How does your garden grow (after the bad winter)

[Billy]

I have been looking over my garden in the last few weeks with all the new growth and, although I had a few casualties due to snow damage, I think everything is flowering so much better this spring.

I have flowers on all my rhododendrons and even my bergenia is flowering like never before.

Any other gardeners noticed the same?

I know that old gardeners used to ring the bark of fruit trees to fool them into thinking they were on their last legs which forced them to produce more fruit. Do the plants think that next winter may be their last and are going for it big time?

Billy 

[Darwin]

Give a fruit tree what it needs to do well and it will usually produce a bit more every other years.  The rest is urban myth or old wives tales...  :worried

[Billy]

The old guys used to cut the bark in a ring about 3/4 around the trunk and it would spur the tree into thinking it was on its last legs and produce lots of fruit as a way of surviving through its offspring.

Tree would recover with new bark growth and carry on as normal.

The old guys new a thing or two. A few years ago i did an RHS horticulture course as a way of killing time while I was working abroad and as part of the course I did a couple of workshops at Edinburgh botanical gardens which was great. If any of you watch the beachgrove now the new presenter took the workshops and he is a natural teacher.

I really used to enjoy it and still mess about a bit in the garden.

Billy

[Scotaidh]

Last year I shelled out ?25 on a Bay tree for use instead of those dry crinkly ones from the herb section in tesco.  One leaf I got off it before it got incased in ice under a foot and half of snow.  As soon as it defrosted it turned brown.  Frost resistent my back side.  I'm keeping it in the garden as a reminder about buying expensive plants.

[Wildfisher]

Bay trees are not hardy at all. You really have to grow them in a container and bring them indoors over the winter. Some winters you will get away with it. In the late 1980s and early 90s when we had a few mild winters in a row we grew a fine specimen of Olearia lyallii - New Zealand daisy bush. It was 8 feet tall and "hardy"  until one winter it got hit by 15 deg of frost. The trunk split vertically as it headed for that great compost heap in the sky.

[Billy]

I had a lot of stems snap due to the weight of snow and I had to remove a lot of the plant to try to save them. The back of my garden is on a slope and the snow was starting to pull them down with the roots almost being pulled out of the ground

I lost a few branches of an Acer (palmatum dissectum) which I have had for about 12 years and seems to be none the worst for its experience but I have three Choisias (Mexican orange blossom) which have struggled. One I think is a goner but the others only have a few branches which are withered.
I have a small Japanese bit in my garden of which the Acer is the focal point and I planned to re-vamp and enlarge the pond but It will need to wait until I get my own back sorted.

I knew about hammering nails in the trunk of trees but I heard that if you used copper nails eventually it would kill them.

Billy

[Fierybroon]

easier now I have just gravelled half the front garden more stoney fingers than green :worms