flowered perennial in 1858, recommended training it to grow over tree stumps – which is certainly easier than removing the stumps. Not everyone has or wants old stumps on their property, so some 19th-century gardeners used 'Jackmanii' and other clematises as weaver plants. They would peg clematis to the ground to direct the vines to weave through the open spaces between flower beds.

There are many "genteel" clematises perfectly suited for easy management in compact gardens. Profiling 150 of them is Raymond J. Evison's goal in Clematis for Small Spaces, a sumptuously illustrated, deeply informed book that features shorter-growing, disease-resistant and long-flowering clematises ideal for borders, patios, decks, hanging baskets and even indoor containers.

Mr. Evison, who owns a clematis nursery in England, raises key issues when considering which species or cultivars to purchase: vine height, blooming period, flower size and color. He also offers ample cultivation advice, which can be applied to North Texas conditions.
Perhaps the biggest problem with growing clematis in North Texas is the need to offset the effects of summer heat and drought. The lack of adequate and regularly available moisture damages clematis foliage and flowers. It can also produce symptoms that mimic fungal wilt.

Clematis thrives on rainwater and insists on cool roots. One simple way to manage this requirement is to locate the vine on the northern or eastern side of a structure, such as a fence. This structure will shade clematis roots during the hottest hours of the day. You also can mulch it heavily and plant small, leafy plants at clematis' feet to shade the roots.

China might be the epicenter for clematis – most certainly originate there – but America has its own clematises. Leatherflower (C. pitcheri), for example, is a lavender-hued native of East Texas thickets that has been hybridized for gardens.

So has scarlet clematis (C. texensis), a low-climbing Edwards Plateau wildflower. It is not the easiest clematis to maintain in North Texas, but it stands out as the only known wild red-flowered clematis species in the world.


Bill Scheick is a garden writer and professor of American literature and culture at the University of Texas at Austin.

Clematis for

Small Spaces

Raymond J. Evison

flower garden