Blog 12

Right Planting Place



Blossom and buzzing – bright Japonicas lift the heart on cloudy days and peach blossom brings promise of summer fruits... with the collaboration of busy Buff-tailed Bumblebees. In shadier places the quieter, less flamboyant flowers of woodlands emerge and open in the sunlight. 



The sunny window of opportunity for growth, flowering and pollination of ground dwelling plants is short in wild woods. Leaf buds swell and open on tall dominant trees and the woodland leaf canopy closes over like a dark summer umbrella. 

Here 


wild Windflowers (Wood Anemones) flourish with Celandines and Violets. They all just appeared from elsewhere in the garden and established themselves here behind a Moss Rose (which right now is a bunch of thorny sticks filtering morning dappled sun before the house creates shade). Plants flourish in their own individually chosen places!

These particular Windflowers 


have a history... they were collected from the wild before World War 1, before there were laws against digging up wild plants. It was not uncommon for country people to plant favourite and treasured plants in odd corners of their cottage garden and veg plots – flowers from the wild together with an incongruous exotic from the local ‘big house’ via one of its gardeners. This farm labourer’s cottage garden, with its little patch of Windflowers under an apple tree, became ours in the early ‘70’s. These are their treasured offspring carefully preserved intact through plant generations.

Their official place for 40 years has been close to a wall under a Spindle tree. Suddenly four years ago they appeared here by the house where for some reason they are flourishing and multiplying much better (and attract early bees). Maybe they were being outcompeted with too much shade. More about mimicking plant habitats below...

Wildlife Gardening Tips: Today, a little patch of woodland floor can be easily created, without raiding dwindling woodland habitats. Celandines (photo 3) can be bought online, as can white Wood Anemones. Blues and Pinks 




can be introduced with Anemone blanda (Greek Windflower), also various species of Violets -photo 3 and these:-


 A few early daffs, primroses and Christmas hyacinths from previous years 

create something similar with spring buzz ... for bees, bee-flies (mimicking bees, on the wing now) and people!

Checking the wild origin of a plant is always useful in deciding where and what to plant. All today’s garden plants were originally collected from the wild back in the last two centuries and much earlier. Artificial selection and crossing have created more flamboyance for human delight, but they usually retain their dependence on soil type, temperature, shade etc.

Even a ‘builder’s rubble’ garden has its team-mate – here


a particularly dark Iris unguicularis (Algerian iris). It grows naturally in sunny spots in North Africa and Greece and its islands - in rocky, dry mountainous places with poor soil = builder’s rubble! Which we were left with by our front door. Green caterpillars thrive on its buds in the depth of winter, food for the robin, but enough deep velvet flowers survive to delight!

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