It has been nine months since I last did a blog posting. !!!! As I am sure most of you are aware, so much of my energies now go into Garden Masterclass.
Winter in the Portuguese garden is a time of lush growth, especially after the plentiful (and indeed above-average) rains we have been having. Most garden and wild plants are in active growth, although at this particular time, it is quite slow. Deciduous trees and shrubs (oaks in the landscape; pomegranates, viburnums, hydrangeas in the garden) seem almost reluctantly deciduous, almost as if they know they are missing out on something. Despite all the growth there is little in flower. Very few annuals are prepared to flower this early – the wild Calendula arvensis certainly is, but it is a horrificly weedy self-seeder, so only a few can be allowed. Cultivated Calendula officinalis is still in flower after a winter sowing a year ago – a bit garish, but amazing to have something that flowers through a very hot summer with minimal irrigation and then on into the winter. This time of year is all about the incredible range of evergreen or wintergreen foliage one has here.
Wild marigold, a terrible weed but nice to let the odd ones pop up to flower, as there is not a lot of other colour at the moment.
The obvious question to ask right away is “what survived the summer?”, which was long and very hot, definitely a climate change summer, with temperatures in the thirties most days. The answer is - “almost everything”. Very small shrub plantings (18x4cms forestry plugs) of Mediterranean natives and some in one litre pots were nearly all fine, on a 2 or 3 weeks interval watering. Most of the perennial and grass planting was too, on a similar watering regime. Only just though. Last year's perennial planting strategy was to use one year plants which had been grown in a nursery bed (unirrigated) for a year before planting to final positions. So they were well-established plants. But.... we had a very dry winter and spring and so a lot of them, I think, did not root well into their new homes and so did not do well. This year, I am going to plant out as 2.5cm plugs and water occasionally, and see if that is any better. Notable casualties were Eragrostis spectabilis and Pennisetum villosum.
Correa ‘Marian’s Marvel’. Correas are great for winter colour, but like so many Australian plants they can’t be hard pruned, and get increasingly gawky with time. Impossible to buy here - this one came from England before the stupid Brexit.
Working with lower shrubby evergreen plants is very different to working with perennials. A huge advantage of course is the year-round foliage interest. Change is perceived as more strongly incremental rather than purely cyclical. By which I mean, with perennials, the look of the garden or planting is absolutely determined and psychologically dominated by the time of year. With something dominated by evergreen shrubs or wintergreen plants, there is far more seasonal continuity and the changes we register tend to be the differences from year to year. As plants get bigger there is a more destructive competition, as anything evergreen will tend to shade out anything beneath it, unlike with perennials which have amazing ability to pack a large number of species into a small space (although this may be news to traditional growers). Many Mediterranean sub-shrubs however mesh together very effectively without too much competition, which is the effect I very much want to achieve in some of the less-managed plantings.
Layered planting works really well with gappy growers like this old Pelargonium variety , here underplanted with Thymus longicaulis, a really good ground cover, and possible lawn alternative.
Many of these evergreens will however grow sparser as they grow, which then makes space again beneath them. Echium candicans will be like this I think. A spectacular dome of silver foliage which looked pretty miserable in its first summer, expanded dramatically in its second, and rather more so than I expected. Some Papaver orientalis around it have had to be abandoned to stygian gloom, some irises rescued, and a hole cut for an abutilon. With time however the nice dome will open out and a small tree develop, allowing for planting around the base. Then of course, at some point, the whole thing will die. Probably annoyingly, but actually I may be glad to be rid of it by then.
One of the few Pelargoniums that forms a ‘conventional’ strong-stemmed shrub, and with such fine foliage. P. cucullatum.
The hummocky form of so many Mediterranean shrubs tends to preclude anything growing beneath them, although as just noted, their branches can interpenetrate and mesh nicely. There is another growth pattern however which does allow for growth. And that is the 'grow up and fall over' model. Sorry for the rather colloquial description but I do not know any technical terms here.
Which brings to a rather political point about botanical terminology. Which having been developed in Europe and North America (i.e. a European offshoot) is very much centered around the description and categorisation of plant forms in those regions. I often wonder how it would look if it had been developed by Africans, or Asians or South Americans? Much more focus on not-herbaceous-but-not-woody-either plants (cacti, many succulents) and on the very different patterns of woody-but-not-even-worth-starting-a-fire-with growth. Amongst the latter are two groups I have intended to major on here in the more decorative part, and one which has turned out to be amazingly useful as an impact plant (Melianthus major). There is a strong tendency here to grow up, with very unattractively leafless gawky stems, and in many cases to then bend over. Many pelargoniums make appalling pot plants – regals (Martha Washingtons to citizens of the EUA); neat little bundles in the garden centre; bending stems going all over the place by the end of the year. The traditional advice to hard prune of course brings back a nice neat plant, which then repeats the cycle.
Phlomis x cytherea. A particularly fine species for year-round foliage interest, although like all of these plants, not at their best in the summer.
Growing in the ground rather than in pots is a potential massive transformation in the way we grow these plants. The gappiness can be filled with other plants around the base; low creepies like Thymus, Satureja or smaller Achilleas, or in some cases the tumbling over then results in the stems growing back up again but resting on the ground to make an attractive lower-level clump. One of our Melianthus flopped over in the recent wet weather; I thought “oh dear, what a mess” but within a couple of weeks is looking rather fine but with just a different form to all the ones that managed to stay upright. Nearly all pelargoniums and salvias will in any case produce new growth around the base which then tend to fill in gaps.
A Melianthus major whose normally upright stems have fallen over but the new growth looks perfectly fine. I shall live this for this coming season I think. Like so many of these ‘messy growers’ they are very forgiving and can be hard-pruned - unlike so much of the more hummocky Mediterranean sub-shrubs.
Lots of foliage interest, but not much flower power at this time of year!
Priorities for this year? Planting out (mostly herbaceous) seedlings for a lot of gap-filling and some borders in a more open situation, with two grasses as theme plants: Eragostis spectabilis and Muhlenbergia reverchonii. No new borders, but consolidation, filling in, and building up plant density.
And hopefully some more blog postings!