Gardening in Emsworth.

 My hellebores have been good this year, as usual.  I deadhead them to prevent them seeding everywhere.  The original two or three plants were given to me - I was invited to dig them up from a friend's garden.  I've a lot more than three now. The flower colours vary from almost white to dark maroon.  Two of my favourites are pictured.  I've tried some of the new cultivars, but none have been very successful.  They are going over now and it's time to deadhead them.  They seed freely if left.  I found another reason to it today.  Inside a few of the flowers were nurseries of greenfly!  The adults must have overwintered there.  The females can reproduce by parthenogenesis whereby the small babies pop out from their rear ends. Meanwhile the hellebore seeds are maturing inside the swelling ovaries in the centre of the flower.

 Winter flowering honeysuckle, Lonicera fragrantissima, is a largeish semi-evergreen shrub which  produces fragrant creamy white flowers in winter. Due to a misunderstanding, mine was trimmed into the standard ball shape this autumn, so I was surprised to find it flowering recently, not exactly profusely, but doing its best.  The right time to prune is after flowering so that the flower bearing branches have a chance to grow and buds develop.  I've always found the timing of pruning awkward.  As the flowers disappear the leaves grow vigorously and in abundance so it's hard to see the stems you should cut off near the ground at this time.  I resolve to prune it properly this spring and hope it will get its natural shape back.

 Garlic is one of the easier crops to grow.  To get the best chance of getting a good crop it needs to be planted in autumn, October or November, so that it gets a period of coldness.  It can be planted until February but a good crop is less likely. Site and soil: well worked and fertile soil, sunny open position How to plant: break the bulb into separate cloves and plant them 'as deep as you like and as early as you like' as I was advised many years ago when I first grew garlic.  Some people plant it with the top near the soil surface, as you do for onion sets, but I always planted mine deeper 2 -5 cm below the surface. Cultivation: weed when necessary. Garlic is prone to rust (a fungal infection of the leaves) but ignore it as it does not harm the bulbs. If a flower starts to develop, pinch it out. Harvest: when the tops dry and shrivel in summer, lift the garlic and let it dry in the sun before storing it in a dry place. These photos show elephant garlic, ...

 Aeoniums are fascinating succulent plants.  A few years ago I was given one, and since then it's gone through a number of different forms.  The most recent was quite unpredictable. Six months ago I had two plants they weren't doing much.  I transplanted them in fresh compost in bigger pots, as a friend suggested.  In retrospect I should have used a much grittier growing medium, but nevertheless one plant thrived, shown below, and the other didn't.     I cut the stem of the less vigorous one in half and planted the top half.  The top isn't growing, but the stem of the bottom half has produced lots of little rosettes.   What will happen next?  Will all the rosettes grow out of the stem?  I'll keep you posted.

 Geum 'Bell Bank' is an early flowering variety which is quite close in habit to it's wild predecessor Geum rivale , aka Water avens.  The flowers are a delightful pink colour rising above a mound of bright green foliage which remains in a dome after the flowers fade, two months or more after they first open in early April. I've had the plant for a few years and would like to split it.  I chickened out this spring, but autumn is another opportunity to do it.

 I bought the original plant from an EHS plant sale - I can't remember how long ago - and it cost me £4.  What great value it's been.  I think it only had 4 leaves, and now, at least four years later, there are four 'shoots' in the pot each with five or six leaves.   Calathea triostar before it was split. It was in its original 1.5 litre pot, so I decided to use the same size pot for the separated plants.  I chose Melcourt Sylvagrow peat-free multi-purpose compost to plant them in, my current favourite.  The plant came cleanly out of its pot.  Each shoot comes from a rhizome, so to separate the shoots the rhizome has to be broken.  I did this by gently breaking them apart (you could cut them). The four transplanted shoots were watered and are now recovering in the (empty) bath, where it is well lit but not directly.  It's an ideal place for them but not very practical in the long run.  Calathea does best in warm humid conditions....