This year has been an amazing year for the roses. At Lewis Cottage we grow over 40 different varieties; from old species and vintage French varieties to modern David Austin English roses. But two years of them being attacked by deer made us wonder whether growing them was worthwhile. The solution was to interplant with perennial foxgloves, which the deer won’t touch, and they can’t reach the roses without navigating the foxgloves.
A very hard winter prune last year to all of the roses in the formal bed to six inches (15 cm) certainly helped produce the incredible display this year and have enabled me to pick bunches of roses for display in the cottage.
In another part of the garden we have an old Paulownia tomentosa (foxglove tree) grown from seed many years ago. Although benefiting from the warmth of the cob cottage walls and flowering many times over the years, it had begun to look bedraggled and unsightly, to the point that we thought it might be the time to get rid of the tree and start again.
Fergus Garrett at Great Dixter writing about paulownias in Christopher Lloyd’s book Exotic Planting for Adventurous Gardeners gives advice about the method of ‘stooling’ paulownias. Lloyd chose to stool the tree annually resulting in ‘a plant transformed’, with furry leaves a metre across. We have reduced our paulownia tree in size by at least two thirds and the result has been quite amazing with new growth sprouting from the main trunk.
We will reduce it further this year in the hope that next year it will produce some gigantic leaves ready for opening again properly for the National Garden Scheme.
Our Liriodendron tulipifera (tulip tree) is in full bloom and the picture below shows why it is so named.
Half of the main stem was lost several years ago and a second tree was bought to replace it, but the original has continued to bloom year after year and is particularly spectacular this year.
If I have drawn a lesson from all these examples it is to never give upon a plant, sometimes it just needs some time to recover.
Jobs for the coming week
- Prune your early flowering herbaceous perennials by about a third or half to delay the flowering period – a Chelsea chop.
- Pinch out side shoots on your tomatoes.
- Shade your greenhouses to keep them cool and prevent scorching.
- Recycle water wherever possible.
- Harvest lettuce, radish and salad crops and sow more to prolong the season.
- Pick sweet peas as soon as they bloom to ensure continuous flowering.
- Dead-head roses if they are repeat-flowering types. Otherwise, leave the seed heads on for decoration.
- Start to lift tulips once they have stopped flowering.
- Plant out tropicals: cannas, eucomis, ricinus, banana and coleus.
- Fill gaps in borders with pots of annuals or summer flowering bulbs which can then be easily taken out at the end of summer.
- Plant out your sweetcorn in blocks after hardening off.
- Spread mulch across thirsty crops of beans and courgettes. This will help retain moisture in the soil.
- Plant up hanging baskets with trailing tomatoes or herbs. Don’t hang the tomatoes too near the roof of the greenhouse!
More information on the garden at Lewis Cottage can be found here
