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Sally Nex

Tag Archives: clematis

Guernsey, Garden Isle #3: Of clematis, clematis and more clematis

01 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by sallynex in overseas gardens, shows

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

clematis, commercial horticulture, cuttings, glasshouses, guernsey, Guernsey Clematis, Raymond Evison, RHS Chelsea Flower Show

guernsey_clematis1

Guernsey Clematis: where three million clematis plants start their lives each year

As privileges go, it doesn’t get much better than a personal guided tour around Guernsey Clematis by the great Raymond Evison himself.

I have met Raymond on lots of occasions at Chelsea: he is a true gentleman, of the unfailingly courteous kind, and his air of urbane charm rather disguises the fact that he is a sharp and very savvy businessman. He has succeeded in keeping his world-beating clematis nursery not only going but wildly successful, while keeping it on its home island of Guernsey.

It’s a feat many good plantsmen haven’t been able to pull off, and Raymond himself admits it hasn’t been easy, but any business that supplies 25% of the world’s – yes, the world’s – clematis supply is a success by anyone’s standards.

It was fascinating to see how you go about producing millions and millions of top-quality plants, while also running a commercial breeding operation which is about the only one at the moment producing new clematis anywhere. And all from an island nine miles by five miles with an erratic ferry service. Respect.
Here’s how he does it:

Once the stock plants (in the photo above) have begun putting out serious growth in spring, they’re given a haircut by something similar to a huge horizontal hedgecutter hanging off bars across the greenhouse roof. This slices off the top 15cm or so, ready to be turned into cuttings by rows of ladies wielding very sharp razorblades.

guernsey_clematis2

Here’s what they produce: doesn’t look much, does it? It’s an internodal cutting, and those ladies will be producing 25,000-40,000 of them every single day.

guernsey_clematis4

Stage two and each cutting is popped into Raymond’s home-made equivalent of the Jiffy-7: a bit like a soil block. The making of these is automated too – in what Raymond calls the ‘sausage machine’.

guernsey_clematis5

Next stop, a whole greenhouse full of white polythene-covered propagators. These have an opening at one end so you can see in: they’re checked daily and when there are signs of growth (usually within three weeks) there will be more ventilation cuts made in the polythene until the whole thing is opened up.

guernsey_clematis6

Plants ready for despatch: once dug up from the beds, the roots are washed and graded, and the leaves cut off. Then they go over to a man in a corner with a microscope: he’ll check plants from each batch for any tiny interlopers which might be trying to hitch a lift (Western flower thrip is a particular menace, apparently, and all but impossible to spot unless you’re at the business end of a microscope)

guernsey_clematis7

And here’s the finished product, passed as pest- and disease-free, 600 in a box, and in this case off to North Caroline in the US to be potted up and grown on before sale. They don’t look much like clematis at the moment: but give them a year and they’ll be smothered in flowers and looking a million dollars. Amazing.

I did get a little look at the breeding operation too, but I’m afraid Raymond would have to shoot me if I revealed what he’s up to. A few facts and figures though:

• 2,500 crosses a year, done via hand pollination with paintbrushes
• from which 25,000-35,000 seeds sown – about a third germinate
• About 6,000-8,000 new seedlings are grown on and assessed for several years (it takes 8-10 years to produce a new clematis variety)
• qualities which are prized include ability to flower up the stem (rather than just at the top), compact, with a ‘pick me up and buy me’ quality: clematis have to flower within the first 60cm or they won’t sell in garden centres
• Current breeding goals are better reds, truer blues, as many doubles as possible, and a new strain of late-flowering, small-flowered clematis which bloom earlier in the season too

What I can say is that he’s releasing two new varieties at Chelsea this year: Volunteer, a container clematis in delicate mauve streaked plum purple; and Tekla, a deep pinky-red with deep red anthers and a late spring flowerer with a second flush in mid to late summer. It grows to 1.5m (5ft) and like all Raymond’s clematis is smothered in flowers from top to bottom.

Both will be on the Guernsey Clematis Chelsea stand: and do look out for the plant support Raymond has the Volunteer growing through. It’s not often I get excited about a plant support, but this one is a work of art and a thing of beauty. That’s all I’m saying.

Good ideas

17 Sunday Feb 2013

Posted by sallynex in news

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

bumblebees, clematis, online garden design, wildlife gardening, wooden crates

Last week a lot of garden journalists emerged blinking into the open for the first major press event of the year: the Garden Press Event at the Barbican in London.

It was all a bit of a shock to the system: previously this has been held in the genteel surroundings of the RHS’s Horticultural Halls in Westminster, where they have such things as marble staircases and mezzanines.

No such luck at the altar to 70s brutalism that is The Barbican: I emerged from the tube station to plunge headlong into the demi-world of concrete and steel and unforgiving lighting that is this most urban of cityscapes. A curious choice for a show that embraces the wildlife-friendly, the environmentally considerate and the beautiful, perhaps.

But once you’re inside, you forget all that and immerse yourself in a gardeners’ sweetshop of delights, offered this year by a record-breaking 90 exhibitors. This show is getting bigger and better all the time: it’s already become unmissable for anyone involved in the garden media.

New ideas were everywhere: so here’s my pick of the ones that caught my eye.

gpe_bumblebees

Mini beehives: not for honeybees (they’re much too small) but for bumblebees. As we all know they’re in a bit of a pickle at the moment, and there’s lots gardeners can do to help them out. Which is fine if you have a local population of bumblebees: if not, these ones come with fuzzy bees already installed.gpe_bumblebees2Here they are: that black blob in the middle. See? Just under that clear plastic lumpy bit? OK, so photographing bumblebees in a plastic box turns out to be something of a challenge, but anyway: this is the insert inside each of those little boxes above. They only stay in the box a year as they don’t return to the same nest twice: but in that time they’ll multiply to 200+ bumblebees in a good year, and you’ll have done your bit for the environment. Oh yes, and you can get refills. (www.dragonfli.co.uk) gpe_clematispotClematis root shaders: Those nice people at Crocus have impeccable good taste and their stand was once again a mouthwatering selection of things I could have snapped up and squirrelled off home with right away (sadly, they weren’t looking the other way, and my bag wasn’t big enough. Shame). Among the handsomest and most innovative, I thought, were these half-pot terracotta root shaders: as we all know, clematis like their roots in the shade and their heads in the sun, so these were just the thing. (www.crocus.co.uk)  gpe_crateStylish ways with apple crates: Not really, strictly speaking, a product on display this one: just a very, very chic idea from the stylist who put together the Homebase stand. All you do is get one of those big wooden apple crates, paint it a distressed off white, then nail it on a wall. Hey presto: instant shelf for your garden lantern, perhaps some potted auriculas, a well-chosen sculpture… (www.homebase.co.uk)

growmatic

Online veg planning for schools: There’s now quite a choice of online planning tools for veg growers out there (I’m a dedicated fan of www.growveg.com) but this one caught my eye as one of the better ones if you’re just starting out. Growmatic has been helping Irish veg gardeners for the last four years: its first venture in the UK looks very promising. You can use it whatever sort of veg gardener you are, but what I really liked was that it gives school gardeners the chance to programme in the school term – so you can plan to grow crops that do their stuff while the kids are there to enjoy it. Could become a must-have tool for school gardening clubs everywhere. (www.quickcrop.co.uk)

gpe_growbagwatererAutomatic growbag waterer: Perhaps not the prettiest of exhibits on display – but definitely one of the more practical. This odd-looking contraption takes the idea of the reservoir-based automatic watering container and adapts it to use with growbags: simple, but possibly a lifesaver when you’re trying to sustain thirsty tomatoes in not-quite-enough compost. You plonk the grow bag on those yellow plastic thingies, which pierce the bag and go up into the compost. Then just fill the reservoir and the water is wicked up via the green capillary matting into the growbag where it’s needed. It holds a hefty 15 litres, enough to keep things ticking over nicely for up to 14 days if it’s not too sunny (about a week if it is). You could always hide it behind a bit of woven wicker hurdle or something. (www.hozelock.com).

 

The Grand Tour #1: The Hilly Bit

29 Friday Oct 2010

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

clematis, ginkgo biloba, moving house, new gardens

Some time ago I promised you a tour around my new garden in a little more detail. Well, now that we’re here, there are no further excuses: so let me take you for a little wander around the garden I now call home.

Imagine if you will a very long and quite thin bit of land along the edge of a lane, south-facing but aligned more or less east-west, and about the shape of an aeroplane wing. It is tapered at each end and has a broader bit (to about 50ft wide) in the middle. Now plonk a house in the middle of the broader bit and divide the whole thing into three by means of a footpath running through a third from one end, and a garage interrupting another third from the other end, and you have the basic layout.

We have three main ‘gardens’ (though one is actually a field with pretensions – in my head anyway – to become an orchard): the first bit is my fledgling veg garden and I’ve already shown visitors to m’other blog around so you’ll have to go have a look there if you’re interested.

The next bit is the main garden: the bit that wraps around the house and is about a third of an acre, give or take a bit.

In my head it is already a beautifully-crafted, well planned and exquisitely planted garden of various different parts, so come with me in my imagination and contemplate:

Part 1: The Woodland Garden(aka The Hilly Bit)

By this I mean the back half of the back garden, which slopes gently upwards towards the footpath between it and what we call the top field. In this photo you’ll have to avert your eyes from the large blue monstrosity in the middle: essential for keeping small children distracted, but a total eyesore. We have ambitious plans which involve terracing a bit just in front of the hill so we can move it back and to the side, and well out of the way.

Incidentally the ‘lawn’ (I use the term advisedly) is probably staying for a while at least, as there are rumours in the village of a spectacular display of sheets of snowdrops bringing admirers from miles around. Not so sure about the admirers, but rather fancy the snowdrops.


Anyway, to take this photo you’d be standing with your back to the trampoline, looking west up the hill: a space of about 50ft wide by 60ft long. What you are seeing is not in fact a somewhat daunting and rather shady slope full of weeds and overhung with neglected trees: it is in fact a choice woodland garden, dotted here and there by pretty birches and hazels and underplanted with lovely woodlanders like trilliums, ferns and bluebells. A path zigzags its way artlessly up the slope to the back, with occasional flights of wooden steps for those wishing to take a more direct route. At the top, to the left, is a rustic-style playhouse and den, made by my rather talented garden carpenter hubby and nestling into the corner and providing a perfect retreat for small children and later sulky teenagers, as well as being a nice little focal point when you get to the top of the slope and emerge into its clearing.

See? You’ve got to have imagination to look at this lot. Plenty of fairly colourful imagination.

Elsewhere in this section: this is a quarry, which has the great advantage of being superbly sheltered, and the rather daunting prospect of very high chalk banks at either side. Where the arrow is – that’s just about where the bank stops and the hedge starts. The top of the hedge is another 8ft or so above that. We are thinking scaffolding.

The opposite side of the garden, on the lane side (which is also the shady side). Another bank, this time more gently sloped, and therefore offering some intriguing possibilities for terraces up towards the foot of hedge this side. I’m thinking zigzag paths again, and a rather spectacular collection of ferns, podyphyllums, astilboides…. I have Keith Wiley’s gorgeous and inspirational book on gardening in shade on my bookshelf and I shall plunder it shamelessly.

There are actually some quite nice plants here already. Someone way back in the dim and distant past (not, I’m sorry to say, our immediate predecessors here) was a pretty good and knowledgeable gardener: although he/she didn’t quite cotton on to the fact that roses don’t like chalk and therefore there are a lot of rather sick rose bushes cluttering the place up. Not this one, though, which is some sort of Rosa alba I think and therefore tough enough to scoff in the face of non-ideal soil types.

Clematis are everywhere: this is much to my delight as I have always rather struggled to grow clematis before. This one is in the main garden but I now also have a monster hedge (as if we didn’t have enough hedges) of a pink C. montana – either ‘Elizabeth’ or var. rubens, not sure yet – on the front wall which promises spectacular sights in spring.

And my pride and joy, and if I’m honest, one of the reasons I bought the house; this is of course Ginkgo biloba, a plant I have always wanted to grow as I just adore those leaves. Now instead of struggling to persuade a stringly little sapling to grow into a proper plant, I have all to myself a really big, mature tree, maybe 30ft high, and as hale and hearty as they come. What’s more – this picture was taken a few weeks ago and now all those leaves have turned the most vivid shade of butter yellow you can imagine. What a tree.

Winter wishlist

16 Tuesday Dec 2008

Posted by sallynex in Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

clematis, coronilla, Daphne odora 'Aureomarginata', garrya elliptica, winter flowers

The moment has come – I’m going to have to opt out of Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day for this month.

This is because there are actually no blooms in my garden. Well all right, that’s a bit of an exaggeration as the winter pansies are still struggling through, and the heliotrope in the greenhouse is in exactly the same state as when I put it in there in October. The pyracantha berries are still looking great, but that was kind of cheating last month anyway. Otherwise – zilch. Nada. Rien. Even the leycesteria which has been soldiering on right through since June has finally dropped its leaves and gone to sleep. To be honest I feel like joining it. I don’t do houseplants (they take one look at me and die) so no joy there either.

So I thought I’d cheat. Here are the blooms I would like in my garden this month:

Clematis cirrhosa var. balearica ‘Wisley Cream’

Garrya elliptica

Chimonanthes praecox (I do actually have this at the end of the garden but it’s extremely shy to flower, so this isn’t so much one to buy as one to cast a spell on)

Daphne odora ‘Aureomarginata’ (just)

Coronilla valentina subs. glauca ‘Citrina’

No pictures, of course, as these are the flowers that are not blooming in my garden today.

I’ll stop at five for now, though I’m sure everyone else has suggestions here. But let this be my lesson for 2008: by this time next year there will be no excuses!

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