The Power Flower

Love them or hate them, bedding geraniums have to come top of my list for their sheer staying power. But even with geraniums, it pays to be a little bit discriminating if you are after maximum performance for the minimum effort.

For ultra low maintenance, my advice is to stick to the zonal types, the ones with banded markings on the leaves. Named varieties are the safest bet as they tend to form compact, bushy plants. The ones sold simply as geraniums often grow rather leggy and uneven, not what you want for a container display. They are also less prone to geranium rust, a common fungal disease that disfigures the leaves late in season.

Don’t worry too much about actual name: ‘Aprika’, ‘Ringo’, there are hundreds to choose from but they are nearly all good, so go for the colour that takes your fancy. Think twice about white though because the flowers turn brown as they fade and they need constant deadheading to keep them looking good. In a wet summer, double flowers often collect the rain and the blooms can start to rot during prolonged grey spells.

Written By Alistair Ayres

Why Do Supermarkets Taste So Bland?

For me even the organ vine-ripened varieties don’t come a patch to one freshly picked from my own plant. The thing about supermarkets is that choose varieties that look good on display, have a long shelf life and are not easily damaged by customer handling. They also stop the fruit from fully ripening by putting it cool storage. If you want really tasty tomatoes, my golden rule is never ever put them in the fridge.

Tomatoes are very easy to grow. Virtually any container, some decent compost, a bottle of liquid feed and your away. The problem is that it’s a bit late to start growing them from seed. Late in the season the plants on sale can also look a bit sad. Fortunately, tomatoes are exceptionally easy to grow from cuttings. Take a side shoot, trim the bottom and remove all but the top four leaves. Poke it into a pot of compost and it will start growing within a week or so.

If you don’t know a friend or neighbour who will give you a small bit of one their plants to get started, even starved and leggy plants from market stalls can be made young and healthy again if you use it for cuttings.

Written By Alistair Ayres

Plant Resurrection

So many times people have brought me a plant with one sickly-looking leaf and asked how they can revive it. It’s a bit like the Monty Python sketch: ‘My plant’s not dead it’s just resting’. Here is my advice that might just work for some plants that are just resting. Bury them.

It’s not a cruel as it sounds. For example, shrubby plants like heathers, hebes and lavenders, along with geraniums and busy lizzies, may actually form new shoots if you bury them. Just leave the last surviving leaves above ground. If it doesn’t work, at least they had a decent burial.
For plants that are just leggy or bare at the base, burying is an excellent rejuvenation technique.

Written By Alistair Ayres

Death Traps

Clay pot saucers look innocent enough but they can bring a slow agonizing death to patio plants. The problem happens during prolonged periods of heavy rain when is retained in the saucers. As a result the compost remains soaking wet and starved of air, and the plant roots slowly rot.
To protect your plants from waterlogging, fill the saucers with gravel so the plant roots won’t have to sit in water. Better still, use pot feet or bricks to keep the container above ground level.
Other common causes of waterlogging are containers without drainage holes or drainage holes become blocked. This is why you should always use a crock (piece of broken pot) or a stone to cover the holes before planting. Putting gravel in the bottom of the pot is a good idea for taller plants, as it will add stability as well as improving drainage.

Written By Alistair Ayres

(The Little Green Space Ladybird suspects that the saucer in the picture is a plastic one. For quality planters for all your window box needs, come to little green space!)

London's Number One Climber

Will it tolerate shade? What about traffic pollution? My balcony is very windy; I want a plant that will provide shelter! I really want something with scented flowers. It must be evergreen. I don’t want something that will grow too vigorously and ruin the walls! Can’t be doing with something that needs a lot of fuss, I have a busy lifestyle; it will have to take a certain amount of neglected. It gets very hot next to my porch; do you think it will survive?

There is just one answer to all these questions. Star jasmine (Trachelospermum jasminoides). Glossy evergreen leaves, attractively tinged with red in the colder months. Delicately scented white flowers virtually non-stop throughout the summer. Stays bushy right from the base, not too slow and not too vigorous. Happy anywhere. It’s almost like it has been designed for the London gardener.

Written By Alistair Ayres

At Little Green Space we specialise in beautifying London balconies! - love the little green space ladybird

Lovely Lavender

Lavenders can make great plants for window boxes and tubs but too often you seem them all bare at the base and flopped out of shape. A lot has to with the variety you use. The dwarf varieties like ‘Hidcote’ and ‘Munstead’ are tried and tested favourites. Look at the labels carefully. Don’t buy plants simply called ‘lavender’ as they are quite likely to disappoint.

French lavenders (Lavendula stoechas), with their curious ‘buterflesque’ flowers have become very fashionable in recent years. They can do very well in containers but be aware they are a lot more tender than the other types. Young plants sold in flower are often raised in greenhouses and can sometimes become very droopy when you put them in the window box. If they droop badly, it can take a whole year for them to recover.

Pruning is essential for neat plants but never cut them back below the level of the first leaves or they will die. Wait until the new growth is well established and give them a hard trim sometime in April or early May. Once the blooms start to fade, follow this up with a light haircut before the flower stems start to turn woody.

Written By Alistair Ayres

(The Little Green Space Ladybird would like to remind tell everyone about the fabulous ready planted 'Lavender Box' window box available through Little Green Space urban gardening website!)

Scented Plants

Right now it’s early April and my whole garden is filled with a delightful, lemony scent. The plant that is so free with it’s fragrance? Osmanthus delavayi, a small evergreen shrub of around 5 feet high and wide, and in my experience rather slow growing. It has foliage a little like small holly leaves, and for a month it will pour it’s scent upon the air.

Another scented star is in the Daphne tribe, D. odora ‘aureomarginata’, another small evergreen whose scent is among the finest of all plants. All the Daphnes are scented, but this one is special.

Written By Alistair Ayres

(Little Green Space, for all your urban gardening needs, produces some scented boxes. Look out as they are only seasonally available! - love the little green space ladybird)

Number One Fan

My other passion besides gardening is making films and for the past few years I’ve been making the annual pilgrimage to Cannes. After a week of intensive film watching, non-stop networking, and wild parties, it’s good to take a day out to appreciate some of the surrounding countryside. One of the treats for me is to see the dwarf fan palms that grow wild at the side of the road.
Chamaerops humilis is the only palm native to Europe and it’s one of the toughest, tolerating high winds, periods of drought and sub-zero conditions. With its handsome evergreen fan-shaped leaves, it has to be the number one palm for London gardens. Growing well in clay or chalk, it’s a good architectural plant for a sunny border. But for me, it’s as a container plant on balconies, roof gardens, and patios, where it truly surpasses.

It’s slow growing so start with a decent-sized plant. They rarely grow above head height, especially in pots. Use a John Innes compost to give extra weight and stability and water very sparingly when the days start to get colder.

Am I ever tempted to bring one back from France? No, taking these magnificent plants from the wild is not right. Garden centres and nurseries offer plenty of specimens born and bred the UK. Bringing home the Palme d’Or, well that’s another matter. I’m working on it.

Written By Alistiar Ayres

(We agree with Alistair. Choice of compost is so important, especially in container gardening. We at Little Green Space, pay a lot of attention to detail in this regard especially for our ready planted window boxes. Love from the little green space ladybird)

Healthy Mints

I love mints and there are loads of different types to experiment with, including from apple, banana, chocolate, lemon and pineapple to ginger, along with the more usual peppermint and spearmint varieties. However, I would be loath to plant them in the garden because once they get established they run everywhere. In pots, they can be a lot of fun. You need to keep them moist though and repot plants once they become straggly.

Mint can also be fun for the children when grown in window boxes. It is pretty hardy. Have a look at the range of containers at online stores like little green space.

If your plants looks a bit and pale and weak in the spring, and later develop orange spots and start to lose their leaves, they have got the dreaded mint rust disease. If you are starting mint from scratch, especially if someone has given you a few runners, you can protect mint plants from infection. What you do is dip the runners (the rooty bits without leaves) in warm water heated to 45 degrees C. Use a thermometer, it mustn’t be hotter than this. Leave them for ten minutes then rinse in cold water before planting.

Written By Alistair Ayres

Grasses

Grasses can make superb specimens for large pots where there form can be really appreciated. They are mostly pretty drought-tolerant, rarely suffer from pests and diseases, and never need more than annual haircut. Here are of three of my favourites which can rival the best flowering shrubs when in bloom:

Stipa gigantea, the golden oat, forms elegant arching flowering stems up to 1.5m or more, gently swaying in the breeze above a neat clump of greyish evergreen foliage.

Miscanthus sinensis ‘Zebrinus’, the Zebra grass, has green leaved banded with horizontal cream stripes. The plume-like flowers appear in late summer and go on well into the autumn. In a 30cm pot, you can expect to reach about 1.5m.

Pennisetum alopecuroides 'Hamelin' , the fountain or foxtail grass, form neat mounds of mid-green leaves and becomes smothered in hairy bottlebrush like flowers from late summer until the frosts.

Eastenders and Window Boxes

Eastenders tonight! It's like a mirror to our world - or not, thank god... Well all the talk on the square tonight is of the window box competition. Never mind the murders, adultery and kidnap.

At little green space, however, we think we can do far better when it comes to container gardening, if only we could enter the competition.

We are sure that Dot Cotton would love a Herbie on the Sill (herb garden) to cheer up her cooking and her miserable life. And if Pauline Fowler was still around we could do wonders with her grey blanket of depression.

I must, however, point out that if Bianca's brood were to damage my window boxes like they did to that poor lady tonight, I would not merely just stand with my hands on my hips tutting. I would use carefully selected colourful language in a raised tone to express my disdain more constructively.

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