'Willpower & sheer idiocy combine in harmony'
The skeleton that holds your garden together
EVERY garden needs evergreen bones that hold it together and become its winter stars.
Evergreens can look downright dull in summer, or at least that's what I used to think, comparing them to the showy annuals or herbaceous perennials.
In fact, they don't. Plain dark foliage plays its part in offsetting more colourful things. When autumn strikes and everything dies down, then it's their time to shine.
Here's the plants that create the winter structure in my garden:
Hollies: (see panel).
Rosemary: This 4ft high bush is trimmed into a rough rounded shape and survived the freezing winter of 2011/12, with just a touch of frost damage.
Fatsia japonica: The two green-leaved Fatsias, although the same variety, have different growth habits. The oldest is a towering 10-footer, popular as an overwintering spot with birds. There's a slightly younger one in the front garden, only 5ft tall, but much bushier and free flowering. The white globule-like flowers appear in November, followed by small black fruits. It's the leaves you grow this for - tropical, glossy palmate specimens up to 16" long. Surprisingly hardy, too.
Fatsia japonica variegata: Planted February 2013, it's slower growing than the other two, with leaves edged and blotched in cream. Less hardy than the plain form.
Lavender: Contrasting lilac and pink forms are trimmed like the rosemary, and planted with plenty of gravel, which probably helps them survive.
Phormium (New Zealand flax): A double-edged sword, a bit like its leaves. What was a striking architectural plant has taken over a corner of the front garden, swamping the weeping cherry and proves impossible to move.
Coprosma Pacific Sunset: Looks like a small holly on acid, with purple and red shiny leaves. It's not that hardy, but survived one winter.
Euphorbia: E. martinii Ascot Rainbow and E. wulfenii provide great structure, despite the latter only being hardy down to -5C.
Pyracantha: Birds very swiftly strip it of its orange berries virtually overnight!
Berberis darwinii: This venerable old giant is a 15ft lookout post for the sparrows. Its tiny, dark green holly-like leaves are secondary to the knarled stems. There's orange flowers in spring and purple/black berries. Seeds itself around a bit, too. The cat likes it as a scratching post.
Ivy: (see panel).
Evergreen shrubs: winter structure
Top, Fatsia japonica variegata; Coprosma Pacific Sunset; Pyracantha; Berberis darwinii; Euphorbia wulfenii and rosemary.
MOST people, if told to choose one climber, would ignore the common green ivy. It's easy to be seduced by flowers and variegated foliage - Goldheart and Glacier are certainly prettier.
My garden came with its own supply - growing out of a crack between the outer staircase and the garage wall.
It's covered the whole wall and looks very handsome. Its yellowish-green flowers are borne in small clusters and have a honey scent. This where a 'slight' difference of opinion occurs between the rest of the family and me. It attracts insects - lots of insects - bees, wasps, hoverflies, flies, butterflies - you name it.
As it covers the wall leading to our back door, people don't appreciate the benefit to wildlife. They see the wasps and think they'll get stung.
Ivy's late flowering season makes it a valuable source of nectar prior to hibernation. The black berries, ripe from November to January, provide many birds, particularly wood pigeon, thrushes and blackbirds, with abundant food supplies.
All parts of the ivy are toxic to human, but not other animals.
Best of all, wearing a wreath of ivy leaves around the brow is supposed to prevent one from getting drunk, as it was dedicated to the Roman god Bacchus, the God of Intoxication!
Ivy flowers covered in insects; below, Goldheart as ground cover.
Ivy: vital for pollinators
HOLLIES are mostly either male and female. If your plant doesn't have berries, it's either male (which don't get any), or a female whose flowers haven't been pollinated.
You need to plant one of each sex, which is more confusing than it seems, since many are named as the wrong gender.
There is a fairly common variety of English holly, Ilex aquifolium JC van Tol, that is female but self-fertile. Its glossy, dark green leaves are almost spineless and the bright red berries appear on dark purple stems in autumn and persist through the winter. There are others - check specialist suppliers.
My first holly was Golden King (obviously female). It has golden-edged, almost spine-free leaves and red berries.
Next came Ilex aquifolium Silver Queen (male!), with dark green spiny leaves, purple stems and branches and new growth tinged with pink. It's a lovely foliage plant, so don't think you're missing out by not having berries.
The other is Ilex x altaclerensis Lawsoniana (female), with broad, spineless leaves, marked with yellow and yellow/green, and red berries.
Sex-mad hollies!
Ilex aquifolium Silver Queen.
Left, Picea glauca Sander's Blue; above, Ilex x altaclerensis Lawsoniana; I. aquifolium Golden King.
THE much-maligned conifer has for years been seen as an easy solution to an older person's front garden, or the Leylandii hedge.
We need to look at them in a new light. They have architectural shapes; all-year-round colour; a great smell and are easy to grow.
Try to work them into planting schemes alongside herbaceous perennials, deciduous shrubs, bulbs, annuals, etc.
Here's my two new arrivals (both slow growing):
Cephalotaxus harringtonia Korean Gold (gold-needled plum yew): new growth is yellow/gold. It grows to 120cm in 10 years; double that in 20. Young columnar growth matures into an inverted pyramid, and will take some shade.
Picea glauca Sander's Blue: Very slow growing, conical tree, but not a dwarf! It will grow to 120cm in 10 years, but eventually matures to 6m. Its soft blue-green aromatic needles become greener with age.
Saunder's Blue is a sport of Picea glauca, the white spruce, an extremely hardy conifer native to upland areas and lake/stream margins stretching from Alaska across the boreal forest of Canada to Newfoundland.
New look at conifers
Cephalotaxus harringtonia Korean Gold with a smoke bush.
