Disappointments

The chief disappointments have been amongst the herbaceous plants but I will start with a family of trees/shrubs, The Cornus family is very large but I am here thinking of what are sometimes called American Dogwoods , though since quite a lot started life in Japan and Korea, perhaps better to call them Flowering Dogwoods, In fact as regards the ones I am thinking of - essentially Cornus Florida and C. Kousa, and their many hybrids - it is not the flowers that are the feature, but their bracts which come in various shades of red, pink and white. Thy are amongst my favourite trees/shrubs spectacular when in 'bract', but also in the autumn when most of them have wonderful colouring. Of the half a dozen or so that we possess only one grown well but so far without any 'flowers'. It was sold to me as C. kousa chinensis but I am beginning to have doubts. All the others have 'flowered', this year rather better than in previous ones, perhaps because of the wet Spring, perhaps just because they are older. Probably our most successful dogwood is C. Porlock followed by what I think is C. Aurora, but C.Satomi looks miserable, C. capitata is dead! Now itis clear that dogwoods can be grown in S-W France. There is a flourishing C.capitata at the Gaujacq planterium,  and I have occasionally seen other varieties looking good. Moreover there is always a selection at the excellent garden centre at Mirande, Le Jardin d'Embaloge and one or two other specialised nurseries, so people must be buying them. I suspect that the nearer that you are to the Atlantic the more likely you are to have success - a bit more rain, and perhaps  more acidic soil though I do not think that the latter requirement is essential. And with all these recommendation the different conditions within your own garden - shade or lack of it, sloping or flat, north, south, east or west - play a vital part, For instance our C. capitata was planted on a dry bank in a rather inaccessible corner of the garden so not easy to water. No wonder it died! And finally as regards the dogwoods there is view that chez nous those with C.kousa blood in them suit our conditions a little better than those derived from C. florida, though in fact some have the blood of both !


Another death this year was the newly planted Sinocalycanthus raulstonii Hartlage Wine. This was strongly recommended by Helen Dillon and is seemingly a shrub not demanding any very special treatment, which did not prevent it taking a strong dislike to us! In fact I do not think that we will replace it for there is something rather too artificial about the flowers for my liking. On the other hand the newly planted Olearia x scilloniensis which I enjoyed so much in the Cornish gardens, have done reasonably well, this a little to my surprise, since I thought that they might find our summers too hot and dry. By no means dead but nevertheless disappointing is the also newly planted Philadelphus maculatus Mexican Jewel. This came highly recommended by Nick Macer of pan Global Plants,an English nursery full of interesting plants, but of course you have got to get the plants over here, so they cost. Anyway I think that I may be at fault in planting it in the wrong place. It turns out to be a much more delicate plant both in flower and foliage than your every day mock orange - a biggish rockery where you could see it from below would I guess suit it better than our rather overgrown bank -  but it maybe that I am just being too impatient.

But as mentioned earlier the great disappointments have to do with the vivaces. Our so-called Prairie Garden needed revving up. It has plenty of grasses, chiefly different miscanthus, macleayas otherwise plume poppies, quite a lot of yellow daises, made up of different sorts of helianthus and rubeckias, blue and purple asters, bits of this and that, but above all and dominating what I shall call the front of the Prairie Garden visible from the house and pool a lot of gaura, chiefly of the bog standard G. lindheimeri, essentially white with just a touch of pink - there are some more strongly pink, not to say red plants available but for some reason chez nous they do not flourish in the same way. What I wanted to do was to add a bit more colour especially in high summer before the tall grasses really take over, and I thought that the answer might be what I used to call polygonums, but which are now called pesicarias, otherwise knotweed, and perhaps also some sanguisorbas - little bottlebrushes on tall stems in reds and whites. These plants are very much the staple diet of a Piet Oudolf's prairie planting so I did not think that there would be any problems with them. but,if for the most part they have not actually died, they have certainly not looked happy. The ground is flat having been cut out wedgelike out of a south facing slope, and made up of fairly typical Gersois clay, though some areas are a little bit more sandy. Because it is flat in Winter it can become a little waterlogged.  In Summer, because it is south facing and there is very little overhead shade it is hot and quickly dries out. As regards my persicarias and sanguisorbas I guess that it was the latter that caused the disappointment. And over the years there have been quite a lot of other plants which one associates with a Prairie Garden that have not flourished. For instance it has been too wet in winter for agastaches and verbenas to flourish, and too hot in summer for many more prairie stalwarts such cimicifugas, eupatoriums, heleniums and veronicastrums to mention just a few. Still the grasses cover up a multitude of sins, or rather omissions, and looking out of the window as I write this on Boxing Day the Prairie garden does not look too bad!