Journalism
Articles about Roddy, and snippets from Roddy's own articles ...
August/September 2006
Broadening Horizons |
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Amongst these have been a number of gardens belonging to period houses, especially in the UK. Period houses can prove to be the most challenging because they, like the houses they belong to, have succumbed to changing fashions over the centuries, and it is often very difficult to establish the original design, in indeed it remains relevant. It is always more exciting if these older houses still retain their own land. If that is the case, then it is always fun to broaden horizons.
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Shutford Manor
On the very edged of the Cotswolds lies the peaceful village of Shutford in Oxfordshire. I was asked in by the owners of the manor house there to help them lay out the gardens. The house itself is seventeenth century, tall and imposing, build in red sandstone, with lawns and gardens lying to the south. It was all rather 'bitty', and so the first thing I planned was a cross vista in order to 'marry up' all the various ingredients with the simple introduction of a cross vista.
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These gardens, almost imperceptibly, melted into the field beyond. However, because the dogs needed to be kept in bounds on the house side and horses on the other, a rather ugly fence had been erected, and so it was decided to build a ha-ha. For this you need a raft foundation with a breeze block wall strengthened with mild steel rods faced with natural stone, the two walls supporting each other with butterfly ties. Interrupting the ha-ha was an existing gate flanked by good, solid gate posts.
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Annoyingly this gate did not line up with the main door of the house at an angle of 90 degrees. I linked the two with an allee of Golden Irish Yew (Taxus baccata 'Fastigiata Aurea'), and as a result, no one is aware of this discrepancy on the horizontal plane. |
Unless a drive is vast I think it a mistake to put something in the middle of it: it is an invitation for a motor car to collide with it. I did point this out to the client, but she was adamant she did not want her rather magnificent early, carved stone font moved. Sure enough, a week later one of her daughters drove straight into it, and so we moved it to the centre of the allee so that it lined up with the cross vista. The font is now planted up with agapanthus every year.
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I also added a small round knot, with germander (Teuchrium chamaedrys) and dwarf box interweaving in straight lines, with gaps in-filled with colour gravels. The long border I also added was planted with hot colours, reds and oranges at one end, with cool colours, blues, silvers and whites at the other, with yellows and purples intervening at the appropriate stages of the spectrum. Made fashionable about 100 years ago by Gertrude Jekyll, this colour planting theme works well in any garden irrespective of period.
Roddy Llewellyn will be providing those of us who are keen gardeners with further hints, tips and period garden inspiration in forthcoming issues of Heritage Homes.
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March 2, 2006
Replacing the ties that bind
Keeping a watchful eye on plant pests and training wisteria and grape vines. |
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Here in Oxfordshire, as in most parts of the country, we have had a proper cold winter for a change. I was talking to Roy Lancaster on the telephone recently, and we agreed how welcome it had been. His conclusion was: 'Fair exchange for a good bug killer'. Well, which nasty insects can we hope have succumbed to the cold?
According to the Royal Horticultural Society, indigenous insects are not affected by a cold winter - only those that have come over to us from warmer climes that have survived recent mild winters. The populations of rosemary beetle (from the Mediterranean) and the berberis sawfly, for instance, may prove to have been reduced during these past cold months. |
The gardener's bonus, pest wise, is a late frost which catches emerging insects unawares, although such freezes are inevitably at the expense of treasured spring flowers, such as wisteria. Personally, I would rather have the wisteria flowers and the insects too.
I am expecting a number of plant casualties this spring, encouraged as we have been to plant exotica from milder continents, following a run of mild winters. Complacency has got the better of me. In recent years, I have left my dahlias in situ instead of lifting them, with no apparent ill effect. I place large plastics containers and glass cloches over some of them, in an attempt to keep the tubers drier and warmer. All will be revealed as the shoots start to emerge in a few weeks or not.
Over an arbour at the end of a cross vista, I have trained a delightful ornamental fruiting vine with purple leaves and black fruits, Vitis vinifera Purpurea. I was first made aware of this superior climbing plant as a child. It had been trained along a stone balustrade flanking the '100 steps' at my mother's old home, Shrubland Hall in Suffolk . In late summer and autumn, it is a sigh to behold when bathed in sunshine, the purple foliage acting as an excellent foil against the black grapes.
Up until last year, I had always pruned the side shoots from the main rods of this vine and other fruiting vines in January, carefully leaving one or two buds, but was told that many French vineyards do differently. Apparently, they cut flush to the older wood, presumably to produce better fruit. So that is exactly what I did last winter to see if it made any difference. If anything, the bunches were a little more plump. I always leave the rotting fruits in autumn for hungry birds, and as a last sugary snack for all the brave butterflies still on the wing.
We all lead such busy lives that sometimes jobs have to be done during one of those rare spare moments, even if the timing isn't perfect. There are certain things you should never do, such as prune a tree as the sap is rising in the spring, but I have learned a shortcut when it comes to wisteria. The textbooks tell us that there are two distinctive annual pruning operations in August and March, the cutting back of new shoots produced that summer to within six leaf nodes of the older wood during the former month, and to within two leaf nodes during the latter.
I find it easier and quicker and it has made no difference whatsoever to the flowering performance of the plant, to prune it back all at the same time in Februrary or March straight back to the recommended two nodes. It is much easier to keep a wisteria neat and tidy if you have been able to train it to shape ever since it was first planted, as I have been able to do for the last 10 years. It is more difficult to do so if you inherit a mature specimen that looks like a ball of knitting that a kitten has been playing with.
I have trained mine into two neat horizontal tramlines, running to the left and right from the centre of the stone building, tied to heavy-duty galvanised wire threaded through stout vine eyes drilled into the wall and secured with plastic rawl plugs. I have tied this main framework to the wire with varying types of tree ties and Flexi-tie to support it as it becomes heavier with age, until such time as it becomes self supporting. This is not a job for green string because it needs replacing every other year. There's enough to do without having to constantly replace ties. I use old, flat, brown shoelaces on climbers, trees and shrubs. They're nice and soft and last for years.
Read previous columns in the In My Garden series at www.countrylife.co.uk/gardening. |
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Anniversary 2006
Roll-call of a lifetime's love on honest British trees
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Ancient tree of England, native oak. |
| Roddy Llewellyn will hop this earthly twig a happy man, knowing that he has planted more than his share of great and mighty oaks and cedars, walnuts and mulberries, Scots pines and sweet chestnuts. Now he tells the how and why ... |
When my time comes I will hop the twig a happy man, in the knowledge that during my lifetime I have been instrumental in the planting of thousands of trees. I do not want to sound conceited; it makes me happy to think that I shall leave many beautiful trees that future generations can enjoy.
Before sailing heavenward on a soft, leafy bed to that great nursery in the sky, I have every intention of planting many more trees. I encourage clients to plant hardwoods because they are longer-lived. It helps, too, if they are indigenous (those that have lived on the site of present Britain for the last three million years or so, since the post glacial period), which includes of course the oak, yew, lime, elm, hornbeam, Scots pine and juniper. A beech will seldom live for more than 200 years. I am not including Roman introductions such as horse chestnut.
Of course we grow many trees from other continents, but they usually live longer, and are more likely to achieve their full stature, in their country of origin. Look at those vast wellingtonias (Sequoiadendron giganteum) from the mountainous forest areas of California. Will they ever grow to the same size in the UK? Since they were introduced to this country only in 1860, we must wait and see. Yet some of the first cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani), introduced to our shores in about 1650, have matured into fine specimens, matching the statuesque proportions of their distant cousins in their country of origin, the west Himalayas and the Mediterranean.
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Cedar of Lebanon, a relative new comer at 350 years. |
Oaks are famous for long life. Some wonderful specimens, believed to be between 600 and 800 years old, can be seen at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire and at Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. Some of the oaks in Windsor Great Park are believed to be more than 1000 years old. Coln Crosby, the superintendent of woody ornamental plants at RHS Wisley, told me, 'Oaks grow for 300 years and then slowly dies back for another 300.' |
Should we be worried about the spread of 'Sudden Death' disease, which has begun to affect oaks and other trees? Worst affected so far is beech, but the good news is that this disease, introduced on imported wood (probably from China) like the devastating elm disease (introduced from North America), has been contained in small pockets of Cornwall. There is still hope that it will be eradiated altogether before it spreads further.
The longest-lived tree in Britain is a yew (Taxus baccata) growing at Fortingall in Perthshire, first recorded by Thomas Pennant in 1769 as having a girth of 56ft 6in. It is reckoned to be about 5000 years old. As a sapling it was busy getting its roots down some 3000 years before anybody had heard of Jesus Christ. But of course yew is a primordial tree, believed to date back some 200 million years. There are several fascinating types of yew. If you are looking for an excellent green up right form, you can do no better than to plant Taxus baccata 'Fastigiata Robusta' (the 'robusta' addition to the name is so reassuring).
Then there is the statuesque Spanish or sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa), which, as a mature specimen, has deeply furrowed, light grey bark and those marvellous shiny leaves a top. At Shrubland Hall in Suffolk, the house was turned into a clinic, there is an avenue of these beauties, reckoned to be between 800 and 1000 years old.
The spacing of trees can be difficult to get right. Having planted a few parkland trees in what was once open space, I have come to the conclusion that if they look too far apart to begin with, you have got it right. I believe in planting small. The 'instant' effect achieved by planting semi-mature trees at enormous expense does not pay in the long run. If you plant a 3ft tall tree and a 10ft tall tree, three or four years later both will be 10ft tall.
The biggest killer of trees is planting them too deep. Always plant them so that the 'root flare' is level with, or even proud of the surrounding soil. It is better to plant an inch too high than an inch too deep. Trees like company, so when you plant a hardwood, surround it, if you can, with shorter-lived softwoods such as silver birch and prunus species (the flowering cherries) to encourage the 'posterity' tree to grow tall and straight initially. This is how they all start their lives in the wild. 'If you observe Nature you will have half the answer,' Colin Crosby of the RHS wisely observed.
He further told me that the popularly conceived fact that the root run mirrors the leaf canopy above is incorrect. The truth is that the root run is twice as wide as the canopy, or more. This is an important consideration when planning a garden. Initial shaping of a tree is very important, especially when a side shoots at a decent angle. Such forks often result in the death of a tree before its prime because water sits in them and eventually seeps down into the hardwood, causing rot.
My nine 'posterity' trees are: native oak (Quercus robur); cedar of Lebanon (Cedrus libani); Scot's pine (Pinus sylvestris); dawn redwood (Metasequoia gyptotroboides); Spanish or sweet chestnut (Castanea sativa); walnut (Juglans nigra or J regia); Mulberry (Morus nigra); Ginkgo biloba, a relatively recent introduction to our shores; and wellingtonia (Sequoiadendron giganteum).
If you are worried about diseased trees, contact the Disease Diagnostic and Advistory Service, Forest Research, Alice Holt Lodge, Wrecclesham, Farnham, Surry GU10 4LH, 01420 23000 (www.forestresearch.gov.uk). |
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