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Authors: Margery Fish
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necessity for tying up their plants, and their gardens are always a depressing sight. There is only one way to avoid staking and that is to grow only plants that never need any artificial support—but what a lot of lovely things would be missed if one did that.
10. Gardening with a Knife
Walter had one garden adage he was always quoting at me: ‘It is nice to take a walk in the garden and better still if you take a hoe with you.’ I think a pair of secateurs would be my choice.
How often one sees odd bits of dead wood, suckers and overhanging branches as well as deadheads on one’s morning amble. That timely snip saves a lot of time and trouble, and one can collect a few flowers for the house at the same time.
Deadheading is a most important part of gardening. It isn’t only from the point of tidiness that one should remove spent flowers. A plant will go on flowering over much longer periods if every dead bloom is removed at once. Kept in a state of frustrated motherhood it will go on producing flowers in the hope of being allowed to set seed and thus reproduce itself. I often get three flowerings on Canterbury Bells by persistent deadheading, and I even deadhead my naturalized daffodils so that they do not deteriorate. I have some old swords and I keep one sharpened for this job. One can slash off a lot of heads in a very short time.
My friends are not so keen on this habit of mine, it deprives them of all the exciting seeds they would like. The only plants I allow to come to maturity are those which I want to increase, such as primulas and cyclamen, willow gentian, blue poppies and incarvillea.
Walter was never tired of telling me about a certain great garden, whose noble owner boasted that no dead flower would ever be found therein—a wonderful standard which we’d all like to copy. I often wondered how many gardeners were employed in that garden, and if there were many beds of violas in it.
We used to have great arguments about this deadheading job. Walter used to go round with a pair of secateurs in his hand and snip off his dead roses, but he never picked them up. I complained that I wasn’t the fifth gardener and it wasn’t my job to go round clearing up after him. But I always did because I couldn’t bear to see the beds littered with dead flowers. In the end it became a family joke and he took great delight in telling me when various parts of the garden needed the attentions of the fifth gardener. He pruned roses in the same way and, when I protested, always explained that the important thing was to get the pruning done and the little matter of collecting the prunings could be done at any time—but never by him!
I think a good many gardeners would have better gardens if they used secateurs more. Most plants respond to quite severe cutting down. Aubrietia, for instance, should be cut right down to the ground the moment it shows signs of getting brown and leggy. It responds magnificently to this treatment and is very soon covered with a new crop of tight green leaves, and before you know where you are is flowering a second time. Some people take shears to their aubrieta but I think secateurs make a better job as they cut closer.
Rock roses, too, should be cut back when they get straggly, dead parts of rock phlox should be cut out, and such things as saponaria and dianthus need drastic cutting. Yellow alyssum can be made to live up to its name ‘compactum’ if everything is cut away after flowering. One wouldn’t think that the plant would be satisfied with a few stumps of stems, and looks maimed for life, but in a surprisingly short time it covers itself with neat young leaves. If it is not cut like this the stalks get long and top heavy and break off at the joint.
Nepeta is a plant that repays regular trimming. As soon as the first flowering is looking a little tired I cut off all the blooms and, working from underneath, remove all the old stems. The plant starts again from the centre and sends
10. Gardening with a Knife
Walter had one garden adage he was always quoting at me: ‘It is nice to take a walk in the garden and better still if you take a hoe with you.’ I think a pair of secateurs would be my choice.
How often one sees odd bits of dead wood, suckers and overhanging branches as well as deadheads on one’s morning amble. That timely snip saves a lot of time and trouble, and one can collect a few flowers for the house at the same time.
Deadheading is a most important part of gardening. It isn’t only from the point of tidiness that one should remove spent flowers. A plant will go on flowering over much longer periods if every dead bloom is removed at once. Kept in a state of frustrated motherhood it will go on producing flowers in the hope of being allowed to set seed and thus reproduce itself. I often get three flowerings on Canterbury Bells by persistent deadheading, and I even deadhead my naturalized daffodils so that they do not deteriorate. I have some old swords and I keep one sharpened for this job. One can slash off a lot of heads in a very short time.
My friends are not so keen on this habit of mine, it deprives them of all the exciting seeds they would like. The only plants I allow to come to maturity are those which I want to increase, such as primulas and cyclamen, willow gentian, blue poppies and incarvillea.
Walter was never tired of telling me about a certain great garden, whose noble owner boasted that no dead flower would ever be found therein—a wonderful standard which we’d all like to copy. I often wondered how many gardeners were employed in that garden, and if there were many beds of violas in it.
We used to have great arguments about this deadheading job. Walter used to go round with a pair of secateurs in his hand and snip off his dead roses, but he never picked them up. I complained that I wasn’t the fifth gardener and it wasn’t my job to go round clearing up after him. But I always did because I couldn’t bear to see the beds littered with dead flowers. In the end it became a family joke and he took great delight in telling me when various parts of the garden needed the attentions of the fifth gardener. He pruned roses in the same way and, when I protested, always explained that the important thing was to get the pruning done and the little matter of collecting the prunings could be done at any time—but never by him!
I think a good many gardeners would have better gardens if they used secateurs more. Most plants respond to quite severe cutting down. Aubrietia, for instance, should be cut right down to the ground the moment it shows signs of getting brown and leggy. It responds magnificently to this treatment and is very soon covered with a new crop of tight green leaves, and before you know where you are is flowering a second time. Some people take shears to their aubrieta but I think secateurs make a better job as they cut closer.
Rock roses, too, should be cut back when they get straggly, dead parts of rock phlox should be cut out, and such things as saponaria and dianthus need drastic cutting. Yellow alyssum can be made to live up to its name ‘compactum’ if everything is cut away after flowering. One wouldn’t think that the plant would be satisfied with a few stumps of stems, and looks maimed for life, but in a surprisingly short time it covers itself with neat young leaves. If it is not cut like this the stalks get long and top heavy and break off at the joint.
Nepeta is a plant that repays regular trimming. As soon as the first flowering is looking a little tired I cut off all the blooms and, working from underneath, remove all the old stems. The plant starts again from the centre and sends
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