Eye candy

This is why I volunteer at The Garden HouseThe Garden House.  Ten late spring images for your delight.

How fast do Dicksonia antarctica tree ferns grow in the UK - May 2024 update

It's been nearly two years since the last update on my Dicksonia antarctica tree fern growth rate.  As I've said before I purchased it in 2002 as a tiny baby, planted it in the rear garden, and have tracked it's progress as it's slowly developed a trunk amd the crown of fronds has enlarged.

It's now May 15th 2024 and the clear trunk from soil level to the level of the newly unfurling fronds of this years flush is 63in / 160cm.  So, another 2.5in / 6cm of extension.  That's nearly 3in /7.5cm a year on average, rather more than the books describe.  It does seem to be slowing down a little.  Here it is in my little pool area in the rear garden.

More than tall enough to sit under, a wish I expressed earlier in the saga!

At a current cost of about £350 for a 5ft trunk specimen I think my £2 purchase has been a good investment.

They're only babies but they'll soon grow up

I've been buying plants again.  Despite having a fairly full garden I can never resist the temptation to add something new for the summer to autumn display.  Four plants in particular, a banana, a colocasia, and two begonias, all obtained as plugs from Craig at Grow Paradise, a little exotic plant nursery he runs from his garden in Dorset.  Cossetted babies at the moment, they'll soon grow to hopefully become garden worthy specimens.

Starting with the Colocasia, this is the cultivar 'Pink China', reckoned to be one of the hardiest and capable of overwintering in the ground throughout most of lowland UK.

For this year I'll restrict it to container growing and overwinter inside but, assuming it pups, next year will be the acid hardiness test.

Much the same can be said for Musa sikkimensis 'Bengal Tiger'.  Frost tender but reputedly root hardy this is another one for a container this year - probably with 'Pink China' in the same 50L pot I have handy.

Hopefully this will grow to resemble this:

Early indications are certainly proming as colour is already appearing after the sunshine of the last few days.

The next two may or may not be hardy.  Begonia luxurians I''ve grown and lost before but it makes such a statement plant with its' palmate leaves that it's definitely worth the effort to find a semi shaded spot for it to develop from this...

...to this.

The second begonia is 'Sterling Moon'.  This is reputed to be a cold hardy cultivar which dies back in autumn and overwinters as tubers in the same way as Beginia grandis ssp evansiana..  Whether it can cope with cool wet Plymouth winters is another matter and I won't be trying to overwinter it outside until I have enough to risk a plant.  In the meantime it can summer outside on a small, shaded shelving unit with other tender begonias and a few houseplants.

I couldn't resist the patterning on the foliage and it's supposed to get better as it grows larger.

It will be interesting to see these develop.

Some Garden Views

All taken May 6th 2024 and all taken in our rear garden.  There's a lot of plants still to emerge - the Hedychiums especially - but even so it's looking quite full for early May given the cold wet spring we've had so far.  As always, click to embiggen.

Chaemerops humilis, European fan palm - 24 years in the ground - and Cordyline 'Red Star'.  They work well together,

A view of the little pool area with my one and only Dicksonia antarctica tree fern and Camellia 'Anticipation' still in flower.  The fern was planted 20+ years ago as a little baby and I wondered if I would ever be able to sit in it's shade.  I can!

Looking back across the little pool (which needs topping up) towards the house the Trachycarpus fortunei fan palm and Camellia 'Anticipation' dominate at the moment but Tetrapanax papyrifera will soon fill in the gap where you can see Maria's workshop.

And here's the understory  with Persicaria 'Red Dragon' and Acanthus mollis filling the floor.

Looking back towards the house from what was a patio but is now filled with vegetable pots.  Musa basjoo is beginning to develop some decent leaves on the right while Acca sellowiana hides the area in front of the living room window.

Looking back from the other end of Maria's workshop we have Chaemerops humilis on the right, the Musa basjoo in the center, underplanted with Acer palmatum dissectum, in the centre and a stainless steel shelving set on the left that I fill with seasonal interest for the summer.  This includes some of my houseplants.

 A Visit to Wildside

On the other side of the village of Buckland Monachorum in Devon, down the road from The Garden House is the garden created by their previous head gardener, Keith Wiley and his late wife Ros, Wildside.

Carved, literally, out of a sloping West Devon field. the garden has been contoured with hills and valleys, allowing a naturalistic planting scheme to be featured in a dramatic landscape.  Coupled with a wide range of plants, each chosen to fit the created terrain, and the result is a magical garden that I'm sorry not to have visited more often.  Hopefully, these few images will provide a flavour of the garden as it was on the 27th April 2024.  Click the images to embiggen.

Hopefully I'll find the time to return frequently during the year to see the garden as the season's unfold.

Adiantum venustum revisited

Back in 2011 I wrote a post in praise of the hardy maidenhair fern.  Given my interest in exotic / subtropical gardening in the UK, one of the questions I always ask myself is why none of the exotic gardens on YouTube never seem to feature this plant.

It's tough, reliably hardy, great for shady spots and has a grace and delicacy that lends itself to producing a carpet of foliage under shrubs and tall perennials on any moist but well drained soil, acid, neutral and even alkaline.  After 18 years of spreading growth it's certainly shown it's worth in my front garden where I grow it under Camellia x williamsii 'St Ewe', Pieris 'Flaming Silver' and Acer 'Bloodgood'

It could amost be called invasive if it wasn't such a gently slow spread by rhizomes, easily controlled by removal of clumps during early spring or late autumn.  It is, I admit, semi deciduous.  The old fronds can get very tatty by winter's end but come the spring and bronze fronded regowth it soon recovers to produce carpets like green waves across my mini woodland floor.

I still haven't found an answer to my original question.  Perhaps the sight of these images might spur greater adoption of this lovely plant

Painted Persicarias

They're tough, hardy perennials that erupt early from winter dormancy.  When they flower later in the year the little white flowers are nothing to write home about.  The frequently need cutting back, both at 'Chelsea chop' time and again later in the year.  They can even be invasive in good conditions.  So why are they a mainstay of many an exotic garden?

Because of the foliage.

Persicaria microcephala 'Purple Fantasy'

One of the features of sub-tropical and tropical gardens is the use of bright foliage as underplanting to the specimen plants.  In cold, wet and windy UK we can't grow the range of colourful foliage plants available in warmer climates but we can grow plants like 'Purple Fantasy', 'Red Dragon' and 'Silver Dragon' to add that tropical looking sparkle to even mundane plantings.

Persicaria microcephala 'Silver Dragon'

Persicaria microcephala 'Red Dragon'

All three carry the characteristic V shaped leaf bar of P.microcephala but the expression is different enough to make them equally desirable.

P. virginiana also offers a couple of painted leaf forms.  'Painter's Palette' is similar to 'Compton's Form' in the V bar is more diffuse and spread as blotches across the individual leaves.  These emerge later in spring than the P. microcephala varieties but soom cover theground with pretty leaves.

Persicaria virgata 'Compton's Form'

So, if you're looking for a tough, hardy, ground covering filler plant under more exotic specimens you can't go too wrong with any or all of these painted Persicarias.

Musa basjoo flowering

I speculated at the beginning of March that my 'hardy' banana, Musa basjoo, might flower this year.  I was right.  Almost immediately after posting that I noticed a fat bud begin to emerge from the top of one of the pseudostems.  A little to my surprise it wasn't the tallest or the thickest of them.  Upright at first...

...the bud stem elongates and the fat bud droops below the horizontal.  Unfortunately for the display the wind has played havoc with the unfurling leaves of the banana and the opening bud now sits among the wreckage.

The bud then opens to reveal the flowers, clustered at the base of the bracts.  .

Each pair of bracts will open in turn to reveal another set of flowers as the season progresses.  I may even get small bananas forming though these are not edible.

I've grown Musa basjoo for many years but this is the first flowering.  With luck and more mild winters it won't be the last.

Erythroniums

I love these spring bulbs with their delicate reflexed flowers on relatively tall stems above, depending on the species and cultivar, mottled leaves giving the North American species the common name of trout lilies.  These are woodland plants in the wild, but open woodland, with deep moist soils and abundant light in the spring, but offering protection from harsh, baking conditions in the summer and autumn.

They thrive in conditions like this...

Erythronium revolutum 'Johnsonii Group'

...where they can create dense carpets in time.

They're not just pink.  Consider the yellow E. tuolumnense, usually available as the cultivar 'Kondo'...

...or the white flowered Erythronium californicum 'White Beauty'...

...or the pinkish yellow shades of the E. californicum x tuolumnense hybrid 'Joanna'/

They're even a good nectar source, as witnessed by this Brimstone butterfly feeding an early spring.

Versatile plants, they deserve a place in any garden that can offer the open woodland like conditions they need to thrive.

Daffodils and the Narcissus Fly

I have a problem with daffodils, Narcissus species and varieties.  The problem is this, Merodon equestris, the narcissus fly:

I carefully buy and plant daffodils in good soil in autumn and next season they come up beautifully, delighting Maria.  The following year they're sparse, with few flowers.  By season 3 they're gone.  And the culprit is on the wing again.

Despite appearences they're hoverflies, not bees, though they mimic bees as protection against predators. And it's not the adults that are the problem but the larvae.  Eggs are laid at the base of the plants, they hatch, and the white larvae burrow down to the bulbs where they proceed to eat out the hearts, including the newly forming flower buds for next year.  The result is that the bulbs come blind in the next season and then dwindle.  

It's not just daffs they go for.  Other bulbs in the Amaryllis family, including snowdrops, Galanthus, can also be affected.  In fact I've given up trying to grow them except as disposable seasonal displays.  I'd love to build a collection of the smaller Narcissus and a population of snowdrops but it's just money wasted.  I use no pesticides in the garden so I've got no means of control other than natural predators - and, if they're around, they're not doing a good job.  I'll have to dock their wages!