Morocco - Souqs, Odd Smells and Citrus - Images

It was a week before Greg and I were to fly out of Luton airport north of London to Santiago de Compostela where we were to spend a week walking the last 100km of the Camino de Santiago. After a conversation over the phone and a mad idea put forward by myself to go to Morocco instead, we made some rough plans and went to it. We hired a car and drove through Portugal in a day, then onwards to Malaga where we visited Gregs uncle before hopping a boat to Northern Africa, Morocco.

We haggled our way to Chefchaoun and then caught a bus to Fes where we had to make a slightly early departure due to some manic bag sales gone wrong, then saw the beauty of the desert before being consumed by the cultural capital that is Marrakech.

Below is a selection of other photos from my Moroccon travels.

Great Dixter - Working Weekend

An excellent weekend of learning. I was expecting a quiet weekend pottering around, little did I realise I would be put hard to work on creating fresh compost according to a John Innes recipe.








The first step in this process is to use a turf cutter to take the top off a meadow and then to stack this high and let it decompose. From here, shavings are taken from one end and spread over an area and then top dressed with compost from the gardens which is comprised mainly of decomposed clippings from the meadows. These two parts are then rotary hoed together before being pout through a sieve. This fine material is the base of the compost, with pine bark, grit, and other additions made after it has been sterilised. It is backbreaking work, but I think one would agree that it makes a supreme growing medium, whereby plants will grow out of the media into its new surrounding soil quicker. This has been found on site at Great Dixter, primarily attributing to the fact that they are being grown in essentially the same soil they are to be planted into as stock.





Other notes I wish to make:
- they wrote the textbook on successional planting.
- Important to create a 4/5 successional planting over a few seasons.
- Work from knowing what you want it to look like in the peak period and go backwards to fill the gaps either side of this
- The results should look good in black and white, this depends on varying
o Colour, texture, form, height, of both flower, fruit and leaf
o Varying seasonal interest of one plant
Cornus with red stems, but variegated foliage
o Select best plants for the spot
- Climbers, evergreen, perennials, biennials and annuals (reseeders need managing!) all grow together and cohabit
o Its about balancing the number of plants so that one doesn’t swamp the other and they live in harmony. Bulbs will often die off if the other plantings around them are too thick and doent die down at the right time
o Good combo – agapnthus and crocossmia, two striking colours
o Use backdrops to the colour like the yew heges which are clipped in autumn to get the most prolonged length of crisp edges
o Even if a garden is designed and developed around the spring summer season, winter interest can be created by evergreen shrubs (the backbone of the garden), grasses which add structure and create interest on frosty mornings and winter flowering plants such as Galanthus, Crocus, Iris reticulata, Helleborus, Primula vulgaris and early flowering Narcissus.

- very organic in its organisational culture
o traditional methods of producing compost which they prop all their plants in
o it’s a very high maintenance garden
o the plant centre is tiny and traditional and there is no desire to enhance things and put in a coffee shop as this will then lose the character of the place. This is just one example of many whereby the traditional horticultural practices are conserved at the expense of non commercialisation and lack of increasing margins.

Sir Harold Hillier Gardens - The Winter Garden

anthonycurnow.com
Anthony Curnow from Macdonalds Plants Plus Nursery in Bendigo is currently undertaking a program in Plant Centre Management Skills at the Royal Horticultural Societies flagship property, Wisley Gardens, UK. This is part of a series of articles documenting his experiences abroad.

Sir Harold Hillier gardens

Sir Harold Hillier Gardens lies close with Wisley as being one of the United Kingdoms leading ornamental gardens, incorporating a wide range of resources that act in promoting and developing horticulture. With a collection comprising of roughly 42,000 plants, about 12,000 different taxa which make up 11 National Plant Collections, there is little doubt as to its popularity.

I visited this garden with the purpose of seeing their well respected Winter Garden, which with more than 650 different cultivars is said to be the largest in Europe of its sort. The variety of plants selected for their form, colour, texture and scent is astonishing. Evergreen plants such as clipped Buxus and conifers are used as a backdrop to the fluorescent stems of Dogwoods (Cornus sp.) and the bright spider like flowers of Witchazels (Hamamellis sp.) Snowdrops (Galanthus sp.) at this time of the year dominate the lawns and gaps between deciduous shrubs, prior to the Daffodils emergence. If the showy display of Daphne bahlou ‘Jacqueline Postill’ is not enough to stop you in your tracks, then her scent alone is bound to bowl you right over. It is staggeringly sweet and you smell this plant well before you see it.
While most deciduous trees are waiting for warmer spring weather for bud burst, the light delicate pink petals of early cherry blossom (Prunus subhirtella ‘Autumnalis Rosea’) have been flowering successfully along its bare stems since early winter. The newly formed bark begins to be revealed from beneath the flaking sheath of the Birches, and the catkins hang at the tips of the branches in preparation for pollen distribution. There are varied outlines formed against the sky of the deciduous trees, such as Ginkgo with its knobbly spur like growth, the twisted branches of Corylus contorta and the classic Quercus growth habit. There is so much to see in this garden that one walks away addicted to the satisfaction gained in overloading ones senses.

Interpretation is incredibly positive in the gardens, with an evident desire to educate the public. Their A4 photocopied handouts provide seasonal interest guided walks, presenting visitors with detailed information on the cultivars and how to say them phonetically, eliminating the questionable Latin pronunciations. Reference to whether their garden centres also stock the plant is made, bringing a unified front to the public, something which RHS Wisley is at this stage working on developing. These are excellent, positive interpretative and marketing ideas for such gardens in promoting horticulture on a technical level without ‘dumbing’ it down.

Along with running a wide range of programme and events for the general public, the Garden maintains a long history in educating and producing some of the countries finest horticulturists. Catherine Withers, a current Wisley Diploma trainee spent a year there volunteering and learning:

‘There are many opportunities for studying at Hillier gardens. I had the pleasure of living in the student accommodation along with the resident cat and the other students, of course. We were rotated around the five areas of the garden on a fortnightly basis, which was a good way to see the whole garden over the different seasons. Every other Thursday was study day where we had a workshop in the morning, often given by the head gardener, on important skills in horticulture such as shrub pruning, propagation, and tree planting. The afternoon was spent going on themed identification walks, being shown 20 plants that we would then be tested on in two weeks time. We also had to produce a project on something related to the garden and give a presentation to all the staff. There are two - three paid placements offered every year, either for six months or the whole year. Applicants usually have to have some horticultural experience. As for volunteering, this can be done at any time and for anything from a couple of weeks to the whole year. The accommodation is free as long as there is space and students come from around the world. For more information on the garden look at the website http://www.hilliergardens.org.uk/’

Sir Harold Hillier Gardens is, like Wisley, a place of opportunity for both budding horticulturists and gardeners of all ages.

A Taste of Horticulture in Holland

In a recent trip to Holland for the weekend, I was provided with the opportunity to be shown around a unique nursery. It primarily grows a number of Hedera sp. of varying pot sizes and three or four varieties of Euonymus fortunei for the landscape and garden centre market.
The difference between this nursery and all the others in the country is its employees. With the exception of a small management team, the other 80 odd employees consist of people with special needs. It provides a good bridging opportunity for people of all abilities in providing them with the skills which will help them out in being employed elsewhere.
The nursery used to grow species such as Zamiocalus (ZZ Plants) and Spathiphyllum which required the houses to be heated, however given the cost to run the boiler and the lack of funding (primarily from government), a shift in species grown on site was made. Very little chemical spraying takes place, with the introduction of some beneficial insects to biologically control common pests such as aphid throughout the seasons. The plants generally look after themselves, with the majority of the worked working in propagation and potting and at the other of the production line at dispatch, where plants are cleaned up and staked.

With winter nearly gone now, the spring season is upon us, and a busy one it is bound to be with the world renowned Chelsea Flower Show in May and the peak season about to begin for all retailers.

Text and Photos by Anthony J Curnow

Sir Harold Hillier Gardens - The Winter Garden - Photos

Wintertime at RHS Wisley Gardens

Winter at Wisley

Its winter time and Wisley Gardens has taken on a new look, with the bare structured bones of the gardens and its borders being revealed, it has turned into a winter wonderland! The colour of the sky offset by the lush grass acts as a backdrop to a number of winter marvels which in our increasingly temperate climate in South East Australia, we just don’t get to experience.

Christmas has passed and the season is reaching its peak with sweetly scented, spider shaped Hamamelis sp. (Witch hazel) flowers being borne along the bare stems, they are real show stoppers having only just shed their vivid Autumn colours. The shorter days and low sun slung on the horizon sheds light in a fashion that promotes shadows, silhouettes and reflections in the ponds, bringing warmth to the plants that are covered white with frozen moisture in the air. The orange-brown flaking bark of Acer griseum, vibrant coloured stems of coppiced Salix sp. and Cornus sp. and the pink and orange fruits of Euonymus sp. all add interest to a season which for many find dull and depressing; there is plenty of evidence that the garden is a living system just waiting for the right conditions to explode into leaf and bloom.

The extents to which gardeners go to save their precious plants over the winter are amazing. Here in the gardens, tents and straw/wire structures keep the growing tips warm and cosy of a multitude of plants (such as Cordyline and Ensete) that are not fully frost hardy.

Life as a Plantsman

Recently I attended a Kew Garden lecture by Roy Lancaster on his life as a Plantsman. Roy Lancaster is a highly respected member of the industry here in the UK, introducing a number of plant species into cultivation during his career. His enthusiasm is outstanding and highly inspiring to young members of the industry. So one may ask, what is a Plantsman? A plantsman as described by Mr. Lancaster falls under the 3 P’s – Plants, People and Places. As a Plantsman, he went on to describe the prerequisites of what it takes to be a ‘good gardener’:

• Patience – there are not many plants that are on the same time scale as humans, and as such be prepared to wait 20 years for something to flower!
• Sense of adventure – the need to see things growing in the wild - ‘’I want to see for myself’’
• Sense of curiosity – a curious mind – question everything – where, when and how?

Some of my most memorable moments so far demonstrates such characteristics; the feeling I had when climbing the high mountains in Switzerland and nearly treading on a small stand of Eidelweiss and being taken off the beaten track on Mt. Kinabalu in Borneo to view Nepenthes sp. growing wild. These were enthralling moments full of my own nerdy excitement – I love plants! We must not forget the origins of the plants we work with each day, and never take them for granted. So get out there, even if it is your local nature reserve, and view plants in their habitat!

Another interesting point is the way Mr. Lancaster continued to promote the fact that being a good gardener really is something to aspire to. I believe being a ‘gardener’ is an old term and I know that little respect is often obtained when asked ‘…and what do you do?’ I think this is why the term horticulturalist is often favoured, as it is a more professional term, which given natural succession, probably is the appropriate term for many of us in industry – we are horticulturalists. We hold a vast bank of knowledge and experience and as such should be seen as those to turn to when any issue arises from plants in both the natural and artificial landscape.