Julie is a free-lance gardener living near York, England. After training in Horticulture, she has spent the last 25 years combining life as mum of 4 and farmer’s wife with practical gardening, designing and construction. Her work ranges from creating new gardens (or parts of gardens) to routine maintenance and advice.
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Always room for just one more!
August 4, 2009
My youngest daughter has recently returned home after six months travelling with two close friends. They have had the most wonderful adventure which has taken them from Thailand through Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand and then Chile, Argentina, Bolivia and Peru.
It is so good to have her safely home, that as far as I am concerned, just now, she is the best thing ever to come out of South America!
However, she does have tough competition in the form of Verbena bonariensis!!http://www.flickr.com/photos/julieparishruralgardener
This hardy perennial has rather sparse, stiff and upright green stems which branch and look very elegant, because the rather narrow green leaves do not hide this ‘airy’ structure. These stems carry lilac purple flowers which start in mid summer and continue right through to early winter. Verbena bonariensis is one of those plants that you can usually squeeze in to a garden that is already full. It looks great when it is planted in a drift through a border amongst other perennials and shrubs. Although it can grow to five or six feet, it is so slender and ’see through’ that it will not dominate and can actually be used very effectively even at the front of a border. By August, when some perennials are looking a bit tired and past their best, V. bonariensis is at the peak of performance.
The flowers are lovely with silver foliage and also look good against green. When it comes to other flowers, they look pretty amongst pink, blue and purple and striking against hot orange, yellow and red! As Autumn arrives, I love the effect of looking through V. bonariensis planted where orange Pyracantha berries such as P. ‘Golden Charmer’ can be seen beyond.
Verbena bonariensis self seeds readily in most soils, although not on heavy clay. Although a hardy perennial, it sometimes succumbs to a severe winter, although many of the ones I thought had died last winter did shoot up from ground level again after being cut back hard in mid Spring. Some plants will actually seed themselves to death if allowed to do so. A position in full sun and reasonably moist fertile soil is preferred, but if you plant young plants between other shrubs or perennials, they will find their way up to the sun where possible.
If you think your garden is full, but you don’t have any of these lovely plants, how about speaking nicely to a friend or neighbour who has a few spare seedlings? Gardens, in my experience, are never quite full.
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2 Responses to “Always room for just one more!”
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Speaking of gardens being full…. mine is packed full of tomato plants. Some are in the green house and doing fine, but the ones in the garden seem to be doing not so well. I wonder if you could offer some advice.
Some of the tomatoes are turning red and ripening nicely, however some are turning brown and rotting before even going red. Do you know what might be causing this?
Emma, I always find questions about plant problems a bit of a challenge without actually seeing them for myself! I am wondering if the brown starts at the bottom of the fruit, if so, it could be blossom end rot. This is quite a common tomato problem. It is due to a localized calcium deficiency in the tomato fruits. Although it CAN happen, this deficiency is usually not due to a lack of calcium in the soil. More likely, is that eratic watering is the cause. You say the greenhouse is fine, therefore I am wondering if you have left the outdoor ones to the rain?
Calcium in the soil is dissolved by water and taken up by the plant’s roots. In conditions of high rainfall or overwatering, the water moves faster than usual from roots to leaves. As you probably know, water moves from root to leaf, where transpiration then removes the water from the plant. When there is an excess of water, it moves so fast that the calcium is delivered to the leaves before being evenly distributed en route! As the fruits are at the ends of branches and the last in line for their share…they miss out.
This localised deficiency of calcium in the tomatoes could be your problem.
You could take off any fruit with tiny blotches and allow them to continue ripening indoors and cut off the rot. Try to give even watering and a mulch is worthwhile…this helps maintain a more stable situation. Don’t overfeed the plants…more imbalances again!
I am not a fruit expert, I would also suggest that perhaps you join a Gardening Forum such as Gardeners corner or similar, where there are many ppl with differing/similar experiences to help you find a solution to a particular problem!