Today, being Monday, I looked for a soft start, and very conveniently I could refer to a chat I had had with my manager on Friday. A species Crataegus was reverting back to the rootstock, outside our area, and I offered to cut all the suckers. I have already mentioned how suckers from the rootstock may draw so much energy from a grafted plant to kill the species that was grafted on it. This is an example.

At first sight, this might seem a thriving, if slightly messy, little tree. But if you look closer, the leaves are not what they are supposed to be. This should be a Crataegus succulenta, with entire, serrated leaves (I know, because there are some around in the area. If I had not seen those, I would have checked on the web). Most of the leaves you can see are lobed, typical of C. monogyna, which incidentally is also the most common rootstock. If you look carefully, however, in between them, overpowered, are some chlorotic entire leaves…

… and after cutting back all the suckers, the species is revealed! Not thriving at the moment, it might need propagating, if we can get some good material.

After warming up with that, I started on bed 6 of 6, or 437-01 as it is called within the South Canal beds area. It is pretty much a solid block of greenery, mainly Cotoneaster and Spiraea, at the moment.

Bed 437-01, outward facing side (click to enlarge)

My colleague has cut the shrubs back to the edge of the bed already. If everything goes to plan, by the end of the next two weeks, most plants will be clearly delineated, so that I can stockcheck them, finding the labels and assessing the health conditions of the plant.

It was not a great start. Somewhat unexpectedly, as soon as I walked through the first shrub, I found a load of litter inside the bed. I hope it was not a human being ripping apart a bin bag full of stuff… but anyway, I had to do garbage collection as a first thing, which was not very pleasant, but now it’s done; weeding of the front of the bed is also done, and a handful of shrubs have been cut back to their allotted space. No pictures, for the time being, all will be revealed in due course.

A couple of trips to the compost heap to tip my woody cuttings, and those of some colleagues I was helping with the tractor, and the first day of my last but one week at Kew was gone. Tomorrow is team day.

More goodbyes today as the apprentices left the Arboretum to go under glass (that is what they do in their second year). This trickle of people going away keeps reminding me of my imminent departure and is making me rather sad.

Today it was raining, so it was the perfect time to do the preliminary stockcheck of the bed I’ve been working on on the last two weeks, so that’s what I did, weeding as I went along. The 5th of 6 beds is almost complete, but the 6th and last is mostly overgrown Cotoneaster, so it will be a challenge…

My manager came out, had another look around, and said my work has had a big impact on the South Canal beds, and I may be proud of what I have achieved.

And so I should, it’s been nice of him to say… but at the moment, it is the thought of leaving the plants I have cared for so much that is foremost in my mind.

Anyway, the area looks good. The plants I cut back earlier on are filling up again and look more natural, and pomes are colouring up on all species: Cotoneaster, Crataegus, Malus, Pyrus… while we still have some flowering Spiraea and the Potentilla of course…

Cotoneaster sp.

Potentilla ‘ochroloeuca’

Spiraea micrantha

Spiraea virginiana

Malus baccata

Malus toringoides

Next week the new trainees and apprentices (8 people, four in my team and four in the other Arboretum team) will start their respective one year and three years journeys. Another cycle begins…

… but the story begins with an overgrown Pyracantha that was in the way of grass mowing.

That is what I started to tackle, which took me one day and a half, as it turned out it was likely two Pyracantha, very similar but different enough (to be confirmed).

And when those two plants were brought back into their allotted space, it became clear there was a plant, behind the Cotoneaster, that I had never seen before: its leaves reminded me of a Euphorbia….

But it is probably worth starting the story from the beginning, with Kew chronically understaffed, so that not all areas get a permanent member of staff to care for them. Students get 3 months placements in different areas of the gardens, while apprentices and trainees get to stay one year in the Arboretum, but they spend six months each in the two different teams… the result is that learning is maximised for the individuals concerned, but some areas may suffer from lack of continuity in management. In an area with suckering and freely self-seeding specimens as the one I am working in, matters can quickly get out of hand, and that is what I think happened. Hence, all my crawling under overgrown plants and large scale cutting back.

It did take me a couple of month to get my head round what was needed, and it was only when I started the stockchecking project that getting in depth knowledge of the plants in the beds gave me the confidence to start tackling the overgrown shrubs. After that I thrived, and you know that I enjoyed talking about it – this story is another one of my much cherished adventures.

The Pyracanthas, when I started on them

The Pyracantha was the perfect practice ground for my newly refreshed and recently expanded pruning skills. Daunting, though. I started going round the plant and trying to understand where to start from. Then cutting the more obviously misplaced branches. Then I did not seem to know what to tackle next and felt so overwhelmed… when I remembered Rossana’s advice: clean everything around you, so that you can have a good look at the plant.

Which I did: there were plenty of leaves on the ground. And while I did that, it gradually became clearer how to proceed further.

 Some of the oldest branches were a real tangle, and they turned out to have some kind of dry rotting going on inside.

The colour of the wood, and new growth in particular, and the slightest difference in the leaves’ and fruit’s shapes made me thing there must have been two different plants there, so I decided to tackle them separately. I will have to get someone to verify their identity later.

Fruits: more rounded, darker on the right than on the left

Reddish stem on left, whitish on right

It took me most of the Wednesday to sort the first Pyracantha… then another couple of hours to sort the second one. There was air flowing through the stems at the end of it, and there were much fewer crossing, damaged and split ones (as many as could go while still leaving a solid framework to sustain the new growth, which is rather floppy in these two specimens) – that means healthier plants; besides, they still looked presentable enough for the enjoyment of the visitors.

It was then that it became apparent that the Cotoneaster was encroaching on a plant new to me: Sibiraea angustata.

A relative of Spiraea, native to China, Sibiraea has some medicinal use for indigestion in its native land, and – I read – has raised some scientific interest for containing eight new acylglucosides, in the class monoterpene.

So I spent the rest of the day to ensure the health of this new plant, with rather satisfactory results. Pity I missed the flowers, they are out in June, pinkish and not too showy, I had a look on the web,,,

Sibiraea angustata

And here is a view of the bed, at the end of the two days. I will have to seed the grass edge, as the shade from the Pyracantha had killed the grass. But it looks otherwise good, doesn’t it?

Front of the bed at the end of the two days

Inside of the bed at the end of the two days

Today we went for a trip to the Royal Horticultural Society’s flagship garden in Surrey, Wisley.

It is a beautifully manicured garden that I have had the pleasure to visit three times this year, with herbaceous borders by famous designers, trial grounds for plants so they can be judged for their garden worthiness and get an RHS Award of Garden Merit (AGM) if they excel, and – something that is really dear to my heart – an orchard (there’s also a veg patch).

As this is a display garden, to show what can be achieved through best practice horticulture and quality plants, it is so different in both appearance and philosophy from Kew – a botanic garden, with scientific resarch for conservation of plant species at its heart… in fact, some of the differences include that while at Kew we display mostly species, at Wisley it’s mostly varieties and cultivars, and that plants in the glasshouses at Kew are by region or family/genera, while at Wisley they are grouped in an aesthetic arrangement.

The gardens also started off much more recently than Kew gardens, as they date back to 1903 when the estate was donated to the Society.

After getting a tour of the gardens and the glasshouse, as I had already seen the (lovely) pinetum and the heather collection this spring, I spent most of the time in the arboretum and orchard – and what a delightful time, as the weather got nicer over the day.

Malus ioensis at Kew

An interesting thing we were told about the orchard is that it has an ailing collection of plums, which is being propagated, it hosts the national rhubarb collection, 100 varieties of pears and a whopping 700 varieties of apples! Several training techniques are sampled in the orchard, which is really fascinating: I would like to have a stint as a gardener there.

A fruiting apple tree at Wisley (sorry, did not get the names I was in a group)

Malus ioensis

A fruiting apple tree at Wisley (sorry, did not get the names I was in a group)

As you know, Malus, Pyrus and Prunus are plants I work with every day, but there is a difference when they are grown for their natural shape, which is of interest to botanists (as is the case at Kew), and when they are pruned for cropping (for example the height and shape of the tree)! Without mentioning the size of the fruit (and likely the taste…)

A trained pear tree at Wisley

Engagement with visitors – for both education and entertainment purposes – is part of the mission of both Kew (where for example we are having the IncrEdibles festival this summer, to inform about edible plants) and Wisley, hence the displays and now they are trialling pick-your-own in the orchard, and are generally encouraging people to try (within reason) some of the fruit.

Pyrus balansae at Kew

The health of the plants is obviously a concern, and H&S of course – for example, we often find kids (and not only the little ones, adults seem to want to have their fair share too) climbing up trees in Kew, and that is not good on either account…

Potentilla thurberi

Potentilla thurberi

At Wisley I spotted another Rosacea, which is so different from the ones I have in the South Canal beds: Potentilla thurberi ‘Monarch’s velvet’. It’s a herbaceous perennial, with palmate leaves and red flowers. I had previously only seen deciduous shrub Potentilla with pinnate leaves and white or yellow flowers!

In the herbaceous beds, I found the use of dark leaves in the design quite intriguing, for example with the choice of dahlias and Sedum telephium (Atropurpureum Group) ‘Xenox’.

The loveliest plant for me was Hydrangea paniculata ‘Kyushu’ , so fresh, white and light, like lace on a summer’s day…

… and the species that struck me most was a delicate, graceful Pittosporum tenuifolium ‘Silver sheen’, the only one (of the ones I know in the genus) that I would choose for use in a garden – that is because in Italy Pittosporum tobira (with dark green obovate leaves) is a plant most often seen around toilets and showers on the beach and as a hedge around seaside towns… that association would definitely taint anyone’s perception of the plant’s garden worthiness… but this one is so different, with its dark stems and silver ovate leaves with dark margins!