About Single and Double Flowers

I am miffed  that the Royal National Rose Society has gone into administration (May 2017). Originally formed in 1876 it owns land in St Albans but finds annual running costs onerous. As small compensation here are details about a couple of charitable red roses.

New Trees: Recent Introductions to Cultivation by John Grimshaw, Ross Bayton and illustrated by Hazel Wilks. Amazon

Cedar of Lebanon

Ornamental Japanese Maples are widely available for planting in your garden. The autumn colouring makes these trees spectacular when planted en mass in a woodland or Japanese garden setting.

Lawns are cut regularly to encourage side shoots, prevent flowers and to keep the grass tidy. Some attention should also be given to other grasses and bamboos to encourage production of fresher growth at the beginning of the growing season.

An unusual tree with even more unusual fruit.

The Papaya is a widely grown fruit tree of the tropics. It’s large fleshy fruit contains many seeds but can weigh from 1 pound up to 20 pound on some varieties.

A water loving tree that is comparatively short lived at about 150 years. It is fast growing and can often be found near river banks.

Available from Thompson & Morgan

‘The older an olive tree is, the broader and more gnarled its trunk appears. Many olive trees in the groves around the Mediterranean are said to be hundreds of years old, while an age of 2,000 years is claimed for a number of individual trees’

In an oval roundabout in Menston a dozen Poplar trees were planted in the 1970s. As you can see only about half survive and these have been mistreated by polling them to restrict height.

From the National Christmas Tree Federation ‘For Christmas trees, overall color of Norway spruce is fair to excellent, but needle retention is considered poor unless the trees are cut fresh and kept properly watered. Growth during the first 10 years after field planting is relatively slow and 8 to 11 years are required to grow a 6-7 foot tree.’Above in the public domain because its copyright has expired