Ancient pear trees, lichen and roses

If you were to visit (or have visited) my little nursery hidden amongst the oaks of the Weald, you would find a couple of huge sheds that have, over time, turned into a place to buy some plants, get some cake and coffee and look at the eclectic range of items in the shop. It’s not a garden centre or a specialist plant nursery but something somewhere between.

I try to grow an interesting range of herbaceous plants, ones that are great garden plants and more unusual varieties than you might find elsewhere.

Herbaceous plants form a huge proportion of the worlds flora and so many have fantastic garden attributes and those do, are likely to have been bred and hybridized over millennia to produce millions of different varieties. Of this huge wealth of plant choice I find myself changing my plant obsessions fairly regularly. I have had little fixations on geraniums, thalictrums, salvias, aquilegias and dahlias and plenty more besides; but it is plants from woodland that I love and whose charms I can’t shake off. The shade lovers, with a lush greenness and soft, subtle flowers that need close inspection to truly appreciate their beauty.  The trilliums and ferns, the disporums and epimediums, the primula and cardamines, I could carry on but the list is quite long and steadily growing. Most of these plants covet a sheltered spot, in dappled sunlight, with a damp but nicely draining soil and a nice sharp cold winter to stop the rot. Not too much to ask I suppose but Sadly my nursery isn’t blessed with these attributes.

Above left, Cardamine pratensis, one of my favourite woodland plant famillies spilling out of a slightly past its prime wheelbarrow.

Above right, The ancient espalliered apples and pears in the garden loving the heavy clay soil.

The curse of clay

Here in Sussex, in the south East of England, we are in the warmest and driest area of the country and the nursery is on the south facing side of a ridge, nearly all in full sun. The soil is the gorgeous Wealden clay; claggy, cold and airless in winter and baked hard on the top in summer with the wet still trapped below.  It is a wonderful place to garden though and you can grow all sorts of plants that love the deep rich and water retentive soil, roses for one. But for many of the plants I love it can be a challenge to get the conditions just right.

Clay soil has some unique properties; it is rich in nutrients so plants that enjoy it such as roses and apple trees can thrive for decades producing an abundance of fruit and flowers without any need for added sustenance. It is great for holding onto moisture, in the very dry summer of 2018 when lawns up and down the country went brown and long-established shrubs were turning up their toes, the garden here escaped relatively unscathed. It also produces fantastic grassland, said to be amongst the best grass fields in the country for feeding cattle. Clay soils are especially hard work to improve, they can swallow endless wheelbarrows of compost and adding grit in proportions of anything less than 50-50 I find pointless. Adding organic matter is crucial for clay soils to create any sort of drainage at all, and also air. Clay soils also hold on to the temperature, they are slow to cool in Autumn and winter and very slow to warm up in spring, this can force us to postpone planting out early in the year with more delicate plants compared to other parts of the country despite our usually warmer temperatures.

Above left, When digging a hole for planting in the garden you are often greeted by pure blue or yellow clay just below the surface. Here the upper soil isnt too bad.

Above right, A rambling rose scrambling over a dead apple tree, showing the weight of plant and blooms the clay can support. Decades old and never been fed.

Pros of clay

Rich in nutrients

Water retentive

Slow to cool in winter

Oaks, roses, apples love it

Cons of clay

Prone to waterlogging

Poor drainage

Hard work to improve or work on

Slow to warm in spring

Breaks spades easily

Any plant that loves sharp drainage can be a struggle to grow

So to accommodate those plants I mention, the woodland dwellers, that love a little shelter and shade, I really need to create some respite from the wind, some shade from the sun and some drainage where it’s possible.