Thursday 22 January 2015

Small is Beautiful

When writing in my previous blog about my love affair with the oak I had not really space to say anything about the actual planting of them. Moreover as readers of these blogs will appreciate I am very reluctant to write anything very much about gardening technics. I have never had any formal garden training and have never become remotely an expert in such matters. What I now have is rather too many years of actual gardening behind me, and inevitably one learns a little from ones successes and failures. I also sometimes think that I am quite a lazy gardener, but especially when it comes to planting trees and shrubs. My holes are never very large, neither are they filled with wonderful compost, but then the subjects that I am planting are practically never very large, which brings me to the title of this blog.

I have often wondered whether if I was very rich my approach to gardening would be very different. Presumably I would have many gardeners at my disposal so my laziness would not be an issue. Moreover I could actually afford to buy very large, even mature trees and an instant garden might become a reality. And of course the obvious advantage of planting large is that you can  get an immediate effect, and thus avoid the criticism of one visitor to a garden I was involved in when she remarked "Ah, I see that you are still in the pygmy stage".  But whether rich or poor there are serious disadvantages in planting big. The staking has got to be much more important, and if, as I often do, one plants trees that are not even 50cms one can avoid staking altogether. Secondly, but perhaps even more importantly a large tree will require significantly more amounts of water over a longer period. Again, if wealthy, these problems can be overcome, though serious staking is never very attractive. A problem that money cannot solve is that your choice of tree is more limited. The larger the tree the bigger the investment required, but also significantly more space, and thus a nursery needs to be confident that it will find a buyer. Here in S-W France we have been lucky in having Jacques Urban's Florama providing a very large choice of very young trees, though the sad news is that he seems to be cutting down on his stock quite considerably.


Much easier to find are trees of say 1.50 to 2 meters high, and I guess that their purchase is the best compromise. That said a 2 meter tree is still significantly more expensive than one of 30cms. It probably will need staking and it will need more watering in its early years. In a previous garden we experimented with the planting of two oaks, one 30cms and the other 2 meters. In four years the smaller tree had outgrown its rival, though after that period the growth rate remains the same, the point of course being that the bigger the newly planted tree the longer it takes to establish itself, while the smaller tree quickly grows away. So if you can wait three or four years plant small and save yourselves money and worry.

Meanwhile at what is increasingly becoming my favourite tree and shrub nursery run by Hélène and Franz Spahl in the Gers near Jegun  a viburnum that was new to me caught my eye. Its name is Viburnum Le Bois Marquis. Hilliers calls it persistent, though I guess semi-persistant might be more accurate, but at any rate what seduced me was its vibrant autumn colour of a reddish hue, and this, because it does not lose its leaves easily, over a long period. Moreover I am promised fragrant white flowers and bright red fruits so what more could one ask for ! Less dramatic but attractive enough is a certainly persistent viburnum. V.propinquum is similar to the much more common V.tinus, but smarter in that its leaves are glossy, shown to advantage by their bright red stems.  Its flower power is probably less than V.tinus and anyway appears much later in the year which is not an advantage - the great attraction of the V.tinus it that it is almost winter flowering, and thus has very little to compete with. Still all three viburnums are worth having, but Le Bois Marquis is a real winner.