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JEARRARD'S HERBAL


5th September 2021

Eucomis bicolor 'Alba' .
There have been searing flashes of summer through the week but autumn is approaching invisibly. A high, hazy cloud has hung in the air and a light mist settles in the valley overnight. In the last moments of August I took a saw up into the top woodland and removed some scrub. In a few weeks the Colchicum will appear and that will be my last chance to get onto the ground for another year. Some saplings have come down and the stumps have been treated to prevent regrowth. It all felt a bit rushed but if the rain falls I am afraid the Colchicum will rush straight into flower. I cut the scrub into manageable pieces and left it for another day to clear away. About half of it was cleared through the week, the Colchicum bed is free and the rest can be done at my leisure.
Last spring the Eucomis were all planted out. I had run out of patience with them growing in pots and was going to plant them randomly in the new herbaceous border, ignore the labels and just let them get on with it. In the end my mania for collecting things took over and I made a new bed for them where there was room to space them and keep them labelled. I'm not sure why I bothered with E. bicolor and E.b. 'Alba', they are both common and distinctive. They may be lifted this winter and planted in the new herbaceous border after all. I have a lot of seedlings with dubious identities that can go out there as well. What a lovely border I will think and what a lot of dodgy, troublesome plants I have managed to cram into it.


5th September 2021

Roscoea purpurea rubra .
The Roscoea collection is following a similar trajectory. It is very easy to grow a lot of plants from seed and I indulged myself with R. purpurea rubra forms a few years ago. I have selected a dozen seedlings that I really like, the remainder must be planted out and the new herbaceous border is my favourite project, let's call it a design experiment rather than a dumping ground. The idea is to plant only those things that will be entirely leafless through the winter so that I can clear the ground quickly and easily in December or January and then ignore it for the rest of the year. The Roscoea that I planted last year have fitted into that pattern very successfully. The Eucomis will do the same. I was planning to lose the excess Hosta in the bed and add late season colour with a selection of cheery dahlias. That was the plan. I started planting the dahlias this spring and overnight the deer ate them all. A situation that I am going to reconsider.
Fortunately the Roscoea were untouched. If the grand plan for a matrix planted herbaceous border falls through I will accept the alternative of a Roscoea/Eucomis blend with Hosta highlights.


5th September 2021

Aechmea caudata 'Bicolor' .
In many ways the greenhouse is easier. Things are planted in pots, the weeding is mostly at bench height and watering in the summer evenings is comfortable and relaxing. In recent years I have started to enjoy standing in the greenhouse, open-mouthed with incredulity. Aeschynanthus, for example, is a large and very tropical genus of gesneriads. There is no chance that any of them would be hardy in UK gardens (someone will prove me wrong) but the introduction of A. buxifolius from China showed that at least one was hardy in a cold greenhouse. I still don't quite believe it.
Cymbidium goeringii is another surprise, as is Dendrobium moniliforme from Japan. I greet them all with open-mouthed wonder.
I have come to accept the hardiness of Fascicularia bicolor so I wasn't entirely surprised that Aechmea recurvata was hardy but when I was told that the Brazilian A. caudata withstood the cold I found it difficult to believe. I was particularly doubtful about the variegated form. However, there are a number of hardy surprises that come from south-eastern Brazil, this turns out to be another. It has taken me three decades to get it to flower but it has withstood the cold over that period and once again I am open-mouthed.



5th September 2021

Disa Betty Arnold (2015 Group).
It has been a week for taking stock and preparing for change. The first Disa seed of the season had ripened and was sown. Some of it will germinate and some of the seedlings will be interesting. I don't know what will happen to the rest, it is a problem I haven't been very good at resolving. I don't have the equivalent of a new herbaceous border to dump them in.
While I was sowing the early seed I took the opportunity to cut off the last flowers and tidy up the plants a little. The only group that I left were this batch of Disa Betty Arnold. I made the hybrid between D. uniflora and D. Oak Valley in 2015, the first plants flowered last year and most of them produced blooms during this season. I haven't found anything among them that I think is particularly striking, I will keep one or two of the best for reference but the majority will go. Unfortunately I can't make up my mind which ones are the majority. I left all of the flowers for another week, perhaps I will make a decision by then.
The next major task is to repot the Nerine seedlings that are about to flower for the first time. Another season, another problem. One or two of them will be good enough to save - you get the idea.