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What’s coming up in the garden this week. By Louisa Bell of City and Country Gardens

Design and construction

Solid as a rock?
The sub-prime mortgage crisis will eventually hit us all. I don’t think banks should be allowed to hide the extent of their exposure to the crisis until their figures are released. It’s like now there are problems. Barclays is turning down 50 per cent of all credit card applications now, and reducing the credit limit for their existing customers. The only good news is that interest rates will probably drop as we all stop spending money.

What does this mean for the housing market? Well, here we all are, sitting in our houses that are worth more than our parents could have ever believed possible. But it’s all relative unless you’re seriously going to convert it into cash and drive off around Europe in a VW camper and never enter the property market again. Our houses are worth lots of useless money. It just means we pay the banks and building societies huge amounts each month so we can live in the house that has been over-inflated by the banks and building societies.

On top of this, with stamp duty and fees it now means it costs the average householder £15,000 (and the rest) to move. That’s just to go from one utility bill address to another.

As you can see from the number of skips and builders’ vans all around us, we’re staying put. We’re moving up, out, down and across and making space and doing with what we’ve got. Creating more space is a thought-provoking exercise, but knocking down a wall here, adding a window there can make a huge difference to a house. Spending £10,000 indoors will also add that money back into your house value (meaningless I know), but it’s not a cheque written out to Gordon or the estate agent.

You obviously know that I’m coming to the garden don’t you? But think of this as space for work too. We have been putting in some great outdoor offices. Lined and insulated and measuring 12 ft by 10 ft, there’s room for a desk; plug in your iPod, install great lighting and it’ll be comfortable, warm and secure throughout the winter. That’s a big room, and all for around £8,000.

The garden itself is such a useable space. I hear clients say time and again that they never used their garden before. Now it’s built properly, they can use it all the time. It’s great to eat outside and sit outside. Look at the November we’ve had. We had a great bonfire party last weekend, and we barbecued, lit a bonfire, had the fireworks and didn’t have to go indoors for anything except more beer.

Money spent on the garden is such a worthwhile investment. It’s better than paint and carpets. Look at the size of your garden, compared to the rooms in your house. If that was a room, just think what you could do with it! Let us tell you what’s possible. There’s no need for that For Sale sign.

Plants

Holly
Ilex aquifolium is he Latin name. Berries, prickly, Xmas – holly makes us think of all these things. Holly is a great tree for all gardens. For a start, as a security measure, it’s perfect for planting along hedges and boundaries. Nobody will want to climb over your fence! It’s evergreen so it keeps its leaves all through the year, but the leaves remain green and glossy and lovely, whatever the weather. Holly looks wonderful in the snow too. There’s something about the outline of those spiky leaves and the red berries against the white ground.

Holly is very easy to grow. A holly tree will often seed itself into your garden too, and you see them growing in hedgerows. They also grow in dense shade, so they’re seen underneath beech and oak trees.

Britain is the only place in the world to have holly woods. These are ecologically equivalent to the evergreen cloud forests of South America and China. So you can see how important our native plant is.

In folklore, the amount of berries on the holly tree is supposed to tell us if the winter will be harsh. It’s also thought to be extremely bad luck to cut down a holly tree, but it is okay to cut the branches and bring them indoors in the winter. This was a pagan tradition but was eventually accepted by Christianity (just like they hi-jacked Christmas itself) as the spines on the leaves symbolised the crown of thorns and the red berries the blood of Christ.

This notwithstanding, it’s a good evergreen shrub with prickly bits and berries on the female plant only. Of course.

Things to do

Winter care
Keep an eye on the weather. Rainstorms, gales, frosts and sudden temperature variations are all common at this time of the year. Keep your plants tied in securely, check tree stakes so that newly planted trunks are helped through any winter gales.

Cut back any herbaceous plants, with thick woody stems, right down to ground level. It’s quite dangerous in the spring when one is weeding the borders (sounds quite Jane Austen doesn’t it?) as there’s the possibility of getting poked in the eye with a woody twig! Keep raking the leaves off the lawn as they fall from the trees, and pull out dead growth from plants to stop the leaves rotting. Plant bulbs in abundance – in their hundreds! Cut back roses with a good sharp pair of secateurs. All straggly growth can go and don’t be scared of pruning them really hard. I have cut ten foot roses down to two inches. It did them the world of good. Prune roses with a diagonal cut, just above a bud on the stem – that little pink full stop. Cut out really skinny stems completely.

Make sure the buds are pointing outwards if you can. That way, the rose will send out new shoots from the pink bud, and they’ll grow outwards and keep the centre of the bush open for the sunshine to reach. It’s all common sense really. If you’re not sure what to do, just trust your instincts. It’s hard to go terribly wrong in the garden. We’re not really a nation of shopkeepers. We’re gardeners.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 20th, 2007 at 5:29 pm and is filed under Gardens. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.