Horticultural hupdate

[caddyman]

We mangled the garden good and proper this weekend, wreaking devastation on the buddleia in particular, in an attempt to get some light and water to the laburnum and the recently planted blackcurrant. We’re going to have to keep an eye on that buddleia, since the brutes are like horticultural hydra and the more you cut them back, the thicker they grow back. Unless, of course, you dig the brutes up in their entirety and we don’t want to do that. We are trying to foster a habitat that supports bees and they love the bud.

A secondary outcome of the massive pruning is the amount of light that is now getting to the middle and lower beds in the garden. We planted a couple of rows of shallots and red onions. Hopefully they will come on while the buddleia is licking its wounds, before it goes all Lost World on us again in the spring (assuming average amounts of rainfall and such).

I also re-threaded the vine on the front wall. The high winds of a few weeks ago brought it down but didn’t kill it. My attempts to put it back in place are a bit makeshift since most of the ties have worn through, but I can sort that out separately, once I’ve worked out what I need to tie it all off properly. A quick trim of the rosemary bush out front also means that people can walk down the street without ducking again. Should have done that weeks ago really, but hey.

I suspect that over the next few weeks we are going to have to try and find some winter flowering shrubs to stop the garden looking too dreary and sombre in the coming months. We have huge wads of daffodil and tulip bulbs out there, but need something to beautify the bare beds between now and spring, when we should have a riot of colour again.

Fingers crossed that nosey foxes don’t start digging everything up in the hopes that we have buried bones.

Comments

[changeling72.livejournal.com]

How very green fingered of you. Did you have a pitcher of Pimms to draw on as you laboured..?

[caddyman.livejournal.com]

I knew we were missing something....

[littleonionz.livejournal.com]

How very industrious. We've still got salad in, but I 'spose we should get a shift on and git some onions in.

[ladkyis.livejournal.com]

be ruthless with the buddleia, as you say it thrives on being hacked and will also stand being split at the root. You could remove half of it and still have a good shrub. They do tend to seed everywhere so watch the gutters and the tops of walls. we have one that seeded into the top of the wall at the back and if we tried to take it out we would have to knock the wall down. the root goes right through the wall which is over 6 feet tall down to the ground. Kill it I say.

[mr-h-r-hughes.livejournal.com]

Kill it and get one of the new weedy, non-psychotic buddleias. Or dump it altogether, there are many things bees love more.

Only a week behind...

[velvet-the-cat.livejournal.com]

I was chatting to a chap at the RHS show in Tatton about taming buddlejas (we have one more akin to a tree than shrub) and he said hack it back to the first leaf buds on each stem/branch/twig as soon as they start to show in spring. He reckoned that this would usually be around 1st March. Chances are, the following year it may shoot even lower down to increase the overall reduction.

Normally, my buddleja butchery has occurred around this time of year and both the davidii and globosa varieties have survived the choppers. :o)