Talkback: Local plants (for local people)

Posts

• Gardeners' World Web User Posts: 17,147

  January 2011

  I love this locally grown plants shrubs and tree's lets hope more people love our native species, shame we haven't our native squirrels instead of these North American grey intelopers that destroy everything in site.My garden is too wet to be able to make a start, my heavy clay like a quagmire, slipped over several times already, so folks be careful out there.

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• Gardeners' World Web User Posts: 17,147

  January 2011

  Collecting seed of local provenance ticks all the boxes. Not only does it guarantee growing tough, locally sourced plants but it provides us, the gardeners with that indefinable sense of satisfaction that only growing your own can provide!
  I too have combed the Chalk Downs above my house, collecting seed of native plants there for some of my gardening projects.
  My biggest success was with the Yellow Horned Poppy, Glaucium flavum. Here on the West Wight chalk cliffs they cling to life precariously, whilst cliff falls regularly occur,plunging whole colonies of plants into the sea below. So, I figure that it is really a duty to collect and grow plants that are rarely grown and could also be in danger.

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• Gardeners' World Web User Posts: 17,147

  January 2011

  This is the problem with guerilla gardening - it spreads plants which contaminate local provenance.
  
  How to be 'sound' then??? Brighten derelict places up - but at that cost to the local environment. Hmmm....
  
  Did dan address that issue?

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• Gardeners' World Web User Posts: 17,147

  January 2011

  Anne, this has been a problem in Bristol since Victorian times when people with gardens used to throw their spent biennials like wallflowers over the seawall into the gorge, unaware of the endemic rarities they were endangering. They have had to be weeded out ever since. I do agree local plants do well in gardens - the Bristol onion, Allium sphaerocephalon, which grows on the Downs and in the Avon gorge does very well in our gardens. Another allium - Allium vineale or Crow garlic grows everywhere around Bristol in the grass verges and on the Downs and is an unwelcome visitor in people's lawns in the spring when they first cut it if they do not like the smell of garlic. This one is endemic to the Midlands and my research into when it first arrived pinpointed the filling in of Charleton village to make the Brabazon runway by topsoil brought from Birmingham to Filton Station. As my garden is very near that runway crow garlic is with me for ever. It is fascinating to find out which of your "weeds" are truly local and which are not.

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• Gardeners' World Web User Posts: 17,147

  January 2011

  Forgot to say my present from the birds last year( probably several years ago but now big enough to be noticed) was a spindle tree. It flowered and I just loved the orange seeds in the pink seed-heads. This was brought from the remains of an Elizabethan hedge in Cribb'sCauseway nearby.

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• Gardeners' World Web User Posts: 17,147

  January 2011

  this way of gardening is by far the most rewarding and "untidy" does not exist in nature xx

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• Gardeners' World Web User Posts: 17,147

  January 2011

  alanthomas-you too can join in the new gardening and grow some locals. If they grow too big after a few years you can give them to people with larger gardens A friend of mine had a present of a native willow tree from nature and , as she only had a small back yard, she dug it out when it was 4ft tall, strapped it to her bike and peddled through Bristol with it to me. Twenty-five years on it is fully grown, teaming with wild-life, and the pussy-willow branches adorn mine and my friends' houses every spring. The smaller branches bend to make rustic fences and I would not be without it. If you want variety why not grow alpines in pots - you can grow hundreds of different species and contribute to biodiversity as well as helping our most recently evolved plants survive climate change. Many species of cyclamen are endangered in the wild and who knows what will be our local flora in the future?

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• Gardeners' World Web User Posts: 17,147

  January 2011

  Fascinated by this blog as it is right up my street. Bristol and Liverpool ships brought many plant seeds in their holds in the middle ages which have gone native, so to speak. Bristol University Botanic garden trialed many of those in their Ballast Garden this year as Bristol Corporation have plans for a permanent Ballast Garden near the dockside. It was fascinating to find out this was how our English marigold arrived as well as curiosities like the squirting cucumber. Nowadays planes bring foreigners to our land on their wheels and wings and there are some rarities brought thus on Salisbury Plain.

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• Gardeners' World Web User Posts: 17,147

  January 2011

  Anne - Dan didn't address that issue, and I don't think we can lay the blame solely with guerrilla gardeners. Seeds from gardens can be easily carried over the fence by birds, mammals and wind, as we've sadly seen in the invasion of cotoneaster, Himalayan balsam, Japanese knotweed and buddleia in the countryside. And weeding out endemic species in favour of exotics is something gardeners have been doing for centuries.
  
  Happymarion - thanks for the info, how fascinating. We should give you a blog!!
  
  Kate

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• Gardeners' World Web User Posts: 17,147

  January 2011

  Sorry to have flooded your blog, Kate, but you do seem to blog about my favourite topics and I love it when you do.

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