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March In Your Garden
By Katherine Watson
I have just received an order
from the Beth Chatto garden
nursery in Essex. The garden
is famous for spearheading
techniques to deal with climactic
change and there are really
useful books accompanying the
different gardens that Chatto has
created - the gravel garden; the
damp garden etc.
I’ve received two rather unusual
forms of Gunnera: G. Hamiltonii
and G. Magellanica. I also ordered
two Darmera peltata, part of the
saxifrage family but on steroids.
When I first moved to my
current house in Old Trafford, I
bunged in a random collection
of plants bought as presents
and purchased without any real
scheme in mind. One of these
plants was a Gunnera manicata
- commonly called the giant
rhubarb because it looks exactly
like you’d expect a giant rhubarb
to look - albeit a giant rhubarb
with a 20 Senior Service-a-day
habit. I loved it but it was way too
big and didn’t sit comfortably with
anything else at the time, so it had
to go.
I went through a few perennial
phases but just recently, I’ve been
tinkering again and am being
drawn to foliage and oddity; spiky
yuccas and trachycarpus and
even Phormium, which I went
right off for a while.
Christopher Lloyd maintained
that it was essential to have
spiky and unusual plants in an
English garden to counteract
the ‘softness’ - ‘...They give an
immediate lift (much like the first
glass of champagne on a Sunday
morning)’ So when I came to think
about how to give parts of the
garden this lift I started looking
at smaller alternatives to G.
Manicata.
The Darmera peltata have arrived
as thick tubers with bright
green bulbous heads and lots of
leggy roots clinging horizontally
underneath - something from
the Mesozoic era surely - it will
produce similar foliage to G.
Manicata but on a smaller scale.
The other two varieties of Gunnera
- Hamiltonii and Magellanica are
much smaller leaved and will,
hopefully, act as ground cover
around the trachycarpus. All need
a moisture retentive soil to do well
but in Manchester we definitely
have one over on Essex when it
comes to wet soil.
Katherine is running a six-week
Introduction to Garden Design
course in April and May.
For more information see page
20, or email
k.l.watson@hotmail.co.uk
www.fatgrass.co.uk.
Garden Design
Planting Advice
Consultation Service
Project Managment
07989968841
www.fatgrass.co.uk
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