When someone is ill they are occasionally described as seedy: the last thing you want in the garden
When someone is ill they are occasionally described as seedy: the last thing you want in the garden is a lot of seedy flowers. With herbaceous plants, the ones which go to ground in winter, it is enough to pick off the heads with finger and thumb, but if you can spare the time to cut the length of stem below the flower back to the next bud or joint, the plant will look better. It may seem to be light work for the lazy, who like to have things “just so,” but it is the most useful thing you can do to your plants, if you want them to flower non-stop. As soon as a plant sets seed it has fulfilled its purpose in life and it starts to decline.
Your aim is to frustrate that aim, by nipping off the flower heads before they turn to seed heads. The plant then produces more flowers in a desperate bid to beat the biological time-clock before the end of summer. Because pruning is such a complicated business, everyone should keep a simple guide to hand for reference: proper pruning done at the right time means less work and more flowers in the long run.DEADHEADING MADE SIMPLEDeadheading always conjures up pictures of lady gardeners with hats and trugs. Shrubs like winter jasmine and japonica (Chaenomeles) should have been pruned back to the wall after flowering by now and they will need some retraining. The vital thing to know is that you want the jasmine to make as much new wood as possible for flowers next year, but the japonica has to be restricted to the old stems, because that is where its best flowers occur. !! The photographs of deadheading and climbers on these pages are taken from ‘RHS Pruning and Training’ (Dorling Kindersley, pounds 19.99).CLIMBERSClimbers tend to get out of hand if they are not regularly tied in.
It can be composted or given away as fodder.New management techniques can make all the difference. Left to themselves, clematis prefer to grow in a bunch of shoots which rush up the wall in a tangle. You need to tease them apart and direct the new shoots in different directions. It is much easier to tackle the training of any wall shrub while you can still see where it is meant to go.
Once you find what suits your plot there will be more time to sit out of doors – the real purpose of summer gardens. Hire or borrow a strimmer to cut the hay in mid- July and it should be removed once it has dried off. Lavenders, iris, cistus, ceanothus, poppies, dianthus, masses of shrubby herbs and rock plants would all mean less work and probably be more rewarding on this soil than peonies, delphiniums and roses.In my earlier guide, I suggested that grass cut slightly longer grows less fast than when it has been scalped. For those with too large a lawn this could be the year to start leaving some of it to grow to hay height, with paths cut through it; a garden meadow makes an exciting place for children to play. Bulking-up the soil with compost in winter will improve things, but it would be less work to change to plants which like the conditions on offer.
Make the summer the time for seeing that plants do well, locally without water. By July growth starts to slow down and if you have looked after your plants well in the early part of the summer, the intervals can be longer.If you regularly find you are having to water for things to survive it may mean that your soil is too free-draining and does not hold the moisture. Clay soils hold moisture better than sandy ones, but even in a drought on the lightest, fastest draining soil, it is not necessary to water more than once a fortnight, if you do it properly. One two-gallon can should be enough for a bush rose or a large herbaceous plant, but for a standard tree, three times that amount every three weeks should see it established. Newly planted trees and shrubs will also need water and with all of these it is better to give a good soaking at intervals than to adopt a little and often routine All soils are different. If you have to do this, water in the early evening when the sun has gone down.