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Sally Nex

Tag Archives: guernsey

Guernsey, Garden Isle #5: Of Guernsey lilies

17 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by sallynex in overseas gardens, unusual plants

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Tags

guernsey, National Collection, Nerine sarniensis, nerines, plant conservation, Plant Heritage

Membership form photo 2016

Sarniensis nerines at the Plant Heritage Nerine Festival

I was in Guernsey at the invitation of the local branch of Plant Heritage – one of those relatively low-profile charities beavering away behind the scenes doing the kind of work you only realise has been done when you come across some dreadful situation they have averted. In PH’s case, that almost always means some wonderful variety of hardy chrysanthemum, or pulmonaria, or hemerocallis or hebe which everyone’s suddenly talking about yet it emerges only survives because a PH volunteer has lovingly kept it alive, properly identified and labelled, in their back garden. It’s a bit like the Heritage Seed Library, but for garden plants.

I’ve been a Plant Heritage (formerly NCCPG) member for many, many years and indeed was on the committee of the Surrey Group in my day – so I have first-hand knowledge of the extraordinary, and largely unsung work they do in keeping hundreds of cultivated garden plants in circulation which would otherwise have been lost to us.

707

A mystery in pink: the as-yet unidentified N. sarniensis 707

They do this largely through the National Collections. These are held wherever there is space for them: in the homes of amateur gardeners, big public gardens like RHS Wisley, or in this case a spare glasshouse rented from Guernsey Clematis.

Actually, this is a nearly-National Collection: since 1993 members of PH Guernsey have been tracking down cultivars, common and then increasingly rare, of the wonderful Guernsey lily and bringing them together, documenting them to PH’s painstaking standards of record-keeping, in the hope (well-founded) of registering them as a bona fide National Collection.

Hanley Castle-001

N. sarniensis ‘Hanley Castle’

These aren’t just any Guernsey lilies, either. You are probably familiar with Nerine x bowdenii, lipstick pink stalwart of the dry, rocky, sunny corner by the house where nothing else will grow. That, to be quite honest with you, is a bruiser by comparison with the Rudolph Nureyev elegance of N. sarniensis: an exquisite confection of dainty petals held just so above a tall, elegantly swaying yet wiry stem.

I have one at home, N. s. ‘Blanchefleur’; I have raved about it before on this very blog. It is one of the few plants in my garden which is neither edible nor particularly useful: but it is exceptionally beautiful, the kind of beauty that makes you gasp every time you see it. Sarniensis nerines (named for Guernsey’s ancient title, Sarnia, although originally South African) have the extraordinary ability to reflect light from their petals, making them gleam and sparkle – a phenomenon the Victorians called gold (or silver) dusting. They make you do a double-take every time the winter sun hits them.

Hotspur-001

N. sarniensis ‘Hotspur’

And that’s when they flower: in winter, or nearly. Mine starts in late October and is usually still going in December (this year, it being so mild, it only finished in February). They have to stay indoors, as they’re frost tender: I keep mine in pride of place in the greenhouse, but I used to keep it on a bright windowsill and it was fine there, too.

‘Blanchefleur’ is considered among the easier of sarniensis varieties to grow (that explains why it’s so tolerant of me, then). But having now seen what else is out there I think I will have to start my own collection. Breeders like Ken Hall, on the Isle of Wight, and the de Rothschild family have produced some bewitching hybrids: there’s vermilion ‘Major’, ‘Wolsey’ in deep red with a gold dusting, ‘Springbank Elizabeth’ in soft pink and var. corusco in brick red.

sarniensis corusco major

Nerine sarniensis var corusco major

The Guernsey PH collection opens the selection even wider as of course many they grow are down to their last half-dozen plants: you won’t find these in the shops. ‘Hotspur’ looks sumptuous, the colour of well-hung beef: I might try to see if I can blag an offcut, perhaps at PH Guernsey’s annual Nerine Festival, held at Candie Gardens (itself an exceptionally lovely old 18th century greenhouse) each October. This year it’s the 8th till the 22nd: I may have to find an urgent reason to visit the Channel Islands again around that time.

Lavant

N. sarniensis ‘Lavant’

Neglect is the key, I find: once mine has finished flowering I water it until the foliage dies down, then bung it in a corner of the greenhouse and more or less forget about it till autumn. I let it very nearly dry out: not totally, or the bulb would shrivel, but enough that the soil feels quite dusty.

Then in late summer I bring it outdoors to feel the rain on its face and away it goes. I rarely repot it – like closely-related agapanthus, it prefers to be potbound. It seems odd that anything quite this lovely should withstand such offhand treatment, but there it is. It does mean terminally forgetful and distracted gardeners like me can share in that stop-in-your-tracks moment when the first blooms open. And for that alone, everyone should grow more of them.

My thanks to Plant Heritage Guernsey for allowing me to use a selection from their gorgeous collection of photos, and more generally for having been the perfect hosts. I hope to see you all again soon – if only to persuade you to part with one of those Hotspur nerines….!

Guernsey, Garden Isle #4: Of Victoriana

15 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by sallynex in garden history, greenhouse, kitchen garden, overseas gardens

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Tags

community gardens, guernsey, Heritage Seed Library, heritage varieties, heritage vegetables, Saumarez, Victorian vegetables, Victorians, volunteers, walled gardens

guernsey_walledgarden_wideview

View down the main path, with espaliered fruit trees to right and left

You knew it wouldn’t be long before I got back to the food. My visit to Guernsey wouldn’t be complete without a look at its fine walled kitchen garden at Saumarez Park: a classic piece of Victoriana currently being lovingly restored by a team of 40 dedicated volunteers.

The Victorians knew what they were about when they enclosed great swathes of their gardens with high brick walls and created the classic kitchen garden. It creates an instant microclimate: the walls act like storage heaters for trained peaches, apples and pears, and the soil, enclosed neatly with paths, is easily tended. The whole becomes a workmanlike, industrious place of abundance, where veg production is the pinnacle of achievement: enclosing an area of the garden for one purpose and one purpose only does seem to focus the mind.

guernsey_walledgarden_thyme

I loved the way carpets of thyme covered the ground at the feet of the espaliers in soft hummocks

Of course in the days of the then Baron de Saumarez (there is still a Baron de Saumarez but the States of Guernsey own the manor nowadays) there was enough money washing around to have a huge staff of proud gardeners, deputy head gardener, head gardener, the lot – most of them working just in the kitchen gardens. De Saumarez fought with Nelson, won the Battle of Algeciras for him (nope, me neither) and made a fortune from naval spoils. He returned home and married another fortune in heiress Martha le Merchant whose family owned what’s now Saumarez Park. They were, to cut a long story short, rolling in it.

Anyway, those were the days: now the States of Guernsey own the park and its walled kitchen garden, and the ‘staff’ is down to a few dozen volunteers led by the redoubtable (and great fun) Ivan le Tissier and head gardener Jill Tetlaw.

guernsey_walledgarden_greenhouses

The 170ft span of beautifully restored Victorian greenhouses

Between them, since 2006, they have restored three magnificent but tumbledown glasshouses spanning 170ft, once used to produce Guernsey’s commercial crop of grapes. They’ve also cleared a mountain of propagation equipment left behind by the council’s parks department, and set out metre after metre of hoggin path edged with cobbles set in cement. And in between all that they had to set up a whole organisation to do it, the Guernsey Botanical Trust; Raymond Evison, of clematis fame, was a founder member and a driving force behind the project.

And they’re still going: they’ve just uncovered an old underground boiler set 15ft below ground level into the greenhouse wall. They’re still trying to figure out why it was put there, and solve mysteries like why it’s so clean it obviously hasn’t ever been used.

guernsey_walledgarden_ventilation

These are ventilation shutters, a feature I’ve never seen before in a Victorian greenhouse like this one: they go through the wall to the outside and you winch them open to let the air out and cool the greenhouse on hot days.

The whole place is spick and span: perfectly trimmed espaliers and soft fruit, and a greenhouse bursting with new seedlings on my visit. Inside the greenhouse is all the equipment needed for raising grapes – including a kind of lie-on ladder which hung just below the glass on runners, parallel with the vines, where a gardener would lie facing upwards to do the pruning and training. Hot work, I’d imagine. They grew ‘Cannon Hall’ here, a Muscat grape grown widely in Guernsey in the days of commercial grape production, that is by all accounts as sweet as a lychee. The volunteers plan to re-plant six vines this year, as well as reinstating the ladder.

Out in the garden they are sticking to Victorian cultivars, as far as possible those grown on Guernsey and all painstakingly researched. Among the pears are Chaumontels, a Guernsey variety described in Mawe and Abercrombie’s ‘Universal Gardener’ as having a ‘melting… very rich, delicious flavour’ which sounds promising.

Other detective hunts haven’t been quite so rewarding: a search for ‘Golden Queen’ raspberries that volunteers finally tracked down to a Swedish seed bank has proved spindly, weak and rather unsatisfactory to grow. You can’t win them all: and sometimes there’s a reason why heritage varieties went out of cultivation.

guernsey_walledgarden_seedtrays

This year’s crops on their way and growing fast

They now have some 300 varieties of vegetable, herb and cutting flower, as well as an oriental veg garden (a nod to the 4th Baron de Saumarez who spent some time in Japan). Some, like the parsnip ‘Guernsey Demi-Longue’ are thought to grow nowhere else – one for the Heritage Seed Library, perhaps. All the produce is sold at the gate and in the cafe at the manor house.

It’s a model example of how this kind of project should be: driven by knowledgeable, skilled people whose enthusiasm, genuine interest – bordering on obsession – and deep devotion to the project seems to know no end. I came away filled with admiration. If ever there was a garden which captures the spirit of the people which created it, this is it.

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.

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.

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