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Sally Nex

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Sally Nex

Tag Archives: daffodils

Guernsey, Garden Isle #1: Of gardening heritage

28 Monday Mar 2016

Posted by sallynex in greenhouse, overseas gardens

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

arum lilies, daffodils, glasshouses, guernsey, horticulture, Plant Heritage

guernsey_stpeterport

St Peter Port, the capital: elegant, beautiful and full of yachts

Hah. Flights. Like number 67 buses. You don’t so much as look at an aeroplane for years, and then you’re in one four times in two weeks. To say nothing of a 600-mile round trip to Cumbria in between.

I’ve been off on my travels again, for the third time in as many weeks. I am not accustomed to such excitement, and it’s left me a little breathless. And with a huge backlog of work to catch up with. It’s all very well this gallivanting malarkey but you do pay for it after.

Anyway, mustn’t complain. The most recent of my gallivants was to Guernsey, to give a talk or two at the invitation of the Guernsey branch of Plant Heritage.

I was more than a bit chuffed to be asked, as I’ve long been curious to see Guernsey. Just nine miles by five, a few miles from the coast of France, this little lump of rock is nonetheless a horticultural legend. I know it chiefly as a place where, above all other things, they Grow Stuff.

guernsey_coastline

Rocky coastlines and secret sandy coves to explore with rock pools to die for

It is an elegant isle: wild rocky coastline tumbling down to little secret sandy coves and mile-long pristine beaches, rolling round to a more urbane, harbour-dominated sophistication around the capital, St Peter Port.

It is also resolutely and proudly British. The Queen is head of state, and the flag is a Union Jack. They have pound notes, for goodness’ sake.

But on closer inspection, it isn’t quite that simple. The island has its own government (the States) able to set taxes – though not defence or foreign affairs – and the people have no vote in British elections. Shop names, entire restaurants, most people’s surnames, the street names and many of the place names are in French.

The last time the island belonged to France was in the middle ages, when it used to be part of the Duchy of Normandy. It became British in 1204, when the people had to choose and voted to join Britain. But – in a quirk which says it all – they also chose to retain a Norman legal system.

Guernsey is far closer to the French coastline and everyone goes to St Malo and Paris for the weekend. But they send their kids to school in Britain and commute back and forth for work. The truth of it is that back in 1204 they were choosing to be British, but with French food. Sounds eminently sensible to me.

guernsey_greenhouse

These greenhouses once housed arum lilies: you can still see them, abandoned, in the field next door

Even as I flew in over the island’s rocky coastline the island’s horticultural heritage was obvious: below were rack after rack of massive greenhouses. Even in private gardens people seem to have bigger-than-average greenhouses here. And in fields, by farms, in fact studding the island wherever you look are massive ranks of horticultural greenhouses, covering acres of land.

But things ain’t what they used to be. Guernsey’s horticultural industry is reeling in the wake of a fifty-year battering. First it was cheaper imports from the Netherlands: grapes, tomatoes and more recently daffodils and other cut flowers succumbed. Then changes to close a VAT loophole a year or two ago mainly aimed at the record company, HMV, had the devastating side-effect of removing all the mail-order horticultural business the island had come to rely on, practically overnight.

guernsey_daffodils

This field is now used for grazing, but the daffs speak of a cut flower industry now long gone

It’s left many horticultural businesses broke, dozens more clinging on by their fingernails, and just a small core of success stories still standing. It is still a place of horticultural excellence, with a handful of companies flying the (British) flag for Guernsey with pride and considerable success. But that’s a shadow of the hundreds of horticultural companies there used to be.

But what that horticultural legacy has left behind, more hopefully than the broken, empty greenhouses, and improbable fields of abandoned arum lilies, is an island nation of gardeners.

Every garden is beautifully tended and full of half-hardy delights like Madeiran geraniums and self-seeding echiums, relishing the benign climate and the envy of shivering gardeners on the mainland. ‘Hedge veg’ honesty boxes are a popular way of distributing the surplus from enthusiastic veg growers; and there are some spectacular Victorian greenhouses, and subtropical gardens full of gingers, palms and colocasia.

It’ll take something stronger than tax laws and EU competitors to drive the horticulture out of Guernsey. They may be a bit confused about the whole British-French thing, but they’re gardeners to the core.

Wordless Wednesday: Early

04 Wednesday Jan 2012

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

alpine strawberries, daffodils, Leucojum, nasturtium, nicotiana, snowdrops, spring bulbs, unseasonal weather

 

End of month view: March

31 Thursday Mar 2011

Posted by sallynex in greenhouse, herbs

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Anemone blanda, chalk soil, cold frame, comfrey, daffodils, end of month view, fig tree, lupins, Pawlonia, peonies, pulsatilla, rock gardens, vegetables, wind flowers

What a difference a couple of months makes.

Last time I did the rounds with the camera was the end of January: barely a leaf had burst its bud at that time, I hadn’t even started the post-winter clearup, and everything was looking decidedly bleak and not a little scruffy around the edges.

I woke up, along with the garden, some time in mid-February. And in the six weeks or so since then, everything has changed.

First up (of course) is the veg garden: always my first priority at seed-sowing time. I’ve been ferrying eyewatering quantities of scaffold boards back on the roof of my poor groaning family estate to divide up the long, thin space into 4ft x 10ft beds. At first they were all re-covered with the black plastic which has been keeping my soil protected over winter: but now, gradually, it’s all coming off.

January:

…and now:

The far end is well up and away: with the addition of a bit of bought-in soil improver (not yet quite confident about how good my soil might be), new potatoes, onions and shallots have joined the overwintering broad beans and autumn-sown onions.

Under those cloches are two varieties of pea; Feltham First (early and robust) and heritage variety Telephone, which reaches up to 5ft tall, so I’m told. Further down there are rows of leeks and carrots under fleece for protection against carrot fly.

Greenhouse no. 1 – unheated – is filling up: the other day I had to rig up the coldframe (in bits since the post-move chaos) in a hurry to get the first of the sweetpeas, chard and overwintered marigolds ready to go out.

But just look at Greenhouse no. 2 – the one that’s frost-free. I have run out of room. There is no other way to put it. The windowsills in the house are groaning with seedlings too. What am I going to do!

Right, never mind the veg: what about the rest of it?

Here’s the rock garden, or rather the herb garden to be. Nicely trimmed these days: and I’ve started placing a few pots of bits and bobs around the place ready to be planted.

January:

…and now:

In the blue pot is an olive tree, about six inches tall when I got it (it was a freebie which looked a lot better in the magazine than what actually arrived on my doorstep).

I nurtured it and nursed it, and now it’s about 5ft high and a lovely healthy young tree. Then it got left outside in the snow and ice, and I resigned myself to losing it: but no. It didn’t even lose its leaves.

So since it’s survived that, I figure it’ll breeze being planted outside. It’s moved around this patch a few times now, trying to find the right spot for what I hope will one day be a fetchingly gnarled evocation of Italy on my doorstep, and a rather fine backdrop to all my Mediterranean herbs.

There’s also plenty going on here quite independently of my own feeble efforts to spruce things up. Little pretties keep popping up all over the place. I keep stopping in my tracks on the way out of the house: the other day it was because I spotted a clump of pulsatilla. Pulsatilla! In my garden!

Aren’t they lovely? Those palest grey fluffy feathers set off the dusty mauve of the flowers so perfectly.

And look at this: in the hollow between two sides of the old stone wall, partially collapsed, a little colony of windflowers has sprung up.

I’ve spent many thorny hours clearing the bank above where my tropical edibles patch will eventually be. It’s not only painful, but also slightly unnerving as this bank is about 12ft high and much of my bramble removal was done while hanging precariously off a handy branch. Must invest in a ladder.

January:

…and now:

It’s all looking a lot better now, so I guess the splinter-pocked fingers were worth it.

There’s more pot placement here: you can make out the fig in the far corner, and just out of sight there’s a Pawlonia tomentosa I was given – half-dead on arrival but now, rather excitingly, reviving.

And other things are popping up here, too: lupins and a carpet of some kind of small white comfrey. It’s beautiful, the bees love it, but it is obviously a little invasive: I shall have to think carefully about where I move it to.

So on to the only other bit I’ve done anything to; the circular bed around our shady seating area.

January:

…and now:

I’ve recently been told by someone who’s lived in the village a lot longer than me that this was once a pond. This is answering a lot of questions: why, for example, a hefty Rodgersia (usually a bog plant) can survive so well in a free-draining, chalky soil.

I have an uncomfortable feeling this circular bed may be hiding a pond liner of epic proportions. We’re talking probably concrete; maybe not even split. We are talking bog garden.

This may rather alter my plans to turn this area into a scented garden full of daphnes and Christmas box and wintersweet.

For now however I have just cleared the winter debris and I’m about to launch into a huge weed-through, followed by my standard fall-back in situations where I have little time and large areas to fill: I’m planning to sow this lot with seed from Pictorial Meadows, already sitting in an inviting little packet on my desk as I type.

It isn’t all weeds and bog plants though: tucked up on the bank, a little higher than the rest, there is a paeony already swelling into bud.

A paeony! In my garden! (another chalk-loving plant I have never been able to grow before. My cup brimmeth over: snowdrops, primroses, pulsatillas and now peonies. Can it get any better than this?)

And last but absolutely not least: I haven’t touched this bit but I have been in love with it for a whole month now. I have, on the hill that rises at the back of my garden, a host of golden daffodils.

There are hundreds of them, across the width of the garden, and we have been giving them away to friends in big fat bunches as well as stuffing every vase in the house. Whoever planted them, many decades ago: I hope you are somewhere just as beautiful right now.

Thank you to Helen, aka Patient Gardener, for hosting the End of Month View: the perfect opportunity to take a step back and take the big view for a change.

March flowers

15 Tuesday Mar 2011

Posted by sallynex in Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Anemone blanda, celandines, Chionodoxa luciliae, daffodils, Leucojum, mahonia, primula, scilla, spring bulbs, spring-flowering shrubs, viburnum

Spring has sprung: and all over the garden flowers are spangling lawns and peeking from borders. I’m not sure why spring flowers are almost all tiny: perhaps it’s to do with the energy involved in getting to flowering stage before most plants are even waking up. But they’re all the more exquisite for their diminutive size.

I can’t take credit for the flowers in these pictures, or indeed for most of the flowers in my garden over the next few months: I’m taking the softly, softly approach this year as I really have no idea what I’ve got just yet, having only had the acquaintance of my garden since last September. And big fat buds are emerging from the ground in the most unexpected places so I suspect there will be more than a few surprises. So far, it’s all looking very promising. Very promising indeed.

Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’: still going strong, but now joined by sumptuously pleated leaves in a brooding shade of slatey-green just breaking their buds

Primula vulgaris – or a selection thereof: these have rather deep yellow centres to be a wilding (though there are plenty of those in the banks hereabouts) but they are close enough not to offend

Scilla sibirica: this is one of mine, one of a few big wide pots I planted up with bulbs the autumn before last, and still going strong. The blue of the scillas backlit with sunlight is enough to stop me in my tracks every time I walk past. They play havoc with the school run.

The early bumblebees are enjoying the last of the Mahonia japonica flowers

and the slugs have been munching my Anemone blanda – though there are plenty more buds coming through

Chionodoxa luciliae: another star of the big sunny pots of bulbs that lift my heart

One of my favourite daffodils: Narcissus ‘February Gold’, small, early to flower and with a deep tangerine corona which glows in low spring sunshine

Leucojum vernum: I was wondering what the big clump of healthy, strappy leaves just outside my back door were: then they started producing lovely clear white flowerbuds about a week ago. Never been able to grow them before (they like wetter soil): I’m chuffed to bits.

Yes, I know. It’s a weed. But you can almost forgive lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria) its rampantly invasive nature and infuriating ability to thumb its nose at your efforts to weed it out when it sprinkles the lawn (and the borders, and the hedgerows) with its lovely droplets of pure sunshine.
Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day is hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens – thanks Carol!

Little rays of sunshine

09 Monday Feb 2009

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

daffodils, Garden Press Day, Taylor's Bulbs

Amid all the misery of slush and cold, and now torrential rain and flooding, this is what’s keeping me going.

I was given these lovely things at the Garden Press Day in London last week by those nice people at Taylor’s Bulbs. They started opening the very next day and are now flooding my dining room with perfume. The variety is ‘Jack the Lad’ – and they’re cheering me up no end.

Beauty in unexpected places

07 Wednesday May 2008

Posted by sallynex in Uncategorized

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Tags

daffodils, roads, spring bulbs, unexpected beauty

This was the scene a few weeks ago at a road junction where I live. It’s the most unpromising place – a corner between one main road and another pretty busy minor road – and it had roadworks opposite and traffic to right and left. But in the middle was this stunning display of spring sunshine. I wasn’t the only one taking photos – it would put a smile on your face in the worst traffic jam ever!

Plant of the month – March

18 Tuesday Mar 2008

Posted by sallynex in plant of the month

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

christopher lloyd, daffodils, Great Dixter, hyacinths, spring bulbs

Hyacinth ‘Delft Blue’


I had always thought of hyacinths as the sort of flower your grandma grows. That is, until I saw them in the late great Christopher Lloyd’s border at Great Dixter. As regular readers will know, I’m a big fan of Mr Lloyd’s, so anything that’s good enough for him is good enough for me. When I went, he had ‘King of the Blues’ in his Long Border, and it truly zinged out at you from among the spring flowers – not gaudy, as some over-bred primroses are, for example, but just pure, joyous blue.

I couldn’t find ‘King of the Blues’ so had to opt for ‘Delft Blue’ – a more commonly-grown type but nonetheless superb for that. At this time of year its uncompromising china blue stands up beautifully to the butter-yellow daffodils all around it – this is not a wishy-washy plant, and all the better for it. You can force them to grow indoors – the usual excuse is to enjoy the scent at close quarters, but to be honest I find it overwhelming and a little sickly in the house. Far better to have it scattered on the wind so you catch a little puff of it as you pass by – one of those utterly blissful moments that gardening is all about. It seems grandma knew a trick or two after all.

Flowers for cutting

17 Thursday May 2007

Posted by sallynex in cutting garden, herbs

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

antirrhinums, asters, Chimnonanthes praecox, chrysanthemums, daffodils, dahlias, lavender, Rosa gallica officinalis, statice, sweet peas, wintersweet

I thought I’d say a bit about my cutting garden, as it’s this year’s project and very much at the front of my mind just now.

I’ve carved out a more-or-less square plot, about 19ft x 19ft, on the far side of my greenhouse where it’s pretty sunny most of the day. It’s overshadowed by a large goat willow, but not too badly, and I’m in the process of raising the willow’s crown so it doesn’t cast too much shadow.

The design is quite simple: a 2ft bed around three sides of the square (the fourth is for my greenhouse and coldframe), with two 4’6″ wide beds across the middle. It’ll all be enclosed in 1″ x 4″ pressure-treated timber to define the beds and make maintenance easier. There are also 30″ paths around the beds for access.

The area was previously a herb garden (a bit ott since I had it in mind once upon a time to set up a herb nursery – then realised how much work was involved). Result is I need to dig out large amounts of lemon balm, chives and lovage before I can plant. The good news there, though, is that the soil is in good heart as it’s already been dug over and improved once.

So far I’ve got lavender and Rosa gallica officinalis, also known as Apothecary’s Rose, along one long side, for drying as pot pourri; the short side will be for perennials for cutting – so far a clump of asters dug up from the main herbaceous border, but I’ll be adding bulbs (daffs and tulips), a statice (great for drying) and whatever else I can find. I’ve added a Chimonanthes praecox (wintersweet) in the corner – again rescued from imminent suffocation in the big herbaceous border – thinking I’ll cut branches if ever it gets around to flowering (they’re notoriously slow to settle). Along the front edge will be dahlias, chrysanths and any other late-season perennials I can think of.

In the centre beds, so far there are only sweetpeas climbing up rustic hazel poles: but my antirrhinums are chomping at the bit in the coldframe waiting to be planted out, and I’ve got plenty more coming on to join them there. It just needs me to keep up with them by digging out a home, and we’ll be raring to go!

Plant of the month – March

26 Monday Mar 2007

Posted by sallynex in plant of the month

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

daffodils

Narcissus “Tete-a-Tete”

It just had to be daffodils – the garden is really coming alive now, with plenty of spring flowers nodding in the breeze, but daffodils just steal the show every March. This is one of my favourites: I’m not a fan of the larger types, except for cutting, and of the miniatures Tete-a-Tete has the purest flower form and colour that I know. If you cut a single bloom and take a close look, you’ll see how utterly perfect it is. It may be everywhere these days – but there’s a reason for that, and it puts a smile on your face every time.

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