Jungle Drums

After the worst winter for decades we have revised the hardiness guidelines for some of our plants based on our own experience at the nursery and those of our customers. In the winter our site is fairly exposed and lies in a frost pocket so plants are really put to the test.

All plants are now colour coded as below. We hope this helps you make informed decisions. The majority of the plants we stock are blue or green coded.
Every plant at the nursery (and soon on our website) has a coloured label for easy hardiness identification.

Please be assured we make no exaggerations regarding hardiness.

After a truly rotten winter, the yearned for milder weather finally seems to be here. At last its good to see familiar faces at the nursery again, and new customers alike, after what’s been a cold, and sometimes lonely couple of months. And the clocks go forward this Saturday. Always a cause for celebration.
We have a new website. Like clothes you can get bored of the same attire, day in day out, so we’ve had a spring re-fresh. We’re also trying to blog more regularly, which is quite a challenge at this, our busiest time of year, and we’re constantly updating and adding new stock to the site.
We’ve already had several deliveries from Spain and Portugal and have a good range of superb quality palms in lots of different sizes at unbeatable prices including Trachycarpus fortunei,

Trachycarpus wagnerianus	Chamaerops humulis
Butia capitata	Phoenix canariensis

and Washingtonia robusta.

Our bamboo is also excellent quality and we have some new varieties this year such as Phyllostachys nigra 'Boryana'

with its camouflage-patterned culms, Fargesia ‘Vampire’ with culms that age to bright red and we’ll shortly be taking delivery of the highly desirable and illusive Chusquea culeo.
Our range of Phormiums is very exciting this year, and includes the rare Phormium ‘Firebird’ in good specimen sizes, as well as the most choice selection of the species.

We’ve enormous multi-headed Yucca aloifolia and some beautiful specimens of Puya coerulea with large trunks. If you’re worried about hardiness, we left our Puya outdoors for the second year running with no protection and it’s looking very healthy. Please don’t think Urban Jungle has a mild microclimate. We are in a dreadful frost pocket!

Our tree and shrub collection continues to expand and we have a lovely range of Pittosporums, including some exceptional and very unusual Pittosporum tobira standards.

We’re chomping at the bit to put our huge range of unusual homegrown ferns  

and perennials on the website but everything this year is a little behind because of the weather. We imagine most will be available from mid-April.
And of course we’ll soon be adding the more exotic perennials to the site including cannas, gingers, bananas and colocasias. They’re just starting to wake up: potting begins in earnest next week in plenty of time for planting out in May (depending on weather).
We’ll be attending several plant fairs this year and have joined the Norfolk Nursery Network.

This is a marketing co-operative of high quality, independent, specialist nurseries. Details of other members' nurseries are on our site. Even more reason for those further a field to give us a visit, with so many other nurseries, and some pretty good gardens in the vicinity. Of course we’re always happy to continue sending out plants with our courier but we welcome your visit. (By the way - I'm not miserable in the photos - just cold!)

There cannot be an exotic gardener amongst us who hasn’t suffered some loss of plants this dreadful winter (-7 last night!!), but at least with the hardy bamboos I can sleep soundly; they are after all the great stalwarts of the exotic winter garden. Being so diverse and versatile, they lend themselves to use in a variety of ways - as an evergreen hedge, backdrop to a border, or as feature plants by themselves. And at this time of year, its a comfort to know that despite this cruel, never-ending winter, just below the surface, they’ll be preparing to send forth this seasons new culms.

Possibly the most admired of any plant at the nursery is our clump of Phyllostachys vivax f. aureocaulis. When the late afternoon sun illuminates it, it glows. The effect is simply breathtaking – even bored children, dragged in by their parents to yet another nursery are captivated by it. This particular clump was lifted from a collector’s garden in March 2007. It is planted in dry soil on the edge of a woodland bed. For the last three seasons it has sent up respectable-sized culms and formed a magnificent tight clump. We removed the top third of the canes, as one should when planting, to help it establish. The effect was so attractive, like a multi-branched tree (I think that’s what’s called an oxymoron, but hey), that we’ve continued this procedure each year. It really is the easiest plant to prune. No need for ladders – simply bend a cane, snip, release, job done. It’ll be interesting to see what it does this growing season. Will it start to wander, as the texts books tell us it will in dry soil? We have another Phyllostachys vivax aureocaulis planted at the nursery in more moist soil. Now this does wander. It’s growing next to a monster Gunnera manicata, and has pushed canes through its crown, like a form of Japanese torture. We may have to carry out a rescue operation this month.

Bamboo seekers often overlook Phyllostachys humilis. It has beautiful coloured canes, far subtler than the flashy P. vivax aureocaulis, and these are not always apparent in young plants. But it also has other wonderful attributes. If you have a small garden but must have a Phyllostachys (as everyone must) it is the shortest growing, reaching on average only 3m in the UK. It has quite small green leaves but they are produced in abundance and have a lovely blue under-side, which is very apparent in even the slightest breeze. The canes emerge olive/green and change over the season to green, aging to orange/brown. Mature clumps have canes in these three different colours.

Phyllostachys nigra is well known and justifiably popular.

Well-pruned specimens, with lower leaves removed, never fail to impress but they should always be planted in full sun for best cane colouration. In hot summers the canes become jet black with white bands of leaf scars below the nodes. We have a clump, maturing well, unfortunately at the back of the border so its canes are somewhat obscured. This has been planted for five years and has made a good tidy, well-behaved clump with nice thick canes. On a facing border, we had to remove a clump of Phyllostachys nigra after just two years to stop it rampaging through the whole bed at an alarming rate. When customers ask if Phyllostachys nigra runs I truthfully don’t know what to say.

Chusquea culeou is an attention grabber.

Ours seemed to sulk in the ground when planted, not doing very much, for two years. Suddenly, last summer, fat, pink shoots appeared around the perimeter of the weedy looking clump. These rapidly shot skyward, with branches emerging from the leaf sheaths on some of the culms to give the distinctive bottlebrush effect. Other culms have retained their leaf sheaths throughout the winter. It’s a striking and architectural plant and very much in demand but frustratingly, always in short supply and devilishly difficult to propagate. I’m really excited at the prospect of this years culms.

But for real culm drama, the rare and wonderful Phyllostachys iridescens deserves an Oscar.

Ours is planted in the poorest, driest, shadiest position at the back of the nursery. Each year the beast wanders yards and yards from its original position and we have to ruthlessly kick off any unwanted culms. Thick, purple-sheathed giant shoots emerge rapidly in to very deep green canes with a white bloom. Mature canes develop distinctive orange vertical stripes. How far it will try to run this year remains to be seen. Apparently 4m is not unusual. We wait in excitement and trepidation.

A short reprieve from this seemingly never-ending winter last week with a buying trip to southern Spain. Its been a cold winter there too, relatively speaking, but the weather changed the day after arrival and became warm and sunny with midday temps up to 27 degrees - wahoo!

We visited some interesting, out of the way nurseries in Valencia and were almost as impressed with the crumbly, derelict buildings on the site of one of them as we were with the plants themselves.

You see this a lot in Spain; buildings that would be treasured in the UK, completely abandoned. Although the trip involved lots of driving it really was worth getting off the beaten track, and we visited some tucked out of the way nurseries where we left no corner unexplored in the quest for the very best plants. At the end of the first day, as we were about to leave we pushed to the back of the nursery and found some amazing Yucca aloifolia – a discovery that rounded off the day nicely. They were piled together in an unruly heap but we stood them upright and could then see what amazing plants they were.

 On the last day we headed south to Almeria, and here we found the best quality palms on a huge, industrial scale nursery by the sea, where the only way to get around is by car, not just outside but even in the glass houses too.
Following a15 hour (yes 15 hour) delay at the airport, due to industrial action in France, and a mini-earthquake a couple of hours before departure, the plane touched down to a cold, grey Stanstead, still very much in the grip of winter.
Thankfully the weather is slightly better for this week – could this be the start of Spring? Lets hope so.

New stock arriving over the next few weeks includes huge Cordyline australis, some with multi-trunks, chunky Yucca rosrata and Yucca glauca, a range of sizes of Phoenix canariensis, big-trunked, multi-headed Yucca aloifolia, Cycas revoluta in a range of sizes , Pittosporum tobira -some very classy and unusual standards, Olive trees, Fruit trees including lime, lemon, grapefruit and orange, Pinus pinea, Topiary – some stunning quality Bay balls with spirals, pyramids and columns to follow in a few weeks, two sizes of Trachelospermum jasminoides, some huge Phormium tenax variegata and Cupressus sempervirens (Italian pencil tree).
More stock arriving weekly now plus lots of our home-grown stock becoming available too.

We are delighted that Jamie Spooner has joined Urban Jungle as Senior Nurseryman. After graduating from Easton College with an HND in Horticulture, Jamie began his working career at Pensthorpe Gardens in Norfolk, and within a year was promoted to head gardener. This stimulated a passion for the new wave of naturalistic planting landscapes, for which Pensthorpe is famous, and so Jamie didn’t hesitate when the opportunity arose to work in Holland, with the world famous designer, plants man and pioneer of prairie-style planting, Piet Oudolf. Jamie garnered invaluable insights into the machinations of a highly efficient and innovative Dutch Nursery and honed his propagating skills.

Will Giles, the author and owner of The Exotic Garden in Norwich has been a mentor and highly influential figure to Jamie over the years and has greatly extended the breadth of Jamie’s plant knowledge and appreciation. When pressed, Jamie struggles to name a favourite plant but confesses a partiality to palms.

Jamie recently returned from two years travelling in New Zealand, followed by a whistle-stop, winter tour of the Scottish Highlands.