Painted heather
I’ve been making a new bed along a wall this week.
It’s to house my creeping thyme plants that have come on
well over the summer in their small cells. Now is a good time to be setting up
any new beds and borders before it gets too wet and will also spare the house
and carpets getting covered in mud.
The soil in the new bed is quite fibrous as I put cardboard
over the grass two years ago, but it’s full of lovely worms. I’ve sieved the
top soil and any large clumps of fibre have been taken out and composted, which
has left me with a lovely fine planting medium for the small plugs. I’ll keep
an eye on any chickweed coming up and remove that too because like the
chamomiles, thyme plants don’t really do well without us having to intervene
occasionally and take out a few self-set weeds.
I’m starting small with an area of around 10’x2’ and can
expand as the plants develop. I might
even get my whole lawn made from thyme just like gardens used to be a hundred
and fifty years ago before lawn mowers.
Heather Sprayed with
food colouring
Heathers are looking great in the shops and gardens at the
moment. Winter flowering types are very popular and will brighten up a garden
or planter well into spring. One type of
heather (calluna vulgaris ‘garden girls’) is particularly popular as the
flowers are very bright and will last months because the actual flowers don’t
open up, they stay as tidy buds. There’s plenty of colour range too from whites
to pinks and purple.
I did notice that the plants being sold at a garden centre
this week were being sprayed different colours even though they were in flower.
I’m not really sure why growers need to put colour on the plants; maybe they
just weren’t bright enough. (They are proving to be the best sellers around our local garden centres so the growers are doing something right)
We’re used heathers sprayed with fake snow in December but
colouring already colourful plants is a bit baffling. The dye used is generally
a natural food colouring so it won’t harm the plants and will eventually wash
off leaving you with (I presume) a dull looking plant that you can put out in
the garden to fill up a gap. Either that or trim it back and get the food
colouring out of the cupboard and get spraying. The only difference will be
that the dye colours the whole plant-stems and leaves- as well as the flowers
so they look a bit artificial, but at a glance you wouldn’t notice.
That reminds me of an experiment I used to do for the
children when they were young. I’d choose a white flower, a rose or carnation,
but any single stem flower will probably do. This is fun to do and usually
leaves the stems their natural colour.
Colour changing
flowers
What you need:
- Fresh white flowers, carnations are best
- Food colouring
- Warm water
- Several small jars to put in different colours
What to do:
Fill the jars 2/3 full with warm water.
Add 15-20 drops of food colouring to the vase. You can add
different colours into each vase to see if some colours work better than
others.
Cut the stem of the flower (adult stuff) at a slant. Put a
flower into each of the vases and wait…
Let the flowers sit in the water and keep checking to see
when the colour starts to change. It
should take about six hours, but it could take longer depending on the plant
Some colours might work faster than others and see what
happens when to swap the flowers into different vases.
Salvia Artemis
I came across a Silver Sage, Salvia argentea in the garden centre and couldn’t resist stroking
the soft furry leaves. Usually sage
plants are grown for their flowers but these short lived perennials or usually
grown as biennials are mainly used for their foliage.
They like dry settings with partial shade and will tolerate
a mild frost in the garden especially if you keep the old leaves on the crown
as they die back in the winter (like you would a gunnera). The following year the plants flower so you
can collect the seeds and grow some new plants for the borders. If you want the plants to live longer just cut
off the flowering spikes as they appear, this should keep them looking good
throughout most of next summer.
