Sub-Lime

Step out onto any suburban street from mid June to early July and the pervading scent will be that of lime tree blossom. I do not mean the citrus limes whose juice graces a Mojito cocktail. I’m referring to the flowers which, when dried, become the ’tilleul’ infusion popular in France. Before it became a familiar high street brand, no day trip to Calais or Boulogne was complete without a visit to L’Occitane to buy the delicately perfumed lime flower soap. These last couple of weeks the lime trees have been at the height of their intoxicating power, pumping forth the freshly sweet perfume which to me epitomises early summer.

Close examination reveals that the yellow green clusters hanging below the heart-shaped leaves of Tilia cordata (Small-leaved lime) and the roundly oval leaves of Tilia platyphyllos (Broad-leaved lime) consist of downward facing bunches of four or five stems. These are attached to a wing-shaped bract which aids seed dispersal and each stem terminates in a cluster of yellow pollen-tipped stamens surrounded by five outer sepals, the central core of each of which ripens into a small spherical fruit. The fruit or ‘nutlet’ as I have read it is called, is covered in fine down lending them a whitish grey appearance.

On warm days, lime tree flowers attract many pollinators, and an odd phenomenon has been observed with the Silver leaved lime, Tilia tomentosa, which is pollinated by honeybees. The trees’ nectar appears to have a narcotic effect on the bees, with dead or dying bees found under the trees each year. A team at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is investigating the issue and there is an interesting article on the Kew website entitled ‘Do Lime trees kill bees?’

I haven’t reported recently upon my Friday stints as a member of the team of garden volunteers at the National Trust’s Osterley Park. For the past two Fridays we have concentrated our efforts in the Tudor Walled Garden, preparing it for its annual colourful impact in late summer and early autumn. In fact, thanks to a myriad of self-sown poppies, two of the quadrant beds have exploded into sheets of mauve, pink and red. In the bed where the green manure was sown earlier this year, (see my blog from this March, Rolling along within the walls), the crimson clover blends beautifully with the poppies.

Last week, in the bed closest to the gate leading to the gardener’s bothy, we planted a mixture of four Gladioli cultivars: Roma, Indian summer, Espresso and Purple Flora. I’m looking forward to seeing their blend of colours later this summer. Meanwhile, our colleague Tracey has worked tirelessly to sow, plant and harvest produce on the third bed. Where possible the rest of the team help her with weeding and some planting, as well as harvesting early crops for the coach house cafe. A gentle job I was assigned last week involved deadheading the sweet peas which grow up obelisks at the corner of the plots, the variety this year being ‘Beaujolais’. Removing the seed pods which develop so swiftly after the flowers have faded encourages more flowers by preventing the plant from expending energy on seed production.

Whilst weeding the edge of one of the plots we found two self-sown members of the Nightshade family, Solanaceae, to which potatoes, tomatoes and aubergines belong. The pioneers we found are the Shoofly plant, Nicandra physaloides, and the Thornapple, Datura stramonium. We left the former in place as its pretty mauve flowers are attractive but the latter will be removed as it doesn’t form part of the planting scheme as well as being poisonous.

*Nicandra physaloides*: the Shoofly plant

This Friday saw us working on the five round beds alongside the wall which divides the Tudor Walled Garden from the picking garden (which is bursting with colourful flowers at the moment). A small fruit tree is planted in the centre of each round bed, and is underplanted for spring and early summer impact with Doronicum, Irises, Papaver somniferum (Opium poppies) and Love in a Mist (Nigella damascena). Sadly the plants have finished flowering and our task was to remove the poppies and Nigella (both annuals) and to reduce the iris leaves by 2/3rds and cut their flower stalks to ground level. We had an hour left in the afternoon to begin a similar task on the long border of the Tudor Walled Garden where a repeating planting scheme of Salvias, honey scented Honey spurge (Euphorbia mellifera), Plume poppy (Macleaya macrocarpa) and Foxtail lily, (Eremurus), is bestowed a sprinkling of gold dust by the shimmering stems and flowers of Elephant grass (Stipa gigantea).

Stipa gigantea

Macleaya microcarpa

Eremurus

Thinking of taller plants growing through lower growing plants, in my own garden I’ve been admiring the delicate yet long lasting flowers of Chinese meadow rue, Thalictrum delavayi, for about three weeks. At a height of about two metres they hover gracefully above the nearby Astrantia major ‘Abbey Road’, a burgundy Heuchera and Houttynia cordata. Like the small leaved lime mentioned above, another plant named for its heart-shaped leaves.

Thalictrum delavayi

Astrantia major ‘Abbey Road’

Bicycle botanics

Perched on a road bike on a hill climb and in the lowest gears is not the ideal situation in which to identify plants growing at the roadside, but I confess to finding myself doing so on Monday this week. I was lucky enough to spend last weekend with a friend in the north of the beautiful island of Mallorca. In preparation for a cycling challenge later this summer, we completed a 25 mile round trip to a cafe a couple of kilometres beyond the monastery of Lluc, in the mountains of the Serra de Tramuntana. Much of our route was a steady climb, craggy peaks visible ahead.

I was peripherally aware of intriguing plants to my right, but so fixed was I on the task in hand I did not give it the attention I might have done had I been on foot. The descent posed different challenges with bike handling taking precedence over botanising. However, along with a sense of a rise in air temperature as we rode towards sea level, I noticed that the scrubby white Cistus bushes (Rock roses) and Scabious (Balearic pincushion flowers) which lined the road at the higher levels, gradually gave way when we reached the plain to margins carpeted with Daucus carota (Wild carrot). Beyond the verges are olive groves and fields of almond trees.

Self-seeded beneath the wooden barriers which protect road users from cliff-sides and sheer drops I spotted species of Euphorbia and Verbascum. For most of the higher regions to either side of the route lay forests of Holm oak (Quercus ilex) and an aromatic conifer I haven’t been able to identify, with roadside signs indicating wildlife reserves and hiking paths. Fat dark brown pods approximately 15cm long scatter the tarmac in some places, the fruit of the Carob tree (Ceratonia siliqua).

Needless to say, being on a bike prevented me from photographing the plants I’ve mentioned. There follow images of some of the plants I saw in gardens on the island, several of which are grown in the Temperate House in Kew Gardens.

Mediterranean fan palm: *Chamareops humilis*

Strelitzia reginae

Strelitzia reginae

Succulents entwine the terracotta heads above this stone table in the gardens of a sculpture garden near Alcudia, ‘Museo Sa Bassa Blanca’.

Apricot fades to cream in this climbing rose at the Museo Sa Bassa Blanca.

Beyond the rose garden at the Museo sa Bassa Blanca lie the hills of the Alcudia peninsula

The ‘Wild banana’: Strelitzia Augusta

AKA The giant white bird of paradise

The wild banana, Strelitzia Augusta, or giant white bird of paradise.

Finally, I’d love to identify the following plant, a shrub approximately 2 metres high, with pea-like purple flowers opening from this delicately veined bud. Do comment if you can tell me what it is.

Hollies and composts: John Innes Park SW19

Not for the first time while working for a client in an unfamiliar area, I have stumbled across a public park with an intriguing horticultural history. In my post dated 25 February 2019 I described discovering Grove Gardens in Teddington, formerly part of a garden designed by Sir William Chambers, architect of the Kew Pagoda. Earlier this week I did some pruning in a garden in Merton Park: Lonicera fragrantissima (winter flowering honeysuckle), Viburnum bodnantense and a Pittosporum. Planning my route on Google Maps, I noticed that the clients lived a few hundred metres from John Innes Park and an internet search led me to the website of the John Innes Society where I learnt that this was the same John Innes of compost fame.

The park was formerly the garden of this property developer and benefactor known as ‘the Squire of Merton’, who developed this area near Wimbledon as an early garden suburb, Merton Park. When he died in 1904, John Innes left money for the founding of a horticultural training and research centre, which became the John Innes Horticultural Institution. The composts which bear his name were developed in the Institution’s premises in Merton in the 1930s. In 1945 the organisation moved to Hertfordshire and since 1967 it has been based in Norwich.

Once I’d completed my pruning I explored the park and was delighted to find an Arts & Crafts style entrance lodge, a wooden bandstand, half timbered public conveniences and a bowling green and tennis courts: in short an old fashioned public park. It is fitting that John Innes Park, a public space with such strong horticultural associations, boasts attractively laid out ‘rooms’, linked by paths bounded by tall yew and holly hedges, the latter dating from John Innes’s time, holly being associated with the Innes clan. The park also contains a large rockery, a rose pergola and a lawned area with a fish pond.

There are numerous species and cultivars of holly throughout the park.

The holly theme is continued in the suburb of Merton Park itself, much of it a Conservation Area, with street signs bearing a holly motif and a stylised holly leaf featuring in the stained glass windows in the entrance halls and front doors of many of the houses. Holly hedging abounds in the estate and in one road I found the hedging is at least two metres high and planted either side of an avenue of stately London Plane trees.

I cannot conclude this post without a brief account of the growing medium I referred to earlier. Each John Innes compost is based upon a soil mix which consists of seven parts medium sterilised loam, three parts peat (or a substitute) and two parts of coarse sand. The basic recipe for each of the three composts, John Innes No. 1,2 and 3, also contains nutrients in the form of hoof and horn meal, super phosphate and sulphate of potash in varying proportions. For example, John Innes No. 3 provides a rich mix for established plants, trees and shrubs and No.2 is suitable for most houseplants and vegetable plants in containers. The more delicate the plant, the fewer nutrients are required, and John Innes No. 1 is suitable for pricking out or potting on young seedlings.

When the John Innes composts were developed, the inclusion of peat in the formulae would not have been deemed to be as environmentally undesirable as it is rightly considered to be today. Whilst researching this post I have been relieved to read that peat substitutes are being included in some products, without deviating from the proportions so carefully laid down by the Institution 80 years ago for the growing mediums which have been in use by gardeners ever since.