Welcome to Your Hints & Tips Page

December/January

With this shockingly cold weather, please remember to feed the birds and let them have access to fresh water at least once a day. Birds like the sparrows, bluetits and goldfinches are 'hardbills' and generally feed on seeds/nuts, goldfinches adore teasles, bluetits have a thing about peanuts.

Other birds like the robins, blackbirds and thrushes are 'softbills' and prefer fruit, hips, haws, apple and adore mealworms if you can provide them as the earthworms are further down now in this icy weather, remember to 'clean' the mealworms by putting them in a container of bran, this they will feed on. You can also mix grated cheese with bacon rind and cereal and a few smaller seeds for the birds.

Feeding the birds now will help them through the winter but don't suddenly stop, they expend vital energy getting to food sources.

That being said, we hope you all have a very merry Christmas and a healthy, happy and more prosperous New Year.

I've been out in the back garden today, 22nd December and gently knocked off the weight of the snow off our Stachyurus chinensis shrub, this already has masses of flowers buds on rigid stems ready to burst into flower in early spring as the weather warms. This was a slow starter and took two to three seasons to establish its roots, only making a little top growth, now it is magnificent. I have to judicially prune it every year to take out the stronger growths by one third and cut back hard the weaker growth, to keep it from being heavier on one side, it always seems to favour growing more strongly towards the east, funny plant!

If you have well shaped trees, shrubs and they too are weighted down with snow, gently shake/brush it off, so that the weight does not spoil their shape.

If you have not done so already prune any remaining weak growths from your roses. Prune back top-heavy climbing roses to prevent wind rock.

Take off any old foliage from the now established clumps of Lenten Roses or Helleborus x hybridus (formerly orientalis). This stops any black spot spores from over wintering on the foliage and also has the bonus of allowing free access to viewing the buds and flowers as they grow ready to flower in early February or even earlier if we suddenly go into a warm spell!

The Christmas Roses (as in the picture) Helleborus niger, have been in flower since late November and are continuing to put on bud, the weather never seems to affect them.

The Prunus kojo no mai. a dwarf japanese cherry had shed the last of its leaves in late October after an unusually brilliant show of autumn colour. Now its naturally twisted and contorted twigs are bare and dressed with snow and icicles, just as if it has been decorated for Christmas. We have a wren who uses this dense cover as a song auditorium, beautiful!

Despite the chill our Clematis armandii has started budding up, but its leaves are folded back to decrease the amount of moisture it loses in the chill, dry winds. I have two frozen flowers on our Rose 'Iceberg' which is not unusual, as I usually manage to cut some for the Christmas table.

Our various pots of plants are covered with filmy fleece, which has been turned back on itself several times, so they have several layers over them. Each layer will increase the temperature underneath by at least 1 degree. We have also put up some temporary green woven windbreak material to help filter the wind and protect certain plants from experiencing the worst of the weather, all this can be adapted for use in your garden.

Bring all your containers together, closer to the house if you can manage it and wrap the exterior of them either with bubble-wrap or with the fleece this will help protect the roots in the pots from lower temperatures, each pot will protect the others in a cluster.

If you want to break down heavy soil, now is the time to continue digging and allow the frosts to break down the clumps.

Try not to walk on your lawns in very wet weather, you'll be regretting it later as you try to make it smooth and level again.

Bring your planted winter display containers closer to the house so you can easier appreciate them.

These can be planted with Cornus especially the shorter one 'Winter Flame' which has coloured stems of yellow shading through orange and coral-red, Skimmia japonica 'Rubella' which has pink clusters of flowers buds now, which when they open have a good scent, only the male forms are scented. Cyclamen coum are in bud at this time of the year, they are completely hardy and have the most dainty but weather-resistant flowers.

Now is the time to sit thoughtfully and plan how you are going to improve your garden for next season, get out those gardening books or even send me an e-mail and I will try and come up witth some suggestions for you. 

Welcome to Your Hints & Tips Page

September/October/November

Now is the time to look at your shrubs, roses and climbers and take out any damaged, diseased or crossing stems. This will prevent disease from infecting other stems, dying back and opening wounds from crossing & rubbing stems. You can also gently take the tips off a few stems and encourage them to branch, giving you more stems and therefore flowers & foliage in the coming year.

We have the most gloriously scented rambler called Rosa 'William Lobb' it has moss-covered buds and usually produces them in clusters of semi-double magenta-purple blooms. It is vigorous and exceptionally thorny, each year I cut back at least a third of the old stems almost to the ground and tip the tops of the younger stems, before tying them in as horizontal a position as I can while they are still fairly flexible.

Encouraging blooms on climbers.

The above method of tying down the stems as horizontally as possible, works for most climbers, to great effect! The growth hormones which are generally at the tip of the stems, are then distributed along the top of the length of the stem. This encourages more growth and more flowers.The same can be applied to Clematis, Lonicera (Honeysuckle) and Jasmine.

We also have a mature Trachystemon jasminoides or 'Star Jasmine' which has lots of white flowers in small clusters and they are highly perfumed.It is an evergreen, which prefers a sheltered position out of the coldest winds, which dessicate its foliage. In our garden it is in a south-easterly position and is doing very well.

Mulching in autumn

Before the ground has a chance to become cold, it pays whatever type of soil you have to water well and then add a thick mulch around your plants. Do not dig it in, the worms will do that for you over a period of time and it will aid the organic content of your soil, opening up heavy soil and bulking up light soils. In addition to this it acts as a protection for developiong root systems and does not let so much frost get into the ground, it also acts as a superb weed suppressor. I generally use either a thick layer of homemade compost or composted forest bark if there is not quite enough compost. Remember to add bonemeal, which is a slow-acting fertiliser to the soil, before you mulch.

Cocoa-shell warning

Cocoa-shell can be bought by the bagful and plants which are woodlanders such as Hellebores, Hepatica and Anemone nemorosa really benefit from this being added to their compost either in the soil or in containers. Again it makes a good mulch which after it gets wet sticks together and then looks a complete mess until it begins to break down.

Please be aware that if you have dogs and they ingest this it can make them severely ill as we found out to our cost. There were no warnings on the bags. We now restrict its use to the front garden, where our adopted Jack Russell (he was my mothers' and she died in March) has no access.

Planting bulbs

Now is the time to plant most bulbs apart from Tulips which really need to be left until November, if at all possible.

Norfolk is very windy, so we tend to stick to Dwarf Tulips, Miniature Narcissus, Muscari latifolium (The Oxford & Cambridge Muscari) so called because of its dark & light blue flower combination, Anemone blanda, Anemone nemorosa 'Robinsoniana', Erythronium dens canis (Dogs' Tooth Violet), its American counterpart Erythronium 'Pagoda' (The Trout Lily) and masses of Snowdrops or 'Galanthus'. The Iris reticulata do well in containers with Ophiopogon pl. 'Nigrescens' or the so-called 'Black Grass' as do the smaller species Crocus chrysanthus types.