Surrey Homes | SH33 | July 2017 | Interiors supplement inside

Garden
R. ‘Open Arms’
hornets feasted on the sap. It had to be bandaged with the
remains of an old sheet but made a remarkable recovery. One
of the slowest trees to establish, a beautiful lime introduced
by Ernest Wilson from the wilds of China, Tilia henryana,
is now romping away and maybe one day soon it will start
to produce its autumn flowers. Look out for this one. It has
huge ovate leaves which are toothed and so very striking.
Clematis were planted here and there. Some have
thrived but in this last dry spell, two or three seem to have
disappeared. The soft pink C. ‘Duchess of Albany’ has gone
in this year with the idea of it providing late summer interest
through a grey leaved Elaeagnus ‘Quicksilver’. I love the late
flowering clematis. Their bell-like flowers appear when you
are least expecting them. The house and sheds are
smothered with C. montana ‘Wilsonii’. Many of
the plants have self seeded and combined with
a Persian ivy which arrived as a cutting from a
friend’s plant in Benenden. C. ‘Wilsonii’ is a
good doer and its fragrant white flowers come
a little later than many of the other montanas.
Gravel in the garden has proved to be
a fantastic growing medium as there is
always something new popping up and
there are now interesting combinations
of self sown hypericums and the prolific burnt orange
flowers of ‘Fox and Cubs’ which came from a Winchelsea
garden open under the National Garden Scheme and
a low growing Euphorbia cyparissias ‘Fens Ruby’.
Borders were dug and filled with a mixture of shrubs and
perennials. One border proved to be too ambitious and the
soil baked hard in the summer. As its nutritional value didn’t
seem to improve despite the addition of copious amounts
of compost and grit, we’ve abandoned ship and a third of it
has now been sown with a wild flower and grass mix from
Emorsgate Seeds. It’s a huge success this year although a
few less ox eye daisies in the mix would have been better.
What survivors these are. I have never known anything to
proliferate quite as much! The other parts of the border are
“It took years to
take out a huge
and exceedingly
geriatric privet
hedge from
round the little
vegetable patch”
R. ‘Blairi No.2’ in the trees
waiting for attention and meanwhile the teasels and purple
fennel have taken up residence and look very happy too.
It took years to take out a huge and exceedingly
geriatric privet hedge from round the little vegetable
patch, apparently highly prolific in our predecessors’ day.
Getting rid of this and replacing it with a picket fence
now planted up with a cultivated blackberry, boysenberries
and that really decorative Japanese Rubus
phoenicolasius is a great improvement and
it’s much more fun to see a few dahlias
and salvias growing together through the
kitchen window rather than the hedge.
A giant purple fennel has appeared and
reaches great heights by the end of the season
too and provides a good backdrop to Salvia
‘Amistad’ and that lovely variety, Salvia
confertiflora. Both of these need to be lifted at
the end of the year and a few cuttings taken but
they strike easily and are worth the effort. S. ‘Amistad’ starts
flowering in July – earlier if it has been kept in a greenhouse
– and its dark purple flowers are still going in November.
And so each year things change – a little. Some
plants start to outgrow their space and have to be hard
pruned; the apples need attention each winter and
gradually need replacing. Moss seems to take over the
lawn but by early June everything is looking rosy.
Sue Whigham can be contacted on 07810 457948 for
gardening advice and help in the sourcing and supply of
interesting garden plants.
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