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Splitting Calathea 'triostar' - an Easter Monday project.

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 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.  The tips of the leaves can go brown
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Bare root fruit bushes

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I'm planning to give up the allotment I've had for 20 years.  The produce I'll miss the most is the fruit: blackcurrants, redcurrants, gooseberries and, most important, raspberries.  So I've bought new bare root bushes/canes from Blackmoor Nurseries, our nearest and very good suppliers, to establish in the bottom of my long thin garden.  It's fairly shady, but growing fruit bushes there shouldn't be a problem.  It's very different from the allotment where it's sunny and quite exposed so it's a bit of an experiment. The photos show the bare root bushes heeled in my future veg patch.  The chard behind them is being ravaged by little snails.  They'll have to go in the compost bin according to the latest pronouncement from the RHS to love our snails and slugs.     I have to move some plants in order to plant the bushes where I want them.  Fingers crossed the weather will dry up and make this possible to do soon.  They should be planted before the bud
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Daphnes

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 It's a pity that scent can't be captured online because it's a stunning feature of most Daphnes.  The first one I encountered was at what is now the Sir Harold Hillier Garden near Romsey on an EHS trip!  Our guide told  that the scent of Daphne bholua  'Jacqueline Postill' would blow our socks off and so it did.  Here's my mine,  in full flower after first coming into flower in December. A lower growing, bushy variety in my front garden, is Daphne odora aureomarginata.    It has spread a lot, and though the books say they shouldn't be pruned, it'll have to be as it's overgrowing other plants.  When it was new and small it was tramped on by builders who stuck together with blue plastic tape, so hopefully it'll survive another chop. Not all Daphnes have a strong scent.  Daphne laureola forms a low growing rounded bush with green lightly scented flowers.  It is a woodland plant, growing wild in Southern England and flowering through the winter.  I
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Abelia grandiflora keeps the bees going

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  Abelia grandiflora grows into a large evergreen shrub with attractive arching branches bearing small shiny dark green leaves, and from summer till early winter it's covered with flowers. It's a bit big for my narrow garden, and I had it severely trimmed in July.  It looked dead for a while but recovered.  The sprays of small pink flowers and bracts started to appear in late summer and are still going strong in mid November.  It's a useful feeding station for bees when most other flowers have finished.
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When is an aster not an aster?

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Answer: when it is a Symphyotrichum.  In recent years many of the plants we knew as asters or Michaelmas daisies have had their names changed as botanists have been examining their DNA and reclassifying them.  They are in full flower at the moment and butterflies and bees are flocking to them.  Here are some of the ones I've got. Symphyotrichum noveo-angliae 'Purple Dome'.  This is a great plant, growing in a dome shape up to 75cm tall and producing masses of 'vivid violet purple' flowers during September and October.  I bought it at Wisley many years ago and split it about three years ago as the dome grew into an amoeba shape.  I've now got four plants all growing in different light conditions.  Shaded ones take longer to come into flower. Symphyotrichum 'Andenken an Alma Potschke' .  At least I think it is - I was given it by a friend who labelled it 'bright pink'.  It's about a metre tall and falls forward a bit.  It's much admired - I
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Autumn Cyclamen

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  When the lovely pink flowers of Cyclamen hederafolium appear it's near the end of summer and the beginning of autumn.  As the flowers fade the leaves appear.  They are ivy-shaped, from which the Latin word 'hederafolium' comes:  Hedera = ivy and folium = leaf.  They have beautiful silvery markings on them which vary from plant to plant.  They provide interesting ground cover throughout autumn and winter.  In spring the leaves die back and the corm beneath the soil lies dormant until the following autumn.   I was given a few corms by my father who was fond of cyclamen.  Now they are all over my garden.  The seeds, found in round cases at the end of a coiled stem, are spread by ants who are attracted by their sweet sticky covering and carry them away.   Watch out for Cyclamen coum , the late winter/early spring flowering variety!
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Musk Mallow - a wild flower for the garden

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Musk mallow ( Malva moschata ) has lovely finely divided leaves growing in an expanding dome in spring.  The pink flowers open in early summer and this year have put on a great show.  Flowers and foliage have a faint musky smell.  It is a short-lived perennial but it self seeds freely. I've just cut off the seed heads to limit the number of plants appearing next year! In the wild it grows on verges and in grassland - something for a wildflower meadow?  Bees like it!
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