I do hope you have managed to find good enough weather to visit a snowdrop garden near you this past month. As I said last month, we planned to visit several, and were lucky with the weather on a couple that are infrequently open, and able to plan to go on a not wet day to the others (all were visited during the grey very cold first half of February, so we were extremely well wrapped up as its very slow work visiting a specialist snowdrop garden – bent double, head to the ground, examining each specimen snowdrop, and trying to take in focus photos (not that I was all that successful in that respect!!). And this year, I might have bought rather a few…: –
First haul, not too many: –
Each individual bulb quickly planted out under the acers – including Galanthus ‘Trumps’: –
and Galanthus ‘Jacquenetta’: –
I like G. ’Trumps for the shape of the flower and the bold markings, and G. ‘Jacquenetta’ because it often holds its flowers at 45 degrees as above, so you can see the double petals inside too.
The second haul might have been larger…
Oops! These have yet to be planted out…They include Galanthus ‘Marjorie Brown’ a large flowered, robust leaved elwesii type-:
And Galanthus ‘Sentinel’ – an upright pure white: –
It also includes one called Galanthus ‘Polar Bear’ which is a late one and I have NO IDEA what it will look like as its flowers are just emerging in the second week of March! In order to plant these out, I need to deal with my Cornus sericea ‘Flavimarea’ or Golden-Twigged Dogwood (though I think of it as green stemmed), that has layered itself all-round the original plant in the gravel garden, so that I can plant these snowdrops where it has rooted itself. This brings me to the first of the propagating techniques I want to talk about this month – layering of shrubs and subshrubs.
The technique of layering I am talking about is one of rooting into the ground, NOT air-layering. Some plants lend themselves more easily to this technique by having lax habit (i.e. they are floppy, or have bending stems), even better if these stems are low growing. So, the basic technique is to select a suitable stem and pull it gently to the ground without snapping it. Here are lots of low-growing floppy dogwood branches ripe for layering: –
Secure your chosen stem to the ground with a rock to weight it down or a “hairpin” piece of wire (in the olden days we would chop up wire coathangers for this purpose, but any bent bit of wire that you can push over the branch to hold it into the ground is fine). In the case of the Cornus sericea ‘Flavimarea’ the branches naturally bent to the ground, and a combination of gravel and leaf litter meant that they rooted through the gravel. Here are some stems covered with gravel and leaf mould: –
Now, it depends on the plant how long you will have to leave it to root – but this is not a quick job. Cornus root comparatively quickly, but I would still leave them for a year, unless I can see new upward growth past the point at which it is in the ground – here you can see it has gone into the ground (under its own volition I might add), obviously rooted through a patch of snowdrop bulbs, and come up again….:-
At this point you can sever the stem coming from the original plant before it goes into the ground. The old stem on this is the vertical thick stem to the left of the snowdrops as you look at it. (There are at least three new stems coming up to the right of that stem.) I would then leave this new plant in situ for a few weeks to make sure it has enough roots to cope by itself before digging it up. In this specific case, I shall leave it until the snowdrops have finished flowering and then attempt to dig up enough soil around them to extricate the bulbs from the mass of roots. Here I have severed the new plant that I have layered from a Viburnum Opulis, which I am leaving til spring to dig up and rehome: –
If you are impatient, you can excavate carefully round the area you have weighted the stem into the ground to see if there are roots yet. (Be aware that I have done this with Climbing hydrangea H. Petiolaris, thought I had enough roots to severe it from the main plant, and dug it up, only for it not to survive. Here are a few roots starting on a dogwood stem: –
In this case I would rebury the stem until there is a better formed root ball. On a cornus they make a mat of small roots – as you can see from these plants I have dug up: –
Here is a closer-up shot of a rootball rooted through the gravel and leaflitter (with an alpine strawberry plant to boot!): –
Again, the thicker stem to the left of the rootball is the old stem, and the two on the right are the new growth. This can now be planted out elsewhere. This Cornus sericea ‘Flavimarea’ has layered itself on three sides into the gravel, and once I have removed all of these plants, I will have lots of space for my new snowdrops to go.
Another version of layering works with subshrubs that have got leggy – such as lavender, or heuchera, where you mound up the soil (it is often better to use a very sandy mix for drainage if you have heavy soil) round the base of all these stems, leaving the tops of the stems above ground. Again, it’s a long job, and not very sightly in a small garden, as it takes a year again for all the stems to make roots – you could dig your plant up and bury it in a pot so it can be kept less prominiently in view. I have done this successfully with Heuchera, unsuccessfully with lavender (I wasn’t patient enough!!), and tried with a Carex that the ants made an anthill through the middle of, so I left the soil in situ last year once they had vacated, but it doesn’t seem to have worked – this spring is when I shall dig it up to make absolutely sure….. If this technique works you get a lot of plants – I had enough Heuchera ‘Marmalade’ rooted stems from just one plant to make a small hedge! This is a handy thing to know if you have pots of Heuchera that the vine weevil grubs get to the roots of – in this garden they LOVE heuchera and tuberous begonias – as you can also root the stems by individually burying them almost to their tops.
Patience is the watchword for the other propagation technique I want to mention – which is more of a course of action (or inaction) rather than a technique. This is in regard to hellebores. As you know hellebores are very long flowered, and a great delight and joy to us in the winter months. Before they are fertilised, their flowers look like this: –
You can see their stamens are pale, there is pollen on the anthers to attract bees. Once the flower sets seed it looks like this: –
Here’s where you need to NOT act – don’t cut the flowers off. Leave them. Leave them so that the seedpods ripen, and burst, and scatter their seeds at the feet of the mother plant. Another thing not to do – don’t keep weeding round the plant. In the summer, you will hopefully find a rash of tiny hellebore seedlings: –
These are actually about 6 months old at this point – picture taken in February of last years’ seedlings. Here’s where I am going to urge you to restrain yourself. I have in the past dug these seedlings up at this size and potted them into individual pots to grow on. Most of them perish, and I mean MOST. Leave them!!! Next year they will be this size: –
Here are some with snowdrops for scale: –
They will have a better root system now, and you CAN dig them up and prick them out elsewhere, if they were mine, I MIGHT prick them out next autumn i.e. when they are at least 18 months old, when they probably have a second stem coming, and the ground is still warm for their roots to establish elsewhere.
If you leave them another year, they will be this big: –
Almost big enough to flower but won’t till next year. They should have a good root system now and cope with being moved.
So, there you have two long term propagation techniques that require patience and not being too tidy. Next time, some spring jobs, and inspirational magnolias.
Sheila May
