Weekly catch up with garden & propagation

Propagation Team

The week got off to a wet start, but the sun’s been doing its best to make up for it with some lovely bright afternoons.

Mel, Rob, and Annie have been busy learning about different root systems, and while they were at it, Mel even rescued a baby pigeon from the tunnel! The two main types of roots they looked at were fibrous roots and taproots.

Fibrous roots are made up of many thin, branching roots that grow from the base of the stem, forming a dense network close to the soil surface.

Taproots are thick, central roots that grow deep down into the ground perfect for finding water in dry areas and keeping plants firmly anchored.

Miya spent some time out and about with Emily, learning all about seed collecting. Emily’s often found gathering seeds from Beth’s garden and the stockbeds, cleaning and storing them until they’re ready to be sown. She was especially excited to collect seeds from Margyricarpus pinnatus a low growing evergreen shrub from Chile. Its flowers might be easy to miss, but in summer it produces gorgeous pearl-white berries nestled in fine, green, needle-like foliage. Around here, we call it the “tooth-berry” because the fruit looks just like shiny little teeth!

Margyricarpus pinnatus

Sean’s been down on the stockbeds, working hard propagating bergenias. One of the stars of the week has been Bergenia pacumbis, which caught our attention thanks to its really unusual leaves. Bergenia expert Scott Galloway came by to take a look and had this to say: 'An unusual form of the species with wavy, irregularly toothed edges blushed pink-red. The bright green leaves are hairy on both sides (though they lose some of the fuzz as they age), and the edges are lined with tiny hairs. It’s one of only two pacumbis I’ve seen with hairs on the petiole. It’s probably a hybrid of B. ciliata and B. pacumbis. In spring, it sends up clusters of soft pink-white flowers on short, thick red stems'.

Bergenia pacumbis

And finally the whole team got stuck into refreshing the nursery displays they’re now looking bright, colourful and full of life. The bees, butterflies and customers are loving them! So please come give us a visit to see them for yourself! 

Garden Team

After a very dry start to July with hardly any rain we were very excited to get 60mm over the weekend followed by a very wet Monday! The dry river beds in the Gravel Garden looked like they had become rivers as rain continued in abundance much to everyone’s delight.

This week we have been continuing in the Gravel Garden, cutting back plants that have gone over such as asphodeline and cutting back nepeta for a second flush of flowers. We chopped some of the Oenothera lindheimeri by half as this will encourage it to flower again well into autumn.

This time of year the Eucalyptus dalrympleana sheds the outer layer of bark and also drops leaves, this requires a clear up on the beds below. We save the bark for sale on the nursery as it makes good kindling, while the leaves are raked up between plants to prevent an organic layer building up on the gravel.

We also collect seed for propagation, this week we have collected Nigella damascena, we are leaving some to ripen further such as alstromeria and Silene coronaria. While the Gravel Garden was a riot of colour a few weeks ago the palette has become more muted with purples, blues and whites drawing your eye through the beds. Looking especially good at the moment agapanthus and grasses are making lovely combinations of colour and texture. Pennisteum villosum has fluffy seed heads glowing in front of Agapanthus ‘Evening Star’ while Stipa calamagrostis gives a back drop for the dark stems and flowers of Agapanthus ‘Midnight Star’.

Pennisteum villosum and Agapanthus ‘Evening Star’

Stipa calamagrostis and Agapanthus ‘Midnight Star’