An old photo circa 2019 of a good haul of plants purchased at the Plant Fairs Roadshow when it made its annual visit to my neighbourhood. So I was sorry to hear of the retirement of Colin and Cindy Moat who ran Pineview Plants for 25 years and were a mainstay of the Roadshow. Originally featuring nurseries from the counties south of London the 'tour' has steadily increased its range both in the participants and the venues.

 I moved to New Cross Gate back in 2010. I started out as a gardener and landscape gardener but by then I was working mainly in the art world after a stint at art school. The flat has quite a sizeable garden which had become overgrown so I thought I'd tidy it up a bit. Then I thought I'd do a bit of planting. I quickly became a plantaholic, more so than when I was working in the 'trade' in fact.

 I soon became frustrated by the limited choice in garden centres. I began to order from admirable institutions like the Beth Chatto nursery and I started going to plant sales at places like the RHS halls in Victoria. Therefore I was delighted when I discovered that something called the Plant Fairs Roadshow was coming to the community centre at the top of the road. That was about a decade ago and over the years I've also caught up with it at various other locations in and around London. I've always been impressed by the dedication of these niche nurseries and the quality (and good value) of the plants. Some have been doing great work for a long time; equally encouraging is the emergence of new growers.

 Pineview Plants will be missed but as they say in showbiz: always leave 'em wanting more...

 Pruning Lavender. Left alone Lavender becomes voluminous and leggy which might be fine if that suits. Alternatively it can be shaped with an annual trim for a more formal look e.g. when used in a Lavender hedge. 

 The important thing to bear in mind is that Lavender becomes increasingly woody over time. It doesn't grow back from the wood so only cut the uppermost (i.e. green) section section of each stem. As long as the cut is above the woody part of the stem the green will re-grow.

 Traditionally the time to prune Lavender is late summer or early autumn though some say spring is ok. Perhaps now is a bit late for me to be pruning but then again it's been a mild autumn with both sun and rain to extend the growing season. Sometimes you have to do things when you can though it's important to work with rather than against seasonality.

 NB the standard advice about pruning the green and not the wood is not quite as hard and fast as it used to be. Some gardeners note no adverse effect when they cut into woody stems as long as the cut is made above shoots of growth. Even so I think Lavender is one for a light trim rather than a hard prune. 

 As mentioned a few days ago I mulched the Rhubarb patch by chopping and dropping the Comfrey growing there. Today I added a barrowload of wood chip and a sack of pine needles raking them into the layer of leaves. Keeping it local I shredded some branches lying around after the tree overhead was pollarded by the council. The pine needles I swept up from a big Scots Pine round the corner.

 Adding organic matter builds soil humus. "Well rotted" is the mantra for compost, particularly something potent like horse manure which shouldn't be used fresh. Using greens and browns as a mulch is fine, shredding when that helps. After all what is the forest floor but an accumulation of "green waste"? Creepy crawlies, bacteria, microbes and fungi rapidly go to work digesting all that goodness and returning it to the soil.  

 Ivy (Hedera helix) is in bloom at the moment, one of our most prolific wildflowers and the last big hit of pollen and nectar for insects. Ivy feeds the full spectrum of pollinators: honey bees and bumblebees, wasps, flies, moths, butterflies et al.

  Yesterday I noticed a large Holly tree with masses of Ivy clambering through it. The whole tree was swarming with wasps, so many there was an audible buzzing noise. 

 Unintentional propagation. White Comfrey (Symphytum orientale) has self-seeded from the raspberry patch to the adjacent bed. In fact it arrived among the raspberries after self-seeding from the 'wild' area at the back of the allotment. There's at least a dozen new plants here so I'll tease them out and replant them in the garden. The best things in life are free...

 Chop and drop. I've written before about the virtues of making 'Comfey tea' to use as a fertiliser. That stinky brew is made by steeping the leaves of Comfrey in water for several weeks. [see entry dated 26th. August 2022] 

 An even simpler approach is to cut the leaves off and use them as a mulch, best done at a damp time of year so they break down quickly. There are several clumps on the Rhubarb batch; I gave them the chop and let them drop right there.

 The thinking is that Comfrey is a 'dynamic accumulator' of NPK- nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. All Symphytum species can be used to for this purpose but S. x uplandicum - sometimes called Russian Comfrey- is the leafiest. Conveniently there is plenty of it growing on and around the allotment. 

 An annual event of this diary to post a photo of the Virginia Creeper (Parthenocissus quinquefolia) turning fiery red on the side of the ancestral home. Native to eastern and central North America where 'the fall' is ablaze with colour.

 As I have probably mentioned before I have a vivid memory of flying into JFK in autumn. Our plane was put into a holding pattern circling over New England for about twenty minutes because Air Force One was due to land. I forget which President it was but I do recall gazing down on the incandescent wooded landscape. 

 Conservationist's nightmare? I saw this on my brief trip to Dorset back in September. An area of Japanese Knotweed interspersed with Himalayan Balsam- two species generally considered to be among the worst of non-native invasive species.

 It came to mind writing my last entry concerning Cherry Laurel which has a bad rep for being invasive of woodland. We could name and shame various others- for example Rhododendron, Cotoneaster and Buddleja.

 Clearly we no longer agree with the Victorians that Japanese Knotweed is suitable for the shrubbery. Likewise Himalayan Balsam rapidly self-seeded itself out of Victorian gardens and into the countryside. Then again I can't help wondering if there is a certain amount of paranoia concerning these 'foreign' plants? I see Knotweed all over the place yet it doesn't seem to be as destructive as its fearsome reputation suggests. I'm not entirely convinced Balsam is as detrimental to natural habitats as some might say.

 Conservation groups organise 'Balsam bashing' sessions and a whole industry has grown up claiming to eradicate Japanese Knotweed (despite research which concludes no chemical or mechanical methods are fully effective). That may be useful and appropriate in certain situations but arguably a case of locking the stable door after the horse has bolted.

 The Victorians were right about one thing: both these dreaded thugs are beautiful in flower. The Knotweed was buzzing with honeybees and the Balsam with bumblebees.   

 Here is a non-native species planted the length and breadth of the land for purely functional reasons. That green ball is Cherry Laurel (Prunus laurocerasus). It has several virtues: it's evergreen, grows very quickly in sun or shade and shapes well. For that reason it has become widespread as a hedging plant, sometimes seen as a standalone specimen as here by the entrance to the music school.

 Generally referred to as a shrub P. laurocerasus is so vigorous that it will become a small tree left to its own devices. Conservationists are not fond of Cherry Laurel because it seeds and spreads into woodland and outcompetes native flora. It has some value for habitat and pollinators but not a pick for the wildlife garden.

 The one at the front of the lodge is due for a haircut. Another at the rear had grown so tall and leggy that we reduced it to the bare bones.

 That may seem like severe treatment but new growth is already appearing on branches within weeks of getting the chop. As I say Cherry Laurel is very vigorous; by this time next year it will be a shapely mass of green.  

 Gardening has entered the autumn tidy up season. Here at the side gate three very vigorous climbers meet and merge. On my father's side Virginia Creeper which should be called Virginia Ramper. On the neighbour's side Russian Vine which is sometimes known as Mile A Minute. In the middle Ivy clambers along the fence line. I ran the hedge trimmer over the mass of foliage but they'll be off again in spring.

 

 

My purchase of Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) was the subject of my last post. As mentioned I have never seen them growing but I have seen photographs of them carpeting woodlands in the States with sky blue flowers.

 That triggered a memory. I wondered if I might have encountered them on one of my hiking trips in California and Oregon. But that didn't make sense because M. virginica is native to eastern North America not the Pacific North-West.

 Then I remembered a plant I saw quite often (as shown above) when I hiked from Lake Tahoe to the Meiss Meadows. I published an entry on 27th. September 2019 noting that it appeared to be one of the Boraginaceae, species unknown. Not a Virginia Bluebell but I reckon this must be the Mountain Bluebell (Mertensia ciliata), native to California, Nevada, Utah and Oregon. Nice to tie up that loose end albeit a few years later.

 Actually to call it a Bluebell is slightly misleading if we are comparing it to the European Bluebells i.e. Hyacinthoides. The flowers of M. virginica and ciliata are more like a Lungwort or a Comfrey which are also in the Borage family. 

 Some plants are hard to find, they're not your average garden centre fare. Case in point I've been looking out for Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica) for some time. I noticed them in a bulb catalogue and purchased three. In fact they're not bulbous- they arrived in bare root form in a sealed plastic bag with some compost to keep them moist.

  I planted them in dappled shade in one of the damper parts of the garden which (in theory) should suit them. I've never seen them growing anywhere but I have seen pictures of M. virginica carpeting North American woodlands with sky blue flowers. Curiously this species was given the RHS Award of Garden Merit a few decades ago but it seems the horticultural trade hasn't shown much interest in cultivating it.

 Autumn is the season for seeds; the seed heads can be as distinctive as the flowers. Case in point the dry pods of Love-in-a-Mist (Nigella damascena). The seeds within rattle like maracas when you shake them. 

 Still seeing some butterflies with the unusually warm spell we've had this month. The Holly Blue has two broods during the course of the year so is one of the first to be seen in spring and one of the last in summer. 

 Rosehips and apples. Autumn is here.

 I planted Allium sphaerocephalon in a sunny border on the allotment a few years ago and they flower profusely in July. They propagate themselves profusely too.

 The bulbs themselves increase rapidly in number...

... each bulb begats more bulbs in the form of offsets.

 Resulting in numerous bulbs that can be gathered from the soil for re-planting.

Moreover each flower head produces bulbils which drop and grow into yet more bulbs.  

 Pollarding maintains a tree at a lower level with a denser growth than its natural habit. Walnut is a fast growing species and this one at the music school had doubled in height since Jif pollarded it about a decade ago. So we set about lopping the branches to the point of the previous pollard.

 I don't get involved with tree surgery as such but pruning not too far off the ground falls within the scope of general gardening.

 A plate of dogs' teeth, by which I mean bulbs from the Erythronium genus which resemble the molars of a canine. Hence the colloquial name Dog Tooth Violet. The above are E. californicum, a mountain species from that part of the world.

 Presumably a selection from the wild originally because these are referred to as Erythronium californicum 'White Beauty'. Said to be a parent of the cultivar 'Pagoda' which does well in my London garden so hopefully these will too.