Wealden Times | WT165 | November 2015 | Gift supplement inside

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Lay down your shears
Sue Whigham marvels at late-season flowers, seed heads and grasses
and urges gardeners to think before pruning
Last week we were having a leisurely walk in Brockwell
Park, an estate set out in the early nineteenth century,
complete with mansion, walled gardens and huge
greenhouses, and now a park bordered by Brixton and Tulse
Hill in South London. Back in the eighties I remember
brief walks there with the dog between school runs and
it wasn’t a place to linger. Now the elegant lido has a gym
and café, there are tennis courts and a couple of fantastic
playgrounds and the old greenhouses are being used by
the local community. There are plenty of mature trees and
there is some interesting landscaping around the duck
ponds. We were admiring the grasses looking their best in
the autumn sunshine when we rounded a corner and lo
and behold, there was a municipal Lambeth truck being
piled high with said grasses, leaving… bare earth. By now,
being a public park, they might have been replaced with
some sort of winter bedding but I thought at the time that
it really was an example of too much tidying, too soon.
So, what does need ‘tidying up’ in late autumn? I think that
any herbaceous plants that have good structural qualities can
be left until they collapse in a soggy heap and you’ll see when
that happens. But, until then, why not enjoy the flower heads
of sedums, of grasses, and the distinctive stems of border
plants like phlomis.
I would certainly keep raking or picking up leaves from the
lawn and adding them to your leaf-mould pile as they make a
good soil improver in no time at all. Oak and hornbeam can
make really good leaf mould in about eighteen months while
the leaves of trees such as horse chestnut, sweet chestnut
and sycamore are much tougher and take longer. Shredding
them with a rotary mower before adding them to your heap
will speed up the process of decomposition. Anything swept
up from under roses that have any sign of black spot or rust
or any other pathogens should be kept well away from your
leaf mould. The other clearing I would definitely do would be
around succulents or any silver-leaved Mediterranean plants
that have problems with wet winters and the possibility of
rotting off.
I’ve got a few Cotinus here (Smoke Bush), some doing
rather better than others. C. ‘Grace’ has put a lot of growth
on but is becoming leggy and rather unattractive in the
back of a border. November is the perfect month to cut this
shrub back by about a third just to ensure a more compact
plant next year. I’d avoid doing that sort of pruning if it is
particularly cold. I’d also have a quick check of fruit trees
such as medlars and quinces, both of which have fruited
well this year. The medlar has a spreading habit and really
no routine pruning is necessary, just sometimes a slight trim
of crossing branches or clusters of shoots improve the tree.
It’s the same for quinces really – just improve on the tree’s
147 www.wealdentimes.co.uk