Saving Water in the Garden

 Bring On The Rain

Water butts and hose to pond

     I used to work in an office surrounded by a small wood. In winter, there was quite a substantial pond among the nearby trees  but in the summer, even if it rained, the water would slowly subside until it completely disappeared. This left a colony of disappointed looking frogs (ever seen a disappointed frog?) scratching their heads and no doubt ruminating about how the moon exerts a strong tidal pull in Manchester. The correct explanation, of course, was that, as soon as the trees put on their leafy summer dresses, they started taking in water and exuding much of it into the atmosphere in the process of transpiration. The amount they disposed of in a relatively short period of time was quite staggering and leads me to draw a bit of a parallel with my garden pond:

      We recently went on a water meter. This led me to look at the water consumption related to the garden and I realised that a large part of this could be put down to topping up the pond. Even with the best construction there is a loss to the atmosphere due to simple evaporation and transpiration from plants. This was a bit different to my woodland scenario, because tree roots have no effect through a pond liner. However there are plenty of marginal plants sitting in the shallows, happily breathing out water vapour and creating the same result. The lowered water level leads to the visibility of artificial liner and a general unattractive torpidity. So I regularly top up.

Full pond

      Unfortunately, tap water is rich in nutrients required by the algi which frequently destroys the clarity of a pond. Apart from considerations of cost, this is the equivalent of whitewashing the TV screen: the programmes are still there, playing invisibly, but what's the point? I suppose the answer to this is the fact that our pond is probably still providing habitat for more life forms than the rest of the garden put together. However, part of the attraction is being able to watch them and it's a bit frustrating being blindfolded. If we were to add nutrient - free rainwater instead, this would put a few algi on the breadline.

      At about the time we made the change to metered water, I saw Aldi's special offer of 100 litre water butts advertised for ten pounds, complete with kit for attaching to drainpipes. We have a flat roof which covers part of the living room and kitchen, so I invested in two butts, thinking this may be a useful source of run-off. Then I set the barrels up to catch what was available. The result was amazing - both barrels filled during the first heavy downpour and I found myself with a free source of water. The problem with this lay in the fact that to transport the water to the pond would require a half day of carrying buckets along about sixty foot of garden and a resumption of my hernia.

The greenhouse - a further source of water

      It didn't take a genius to come up with the idea of fixing a hose from butt to pond: one barrel is now used for watering purposes and  the other one constantly overflows into the pond. A minor snag with this is that the hose has to run across the path before disappearing into the obscurity of the back of the border and eventually reaching the pond. A hose across the path is seen as a challenge by my wife: she has to catch her foot in it and thoughtlessly damage my carefully laid paving by crashing down on it, so the attachment is only made when it is raining and she is safe indoors. The rest of the time I leave it coiled out of sight and awaiting action under an obliging Fatsia.

For more on ponds see water fern,
water lilies
marginal plants
making a waterfall
frogbit
pondside plants

Foxglove (Digitalis purpurea)

Any Fairies Around?

Foxglove and Sedum

      Foxgloves are normally a biennial plant, meaning that they produce a rosette of leaves in the first year, flower in the second, then snuff it. However, they've not all read the books, so you inevitably get some which decide to go on flowering over the next few years. Perhaps that's just a stage in their evolution or maybe they've always varied like that. Anyway, the point is, that I've usually seen them as a nuisance and a weed when they pop up where I don't want them and this year I gave them a bit more thought: they're an attractive flower and when one appeared growing adjacent a Sedum spectabile I decided to leave it because it flowers early and can be removed when they finish, leaving the Sedum to present its display unimpeded later in the summer. This should be a major rule in gardening: maximise the use of the space you have, so that there is always something of interest.

      The flowers on foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) open first at the bottom and work their way up over a period of weeks. The reasons given for this are twofold. Firstly, it gives security against bad weather which will keep bees, their main pollinators, in bed until it cheers up and secondly, its normal habitat is in areas where tall grasses and other plant are liable to grow up around it and hide the flowers from bees, so later flowering to the tip of its spire ensures they will still be seen. Nectar is secreted at the base of the flower, attracting bees which follow the 'runway' marked out with spots. They have to force their way down the flower to the nectar and, in so doing, rub past the anthers, picking up pollen which gets transferred to the next plant they visit.

Getting Pollinated

      Reasons for the name foxglove remain debatable. One which I may have mentioned before is the closeness to 'folk's gliew', the 'folks' referring to the little folks or fairies and 'gliew' to a Saxon musical instrument made of small bells - fairy bells. I like this explanation but it is poo- poo'd by the experts who maintain that, in Old English, it was called foxes glofa. This may well be, but the fact that it has a number of names, including fairy's thimbles, dead men's thimbles, tod-tails, floppy dock, fairy gloves and fairy bells, suggests to me that it seems reasonable to assume that it was always called a few things. Therefore the choice of foxes glofa proves nothing except that no one really knows the truth of the matter.

Yellow foxglove (Digitalis grandiflora) which arrived uninvited

      The history of medicinal use of the foxglove is quite interesting: a bloke called William Withering, a physician in the mid eighteenth century, came across a remedy for dropsy which contained foxglove. Knowing that heart failure often caused dropsy, he did careful analysis and came up with digoxin, which is still widely used for heart treatment. This finding is recognised as the tipping point from folk medicine into scientifically based modern treatments. I'm always interested in the derivation of names and like to think that Bill Withering's came from a facility to belittle someone with a look rather than a propensity to kill plants.

      As it is throughout life, you can have too much of a good thing and poisonous foxglove is a case in point: the right amount can save your life, whereas a bit too much can lead to the funeral insurance being cashed in.

Caltha palustris

Wholeness

Heron on nest

      I've always seen wildlife as an important part of the garden, something that transports it from being a clinical product of my efforts, like a newly painted kitchen, to a living entity - a lesson in how all living things are interdependent. If clinical is what you want (and some do), try silk flowers and a plastic lawn, they'll give you the body but not the soul. High fallutin' eh? The reason I mention that is because it gives me the excuse to use my 'gardening' blog to branch out a bit.

Dipper

      I walked around Queen's Park in Rochdale last Saturday morning with my daughter and watched herons both in their nests and balancing precariously on the pinnacles of conifers before soaring off like some prehistoric pterodactyl, with the object of relieving someone's pond of its koi carp inhabitants. The River Roch runs immediately adjacent the artificial lake which surrounds the nesting island and a quick flash of white caught my attention on stones near the far bank. It was a dipper, a small bird with a white bib, so called because it, er, dips. Getting a photo was difficult because every time I clicked, the damn thing ducked and most of the photos are of a bum sticking out of the water. Although they are light and fluffy, they have the amazing ability of being able to walk along the bottom of a fast - flowing stream, catching small fish and insect larvae (especially those of caddis fly and mayfly). They do this by opening their wings underwater, angling them so that the flow works to press downwards. Then they close the wings and bob to the top, sometimes thirty seconds later. You'll often see them bashing something on stones at the streamside and that'll be caddis fly larvae which protect themselves by sticking a 'coat' of small stones around their body. Not liking crunchy larvae, the dipper knocks off the stone before dining.

Marsh marigold (Caltha palustris)

      Also on the bank, and bringing us back to something we can enjoy in the garden, were the bright yellow flowers of marsh marigold (Caltha palustris). In the wild, the flowers tend to be single, meaning that they have a single row of petals but breeders have come up with 'Flore Pleno' - a variety with double flowers. I prefer the wild form because it brings to mind the river or pond bank and, after all, that's what a garden pond is attempting to emulate. I don't know about the double form of marsh marigold, but some of the garish bedding plants commonly seen may attract the human eye but are unable to produce pollen. These are one step away from plastic and so don't attract insects, taking the gardener's philosophy back to that of the newly painted kitchen.

       For more about the wild garden, go to Heartbeat and Wildflowers in the garden.

Horse chestnut scale and azalea gall

Slightly Unusual Problems

Horse chestnut scale

      I was looking at my picture library and a couple of things stood out which may be worth a few words: the first one is horse chestnut scale (Pulvinaria regalis). The poor old conker tree, which is currently suffering attacks by a number of enemies, has lent its name to this one although lime, sycamore, cornus, elm, magnolia, acer and bay laurel are also prime targets. It is an unwelcome immigrant from Asia, probably introduced on plants, and is most common in urban areas. Apparently the reason for its prominence in these parts is down to the fact that gardeners and park-keepers sweep up leaves and, lodging on them, the pupae of a tiny parasitic wasp which influences the spread of scale - a case of babies and bathwater in the cause of tidiness. On occasion a whole trunk can be covered with the females shown, giving it a mottled appearance.

      The females shown in the picture breed by a process of parthenogenesis - don't mate with males- so that a close look shows them looking pretty bored. The white 'skirt' is where the eggs are, about 2,000 per scale, and mother dies when she's finished laying. The corpse remains attached to the egg sac, giving some protection to the contents but presumably not much satisfaction to mum.

      All scale are sap-suckers but usually the host plant is so large that there is little real damage apart from aesthetically. This is good because controlling the problem on a large tree, short of burning it to the ground, is next to impossible. This brings to mind the old Benny Hill sketch where he pulverises a tomato plant with a large lump hammer:

      "Don't do the tomato much good", he says with a cheeky smile and what I take to be a west country accent, "but it gets rid of the greenfly". For more about horse chestnut problems go to this.

Azalea gall

      The second thing worth a word or two is the Azalea gall (Exobasidium vaccinii). I first saw this many years ago on an evergreen azalea at Bodnant Gardens and, in my ignorance, thought it was a fruit. However it turns out to be a fungal problem and it fairly quickly becomes white with spores which are thought to be passed to other plants via rain splashes. From what I can make out, the one in the picture is fairly unusual in the regularity of its shape - usually it is far more lumpy and can look a bit like peach leaf curl.  Flowering can be reduced, so the galls are best removed before reaching the white, spore spreading stage. I have seen a recommendation that the infected plant should be sprayed with Bordeaux mixture early in the year, but have no experience of the efficacy of such treatment, so retain an open mind.

     The main thing my researches have come up with is the fact that no one seems to know a lot about the problem so, if you're really worried about it, try growing spuds.

Marigold and Rue

Snippets

Marigold (Calendula officinalis)

From our supermarket - stocked citadels we tend to see marigolds as simply a pretty flower providing a splash of annual colour in the garden. However, there's a bit more to them than that:

The common name comes from 'Mary's Gold', as it was so called in honour of the Virgin Mary. Why this should be is open to conjecture, but the scientific name, Calendula officinalis is a bit easier to explain: 'Calendula' comes from the Latin 'Calendae', meaning the first day of the month and possibly refers to the fact that, in its native Southern European and North African habitat, it can often be seen flowering throughout the year; 'officinalis' applies to plants with perceived medicinal properties. Dipping a leaf in boiling water for a second, then bruising and applying it to a wound controls bleeding and speeds the healing process. When you hear a fact like this, there's a tendency to think this would be really useful if you were to injure yourself in the countryside. However, if you think about it, the presence of boiling water on the spot is about as unlikely as a comfrey plant growing next to the nettle that stung you. (I think it probable that no one is absolutely sure whether comfrey eases nettle stings, because by the time you find some the pain has naturally dissipated or you've died of old age).

Herbalists also use marigold internally for a bewildering list of ailments ranging from colitis to athlete's foot and as if its medicinal properties aren't enough, the plant has numerous uses in the kitchen: a complete flower dropped into a stew will add a pleasing flavour, while the petals have a similar effect in salads and soups. It also provides a pretty good substitute for saffron because, when soaked in milk or water, it can be used as a colouring for rice, cakes and puddings.

Rue (Ruta graveolens)

Not all plants are as benevolent as the marigold: rue (Ruta graveolens), derives its name from 'graveolens', meaning 'heavily scented' and 'rue' refers to 'bitterness' or 'unpleasentness'. The latter feature manifests itself through its powerful oils. In contact with the skin, these render it sensitive to sunlight, resulting in eruptions similar to those caused by giant hogweed. In nurseries the gardeners wear protective gloves which cover to the elbows when they are dealing with the plant. Although seen as a tonic and stimulant to digestion in small doses and chewing a leaf may relieve tension headaches, it is toxic in stronger solutions, so should be used advisedly. Sprinkled dried and powdered over seeds as sown, the herb protects against seed - eating birds and insects who presumably don't like the potential skin eruptions or death which it promises, and, rubbed through the coats of dogs or cats, it repels fleas.

The variety 'Jackman's Blue' is readily available in garden centres and the 'blue' the name offers gives a nice evergreen contrast to a bed, or, at a height of about two foot, provides an attractive low hedge round a border. Apparently neither rue or basil will thrive if planted close together, although this is a problem I've not personally encountered.

Deep Bed System - Why Dig?

Why Dig?

Artificial digger

      I used to think that bastard trenching was about burying someone you didn't like. College rectified this impression by pointing out that the term refers to a system of digging whereby the soil is turned over to a depth of two spade blades. Well-rotted organic material is incorporated into the bottom layer and the overall effect is that of aerating and enriching the soil as the series of trenches march across the plot, the soil from the next one filling its predecessor.

      All this seems very logical until someone asks the seemingly daft question 'but why dig at all?' Think about it: untold billions of acres of land have never been touched by a spade but are populated by a profusely growing collection of trees, shrubs, herbaceous plants and annuals. So why do we spend so much time breaking our backs under the impression that our way produces better results than nature? The answer to this conundrum lies in the simple fact that we walk on the soil, compacting the crumb structure and excluding air. Plants respire - a process which involves roots converting sugars into growth energy and one of the raw materials necessary for this to take place is the oxygen our size nines have squeezed out.

Natural digger

      One way round this problem is to adopt the deep bed system of growing: by creating a bed about four feet wide we present ourselves with an area we can reach across to cultivate plants without walking on it. An annual top dressing of a couple of inches of well-rotted organic material will then be incorporated into the soil by worms, mining bees and various other organisms. Their digging activities allow air to the lower levels, at the same time as incorporating a natural drainage system to cope with excess water. Creating a good crumb structure is what it is all about. Healthy soil crumbs will have spaces between, allowing water to drain and giving access to air. The crumbs themselves will contain a balance of organic material which acts as a sponge to retain enough water and nutrients for plants to thrive and the hard, impervious, mineral particles also do the drainage bit.

      By using a deep bed system we are working with nature, enabling natural soil inhabitants, of which there are millions per cubic foot, to beaver away at doing what they do best - breaking down organic material. Picture the scene: a leaf falls from the tree and a nearby worm, leaning on his mini Spear & Jackson stainless steel spade, wipes the sweat off his brow, grabs the stalk and starts dragging it into the cave he's just excavated. Easy, isn't it. Out with the deckchair.

Mining bee excavation between drive bricks

Mining bee

For more about worms go to composting - worms.
   

Herbs

More to a herb than meets the eye.

Willow Catkins

We've got some friends in Knutsford and, when we go round to see them, they always seem to have a bowl of some new recipe of crisps for us to help ourselves from. On one memorable occasion, I tried a good handful and found the taste disgusting.

"I'd complain to Booths about these, if I were you", I said to our hostess as she came into the room,  "they taste like scented cardboard"

"That's probably because", she replied with admirable constraint, "you're eating my pot- pourri".

Pot-pourris

And that's the thing about herbs. They aren't just the pretty selection of plants which fit happily in the bed under the window - according to the dictionary definition, they are 'plants which can be used for scent, insecticides, medicine and culinary purposes'.

If you're going for the 'scent' bit, it's easy to make a pot-pourri using this recipe I spotted in a Dr.D.G.Hessayon book: add 1oz dried orris root, 1/2 teaspoon allspice, 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon, and a few drops of flower oil (rose or violet) to a quart of dried flower petals. Shake them together in a plastic bag and leave the mixture sealed for about three weeks before putting it in a dish or pomander. Apparently only rose, lavender and carnations retain their scent after drying, so forget some of the obvious things like cornflower and marigolds unless you want to add some different colours.

Even some trees come under that general definition: in days of yore, a person with a head-ache would chew a willow or poplar bud to ease the pain. Relatively modern science  laughed at this as an old wives tale but then looked suitably embarrassed when it was discovered that the buds and bark of these trees contains salicin which, in the human digestive system, becomes salicylic acid - a major component of aspirin.

Hop (Humulus lupulus)

Similarly, herb pillows, much recommended in the old days as remedies for all sorts of things, were suddenly discovered to often have well-founded scientific reasons for their efficacy: King George 3rd had difficulty sleeping to such a degree that he was ready to hand over the crown to the Prince Regent. Fortunately, one of his mates suggested he try a hop pillow. The pillow is simply a muslin bag containing the dried herb which is placed in your own pillow, allowing  the heat from your head to release the volatile oils. Anyway, Georgie boy suddenly found he was sleeping properly and, after a few successful nights, decided to continue with his duties as king and dispensed the poor old Prince Regent back to the world of opening supermarkets or whatever it is they do. The Latin name for hop is Humulus lupulus and lupulin is a known sedative.

Verbena

Verbena, used in a herb pillow, is popularly recognised as an aphrodisiac. A potential problem with this is that, should any hardened stalks be left in the pillow, there is a danger of one penetrating the eardrum at a moment of erotic bliss. This, I feel, is the source of the belief that too much of certain things make you go deaf.
      For more on the unusual uses of herbs go to this.