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Thursday, September 04, 2008
A Cabinet of Curiosities
September in the garden is like a cabinet of curiosities, for shadows deceive the eye and light plays funny tricks even during the mid-day hours. That’s quite poetic – for Charlie Wilkins.
NOW’S the time to have an eye for golden detail, for odd shapes here and there, even wispy little flutterings amid the robustness of hydrangeas, fuchsias and dahlias. If you like movement and if you garden with ornamental grasses, you’ll have these golden treasures I speak of, and be able to rely heavily on shape and pattern for the remainder of autumn.
The interest in grasses grows, partly, I think, because they’re such easy, no-trouble plants which add enormously to the interest of a garden, and partly because of our growing appreciation of line and colour as an enhancement of the beauty of flowers.
Everyone seems to be into grasses nowadays and the trend fits into our idea of a carefree garden. We do not want too many, of course, and they need to be very, very carefully placed.
Personally, I like to see them displayed where a special effect is needed – at the top of steps for instance, at the turn of a border or on a steep embankment where one has to look upwards into the plants rather than down.
Tall varieties can be used in a flat planting to give height, arching varieties used in pairs as formal features, and the delicate-looking types as specimen clumps in small intimate gardens.
Space will not permit me to go into detail on the merits of the more desirable garden forms now freely available, but I surely have room for a mention of stipa gigantea. Once established, the multiple flower heads arrive as loose, conical heads of nodding, golden spikes that shimmer in the sun and tremble at the slightest breeze.
In any situation which can boast an acid soil, a decent quota of full sun, and sharp drainage during winter, the plant will truly delight. Even when the seeds of this golden oat grass have been shed, growers will find beauty in the empty husks and upright stance of the long whippy stems.
If you can copy its natural home conditions of Spain and Portugal (hard this year, I’ll admit), then you’ll surely get a decent return in terms of spectacle and colour from the hugely popular golden oat grass.
AN INDIAN SUMMER
WHEN August fades to September and the schools reopen, gardeners look to the skies for weather signs that will allow them one late flush of summer.
A few days with a pewter-coloured sun and warm, gentle breezes is all that’s expected for the season up to now has been disastrous. In diminishing light and in whispered tones, they speak of an ‘Indian Summer’.
This hoped-for extension of summer never seems to materialise and many now suspect that it is only wishful thinking for a time that doesn’t even exist. The ache of regret is alive and well.
THE COMMON SNAIL
THE common snail with its tortoiseshell house is the most widespread of all the molluscs but the smaller strawberry snail with its appetite for nearly all garden plants is the least welcome.
The banded snail can never make up its mind, for one night it will be grass and weeds it consumes, the next it could easily be your best hosta or prize pom-pom dahlia. Continue to guard against these by using either pellets or liquid slug killer.
Just because the season is growing old and the schools are reopening does not mean that these voracious feeders are going into hibernation or anything. Quite the opposite, really: they’ll be active throughout winter.
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