Bare ground

Making sure that the ground is covered will greatly reduce the time needed to control weeds. Cover bare ground with paving, decking, evergreen perennial ground cover plants or bark mulch to keep every inch as low maintenance as possible.

Lawns

If you want low maintenance, then you need to manage your expectations about lawns. To have a ‘perfect’ lawn you need to spend a lot of time mowing, scarifying, aerating, feeding, weeding, and more. So you can either accept that you’ll have an untidy lawn or replace it with a lower maintenance solution such as paving, decking or fake turf.

Plants

Choose plants which don’t require too much work. Plants such as roses, tender perennials and formal hedging take more work than trees and shrubs, so think carefully before you plant. Don’t select plants which will eventually outgrow their allotted space, otherwise you’re giving yourself the extra work of cutting them back or moving them.

Putting plants in containers and hanging baskets might seem to be a low maintenance solution, but they will require regular watering, feeding and the compost will need to be refreshed each year. Whereas plants growing in the ground will often be able to look after themselves once they’re established.

Shaping your borders

If you are going to include beds and borders in your garden then you can make them easier to maintain by edging them in brickwork or steel edging strips, which won’t need to be neatened each year, and which you can mow straight up to. Having straight edged beds and borders, rather than curves, will make it cheaper as there will be a wider range of edging products you can use.

Water features

Introducing water into the garden can be a low maintenance way to bring interest and movement into the garden. A small, pebble based water feature should only require maintenance once a year to clean out the pump and an occasional top up in dry summers. Ponds can also be fairly low maintenance – make sure you include oxygenator plants to help keep the water clean, and surface floating plants to shade the water and discourage algae growth.

Get more ideas for low maintenance gardening

Image courtesy of dan at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Please note that the use of the Olympic rings and Paralympic Agitos symbol is fine in private gardens, schools, village halls and allotments. However, permission should be sought from the Olympic Committee for use of these copyright logos in gardens which are in public places such as roundabouts, town halls or public parks, or in association with any businesses.

Olympic spirit

• Use golden flowers (eg rudbeckia or marigolds) to create your own gold medal shaped bedding display, and why not be patriotic and fly your national flag from the centre of it?
• Recreate the Olympic rings with 5 pots, each painted in one of the Olympic colours and arranged to form the symbol of the games. Pot each one up with co-ordinating plants (see below for planting suggestions).
• The Paralympic Agitos offers a great opportunity for drift planting of bedding in red, blue and green, perhaps surrounded with white plants. See below for planting ideas.
• Use some chicken wire to create a Olympic Flame size cone (wear stout gloves when making it), line it with old woollen jumpers or sphagnum moss, and plant it up with golden and red coloured plants for your own fiery tribute.
• Why not commemorate the Games by planting a tree in their honour?. Create a plaque to show who planted it, on what date and occasion, then have your own planting ceremony just before you settle down to watch the Olympic opening ceremony.
• Hold your own gardening-based Olympics. See who can grow the tallest sunflower or capture a few snails, paint numbers on their sides (nail varnish is good for this) and hold snail races.

Sport-specific

• Go all athletic by creating a running track in your lawn. You don’t have to pay for expensive lane marker spray, just let your lawn grow a bit longer (in the hot summer weather this will be quite good for it) then mow running lanes into it. If your lawn is small you can still create a spiral track or maze for small children to enjoy.
• Use up some of those old plastic pots by planting them up with grasses (or even just lawn grass), drawing faces on them and providing them with swimming goggles to wear – creating your own Olympic swimming team.
• If you have a long enough water feature in your garden buy a couple of toy wind-up swimmers and have your own mini Olympic swimming tournament.
• Support the equestrian events by gluing/tying old horseshoes onto plant pots to decorate them, or hanging them from the branches of trees.
• Stick table tennis bats in pots to create a pretty, contrasting backdrop for plants.
• Cut old basketballs, footballs or volleyballs in half, make some holes in the bottom, hook hanging chains from the edges, then use them as hanging baskets. Alternatively, sit them on the top of pots and plant them up there.
• Tie the handles of three old badminton rackets together then peg the other ends into the soil around a plant that needs support, so the rackets form a three-sided pyramid around it.

Displays of patriotism

• For the ambitious (and those with the space) why not create a Union Flag bedding display? See below for planting ideas.
• If you have smaller space or want something less fiddly, any planting scheme with red white and blue will show your support for Team GB. The national colours tumbling out of a hanging basket would look spectacular.
• Why not reserve an empty bed for a British medal tally? Have a collection of gold, silver and bronze coloured plants (see below for planting ideas) then plant one for each medal won during the Games.

Colour co-ordinated plant ideas

• Reds:
  • Pelargonium
  • Begonia
  • Petunia
  • Salvia
  • Lettuce Lollo Rosso
  • Lobelia
• Whites:
  • Pelargonium
  • Lobelia
  • Petunia
  • Verbena
  • Alyssum
  • Cosmos
  • Begonia
    
• Blues:
  • Lobelia
  • Petunia
  • Ageratum
• Yellows/gold:
  • Marigolds (Tagetes or Calendula)
  • Rudbeckia
  • Gazania
  • Snapdragons (Antirrhinum)
  • Begonia
  • Gaillardia
  • Coreopsis
    
• Greens:
  • Lettuces
  • Coleus (Solenostemon)
• Blacks:
  • Ophiopogon planiscapus ‘Nigrescens’
  • Petunia
  • Chocolate cosmos (Cosmos atrosanguineus)
• Silvers:
  • Cineraria maritima ‘Silver Dust’ (aka Senecio cineraria)
  • Edelweiss
  • Dichondra ‘Silver Falls’
  • Helichrysum
• Bronzes:
  • Tagetes
  • Rudbeckia
  • Gazania
  • Echinacea
    

For more ideas why not visit the London 2012 website and take a look at its gardening suggestions?

So why not have a go at making a more natural looking feeder, which will help the birds and look attractive? Our simple to make peanut feeder will do just that.

Please note – it’s important not to feed loose peanuts to birds in the spring and summer months when they are nesting as they are not an appropriate food for chicks. Peanuts in ‘wire cage’ style feeders are OK as the birds can only peck out a little at a time.

Here’s how to create your own winter peanut feeder:

1. You’ll need some strong but flexible wire, we used 0.9mm galvanised wire. Something similar will be available in all good garden centres. You’ll also need some wire cutters and a supply of shell-on peanuts (“monkey nuts”). It’s also a good idea to have some thick gloves for when cutting the wire and, if you’re not particularly nimble, also wear them for threading the nuts onto the wire.


2. Cut a length of wire appropriate to the size of the feeder you want to make. The feeder we made had 60cm of wire to be covered in peanuts, plus 30cm for hanging, so a total 90cm length of wire was cut.

3. Carefully thread peanuts onto the wire and, when the required length is filled with peanuts, twist the ends together, leaving one end longer so you can use it to hang the feeder from the tree. Shape the feeder into a circle.

4. Loop the long wire round a branch of your tree, or anywhere else you fancy hanging your feeder. If you’re putting it round a tree, don’t wrap the wire round too tightly in case you forget to remove it when it’s empty and it starts to dig into the bark.

Once you’ve made your first feeder, why not get a bit more adventurous? Try making star shaped feeders or have a smaller circle hanging inside a larger one. You can also experiment with different foods; try threading a mix of sliced apple, pear or whole grapes on with the peanuts. Add a pretty ribbon and this can also make a good gift for Christmas, though we suggest wrapping some tape around the protruding ends of the wire so the recipient doesn’t catch themselves when opening their present.

Now, I’ve always been aware that you should avoid eating green potatoes, but I haven’t really considered them an extreme danger to health. It’s not like eating hemlock or foxgloves, is it? Surely the speaker’s suggestion that eating just two shoots from chitting potatoes could kill you was a gross exaggeration? As a regular potato grower I decided I should find out more.

It turns out that all parts of potato plants contain glycoalkaloid toxins called ’solanine’ (the botanical genus for potato plants is Solanum) and chaconine (though I’ll just refer to them as ’solanine’ in this blog). But these are particularly concentrated in parts of potatoes which are green below the skin (where they have been exposed to light) and in the sprouts. The leaves, flowers and fruits are also highly poisonous.

Solanine is the same poison which gives deadly nightshade (Atropa belladonna) it’s epithet; both plants coming from the same family ‘Solanaceae‘.

The normal concentration of solanine is a maximum of 7.5mg per 100g of potato, with a higher concentration in the skin than in the flesh. Green potatoes can have up to 80mg per 100g, which can be a fatal amount. Many years ago there was an outbreak of solanine poisoning in Scotland which resulted in the death of a 5 year old child. The child had eaten potatoes which had 41mg of solanine per 100g of potato.

Deaths are rare from this poisoning, but not unknown. Symptoms of mild poisoning include diarrhoea, vomiting and severe abdominal pain. More acute cases may suffer from a general weakness, drowsiness and confusion. The symptoms can occur within minutes or up to two days after ingestion.

So, having scared myself (and maybe you!) about eating potatoes, what should we do about it?

Well, I for one would abhor a ban. No more chips? Not on your Nelly!

However, I would recommend caution when growing and storing potatoes. Obviously, never eat a green potato or potato sprouts. But also consider how you grow potatoes if you have children or animals in the house. Chitting potatoes left on a windowsill may be a great curiosity for little hands. And berries on potato plants left to go to seed would be at the right level for peckish children and pets.

So be cautious about this potentially dangerous foodstuff, but don’t let it stop you enjoying your spuds!

A couple of years later the box is doing well in places, not so well in other spots, and some last minute ground cover sweet peas are rampaging over the plot in my attempt to give it a bit of colour when I had no time for planning further forward than popping a few seeds into the ground. So, with next spring in mind, I sat down with a bulb catalogue to plan properly for next year, specifically with a colourful display of tulips in mind.

Browsing through the catalogue I had no trouble finding tulips which I liked, in fact I could quite happily fill several acres with my choices, but struggled rather with narrowing it down to a more realistic, and well combined, selection. Therefore I went back to basic and, instead of starting with the varieties available, I started with the basics of how to plant tulip displays.

The first principle I worked to was that the smaller the space, the fewer varieties it can cope with. A small border would look very cluttered with four different colours of tulip vying for position, but one type, or perhaps two in either complementary or contrasting colours, would give a display with much more visual impact.

On a larger scale the options are more numerous, though I still favour blocks or waves of one or two colours over a general cacophony of different varieties. In a long border a drift of a single type of tulip, weaving between other plants, creates a sinuously dramatic affect. If the border is particularly deep or wide then you can incorporate several drifts of different tulips, which can be truly spectacular to behold.

In a bedding scheme dedicated to tulips and other spring bedding you can plant striking, geometric shapes in different colours. Perhaps rectangular rows of different varieties, or concentric circles creating a rainbow effect.

In pots, just one colour often looks best, although combining two complementary or contrasting tulips can be simple enough to still perform well in such a small area. Containers are also ideal sites for the more ostentatious tulips, such as Parrot or Double tulips; bringing them nearer eye level allows them to be better appreciated.

Of course, this is all very well and good, but it doesn’t take into account my desire to try out lots of different bulbs! In the end I’ve stuck to mainly reds and yellows (colours which I mainly use for cut flowers in the house, which some of the tulips will be sacrificed to). In each of the four sections of my parterre I’m planting one early variety and one late one, but in colours which will match should they be out at the same time. So I’ve managed to cram in 8 different kinds of tulip and, I will admit, am a little worried that this will be a bit over the top for such a little space, but then I’ve never really been one to practice what I preach! Perhaps I’ll be a little more sensible when choosing bulbs for my spring containers…?

A few more tips about planting tulips:

• You should aim to plant a minimum of 6 plants (in containers) or 15 (in beds/borders) together so they don’t look ‘lost’ among other plants, though you need 30+ to get a really dramatic display.
• As well as considering the colour of the tulips you’re planting you should also consider the flowering time (particularly if you’re intending two varieties to be in flower at the same time), the height of the plant (to ensure that you don’t have shorter ones hidden at the back of displays) and whether the colour of the flower is the same throughout its flowering period (you can now get some ‘colour change’ tulips which start in a light colour and age to darker).
• If you fancy having a real mix of colours try to purchase the bulbs in separate colours and mix them yourself; if you can’t identify the different bulbs you won’t be able to ensure a ‘random’ spread of colours through the display.
• Always put all your bulbs out on the soil surface before you plant them, to ensure that you have enough for the area to be covered and to enable you to mix different coloured bulbs to give a natural effect. If you’re dealing with more the one colour flower, or just have trouble spotting bulbs on the soil surface, place something bright next to each bulb and used a different colour for each type of bulb. The tops from plastic milk bottles are useful for this or plastic plant labels.

I know I’m not alone. I have seen other plantophiles, reaching out without thinking to run their fingers through furry Pennisetum villosum or to cup a dahlia flower in their hands, then suddenly realising what they’re doing and withdrawing before looking around to make sure they weren’t caught in the act.

In popular gardens I’m sure that this can become a real problem, with delicate leaves, flowers and stems being bruised by curious hands. But what is it that makes us do it?

My theory is simple, we have an innate desire to appreciate things with as many senses as possible, so we can form a full and enduring understanding of the item. We want to smell the roses, touch the grasses, look at explosions of floral colours, hear the rustling of bamboo and taste the autumnal fruits. Food’s no different. Our anticipation is piqued by the sound of sausages sizzling in a pan, we smell the delicious vapours as they near readiness, we see the brown sheen of the finished dish, then we have the feeling of biting through the crispy skins before sinking our teeth into the wonderfully textured flesh before the taste explosion of meat and herbs races through our mouths.

So perhaps being a plantophile isn’t such as deviant a proclivity as I first thought? Maybe it’s just my desire to appreciate each plant as fully as possible? In fact, should I even be encouraging a more tactile understanding of plants?! Well, if you haven’t yet felt the thrill of plants, here are some of my personal favourite touchy-feeling plants:

• Stachys byzantina – the common name ‘lambs ear’ says it all, I love stroking these soft leaves and have been known to pick one just to brush it against my cheek.
• Junipers – I love the fact that you can run your hand upwards and it’s perfectly smooth, run it downwards and it’s aggravatingly spiky.
• Grass – let’s face it, nothing feels as good underfoot as grass. It’s all I can do to stop myself running around bare foot in well-mown formal gardens!
• Pennisetum villosum – one of the fluffiest grasses I know, I have a cultivar next to my arbour so I can caress the feathery flowerheads!
• Box hedging – neat, compact box hedging (Buxus sempervirens) is just screaming to have a hand run over the top of it, feeling the almost ‘bounciness’ of the tiny stems under your palm.
• Antirrhinum (snapdragons) – nothing in the world can deter me from making those dragons’ mouths open wide then snap shut!
• Cryptomeria japonica – looks like your normal, needly conifer, but get up close and personal and you’ll find that the foliage is wonderfully soft.

Next time you’re out in a garden why not pause and have a feel? Just make sure the head gardener doesn’t see you!

We also like to name our gardens – in various ways. Thinking about famous gardens, we can see a range of reasons behind the names. Many simply relate to the garden’s location (think Versailles, Kew, etc). Others are a bit more interesting…

• The Eden Project – How pretentious can you be?! Or so you think until you visit the magical amalgamation of horticultural, architectural and ecological wonders…then you do start to see their point! Another Garden of Eden exists in Calcutta, India, but I shan’t cast churlish aspersions on their choice of name as I haven’t had the opportunity to see them for myself.
• The Chelsea Physic Garden – Named for the medicinal uses of plants which it was set up to explore (by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London in 1673), but when young I misread the name and expected that you’ll walk in there to find a séance in action or someone who will guess your favourite colour for you!
• The Wave Garden – A garden which is truly named for its form. Paths, plants, sculptures and rails all flow through this snaking garden on a hillside overlooking San Francisco Bay in California.
• The Lost Gardens of Heligan – It does seem a little unfair to continue to call those wonderful gardens ‘lost’, when they have been renovated so well. Perhaps ‘The Found Gardens of Heligan’ would be more apt?
• Lion Grove Garden – The idea of being stalked by lions while innocently enjoying a garden stroll is an exhilarating one, to say the least. But the alternative name for this garden – Stone Lion Grove – should allay most fears. In fact the lions in this Chinese garden are all carved from waterside rocks and have been residents of the garden since its creation in the 1300s.
• Foggy Bottom – Part of the Bressingham Gardens in Norfolk, UK, the family nickname for this dell garden has stuck and become its ‘formal’, albeit cheeky, name!

On a domestic scale, few of us are lucky enough to have gardens of a size which justify their own name. But we often name our houses and some of these seem to be chosen to tease us about the gardening delights they contain. I used to live near a ‘Dingley Dell’, whose garden was walled with a small arched gateway leading to it. I never visited it, but developed a wonderful mental image of twisting paths, fern strewn dark corners and greens of every shade.

More common are tree-related names, I’m sure you’ll know a couple of these: Yew Cottage, The Hollies, Treetops, The Firs, and so on. I have yet to come across a flat with greenery draped over the balcony which has been aptly called ‘Babylon’ but I’m sure (or, at least, I hope) there is one out there!

This leads me to wonder whether these highfalutin names are really appropriate for the average gardener? Maybe we should be a little more realistic in our choices, so we don’t set visitors’ expectations too high? What about ‘Dunweedin’, ‘The Brambles’ or ‘Rampant’?

As for our house’s name? It’s ‘Redgate’. And we don’t even have a red gate! We inherited the name with the house and think it’s named after a local farm. As with boats, we feel it might spell bad luck to change the name, and ‘Eden’ would definitely be far too pretentious for our little plot!

• Sprouting Seeds Rocket
• Sprouting Seeds White Mustard
• Sprouting Seeds Fenugreek
• Sprouting Seeds Sandwich Mix
• Sprouting Seeds Salad Sprouts Mix

In light of this outbreak, and its potential source, we decided to find out a bit more about e-coli bacteria, how seeds and crops can become infected by it and what the real risks are to consumers:

The e-coli (or, to give it its full name, Escherichia coli) bacteria is a single celled organism which usually exists harmlessly within the human digestive tract. E-coli belongs to a group of organisms which are the oldest (in evolutionary terms), simplest, physically smallest and most abundant organisms in the world. In optimal conditions, e-coli populations can double in size every 20 minutes. This is a life form which is far more successful than mankind!

The e-coli bacteria currently affecting Europe is particularly aggressive as it has similar properties to dysentery, however it is believed that some people can carry the bacteria without any negative affects. For those who are susceptible to this strain of e-coli, it can cause very serious symptoms including bloody diarrhea, produce toxins which infect the blood, kidneys and nervous system, and may sometimes be fatal (although most people make a full recovery).

E-coli can survive within the harshest of conditions, so pretty much anything can be contaminated, including seeds and food products. Contamination of seeds or crops can occur in a number of ways, for example:

• From coming into contact with contaminated manure or water.
• From contaminants in the production and processing environments.
• During the packing process (potentially as a result of poor human sanitation).

The irradiation of seeds removes 99.999% of e-coli within them, however this is not currently a process approved by organic production standards. Alternatively, seeds can be chlorine treated, which kills many e-coli infections, although it has been suggested that an ancient Japanese tradition of soaking seeds in vinegar may be more effective. There is an argument that organic growing can also increase the likelihood of crops being infected by e-coli and other pathogens, due to the use of farmyard manure as a fertiliser (the fresher the manure, the higher the risk) and the absence of preservatives; however studies so far have been inconclusive.

Good hygiene should generally be sufficient to protect you from the bacteria. Wash food thoroughly, and wash your hands both before and after handling it. Maintain good hygiene with your food preparation implements, particularly ensuring you don’t use a chopping board for fruit and veg which you have just used for meat. Cook food thoroughly, ensuring it is piping hot to the centre, and ensure chilled food is kept in the fridge, not out on the work surface – high or low temperatures will remove, or at least slow the growth of, bacteria, whereas room temperature is a perfect incubation environment!

For more information, please use the links below:

• Thompson and Morgan update on their sprouting seeds
• New Scientist article by Dominic Dyer relating to e-coli in organic food production
• NHS advice on the current e-coli outbreak

Enough of the philosophising and down to Christine. For those of you who don’t know her already from her books and UK television presenters, she is a passionate gardener whose enthusiasm and down to earth manner inspire her readers and television audiences. Lancashire born, she is as direct and pragmatic as you like. She calls a spade a spade. Well, to be honest, she’d call a spade a spade, or a plant support or a slug dispatcher, depending on what it’s most practical to use it for at the time. It was with this knowledge and a little excitement that I proceeded down to our local garden centre today for a talk by Christine Walkden.

Walking into the room I found myself confronted by a few rows of obviously keen gardeners, one of which (dressed plainly in chinos and a blue jumper) was fiddling with an old fashioned revolving slide projector. I then realised that, of course, this innocuous stranger was actually the star of the show. Taking my seat I joined the others in waiting for the tail enders to arrive for Christine to start her talk.

Once everyone was settled, Christine launched swiftly into her talk, the topic of which was how to get 2000 plants in a 20’ by 30’ garden. She started by explaining that gardens are getting smaller all the time, yet we still come to garden centres, buy something we fancy (with scant regard to eventual size or growth rate) and come home to face the problem of where to plant it. We all laughed nervously – how did she know us so well?!

She also expounded the rule of managing expectations…not of plants but of yourself. If you put a shrub in, promising to move it elsewhere in 5 years time when it outgrows the space, how realistic is it that this is going to happen? Like heck it will! The laughter was a little more relaxed this time – clearly she wasn’t using some clever mind-reading technique to reveal all our little secrets, she was simply a gardener like you and me.

Christine then proceeded to spend a good hour explaining to us how we can fit in those 2000 plants (and much more beside) with nothing more than a little imagination and forethought in not buying petite plants from a garden centre which will turn into rambling monsters by the end of the year.

She encouraged us to consider all surfaces to be potential planting areas. Pop a few breeze blocks down to create a bed on a paved area, use crevice planting to have a self-watering trough, create soil-free planting zones with tufa or home-made versions, and look at every part of your garden and think “how can I plant something there?”. A thought struck me – I was intending to paint our recently purchased old fashioned concrete coal bunker to make it a bit less conspicuous, but why don’t I just turn the top of into a planting area? But it’s in shade. No matter, Christine was happy to suggest some plants which would work well there. A new project – lovely!

Don’t restrict alpine plants to rock gardens, she advised. After all, rock gardens are just a way of showing them off, any well drained position will host them nicely. Why not try carnivorous plants? Great for getting kids interested – what little boy wouldn’t enjoy feeding those dead flies that congregate on the windowsill to a plant?! If you’re using a trough for a water feature pop a milk crate upside down in it so it’s made safe for children without losing the planting potential. When planting bulbs in layers (so you can fit more in) water each layer as you go so the bulbs know they are meant to start growing. Plant Saxifraga or Dianthus in walkways, they cope well with being trodden on. Put a sponge through a blender and mix this in with your hanging basket compost instead of expensive water absorbing gel. The tips were coming thick and fast!

Her presentation technique was sometimes mad cap (some tips would need a large health and safety warning in other circumstances!) but always warm and effusive.

At the end of the talk she was happy to answer questions, sign her book (her own paper-based gardening blog, can’t wait to read it) and chat to the audience. It was clear that she will never tire of talking about gardening, and we’ll never tire of listening to her.

As I left, the sky had cleared after a grey morning. I stocked up on compost and headed home for a welcome afternoon in the garden, and to check out the top of that coal bunker.

I say ‘would-be’ as I seem to find precious little time to practice the many gardening activities we preach about at Oak Leaf Gardening! So is dedicating even more time to my computer by writing this blog a bit counterproductive? Perhaps, but the fact is there’s so much more I want to say about gardening than I can fit into the ‘factful’ pages of Oak Leaf Gardening. Plus, it’s nice to have somewhere I can talk to you properly, rather than having to studiously check the accuracy and understandability of my writing. And, of course, I have somewhere to use my favourite made-up words like factful and understandability!

“Hah!”, I hear you cry, “So it’s just another self-indulgent and pointless blog?!”.

Well, you might not be as far off the mark as I’d like with ‘self-indulgent’, but I hope to avoid ‘pointless’ at all costs.
In fact, there’s a very good point to this blog – it’s going to do things that the rest of the site doesn’t do. It’s going to share my experiences, warts and all, in my garden, in other people’s gardens, at garden shows, in garden centres… Hopefully I will be able to tell you something new and interesting or, at the least, give you a laugh at some of the less ‘haughty-cultural’ events in my gardening life, such as the ‘stop the dog eating the compost while I’m turning it’ competitions and the annual eye poking festival (ie rose pruning).

So read on and, if you enjoy something, have a similar experience to share, or think I’m veering dangerously close to ‘pointless’, then please feel free to add a comment and let me know!

Sam