JEARRARD'S HERBAL
20th October 2024
Strobilanthes pentastemonoides
Another wet week in the garden. If there was a theme for gardening this week it would be peering out of the back door into the murky weather and deciding not to bother.
I did a little bit. I planted some bulbs in the hellebore bed. It's a nerve racking thing. I don't want to distract from the hellebores as they flower in spring but
the display is rather thin when it is just the hellebores.
I could probably improve things by feeding more heavily but I don't want to get the trees up there over-excited and heavy with sappy growth.
They have to withstand the wind. I have settled for planting small spring bulbs among the hellebores to eek-out the display. After a couple of years trial, I added 100
Narcissus 'Snow Baby' this year. The Narcissus is a really good thing, flowering just after the snowdrops and pale enough to emphasize the warm colours of the hellebores.
Perhaps.
At the bottom of the garden Strobilanthes pentastemonoides is enjoying the rain. It comes from the Himalayas and in warm sunny weather it seems limp and colourless.
A drop of rain, or better still a heavy mist swirling around mysteriously, and the plant bounces up and oozes like a sticky-purple pudding.
20th October 2024
Allium thunbergii 'Ozawa'
In a much more straightforward way Allium thunbergii 'Ozawa' is flowering in the greenhouse. I was enchanted when I first saw it a few years ago.
An onion in flower at the end of the year. I bought it immediately and killed it with yearning almost as rapidly, I wanted it to thrive so much.
I visited every morning, primped, preened, watered and worried. Its rapid demise was almost inevitable. Anyone with a taste for opera will explain that the more
adored the heroine is, the more inevitably she is doomed. It's just the way of things.
The second time I bought 'Ozawa' I was determined to play it cool. It was repotted, stood amongst the autumn bulbs and left to its own devices. There has been no fevered adoration,
no swooning, and considerable growth. On balance, given the choice between a tragic opera star and a live Allium, I will pick the onion.
That is not to suggest that obsessive onion-yearning has died. Between the acts I have bought the white form ('Album'), 'Judith's Findling' and
A. stellerianum kurilense, but that's an autumn libretto for another day.
20th October 2024
Callicarpa bodinieri var. giraldii 'Profusion'
Strange torrents of colour in the garden. Through the spring and summer bright pigments flare in tidy counterpoint to the green vegetation.
Slowly there has been a perturbation in the chromoscape. Green is splitting into a thousand shades and the garden has slid from the precision
of a photograph to the tangle of a tapestry. The transition is very satisfying and also slightly worrying. I like to feel as though I am in charge.
I never am, but I like the feeling. As the chaos of autumn makes that very evident, I shelter in the comfort that winter will clear it all away and make things tidy again.
Winter is coming and with it the threat of cold. I have very mixed feelings. Tidy-and-cold or hot-and-chaotic? That has always been the fundamental choice.
The Callicarpa has thrown its purple tints into the mix. Callicarpa 'Profusion' is one of the rare plants that has a soul infused with purple.
The summer flowers are touched with purple, the fruits glow purple and as the month ages, even the foliage will blush purple.
It is a sustaining colour for the tapestry season, full of rich determination but without the fiery finality of autumn leaves.
20th October 2024
Colchicum 'Waterlily'
I have a lot of oak seedlings coming up in the garden. I think they have been carried there by the jay, the closest fruiting oak is a fair way away. They are welcome.
There have also been a lot of squirrels in the garden this year. I am starting to see signs of damage on the larger trees. Do squirrels store nuts with smug self-satisfaction?
I wonder if the idea of being sustained through winter more important than the actual nuts. I get occasional hazel seedlings germinating, I have no idea where they have come from,
the land here was pasture for a hundred years before I started gardening, I blame the squirrels.
I have been sustained through the last few weeks by the idea that the Colchicum are coming. I get a lot of smug self-satisfaction from it. I did a trial to see if Colchicum
would grow in the thin woodland at the top of the garden. Then I did a large planting, then another large planting. In the first year all bulbs flower well, in the second I always expect
a reduced showing as the bulbs establish. A return to form in the third year and a noticeable improvement in the fourth.
Last year the Colchicum were not as overwhelming as I had hoped, this is the fourth year. Tensions were high, improvement or not, will the stored nuts sustain me?
I think it has been a good year, there are more flowers in the clumps, the stems are sturdier, the cover is better. When I first planted them I knew that it would take several years before
they succeeded. Is it best to plant a few and slowly spread them or take the gamble and plant in bulk? I waver between the two options.
I have a birthday that arrives with the autumn bulb catalogues and it often seals the deal.