JEARRARD'S HERBAL
26th May 2024
Bletilla Brigantes 'Desirable' .
Summer has continued in the garden in a gentle way. The heat has been moderate and the tube of sun-screen has been squeezed. During the week I planted out a trio of Hosta
in the garden. I have a clever idea that large elegant Hosta will add something useful to the Hellebore border through the summer. I want to use H. 'Krossa Regal'
through the whole thing but I haven't got enough yet and I'm impatient to see if it works. Cheap variegated hosta-blobs from Tesco will show if it will succeed. They got quite dry through the week
and I thought I had been reckless but there was enough rain yesterday to settle them in and get them through.
In the greenhouse the Bletilla are coming into flower. B. Brigantes is a hybrid between the yellow B. ochracea and pink B. striata. For a few years now I have crossed my different clones together
in the hope of getting a yellow seedling but I always forget to collect the seed in time.
This year. This year I will remember. I'm certain of it.
26th May 2024
Magnolia tripetala .
There are a few plants in the garden that I look forward to with unexpected intensity. The first snowdrop is always a welcome sight, but the first Galanthus 'Reverend Hailstone'
is a special moment for me. I had got used to it being the start of the season. I have earlier snowdrops now, but 'Reverend Hailstone' still feels like the starting gun for spring.
In the same way, Camellia 'Nobilissima' starts the camellia season even though it's not the first to flower, and I await C. 'Simon Bolitho' every year with unjustifiable delight.
It is single and pink and I have no idea what it is that makes it wonderful.
Magnolia tripetala comes into the same category. I watch the fat bare twigs in winter and take comfort from them. I watch the buds break and the first leaves unfurl to expose the flower buds within.
I watch the sun illuminate the new foliage and I rejoice when the first flowers open and rapidly age to beige and brown. I find the whole process a delight and I have no idea why.
There are brighter Magnolia, earlier Magnolia and there are undoubtedly Magnolia that smell better. Still, it is Magnolia tripetala that enchants me.
If I can get more, I will plant more.
26th May 2024
Paeonia 'Bartzella' .
Paeonia 'Bartzella' makes me laugh, it is a clown. Not a creepy clown, like a circus performer, pre-meditated deception with a big red nose. This is a clown like a child of three
jumping in a puddle in her new summer sandals (last week in the car park of aforementioned Tesco).
The herbaceous peonies are elegant and pink or red. They bow their heads in tired felicitation to the world.
The shrubby peonies are scatter-brained with the wild excesses of the high life. They teeter briefly into flower, pink or white, occasionally yellow and look down upon their bowing counterparts.
It was thought that the twain would never meet, that the two sections of the genus would forever eye each-other dispassionately. However in 1948 Dr. Tiochi Itoh
managed to raise some seedlings between the two groups and slowly a range of Intersectional or Itoh hybrids have been developed. To my eye, 'Bartzella' is the best of them to be introduced so far,
it has large yellow flowers to rival the best of the tree peonies and a low growing (but still essentially shrubby) habit. I watch the buds swelling each year with puddle-jumping delight.
(An record of an earlier breeding of Intersectional Peonies appears in Gardeners Chronicle, 7th August 1852, p.499).
26th May 2024
Vallea stipularis .
Spring has crashed onto the shores of summer and dissipated like a boisterous wave into the sand. The garden seems to be filled with Crinodendron hookerianum.
It isn't true, I only have five of them but they are all grouped together. The pink and the white are still young and hardly making an impact, but I have three large shrubs of the red
and it is looking astonishing. The upright branches carry good deep green leaves and scarlet lantern-flowers hang in abundance. It is a marvellous shrub
A few yards away I grow its relative, Vallea stipularis. I bought it years ago as a rooted twig in a pot. I was told that it was good and that was enough recommendation.
I grew it for a long time in a tub in the hedychium house where it was charming and straggly. Outside in the garden it has shown that it can be even more charming and even more straggly.
It took a while to get going. It doesn't appreciate cold winters and I have a feeling that the deer rather liked it in the early years. However, it has outgrown these issues
and now flowers with moderate but heartfelt abundance in the early sparking of summer. It will manage a flurry of late flower in the autumn if it feels the urge.
The Crinodendron has robust impact in flower, indeed, even if it fell on you. The Vallea is a gentler thing, a welcome waft rather than a deep impact.
Both are anticipated with excitement, their arrival marks a high point in the season.