This tree grows on my neighbor’s wall. It is awesome. But it is amazing thing is the figs are very sweet and juicy. Read the rest of this entry »

Maxatawny, an Indian word whose translation’is “Creek Where the Bears Walk,” is the site of Rodale Press’s new Organic Gardening Experimental Farm (OGEF). This land was originally farmed by a German family. Rodale purchased the chemically farmed acreage. The acquisition of these 122 hectares (305 acres) in eastern Pennsylvania has opened the door to more extensive research in agriculture production based on simpler and saner techniques. The farm fits nicely into other Rodale activities. It is on the not particularly fertile soils of this farm in Emmaus that Rodale’s Research and Development people have set up their Home Utilities Workshop to test small-scale gardening and farming tools and equipment. Devices like seed and bean sprouters and food driers are tested in the Fitness House Kitchen, also in Emmaus, which uses food produced on the farm. Rodale’s findings are published and disseminated throughout the world. Read the rest of this entry »

As well as being invaluable for giving height to an otherwise flat plot, climbers and wall shrubs also offer an excellent way to disguise an ugly enclosure or hide unsightly objects. To grow well, all need some means of support — a wall or fence, or perhaps a rustic arch or pergola erected purely for the plants‘ convenience.

The so-called “self-clinging” types have either aerial roots (the ivy) or sucker pads (Virginia creeper). Other climbers (such as grape vines) have tendrils. Ramblers (such as honeysuckle) push toward the light by twining around a host plant. Some shrubs, although not strictly climbers, adopt an upright habit when grown against a wall — for example, Pyracantha. Read the rest of this entry »

Plants chosen for hanging baskets and wall pots are usually temporary bedding plants that bloom for one particular season, generally summer. There are some permanent plants that can also be used, if desired. Bear in mind that in areas where the temperature drops below ^—4.5^°C/25^°F it can be difficult to winter any plants in baskets or wall pots outdoors because the soil quickly becomes frozen solid in freezing weather. If you wish to overwinter planted baskets and pots, keep them in a cool but frost-free greenhouse.

Many people plant glorious mixtures of summer bedding plants in baskets and wall pots: trailing lobelia, sweet alyssum (Alyssum maritimum) with its masses of white flowers, and petunias, with perhaps zonal pelargoniums or bush fuchsias in the centre, maybe with silver-leaved cineraria. There is nothing wrong with such designs and indeed they look most attractive in an English cottage-style garden, but the trend is towards simpler designs using fewer plants, and even towards single-colour designs coordinated with the house colours. Read the rest of this entry »

Hanging baskets and wall-mounted pots provide you with more opportunities for creating colourful displays outdoors, on house walls and even on outbuildings such as the garage or shed. They are mainly for summer displays since plants, even if hardy, often do not survive winters in these containers, except in areas where winters are very mild. Hanging baskets or wall containers are relatively small, and the soil in them can quickly freeze solid. There is not much one can do to prevent this, except to hang baskets of plants in a cool but frost-free greenhouse during freezing weather.

Choosing and Using Hanging Baskets

Traditionally hanging baskets are made from a widely spaced mesh of strong galvanized wire and are bowl-shaped. They are generally supported with three chains. Plants can be planted right through the wires in the sides to create a ball of colour. Such wire baskets are inclined to dry out rapidly in warm weather, so frequent watering is a must — at least twice a day. Read the rest of this entry »

Trellis, or treillage as it is sometimes pompously called, has a long pedigree as a garden feature. In its original form, it probably consisted of a woven screen of branches used for fencing or to support trained fruit trees against a wall. Today it is primarily used as a decorative element, but with careful planning you can combine this with the traditional approach to produce a very attractive screen, wind-break or base for climbing plants.

The most widely used type of trellis consists of thin strips of wood nailed together to form a diamond or squared pattern, but there are many other possibilities. Plastic is increasingly available and, if of good quality and simple design, can be quite acceptable. Wire, steel and wrought-iron have long been used in a variety of ways, ranging from strands of wire stretched between posts to delicate filigrees that reflect the architecture of an adjoining building. One of the great advantages of free-standing trellis is, of course, the ease with which it can be erected. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m essentially a lazy gardener and if there is a way to tend plants at a comfortable height, rather than at ground level, then I’m all for it. But this is just one of the advantages of raised-bed gardening. Raised beds give young plants a much- needed boost, soften the hard line of an adjoining wall, can double as occasional seats, become an integral part of steps or ramps or temporarily provide a children’s sand-pit. You can use them to contain a given area such as a patio or vegetable garden, and remember that the soil in a raised bed can be quite different from that in another part of the garden. This will allow you to grow plants that would not normally thrive in the immediate vicinity — for example ericaceous plants could be grown in an acidic bed in an otherwise chalky garden. Read the rest of this entry »

Walter realized that it would be some time before the climbers would make an effect on the bare walls, so one day, without telling me, he bought a collection of stuffed heads and mounted horns at a London sale room. Very soon heads, antlers and horns sprouted from every available wall, inside and out. The malthouse received the most imposing pieces from the collection, and very soon our house wasn’t known as ‘the one with the lovely blue clematis on the front’ but as ‘the house with all the heads on the outbuildings’. In a community largely composed of retired army people this display was definitely surprising, if not a little shocking. One adorned one’s house with one’s own trophies but it was rather unusual to buy them by the gross. Walter used to chuckle about his heads and was delighted when he could tell an enquirer that he had bought them and not shot them himself! Read the rest of this entry »

We were surrounded by high walls and nothing was growing on any of them. The three-storey malthouse and the cowhouse, being strictly utilitarian, were starkly bare, nothinggrew on the high wall along the road except tufts of arabis and an odd wallflower or two, and Walter was very anxious to clothe the end of the house where the old stones were too decayed to be repaired and the surface had been covered with stucco.

He sent me to the local nursery for ampelopsis by the dozen, we bought roses, pyracantha, cotoneaster and clematis. My sister gave us a Ceanothus Veitchianus for the front of the house, which was a sheet of blue in a very few years. Read the rest of this entry »

The garden that went with the house was divided at the back into two tiny gardens, with walls and small plots of grass. We supposed that these went back to the time when the house had been two cottages.

In addition to the walls dividing the two little gardens at the back another wall divided us from the barton, and beneath all these walls someone had amused himself by making banks and sticking in stones vertically, like almonds on a trifle. We imagined the idea was a nice ready-made rock garden for us to play with. The first thing we did, when we really set our minds to the garden, was to remove all the walls and stones and pile them up for future use. They were quite a problem, those piles of stones, as they were moved from place to place as we dealt with the ground where they were piled. I could not see how we should ever use them all. Read the rest of this entry »

After the seed is sown it must be raked well so that it is covered with earth, and then the surface has to be firmed again. After that we require gentle rain but, if it is not forthcoming, artificial watering must take its place, using a spray or a fine rose. The idea is to have the seed as closely embraced by damp earth as possible so that when germination takes place there are no air pockets to discourage the tiny thrusting roots. Birds sometimes enjoy a meal of grass seed, so it is really safest to cotton the ground after sowing.Once a lawn is made it really should not require a lot of attention if it is cut regularly. To keep it in good condition a light dressing of _granulated peat mixed with a little bonemeal and dried blood should b_e given in the winter. If there are weeds a selective weed-killer is used at the end of March, and in April a dressing of lawn sand will encourage new growth. Moss can be removed by raking and if rolling is done a spiked roller should be used to aerate the soil. Rolling with an ordinary roller does more harm than good, particularly with very heavy soils. The use of a lawn mower regularly gives it all the

rolling it needs. Read the rest of this entry »

After I had made the terraced garden I had more walls to play with than I knew what to do with. I grew aubrieta from seed, all kinds of arabis, including the double variety and shades of pink and rose, also Arabis blepharophylla, which one so seldom sees, but which is an excellent wall plant with its tight rosettes of deep green leaves and stiff heads of magenta flowers. One plant of Dianthus caesius gave me innumerable cuttings, and all the rock campanulas were used ad infinitum. Saxifrages were stuffed into crannies, in some places I planted gypsophila to foam over the stones, in another Saponaria ocymoides. The trailing Geranium Traversii, Pritchard’s var., is good on a high wall, as it is generous with its trails, while Geranium sanguineum lancastiense can be used on top of a wall or in a rock crevice. Read the rest of this entry »

I continued planting daffodils under the apple trees, acquiring cheap lots when I could, and lifting and dividing those already there. They were a great joy, because- daffodils undoubtedly look their best tossing their heads in long grass, but in the end they had to go too. We were faced with the problem of cutting the grass and there again the problem of labour defeated us. We had an Allen scythe, but no one to use it. We begged local farmers to help by cutting it with their big mowing machines in return for the hay, but the orchard had been used for chickens and was so uneven that the blades of the mowing machines were badly damaged. The sensible thing was to wire the orchard and let it for grazing, and that we did. Cows don’t eat daffodils unless there is nothing else for them, butthey trample them in a heartbreaking way, so that half the buds never had a chance to open. There was nothing else for it but to dig them up and plant them in other parts of the garden. Even if we could have solved the cutting problem and let the grass go for hay it wouldn’t have worked. If you take away all the grass you must in fairness give your trees some nourishment in place of it, and the natural way to do this is to offer your hospitality to cows or sheep, who will keep down the grass and leave thank offerings behind. Read the rest of this entry »