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Blooming marvellous
Conrad Astley24/ 3/2006
Even the world of gardening is affected by changes in fashion. As the clocks go forward, Conrad Astley spoke to a gardening expert to find out what would be appearing this spring.
IT may not have felt like it over the last few weeks, but spring
is here.
This means the time for keen gardeners to get out their wellies and
prepare to spend hours kneeling in the mud. Or does it? According
to Clare Swatridge, head of plant buying at Cheshire Garden
Centres, times have changed.
Many people don't have huge amounts of time to devote to gardening,
but they are still keen to take advantage of attractive new plants
that have come out onto the market.
And with such a variety available, shopping for plants is now like
buying an outfit - choosing groups of items which look good
together.
"People want instant gardening," she said.
"They've progressed from saying `I want this product.' Now they
need advice about what goes together. They say `I want this
effect.'
"We try to get our displays looking like that, so people can see
what they look like together, and we build them around different
themes. People need help with that because they're short of time.
It's like when you go shopping for clothes. You might buy a pair of
trousers and pick accessories that go with it."
She said large specimen plants, which come in 20-30ltr pots, are
incredibly popular, and although bamboo does not sell as well as it
used to, it is still a fashionable choice.
Palm trees have also become popular over the last decade, along
with olive trees - which must be kept in the right part of a
garden.
Clare said climate change has had a powerful effect on recent
gardening trends.
"You always used to see palm trees in Cornwall," she said.
"But they are becoming very popular in the north now as well.
"Climate is a big factor. Although it has been cold over the last
few months, our winters have generally become much milder, and this
has encouraged people to be more adventurous. Palm trees have
gradually become more popular over the last 10 years."
A national obsession with health food has also inspired more
gardeners to attempt growing vegetables, with tomatoes, aubergines
and cucumbers being snapped up by greenhouse owners.
Blueberry plants - producing some of the most popular health foods
- have also become very popular, although gardeners are not as keen
to grow more traditional English fruits like apples and
pears.
"Blueberries aren't hard to keep. They're very good for you, and
they're supposed to have a bit of an effect like Viagra.
"We sell a lot more vegetables than we used to. People like to know
what they're eating now, so if they have grown the food themselves
they can be sure nothing artificial has been used on it.
"People also go away to more exotic places now, so they see things
and want to have a go at growing them."
The obsesses ion with health food has also inspired many gardeners
to grow herbs, such as rosemary and basil, while lavender was also
a popular choice.
She said wall climbing plants, such as climatis and
trachelospermum, which has scented white flowers, were also
popular, while Japanese maples - either small trees or shrubs - had
recently become fashionable choices.
There were also newly developed varieties of flowers, such as
the osterspermum or South African daisy, and the erysimum stars and
stripes, a wall plant which grows to 60cm and has pink
flowers.
The company, which has a garden centre on Manchester Road in
Wilmslow, recently bred the new strain at its Congleton
centre.
Like all fashions, there are things which fall out of favour. Clare
said potentillas, a prickly shrub which the police traditionally
advised homeowners to grow for security purposes, was not as
popular as it used to be.
Meanwhile, hardy perennial plants, which reappear every spring,
have now begun to come back into fashion.
"It's because they're quite dramatic when they come up," she
said.
"The backbone of the garden is these shrubs that come up every
year."
GETTING your garden spruced up is only the first part of the job
- you then need to make sure people can see it.
Garden lighting has become popular over the last few years, with
garden centres and DIY shops selling a huge range of outdoor
lamps.
But according to one specialist, most of what goes out on the
market isn't up to the job.
Dave Herbert, who runs Chester-based Garden Lighting By Design,
says most of the commercially-available outdoor lamps aren't
powerful enough, or create the wrong sort of light - spreading the
beam across a wide area rather than concentrating on a specific
feature.
Dave says to light a garden properly, the lighting has to be
specifically designed to bring out its good points.
He works with Manchester-based theatrical lighter Jason Taylor, who
normally uses his artistic skills to illuminate West End
shows.
The company has worked in gardens ranging from 17 acre country
estates - where months are spent getting the lighting just right -
to small urban gardens.
They have recently spent two months working on a nine acre garden
in the Yorkshire village of Penistone.
However, Dave said regardless of the garden's size, the key to
success was the same.
"You don't want to see the source of the light,you just want the
effect," he said.
"You can get these lamps that just screw into the wall - and that's
the worst thing you can do because your eye is drawn to the lamp,
but when we light a garden we make sure you don't see any of the
bulbs.
"We mark out the points of the garden that should be lit, such as
trees, and put lights onto them that will create a lot of shadows
and add depth."
Call Dave on 0845 601 5763.
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