JEARRARD'S HERBAL
18th August 2024
Sunshine and rain have dominated the week. It has been good growing weather and the bananas have started to look lush again. They are superb foliage plants here but the season isn't very long.
In the cold spring weather they are slow to get going and during November they will be shredded by the gales. However, for a few months in late summer they are astonishing.
The garden (or possibly the gardener) has relaxed into the heat of summer. Some of the things that need doing will get done, and some of them won't. Of the things that don't get done,
many will turn out to be unimportant. I have started preparing the bulb beds for the arrival of spring. I have controlled the worst of the spring weed growth
and during the week I managed to mow the paths. As a result the garden (or possibly the gardener) is basking in warm relaxation waiting for the moments when the time, light
and location work together.
It is easy to spend the year thinking "that didn't work, did it" but it's summertime and the living is easy. It's working out fine.
18th August 2024
Angelica sylvestris 'Ebony'
The garden has acquired a gloss of proper wildness. Through the winter there is a sense of un-natural order. It is easy to keep the grass short
and it reveals the exact position of the uneven ground. The leafless trees appear stark-naked in public, lacking the leafy modesty
of summer. A winter walk in the garden is an exploration through shocking certainty.
It doesn't last. Spring explodes the myth of simplicity. I find it easiest to go-with-the-grow, allowing spring to carry me forward until it dumps me at the end of the ride
and summer takes over. I don't surf but I imagine the experience is very similar. Summer arrives and the exuberance of spring turns to ragged excess.
A bit of trimming, some petulant stamping of feet, and the garden is glossed again.
Angelica 'Ebony' encapsulates the success of the season. I put a single seedling into the herbaceous border years ago and since then it has looked after itself.
Every year I get a flower head or two, somewhere or other. I don't need any more control and I would be uncomfortable with much less. For me,
Angelica 'Ebony represents proper wildness.
18th August 2024
Hedychium gardnerianum 'BSWJ.2524'
In the gardens of the south-east the late summer perennials have taken over, filling borders with colour. I have just seen the new Piet Oudolf border at Wisley
and it is astonishing how well it has grown from a spring planting. It is full of daisies and sunshine, reflected light and the happy chatter of pollinators.
Perhaps on a bad day it looms gloomily out of the persistent mist but it is difficult to imagine.
Back home and the mist could return at any moment. The bold foliage of the Hedychium survives wet weather very well.
I have had a couple of flower spikes on plants in the greenhouse, but this is the first to open outside. It s an early form of the species from Crug Farm Plants.
For many years I have taken note of it without really valuing the difference (there are a lot of barely distinguishable forms of the species) but it has always been early.
This year the golden flower head arrived at the perfect time. The undergrowth had been controlled, the sunshine fell in the right place,
the Hedychium triumphed.
18th August 2024
Persicaria amplexicaulis 'Eastfield'
I have a number of forms of Persicaria amplexicaulis in the garden (Bistorta amplexicaulis now). They provide a sprinkle of colour through the late summer,
have good leaves and tolerate drought and flood with good cheer. They can be a little invasive but they aren't spade-proof. They can be removed where they are in excess.
They are often seen in prairie gardens where the colour adds variety and depth to the masses of yellow and lilac daisies that abound. It is too wet and too shaded here to
try prairie gardening, but the Persicaria is very welcome.
This unimpressive picture of P. a. 'Eastfield' illustrates the garden triumph of the year. I bought the plant more than a decade ago and it has sat in a pot ever since.
It should go into the garden. It really should go into the garden. It absolutely must go into the garden. Finally, with a single weak shoot surviving, it went into the garden.
Anywhere, anywhere, just get it into the ground. What about there. Done. In the months since it was planted it has already grown appreciably stronger and flowered.
I don't know if it is exactly where I want it but it is somewhere, and I do want it.