Agapanthus africana, Howea forsteriana frond (Kentia palm) and Ipomoea Carolina Bronze

EDP article for Saturday Sept 4^th 2010 (plus extra radio bit!)

OK – so we haven’t had warm sultry days and pleasant evenings, and the nights are pulling in fast with three days of more-or-less continuous rain in recent weeks! Last Sunday was almost a washout here at the Exotic Garden with only 28 hardy garden enthusiasts arriving fully clothed for everything that Norfolk weather could throw at us! In the garden we experienced dark skies with heavy rain and high wind blowing all the containers over followed within half an hour by pleasant calmness with blue skies and the suns warmth on our faces. The old adage that you can experience all four seasons in one day is certainly true in our delightful climate. I could be miserable about our recent weather, but I’m not – instead, I would rather be ever optimistic that September will be a good one – please!

The clement weather this week has allowed the garden to be revitalised with much tweaking, tidying and dead-heading giving the garden its second wind (no pun intended) for its Autumn show of exotica. Most of the containerised plants are still producing sumptuous growth after such a drenching and thanks to all the feeding they are green and vibrant. One of the main stays of the garden over the years that has revelled in such a good soaking is the humongous ‘Elephants Ear’ Colocasia esculenta ‘Mammoth’. This large aroid has produced apple-green leaves up to a staggering 84cm long by 60cm wide over the last few weeks and will probably get even bigger over the next month or so, taking cool nights well, only to be cut down by the first frosts in November.

For those of you who haven’t grown this whopper – a little description is needed. Colocasia esculenta is a staple diet for millions of people in equatorial regions of the World though they are thought to have originated in Malaysia and surrounding areas. The leaves are eaten as well as the tuberous root system, which has to be boiled to break down Calcium oxalate, which is a sharp needle-like substance which is unpalatable and painful if you get it in your mouth. Although I knew this, I never-the-less tried a very small piece which I immediately spat out as my mouth filled with what felt like tiny shards of glass! As to what they taste like boiled – I still have not had the pleasure…

Staying on a big leaf theme, a plant that is always considered a jaw-dropper is the ‘Rice-Paper Plant’ Tetrapanax papyrifer, and what a monster it is!

‘Rice-Paper Plant’ Tetrapanax papyrifer

‘Rice-Paper Plant’ Tetrapanax papyrifer, on left with Colocasia fontanesii and Fatsia japonica on the right

I have been growing several clumps for about ten years, enjoying their massive leaves which easily get up to 1m (3.3ft) or more across, somewhat resembling an exceedingly large Fatsia japonica leaf though less shiny and more pleated with a slight whitish bloom on the undersides. The leaves are held on long petioles (leaf stems) also up to 1m (3.3ft) long. The whole plant easily grows to 3m (10ft) tall, though it can reach double this height in our climate if well fed and protected from the prevailing winds which can desiccate the foliage. Unfortunately it wants to flower during the winter months here; hence they are soon blackened by frost in late autumn. My largest plant came through the winter without protection only losing about 30cm (1ft) of its top growth. This fine plant is endemic to Taiwan, but widely cultivated in Eastern Asia where it is evergreen, though deciduous in this country due to a weather condition called winter! Rice paper itself is not made from rice as commonly thought, but is in fact made from the pith of this rather handsome plant.

Continuing on the big leaf theme, a plant that I discussed with great enthusiasm in May of this year on my blog is Schefflera macrophylla. I purchased my plant in the spring of 2009 and overwintered it frost free in one of my Poly tunnels, then planted it out after much head scratching in front of my house to the left side of the entrance so I could easily admire its beautiful form and architectural grace. The leaves are  now up to 75cm (2.5ft) across, consisting of five large leaflets up to 45cm (1½ ft) long by 20cm (9ins) across on brownish purple petioles (leaf stems). All through the summer and into the autumn fabulous new growth is produced in abundance covered in pale ginger indumentum (velvet-like covering) which looks stunning against the rich dark green leathery foliage.  Although considered hardy I will definitely be protecting it this winter, just in case we have repeat arctic conditions. My specimen is about 2m (6ft) tall, though in the wild it can grow up to 7m (23ft) in height – very exciting indeed!

Schefflera macrophylla

Schefflera macrophylla surrounded by other exotica…

Trying to finish with another big leaved plant, I almost forgot the stately ‘Windmill Palm’ also known as the ‘Chusan Palm’ Trachycarpus fortunei and backbone of any exotic garden in a temperate climate like ours or Washington State in the Pacific North West. I know it has fairly big leaves, but seeing  them every day I had forgotten how big the fronds actually get, so I went into the garden and measured a frond on one of the palms closest to the house to be amazed that it has fronds 120cm (4ft) across that are almost round! My tallest specimen was planted about 18 years ago as a trunk-less juvenile and is now towering over the garden some 7m (20ft) high with around 5.2m (17ft) of thick hairy trunk. It flowers every year producing a thicket of small plants around the base, with one seedling already 1m (3.3ft) tall.  Chusan Palms are tough old things, easily taking temperatures down to -17C (1.5F) though small plants would take considerably less until they form a trunk.

There are eight different species of Trachycarpus, one of the smallest leaved forms being Trachycarpus wagnerianus or ‘Miniature Chusan Palm’ which looks like a smaller version of its big brother, but more suited to a windy position as the stiff leaves tolerate strong winds, whereas the large leaves of T. fortunei tend to become rather tatty in windy areas.

Trachycarpus wagnerianus or ‘Miniature Chusan

I don’t like to say it, but I suppose autumn has now begun, I just hope for all our sakes it’s a good one as winter here lasts such a long time.

On Saturday August 14^th I was a phone guest for half an hour on the Gardening With Ciscoe Show with the inimitable Ciscoe Morris – a big gardening radio and TV star in Seattle Washington USA on 97.3 News.Talk KIRO FM – It is now available on a podcast that can be heard on http://www.mynorthwest.com/?nid=577&a=19885&p=30&n=Gardening%20w/%20Ciscoe

Myself, Bob Lilly centre and Ciscoe Morris on the right, doing a live two hour phone-in on the ‘Gardening with Ciscoe Show’ at the Puyallup Fair in Washington a few years ago, while on on a lecture tour of the Pacific North West.

Cucumber in the Greenhouse

In between showers and cloudy/wintry days I have been able to harvest my first crop of potatoes from a variety called Red Duke of York. The 2010 crop was not as bountiful as previous years due to the extremely dry weather which we experienced at the beginning of the summers and the late spring.

My tomatoes are ripening nicely in the greenhouse and also outdoors. In fact I have been busy feeding the plants with organic tomato feed as these plants are rather greedy. I had a nice crop of cucumbers in the greenhouse but it’s coming to the end as some of my plants have really dried out. I haven’t had as much success with peppers as I have in previous years and I am not sure of the reasons why. There is a possibility that I have overfed the plants and encouraged them to grow leaves as opposed to flowers. The peppers are still small and green but this could be due to the fact that this is a different variety from my usual favouriate Tasty Grill Red F1 Hybrid variety.

I have managed to cope with my courgette glut by sharing my crop and also using them extensively in risottos and in roast. My courgettes are truly relishing the wet weather and it is showing. Likewise the lawn is starting to recover from the draught which completely burnt out the green expanse of grass.

I will have to keep an eye on potato blight and tomato diseases if the wet weather continues for too long. The gardening season is not over for me yet as I am preparing my final sowing of beans and lettuces to come.

The fresh mushrooms shine out like beacons.  It takes  no time at all to get your eye in.  Within minutes today’s mushrooms can be spotted. Luminous on top, turned over their gills are pure pink.  Yesterdays are supermarket brown.  We don’t bother with them.  I remember my first mushrooming, in the borders of Scotland about twenty years ago. We had gone from London to stay on a farm, owned by relations.  They took us out on the hill.    I could hardly believe the insouciance with which yesterday’s mushrooms were discarded.

Here,   we  will be eating mostly mushroom soup.

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I’m attempting to grow some Potatoes for Christmas Day. I had heard that it was possible but I’ve never tried it before. I’ve done some research so I’ll tell you what I know but with the proviso that I’m not speaking from experience here, just hearsay.

Firstly, you need to buy a solid second-early variety like Maris Peer. Then you should plant them in the normal way. I planted mine a week ago and already they are growing well.

The trick with Summer-planted Potatoes is watering. They need watering during any dry periods – just until Autumn when there should be enough rain to water them naturally.

When the plants are around 25cm high, earth them up to give them a good sturdy grounding and space to grow in.

You might find that Summer-planted Potatoes are prone to Blight because they’ll be sitting through a lot of wet weather. You can decide how you will cope with that. If you’re okay using Bordeaux Mixture then you can do that, or you can try to grow them under cover (either poly tunnel or greenhouse). But either way snip off infected leaves as they occur, as you would with normal Potatoes.

But what about frost? Well, certainly in the UK the worst of the weather usually comes post-Christmas time. So you should be able to keep and eye on the weather and throw a fleece over them if there is a particularly nasty frost forecast. But, if your Potatoes make it to November and a frost hits then the leaves might die back but the Potatoes should be fine underground for a few weeks.

Just remember to dig up your Potatoes ‘before’ Christmas Day if there is frost forecast. You wouldn’t want to put in all that effort only to be foiled by a solid, unworkable soil on the big day!

What a fabulous week of heat we have had here in Norfolk – from freezing cold a few weeks ago to boiling hot, in other words – typical British weather for the time of year! (The driest spring for 80 years!) My watering regimen has been stepped up to cope with the drying heat, especially those porous terracotta pots and containers that often need watering twice a day when the temperatures reach dizzying heights. Luckily for tropical’s this is ideal weather where most plants are putting on a massive growth spurt.
Last week’s open day at the Exotic Garden was rather interesting as several of the visitors requested to watch the England versus Germany match on my TV – no comment on the score! The height of my afternoon though was the arrival of Joe Seamone (aka Boca Joe) an exotic landscape designer from Washington, DC on the East coast of the United States, who arrived suitably attired in shorts and the obligatory Hawaiian shirt. We had a fascinating couple of hours slowly walking round the garden discussing the differences in growth rates of exotic plants on both sides of the Atlantic and as you would expect they are very different indeed! His garden is on a latitude more in line with Lisbon in Portugal, so as you would expect the summers are much hotter than ours at around 30-35C (85-95F) during the summer months and exceedingly humid, though their winters can get down to an arctic -18C (0F).

Joe Seamone outside his home in Washington DC with an exceedingly large Colocasia esculenta ‘Jacks Giant’…

What about the exceedingly cold winters though? Because gardeners there know it’s going to get really cold the more tender planting is overwintered frost free, often in a basement which most houses have in the US, or a thick layer of leaves or something similar is placed over the roots to a depth of 30cm (1ft), which allows them to bring tender plants like Colocasias and Cannas through the winter with little damage, or, like we do, bring them into frost free conditions. It is the summer heat though that really makes the difference compared to our typically luck warm summers. He showed me a picture of himself standing next to a Colocasia ‘Jacks Giant’ with leaves up to a staggering 1.5 x 1.2m (5×4ft) where in this country with warmer winters and cooler summers we might expect about a third of the growth, that is unless we have a hot summer – I’m always in hope.
Things are really moving in the garden this week thanks to the warm weather with most of the exotics visibly growing almost in front of my eyes. In the Xerophytic garden it’s a riot of colour with a sea of the California poppy (Eschscholzia californica) which hails from – as its name suggests California and much of the western US. It is an annual species with intense almost day-glow-orange, silky textured flowers above floppy greyish-blue feathery foliage. I have always loved this plant as it’s very reminiscent of long, hazy summer days when I was a child – I’m sure the summers were hotter then!

For shear over-the-top colour, there is nothing that can beat members of the Mesembryanthemum family (meaning ‘midday flowering’) a delightful genus of drought tolerant plants from South Africa in a range of daisy-like flowers often found in intensely lurid colours. Lampranthus for instance in its many different forms range from shades of white, bright lemon yellows through rich maroon tones to the brightest almost pulsating pinks and purples, all growing on low spreading succulent leaved plants, revelling in a hot dry full sun position giving a real ‘Wow’ factor to the garden. Delosperma is another member of this genus with greyish-green succulent foliage and equally over-the-top day glow colours forming large groundcover mats about 10cm (4ins in height).
Close to these are several clumps of the hardy Aloe striatula, a tough plant which has proven to be hardy down to -8C (17.5F) and probably lower if kept dry. This succulent grows fairly quickly into a multi-stemmed plant around 90cm (3ft) tall in height and spread. The erect flower spikes stand well above the foliage somewhat resembling the flower spikes on Kniphofia (red hot poker) in a shade of yellowish orange. Blackfly are also rather partial to it as well, though these pesky little blighters can easily be removed by spraying them with a very week solution of soapy water. Like the Mesembryanthemums, they must have supper well drained gravely soil for the best performance.

Another rather common but but never-the-less attractive little succulent is Aloe aristata which is just about to come into full bloom. This small succulent is a stemless, clump-forming succulent, with dense rosettes of stubby, lance-shaped toothed leaves with small white spots and soft white spines, particularly beneath. The flowering spike is about 30cm (1ft) tall topped with orangey-red downward pointing well spaced tubular flowers. This one does like to grow in the slight shade of taller plants where it will last for years.

Echeveria glauca is a superb and fairly cold tolerant succulent if kept on the dry side during the winter months. This rather attractive succulent is grown for its bold fleshy silvery bluish-grey leaves which form tight rosettes as they mature from 10 to 30cm across (4ins to 1ft) and look good planted solo or en masse. In summer the foliage is punctuated with spectacular spikes on long greyish stems about 30cm (1ft) tall consisting of waxy flowers that change from red through orange to yellow from the top to bottom of each flower. Echevarias also make excellent container plants as long as they are not over watered which will cause them to rot – dry is best for these beauties.

Thinking of containers – a lovely succulent that looks superb in a terracotta pot is the diminutive Ledebouria socialis, also known as ‘Silver squill’ or ‘Wood hyacinth’ a bulbous species also native to South Africa. It is a small plant reaching only 15cm (6ins) in height with strap-like leaves that are a very attractive silver-gray with dark green splotches rising from small reddish tightly packed bulbs. Once established it forms small colonies which look excellent in a shallow pot in a full sun position. Unfortunately this one is not hardy so must be brought into somewhere light and airy, where you will be rewarded during the winter months with massed spikes of very small, greenish-white flowers – let’s not think about winter yet…

The solstice arrived and swiftly departed without stopping, heralding the start of summer whatever our temperate climate throws at us over the next few months. We wouldn’t be British if we didn’t constantly complain about the weather! Too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, we muddle along and cope with all that out fair isle throws at us in our stride, with of course, plenty of grumbling on the way.

So our gardens are a few weeks later in growth than past years and in some years we are a few weeks ahead, though by high summer everything seems to even out and then we can grumble about the summer past! Some plants will always do better in some years rather than others depending on whether they like a lot of rain, heat, or sun, though a combination of all would be just fine and dandy. The blooms on the Torbay palm Cordyline australis for instance usually flower here at the Exotic Garden form mid May onwards and are only now coming into full bloom, with their intoxicatingly seductive Lilly scent with clouds of bees buzzing around.

Unfortunately the cold nights throughout the first half of the month often dropped down to single figures which has held many of the more tender planting back such as Coleus (Solenostemon) and Ricinus communis ‘Castor Oil Plant’ which loath cold nights, though with warmer weather they will soon perk up and grow into handsome plants by high summer.

A small tree that is doing very well here this year is the large leaved Magnolia macrophylla and what a whopper it is. This amazing small tree is indigenous to woodlands in south western United States and is hardy down to about -15°C (5°F). Mine is around 10 years old and about 3.5m (12ft) tall and doing exceedingly well, taking the past cold winter in its stride. Magnolia macrophylla prefers growing in dappled shade as it does not perform well in a full sun situation. The leaves on this monster can be from 30-90cm (12-32ins) long and 18-30 cm (7-12ins) wide. These over-the-top leaves are bright green above with a fuzzy, silver-grey underside, creating a beautiful two-toned effect with each passing breeze. From May to July it has showy fragrant blossoms, each up to 30cms (12ins) wide and pale ivory in colour with a slight rose tint at the base, lasting a day or so, hence easily missed.

On a far more diminutive scale is another woodlander that has grown to perfection over the last three years here at the Exotic Garden; Podophyllum ‘Spotty Dotty’. This perennial marvel of the plant world has been planted near the entrance to the garden under a large pink flowered Horse Chestnut Aesculus x carnea. I first saw this little gem when on a lecture tour of the US Pacific North West where I fell in love with its stunning beauty in the garden of Linda Cochran on Bainbridge Island near Seattle. This delightful, if not rather bizarre looking plant, has lobed umbrella-shaped leaves up to 30cm (1ft) across, which are deep chartreuse with dramatic chocolate-brown spotting throughout the spring and into the summer. The whole ensemble emerges in early spring where it pushes up through the soil like a closed umbrella and expands once it is clear of the soil surface. The drooping garnet-coloured flowers are found under the leaves in clusters, so you have to gently push the leavers aside to see them. The flowers appear from late May throughout June and have rather peculiar metallic scent that makes you recoil as it is not the sort of aroma you expect from a plant! Never-the-less, I think this fairly recent introduction to the UK will be seen far more often in our gardens in years to come especially as it is hardy.


Another gem from plant collector extraordinaire Dan Hinkle who also lives on Bainbridge Island is Disporum cantoniense ‘Night Heron’. This rare and exceptional cultivar emerged from wild seed collections in China. The stems emerge from the ground from late winter to early spring with lustrous deep brownish-burgundy foliage rising up to 1.8m (6ft) tall like a handsome well-mannered bamboo and by summer the foliage fades to greenish-purple. Myriads of delicate, drooping, creamy bell-shaped flowers appear in terminal clusters in spring lasting for weeks, followed by masses of small glistening black-purple fruit. Like the Podophyllum it prefers dappled shade and moist soil.

My cats are all making a racket in the kitchen – telling me that I forgot to feed them this morning! I better go and feed them and have a cup of tea followed by a slow stroll with them around the garden and soak up the summer warmth…

The Spinach has had it. I knew it would happen. It was one of the first things I sowed in early Spring and has been happily producing these past few months. But Spinach doesn’t last forever. It’s one of those cool weather plants that really just gives up when the weather heats up.

It’s started to go to seed so I harvested everything that was left, pulled up the plants and put them in the compost bin. I’ll leave it a few months until I sow some more.

Never one to leave the earth bare, I have already sown some Swede in place of the Spinach

I wandered from my plot to a deserted one that is going wild. These flowers were lovely like plump Daisys. They have such happy flowers in the White and Yellow. I think they are called May Weed..

Growing in the midst of an overgrown plot were these Foxgloves. These are such a traditional English Cottage garden plant. These had purple speckles on their gloves throats. Once they have flowered I will try to collect some seeds. These are the flowers of an English Summer, with the steady drone of Bee’s collecting the nectar from their deep cups. I watched Swifts flying around above me swooping and soaring. They are the Birds of an English Summer with their shrieking sound. I also heard a mournful Cuckoo today at the plot.
After five hours weeding, making coffee, and admiring the wild flowers we drove back. Cat stopped the car on the road out of Walton. The sun made these fields of Wild Poppies shimmer in the sunlight. They bloom in great swathes in the farmers fields. They are such an important part of the Summer. I love the blood red blooms.
Tomorrow we go to Birmingham for Gardeners World Live at the NEC..