Jungle Drums

Second Spanish buying trip postponed due to volcano – oh how bothersome! Actually, it’s disappointing but not disastrous as we discovered so many good batches of stock during the February visit that we’re still able to place an order and be well stocked up for the next few weeks. And compared to the blow of a cancelled holiday, or worse, the interminable boredom of taking up residence in an airport departure lounge for days on end, well, it’s just a minor inconvenience really.

But every cloud has a silver lining and this one is the beautiful, clear blue sky, unsullied by nasty ‘vapour’ trails that linger for hours.

Daytime temperatures are slowly creeping up but we’re still suffering very cold nights with some plants remaining reluctant to awaken. When visitors tell us they’re concerned about, for example, their tree ferns producing new fronds, I point them to our beech trees that are still completely naked, for reassurance.

Met office 5 day forecast is saying 17 degrees for Norwich on Saturday 24^th and the forecast we subscribe to, WeatherAction, has predicted, for some time, a heat wave for the last week of April – ARE YOU READY???!!!

The last few days we’ve been potting cannas and they’ll be available in approximately 2 weeks time. Our method is as follows - We keep cannas in their pots over winter in a frost-free green house. At the end of March we turn them out of their pots, cut away the roots and divide the rhizomes into manageable size pieces. We then pack them tightly into wooden trays and cover with compost, which is kept just moist.

The cannas seem to burst into life and a few weeks later (now), when they have developed a reasonable root system, but before their roots become a tangled mess,

they are turned out of their trays and potted into 2 or 3 litre pots and again kept just moist until a really good root system has developed.

All our stock is home grown and we’re very vigilant with virus. Nobody is able to say with 100% certainty that their stock is un-virused, (only laboratory tests can certify this), but our plants look very clean and anything that looks suspicious is immediately burnt. At last we’ve re-built our stock of Canna musafolia, after destroying the whole crop four years ago, and now have plenty available. We had a visit from Ian Cooke, the UK Canna authority last year and he was very complimentary about our cannas and said how disgusted he was with many other nurseries and garden centres that knowingly sold virused cannas to unwitting customers.

I can’t gush about Cannas enough. Fast growing, lush, jungle foliage, easy to grow, quick to make up, and what other plant provides such an amazing, flower display that lasts from July until the first frosts? They require minimal frost protection in the winter and reward us each year with such a flower and foliage spectacle. And for traditionalists-type gardeners, who claim they are not hardy enough and are too high maintenance for them to grow, they may care to consider the following-

1) They require far less maintenance over a season than a hanging basket.

2) They are probably hardier than most of the plants in a hanging basket and if you can’t be bothered to protect them at least they stand a pretty good chance of surviving outdoors in an average winter.

3) For the same price as you would pay for basket plants you can buy several good size cannas which will give equal flower power (and better foliage too). 

Varieties available this year include

Musafolia

Edulis

Ehamanii

Madeira

Pacific Beauty

Ambassado

Queen Charlotte

Durban

Striata

Striped Beauty

Indica purpurea

Wyoming

Taney

 

It’s amazing and slightly daunting to think that we could be planting out the tenders in just over a month, weather permitting. Assessing our large stock plants we were disappointed to see that our Ensete maurelliis look a bit on the mushy side and smell like fermenting hops in a brewery. Funnily enough we were taking care of a few Ensetes for Will Giles of The Exotic Garden- they were down the far end of the heated greenhouse and were fine. Just goes to show that there are even microclimates in greenhouses – or is it provenance? The Colocasias and Alocasias don’t look too sharp either but on closer inspection they were salvageable and with a surgeons skill and precision, Jamie has been cutting away the rot from each tuber, giving them a puff of Flowers of Sulphite and placing them in intensive care on a covered heated bench. Cannas and Gingers and Brugmansias look very good.
We’ve been potting our bedding plants. Bedding I hear you say – surely Urban Jungle aren’t peddling Petunias now? No. We have far more interesting plants than your typical garden centre.

We have some gorgeous :

for foliage in our Tropical Garden.

For the Desert Bed we have :

  Of course we will have these for sale in a few weeks time as well.

As if this time of year isn’t frantic enough in any nursery, coping with the massive increase in potting, watering, customer service, deliveries and mail order, we’ve taken it upon ourselves to re-commence our market stall in Norwich city centre, 3 days a week.

  The Nursery, being situated on a small country lane that basically leads to nowhere, means we have to do everything we possibly can to draw attention to ourselves. Over the years we’ve built up a large customer base at the nursery, but one can never rest on ones laurels, and after a break of a couple of years it seems a good time to resume this outlet. If you are reading this (is there anyone out there?), and you are in Norwich on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday, come over to the stall for some plant talk.

 

Having recently increased our range of Phormiums it got me thinking. I’ve often wondered what possesses some people to build up a National Collection of plants. I’ve watched Gardeners World visiting the gardens of the owners of the National Collections of Snow Drops, Narcissus and Geranium. The gardens were about as exciting as Monty Dons sock drawer. And that’s when they were at the pinnacle of their year, with a flowering display lasting, oh, all of one month (a bit more for the geraniums). I even thought the garden of the holder of the National Collection of Cannas was a bit monotonous, and I’m mad about cannas. But just recently I’ve really fallen for Phormiums and maybe, just maybe, I’m starting to empathize with this acquisitive compulsion. A Phormium collection would be one of year round interest, permanently evergreen and architectural. It would include plants from the diminutive Phormium Jack Sprat reaching only 45cm to the massive Phormium Williamsii towering up to 5m and every size in between. A garden with a Phormium collection would be spectacularly colourful – there are all shades of the colours of the rainbow. -even blue(ish), in the form of Phormium Sea Jade and there are the incredibly black Phormium Platt’s Black and Black Adder.

Courtesy of Mark Steven

Add to this a monumental flowering extravaganza and a bountiful supply of material for flower arranging. The leaves that is, not the flowers. Although they make a stupendous statement on the plant I can’t imagine Phormium flowers would have much vase appeal.

Courtesy of Dysartian
From New Zealand, there are two species of Phormium: tenax and cookianum. If you’ve ever wondered what the difference is, it’s usually quite easy to tell. Tenax has more upright leaves than cookianum, whose leaves tend to have a graceful arching habit. The flowers, which are held on long stalks, also give a clue to the species. Tenax flowers are short tubes, held upright on the stem. Cookianum are longer, and pendulous and the seed pods are twisted. Dangling seed pods of cookianum below 1. Upright flowers of tenax below 2.

Courtesy of rosie.perera
Phormium, or to give it its more common name, New Zealand Flax, has played an incredibly important role in the economy of New Zealand. The Maoris used the leaves and fibres for baskets, roofing, cooking utensils, mats and, after washing and pounding, they could be used for clothing soft enough to be worn next to the skin. In the 1800s thousands of tonnes of flax fibre were exported to England for rope making. The last Flax processing plant closed in the 1980s but plans may be afoot to develop a paper industry from Phormium. 
Phormiums are easy to grow requiring only a moderately fertile soil. They can tolerate some shade though not total shade and are very hardy, though after the 2009/10 winter we would advise to protect young plants with fleece in winter. The newest, central leaf can be damaged by severe frost but plants usually quickly recover in spring. They’re low maintenance, requiring little water and no staking, and just a quick tidy up of brown leaves once or twice a year improves the appearance of the plant considerably. What’s more they’re wind and salt resistant, so are ideal for exposed and coastal gardens.
We have a really good selection of Phormiums available at the nursery in a variety of sizes and plan to increase our range over the coming months. I think there are about 150 cultivars, so, we’re on our way to about 10% of National Collection!!