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Celebrating the Hellebore

By on March 19, 2012 in Cut flowers, Hellebores

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I decided to take a break from shovelling muck, lifting and dividing perennials, pruning roses and sowing annuals to play with hellebores. They took a hammering back in February with that cold snap but after trimming off the damaged leaves and stems they are looking better than ever. I have given them a feed with some of our chicken poo, turbo charged, home made compost and if I get round to it I really should do some hand pollinating and save some seed for the new woodland area we are creating. So many of my favourite flowers for cutting are shade lovers; in an open field shade is a rather precious commodity. We have a line of large beech trees underplanted with nettles, after four years I am ready for a change…

 

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Anyway, back to the hellebores! A couple of years ago I bought a job lot of these little lovelies from Hugh Nunn at Harvington Hellebores in Evesham. I had seen an article about his hellebores in Gardens Illustrated and was seduced by the beautiful pictures of them, he has been breeding them for twenty years to get some really bright distinctive colours. I am now the proud owner of single and double- flowered varieties in yellow, white, apricot, picotee, pink, red and black. For arranging they can be tricky, I usually wait until they are forming their seed heads. At this stage they hold very well and will be happy in a vase for at least a week. If you want to enjoy them before that they either need to be cut very short and seared or floated in a bowl of water. I could not resist displaying them on my rather weary whippet Violet, I think she is a bit fed up of being my flower model!

 

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Our polytunnel is now bursting with spring bulbs so the mail order and our Saturday shop are open for business again. We are offering more delivery days this year (Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) and a couple of new ways to enjoy our flowers: 'Best of the Bunch' and 'DIY Cut Flowers in a Box'.

'Best of the Bunch' will be a pure and simple bunch of one of our favourites, starting with our anemones and followed by sweet peas, peonies, dahlias and whatever else is in abundance and looking gorgeous.

 

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The 'DIY Cut Flowers in a Box' will be a box full of foliage, filler and focal flowers for people to arrange themselves to have a few arrangements around the house or perhaps for an event.

 

This week sees the start of the wedding season and my first growing course. We are fully booked for March but still have a few places on the April dates.

 

 

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Dazzling Dahlias

By on November 30, 2011 in Cut flowers, dahlias, propagation

 

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I could not finish this season without a blog about dahlias. They have always held a special place in my heart being the first cut flower I ever grew, back in my early 20s. I was captivated by their saturated colour and impossibly perfect forms and have grown them ever since. I also love their productivity, anything that responds to being picked by producing more flowers has got to be a winner. They are a controversial flower; you either love them or hate them. I think a lot of people say they don't like them because they associate them with earwigs and garish rows of flowers on the allotment. I always say "there is a dahlia for everyone" and will do my best to convert any dissenters by showing them every shape, size and colour in our dahlia beds which house about 80 varieties. Dahlia breeding has come a long way since being Grandad's favourite, with smaller, more delicate shapes and colours working well in mixed borders. I favour the Karma range, a relatively new strain bred by the Dutch for the purpose of cutting. They have lovely long stems, are mostly waterlily in shape and have a longer vase life.

 

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We have just been lifting a few hundred tubers this week which need to be divided and relocated next spring to free up the spanish tunnel for more roses. The tubers are drying off (upside down) for a couple of weeks before they get stored in the barn in crates of compost over winter. In the other dahlia bed I have left the tubers in with about 70cm of compost and straw on top. It worked well last year despite geting down to minus 20.

I have had some really good whites and creams this year for all of our weddings. I have always found white very difficult in dahlias as it is prone to weathering very easily, but 'Eternal Snow' and 'Nathalies Wedding' (both waterlily shapes) remained pristine and featured in many bouquets this year.

 

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I will keep an eye on the tubers for rot through the winter months. In February/March my favourites will come out of store and on to a heat mat to get them to shoot. These will provide cuttings for plants to sale in late spring.

 

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Clogs in the blog

By on November 11, 2011 in Cut flowers, Plant breeding, roses

My first blog for many months… I did have very good intentions but they got swept away by the demand for our flowers which seemed to take up every waking hour. Not that I'm complaining….

Anyway, the season has drawn to a close so I am now able to waffle on all winter about….well, flowers. If I'm not working with them I have time to talk about them and all the lessons learnt this season, and maybe squeeze in some ideas for 2012. 

I found lots of inspiration in Holland last week when we visited the Hortifair, an annual get together of amongst other things, cut flower breeders and growers from all round the world. I made some useful contacts with a few Dutch nurseries, who specialise in growing plants for cutting. It was sad to see the UK only represented by one grower (David Austin's roses); the fair was dominated by the Ecuadorian and Kenyan growers with Ethiopia being the new kid on the block. I presume these countries are favoured because the climate allows flowers to be grown year round and natural resources and labour are cheap. A conversation with an Israeli plant breeder was eye-opening, he was genuinely shocked when I asked him about the flowering period for Solidago (Golden Rod) – "don't you want to grow it year round under lights?". When I told him that my selling point was seasonal he looked bemused, obviously something he had never heard a grower say before!

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There was not a great deal of variety at the fair, with roses being the main flower of the show. These were the kind of rose that has sacrificed all trace of scent for stem length, head size, vase life and productivity. Inevitably it is profit that comes first, which has taken flower breeding away from fundamental characteristics that we value like scent and seasonality. I suppose I knew all of this but the show just helped to reinforce my belief in what we are doing.

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I have returned with a very long wish list and to 1000 new perennial plants which arrived whilst I was away. We are expanding into a new 3 acre field which is already planted up with a few thousand scented narcissi, tulips and dutch iris bulbs. Once all the planting is done (which is slow going in this dank, gloomy weather) I will get on with lifting the dahlias from the spanish tunnel (like a polytunnel but with a just a top cover in the summer months). I have learnt that they do much better outside with good air circulation and plenty of moisture to keep the dreaded red spider mite at bay. They will be replaced by another bed of roses, this time lots of soft pinks, apricots and blush/nude tones for weddings.

 

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Rachel Siegfried

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