Gardeners Friends

When in doubt plant Cosmos.  It is particularly good advice for someone like myself still at the pygmy stage: seemingly acres of bare ground all set for the weeds to colonize, so get in first with the Cosmos. I do not know why it is so acceptable. One could call it a weed, and it can certainly be invasive. Moreover now that Gersois farmers are planting fields of it, it may become rather too much of a good thing. But for me it is saved from almost all criticism by its delicacy of leaf and indeed of flower. It is an annual, but normally it reseeds freely, though our heavy ground is not ideal for any reseeding, and a late frost might do for it.

Another very generous reseeder is Verbena bonariensis. It was Christopher Lloyd who first sang its praises for me, I think in what for many years was my gardening bible, his 'The Well-tempered Garden'. Maddeningly I cannot put my hands on my copy to confirm that, and this may be indicative of the fact that I now have a new bible which many of you may not have come across: Pamela J. Harper's, 'Time-tested Plants', tested over thirty years in her garden in Virginia. Her soil is acid, which most of ours is not, but curiously the weather she describes seems very similar - hot summers with possibilities of drought, winter frosts but not enough to do great damage. Most of the plants she writes about grow very happily here, and how well she writes about them. I do not know of any other gardening book which has provided me with so much useful information, let alone inspiration. If Pamela J. Harper approves of a plant I am sure that I will!

But back to Verbena bonariensis. Its great virtue, as Christopher Lloyd pointed out, is that it is a see-through plant, that is to say that it does not block out from sight what is behind it, so that though tallish it can be planted anywhere in a border, and provide colur and interest over a very long period. Like Cosmos it is easy from seed, and a generous, sometimes too generous reseeder, but easy enough to pull out if not wanted. In fact in theory it is a short-lived perennial, but an old plant soon gets rather tatty, and one might as well consider it as an annual.

The same might be said of Salvia turkestanica. The purplish blue haze that it creates in early summer always gives me a thrill, and even though the bluish petals fall quite quickly the bracts continue to provide colour for a long time, provided that the heat is not too intense. Some people do not like the smell. This only emerges if you make contact with the plant, but if you do it is strong, and for me rather Proustian, evocative of happy hours weeding in a Guildford garden of close friends, now some thirty years ago.

Another bible for me is Graham Stuart Thomas'   'Perennial Garden Plants', the most satisfactory descriptive list of plants with advice on cultivation that I have ever come across. He gives Gaura lindheimeri  only medium marks - 'not in the first flight' - and I have just seen that Christopher Lloyd in his 'Garden Flowers' is a bit sniffy as well. But it does exceptionally well in our climate providing in this case a whitish haze of flower which like the grasses moves in the wind, over a long period.  Some time ago a pink version was produced, and like so many novelties, rather took over from its predecessor.  But as time passes my choice turns back to the white, though in fact I have both in the garden. The more dumpy varieties which you can also find, especially in pink seem to me to be an 'erreur' since the great attraction of the plant rests in its gracefulness.  Again I would call it a short-lived perennial, but again also it reseeds itself freely, so once you have got it you should never be without, and apart from pulling out the unwanted ones, it should never cause you problems.

There are other 'gardeners friends' that I shall return to no doubt - the common Fennel, Foeniculum vulgare, especially for me the purple leaved variety, comes to mind, though its propensity to reseed can be a bit more of a nuisance than with the above. But for the moment I want to mention what might be called my 'new best friend', Viola bertolonii.  I have always been an admirer of the violas, and in England at one moment considered myself almost a collector. Since living in France I have not had nearly so much success despite the fact that Viola cornuta is a Pyrenean plant, I assume because the conditions have been too hot and dry.  Looking through the Chilterns seed catalogue - another 'bible', though some may find its descriptions a bit OTT - I came across the aforesaid V. bertolonni. What caught my attention was the fact that it welcomed ' a sunny position', and came from Italy, so I felt that it ought to be able to put up with our summers, and somewhat to my surprise it has. It is a good blue with a well-whiskered face, and a reasonably long stem. It seems to be in flower from February to October, and it reseeds. What more could you wants? Perhaps smell, but then you can't have everything!

Roses

Today it is snowing and they are promising us at least more rain, if not more snow.  I should not complain since I have spent so much of my time in France praying for rain, but the wet weather is beginning to be a bit of a bore. It also tempts me to make some sarcastic remarks about global warming, only I know that the 'fundamentalists' amongst you will riposte that bad weather is also evidence of this phenomenon. Donc, we agnostics cannot win.  Meanwhile it may be a good moment before one is overwhelmed by the onrush of Spring, to think about roses.  Fortunately I am extremely fond of them, I say fortunately because if there is one plant that does like our often heavy clay it is the rose. Not all of them in fact. For what it is worth I have found that the rugosas do not do well here, in particular they are prone to constant die back. This has always worried me since they are supposed to cope with anything, and moreover they contain one of my favourite roses, the wonderfully scented Roserie de l'Hay. The conclusion that I have arrived at is that while they cope happily with poor soil, what they do not like is too rich, or in winter too damp a soil. And while on the subject of disappointments, two roses that grew very well for me in England, Nevada, covered early in the year in large single white, sometimes touched with pink,flowers, and its sister, Marguerite Hilling, have not performed down here, I guess for the same reasons that the rugosas have not. If one can produce good drainage perhaps the problem would disappear. Still for the most part the problem is not under-performance, but an embarras de richesses. I am of the generation that has grown up with the revival of what I will call the old-fashioned rose, or in French Les roses anciennes, which somehow sounds better.  It was a reaction against the perhaps over-colourful and over-artificial hybrid tea rose - how many of you remember Super Star? - a reaction led by people like Graham Stuart Thomas and Vita Sackville West. One of the most important moments in my life was my first visit to Sissinghurrst, just a year or two before Vita Sackville West died. I was overcome by many aspects of that marvellous garden, and on subsequent visits have never been disappointed, but of course one of its great features are the old-fashioned roses. Two roses that I first saw then, Complicata, in fact a once flowering single deep pink, and Fantin Latour, for me the quintessential old-fashioned rose, have been in every garden that I have ever been associated with.

But that visit to Sissinghurst was over forty years ago, and old-fashioned roses are not only old-fashioned but old hat. They also have obvious disadvantages. Many are prone to disease, especially blackspot. Many of them are only once-flowering, a criticism which is a little bit hard, since most shrubs are only once-flowering, but since many roses can be almost continuously in flower outside the winter months,one may field with those that do not that one is being sold a bit short. One of the developments in say the last twenty years has been precisely to overcome this criticism by producing roses that are in the style of the old-fashioned, but which repeat flower, and are also by and large healthy. The man who has been responsible for all this is of course David Austin, and his English Roses are now to be discovered wherever roses are to be found, and very much in France. Moreover the French breeders, of which there are many distinguished ones, have followed his example; I am thinking of Guillot's Generosa and Meilland's Romantica series.  I for instance have fallen for Meilland's Alain Suchon, largely because I am a great fan of the French singer, but in theory it is lovely deep red, very smelly rose rather in the style of Austin's William Shakespeare, which incidentally is one of roses that is not free of blackspot.

David Austin roses are almost certainly deserve a blog to themselves, so popular are they, and for the most part rightly so.  In fact so many new ones appear each year that it is very difficult to keep up with them, so that my favourites such as Heritage and Mary Rose date from twenty years ago. Slightly more recent, and one that I had doubts about because I was not quite sure of the colour. It name, Molineux, after a football ground, is a bit of a worry to start with, and colour, which changes from yellow through to apricot according to the weather, is almost fluorescent. But so healthy is it, and so continuously in flower, with good scent, and finally so cheerful is the colour, that it has won me over. A very new one that I have got my eye on is Munstead Wood. In this case with its reference to the great Gertrude Jekyll, the names pleases as does the colour, a deep velvety crimson according to the catalogue, the rose colour I particularly like. I just hope that it has got enough red in it to avoid the burning that roses with a lot of purple in them tend to suffer from in our climate. One of my absolute favourites, Souvenir du Dr Jamain, suffers from this problem, and finding the right balance of sunshine and shade to overcome it is very difficult.

There have been plenty of other developments in the last forty years, including patio roses, and groundcover roses, these always a worry for me, since prickly groundcover does not seem a good idea, but my own development has been towards the so-called wild, or species roses. They are usually only once flowering, and the flowers are single, that is to say normally just five petals. Of course the best known of these is the Dog rose, but in fact there are many others from all parts of the world. What I like about them, apart from their simplicity is their all the year round intere"st, which includes hips, and less often, but not uncommonly, very good autumn colour - Rosa virgiiana would be a very good example. Still a fuller discussion of these, and many other roses no doubt, will have to wait for another occasion