The recent damp weather has been ideal for deadheading Buddleja crispa and pruning ballotas. When I first started gardening, I was made aware of toxic and skin irritant plants, but it took a while to realise how careful you need to be around some of the plants with felted leaves, as their fine hairs can catch the back of your throat and make you cough. I foolishly ignored my terrible “ballota cough” for a couple of years, but we now wear dust masks and (if possible) avoid pruning phlomis, ballota and Buddleja crispa in dry weather.
Most of the deutzia, philadelphus and weigela were done a couple of weeks ago, but there were a few shrubs that we hadn’t got round to pruning yet. We mainly cut the old, flower-bearing stems back to a new young, strong shoot and thinned the shrubs where needed.
We also tackled a couple of large, overgrown Skimmia japonica in the bed below Beth’s patio. They had layered and turned into a green wall. It’s a job we didn’t have time to do earlier in the season. By pruning them now, we’ll lose most of this year’s flowers, but it gives the new growth time to harden off before winter. To quote Beth’s dear friend Christopher Lloyd “it’s OK to prune when you have the time to do it and have the tools at hand, rather than not do it at all”.
Earlier this week we had nearly a whole day (!) without rain, so we donned our waders and continued the ongoing task of removing blanket weed in our garden ponds. While in the water, we removed the flowers on Thalia dealbata, as they unfortunately have a tendency to trap small pollinators. In its native habitat it’s pollinated by large carpenter bees who are capable of extricating themselves from the flower’s grip. The Powdery Alligator-flag is such a prominent, architectural feature in our ponds and we wouldn’t want to be without it, so we’ll continue to cut the flower buds off to keep the insects safe.
Propagation expert Emily has been busy increasing our numbers of snowdrops and narcissus by bulb chipping. A method where each bulb is sliced into small segments (which must contain a piece of the basal plate). The segments are then placed in a bag with vermiculite which is kept in a warm (20C) and dark place until the slices have produced bulblets which can be potted on. We use this method to bulk up stock of some of our more unusual snowdrops and daffodils.
On Thursday we had a visit from the Hydrometry team at the Environment Agency who replaced our old rain gauge with a very similar looking one. The new gauge has been approved by the MET Office so we can become one of their private rainfall observers. The shiny instrument on top of the new gauge is called a kiff mushroom and is used at MET office observation sites when inspecting the placement of their gauges.
Read on: Autumn Jobs in the Garden
Written by Head Gardener Åsa
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