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| Go greener |
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| With a growing number of gardeners eschewing chemicals in favour of natural alternatives, we can suggest some effective products from our organic gardening selection |
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| Relax and refresh |
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| Good food freshly prepared daily, aromatic coffee, chilled wine and a grassy play area for the children. What more could you need? |
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| Food heaven |
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| Our Farm Shop is heaven for food lovers! Delicious handmade food, top quality groceries, fresh fruit and vegetables and stylish cookware and gifts. |
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| The Discovery Walk |
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| As thousands of daffodils herald the spring, stroll or stride around our Walk while the youngsters enjoy the Nature Trail |
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Yuccas aren’t yucky, and ’ave an agave, too!
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| Friday, 18th September 2009 |
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IN THE GARDEN WITH PETA MARSHALL
Think of ‘exotic’ plants in the garden and you will conjure images of palm trees and perhaps tropical bananas. Then maybe there are some cannas, those wonderfully hot, exotic-looking plants known as ‘Indian shot’ – goodness knows why they’re called that!
There are also gingers, bamboos, cycads…the list is potentially huge.
But what about those other plant stalwarts of hot countries – the succulents? Imagine donning a sombrero and dozily sitting astride your heavily laden ass as it carries you languidly across sun-bleached desert to visit first one juice-filled succulent plant, and then another. The sweltering noon day sun beats down upon your sweaty brow…sorry, I’m going off on one again!
You may not quite be able to grow the 20ft. high cacti they have in the Mexican desert, but you can create a certain amount of hot-climate charm with succulent plants in our UK gardens.
Essentially, a succulent plant is one that has modified itself through evolution to cope with drought conditions. Leaves and/or stems store water, and do not ‘transpire’ or ‘sweat’ as most other plants. Succulents need to replenish their water reserves and would normally do this during the once-yearly heavy desert rains. Cacti are just one type of ‘succulent’, grouped separately because of their spines and needles.
There are few any hardy cacti we can grow all year outdoors in this country, but there are some very good general succulents: the important thing is to choose plants that are hardy in the UK winter. Here are my favourites:
Agaves: These are distinctive, stemless, rosette-shaped plants. Their long, tapering leaves – often variegated with strips of cream or white – are stiff and tipped with sharp, needle-like spikes.
They can be ferocious customers, so should be positioned with care, well away from the edges of paths and from the attentions of children or pets.
For safety’s sake, the spines can be trimmed back.
The smaller growing species can take up to 10 years to flower, and the larger ones as many as 40 years – so agaves are really grown for their leaves.
The best known is Agave americana, also known as the century plant because it flowers only when huge (although this doesn’t normally take 100 years!). It has dark blue-green leaves, the backs of which are attractively patterned with a ghost-like imprint of the adjacent leaves, formed as they first unfurled. The form ‘Variegata’ has attractive yellow-cream stripes, and I prefer it.
Both are almost hardy throughout the UK. The variegated one is slightly less hardy, but should survive in our part of the country, especially if given the shelter of walls, and a soil that is well-drained.
Look out also for Agave parryi (hardy with greyish leaves), A. parviflora (white markings on the leaves, with thread-like edges), A. salmiana var. ferox (large leaves with masses of spines along the edges), and A. victoriae-reginae (known as the ‘royal agave’, which has tightly packed, dark green leaves that are striped and edged with white – and small needle-like spikes on the tips).
Incidentally, in Mexico and other Central and South American countries there are species of agave grown as crops – for their sap is used as the base ingredient in tequila.
Yuccas: These are dramatic evergreen plants which are invaluable as stemless, rosette-shaped forms or as small trees with stout trunk-like stems. They produce tall spikes of bell-shaped white flowers and most are hardy in the UK.
Yucca gloriosa, or the Spanish dagger, is a fully hardy garden variety reaching up to 8ft. or so. Initially it grows as a large rosette, with stiff, pointed, spine-tipped blue-green leaves. It becomes tree-like with age, forming a stout trunk once the lower leaves die, when they can be removed with a sharp downwards tug.
It is free-flowering from mid-summer and throughout autumn, bearing magnificent spikes, 3ft. or so high, with drooping tulip-shaped flowers that are reddish on the outside and cream inside.
The form ‘Variegata’ has more showy leaves that are bright pink, yellow and green when small, maturing to green, edged with gold.
Consider also Yucca flaccida (an arching rosette of green leaves; and there is a variegated form), Y. filamentosa (known as ‘Adam’s needle’, tall at 6ft. or more, and edged with a multitude of curling white threads), Y. aloifolia f. marginata (stiff-leaved and very sharply pointed, with strong variegations), and Y. glauca (a delightful grey-green species).
Don’t be tempted to plant the indoor plant Yucca elephantipes outside; although it will survive all but the coldest of winters, it really is a warm-loving plant and will always look so much better in the corner of your living room, rather than the corner of your patio!
Other hardy succulents for the garden include:
Aeonium arboreum – a perennial with soft, fleshy leaf rosettes; if you have a south-facing sloping garden, where cold air and excess moisture will run away, you could plant it out (otherwise keep it in a container for overwintering in a greenhouse or conservatory). Look for the deep copper-purple ‘Schwarzkopf’.
Aloe striatula – probably the hardiest of the aloe family, with rosettes of pointy green leaves.
Beschorneria yuccoides – an evergreen perennial producing rosettes of fleshy, lance-shaped leaves and tall, showy flower spikes.
Other succulents, such as Furcraea and Puya, are rather harder to find, but certainly worth trying as they will give your garden that extra bit of exoticism.
All this makes me want to go and see them in their natural habitats…where the climate is hot and the sun always shines…aah! I’d better go now as my donkey needs milking! Happy planting!
This week in your garden
Plant out spring cabbage seedlings 4in. (10cm) apart, in rows 12in. (30cm) apart. Remove two in every three plants over the months as spring greens.
Lift maincrop potatoes and leave tubers on the soil to dry off for an hour or two before storing in sacks or boxes in a well-ventilated, frost-free shed.
Prune out fruited blackberry canes and replace them with strong, healthy, current-year shoots.
Peta Marshall is the plant centre manager at Priory Farm in Nutfield. Website: www.prioryfarm.co.uk
NEXT WEEK: Preparing the greenhouse for winter
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