JEARRARD'S HERBAL
10th September 2023
Nerine masoniorum
Hot weather crept up stealthily on the garden and caught me by surprise. On Monday the weather was spectacularly autumnal. Bright sunshine coaxed me out for breakfast
in the garden and I spent some time turning over some ground and removing rubble. By Wednesday I was hiding indoors in the shade and sweating at the thought of activity.
I have been looking at the new herbaceous border. There are some things that I would like to plant out, just to get them out of my way. There are some seedling Eucomis
that are not as promised, but they would make good filler. Some seedling Roscoea that are using up valuable greenhouse space. It would be nice to get them planted, but it's too dry
to risk and too hot to bother.
Beside the house, Nerine masoniorum has started to flower. It has been out there for three or four years now and it doesn't seem to have been damaged by cold.
It's one of those plants that I have always thought of as impossibly tender. It looks so fragile, but it is tough. In the greenhouse it has increased like a tiny thug, filling pots with grassy leaves.
That was the source of the plants outside. I found that I had a dozen pots of it, and some of them had to go.
10th September 2023
Hedychium gardnerianum BSWJ.2524
I grew up in a garden that had Englishness written through it like the letters in a stick of rock. It was my parents first garden, a newly built house. It was where they discovered
lupins and builders rubble. The most exotic things that I can remember were the Californian poppies. I had no idea who the Californians were, but I was sure they were lovely people with big orange faces and pixie hats.
I don't think Hedychium gardnerianum could have existed in that garden, any more than a tiger or an elephant. It was too exotic. I was a teenager before I had the courage to
order a rhizome from a bulb catalogue, a fragile tropical wonder to coax into life in the greenhouse. I was a bit shocked by the giant wooden lump that arrived.
It was crammed into a 5" pot and never flowered.
Since then the garden has filled with Ginger Lilies. Hedychium gardnerianum flowers reliably in the borders. This selection from Crug Farm Plants is the first, but it will be followed by others
over the next month or two. I haven't inherited very much from the Englishness of those early gardens but when the Hedychium flower I am gobsmacked with astonishment.
10th September 2023
Hibiscus syriacus 'Notwoodtwo' WHITE CHIFFON
I have never been entirely certain whether childhood distorts understanding or understanding distorts childhood. It is a quandry. Take Buddleja davidii for example.
It is a pestilential weed, there can be no doubt. I find them in the garden, seedlings that have been overlooked for a year or two, suddenly towering up
in tiresome excess. It is impossible to pull them all up because childhood intervenes. I can still remember sitting on a warm brick wall in the September sun
in the middle of a butterfly ballet. The Buddleja are excused their occasional naughtiness.
Childhood lavenders still scent the garden, though they don't survive here. Hibiscus are still a rippling tide of colour, though flowers are uncommon. They want a climate that is warm and dry
and filled with the sunshine of youth. I can offer dank, shady maturity. I have two Hibiscus syriacus cultivars. One doesn't flower, the other flowers once, and here it is.
My neighbours have one planted against a south wall, where it performs a seasonal Hibiscus miracle in the warmth. I just need a bit more wall.
10th September 2023
Ourisia coccinea
Ten years ago I bought Ourisia coccinea, convinced that there was somewhere suitable in the garden to grow it. It likes shade and moisture and all the things that this garden does so well.
I know that gardens and plants reflect the truth with unflinching accuracy. If I had remembered that at the time I might not have bought the plant. The nursery I got it from had a few plants growing in pots
in the deep shade of the north wall of their house. The pots were standing in a blue washing-up bowl of water. They didn't have any planted around the place, just growing in the washing-up bowl.
I could have taken the hint that the plant is not as easy to please as I thought, but I didn't. I still have it, but I have never found anywhere in the garden that it will grow.
I have it in a pot, in the shade, standing in water. It's not the outcome I would have chosen.
However, in the autumn the scarlet flowers are astonishing. I could propagate a few more, try it in a few more places. I could convince myself that I can make it work, that the garden can be filled with its handsome
hanging trumpets. Alternatively I can leave it where it is in the shade, in a pot standing in water. A small astonishment and a reminder to pay closer attention in future.
Plants are not grown in blue washing-up bowls without a very good reason.