Spring flowers, seed sowing and multiple birth

So much to do, so little time
There has been a slightly bigger than usual gap between this blog and the last because there is just too much to do - but there is plenty to look at and it would be a shame not to share it with you. Last week's planting is doing well, the Pulsatillas' fluffy buds have opened and the other plants are settling in nicely.

N. pseudonarcissus in a Buxus pot (644)

I have been a bit disappointed with the crocus and narcissi that I planted in pots this year - I experimented with using compost from the compost heap in the bottom of some of the pots and I think that this combined with the heavy snow and temperatures around minus 12 or 15 for days at a time contributed to some rotting. Well, you live and learn. I won't use garden compost next year but I don't think there's much I can do about the weather.

Old but tough
My vintage narcissus collection seems to be OK though, Narcissus pseudonarcissus was the first in full flower this week, Jim has drifts of this British native in his garden and they look stunning, but in a pot attention is focused on them and you notice more about the details of their pale, slightly twisted petals.

A cheerful heart
The most striking flower in the courtyard garden at the moment is Tulipa 'Heart's Delight', this belongs to the Kaufmanniana group of tulips, valued for their short-stemmed early flowers which open wide in the sunshine, and their leaves which are striped and spotted with maroon. This is the first time I have tried this variety and I am pleased with the soft red on the outside of the petals and the starry cheerfulness of the flowers in sun.

T. 'Heart's Delight' with Carex 'Curly Whirly' and Corydalis cheilanthifolia

 Seed sowing is in full swing in the greenhouse, so I thought I might share my basic seed sowing technique:

1. Use a compost which does not have large lumps in it, or sieve it with a garden sieve. I use a peat-based multi-purpose compost but add a generous dollop of Perlite (the white granules you can see in the picture) so that the drainage is good. Seeds and seedlings like to be moist but not soggy.

2. Over-fill the seed tray, then sweep the excess off the top, level with the edge of the tray, using the flat of your hand (without pressing).

3. Pick the tray up and tap its base on the bench a couple of times to settle the compost in. Then take a block of wood or similar and gently press the compost down by about half a centimetre. This makes a firm, level surface to sow the seeds on so that you will get even germination and there won't be large air gaps for baby roots to get stranded in.

4. Sow the seeds thinly. Don't be tempted to use the whole packet if it means the seeds are in clumps. If they are cheek by jowl the seedlings are more likely to damp off (rot), they will grow straggly and weak and it will be hard to prick them out without damaging them. Large seeds (these are Tagetes 'Disco Mix') are easy to space out.

Small seeds can be sown thinly if you crease the foil packet to make a narrow channel then tap it gently as you move it across the surface of the compost so that a few seeds fall out at a time.

5. Cover the seeds in accordance with the instructions on the packet (or if there are no instructions the rule of thumb is cover by approximately the same depth as the diameter of the seeds). I just use a plastic pot as a sieve and work back and forth, tapping lightly and making sure the covering is even. Do read the packet carefully because some seeds need light to germinate and so shouldn't be covered at all.

6. Label with the name and date and keep the packet to one side in case you need to look at it again or in case the plants are a roaring success and you want the same thing next year. Then place the tray in a box or tray of water so that the water comes half-way up the sides. Leave only until the surface appears moist then remove promptly.

8. Place the tray in a propagator (ours is cobbled together out of scraps of wood and plastic sheeting, with a thermostatically controlled heating cable under grit). I find the vast majority of seeds are willing to hatch at about 15 or 16C but again you need to consult the seed packet for any special instructions. You shouldn't need to water them again while they are in here, but make sure the base of the propagator (gravel, sand or capillary matting) remains moist. Seedlings don't like to be soggy but they will not tolerate drying out, even for half an hour, so check them frequently. Many seeds, especially hardy annuals, are fine on a windowsill sealed inside a clear plastic bag.

9. As soon as you think all the seedlings have germinated and are fully expanded (not still folded up or with seed leaves stuck in seed coats) you can remove them from the propagator or bag. At this stage they may need another drink, so you can give them another dunk in some water but don't get the compost absolutely sodden. Make sure they are not in bright, hot sunshine or a draught and leave them for a few days (still inside the greenhouse or on the windowsill) to toughen up a bit.

Then prick them out as soon as possible - I'll give more details on this another time- I think that's enough for now, so here endeth the lesson.

Talking of propagation

And finally - do you remember the sheep I pictured the week before last looking so uncomfortable? Well this last Thursday she produced FOUR lambs! No wonder she couldn't lie straight.

Everyone up and about in a matter of minutes. I really, really don't want to be reincarnated as a ewe!

Willow weaving and a pot full of mountainside.

This week I finished pruning the crown-like willow arbour that nestles behind the Octagon. I could only do little bursts of work on it last week because even with two pairs of gloves on I had to keep dashing back into the pottery to warm my fingers by the kilns. But this week I could make much faster progress and was down to shirtsleeves for the first time this year.

Before - work just started in the foreground

The arbour was made by Richard Kerwood of Windrush Willow about five or six years ago and is so solid and well established that it throws up 12 foot shoots every year. Cutting it back is a major exercise but does provide me with plenty of material for making plant supports. Many of you will have seen Windrush Willow and their lovely sculptures, plant supports (much more elegant than my efforts) and baskets at events here; they will be back for the Summer Garden Party this year.


After - all neat and tidy

Chop-chop with Puss-Puss

It is such a satisfying job, lopping most of last year's growth off, leaving shoots that are well placed to repair breakages or reinforce weak points and weaving them in. Puss-Puss turns up without fail because willow shoots are his favourite toy.

Here he comes.

Daft fluffball

Mini landscape for Steeple Aston.
On Tuesday I went to do a spring planting demonstration for Steeple Aston Garden Club. I don't actually plant many pots at this time of year, the vast majority are either planted in the autumn or in May/June but if I do a new planting one of my favourite ways is to make a little alpine landscape in a pot, using stones, crocks or whole pots to make crags, cracks and crevices for alpines to fill.

So I raided the seconds pile for a few odds and ends to embed and picked a beautiful 15 year-old Orange Pot (621C) to put everything in. I always like to take a weathered pot with me to demonstrations because often people look at the new, bright pots and find it hard to imagine them mellowed with age. And our pots do age beautifully, especially if you don't keep them too clean!

Just after watering in.

My turn to do the washing up.

As I started putting my concoction together in front of this friendly group of gardeners I became aware of a few puzzled looks - and had to admit that my arrangement looked rather like a bowl of washing up. To my relief as soon as the plants started to go in it looked better and by the time I added the mulch of gravel and grit the whole thing was meeting with approval.

Nanoclimates.
Most alpines enjoy having cool places under "rocks" to send their roots and like to have their heads in sunny, airy conditions, so raised in a large-ish pot in a sunny area is an ideal location for them. Plants that like cooler conditions, such as most saxifrages, can be sited on the shadier side of the crocks or sheltered behind larger plants - there are different microclimates even within one potful.

Alchemilla erythropoda's pinkish stems pick up the pinkish red in the bud of Pulsatilla vulgaris 'Pinwheel'

Don't just buy plants in flower.
You can also inspect the detail more easily than you can on the ground. This is already quite a pleasing arrangement even though there are no flowers yet! Plants establish best when they are concentrating their energy on root growth rather than flowers, and if you plant them before they flower then you have the pleasure of seeing their whole flowering season, not just the part of it which occurs after you have taken them home from the garden centre. It is also worth looking carefully at foliage colour and form - if you have effective combinations of these the pot will look good all year.

I have planted this fairly densely for instant effect, so I will have to observe it carefully, especially as some of the plants are new to me: if some spread too rampantly I may have to remove or reduce them in order to avoid suffocating their neighbours. Some will creep, some will sprawl and I am hoping a few will start to overflow from the pot.

Here's the plant recipe - but you don't need to use exactly the same things, have a look and see what's available locally and don't forget to see if you already have something you can split and replant.
Main pot, clockwise from front left:
Crassula milfordiae sedifolia
2 Pulsatilla vulgaris 'Pinwheel  Dark Red Shades'
Alchemilla erythropoda
Hebe (it's a scruffy cutting of a low-growing one, and I'm sorry I've forgotten the name - will add it as soon as I find it!)
Saxifraga 'White Pixie'
Chamaecyparis 'Rubicon' (a slow-growing maroon-tinted conifer - if it gets too big it can simply be moved)
Sempervivum (I have used 3 clumps in total, all split from the same overcrowded potful)
Rhodanthemum hosmariense
About 5 Crocus 'Blue Pearl' (from a spent potful - these will hopefully come up again next spring...)
Embedded Frilly Lily pot:
2 Sedum spurium 'Coccineum'
Embedded Rose bowl:
2 clumps Sempervivum
Sedum spathulifolium 'Cape Blanco'
Embedded small Round pot:
Phlox subulata (a pink one - name lost, but there are lots of good ones)

Happy landscaping!

Spring Delights and Shopping for Plants

Let's start with Plant Combination of the Week. I thought this was rather tasty and I am quite smug about it because I had never grown this crocus before so wasn't sure of the exact shade of pink, I studied photos and hoped for the best; the pansy is from a mix but was flowering when I planted it so I knew the crocus had to fit with these shades of lavender and dusty pink. Note also the way the emerging leaves of Tulipa 'Silver Parrot' have a pinkish edge. I wish I could say that I had planned that detail but that's where serendipity comes in! The tulip is new to me too, so let's hope that fits with the colour scheme as planned...

Crocus tommasinianus var. roseus and Pansy 'Cancan'



 So all the classic signs of spring's approach are here: although the nights are still frosty the sun is almost warm, buds are swelling and threatening to burst and so are Elizabeth's sheep in the field  behind the back-up stock area.


Hard to get comfy nowadays

 The birds and the bees

The birds have gone berserk. It's like something out of Hitchcock. On the way to work a buzzard buzzed me, a rook dropped a twig, no a branch, on my car and blackbirds and pheasants played 'chicken' across the road. This afternoon as I stood at the top of my stepladder pruning the willow arbour a shadow dropped to the ground and there was an almighty shrieking. The sparrowhawk had nailed another blackbird and when I went to investigate  it was crouched on the ground mantling (covering the victim with its wings) and glaring at me to make sure I didn't even think of interfering. The predator got its come-uppance later when a couple of jackdaws called in reinforcements: within two minutes a cloud of angry birds - about 40 jackdaws plus rooks and magpies - was whirling and squawking around the hawk. Eventually it broke away and everyone went home.



A bee dives into Crocus 'Blue Pearl'


Bumblebees have been lumbering about for a while, but this is the first week I have noticed large numbers of honeybees rummaging in the flowers. They need all the help they can get after a hard winter. Joe says that both his hives died out this year, honeybees are in difficulty - mites, disease and now the weather have taken a heavy toll. Having as many early-flowering plants in your garden as possible helps these insects to recover.

To market, to market...
On Tuesday morning I went to the market to buy a few plants because I'm doing a demonstration/talk for a garden club next week so I want to be able to give them a few ideas for things they can be doing now. I'll let you know the recipe for the planting I do for them in next week's post.

I was very pleased to see that there was a new plant stall (Spinneywell  Nursery) at Moreton-in-Marsh market with some old favourites and a few unusual plants all in 9cm pots. Plants in small pots are very useful when you want to cram plenty of material into a planting. Market stalls will usually have competitively priced multibuy offers and of course the stallholder just brings what's looking good now - so it is easy to choose if you are wanting instant effects.

Moreton market - a major Cotswold attraction

Go ahead, have some sweeties!
It was hard to resist the gaudy primulas and little potfuls of daffs that were on display at the other stalls. It looked like a lovely easterish box of sweets. Don't go thinking I'm against primulas - they are great when you want a dollop of colour at this time of year, it's just that I was looking for something else, but I won't tell you what it was until next week. In fact I get annoyed by plant snobbery, it is yet another of my hobby horses (I have a whole herd). After all, why deprive yourself of a certain plant just because someone else thinks it is common as muck? Have the plants you like, that's what I say.

Barn Close Nursery's stall at the market.


Where do you get yours?
People often ask me where I get my plants. I try to propagate as many as I can myself but when I do buy I like to buy from a range of sources. Occasionally I buy a few from an exciting repository of rarities such as Bob Brown's Cotswold Garden Flowers; I also use mail order, go to local garden centres, farm shops, markets, horticultural shows, garden gate stalls with honesty boxes, even DIY stores (but here you have to be careful about the quality of the plants as they may have been under cover for too long or badly watered). In short I go where everyone else goes as I don't want to be like the annoying cookery recipes in magazines which look lovely but demand absurdly obscure ingredients.

I also now have the temptation of the Hillier plants that we sell at the pottery, they do a great range of shrubs and perennials and my next job is to finalise the order I'm placing to replenish our stocks in time for our April Foolishness event. I already have my beady eye on some of the goodies in their availability list...

Time to get a move on.

Crocus 'Prins Claus' in the Courtyard Garden

More and more bulbs are brightening up our lives as we rapidly slide towards the most hectic part of the year. My new compost has arrived, so have all my seeds and next week I shall be seed sowing in earnest.

So far I have sown the sweet peas, and a few odds and ends such as Cerinthe major 'Purpurascens', saved in paper bags from last year. I have also used up a few packets which were opened last year - they may work or they may be dead, in which case I will still have plenty of time to grow alternatives.

I have to resist the temptation to sow too many seeds early or I will run out of space in the greenhouse and polytunnel when the weather is still too cold to harden young plants off. But those pristine new packets do look exciting!

My glamorous assistant

As the season gathers momentum I start asking for more help. I am allowed to have Barbara (Miss Babs) once a week now. If you have been here you may have met her because she also decorates pots, helps customers, knows where everything is and stops the staff room from turning into a pigsty. She is so omnipresent you might think she is one of identical triplets. Babs is a very big help, she works so hard and doesn't moan when I give her mucky, repetitive jobs either. Most importantly she has green fingers and she makes me laugh a lot.

Miss Babs potting up lilies.

This week Miss Babs hurtled about sorting out the lilies. We have about a dozen pots left over from last year; normally I would completely repot these during the dormant period. This year, however, I am gambling with just replacing the compost above the bulbs and adding some slow release fertiliser. We'll see. It saves on labour time and compost but it may mean that some of the bulbs don't re-flower so well and we may get more lily beetle and vine weevil. She also planted about 10 pots of fresh lilies using bulbs from December's mail order offer: El Grado is a deep reddish pink about 15" tall and Mona Lisa is a scented beauty 24" tall with pink speckled flowers, each petal having a darker pink central stripe.

Ideal homes for lilies.
We make a lot of Lily pots here. If you look at the range you will see that they are relatively tall, narrow pots. This is partly for aesthetic reasons - a plant which naturally is tall and flowers at the top looks more in proportion in a tall pot. A narrow pot which does not flare too much at the top also means that there is little bare compost around the stems.

L. 'Fire King' in a Floral Tom last summer.

There are more important reasons for choosing a tallish pot: lily bulbs like to have about 3 or 4 inches of compost above them and they need at least 3 or 4 inches below them to give their roots room to spread and feed. Many produce roots from their stems too, so deep planting helps them to anchor themselves.

Horticulture in the bath
The weirdest reason for choosing a tall, narrow pot is that the drainage is sharper than in a short, fat one. I am still looking for a physicist who can explain this to me in layman's terms but I would urge you to play in the bath with a rectangular sponge and you'll see what I mean. Anyway, lilies hate to sit in winter wet, so any Whichford pot is good, but a tall, narrow one is best.

Going anywhere nice for your holidays?
This week Tom Negus the tree surgeon came to do some work for us. We have a lot of trees and some were beginning to take more than their fair share of the light and crowd some of the buildings. Tom's been very busy since the awful winter but luckily we managed to get him in before the birds start nesting. He has crown-lifted the oaks near the greenhouse and thinned the large field maples which punctuate the hedges. Like any good hair cut the change in shape and weight has an instantly rejuvenating effect.



Tom and one of the field maples.


Finding it just a little nerve-wracking watching Tom remove large branches above my tatty but beloved greenhouse I wander off to look at the plantings. Every time I time I turn my back on them a few more crocuses pop up. The fat shoots of Fritillaria persica are emerging now... it's all very exciting but I have to stop wallowing in anticipation and go and do some real work!

Shoots, snouts, spots, stripes and pots.



March 2010. This year Iris 'Harmony' has nearly finished flowering in late February.

That's odd. I've just been looking at last year's photographs and it seems that we are about two weeks ahead in terms of things popping out of the soil.  Bulbs in plantings more than a year old often emerge faster than in this season's plantings but is this global warming? I had assumed that the cold this winter was so drastic the plants would keep their heads down but I suppose last year's cold snap was later, so the plants hung on in their bunkers for a bit longer in 2010. 2008 was comparable to this year I think, but my photographic record shows that there was a hard frost in early March, so we can't get too excited yet.

Not sprung yet?

Oh but doesn't it make you skip about and gleefully rub your hands when you see all those big fat shoots coming up? As soon as I see the snouts of the tulips emerge I know that spring is not far off.

There is a surprising amount of colour in tulip shoots, some are tinged with russet, some glaucous green, others edged with pink or marbled with maroon.

It is worth considering the leaf colour as well as the flowers of tulips when planting - if you can echo these colours in the evergreen plants that are with them then the end of winter can provide some satisfying combinations. Sometimes it happens all by itself, serendipity is a big factor in successful gardening. The trick is to observe it and repeat the effect another year.

Putting on my anorak

Am I getting a bit geeky? At this time of year I can be seen pottering around the garden apparently peering at nothing - some people might assume I'm looking for pixies but really I am looking at details. Fine details drive the galanthophiles to wear out the knees on their trousers looking at the different green markings on snowdrops and the hellebore enthusiasts to slip discs as they peer into the latest picotee.

I. 'Katherine Hodgkin'

We are all hungry for visual entertainment after the greyness of a British winter. In pots and containers the little details such as the markings on Iris 'Katherine Hodgkin' and the flushes of colour on emerging foliage are so important at this time of year: they are easier to see than in the chaos of summer, they feed our appetite for colour and if we take time to look at least every few days we can see that they are changing really rapidly, a sure sign that we are not going to be stuck in winter gloom forever.

Pile 'em high

Once again this is where pots come to the rescue. It is so easy to forget that pots can be moved! As soon as little bulbs and iris are out you don't have to leave them on the ground, you can pick them up and put them on your windowsill or on a wall so that you can study them more closely or give them a sniff.



This one I did plan.

Don't be afraid to put pots on pots; it works best if you set the small pot in the big pot when you do the original planting, a small, narrow pot can be sunk into the compost for extra stability and moisture retention, when filled with similar plants to the main planting it gives extra height and impact. I planted the one pictured right during the talk I did in November and it's looking promising. 

You can, however, use small or medium-sized pots to fill the gaps left in big pots by shrubs that didn't survive the snow.This week I gave up on a bald Pittosporum garnettii and cut it flush with the surface of the compost (digging it out would risk damaging the bulbs coming up around it). Then I filled a narrow-based pot with spare Helleborus foetidus, which I had previously weeded out of the gravel, and set it in the gap, making sure that it was well wedged in and unable to fall down. It looks almost like I planned it that way...



A cheapo planting amid the green shoots of recovery

Here Come the Girls

Spring is coming! If you listen closely you can hear it rumbling. Bulbs are popping up everywhere: Iris 'Harmony' is first out in the pots this year, I. 'Katherine Hodgkin' is hot on her heels, Crocus 'Gypsy Girl' is beginning to unfurl,  C. 'Blue Pearl' and 'Cream Beauty' are still getting dressed but will be out soon.

Iris 'Harmony'

It always seems a shame to leave things flowering in the depths of a wintry garden, you may only see them once a week. If you have spares of any little bulbs it may be worth experimenting with hoicking a few out and putting them in a pot by the door.
Snowdrops are ideal for this - if planted as dormant bulbs in the autumn they struggle to establish as they don't like to be dried out; they are happier being moved 'in the green', ie while the leaves are up. Normal procedure is to move snowdrops after they have flowered but I find they don't mind being moved in flower or bud. A few may get damaged and flop over, but if you dig up a small clump carefully and treat it as a single plant they should be fine.

Snowdropping hints

He won't notice...

If you are not lucky enough to have spare clumps of snowdrops it is worth inviting yourself round to a friend's house for coffee (try taking a cake) and admiring his or her snowdrops wistfully. If they don't take the hint just go right ahead and ask for a clump - genuine gardeners are usually happy to share plants. But don't even think about taking them from the wild or without the landowner's permission. Thursday's mild but slightly rainy weather provided the perfect conditions for moving plants about, so I decided to make a group of plantings using snowdrops pilfered from Jim's garden. Yes, all right, I know what I just said about permission.

I told you they'd come in handy one day

I decided to do  a vaguely naturalistic planting reminiscent of woodland margins. Does that sound pretentious enough? Actually I just thought I could do something quite pretty without spending ANY money on plants. This is possible because I belong to the Untidy Hoarder school of gardening and always pot up little seedlings and odds and ends and leave them cluttering up the area by the polytunnel.

So here's the recipe for a snowdrop arrangement for a shady doorway:

1280 Geranium Pot: Hazel seedling or similar little deciduous tree, 2 clumps snowdrops, Sarcoccoca confusa, Helleborus niger, Vinca minor, Corydalis cheilanthifolia.

Marigold Pot: Ribes sanguineum, 2 Corydalis cheilanthifolia, Helleborus niger, 1 clump snowdrops, small Hart's tongue fern (Asplenium scolopendrium)

1205 Small plain pot: 1 clump snowdrops, 3 little fern seedlings (Athyrium filix-femina? I'm not good at naming ferns)

Waste not, want not
The hazel, hellebore, ferns and corydalis were all stray seedlings. The corydalis will produce little pale yellow flowers from now until May and the ferny foliage will puff up to make a nice dome. My sarcococca is a bit yellow and straggly because it has been stuck in a little plastic pot for too long but it'll soon recover - this evergreen shrub (also known as Christmas Box) has little white flowers in Jan/Feb with a lovely fragrance followed by berries which turn red then black. The vinca was living in a pot with the hellebore - I think it's a white one. The Ribes is a white form struck from cuttings, it will get too big for this pot but will be easy to transplant when it does. The snowdrops and ferns from the smallest pot should be transplanted or potted on after the snowdrops have flowered next year.

All of these plants enjoy a relatively shady location. They will be fine in the largest two pots for at least one year, probably for two or three years. If they start to get overcrowded (the vinca will root about and the corydalis will have babies) just take something out and fill the gaps with fresh compost. I added some slow release fertiliser to the compost - a little more can be added each year. Eventually the plants can be recycled into other plantings, released into the garden or potted up into a bigger pot.

Adding some moss

The natural look

To make the plantings look more natural and established I added some moss which I scraped off some old planks near the compost heap - another good reason not to tidy up too much! Like other plants, moss should not be collected from the wild. At home I find that the blackbirds knock plenty off my roof in early spring and I add it to many semi-permanent plantings because I prefer it to bare compost.

Normally I would plant the pots in their final location to avoid lifting them when full but as it was raining I stayed in the polytunnel then wheeled them to the doorway of the staff room and watered everything in. The backdrop (messy ivy) isn't ideal but hopefully as the leaves expand and white and yellow flowers wax and wane, the seasonal variety will provide interest to people passing through the door. I chose fairly plain and simple pots of similar shapes so that there was not too much distraction from the detail of the plantings. In summer the plantings will be very quiet and green - but this is no bad thing amongst the riotous colours

Jeanette's birthday - cake and snowdrops in the staff room

Small pots of snowdrops can be brought indoors for a while - they have a surprisingly strong honey fragrance. The bulbs can  be planted out after flowering. At break time I came in out of the rain with one clump and gave it a temporary home on the tea table to help celebrate Jeanette's birthday - if you ask me all good days should include cake!

A bad start followed by renewed inspiration

Expletive deleted
Don't you just love Monday mornings? This week I staggered out of the car into the iciness of the pottery car park, gathering up my baggage (extra fleeces, lunch box, bag of notebooks and seed catalogues, camera bag) and what did I drop on the rock-hard ground? My camera, of course. As I had stopped on the way to work to take interesting misty frost pictures of the valley it had its big lens attached and the fall wrenched the connecting ring off the body of the camera. So no fresh pictures this week, I'm afraid, but I do have a good archive.

Succulents safe from frost in the greenhouse last week

Could you just...

I was very glum about my camera, and the continuation of the freezing weather really didn't help my mood but at the pottery there is always someone who can make you laugh. I am lucky that if I need company I can pop indoors. There have been plenty of excuses for this recently: Annabelle, Emma and Sue have been working hard on the new catalogue and they occasionally ask me for a bit of verbiage about ways to use the pots. Jim has been working on the catalogue and on plans for a show garden in Japan - so when he came into the office we had a lively discussion about his colour ideas for the planting of it and somehow I ended up agreeing to give him a list of possible plants. He is maddeningly good at getting you to agree to things without seeming to ask. To his credit, however, he does put up with a lot of 'healthy disrespect' from his staff - and gives as good as he gets of course.

Thinking ahead 



Happy succulents outside last summer

I think I have just about planned the summer displays. First I go into a sort of trance and think about how it looked last year, then I visualize colours and shapes which will hopefully give different effects in the various areas this year. It may look to the untutored eye like I am just sitting around drinking coffee but in reality the little cogs are going whir-whir. I will be re-using a lot of plants, such as my rather magnificent collection of succulents and other tender perennials which I keep from year to year (Ice Age permitting). The challenge therefore is to make the same place look different from year to year by changing the pot combinations, using old plants in different ways and places but keeping them happy by putting sun lovers facing south and west and keeping the shade lovers close to the northern side of the pottery.

 A sucker for a pretty picture

Ricinus 'NZ Purple' towers in the foreground

The seed catalogues are my secret weapon. Gaudy pictures of novelties catch my eye, and I have to include some of them, especially if I think they may annoy Jim (he has a thing about Busy Lizzies...).  But I'll try anything from humble nasturtiums and marigolds to exciting exotics like Solanum quitoense and Leonotis nepetifolia; some of the experimental choices become regulars and I'll order them year after year.

L. 'Riviera Sky Blue' with Felicia and pelargoniums

Lobelia 'Riviera Sky Blue' is a case in point because it has such a lovely clear colour - I just have to think of something else to combine it with. Another regular, Hordeum jubatum, adds some elegant flowing lines in late summer, best backlit by morning or evening sun; Ricinus 'New Zealand Purple' is spectacular in any large pot and a great foil for orange, red, blue, pink... There are so many great plants that are easy to grow from seed.

Hordeum jubatum in the foreground

Three go mad in Hampshire
On Wednesday Richard, Maggie and I visited Hillier's Nursery near Winchester. We have started selling Hillier plants at the pottery and were invited to an open day to see exciting new collections of plants for spring. The site is enormous (about 50 acres I think), huge amounts of glass, tunnels and open areas for a wide range of plants. It was fascinating to see  plant production on such a scale, although Richard was disappointed not to see the Edward Scissorhands pruning machine in action. MD Andy McIndoe and director Kevin Hobbs showed us the new plants with pride and enthusiasm - it was good to see that the people in charge still obviously know and love the plants they are dealing with at the same time as having an eye for their commercial value. I'll have to place an order soon, so that there will be plenty of stock for when our customers start to come out of hibernation and visit the pottery in greater numbers - more tricky decisions!

Hillier Hellebore Hybridising
Kevin kindly took us to see other parts of the Hillier site and my favourite stop was at an out-of-the-way polytunnel which houses Alan Postill and his hellebores. Alan has been propagating plants since he was a teenager and still obviously loves what he does: flitting from row to row, tilting the chin of an anemone-flowered break here, caressing a fine yellow there, he showed us promising new strains with flowers carefully hand-pollinated, labelled and covered with little muslin bags. Odd corners held motley collections of plants from far-flung parts of the world brought back by Roy Lancaster and John Hillier for propagation by Alan, as Kevin said, "Give him a pencil and he'll get it to root". There's an article about Alan and his work in this month's edition of Gardens Illustrated (I really wished I had my camera with me but this article has some lovely photos). That is one of the things I love best about horticulture: every now and then you get to meet the unassuming proper enthusiasts who form the backbone of the trade and are generous in sharing their enthusiasm.