Cornwall Life – October 2019

Cornwall Life: August 2019Š 51

GARDEN MASTERCLASS

Gardener and broadcaster Toby B uckland

delivers his expert advice

WHAT TO

DO NOW

Don’t spare the secateurs

• prune spent lavender by
  removing the old flowers
  spikes and trimming
  roughly an eighth of the
  way down the leafy sprigs
  to encourage the crowns to
  thicken up into tidy tufts for
  winter. Pull off tatty dead
  leaves from Torbay palms
  to keep them looking good
  and cut off old flowers
  too. If your palm is in a
  container, stop feeding it
  along with any evergreens
  at the end of this month
  to give leaves a chance to
  harden up for winter.
  This is the time to do
  your hedge trimming
  too as even when beech,
  hornbeam, yew and privet
  are cut back to old wood
  there’s time for them to
  recover before growth
  slows in autumn. Prune
  fan-trained pear trees
  (pictured), shortening the
  soft watershoots that have
  grown this year to allow
  sun into the fruits. A brush
  with the secateurs will
  also breathe life into tired
  cranesbills, Lady’s Mantle
  and mint. Cut them back
  to their crowns, water well
  and they’ll bounce back
  with fresh green leaves in
  just a week or two.
  For the keen DIYers,
  August being warm and
  dry is the best month to
  relay paving and paint
  fences. It’s also the month
  when new acquisitions
  suffer from drought so give
  the roots of any plant put
  in the garden this year a
  good soak.

If you have a garden question send it to @tobybuckland via Twitter

Silence is golden

The garden takes a bit of a
breather now: the early-
summer flowers are spent
and, apart from the sound
of the hosepipe and gentle
click of the secateurs, all
is quiet. But just because
the larkspur, catmint and
cranesbills have gone to
seed, there’s no need for
your garden to be colourless.
In recent years, a whole
raft of late-season bloomers
have found their way from
nurseries into our gardens.
They are the prairie-
perennials from the grassy
plains of North America

• an easy-going tribe that
  delivers floral-fireworks
  right through to bonfire
  night and beyond.
  This is how my late-
  perennial border looked
  this time last year with the
  shocking-pink Aster ‘Alma
  Potschke’ (centre) and
  the mauve middle-of-the-
  border stunner A. ‘Little

Carlow’ (left). That’s the

giant sunflower Helianthus

‘Lemon Queen’ at the back –

it towers into a 2m back-of-

the-border living screen. Its

flowers are loved by bees,

as are those of the smaller

knee-high yellow daisy,

Rudbeckia deamii (right and

front). Plant a few of these

beauties in your garden and

rather than August being a

hiatus it becomes the start of

a whole new flower season!

You can’t beat the tall Verbena

bonariensis for giving the place

a natural cottagey look, and if

you like a space that gardens

itself, it’s the plant for you

as it seeds liberally around.

Thanks to its head-high wiry

stems the purple flowers add

an extra layer of colour above

the herbaceous crowd, and

because the stems are so thin

they don’t shade earth-bound

neighbours below. Flowering

from the start of summer to

autumn, the blooms are manna

for pollinators and all it needs

to thrive is a free-draining soil

and sun. Its liberal self-sowing

means it’s often found in a

troupe – but be careful putting

spent seed-filled blooms on

the compost heap. For pots

look out for its smaller cousin

V. bonaiensis ‘Lollipop’.

Plant of the Month: Verbena bonariensis

If you do just one thing... summer prune wisteria, cutting back

the whippy green shoots to five to six buds. This keeps the plant

in check and combined with a winter snip improves flowering.