Date/Time
Date(s) - 14/06/2024
7:30 pm
Location
Kilmington Village Hall
Categories
David has long experience in gardening, having worked at Hestercombe for 21 years and then run his own gardening business before retiring last year.
He told us that, while Gertrude Jekyll is often credited with inventing the earliest herbaceous borders, the first recorded such border, created in the 1840s at Arley Court in Cheshire, pre-dates her work as a gardener by many years. Fellow pioneers of this style of planting in the later 19th and early 20th centuries include William Robinson (Gravetye), Vita Sackville-West (Sissinghurst), Lawrence Johnston (Hidcote), G F Wilson, who gifted his garden to RHS Wisley – and Monet!
Herbaceous plants are those that die back in winter, reappearing in spring. Not all are totally hardy in our climate, so protection may be needed for more tender plants like salvias. David said that the best way to ensure survival of your plant is to give some of it away, so that you can get some back if yours fails to re-emerge. Taking cuttings will also insure against losses – salvias, for instance, grow easily from cuttings, even rooting in water.
The ideal time to divide perennials is September/October/November, or March in colder areas. Plants can be divided by digging up a clump and prising it apart with forks, making sure that each piece has a bud. Before re-planting, organic matter should be added to the soil. If re-planting in the same spot, plants should not be crammed in too closely. In spring, feed the plants with Growmore, fish blood and bone or Q4, but don’t waste fertilisers on them in the autumn. Staking should be undertaken in spring, before the plants grow tall and floppy.
Flowering can be delayed or prolonged by doing the “Chelsea Chop” in late May – either cutting the whole plant down by about half, or cutting some of the stems down by half so that they don’t all flower at once. Another way of delaying flowering is by pinching out ½” – 1” of each shoot in mid-May. If plants are dead-headed, some of them may re-flower in late summer.
Among David’s many suggestions for a succession of flowers were winter-flowering Iris unguicularis, hellebores, bergenias, hardy geraniums, flag irises, eryngium, oriental poppies, delphiniums, achillea, agapanthus, echinops, sedums, salvias, rudbeckias and Michaelmas daisies. He also suggested filling gaps in the borders with annuals. Finally, he gave us a list of gardens to visit with notable herbaceous borders. Those local to us include Colyton Fishacre, Lytes Cary Manor, RHS Rosemoor, and Hestercombe with its formal garden designed by Edwin Lutyens with planting by Gertrude Jekyll.
Beverley Perkins