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Garden Blog – A Double Walled Gardener’s View

March started off raw, the starlings moving in crowded eddies at dusk, evenings beside a smoky wood burner, tying in roses during the day; but now the weather has turned generously warm and there is the scent of hyacinths –some were left over last year and got replanted around the tanks in the Double Walled Garden-in the air. Without devoting too much space to scene-setting, though, there are one or two plants out now that I would like to recommend to readers of our blog.

The first of these is a Pulmonaria “Blue Ensign”, already coming into flower at the start of the month, as the snowdrops finish. The petals are blue with a touch of iridescence that you find in some borage family flowers, the foliage is neat –at this stage anyway-and nicely downy, and the whole plant is easy and appealing. Unless you are allergic to Boraginaceae, it is very likeable.

While the pulmonaria is getting going, hellebores are in full effect. People like to search around for dark hellebores. This is worth it, as some of the slatey or red-tinged blacks are really exceptional. Efforts are being made to breed purer yellows as well. Whichever colours you like, it makes good sense to chop off all the old leaves to the ground before the new growth starts emerging, at the end of winter. The plants will look much better for it and it will reduce the spread of fungal leaf spots, a real affliction in this genus.

It should be said that the advice to remove the old growth applies to Helleborus x hybridus types (ie. the colourful ones that you see in garden centres, often referred to as Helleborus orientalis) and H. niger, which are naturally herbaceous-it doesn’t apply to those species which have perennial, stocky stems.

 

Plant of the month, in my view, is a relative of the hellebores, even if it looks quite unlike them. Pulsatilla vulgaris, the Pasque flower (which is appropriate if Easter falls early) is a fairly easy perennial. It is a rare native in Britain on chalk downs or calcareous grasslands, but it does well in cultivation here in Wales as long as there is good drainage. At NBGW we are on slightly acid clay; the pulsatillas in the Walled Garden were planted out with about 50% coarse grit mixed into the soil just around them, and have fared well.

 

Pulsatilla vulgaris has purple flowers with a boss of golden stamens at the centre. It is the foliage which really gives this plant its charm, though. With a covering of fine, silky hairs, the leaves (and flower buds) of pulsatillas can emerge when most of nature would rather stay under the duvet. There are different colour forms of P. vulgaris, including interesting blues. P. “Budapest Strain” is a sort of powder blue. Other species of pasque flower are also worth trying, though these are definitely for the rockery.

 

In the same family are the wood anemones. Anemone nemorosa has many fine colour forms, some of them to be seen along the colour corridors in the Walled Garden.  A. nemorosa “Allenii” is a choice blue-flowered form, A. x lipsiensis (a hybrid of Anemone nemorosa and yellow-flowered A. ranunculoides) is a pale yellow.

In our Ranunculales order bed there is some straightforward A nemorosa, which is nicest of all when you see bright clumps of it on sunny banks, or carpeting the ground in woodland.

 

So those are a few March flowers, in bloom at the wonderful time when the garden is all freshness and possibility, and there is warmth in the air, and you can still make plans and adjustments in the full expectation that your garden will look perfect this year. Did I forget to mention daffodils? This is Wales, you can’t help but notice one or two of them planted around, and they’re lovely.

 

Rupert Jensen

Horticulturist NBGW