centres. Peppers are also surging in popularity and they are so easy to grow in a large pot of well-drained compost. In recent weeks I visited two stunning gardens in Bedfordshire only a few miles apart yet so strikingly different. Cathy Brown's Stevlington Manor is a carefully landscaped and co-ordinated four acres established over the last 20 years and run on almost totally organic lines. This is important because Kathy uses the petals from varieties of roses such as Zephrin Drouin to make rose petal butter which she includes when making her delicious sponge cakes.
Kathy Brown's swimming pool – now a home for low-maintenance container plants.
I mention Kathy for another reason because Bedfordshire, like much of eastern England, has over the recent years suffered from reduced rainfall and she has very cleverly turned an outdoor swimming pool into a comfortable home for a collection of low-maintenance container plants. With the pressures on available water and the social dogma of gardeners wasting water Kathy has carefully put together many ideas of using even throwaway polystyrene bedding plant containers that have been sprayed to turn them into unusual containers for drought tolerant plants.
The modern gardener’s vegetable harvest – a far cry from what was dug up at the time of the last London Olympics.
meaning that in good growing conditions when it's warm and moist lots of fertiliser is released but if the weather goes cold the release of nutrients also slows down, the same occurs if conditions become very dry. These modern fertilisers, sold under the name of Osmacote, last a whole season. Growing techniques have also changed
over the years. When I was a kid my cold frames were glazed with glass and made of timber and at the height of bad winter I would cover them with old carpet . Today we have products such as Link a Bord that
can be used to construct raised beds that contain the heat of the day yet insulate against extremes of temperature. One thing that has gone full circle during the Queen's reign is that of growing your own and there can be nothing more rewarding than sitting watching the Olympics eating a healthy salad where virtually everything has come from the garden. In the late 1940s and early 50s the only cucumbers we could grow outdoors. To d ay ’s mini cucumber is becoming one of the most popular fruits sold in garden
Gardening is becoming costly like the Olympics and I'm sure we need to find ways of saving money. Some of the new pesticides and weedkillers are coming out at very expensive prices and while the new grass seed and fertiliser mix the repairing patches caused by dogs and cats is brilliant and really works but is often seen around £15 mark. Some of the new plant introductions seem to have become very expensive and perhaps the biggest worry has come about using green waste peat free composts. So if you're getting bored with the Olympics why not get out into your own garden and save a little bit of money by making your own compost or by carefully taking a few cuttings or by saving a few seed from subjects will come true from home saved seed. You can save a lot of money and there is huge satisfaction from encouraging a tiny cutting to make its own roots and to nurture it and care for it until it blossoms. Late July and early August is perfect time to take cuttings of many of our shrubs. We call these 75-100mm long cuttings semi ripe or greenwood. They are young enough to be capable of producing roots but old enough not to wilt until they make roots and one of the greatest secrets is to cut the existing leaves in half to reduce transpiration. It is a good time to give your house plants a new lease of life, I often repot divide and take cuttings from many houseplants in late July and early August as it gives them time to settle down again and fill the pot with roots making it easier to overwinter them.
Howard Drury is happy to be associated with:
www.ashwoodnurseries.com,
www.armillatox.co.uk and
www.linkabord.com
NOTTINGHAMSHIRE TODAY 135
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