Dingy V Dazzling

On a recent visit to a friend’s nursery we laughed to hear their young son, on the cusp of reaching those dreaded teenage years, moodily describe his parents’ nursery’s plants as ‘dingy’. They are expertly grown and the nursery is well laid out and orderly. They also have well-stocked gardens and display borders. He did however have a point. They specialize in hardy herbaceous and deciduous shrubs. Their season was well and truly over and very little green foliage or flowers remained. For me it seemed a bit depressing.

You know – it doesn’t have to be this way. I can’t help but be constantly amazed at how the English are still stuck in this Cottage Garden mentality time warp. There is such an amazing availability of hardy, evergreen, flowering, exotic-looking plants it beggars belief that gardeners would choose to adorn their garden with anything else. All gardening styles have their merits and traditional herbaceous planting schemes I will begrudgingly acknowledge can look amazing for a few weeks of the year but is this good enough? Not for me it isn’t.

We are half way through October and the vast majority of the plants at Urban Jungle are still looking lush. Obviously the bamboo, palms, phormiums, cordylines, pittosporums, yuccas and agaves, to mention just a few, will show off all year round but to be able to extend the season with the amazing flower power of plants, now at our disposal is thrilling. Here are just a few still strutting their stuff at Urban Jungle on this chilly, windy day.

Canna Ehamannii

Brugmansia about to explode into flower (again).

Lyonothamnus floribundus asplenifolius

Fremontodendron ‘Californian glory’

Fasicularia pitcarnifolia

Hydrangea paniculata ‘Grandiflora’ 5^th month of flowering.

Eryngium pandanifolium-is it ever going to stop growing this year.

Puya coerulea

Grevillea ‘Coastal Glow’

Pittosporum ‘County Park’ and Phormiums

Ensete ventricosum shrugged off last week’s frost but will have to come in from the cold soon.

Solanum crispum ‘Glasnevin’

Cobea scandens

Hedichium gardnerianum - still pumping out flowers.

Acacia dealbata - getting ready to flower in late winter.

Canna Border

The Seven Palms Bed

In May we planted a small area of woodland, which we have called The Seven Palms Bed. It is a large oval shaped border, approximately 7m x 5m in which we planted seven Trachycarpus fortunei palms in the centre. These were taken from our hospital area – not good enough for sale but recovering well enough to be planted out.

The Seven Palms Bed

Around the outside of the border are six Ailanthus altissima (Tree of Heaven). This is a bit of an experiment. The plan is to pollard these in spring. Hopefully they will react to pollarding like many trees and produce enormous palm-like leaves. If they don’t we may need a re-think. Hydrangeas aspera, sargentiana and ‘Nepal Beauty’ will add large leaves and flower power and Aralia variegata and Aralia aureomarginata create a refined elegance. Evergreen colour and ground cover are supplied by Heucheras ‘Obsidian’ and ‘Crème Brulee’, Epimediums and Pachysandra variegata. Large leaved perennials include Angelica gigas, Astilboides tabularis, Ligularia dentata ‘Desdemona’ and Rogersia ‘Herkules’.
Two Canna ‘Stuttgart’ were removed today and consigned to the compost heap. After showing such initial promise a few years ago, when they first appeared on the scene, they fail to live up to their promise each season. They start well enough in spring with their elegant, tapering apple green leaves with thick clotted cream stripes, but come high summer they turn to toast. These really are the most awkward of plants and can only be safely grown in a cupboard - with the door kept shut. A single ray of sunshine can ruin the plant.

Canna ‘Stuttgart’

Back to the making of the garden. The soil was quite dry and impoverished, being under mature Birch trees so after thorough soil preparation, including removing a mat of fibrous tree roots, we incorporated considerable quantities of farmyard manure. Then we planted, watered and added another thick mulch of farmyard manure. And then we had an incredibly long dry period. Considering we planted in such a dry area and perversely, many of the plants we chose are moisture-lovers, all came through the drought unscathed (we’ve turned the sprinkler on the bed only twice). After the recent rains, the plants are starting to establish well and considering it is only three months old, the bed is already beginning to look bold and exciting. What’s more, the soil preparation and mulch have really paid off. I removed less than half a bucket of weeds this afternoon (the first weeding session) and the ground felt warm and surprisingly moist.

Last weeks delivery of Acers are all potted although fitting them on to rows with irrigation was the usual game of Tetris. We have a lovely new variety – Acer palmatum ‘Japanese Sunrise’. Of course they have no leaves yet (they’ve only been here one week) but the bark is most beautifully red and yellow toned. This colouration will further increase during cold weather.

Acer palmatum ‘Japanese Sunrise’

TIME ON MY HANDS

I have spent the last two hours browsing a couple of blogs. Will Giles of ‘The Exotic Garden’ fame (my first visit to his blog and very good it is too), and one of my current favourites, Hyperlipid.

Hyperlipid isn’t for lightweight scientists so most of it goes over my head but I can just about get the gist, and the gist is this. Saturated animal fat is good not bad. Grains and a high carbohydrate diet are very bad and, get this, fruit and veg may be bad - (say what?). After all that hard work in the ornamental veg garden. For crying out loud!
Thought provoking to say the least.

Anyway – this led me to two conclusions.
One– I probably do have a bit more time on my hands now than I’ve led myself to believe and
Two - This blog has to be updated at least once a week from now on or it’s going.

So – I’ll simply start by talking about the day.

A relatively quiet day, after a really busy spring and early summer. Business usually starts to tail off at this time of year. I wish it wouldn’t. Just as we start getting into our stride it tends to go quiet – I guess most people are thinking about holidays right now (or swine flu).

This did allow me to do a spot of gardening between serving and I managed to pull a terrifying amount of weeds from the Tree Fern Dell (it was thoroughly weeded less than a month ago), shoehorn a few more cannas into the Exotic Border and add a few more items to the online shop such as Exotic Hydrangeas, some Mediterranean Shrubs and Ensetes ‘Maurellii’ and ‘Tandara Red’.

Tree Fern Dell

Exotic Border

Also spent a good deal of time repeatedly picking up plants that had blown over in the wind (yet another wet and windy day!) all the while pretending I couldn’t see the potting shed spilling its guts out into the sales area. Of course I could see it, as can our customers (whatever must they think) and I shall clear it up soon. It’s just that I’ve been sooo busy…. Anyway it’s got to be cleared up before tomorrow, as the next big potting job arrives. Acers from New Zealand.

Of course it’s the middle of winter in New Zealand so they are sent in dormancy. They arrive bare-root and foliage free. We get them potted straight away into 7.5 or 10 litre pots in a mix of peat based and John Innes composts with some added bark and slow release fertiliser. They are then tied in to lines to stop them blowing over and each are given their own irrigation dripper, and away they go. They will be in full leaf by autumn, just as it starts getting cold and the nights start drawing in, and then their leaves will change colour and drop again. They don’t seem to mind this stop-start-stop quick turnaround of seasons although the autumn colour won’t be as striking this autumn as next – something to do with not having the time to build enough sugars in the leaf. (Lightweight science).

Acer palmatum ‘Red Emperor’

It is a miracle to witness these unpromising looking stems metamorphosis into these beautiful trees in just a few weeks and one of the many reasons I love this work.

THE EDIBLE JUNGLE DISPLAY GARDEN

THE UNVEILING OF OUR DESIGN.
If you are or are thinking about growing some produce in your garden you may be interested in our fruit and veg garden design. If not look away now. Don’t worry – we will be updating you soon on new and exciting exotic plants for 2009.
This is the first time we have revealed the design for our new ornamental productive garden.

Just a few words to explain how we arrived at this layout.
We wanted to avoid 'dotting' ornamental plants around and making random allotment style beds so we decided on an overall geometric pattern of 3 interlocking circles where the shapes would have purpose and form the structure of the garden rather than being shapes for arts sake. Vegetables will be planted in the centre of the 3 circles in rows. Our rows align to the centres of our circles - like the spokes of a wheel, instead of from east to west as conventional wisdom dictates. One of the circles forms a path and the other 2 are formed by rosemary and lavender hedges. They delineate the boundary between areas that will be used for vegetables within and those that will be permanently planted with fruit bushes on the outside. There is one wide pathway that leads through the centre of the garden and the three circles that will be the main connection between the new garden and the rest of the nursery.

If you were deciding to make your garden, or part of it, productive its a good idea to decide what your priorities are. Ask yourself; for example, ‘what type of vegetable are we most likely to store after harvest or use regularly on a cut and come again crop?’ Try to visualise the range of produce you need or want most of all - what you can practically manage and use
The next step is to look at the space available and assess it with a clinical eye. The sunniest spot is premium food producing territory as well as Yucca and Agave paradise. You probably know where the ground is most fertile. Your lawn might turn out to be a luxury, and how many pounds of produce would your pond deny you? . If space is limited but you still want to grow some food concentrate on crops that are expensive to buy or hard to obtain like berries or unusual varieties of salads. Most berries will grow well in some shade.

JUNGLE DRUMS - December 2008

Now we are well into December I'm sure most of you are thinking of Christmas. We have lots of beautiful, evergreen plants for gardeners and, may we also remind you of our Gift Vouchers, available from the nursery or web site.
The weather here has been bitterly cold for weeks but all the plants in our borders are doing fantastically well and on a cold sunny day it is a pleasure to work outdoors at the nursery, surrounded by evergreen exotics. If you are in the area over winter please drop in and see us - and the plants.
We look forward to updating you in following newsletters of new stock arriving in spring. In the meantime we are sending you an update of our new project and some of the reasons for embarking on this venture - The Edible Jungle.

URBAN JUNGLE GIFT VOUCHERS AVAILABLE HERE

Edible Jungle Garden Update - Why Grow Your Own?

There is an ever more urgent rush to embrace the organic/local/healthy way of providing food for our families and ourselves.
Supermarkets are demonised, we shop there almost guiltily and we frown on the displacement of small local businesses ever more.
Knowledge of the pollution, contamination and adulteration of our food is becoming more widespread. The ever-advancing technologies used to mass-produce our 'daily bread' are becoming farther removed from nature and common sense.

Adapting to change
All of us have concerns about our own and our family's health. Even if we are not motivated to affect widespread change in society, now is the time to bring real nutrition back into our lives. A major shift in our society has been happening over the last few years. These are rapidly changing times in many ways and some of us are bound to feel that growing our own is an added burden to a busy schedule; some may envisage problems and setbacks and be disheartened - even discouraged from starting. This is where we hope to help by setting an example (of how not to do some things as well probably).

Realistic targets
Having catered for our customers' love of plants - artistic and (sometimes single minded) collecting desires we know that not all of you are happy to rip out your palms and pretties. You may not be ready for the Bob Flowerdew 'gardening out of old tyres' style but we feel that it is possible to maintain an attractive garden in the exotic style and feed yourselves from the self same plot, and we feel that it is not necessary to start off by doing a 'Good Life' and going self sufficient. By combining the pretty and the productive you can start gradually - and realistically for your busy home and work schedule.

Don't Cut off your Nolina to Spite your Fatsia
It is important to be able to envisage this. Not many people are willing to turn the garden they have worked hard to transform into a paradise, into an allotment full of canes, bits of plastic and scarecrows. It's not just about looks either - you can still entertain, dine, bbq and sunbathe in an Edible Jungle without having to don wellies and sit on an upturned bucket!

Having our cake and eating it
Our garden will not compromise on the practical needs of growing fruit and vegetables; in our plan, we have positioned the ornamental plants so that they do not cast shade or create root competition. We have laid out the vegetables, fruit and herbs in as ornamental a way as possible in strong geometrical forms and flowing curves. All the practical aspects of the garden such as paths, compost heaps, arches for supporting vines, benches and seats are laid out according to the 3 interlocking circles of our design. Our three circles represent the three principles of this project:

PRODUCTIVITY - BEAUTY - PRACTICALITY

Inspiration
Some of the inspiration for this new garden has come from a wonderful film called 'The Power Of Community - How Cuba Survived Peak Oil'. It is a case study that has a useful lesson for us all about the rapidly diminishing oil reserves and how much we rely on oil based products to produce our food, but is also a heart warming tale of people learning to live from the land again and rediscover their communities. You can learn more about the film at http://www.powerofcommunity.org/cm/index.php and view it on You tube!

Transition
The situation isn't as desperate as that faced by the Cubans during the missile crisis, when their oil was embargoed, but there can be no doubt that we have had it easy for a long time in the west and things are starting to change. We now have a group in Norwich called Transition Towns who are beginning to work towards community based sustainability - you may have heard of the Totnes branch who have their own currency - the Totnes pound.

Swots
We have done an awful lot of research - spending hours in the library, staring at computer screens and generally making pains of ourselves by asking lots of questions to those 'in the know'. We've unearthed some fascinating and some horrible facts that have motivated us and informed us which we would like to share with you below. The first is an article describing (or rather understating!) the disasters that can come about by using herbicides. The second is a fascinating and thought-provoking talk about meat production. And finally a brilliant and very funny book that might make you rethink everything you thought you knew about nutrition.
Home-grown veg ruined by toxic herbicide
Michael Pollan: The omnivore's next dilemma
Book - 'In Defence of Food: The Myth of Nutrition and the Pleasures of Eating' by Michael Pollan

We are looking forward to revealing the design in our next Blog.

THE EDIBLE JUNGLE

From spring 2009 Urban Jungle will be supplying fruit trees and bushes

Announcing our new project

An organic, exotic, plantation-style garden providing self-sufficiency in fruit, vegetables, cut flowers and eggs.

Our nursery is known for ornamental exotic plants and they will remain our passion and the identity of our business. We’ve had six years at the nursery now, expanding our range and experimenting with different stock, and we are always on the lookout for new developments in horticulture. We’ve been aware of the increase in popularity over the last few years of fruit and vegetable growing, but have resisted the temptation to ‘jump on the bandwagon’ or make a gesture towards the latest trend and simply stock a few packets of seeds and some fruit canes.
Now we feel we can bring our own contribution to productive gardening: an Urban Jungle take on this new and important change in how our customers want to garden. By creating a new architectural and exotic garden that’s highly productive for 365 days a year and that doesn’t look like an allotment, we hope to show by example, how your own garden can be productive without looking like a cross between a farm, recycling centre or ‘hobby patch’. Nor will this be an ornamental garden with a passing nod to food production – a few strategically placed Ruby chard and a hanging gourd do not a self-sufficient garden make!
We’ve been researching and scratching our heads for long enough and are ready to get started now: it’s a bit of an adventure really and we fully expect it to be a learning process with a steep curve (upwards we hope). We invite you to join us on this journey to self-sufficiency ‘the beautiful way’. You can follow this project on our blog and come along and have a laugh at our expense if you like, at what we achieve. We believe it is important to put your neck on the line if you believe in your vision of how something can be done, and whilst this is not some revolutionary concept we feel it is an idea who’s time has come.

We have an area of ground at the nursery ideal for the project. At present the area (approximately 26m x 20m) is home to a large muddy puddle which was once a pond – allegedly, six years worth of plants that have been ‘held in this area until they get better’…..hmmmm, and a ‘compost heap’. The compost would be useful if we could get at it – it’s currently guarded by malice of stinging nettles and a wasp nest. Next to this is another strip of land that will be home to a couple of dozen blissfully happy hens. All surrounded by countryside teeming with rabbits, deer and foxes. Security could be an issue.

On the plus side, the site is reasonably open and sunny and has several productive apple trees, which we are told are old and rare varieties. The ground hasn’t been cultivated in recent history, nor chemicals used, so, although the Soil Association might not certify it, its potential for organic (in our opinion), paradisiacal fecundity is self-evident.
We feel that we have arrived at an exciting design for this new garden that pays as much attention to looking good exotically as it does to tasting good naturally, whilst making it comfortable to sit and relax in, to soak up the regimented rows of food growing and the lush exotics adorning. You will be able to walk into the garden under arches laden with gourds and squash, sit amidst the circles of rosemary and lavender, and stroll by the new pond and under the bananas, out into our adjacent ‘Tree Fern Garden’.

Look out for regular updates.

NEWLY ARRIVED STOCK

The nursery has had a complete transformation and is looking stunning. We are continuing to add display borders and are now stocked to the gunnels with the most sensational plants. Our range and value for money are unbeatable. If you haven't visited for a while, or for that matter have never been to the nursery, then it's about time you honoured us with your company. Our customers really matter to us and unlike large garden centres we offer knowledgeable advice and old-fashioned service as well as fantastic plants. So, if you're fed up with bland monotony, staff who don't know a Daisy from a Dasylirion and who pretend you're invisible if you require assistance, having to walk through acres of non-gardening related merchandising tat before you reach the ever diminishing plant section and that oh so pleasant aroma of micro-waved lasagne and jacket potato., then take a visit to Urban Jungle cause we don't do it like that!

NEWLY ARRIVED STOCK INCLUDES

Trachycarpus fortunei - lots of sizes - beautiful quality from £110 to £310
Chamaerops humulis - as above £23 to £85
Gnarly Grape vines - 1m trunk and very leafy £95
Pittosporum tobira - huge, fat plants 1m tall and nearly as wide £58
Puya coerulea - very silver, multi-headed on 60cm trunks £176
Citrus - oranges and lemons - variegated too - from £55
Agaves and Aloes for conservatory and garden
Accacia dealbata - 2m, fantastic quality and in flower bud(!) £30
Agapanthus - ludicrously large plants - from £7.5 - £12
Erythrina crista-galli - 1.2m thick woody trunks £81
Bay pyramids - 2m - £140

And of course LOTS MORE.