Beth Chatto's dry garden in the UK

With the summer round the corner and predictions for our climate to become hotter and drier, a lot could be learned from a dry garden in the UK says PATRICIA JORDAN

I WAS BROWSING through my January copy of The Garden magazine recently when I came across an article about Beth Chatto’s famous garden in Essex. This wonderful octogenarian has had a great admirer in me for many years. Two of her many books, The Damp Garden and The Gravel Garden, I read avidly. The first because I gardened in a very damp riverside garden in Scotland for over 20 years, and the second in preparation for coming to live in Cyprus. The eastern counties of England have much less rainfall than other parts of the country and many of the plants that do well in her dry garden would, I thought, succeed here too. She started to garden seriously when her husband became ill and as her fame as a gardener and plants-woman grew and people sought her advice and bought her plants, she created a huge dry garden from her car park. Having dug down into the earth below it and then filled it in with lots of good soil, manure and compost, she set about planting plants in the plots that required little, if any, artificial watering. This dry garden has been greatly acclaimed worldwide.

Her principles are ones we could follow here. With dire predictions of less rain and more heat we should be thinking about how to create a garden that does not require copious amounts of water, unless it falls naturally from the heavens. Like me, I suspect, you would not want it to be all cacti and succulents, which can survive these conditions, but a mixture of them along with some herbaceous plants, which would be both pleasing to the eye and easy to maintain. Gravelled paths, onto which prostrate rosemary, different varieties of lavender and clumps of euphorbias tumble and soften the edges, could be backed by tall groups of Pampas Grass and verbascum to frame the picture. Gardens, after all, are another art form and should be pleasing to the eye. Grasses are just gaining popularity here as more and more are brought in from abroad and certainly add movement to an otherwise static display. However, it will take a little while for them to be readily accepted by gardeners in Cyprus, unless they have been used to seeing them elsewhere.

Grey leaved plants do especially well in hot dry conditions. The silver look comes from hundreds of fine hairs along the stems and leaves of the plants that filter hot air and winds, cooling the plant and allowing it to survive the heat of summer. Silver leaved lavenders do best of all here, along with artemesias, rock roses, rosemary, sages and achilleas to name but a few. With colourful flowers atopping the grey foliage, it all makes a very pleasing picture during the summer.

patricia@cyprus-mail.com

Things to do in the garden this month

There is still some pruning to be done this month with the turn of any citrus trees you may have. Some trees may still have fruit on them but you can always avoid those branches and come back to them later on. Feed them and the rest of your fruit and nut trees with 20.0.0 this month. In the next village to me there is a lemon tree with the most enormous lemons on it. Quite how this comes about I am not sure, but they certainly put mine in the shade.

Other shrubs and trees may need some attention as well. We have just completed the annual lavender par terre trimming, resulting in about 25 bags of trimmings! The rain late last year certainly promoted growth with some of the cuttings about half a metre long. The perfume from the foliage, as we moved among it, was quite overwhelming. The size of the par terre is about the same as a badminton court so it takes a great deal of effort to get it sorted out. I wonder if we have the only lavender par terre in Cyprus?

Lots of shrubs and decorative trees are putting on growth again and may need some trimming to keep them in shape. If you haven’t already pruned your roses then you should do so without delay. Hybrid tea roses should be pruned to just above an outward facing leaf shoot. Rosa damascena needs to have old wood removed to encourage new shoots to appear and keep rust to a minimum, while with Rosa banksia you only need to remove any dead stems. You can start a feeding regime after this procedure.

The new growth on the tips of Photinia ‘Red Robin’ is very bright red at this time of year. This is a good value shrub or small tree, which also can double up as hedging. This is one bush that makes a good firm barrier. If you want to deter unwanted visitors you could choose pyracantha with its hidden thorns and this is a very good time to plant it to enjoy the colourful autumn berries. When to prune this shrub can be a difficult choice, as the flowers appear on the previous year’s growth and if you cut off too much you will not get many flowers or berries. Other shrubs like jasmines, passion flowers and stephanotis flower on new growth.

You may find that winter jasmine, with its lovely drooping stems and pretty yellow semi or double scentless flowers, is bursting into flower this month. This is an easy plant to propagate. If the stems touch the ground, they will throw out roots and produce new plantlets from there. You can help this along by pinning shoots down with a big staple or a stone.

Echium webbii’s flower stems are beginning to show through the clusters of hairy leaves and will soar to great heights almost before your eyes, with long flowers spires of intense blue. Much loved by bees and butterflies, this great plant is unfortunately quite short lived with a maximum life of about five years before it turns woody and dies. Try taking cuttings throughout the season. They do not require any special treatment at all, just cut off a shoot and push it into damp earth in a shady part of the garden. It might flop for a day or two and then pick up, and you will have a rooted plant before too long.

With all the heavy rain in mid-January some plants may have been battered to the ground and there is not a lot you can do about that. I staked up my broad beans earlier in the year, to avoid them being knocked over. Fingers crossed that the flowers and buds survived the onslaught and we will be able to harvest some delicious broad beans soon. Other plants such as freesias, ornigothalums and calla lilies might suffer a similar fate but as their main assets are their lovely flowers, and as the stems are not yet showing, they may still delight us later on. I planted some new Calla lily corms during the autumn and despite them looking like shrivelled potatoes, within a short time I had luscious foliage with some promising flower stems tucked in underneath.

Weeds are springing up helped by all the rain and short bright periods of sun, which encourage them to grow quickly. That ubiquitous plant of the countryside, oxalis, and pretty though it is, is the very devil to get rid of. To do away with it altogether it is necessary to remove all the white fleshy stem pieces from the soil and the little bulb that hangs off the end. It is no good just pulling up the flowers and leaves, you have to tackle it from below ground. If not, although the plant will be somewhat weakened, it will return to haunt you next year.

Plant of the Month Ocimum basilicum 'Magic Mountain'

THIS MEMBER of the basil family is worth growing for its flowers alone. Deep purple spires of flowers appear on long, dark stems looking like huge heads of veronica. While a lot of the basil family are annuals, Magic Mountain is a tender, short-lived perennial, which sits as well in a flower border as in the herb garden. The dark green leaves are flushed with purple and the plant flowers through late summer, well into winter especially in sheltered places.

Grown in well-drained soil in full or part sun, it should reach 45 to 60cm in a well rounded bush. By growing this plant you will encourage bees and butterflies in to your garden. It seems to be fairly drought tolerant and the flowers can be dried for winter flower arrangements. One of the easiest ways to propagate basil is to take cuttings and put them in a glass jar of water, rather like you would propagate mint. Once there are some reasonable shoots on the cuttings they can be transferred into a pot of soil. Do not put them outside immediately, as they have been cossetted indoors, but gradually introduce them to outdoor living.

In Cyprus they are distributed by Sahin Nurseries in Skarinou.