Resilient gardening - it's not just about tough plants

So how are you going to plan your borders next year if we get another really hot summer or indeed a really wet winter? Dig all your plants up and get drought resilient plants? It's not going to be quite that simple is it? Or maybe you have to have a gravel garden or sand garden or something, but actually you can have a traditional classic herbaceous border like this one here at the No Name Nursery. I went down to talk to Steve Edney and Lou Dowell about how they have created this and maintained it throughout a very difficult summer and winter, only watering it twice and it still looks brilliant. It's not just about the plants you choose, it's about where you put them, it's about how you plant them in the first place. So you don't have to change your whole garden, just adapt some of your gardening techniques. It's what I call resilient gardening. Steve and Lou grow and sell their plants through plant fairs such as the Plant Fairs Roadshow. The Plant Fairs Roadshow is a series of plant fairs throughout southern England in beautiful gardens during the summer months, so if you've got a chance to visit it I can highly recommend it. So Steve and Lou, we've had a really tough summer haven't we? It's been hot, it's been dry and what's more in the winter it absolutely poured down with rain, so a straightforward Mediterranean plant is not really going to be the answer is it? Actually one of the real surprises for me has been North American prairie plants and how well they have done. We had 58 days with no rain here, yet January and February had record-breaking amounts of rain, so you're you're quite right and that is tricky for plants to cope with. I think for me the Longboard has really shown that where it bakes in the sun at the front and it's really shown what has made it and what has not done so well, things that we think would have done but haven't. What did you think would have done well and it hasn't? The cosmos, cherry chocolate. This isn't an annual cosmos, this is a perennial cosmos so it has a tuber like a dahlia and being dahlia mixed bread into it with the native to Mexico, you'd think it would be heat tolerant. We mulched it and yet it got mildew and it's miserable, stunted growth, really disappointed. The other plant that really springs to mind that we actually dug up before it even flowered was a persicaria. Now persicarias are really tough and I had no doubt whatsoever that it it would survive but this is now the third year in a row that we've had dry conditions for more than a month at a time here in East Kent and actually every year it's just looked tatty. Even if it's made it into flowering, it's burned to its edges. It's called pink elephant, this particular type. That's not true of all persicarias. If you're not careful you can condemn an entire group of plants when actually often there are clear winners, certain cultivars within persicaria that have done very well. A lot of them, the amplexa coalesce types, actually haven't done very well at all and pink elephant which is a little miniature, only about 40 centimeters tall, hence it being right on the front edge, has been dreadful and my feeling is I think it needs more shade than it's getting but we dug it up and put something else in its place. I think for people who don't know what a cultivar is, could you give us a quick definition? Oh yes, so it's where a particular species of a plant has been bred for certain attributes. So I'm thinking of summer flowering alliums because they really have exploded in recent years. Ten years ago we knew one summer flowering allium which was a species called angulosum and now there are so many cultivars and hybrids of that one like summer beauty, like millennium, lavender bubbles and bubble bath. They give them all these terrible names but what they're often doing is they're looking to make the flower slightly larger or maybe slightly smaller, more compact in a plant. They might be trying to breed more disease resistance into the plant, that's not such an obvious sign. The most obvious signs of a cultivar is normally more compact growth and longer flowering period and perhaps they've changed the colour of the flower and so really they're trying to breed with a plant to give gardeners greater range for use in a garden. And that brings me on to how important is the cultivar because people will say things like oh no lavender is fantastic in the heat but you know do you have to think about which particular variety of plant you're planting? Definitely, I mean I think the asters have really shown that in the long border haven't they? Red Star has been shocking, absolutely terrible. All the leaves are brown and crispy. Not even sure it's going to flower. No it's not looking good. It looks like a death door but the latifolius horizontalis is looking amazing, really fresh. The novite anglias, they're all looking great and they're the ones that people go oh no no mildew at all. Not this year, no. And I think partly that is also because I think with extreme weather events where a plant is helps as much as what the plant is. So anything right on a very front edge can just get too intensely hot and get baked and so may not succeed but if it's three or four plants in and its roots are a bit cooler and it's popping through and another plant in front is taking the brunt of the heat, actually that can be a benefit to the plant. So companion planting is incredibly important. I think one of the best examples of that this year has been sanguisorba. In the stock beds they've really hated it, they've gone over really quickly, they've looked awful, yet the ones in the long border that are sort of four plants back that have got their bottom shaded are actually looking really good. Because I instinctively, when we were talking about what we thought had done well and hadn't done well, I immediately said oh I don't think sanguisorba had a good year and then Lou actually took me out to the long border and said yeah but not the ones in the stock bed but I think they're bearing the brunt of heat because there's nothing around them. They've got bare bottoms, they're getting really hot and but in the long border they are four meters into a six meter border which means their roots and their lower leaves are all in the shade and actually they're all flowering and looking really happy. So I had to eat my words there. And actually the stock bed has had more water than the long border has. Yes so the long border has only been watered twice targeted watering this year, once in April, once in late June. The stock beds, because they are for the nursery, we've watered them four times and still the sanguisorbas have done dreadfully there. So when it comes to watering one of the things that's driving people mad I think is people say oh drought tolerant once established, so how established does something have to be? Well so most perennials take three years to reach sort of their their maximum if you like performance and therefore you assume also that the limits of their their root growth we expect. There are outliers to that and I'm thinking baptisias which have been an incredible plant this year, a lupine from North America, but on the most parts you'd expect after three years a plant to be fully established. If it's perennial, if it's a shrub that might only just be getting established at that point, might need more like five, if it's a tree more like seven before you would say that's an established tree. A woody plant are so much slower to really find their way in the ground. And so when it comes to say watering new plants, what would you say is a sensible thing to do? Water them in the first two summers or much longer for trees but let's stick with say perennials and then shrubs what would your advice be? I think it's really difficult, I mean we often don't water things until there's signs that they need it because otherwise you're being over nice to them too quickly. So we're quite hard in that we just watch things and if we think it needs to be intervened with then we do because everything has got a different establishment rate. And there's a little bit to unpick there, for me I always think that if we have a very wet spring that's when you can come into trouble later on in the summer because there's a lot of a lot of top growth going on because they feel really happy and there's plenty of moisture available and therefore then access to food as well. So I always find if we have a damp or wet spring then plants could often struggle later in the summer. If we have a dry spring I actually find that plants have been checked a little bit early in the season and then they seem to be able to cope with dry conditions in the summer because they haven't overextended. So in terms of watering we're quite hard on plants early in the season, we only intervene as it starts to get hot. More importantly mulching, you know we never really used to mulch 20 years, I mean up 33 years I've been a gardener now, even 20 years ago mulching was only for really sensitive plants that we wanted to do well. Now if you want to be successful with a plant in a very dry location it doesn't matter whether it is a grit, a gravel, stone, whether it's an organic mulch, green waste, compost, manure, whatever it is to cover and protect the ground, even grass clippings, they've been a real lifesaver this summer. Grass clippings, very very fine, not big clumps and mounds and keep them away from the actual crown, don't mound into the crown because then it'll get too hot and rot but actually just something to protect the earth and not let the sun bake it too dry has actually been just as important as how much we water something. But when we did plant we water the hole two or three times before the plant goes in it and let that water soak right through, really deeply, water the bottom of the hole, the plant gets dunked in a chug of water or a bucket of water to soak the root ball and it then goes in, back filled, more water and then a mulch over the top of the whole lot after it's been watered again so it's really locked that moisture in. I got with one of my students, we actually did a little experiment with this where we actually planted something together in April when it was quite dry and I said now water it and he gave it five litres of water, half a can, thought that looked adequate but of course lots of it runs away and runs in different directions and I said okay give it a minute, right get the trowel and dig it out again, he's like I said dig it out and when you dig even in April, dug it out and none of that water have penetrated to the very bottom of the root ball and so watering the bottom of the hole is one of the most important things if you're going to plant and it's dry to help aid establishment. So water thoroughly as you're planting throughout every bit of the process and after that don't really water until you can see oh it's looking a bit dry. Would you recommend a moisture meter that you can just sort of stab into the earth? I think if you're new to gardening and you're not certain what the little signs are, like sometimes plants it's not just wilting, sometimes the leaf tone and colour can change when a plant becomes a little bit water stressed but before it starts actively wilting. We never let a plant go longer than six weeks during intensely hot summer period so even this year where we had 58 days there were a few moments when we said okay we'll wait for a lull in one of the heat waves and then we'll actively water plants to help them to overcome the next heat wave which is inevitable. And I think you were saying that in some countries you're only allowed to water at night and you think probably that might be a good way of saving water because there's no evaporation at all. Oh yeah, it's got to be the way forwards is going to be night time watering, much more targeted maybe with drippers. We've got to start thinking about much more water capture if you can so capturing water in water butts and on a few of our projects we're in talks at the moment about more water capture whether that is tanks above ground even digging in subterranean tanks especially under driveways yeah perfect place perfect because of course the the sort of standard water butt I find lasts about three days in in just a middle size garden so you do have to have a decent size or several water butts one of my neighbors has got 17. I mean the other thing I think has been really good this year we've used in the vegetable garden is just the the water bottles where I've cut the bottoms off and wedged them in with squash courgettes so that water is straight into the bottle at the base root of the plant and it's really helped. Now the other thing we've done of course to mitigate the heat stress is actually used cloches which are actually shade netting it would be normally bird protection but Lou's got these cloches that then cover over and they block out about 70% of the sun which has meant that a lot of our salad crops didn't instantly bolt and they didn't scorch and didn't need to be endlessly watered. Could you recommend five tough perennials which will put up with all these difficult conditions and look gorgeous? So for me number one number one the best plant this summer there hasn't been a single scorched or brown leaf on it anywhere Saratula. It's a knapweed relative so don't think of it as a weed because it's a highly ornamental plant it's a filigree almost firm like foliage green and purple hues. Saratula in latin means delayed so it comes up into bud in June has these tiny little buds that look like a faberge egg and then it doesn't open until September October so it's a purple flower right late at the end of the season but the foliage is beautiful it's about 40 or 50 centimeters tall but it it's just laughed in all of this heat and dry weather has not bothered it a job. Is it relatively easy to find would people be able to buy it? Yeah I would say you've got to go to a specialist nursery you won't find it in a garden center so if you're out at one of these you know rare plant fair type things or the plant fairs road show or anywhere where there are specialist growers who really know their plants. So Lou what would your number one be? I think for me it's probably the Sedums or the Hylotelephiums now considering we were so wet through the winter they've just been great all summer we've got Matrona, Mustard Red, Purple Emperor and I actually think they seem to have gone out of fashion a bit you don't see them for sale as much as you did the one that I always often see now is still the brilliant the pink one oh yeah which is kind of the old traditional what they called ice plant I guess wasn't it yeah whereas these that we're talking about and that we have have got a lot darker foliage on them really stand out they really stand out and they're having before they flower they look really good there's not a mark on them no they have number three from you I'm gonna have my terrible pronunciation sometime Lamprothorus Hieronymus it's actually in the same family as Pampas but don't let that put you off because it's a much more elegant creature green arching grass with soft seed heads again not that kind of stiff upright that like you thought of of the old Pampas grass is a much more elegant creature from Argentina evergreen and so it's always got presence there and so just think of one of these lovely elegant arching grasses that has presence all year round and then flowers late spring early summer and the seed heads persist until early autumn. Lou, the Oregonums have had a really good year they've been great so we've got quite a few different ones this Bristol Cross, Herrenhausen, Hopliz and of course as well as looking great the bees have really enjoyed them they've been really good for them and they've got a good seed head to follow so yeah they have they've they've really held their own and one more from either of you well for me it's got to be Baptisius I mean for me you know because they they're a plant close to my heart at the moment sorry to jump in there I knew you probably had something in mind other than but I'm chairing the trial for the RHS we have a big collection of them here at our nursery you can still see them at Wisley for the next year and if you love lupins but you've been you know you've not been able to grow lupins for a while now like we haven't I wasn't prepared to give up on the cottage garden so we're trying to find alternatives that that do a similar sort of thing so they're flowering at the same kind of time as lupins in May and June they're available in just about every color other than red that's the only shame and they have silvery foliage which is fantastic and deep rooting I think on the trial we haven't watered them once this year not not once and you think how dry this whole year has been overall and they've they've been they've done remarkably well we haven't watered them in stock bed either no we haven't watered them here no what about tough but beautiful shrubs I'm gonna say something controversial here and I'm no glad everybody's gonna be glad to hear this apart from Steve because it's one of his my sore points yeah roses yeah I've actually been really surprised by roses the ones we've got uh Gabriel Gabriel on the long border accepted whole it's a fan oh Bengal crimson of course it just hasn't stopped they all the foliage is all clean on them there's no black spot and they've repeated flowering the ones that do repeat the ones that do yeah they've been I have to concede this has been this has been an exceptional year for roses and what about trees because what you were saying earlier is of course now shade is getting more and more important in our gardens which is funny isn't it because you'd think that where there's shade it means that there might be roots of hedges or shrubs or trees and so they're going to be taking food and water and competing with plants around them in that shady space but actually for us we really noted earlier in the summer that it was the grass it was the last place the grass was still green was on the shady side of hedges and trees so anywhere there was a bit of even park shade was the last bit to go brown I think it's really important to say especially with a small to middle sized garden don't pick trees with really big broad leaves because lots of trees with huge leaves create deep shade and what you want are trees with finer leaflets that create dappled shade because you'll be able to grow a greater range of plants under them so that you can get this layering effect and of course trees I'd always say to people plant a tree the second you get into your garden or if you've had a garden for a long time you know they say the right time to plant a tree is 20 years ago isn't it or now I would say crab apples yeah I mean they've got such an amazing long season from the flower to the fruit to the autumn colour and they've been the ones we've got done really well this year they've not been bothered by the weather at all so and of course they're a great size for most people's gardens any particular crab apple you can recommend oh I've got one I don't know I like so many of them go on you pick you pick the cultivar then I think scarlet it depends if you like red foliage if you don't then you're going to hate that choice but the berries are quite small in the autumn and the birds gobble them all up very quickly the spring flowers are beautiful it's not too large and the summer foliage is it's just a good foil for other plants around it because I quite like a little bit a little bit of red in the landscape people are so obsessed with flower but you can get excellent colour from foliage one of my surprise winners has been Salix capucii you would never think a willow would be a choice for a drought tolerant planting okay so this is a rare tree there are a couple of sellers in the country but it's an Asian species of willow so it is used to being hot and dry for long periods and the beauty of it is from a distance it almost looks like an oversized olive has that silvery lovely foliage but it looks quite shaggy and that's because when you look down at the actual stem all the leaves are facing slightly different directions and that means that at any one moment there's not more than about a third of the sun that's actually directly hitting the leaves so even as the sun tracks around during the day the leaves aren't being hit by constant solar radiation the whole day long a great adaptation for drought tolerance so what plants would you recommend that we don't plant wow I've got something go on and this is me and Lou don't always agree we very rarely agree it's amazing how we've managed to create a garden together without murdering each other we think we don't agree we really do on most things but there are just some of those deep plant loves that um that we just don't share with each other cirsus yeah already a bit twitchy aren't they you know you plant a circus and you turn your back and it's died they're very fussy they don't like it too hot they don't like it too cold they don't like it too dry they don't like it too wet they want a nice stable climate and that is just not the uk anymore something that we've never really been good with is still be it's always just gone dry and crispy and horrible so unless you've got a really damp damp spot for it it's it's a no from us I think on that anywhere around here even in the shade for me one of the really big disappointments this summer has been persicaria you know they're all alive but they're all looking terrible I think there's going to be quite a few Mediterranean plants that people are recommending and are appearing on the radars and they're great if you're planting them in the sand beds but I think ordinarily there's a lot that is probably going to struggle on most people's average garden soil the the risk is with so many of these summer dry loving plants is that where we have two months of endless rain they get a lot of water sitting at their crown and so what we tend to do just as a counter to this if we're going to plant more summer dry loving plants is actually when we plant we make sure we put about a 10 centimeter dollop of horticultural grit directly around the very base of every plant that that we think might be a little bit susceptible to winter rots that and planting on slight mounds rather than in a bowl with the that that helps combat any problems from those winter plants that might rot in the winter I don't think there's got I mean there's certain oreganums for instance like is it the diptamnus and the kent beauty that are a lot more dry loving and they wouldn't do well out through the winter so again you're back to cultivar selection rather than just a specific plant I think rosemary is a plant for me that always seems to struggle a little bit it it just doesn't like to sit too wet but actually rosemary doesn't like to completely dry out either so a really good topping of horticultural grit is what we give our plants actually keeps moisture in during the summer but also allows good drainage in the winter not actually just planting because you don't want to if you're on clay soil you don't want to dig a hole and fill it with grit because all of the water just rushes into the grit field hole because that's nice and easy for water to percolate into it's a good topping like a mulch instead of compost and if you'd like to see how Stephen Loo actually created the border with lots of brilliant tips for your own border then see this video coming up next how to create an outstanding perennial border and thank you for watching goodbye