JEARRARD'S HERBAL
9th April 2023
Camellia rosiflora 'Rosaeflora Cascade' .
The weather has been spring-like all week. Sunshine, rain and mist have all been soft and gentle. Remarkably, they have also arrived at suitable moments.
The rain fell at night, the mist formed in the morning and the sun shone from mid-day. The garden has continued to grow rapidly. Last week I finally finished planting out hellebores,
leaving a series of bare patches through the border where I had dug. It looked untidy, but it was a small disturbance to get the border planted. This week the
bare patches have vanished, engulfed by the burgeoning bluebells.
Mild weather has allowed the camellias to develop fully. A few of the most vulnerable, fancy flowered forms still show browned margins and bruises where the wind has battered them,
but there is a spectacle of colour. Camellia rosiflora 'Rosaeflora Cascade' is having its best year for a long time. It was growing in the greenhouse and had become too large for its (moderate) pot,
so in 2016 I planted it out, with some nervousness. It was not expected to be particularly hardy. Fortunately it has been a lot tougher than expected, coming through the Beast from the East in 2018
and shrugging off the radiation frosts we had last December. It is now covered in modest flowers, tucked among the leaves. The plant has a rounded, weeping habit and has reached about 1m tall.
One hundred full centimetres of triumph.
9th April 2023
Calanthe No.1 .
The orchids of China and Japan have occupied my attention in a way that the orchids of Europe have not. It isn't the esoteric exoticism of the Orient that draws me, but the practicality
of growth. The Mediterranean orchids seem to like sunshine, free drainage and hot spring weather. My garden is shady, wet and cool. It is not a good match. Many of the oriental orchids
are adapted to shady conditions and a wet summer season. I can usually manage that.
I am not suggesting that I have solved the innumerable problems of the cultivation of Japanese orchids, but rapid death is no longer an immediate inevitability.
I have struggled with Calanthe. I was convinced that they liked moisture and warmth. I have killed a few in misguided attempts to achieve those ends. A large clump of
C. sieboldii flourishing on the rock garden at Kew perplexed me for some years, it seemed far too dry. Last year my surviving plants were moved into a closed
greenhouse where the spring temperatures rise rapidly. Kept well watered, they have at last started to prosper. I was right that they like moisture and warmth, but it seems to be the warmth
that is most important.
This is a Calanthe seedling raised by Anthura in the Netherlands. I have named it 'No.1' for my own convenience. I like the soft brown flowers and the yellow lip. Over the last year
it has grown well and I have started to look at the genus with more confidence.
9th April 2023
Iris ex 'Bay Street'. .
The Pleione season is reaching a peak. In the next week or two I will be able to see how the plants have fared. Last year I changed my compost and changed my watering regime,
this year I will find out if it has worked. Early suggestions are looking good but fat pseudobulbs at the end of the season are the only real measure of success. I found the time through winter to
weed the pots thoroughly and the plants look better for it.
Unfortunately I didn't manage to weed the Pacific Coast Iris on the bench beside them. I had convinced myself that there would be plenty of time once the Pleione
had finished. I was a fool, the Iris have just started to flower. Now weeding will be an emergency, cosmetic act to get them through the flowering season. I will come back and do it properly when they have finished.
This is an open pollinated seedling from Iris 'Bay Street'. The seed came from the Pacific Coast Iris society in the USA. Breeding over there has advanced a long way ahead of
the cultivars I had previously grown. I doubt any of the seedlings I have raised are worth showing off on an international stage, but in terms of British horticulture, these are the best I have seen
(I didn't breed them, I just grew the seed).
9th April 2023
Zantedeschia odorata .
In spring a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of orchids. Something like that anyway. Orchids exert a peculiar fascination and it seems to be
a marmite family. People either love them or hate them, there appears to be no middle ground.
The same is true of aroids. People either love Arum and name every slight variation, or they hate them and dedicate their lives to exterminating them in the garden. I have a rapidly
growing clump of Arum maculatum making a mess of one of the good snowdrop patches. I must remove it, I really must. I'm not going to. You can tell which aroid clan I belong to.
It has nice, dark spotted leaves. I enjoy it (and I am emphatically NOT going to put a name on it).
Odd aroids are fascinating. When I bought this tuber of Zantedeschia odorata I was expecting autumn flowers. Further research showed that I should expect autumn and winter growth, and spring flowers.
The plant has behaved as it should, and almost exactly as Z. aethiopica does. It is ravishing and rare, and almost exactly the same as the common one. I am quite convinced that they are distinct,
but they are not very distinct and I am not very convinced. I was well disposed to like in a gentle way, but then PlantZAfrica informed me that the tubers were adored by porcupines.
Now I think it is a fabulous plant.
Well, I'm not going to argue with a porcupine am I.