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Any time I’ve travelled to Britain or Europe, especially the Netherlands and Germany, I have admired their stunning bay trees simply growing in home gardens. Most European bay trees are grown in Italy where they do a magnificent job of shaping them into narrow spires, perfect cones or rounded spheres.
Laurus nobilis is a Mediterranean native which, left in its natural habitat, will grow 3.6-to-12-metres tall and wide. Trees are usually multi-stemmed and produce much-sought-after, aromatic leaves about five-to-10-centimetres long. Each spring, small clusters of yellow flowers appear and eventually turn into small black fruit.
The Sunset Western Garden book lists bay laurel as a Zone 5-to-9 plant, but in my experience, it’s truly a Zone 7, which, if well acclimatized and growing in the ground, can tolerate temperatures of anywhere from -10 C to -12 C.
I mention this because I think bay laurel is one of the most underused varieties in our gardens today. About 15 years ago we planted a young bay on a rather steep bank on the south side of our home and enjoyed the tree for many years. It was very vigorous and had to be pruned to keep it down to a manageable size, but once shaped, it was as beautiful a broad-leafed evergreen as any other in the garden. Every time I walked by, I would rub my hands on the leaves and enjoy its extraordinarily scented foliage. The true beauty was also going out at any time of year to gather a few leaves to enjoy in so many recipes. Leaves also make wonderful potpourris and we often used stems and small branches in attractive
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Resilience. It’s one of the buzz words everyone’s talking about right now, part of the zeitgeist. And it’s true. We do need resilience in all walks of life – emotional, physical, spiritual, psychological. And the planet needs resilience, too, although a glance to any news bulletin will confirm that we’re not doing too well on that score.
I met the Duke of Edinburgh a few years ago. Shame I was stuck in front of a computer at the time, and not somewhere more exciting like the Chelsea Flower Show. Meeting human royalty might be a rare occurrence for most people, but you can surround yourself with royal plants and get that regal feeling every time you step into the garden. To illustrate my point, let me share with you an old joke….
Header image: Suited up to simulate the conditions of working outside on Mars. Jonathan Clarke (the author, left) with visiting engineer Michael Curtis-Rouse, from UK Space Agency (right). Jonathan Clarke personal collection, Author provided.
Here in the UK it’s traditional to take a couple of weeks off work over the summer and head off to somewhere with better weather – or at least somewhere that you can get away from it all for a little while. It’s one of the ironies of life that this takes you away from the garden at a time when it really could use your help. If you have a gardening neighbour then you can rely on them to take care of your garden while you’re away, but if you don’t and don’t want to come home to dead plants, weeds and giant marrows then there are a few things you can do to prepare your garden for your absence.
I’m hoping to go and see The Martian soon, one of the few films to feature a botanist as the hero. Astronaut Mark Watney is one of the first humans to set foot on Mars, but accidentally gets left behind and has to survive on his own – and to do so he grows potatoes. He wouldn’t be the first person (or even population) to rely on potatoes for survival, but here on Earth there’s a slight snag. The potato (Solanum tuberosum) has an arch nemesis – late blight, caused by an organism called Phytophthora infestans. It cuts down both potatoes and tomatoes, and was the biological cause of the Irish Potato Famine in the 19th century.
The idea that we should be gardening without using peat is not a new one, at least here in the UK. I have a copy of ‘Gardening Without Peat’, published by Friends of the Earth in 1991. It explains that our exploitation of peat bogs is using up peat faster than it is being formed – we should consider it a non-renewable resource. The destruction of the peat bogs is causing a decline in biodiversity and allowing carbon dioxide to escape into the atmosphere to add to our climate woes.
Last weekend, as the temperatures soared, I found a certain amount of solace in learning more about how plants are being grown in Antarctica – the coldest place on Earth.