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.

White nights

It’s 8.30pm. I am sitting at the table looking out onto my garden. The sun has set and dusk is blurring the outlines of the plants. The deeper shades of green are the first to blend into the gloom, along with the maroon leaves of the Heuchera “Palace Purple’. The greenish yellow foliage of the Sorbaria sorbifolia ‘Sem’ maintains its brightening effect for a little longer before receding into its corner. But two plants gleam through the gathering darkness due to their white flowers.

in the foreground is Hesperis matronalis var. albiflora. Held about a metre above the ground in plump racemes, the four petalled flowers resemble those of the white form of Honesty (Lunaria). I step outside to snip a couple of inflorescences to bring into the house and breathe in an intoxicating perfume resembling stocks, hence its common name Sweet Rocket. My RHS A-Z Encyclopaedia of Garden Plants reminds me this is a biennial or short-lived perennial and indeed there have been several years where this understated beauty has been absent from the garden when I have omitted to replace it.

Towards the top of one of the supporting posts of the wooden archway which frames the seating area at the rear of the garden, a dozen or so white rose blooms resist the onset of night. I planted the aptly named ‘White Star’ climbing rose two years ago and it is vigorous and healthy. In March I pruned the rose and trained its stems in a spiral, attaching them to strainer wire which I installed on the four faces of the wooden post. I am delighted at the outcome: blooms evenly distributed from base to top, the glossy dark green leaves highlighting the large, waxy and very fragrant flowers.

Rosa ‘White Star’

Half a kilometre away in Kew Gardens I imagine other pockets of white flowers glimmering in the darkness. The collections of Philadelphus and Deutzia no doubt look ghostly at this time of day. As might the starry white bracts of Cornus kousa and the drooping cotton handkerchief bracts of Davidia involucrata. But for sheer scale and profusion of white flowers, a large tree which stands near the entrance to the North Wing of the Temperate House must make an impressive nocturnal spectacle. The branches of the Chinese Fringe Tree, Chionanthus retusus, droop almost to ground level, weighed down with their shredded white flowers, creating a cool cavernous space which invites games of hide and seek.

Chionanthus retusus

The Chinese fringe tree framing a view of the Temperate House

Davidia involucrata

Whilst on the subject of Kew Gardens, last Monday, during my weekly three hour stint in the plant shop, a visitor from Seattle showed me an image on her phone of very tall blue spiked plant and asked me to identify it. I recognised the plant as Echium pininana, giant viper’s bugloss, and my colleague confirmed the the shop stocked the seeds in the Thompson & Morgan World Garden range.

Echium pininana

Coincidentally I had, like the Seattle visitor, seen a mass planting of these huge biennials in St James’s Park a few days before, creating an almost prehistoric effect. Nearby, in a shadier location, I was very taken with a glorious display of foxgloves, honesty, heuchera and a fern, Cyrtomium falcatum. The only reason I was able to identify the fern, was that I bought one at a plant fair at the Garden Museum in Lambeth at the beginning of the month. It has broader individual leaves than most ferns and is now growing happily in a dimly lit spot beside the back door. Unlike the garden’s white flowered plants, however, it fades into the darkness when night falls.

Cyrtomium falcatum

Shade garden planting in St James’s Park

More purple prose

The common names of plants often reference other plants. For example, the ‘tulip tree’ (Liriodendron tulipifera). Not only do its generous waxy cream goblets resemble tulips, its uniquely shaped leaves with their truncated upper edges remind me of stylised versions of the flower. And this weekend I came across the ‘snowdrop tree’ on Instagram, Halesia Carolina, whose snowy white bells are reminiscent of the blooms of its namesake.

Another tree whose flowers resemble another species, and which is in glorious flower at the moment, is the foxglove tree, Paulownia tomentosa. Four examples of the tree occupy a corner to the right of the Garden House in Mrs Child’s Flower Garden at Osterley, one of which stands slightly apart from the others, behind the wall in the section of the garden where stands the unusual species of strawberry tree, Arbutus madrona, which I featured in my blog dated 17 April 2019.

Like foxgloves, the tree’s petals are a fleshy tubular shape with a flared rim to entice pollinators. Approximately 5cm long, the mauve flowers are topped by exquisite tan calyxes, like suede jackets shrugged over elegant pastel ballgowns.

When after a heavy shower last week I picked up one of the many flowers which the rain had loosened onto the ground beneath the tree, I detected a strong violet scent. The ripened seed cases are almost as attractive as the flowers themselves, being egg-shaped capsules containing numerous winged seeds. When driving along the busy Chertsey Road (A316) the other day I noticed Paulownia trees lining part of the carriageway, presumably indicating a toughness and resistance to pollution belied by their flowers’ delicate appearance.

I read that the tree originates from Eastern Asia, notably China, Japan and Korea. And whilst it is an introduced species in Europe and the USA, it was interesting to note that fossilised Paulownia tomentosa leaves have been found in Washington State. The name Paulownia was given by the German botanist Philipp Franz von Siebold in honour of Anna Pavlovna, 1795-1865, daughter of Tsar Paul I and wife of William II of the Netherlands: hence the tree’s other common name, the Princess tree. The image above demonstrates why the species epithet ‘tomentosa‘ meaning ‘covered in hairs’ is so apt.

Shades of mauve and purple are prevalent in gardens this month as shown in the images which follow. From left to right: Cerinthe major ‘Purpurascens’; Centaurea montana; Lavandula stoechas; Allium ‘Purple Sensation’.

Ex box and a princely garden

I recently completed the third front garden planting makeover since launching Weeds Roots & Leaves last autumn. The brief was to replace low box hedging and five larger box balls, all of which had been decimated by the lethal combination of box blight and box tree caterpillar, with Ilex crenata, Japanese holly. Whilst the central circular hedge and that beneath the bay window of the house were relatively easy to extract from the sandy soil, the mature box balls were reluctant to relinquish their positions, having developed very tenacious root systems. They eventually yielded in the face of extreme determination on my part, leaving behind soil in the planting holes which was depleted and dusty. I worked in several bags of well rotted farmyard manure and topsoil in order to improve the soil. This week, with the welcome help of a friend, I re-planted the hedged areas with 56 Ilex crenata plants which I sourced from North Hill Nursery in Chobham, using 2 Litre plants for the bay window hedge and 1 Litre plants for the circular hedge.

Because the garden already has a restrained dark green and cream colour scheme, I planted Anemone x hybrida ‘Honorine Jobert’ behind the bay window hedge. The gently curving bed beside the path to the front door already contained two fine Skimmia japonica ‘Kew Green’ and I added a further specimen of this glossy leaved cultivar in the space left by a box shrub as well as two more beside the wall bordering the pavement.

When I visited Prince Charles’s gardens at Highgrove on Thursday for a guided tour, I learnt that even a future monarch’s plants are not immune from box blight. On a couple of occasions during the tour the guide pointed out box substitute hedging. The first of these was Euonymus ‘Green Rocket’, a low hedge of which surrounds a bed in the Sundial Garden, framing the deep red flowers of an Anemone coronaria cultivar and the blue of Camassia leichtlinii. The guide explained that as soon as the box shows signs of infection or infestation it is grubbed out and replaced with alternative evergreen hedging. It was good to see that many box plants are thriving throughout the garden indicating that the strategy appears to be working. The other example of a successful substitution was in the very impressive walled Kitchen Garden where the box hedges had been replaced with Teucrium x lucidrys, commonly known as germander.

The only area where photography is permitted is beside the Orchard Room visitor centre where I spotted these tulips and olive tree.

The two hour tour took in much of the extensive grounds and, since photography was unsurprisingly not permitted, I jotted down the notes from the guide’s commentary and my impressions of a garden which has been 35 years in the making. A distillation of my notes follows.

A ‘signature plant’ whose bright yellowish green foliage highlights several sections of the garden is Philadelphus coronarius aurea, golden mock orange.
Throughout the garden are examples of what the guide described as ‘Highgrove whimsy’: wooden or stone pavilions and summer houses which I interpreted as the C21 equivalent of William Chambers’ ‘follies’ for George III at Kew.
The organic site is managed on sustainable principles, with all plant waste being recycled for mulch and compost and rainwater collected for irrigation. Biological control methods are implemented rather than pesticides. I was surprised to learn that in two areas of the gardens where azaleas are planted in raised beds, the soil is imported from Bowood House at Calne in Wiltshire approximately 22 miles away.
Camassia leichtlinii interspersed with deep red tulips are currently in bloom in the large wildflower meadow to the south east of the house, where the soil is Gloucestershire clay. An avenue of hornbeams, edged with low willow hoops, leads across the meadow to the Winterbourne Garden where more exotic species such as Chusan Palm and Tree ferns create an exotic display.
From here a long high walled corridor lined with waist height terracotta pots planted with azaleas, runs between the Kitchen Garden and the Arboretum. Halfway along this Azalea Walk a gate decorated with Egyptian hieroglyphs leads through to the Arboretum. The hieroglyphs read ‘The flowers in the garden are a reflection of the stars in the sky’.
In the Arboretum the acidic soil occurs naturally and acers and azaleas abound, the predominant colour being the pinkish red of Acer palmatum ‘Shindeshojo’. The understorey included Narcissus jonquila ‘Sun Disc’ and wood anemones.
An apple arch leads through the Kitchen Garden to a ring of Malus ‘Golden Hornet’ at the centre of which stands a pool into which a woven willow frog ladder has been lowered to assist exiting amphibia. Several gardeners were planting up the vegetable beds when we toured this part of the garden.
One of my favourite parts of the garden was The Stumpery, with upturned tree trunks accommodating a profusion of Tellima, ferns and species of Epimedium, Dicentra, Trillium and Pulmonaria. The genus which recurs throughout this area is Hosta and the guidebook reveals that Highgrove holds the National Collection of large and broad-leaved hostas.
Topiary features in many areas of the garden such as the yellow yew balls either side of the Thyme Walk which the garden team have fashioned into crowns, helter- kelters and cakes, and the extensive yew hedge which surrounds the most formal parts of the garden and which was designed in 1989 by Sir Roy Strong.

acer-palmatum-shindeshojo-ras-05-2011-7984-gpp — *Acer* *palmatum* ‘Shindeshojo’

DCF 1.0 — *Philadelphus coronarius aurea*

camassia_leichtlinii_blue_danube-w_2_1200 — *Camassia leichtlinii*

As we drove away from Highgrove a cloudburst descended which accompanied us most of the way home, the only comfort being that hopefully the Ilex I had planted two days before were receiving a similar drenching. Rain, or the lack of it, was a popular topic in the Gardeners’ Bothy at tea and lunchtime at Osterley on Friday, where my gardening week concluded. The previous day’s heavy rain in the West Country had made less of an impression in Middlesex and it remained dry during our garden volunteering duties on Friday save that at 3.15pm as we were preparing to leave the heavens opened and gave the gardens a much needed soak and us a good excuse for a cup of tea.

The Friday team was deployed in the Winter Garden in the morning, cutting back the colourful stems of the willows and Cornus, before they begin to leaf up further and make pruning a heavier job. This will encourage the plants to develop fresh stems this summer in preparation for another display of orange, red and yellow stems next winter. Head Gardener Andy pruned out branches of the large variegated hollies in the Winter Garden which were beginning to revert to a dark green. These prunings were shredded in the afternoon and deposited onto the pile of plant material in the yard which is the first stage of the composting system.

To the accompaniment of the shredder we split into smaller teams in the afternoon to work in and near the Tudor Walled Garden. Two of us weeded the area through and around the bean supports in the bed into which most of the edibles have been planted so far this year. Another three pricked out seedlings which will be hardened off in the cold-frames before being planted out in the next few weeks. The week before we had planted both flat leaved and curly parsley and lettuces in this bed which is divided into four quadrants, the planting lines having been marked out with twine. Slowly but surely the foundations are being laid for the profusion of crops which this bed will be producing by the end of the summer.

Purple days

Betrayal, remorse, death: and yet such beauty. Cercis siliquastris is said to be the tree on which Judas hanged himself after turning Jesus in to the authorities having identified him with a kiss, and in return for 30 pieces of silver. The Judas tree as it is commonly called is planted throughout the various gardens of the Alhambra in Granada: in those beside the Nasrid Palaces, the ramparts, the monastery of St Francis (now a hotel) and across the valley in the Generalife which my guidebook translated as ‘the garden of lofty paradise.

When I visited in the third week of March, few deciduous trees were in leaf, highlighting the many evergreens across the estate, notably the ranks of cypresses silhouetting the upper terraces of the Generalife. Consequently, the deep mauve flowers of the Judas tree stood out boldly in the landscape. Close examination reveals that the pea-like blooms erupt from branches, twigs and even trunks of these remarkable trees, with the heart-shaped leaves emerging several weeks after the flowers making the colour of the trees all the more prominent.

Shades of purple predominated in many of the plants in flower during my visit to Granada: the irises in the foreground of this view of the city from the Generalife Gardens and the wisteria clothing ancient walls and perfuming the air with the unique fragrance which in this country I associate with mid to late April.

And it wasn’t only the purple flowers which were in bloom at least four weeks before those at home. The palest of pink peonies dominated a bed surrounded with clipped myrtle in one of the Generalife’s upper gardens, the Jardines Altos.

This garden was beside the intriguing Escalera de Agua, where instead of a banister rail, water flows along stone channels on either side of the steps leading to the wonderfully named Mirador Romantico. This feature reminded me of William Kent’s early 18th century landscape garden at Rousham House in Oxfordshire where the shallow zig-zagged rill’s source is in a woodland glade leading to the cascades and pools which eventually flow into the River Cherwell. In the Generalife and the palaces of the Alhambra the numerous rills connect the pools and fountains at the centre of the patio gardens, many of them cloistered with elegant pillared arcades, off which lead chambers decorated with intricately worked plaster and ceramic tiles in vivid colours.

In the final week of April, at home in west London, the two notable Judas trees in Kew Gardens have been in full flower. One spreads its branches dramatically at the foot of the steps from King William’s Temple in the centre of the Mediterranean Garden and the other overhangs the perimeter wall beside the Queen’s Garden at the rear of Kew Palace. The former forms a backdrop to some of the glass sculptures of Dale Chihuly now erected in many parts of Kew Gardens, and to which I shall return in future posts. In my back garden at home I have been delighting in the extravagant purple and mauve swags of the wisteria, as well as its gorgeous perfume.

87cbc7f5-8281-4600-b5ad-3c1b657a274a

A sacred strawberry tree

In a secluded area behind the Garden House at Osterley stand two tall trees with richly russet coloured peeling bark: they are Arbutus menziesii, a species of strawberry tree whose fruits are distilled in Portugal into a spirit known as ‘Madrone’. When I visited Seville Cathedral a fortnight ago I found in one of the numerous side chapels a relief called La Virgen de Madrono, the Madonna of the Strawberry Tree. A kneeling angel offers the infant Jesus a dish brimming with the fruit of the Madrono. I read that the tree originates on the western coast of North America, from British Columbia to California and can reach a height of 25 to 30 metres.

Figs in squares and a recipe for Seville orange marmalade

During my recent visit to Andalusia, I noticed that in Seville, as in Granada and Cordoba, the most commonly planted street trees appeared to be citruses. It was a novelty to find these glossy leaved, and sometimes surprisingly thorny trees growing in the city’s thoroughfares and squares, because until this visit my only experience of the Seville orange was of the annual pilgrimage to the supermarket in mid January to secure a couple of kilos for marmalade making. This species of orange, Citrus aurantium, is favoured for preserve making because of its bitter peel and because its high pectin content helps it to set.

This year I bought double the usual quantity of fruit and enjoyed a companionable day with a friend de-pithing and de-pipping, slicing and simmering. With the aid of two preserving pans we filled approximately 30 1lb jars with the sharply sweet preserve. After giving some jars as gifts, I estimate this will last until the autumn when I fill the gap until next January by making three fruit marmalade with sweet oranges, grapefruit and lemon. Whilst in Spain I learnt that the Spanish word for any kind of jam or marmalade is ‘mermelada’ from which I understand our ‘marmalade’ derives, via the Portuguese word for quince, ‘marmelo’, which were originally boiled with sugar before the same technique was used with oranges.

Seville orange marmalade

1.5kg Seville oranges

2 lemons

2kg granulated sugar

1 muslin bag

8 sterilised jam jars

Halve and juice the oranges, then scrape out the pith and pips into the muslin bag or onto a square of muslin which tie into a bag.
Shred the rind thinly or thickly according to taste and add to the preserving pan with the orange juice, 2.5L of water and the muslin bag, immersed in the liquid and ties to the pan handle.
Simmer gently, uncovered, for 2 to 2.5 hours until the orange rind is soft. Meanwhile place some small plates in the fridge to chill.
Remove the muslin bag and squeeze as much of the juices into the pan as you can. Discard the bag.
Add 2 kg of sugar and the juice of the lemons and stir over a low heat until dissolved. Turn up the heat and boil rapidly for 15 minutes.
After 15 minutes, spoon a little marmalade onto a cold plate. There is a ‘set’ if the marmalade has a crinkly skin when pushed with a finger. If it’s still runny, cook for another 5 minutes and test again.
Remove the pan from the heat, skim any froth from the surface with a large spoon and leave for 15 minutes before filling the hot sterilised jars using a ladle with a lip.
Seal the jars with a disc of waxed paper the surface of the marmalade, a larger disc of cellophane secured with an elastic band and the jar lid. Finally, label the jars.

The other street trees which made a big impression on me in Seville were the Moreton Bay Figs or Australian Banyan, Ficus macrophylla, which in at least two squares we saw served as monumental anchor points at each corner. One such square was Plaza Cristo de Burgos where our Air BnB apartment was located: in a large two patio building behind an ancient facade. Fig trees similarly framed the corners of the Plaza de Museo, one side of which is occupied by Seville’s wonderful Museo de Bellas Artes, in a former convent building. We took a break from the beautiful paintings and sculpture at an open facaded ice cream shop on the opposite side of the square where, appropriately enough, I chose the delicious fig ice cream. Not that the small stumpy stalked fruit of the Moreton Bay Fig is appetising, being described as unpalatable and dry. The little fruits litter the ground and are presumably consumed by birds and other fauna.

The striking features of these trees, sheer girth and height aside, are the sinuous aerial roots which wind around the spreading buttress roots and are protected in ‘overcoats’ of hessian sackcloth. Clothing the roots in this way may be less a protective measure and more a method of preventing the tree living up to its species characteristic as a ‘strangler fig’. The magnificent specimens in this square are already huge and by restricting the younger aerial roots in this way, the scale of the trees might be controlled somewhat since I read that the roots are invasive and can damage pipework and pavements.

The oval evergreen leaves reflect the species epithet ‘macrophylla‘ meaning large leaved and create a dense shade which was welcome even in the last week of March.

Where the street trees are oranges

If the overriding fragrance in late March in the southern Spanish city of Granada is that of wisteria (four weeks ahead of Greater London!), that in Cordoba is of orange blossom. Orange trees, many bearing both blossom and fruit, line the squares and avenues of this elegant city. Those growing on Calle Claudio Marcelo, where our Air BnB apartment was located, were laden with waxy white flowers and were planted closely together to create a cooling, shady environment for the busy office workers who seemed to frequent this district, a ten minute walk from the famous Mezquita. A temperature on the day we arrived of 25 degrees helped to pump out the sweet scent onto the street, having the practical effect of masking the less than fragrant odours emanating from the large recycling bins opposite the door to the apartment building.

Previous readers of this blog may have noted the writer’s penchant for salmon-pink geraniums. Just a cursory exploration of the secluded patios and calles of Cordoba revealed dozens of terracotta pots attached to available vertical surfaces: white-washed walls, metalwork balcony railings and external staircases: almost all spilling over with geraniums ranging from pale pink to magenta, via salmon-pink and scarlet. Clearly little or no frost affects the colourful displays. In a few secluded patios, glimpsed through wrought iron grilles known as ‘cancelas’, orange Clivia Miniata is visible, its spectacular trumpet like flowers thrown into vivid relief against the strappy dark green leaves. To this Northern European visitor, used to seeing the ‘Bush lily’ in glasshouses or conservatories, this was a truly exotic sight: in March AND outside! I read recently on the Kew Gardens Facebook page that this South African species, also commonly known as the Natal lily, is threatened in the wild by over-harvesting for both horticultural and local medicinal uses. The latter includes the treatment of snake bites.

Citrus trees also feature in the courtyard gardens of the Palacio de Viana, a mansion dating from the sixteenth century in the district of Santa Marina in the north east of the city. Twelve patios and a central garden are embedded within the extensive buildings of the palace, each courtyard inspiration for a small formal city garden. There are central pools with fountains in most of the courtyards, each of which is named for a predominant feature (Courtyard of the Well, the Pool and the Chapel) or historic association: hence the Courtyards of the Cats and the Madama. The planting is distinctive in each patio with an emphasis on container planting in most of the smaller areas. The range of plants is very extensive. A corner in the reception courtyard features Monstera deliciosa, the Swiss cheese Plant, in terracotta pots. Assorted half pots filled with the Sprengeri asparagus fern, Asparagus sprengeri, decorate a nearby wall. Intricate patterns of pebble mosaic cover the patio floors around the central fountains and doors and shuttered windows painted a muted shade of turquoise open tantalisingly off each patio.

In the Courtyard of the Bars, intensely blue and purple Senecio cruentis (commonly called Cineraria) is displayed in a theatrical tableau against one of these doorways: another example of a plant which is more usually seen at home as an indoor or conservatory specimen. The formal structure of the large square garden is created with four quadrants each comprising four beds bordered with box hedging (not a hint of box blight to be seen), some of the top surfaces clipped into hemispheres. Here a Date palm, Phoenix dactylifera, towers over the citruses: lime, lemon, grapefruit and mandarin as well as sweet and bitter oranges.

Function also plays its part in this little corner of paradise, in the form of the Courtyard of the Gardeners, where the gardeners used to store their tools, and the Courtyard of the Pool with its glasshouse used for propagation and pool containing water from the well in the neighbouring Courtyard of the Well which is served by an underground stream and supplies enough water for all twelve courtyards.

The design principle of a house constructed around a central patio is evident in the site we visited in the countryside to the west of Cordoba, Madinat Al-Zahra, where archaeologists have uncovered and partially reconstructed an Arab city dating from the tenth century. Rooms in the houses in the upper part of the site are arranged around wide square patios. An introductory video in the visitor centre at the foot of the hillside upon which the ancient city is located, helped me to envisage how these homes would have looked. In the March 2019 edition of the RHS magazine, The Garden, an article about garden designer Tom Stuart-Smith’s ‘Le Jardin Secret’ in Marrakesh contained a useful summary of the elements which symbolise the Islamic vision of paradise: ‘fourfold layout, water (the essence of life), enclosure and shade, a private space and symbolic, indigenous planting’. Madinat Al-Zahra survived for barely 75 years before power struggles within the ruling caliph’s family brought about the destruction of the city. Six centuries after its demise, the builders of the Palacio de Viana used these elements in the design of the many courtyards of the palace.

Next time I visit Seville Cathedral and discover a link with a tree in the garden at Osterley.

Rolling along within the walls

After a few months lying dormant, having been cleared, weeded and mulched, the four beds which occupy the centre of Osterley’s Tudor Walled Garden are beginning to be planted for this year’s display of edibles and ornamentals. On 8 March gardener Ed rotovated the plots and the Friday team of volunteer gardeners raked the surface with landscape rakes to create as fine a tilth as possible. The next step was to even out the surface still further using a faded green garden roller, the ‘Ogle Roller’. This venerable machine was made in Derby at the Castwell Foundry but I’ve not been able to find an approximate date when these might have been in production. We discovered that it is easier to pull not push a garden roller on soil and that it required two of us to keep the roller steady and the lines straight, as well as achieving a neat turn at the end of each row. The latter involved a tricky manoeuvre where the two barrels of the Ogle came into play, with one remaining stationary and the other turning to help swivel the roller to a position alongside the previous ‘stripe’.

While we were occupied with this task, colleagues erected the hazel pole bean supports. Whilst the Climbing and Runner Bean plants will not be planted for a few weeks, we did plant a couple of dozen Broad Bean plants. These are the first of numerous vegetable and salad crops being raised from seed to be planted out when both weather and soil are a little warmer.

As an experiment this year, on 22 March one of the walled garden’s plots was sown with ‘green manure’ seeds. In 12 to 14 weeks’ time the plants will be chopped down, dug in and the bed planted with crops in the cabbage family for harvesting during next winter. The plot was first divided off into four triangular sections the interior of two of which were sown with Alfalfa and the other two with Purple Clover, with Black (Japanese) Oats being sown along the intersecting lines.

Whilst this part of the garden looks slightly bare at this time of year, these preparations are the foundation of the second of Osterley’s three garden zones. The Osterley garden is virtually divided into three principal zones, both for seasonal interest and to make it as easy as possible to manage with a small workforce of one Head Gardener and two full-time gardeners, albeit supported by a large team of volunteers. From now until mid-summer the first zone or Mrs Child’s Flower Garden (about which more in future posts) will dominate the scene. The Tudor Walled Garden will be at its height from mid-summer to October, followed by the third zone, the Winter Garden.

I shall plot the progress of the planting in the Tudor Walled Garden in this blog over the coming months.