Weekly catch up with garden and propagation

This week in Propagation

with Rob

Clan Crozier are in the pack house! There was a rather special moment this week when we had a mother and daughter team (Leanne & Kiran) picking and packing plants together. Leanne's our Marketing Manager, with a decade of experience in horticulture, working across both propagation and the garden team. Kiran hasn't been with us for quite as long but clearly has many of her mother's traits: cool, calm and collected. Although, Kiran assures me she's cooler!

We also welcomed Tom onto the team for a few days. Tom's been an absolute star picking our best plants for mail order. It really is a family affair, as Tom delivered these plants to Callum and Jack, his older brothers, who have been incredible in getting our orders out the door. Well done, all!

I was approached by Emily earlier in the week, who sauntered over to me with the sort of swagger you might expect from a 1950s mobster. As expected, she had 'merchandise' to show, but thankfully it was in a shady corner of the propagation building, rather than the boot of a car.

To my relief, Em only wanted to show me some of her seed collecting bounty. Including, the much sought-after Melica uniflora f. albida. We have just released a whole host of this super attractive grass, famed for its buds resembling tiny grains of rice. Works well in shade areas, especially paired with hostas and ferns.

I found Em later on in the week making some changes to our nursery display installation, experimenting with some new plants, wildlife mounds and sprinkling seed. I'll keep you updated on how the sand display develops as those seeds take hold!

A new treasure has arrived, Kitaibelia vitifolia, known commonly as Russian hibiscus. Not often found across the UK, we are adding it to our unusual library of plants here at Beth's. It's a large and bushy perennial, often achieving 2.5m in height, sporting broad, 5cm white and pale-pink flowers. Emily has sown the seed, pricked out into plugs, and hopefully it won’t be too long before you'll find this beauty on our nursery.

Elsewhere, the brilliant Priya has been potting Betonica officinalis 'Hummelo', which when established displays upright magenta-coloured flowers. It's named after the village in the Netherlands where Piet Oudolf's influential garden is located. A great plant for bees and butterflies!

This week in the garden

with trainee Mattie

It's been an extremely hot week, with temperatures up to 32 degrees in the garden. Although we've been sweltering, the plants have been doing very well despite the heat and only 15.5mm of rainfall so far this month. The cistus are flowering with their papery purple and white blooms, the salvias are a hive of insect activity, and the towering foxgloves are hosting napping nectar drunk bees.

We've been finding deep shade in the Woodland and doing the quite monotonous task of pulling arums before they seed and dominate the borders even further than they have. When it's been cooler, we've been out weeding in the Scree and taking away spent forget-me-nots.

We love sharing our range of plants with our visitors by giving a new ident each week in the Visitor Centre.

It was also lots of fun to do some workshops for the public, all about propagating and creating container displays with pelargoniums and sempervivums.

I've particularly been enjoying the Reservoir Garden this month, which is our trickiest area of the garden. Originally sandy soils, Beth added clay when she dug out the reservoir hoping to improve the soil. Now it is an odd mixture of clay and sand, where plants have often struggled to find their place. 

On our last intern weekend we had a huge help planting up lots of new planting from our friends and colleagues. It's now a rich tapestry of Euphorbia cornigera, Geranium 'Eureka Blue', velvet bearded and Benton irises, ever reliant Stachys byzantina, nepetas, Stipa gigantea, showstopping giant fennel, and dazzling purple jewels of alliums. 

Then soon the rudbeckias, asters, eryngiums and cynaras will take their place. The Reservoir Garden won't stay like this forever, with plans to redevelop it being put in motion, but what it has been is a place of learning, experimenting and a record of joy when we discover what works in some of the most difficult conditions.

 We hope you've been keeping cool this week, until next time!