Garden makeover: Shedding about

This is my shed.

Yeah, yeah, I know, well we can't all have quirky interesting sheds. I've actually got another shed too, up at the allotment, which is both quirky and interesting so maybe it'll find its way onto these pages before long just to prove this is Not My Style (honest).

Anyway. I inherited the shed with the garden, and as I was wittering on about recently, there were a lot of eccentric design decisions made by my predecessor in this garden - one of them being to place this shed plumb in the middle of the main view from the house. So when you look out of my kitchen window you see my lovely plants set against a gorgeous background of poo-brown shiplap.

Next bit. This is my Problem Area.

It's actually right opposite the shed, a little further down, and all I can do with it is hack it back periodically as nothing will grow there. It's under the deep shade of an overhanging cobnut tree (one of the more lovely aspects of my garden) and is a jungle of nettles, next door's self-seeded pink buddleia and rampant borage. You quite often see this deceptively pretty plant sold both as plants and seed in garden centres, at which I invariably laugh hollowly and totter out weakly since I've been waging a running battle with it for nearly 7 years - mind you I'm winning... mwah ha ha ha....

Mmm. Well. Anyway. I have for quite a long time been eyeing the shed... then eyeing the Problem Spot... then eyeing the shed again... It's an obvious solution. So today I started digging. You can just about see the fork (about to root out those bloody borage roots again) and the stakes marking out the spot in the picture above. It's going to be a horrible job (the pic of the shed very wisely doesn't include one of its contents - I don't think I've seen the back wall since we moved in) but the results will be Step One in the great garden makeover. Wish me luck.

Summer-pruning roses

About this time I find all my roses, and everyone else's too, are getting a bit wayward.

They've mostly finished flowering, bar a few late flushes, and they suddenly start shooting great thick stems skywards in a bid to take over the world. This is a Good Thing on the whole, as it means they're very healthy and well-established, and you should be able to look forward to a nice handsome display next year.

However - if they're anything like the 'Perpetually Yours' climbers on the fence between me and my neighbour, they can become a serious hazard. This summer while my back was turned they shot up several massive stems above the fence, a good 6ft long, which began waving about spectacularly in the recent gales threatening to whip off the heads of sundry children and household pets passing by.

'Perpetually Yours', incidentally, is a lovely rose covered in froths of pretty frou-frou noisette flowers in palest yellow. I have two, which took a while to establish in my sandy acid soil, but which are now spectacular each summer. Their only real shortcoming is that they don't stand up to weather very well, dissolving into soggy brown soup in heavy rain, like many roses I've found - a problem strangely unmentioned in the brochures. Mind you, the tried-and-tested favourites - 'New Dawn' and 'Dublin Bay' in my garden - seem to escape this problem.

But I digress. The point is, everyone talks about pruning roses in late spring (or late winter, if you're me) but nobody mentions that they need summer pruning, too. This time of year I end up picking thorns out of my fingers yet again, tying in wayward stems and cutting out any heading in the wrong direction.

I also cut back those long flowered stems by about a third - some of this has been done already in deadheading (which I'm intolerably bad at getting around to, though it doesn't seem to make much difference to the number of flowers I get) but there are always some which still flap about. This summer pruning will to some degree restrict growth, as all summer pruning does - but it's sometimes no bad thing to give roses a rap on the knuckles when they're getting too full of the joys of summer. Just don't do it any later in the season, as new growth will get knocked back by frost if it hasn't had the chance to harden off in time.

Knowing your onions

I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to brag a bit.

You see, I've been spending this week digging up the onion crop up at the allotment - the tops had gone over so it was clearly time they were out of the ground.

What you have to understand is that I've never - and I mean never, in about 8 years of veg-growing, had any luck with onions. They always turn out mingy little buttons, better for pickling than for eating. I've tried everything - different varieties, different spacings - but no joy.

Until now. Just look at these whoppers. The largest ones are around 6" across. They look like proper onions - you know, the ones you buy in the shops. The above picture shows just half the harvest - there was another 11ft-long bed full to go (you see, I overcompensate for the shallot-size onions by planting loads of them). My entire greenhouse is now stuffed to the gunwhales with drying onions and I've run out of racks. I'm even thinking of entering some for the village autumn horticultural show, I'm that chuffed.

Mind you, I have to confess to a sneaking suspicion that this is not actually anything to do with me. It's been a wierd year all round - early summer crops (peas, broad beans, French beans) which I'm normally dead good at have failed utterly this year. And cabbages, which I fail with quite as spectacularly as onions as a rule, have turned into kings - my 8-year-old picked one of my red cabbages up the other day and disappeared behind it.

If this is climate change, we're going to be eating a lot of cabbage from here on in...

August flowers

This month's boost to the gardening ego for the wonderful Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day at May Dreams. I love doing this - it reminds me that however scruffy my garden is, there's always something flowering somewhere.

Garden makeover #1

There's only one problem with my garden - I don't like it very much.

I don't mean the plants (I lurve them) but the layout. I inherited it from the previous owner, who was a special needs teacher with many, many special needs of his own - totally barmy and it's entirely reflected in the lunatic way he's laid out the garden. I got rid of most of the crazy plants he put in as soon as we moved in (I mean, who plants Rhododendron ponticum in their garden?!). Mustn't be too scathing though as he did pass on my much-beloved Lonicera xylosteum.

However - though it's easy enough to rip out plants and replace them, doing the same thing with the basic layout is one of those huge tasks that makes you want to just go back to sleep.

Well, now that I'm emerging, blinking, into the light having spent eight years in Very Small Child Country, I'm feeling just about strong enough to take on the challenge of a makeover. What's more, I brought a client back to my house the other day and she didn't believe it was mine because it was so unkempt... well that was embarrassing. So I really, really have to do something about it now.

When I say makeover, of course, I'm not talking Ground Force. More like a slow, meandering, several-years-long process of improvements, at the end of which I hope I shall have a garden which better reflects what I think a garden ought to be.

Gorgeous greenhouses

I'm a bit of a sucker for garden visiting - you know, when you get the chance to nose around someone else's garden under the guise of Supporting the National Gardens Scheme. Some are real gems - others less so, but there's usually something you can find to get enthusiastic about.

So while I was on holiday recently in the Isle of Wight I dragged my poor family off again to see someone's back garden (they've even stopped protesting now, having opted for resigned tolerance instead). The one that was open while we were there was Pitt House, near Bembridge, promisingly advertised as being four acres with statues, ponds and a waterfall, plus sea views.

Well - it was nice enough, and the waterfall was lovely as were the sea views, but I couldn't help thinking they could have achieved a bit more with all that space (four acres - and they have two gardeners, too, so no excuses). There was, however, one true gem in amongst the ordinariness: a Victorian greenhouse, entirely original (even had those cast-iron bracket thingies to raise the vents) and utterly gorgeous.

Oooh I want one...

...and look at these grapes. They were cutting bunches for people to taste - absolutely yum.

Best not to eat this one - poisonous. But enormous.

I thought this was a natty idea - invented by the Victorians, of course. It was just a shallow pool of water sunk into the floor of the greenhouse, under a bench. It evaporates over a hot day, keeping humidity levels high without any need for spraying floors or doing anything, really, except topping it up from time to time. It was a bit green and scummy - but you could probably improve things by... oh... planting a tropical waterlily in there or something...

Isn't this sweet? I discovered it tucked away in a corner under the benches. No idea what it was doing there.

And this was the pièce de resistance: backed on to that sumptuous main greenhouse was a sunken one. Just look at those tiles. It was entirely wasted on a load of ropey old fuchsias, but it got my imagination firing on all cylinders. Melons... pineapples... mmm......

Worrying about my veg

Until now I've had a separate blog for my allotment, but pleading severe lack of time to do just about anything, I've decided that my veg are going to invade the otherwise ornamental portals of this blog (so I've got rid of the other one).

It was kind of inevitable anyway, as I discovered a previously unsuspected vocation as a vegetable garden designer this spring (about five enterprising people were brave enough to let me experiment on their gardens and we got some pretty good results) and this has since mushroomed into a) a garden design course so I can at least pretend I know what I'm talking about, and b) a cunning plan to incorporate as many edible plants as possible into my back garden. So for some time now my veg-growing - previously banished to the allotment - has been shacking up with my more decorative plant-related enterprises and the two are now pretty much indistinguishable.

Only thing is - I've been pulled up short by the current concerns over contaminated manure. Since I'm mainly organic, not being able to be sure of my sh** is a real setback. I'm currently debating the options: buy the manure, but compost it for a year? (and if so, where?!) Spent mushroom compost (hard to get hold of, and besides wasn't that manure to begin with anyway...)? Super-expensive sterilised soil improver from t' garden centre? Or just take the risk?

They say nobody's going to take any notice of this until the market growers are affected. And I'm not sure how much of a crisis it is anyway: someone said to me the other day they thought it was only a problem in the London area (which almost means me, but since I'm just outside the M25 I usually exempt myself).

Will no doubt continue dithering until someone more sensible says something. Could be a while, then...

Colour, colour and more colour

Just got back from a week's holiday in the Isle of Wight - lovely, thanks, and more of which later, but in the meantime I had a few pics from the Thompson & Morgan open day in Suffolk which I went to just before I left.

Now this is something of a fixture in most garden journalists' calendars but it was the first time I've actually made it along. Bedding isn't really my thing so I hadn't really made it a priority before. How wrong can you be.

Now I'd better declare a blatant attempt at bribery on the part of the T&M people, armed as they were with oodles of freebies and a slap-up lunch. But - honest guv - I didn't really need all the buttering up. This was an amazing display of gorgeous flowers which just bowled me over.


Not that there wasn't any good old-fashioned traditional bedding: in fact there were buckets of it, including many in those awful gaudy candy-pink shades that old ladies love so much. However - stay with me here: in among the god-awful colour clashes there were some superb plants: ones which caught my eye included Begonia boliviensis 'Bonfire', in sizzling, sultry red, and much more subtle greeny-yellow Petunia 'Susanna' - as cool and reserved as the begonia was in-yer-face.


And here's a close-up of the sexiest fuchsia ever - Fuchsia denticulata. I love species fuchsias. Must collect some more.


Bedding outside - they don't bother with subtle colour combinations, do they? But don't you love that millet (Pennisetum Purple Majesty)?


And here's a close-up of the Nicotiana - it's N. suaveolens and planted en masse like this creates an ethereal, airy effect like dancing fairies.


I liked this nasturtium, too - a sultry red with purple-tinged leaves called 'Cobra'. They gave us a packet of seeds in with the freebies so I'll look forward to growing it next year.


These sunflowers ('Irish Eyes') made me smile, too. They were a bit small for my liking - about thigh-height - but looked great in a big massed planting like this.


My only complaint was that we didn't get to see more of this - the trials field, where T&M develop their new varieties, so you get a sneak preview of varieties in development. Quite apart from anything else, the whole (highly commercial) process of breeding new variations that might become tomorrow's stalwarts is fascinating.

Still - maybe next year! I haven't even mentioned the fruit & veg, either - lots of great ideas (standard-trained fig, anyone?) The trials are open to the public too - T&M's open day has been and gone, but all the major seed companies do it so get along to one if you possibly can (even if you are a bit sniffy about bedding!)

Didn't we have a luvverly time...

I promised you some pics of our weekend at the Great Gardening Show at Loseley House - so here they are...


Our humble little corner - that's my hubby and dog looking rather lugubrious (or is that just embarrassed?). We sold quite a few of those nice oak boxes and got lots of interest in the garden storage solutions. Quite a hot topic at the moment, it would seem (all the better for our bank account, then).


Then I set off to have a look around. Got very excited about these "hanging bamboos" - finally, I thought, I've found a way of using bamboos that keeps them in their place. But then I found out they're not bamboo at all but a grass - Agrostis stolonifera. I suppose bamboo is a grass, strictly speaking, but I think my campaign to outlaw the stuff continues unabated.



Loads and loads and loads of flowers everywhere - I thought this display was a riot...


...and so did the bee, which took absolutely not a jot of notice of me while I took this photo. Far too busy. As you would expect, from a bee.


This fig tree was on the rather wonderful stall from Plants On Line. They had some fabby citrus and olives too (I'm a bit obsessed by exotic-ish edibles at the moment as I'm cooking up a scheme for my garden - literally...) And a few pomegranates, which is another tree I hanker for. Apart from their rather regrettable predilection for bamboos, this is a seriously good nursery which I hadn't come across before.


Further indulging my edible exotics fetish, this is my must-have plant for this year: I spotted loads of colocasia at Hampton Court and this one was a beaut. Just look at those leaves... the edible bit is the tuber, which tastes a bit like potatoes so they tell me. I'd like to know who digs up £20 tubers to eat, mind you...



Last but not least, on the same stall as the colocasia (that's Athelas Plants - another fantastic exotics nursery) was this gorgeous Anizoganthus in full flower. It's called 'Gold' (can you tell why?): don't know the plant well but apparently it's not that easy to get it to flower like this. The label tells me it needs sun and well-drained soil - might do well in my acid sand, then...

My "must-grow-before-I-die" list is getting longer and longer. Better make it to my Queen's telegram otherwise I'll never get through it at this rate.

It's showtime!

I'm seeing life on the other side of the garden show stand this weekend - I'm actually an Official Exhibitor for the first time ever!

Here's a rather gratuitous pic of my pass to prove it:



As I've never done anything like this before it's probably more exciting than it ought to be but I don't care, I'm really enjoying myself. It's at the Loseley House Great Gardening Show, which is an annual event that's become a local fixture round here - though I must admit it hasn't been as packed as in previous years, no doubt something to do with the impending recession.

Anyway, this is all thanks to my rather talented hubby who's just jacked in his job and turned a 20-year hobby into a business, making all sorts of garden carpentry (shameless plug for business via his website here). He booked a stand some months ago - it started out as a stand for a wendy house but then he got into all sorts of other things woody as well so we've got quite an eclectic mix. And a few plants of course - I schlepped off to my local nursery, Spring Reach (another shameless plug there) to scrounge some pretty roses and rather nifty standard-trained cotoneasters on last-minute loan to tart the whole thing up a bit. Business has been pretty good so far, and we've still got a day to go - hopefully will get around to a few proper pictures tomorrow.

End of term

I thought you might like to see my model...

No, it's not a random collection of toilet paper, cotton wool and lollysticks, but a state-of-the-art 3-D representation of a town garden. Oh, all right then, it is a random collection of the bits other people throw out, but I had a fabby time putting it together.

This was the grand finale of the Capel Manor Drawing & Graphics course, which finished today - or rather, today was the deadline for handing in the coursework, which I managed by the skin of my teeth (was frantically cutting up chopsticks with my Felco no 9s over breakfast to make the pergola legs). It wouldn't win any prizes, but it's such a long time since I made anything like this that I just had a blast.

The whole course has been a bit of an eye-opener, in fact: can't believe it's finished already, it's gone so quickly. I discovered that I'm not all that good at drawing, though can turn out a passable stab at something recognisable if coerced: but much to my surprise, I do really like graphics, especially the pen work which is fiddly but very satisfying. I think it had a lot to do with being able to see the point of things - being a very prosaic sort of person, I could happily sit for hours drawing Very Precise Circles for planting plans whereas I got a bit impatient with all that painstaking shading and "just let yourself free" arty-farty stuff.

I was reading a recent issue of Gardens Illustrated (one of my favourite magazines) which has a column by the novelist Frank Ronan in the back (ashamed to say I've never read any of his novels, but he can sure can write about gardening). One of his last bon mots on the subject of "what is a garden" was "The gardener starts with a plant, not a pencil."

Precisely.

July flowers

I decided to join in with the Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day this month - this is the first time I've ever created a slide show, so be gentle with me!

You can see everyone else's spectacularly gorgeous gardens at May Dreams - go check them out, it's a real celebration of summer.

All change

I'm having to say goodbye to my weekly gardens at the end of the month. I've been offered a peach of a writing job which I can't really say no to - but something has to give, and it's the gardens that must go, sadly.

Not that I'm giving up gardening - no sir. I'm still doing my "big" gardens - those projects I'm working on involving an element of design or re-working. And then there's my own garden, which I'm cooking up a scheme for - involving more exotic plants than I strictly speaking ought to give houseroom for (but I just want to have a go at growing them).

It's a great opportunity for me, but I must admit to a bit of sadness as I trim hedges and weed borders for probably the last time. You get to know gardens intimately when you spend hours every week there - and you kind of forget they're not yours. So it's a wrench to leave them (and I keep thinking things like "I hope whoever comes after me keeps up with the mulching..." or "I must do that overgrown Philadelphus before I go or it'll never get done".

It's hard to let go.

Plant of the month - June

Geranium 'Ann Folkard'

Well... actually, this might be G. psilostemon, but I don't think so. I've lost the label (as with so many of my plants) and my memory of writing 'Ann Folkard' somewhere is hazy, but extant.

Anyway, this gorgeous floozy has taken a while to get into her finery, suffering as she has from far too much competition in previous years while she was trying to establish herself. I belatedly realised this last year so she got a nice year free of anyone else trying to outdo her, and has rewarded me this summer with the most unbelievably spectacular fireworks of in-yer-face magenta pink. She's forgiven her thuggish neighbours to such an extent, in fact, that she's now clambering among them lovingly, brightening them up no end with her lipsticky kisses. It's brought some eye-popping combinations - magenta and orange anyone? (this one when she wrapped herself around a neighbouring Californian poppy. It looked sensational).

Magenta pink isn't usually my thing, but Ann does it so well, and somehow it just looks right, giving the border real pizazz week after week. Hardy geraniums are generally good do-ers, and the fact that this one has managed to survive three years of suffocation and still come through it smiling her head off is testament to just how tough she is. I haven't watered, cut back, or in any way given her the attention she so clearly deserves - yet she rewards me with this. I think it means she's forgiven me, so I'll make it up to her with lots of TLC from now on.

The Bamboo Uprooting Movement

That's it - I'm officially launching the BUM.

I'm still nursing my wounds after having to deal with a client's rampant black bamboo (Phyllostachys nigra) - don't believe 'em when they tell you it's clump forming: it is, but only if you want clumps six feet or more across.

Now I've been collared by my next-door-neighbour wondering what these big hefty weeds growing in her garden are. It turns out that when the next-door-neighbour on her other side had his garden re-designed, the designer (who should have known better) scattered bamboo willy-nilly through the otherwise well-planned borders - and crucially, along the dividing fence between the two gardens.

The bamboo has now decided next door looks kind of nice too, so it's making a bid to colonise my poor neighbour's garden. This is what happens when a garden is designed without consideration for the fact that it's a garden: i.e. it grows, and some plants grow more politely than others.

Bamboo is a very impolite plant, has no respect for borders, or anything else for that matter. It sends out runners as thick as steel hawsers - and as difficult to get out - that then send up huge canes which you simply can't ignore or live with - or get rid of. I believe it should be classified as invasive, in the same bracket as Japanese knotweed. After all, no doubt the Victorians thought knotweed gave borders height, stately elegance and architectural beauty when they brought it back from the Himalayas in the 1800s - and look where that got us.

I'm now wondering whether I'll cause a civil war if I advise my neighbour to do something unmentionable involving cutting a stem and pouring something lethal down its hollow middle. Please - don't find yourself in the same situation. Get it out of your gardens. Now.

How to make a coldframe #4

Time to get back to my coldframe construction - it's been put on the back burner a little since all the blessed weeds started growing in about April. I'm currently juggling with a Heath Robinson construction of planks and old greenhouse glass next to my greenhouse as the home for my long-suffering seedlings (late-sown summer annuals, mostly) - I do wish I could get on and finish the deluxe model. At this rate it'll be just about ready for the first frosts...

Anyway, I think I left this just as the uprights were nicely battened and ready to clad. You start by doing the end uprights, the ones you put battens around the inside edges as well as at top, back, front and base. The reason for these inside battens will now become obvious: these are what you fix the cladding to.

This is a pretty easy process: you can either use thin planks, like I have, or following the Terence Conran design more closely, you can use overlapping cladding, which is kind of wedge shaped and widely available from DIY stores. I originally thought this would look a bit clunky (actually I still think that) but now I think it might be the better option - the above looks smart, but it does inevitably mean tiny gaps between the planks, as wood rather inconveniently tends to move as it gets soaked or dries out. Cladding, on the other hand, can move all it likes but it's still overlapping, so no draughts.

The only slightly tricky bit is cutting the top triangular wedges to size: the best way is to draw the shape of the upright onto the planks as a cutting guide before you actually nail them on to the battens. Or you can do it like me, and fiddle about cutting extra bits off here and there as you go along, thus doubling the time it takes you and making you swear in frustration.

No prizes for guessing that we'll be cladding the rest of it next time.

Previous bits of the series:

How to make a coldframe #1

How to make a coldframe #2

How to make a coldframe #3

Novelty value

I found out what my mystery honeysuckle is today!

I eventually got around to taking a sample over to Wisley's spectacularly useful Advisory Service a couple of weeks ago. For those who don't know, this service is perhaps the most useful thing you get along with your RHS membership: you get to take any problem, and any unidentified plant along to your nearest RHS garden (or you can send it in) and you have instant access to the country's leading plant experts to identify it for you. I always have the "I'm not worthy" feeling when I go in there - why would they want to be bothered with my humble little garden? - but they're unfailingly friendly and extremely helpful.

Anyway - back to the honeysuckle. It turns out to be Lonicera xylosteum - a new one on me. In his email the RHS botanist tells me it's "a native shrub sometimes known as fly honeysuckle... It normally forms a medium-sized, deciduous shrub producing small, creamy-white flowers in early summer. These may be followed by red berries in the autumn. Although of very restricted native distribution, it is grown in gardens and has become naturalised throughout the country."

I love having an Unusual Plant in my garden. It makes me feel like a trustee of something important - something to do with there not being that many around, but one of them's in my garden. I'll get ideas about National Collections next...

Beauty in unexpected places #2

This lichen was clinging to an ancient apple tree on the Trevarno Estate in Cornwall (yes, I'm aware that I've banged on about this lovely garden before). It was in the walled garden - currently being restored to its former glory, and including a few remnants of the old Victorian kitchen garden it once was.

Lichen is a thing of total, wonder-inducing beauty if you look at it closely. It appears on older trees and lots of people think it's doing damage - in fact it's just a sign that conditions are perfect, which means damp and a little shady with a nice bit of roughened wood to cling on to. Those little tufts of hairy grey moss just add to the general sense of other-worldliness, don't you think? It could be a scene from the surface of the moon.

So, then, that was May...

May is a write-off for me every single year. I always seem to leave normal life somewhere about mid-spring, and then wake up again when the summer's arrived, slightly bewildered and wondering what hit me (and the garden, which is by then knee-high with weeds).

The main reason for this is a particularly nice one, which is the massive workload I get in the run-up to and during the Chelsea Flower Show. I go there every year with a much-prized press ticket and have a ball. I loved it this year as much as ever: you don't need me to go on about which garden was best (plenty of others have done it better) but all I'll say is that my favourite won it. I had Cleve West's lovely confection as an outside bet for best in show - he said he was hedging his bets by making one side a tapestry of rich, purple-and-burgundy colour while the other end was all soothing greens and whites. I thought it just meant you had two gardens in one, so double the bang for your buck, so to speak. The amazing thing was, it held together as a whole, too, which is quite a feat.

The only other thing I'll go on about is the Great Pavilion, which is by far my favourite bit of the show, and the bit that makes me feel most humble. Avon Bulbs, Hilliers, Barnsdale, Kirstenbosch, Grenada, David Austin... the roll call of my all-time favourites is nearly the same every year, but there is a reason for that: these are the ones you can depend on to put on an exceptional show of horticultural fireworks, and you always come away bursting with new ideas and marvelling at new plants.

Anyway, that's quite enough of a show long past now. I brought my annual souvenir away too: I've been buying a plant from a Chelsea garden every year since I started going. So far the tally is a Helictotrichon sempervirens (2006), a Heuchera 'Brownies' (2007) and this year two: a shining silver Astelia and (impulse buy this one) a fabulous purple-and-green canna which cost me six quid for a five-litre potful from the confusingly-named Gavin Jones Garden of Corian, which was alternatively titled "Elevations" and was in fact designed by Philip Nash - dunno who Gavin Jones was. The garden was OK - not my favourite style, as it was kind of modern and spiky with lots of white hard landscaping mixed with steel and glass - but the planting was fantastic, with a really rich textural mix of exotics and unusual forms of more commonplace plants. I loved (and nearly also bought) the Pittosporum tobira 'Nanum' they used and it's now on my list of plants I must grow before I die.

But there I go, on about Chelsea again, and it's a week gone by since the last day. Back to work, back to the hedgetrimmers... normal life again.

Magnolias at Kew

Yes, I know it's long past magnolia season but I thought I'd just recall for everyone just how lovely these trees are. My excuse is that I've been having a bit of a magnolia fest this year, as not only did I get to write a whole article about them which included talking to some of the country's best growers and enthusiasts but also got to see the National Collection down in Caerhays which got me totally smitten - especially this fine specimen.

Well, just a few days after I got back from Cornwall I was over at Kew on another journalistic jaunt (I do love my job) and while wandering back from doing my interview, went to have a look at the magnolias. They'd been rather clobbered by frost, unfortunately - occupational hazard if you're a magnolia - but there was still enough there to make me swoon.



This one was amazing (and this pic is now my desktop - VP take note, I've shown you mine now too!). This is M. 'Phelan Bright', and these flowers are 10" across. Pretty amazing anyway, but even more so when you consider the tree is only 3 years old (some magnolias can take up to 20 years to flower).


Sadly this lovely thing was just about the only flower on the whole tree not reduced to brown and tattered ribbons by frost. Made it all the more special that this one survived. This is M. heptapita 'Yulan' - I'd never heard of the species, but the flower colour was the purest white of the lot.


Magnolias aren't often praised for anything except their flowers, but the buds are just gorgeous (fuzzy brown nutkins you can't help but stroke) and the leaves are often spectacular too. None more so than the leaves of M. grandiflora - it's evergreen and as you can see has lush, almost tropical foliage.


I love magnolias for their branch structure and their habit of flowering before the leaves come out - yes, it exposes them to frost, but it also shows you how spectacular pure white flowers against the stark outline of a tree trunk can be. This one is M. x veitchii 'Alba'.

Note to self: plant another magnolia. I only have M. stellata but every time it comes out in my front garden it looks more spectacular and I promise myself I'll get another one soon.