GIVE LAVENDERS A HAIRCUT
This has been a bumper year for lavenders. With hot weather at the right time, flowers were abundant and fragrant.
Bees and other pollinators crowded among them, but it’s time to prune now for a great show next summer.
If grown as low hedges, clipping at least once a year is essential. Individual lavenders will also benefit from an annual cut.
Good-quality secateurs are usually all that is required. Small hedging shears will be easier for trimming hedges.
British gardening expert Nigel Colborn tells green-fingered readers that trimming your lavender once a year is essential
All lavenders sprawl with age. To prevent that, cut your plants well back.
Grab a bunch of spent flowering stems and sever, cutting into the leafy, growing parts of the plants to encourage new growth.
Large, feature lavenders will also benefit from the flower stems being pruned and leafy greenery cut.
Flowering will be more copious next summer. Hedges or bushes which have become badly splayed may be salvageable.
Deal with half of each plant now and the other in 2021. Cut one side of the bush almost to ground level.
New basal shoots should come up from the low stumps. Repeat next year, cutting the other side of the shrub back.
This is a good time to plant tougher lavenders. ‘English’ ones such as Lavandula angustifolia and L. x intermedia are hardy and safe to plant now.
Wait until spring for varieties such as L. pedunculata.
CLEAN UP HELLEBORES
Oriental hellebores are waking. New leaves will appear from the ground and are vulnerable to infection so remove those that emerged last winter and have grown during summer.
Diseases may show as black marks on the old leaves. Whether marked or not, all old foliage should be cut away.
Don’t trim back taller, shrubby hellebores such as H. foetidus or H. argutifolius.
Those will produce flowers at the tops of the leafy stems that developed earlier this year
All old foliage on oriental hellebores should be cut away but don’t trim back taller, shrubby hellebores such as H. foetidus or H. argutifolius
GET POTTING CYCLAMEN
If you kept indoor cyclamen from last winter, or grew plants from seed, nudge them out of dormancy.
Make sure they are in pots with drainage. If any need re-potting, handle with care.
Partially fill the pots with compost. Set each tuber in the compost, barely covering the tops. Water regularly but don’t overdo it.
If you kept indoor cyclamen from last winter, or grew plants from seed, nudge them out of dormancy
QUESTION
I grew three foxgloves last spring — white, dark pink and rosy purple. I let them self-seed and now have lots of baby plants. When will those flower?
Can I transplant them — and if so, when? Mrs B. Kowalski, Kent.
Your seedlings will flower early next summer.
You can transplant them between now and late autumn. Grow your plants in partial shade or sun, preferably in soil which does not dry out quickly.
Water them at planting, and again if there’s a dry spell before October. They will be hardy all winter.
You can foresee flower colours by looking at the leaf undersides. Plants with pink-leaf midribs will have purple-pink flowers.
Those with paler-pink midribs will have pink blooms. White-flowered seedlings have no colour in their midribs
PLANT OF THE WEEK: HELENIUM ‘RUBY THUESDAY’
I know it looks daft but that spelling is correct.
‘Ruby Thuesday’ is an excellent variety of the American wildflower sneezeweed, Helenium autumnale.
Sturdy stems grow to 75cm, branching at their tips and bearing showy flowers with reflexed outer petals.
I know it looks daft but that spelling is correct. ‘Ruby Thuesday’ is an excellent variety of the American wildflower sneezeweed, Helenium autumnale
Flowering from mid-August into September, the central cones are dark chestnut, turning gold as they mature.
The petals — ray florets — are mahogany red and sweep back as they age.
Heleniums like fertile soil and summer heat but hate being too dry, so have a can of water handy.
Like many perennials, they benefit from being divided and the splits re-planted every third year