Hardy perennial Hellebore ‘Slate’. Photograph: Dave Zubraski/Alamy
Pickle this
If your food waste goes to landfill, you’re missing a great soil improver. A bokashi system lets you collect and ferment it using beneficial micro-organisms: it’s easy, quick and compact, plus the runoff (or bokashi juice) is great for keeping sinks and drains “sweet”. Put the fermented waste in your heap or wormery, or bury it in the soil. For a bokashi starter kit, try evengreener.com.
Visit this
How many cherry trees can you name? I bet it’s one: ‘Morello’. The Cherry Fair at Brogdale Farm in Kent on 19 July aims to open our eyes to a world of cherries, from ‘Stella’ to ‘Merchant’. Taste and buy more than 30 varieties, and find out how to coax a great crop from your own tree.
Plant this
Come spring, you’ll be glad you planted up that unloved shady corner. Hardy perennial Hellebore ‘Slate’ has pretty, purple-black blooms from February to April, and would look good with lime-green euphorbias or white pulmonarias. Height and spread: 40cm x 40cm. Buy one H. ‘Slate’ in a 9cm pot for £11.99 (including free mainland UK p&p). To order, call 0330 333 6856, quoting ref GU357, or go to our Readers’ Offers page. Dispatched in July and August.
I remember the day I first I saw a dog’s tooth violet. It was April in the
garden my parents moved to in the mid-70s and the find was just one of many
treasures that emerged after we cleared 50 years’ of undergrowth. The plant was
part of a tightly clustered colony in a little clearing under the shade of a
liquidambar. The leaves emerged first, pushing up and then opening out in a
splay of blue-green paddles that were curiously mottled. Pointed buds soon flung
the petals back to reveal a push of green stamens. It was a mystery how
something so exquisite had survived the neglect.
It was several more years before I came to meet Erythronium
dens-canis in the wild. It was a June trip and my first plant-hunting
venture in the Picos de Europa in northern Spain, aged 19. I had no idea that
you could see summer astrantia in the morning and narcissus in the afternoon
through making the ascent. We moved through nut woodland, where moody mourning
widow combined with Lilium martagon, and through orchid-filled meadows
mounded with wild peas. Gaining altitude, we saw the turf shorten and the season
move backwards as we approached snowmelt. It was here that I found the very same
erythronium. Once again they were alone and ahead of the summer competition.
Seeing plants growing in the wild takes some of the mystery away from how to
grow them. The mountainside erythroniums had all the water and light they would
need while they flowered, seeded and retreated below ground again before the
slopes dried in their dormancy. Our domesticated dog’s tooth violets had
survived there in the moss, with spring moisture and light while the liquidambar
was dormant.
I’m guessing our hearty soil and lush grass will overwhelm them at the farm,
but the dog’s tooths are not difficult bulbs as long as they do not have too
much competition. Winkling them into the beds among later-emerging perennials,
such as peony, is the best bet. I will also try some of the other species.
Plants adapt in the wild by evolving their genus – and we can use this to our
advantage. Perfect partner: the violet head of mourning widow
(Cranesbill). Photograph: Arco Images GmbH /Alamy
Erythronium also occur in North America and the American species offer up
several good varieties. E tuolumnense stands about 18in high with
apple-green foliage and starry yellow flowers. ‘Pagoda’ is a fine and vigorous
selection for open woodland or a border that allows it time to settle in. Plant
it among pulmonaria for a springtime combination and the cover of foliage once
they become dormant. Erythronium californicum ‘White Beauty’ s smaller in stature, with
marbled foliage and ivory flowers. I like to mingle them through a low carpet of
wild strawberries and for the carpet to sweep among epimedium, which enjoys the
same conditions. If you find them a place that they like and where they can be
left alone, you may well be planting them for future generations.
Get growing
Buy dog’s tooth violet plants now while in full growth or order for delivery
in the autumn as dormant rhizomes. Keep rhizomes damp if you are waiting to
plant them by storing in compost, as they will not recover from dehydration.
