Plants
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♥Dec. 20th, 2015 // 02:30 pm♥
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This afternoon, we took Jo out in the car to a nearby wood for her walk. I was quite impressed to see how much difference the half a dozen hairy cows have made to the bits of the orchid meadow they were on this year: there's a very clear line, where the electric fence was, with smooth lush turf on one side and scrubby undergrowth on the other. They'll be moving them around, a bit at a time, for the next few years, to get it cleared back to proper meadow land.
On the way there, I sighed wistfully when I saw the dogwoods by the drive to our local NGS garden, and mentioned, as I have before, how much I would like to have a dogwood rainbow (like wot I once saw a picture of at, I think but wouldn't swear to, Windsor) but that we don't have the room. "You could put them where the leylandii were, so that you see them in winter when the shrubs in front have lost their leaves," Mike said, and that is indeed a cracking idea. I don't think there's enough space for a proper full-on rainbow, which I suspect needs to be half a dozen or more plants deep, but I could certainly have some clumps of different types to give a bit of winter colour.
(The RHS website is really useful, don't get me wrong. I just wish that, in with the detailed instructions about how to grow from seed, and how to take cuttings, and what plants you can best graft things onto, they also had a note about when the best time of year is to then plant them out. Or, indeed, to buy the damn thing from the garden centre and put it in the garden.... Also, needs more pictures.)
We popped to the (proper) garden centre and had a look: they have got half a dozen varieties, including one of the very pretty ones that changes colour along the stems, but I suspect that we'll end up getting them online. I also eyed up a corkscrew willow, which would probably do quite even better than a rowan in the slightly soggy corner. We did get some veg seeds, though, and discovered that they still have masses of Christmas trees, most of which they grow themselves on the Isle of Wight, so I know where we'll be going for our tree next year. It didn't occur to us to try there, I'm not sure why unless maybe because it's the opposite direction from home to the places we'd already tried. |
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