My previous gardening blog was written for those starting out in gardening. It suggested people should look more closely at what their garden can actually provide before launching out and purchasing any new plants that might not otherwise suit their conditions. Here, I’m highlighting a few points for you to consider before planting. But first, let me explain the photograph…
Gardeners the world over view a ‘walled garden’ as the ideal environment to protect garden plants from inclement weather – specifically the wind, but the reality is quite different as the top picture shows. Between the winters of 1999 and 2002 I was compelled to protect my new shrubs from terrific swirling winds that wreaked havoc on the very plants I had invested in to protect my planting! The prevailing westerly winds would simply blast themselves along the east-west wall until the first corner encouraged them to swirl and damage my new planting.
This vivid example serves to show just how you can take nothing for granted in the garden. I want to extend this point with some more examples that highlight the importance of really knowing your garden’s aspect and the conditions underground because they can dramatically affect both your wallet and gardening pleasure. The essence of all this is; that it’s far better to work with mother nature than against her. Or to put it more crudely, if a gardener insists on planting cacti in boggy conditions – they will be buying new plants every year.
Plants are naturally very resilient. They want to survive, they really do. They can also be ‘bloody minded’ and defy the odds with apparent ease! If they ‘like’ their ground conditions they will surprise you and survive much colder spells than the texts suggest. Like I said in the previous blog; they just need you to put them in the right place to help them help themselves.
So what do you really know about your garden’s aspect?
I bet many reading this believe the warmest wall in a garden is the south wall. Rubbish! Think again.
The south wall actually faces north – it’s the south face of the north wall which attracts the sun and is the warmest. Ok, so I’m being a bit pedantic here I know, but it’s important. This is just one example of the importance of proper consideration of your garden’s aspect and remember all this is turned upside down for gardens in the southern hemisphere. Here’s another example.
When I began gardening one of the biggest mistakes I made (that I know about), was to plant all my new ‘borderline tender’ shrubs against the east wall, which faces west, believing it to be one of the warmest areas of my new garden. Yet I couldn’t be more mistaken. Why?
Because I didn’t appreciate that the wall didn’t only shield my new plants from the cold east wind, it also blotted out the morning sun. So much so in fact, that during winter months the lower winter sun didn’t reach my plants close to the wall until mid-day and was effectively gone by 2pm. As a result, my west-facing wall is actually the coldest part of my garden from mid-November right through until early March! Mind, my west-facing wall is also one of the warmest between April and October when the sun is higher and can reach it much earlier in the day – all because of the wall’s height. During my first ‘winter of discovery’ I lost every newly planted tender shrub planted against the west-facing wall in just three months!
But experience has since shown that if I had put those same plants just ten feet further off that same wall they would have caught that early winter sun much earlier in the day and could well have survived. Today, the west-facing wall is planted with Sinicalia, Clerodendron, Lonicera, Akebia and Wisteria. Plants that ‘die’ right back to bare stems or disappear altogether underground for the winter months only to provide magnificent colour and spectacle throughout the summer/autumn.
Two years ago I repurchased one of those tender shrubs that I lost against the west-facing wall and squeezed it up against the north wall – facing south. During the recent bitter spell the garden temperature plunged to -10C and I forgot about my young abutilon, which, many texts suggest, should expire around -5C. Not a bit of it! It’s putting out new leaf like never before. Why?
Because it got every scrap of winter sunshine and, at the base of the wall, any wall, the soil is often much drier – particularly if the wall has a good coping. This is important; Because by keeping the root ball of your borderline-tender plants drier drammatically increases their chances of survival. They won’t have ‘cold wet feet’ for months and are much more likely to pull through a cold winter. But it’s not only my abutilon that has pulled through despite everything. Other tender plants like the crinodendron hookerianum and my carnivorous Californian ‘natives’ (Sarracenia & Darlingtonia) which should all be dead now, at least according to the texts, happily survived the sub-zero conditions because their bases were drier than normal. (Protecting your tender plants in winter will be the subject of a separate post).
With few exceptions, the majority of your tender or borderline-tender plants will survive far lower temperatures than many texts will give them credit for PROVIDED they’re located in the ‘right’ place’. Discovering the ‘right place’ for your plant and for you as gardener and ‘plant arranger’ is a large part of what gardening is about.
Sometimes the ‘right place’ can be beside the protective screen of a larger shrub or tree which helps to take the sting out of any icy blasts. The wind in your garden can be a killer, not only because of the obvious wind chill and the risk of physical damage, it can also dry plants out and literally ‘burn’ their foliage leaving brown-tinged leaves, until new ones appear during the following spring.
Trees and taller shrubs will also protect the plants under them from frosts. And remember frost ‘flows’ like water to the lowest level of your garden and from one garden to another. So if you’re on a sloping site it will pay you to ‘let the frost out’ of your garden rather than put a solid fence or wall up that serves to trap it in!
These are just a few things you will notice about your own garden when you start viewing it from your intended plants’ perspective. A good tip I used early on was to attach a ribbon to canes located at various places around the garden – particularly odd corners – as they will surprise you. Some will be fairly calm areas and other corners will look as if they’re in a tornado at the same time – depending upon the winds’ direction.
These are just a few pointers to get you started, but I hope their example will encourage you to reaffirm your own microclimate.
