Hedging your bets (or betting your hedges)

Over the years, we have often heard a story very similar to this one: a first time fruit tree owner was delighted at the sight of their trees coming into maturity, flowering beautifully and being courted by all manner of bees and butterflies before becoming weighed down with piles of slowly but surely swelling fruit.

Tags: Fruit trees

People seem to think that every newly-planted tree needs a stake. They are sometimes (but not always) right as despite lots of writing to the contrary, staking is not always the best thing to do for your tree.

Here are a few reasons why.  Staked trees:

• tend to have a smaller root system than unstaked ones
• they also tend to grow taller and so are not as well anchored as unstaked ones.

Tags: planting, Staking

I had this all ready written about 2 months ago (because it was going to be topical now) and then forgot it. Hopefully the warning will go unneeded (as opposed to unheeded).

The Autumn equinox passed almost unnoticed (apart from it being the nicest day of the "summer" so far). But the equinox in September is every bit as dodgy as the one in March. Remember poor old Julius Caesar and "beware the Ides of March"?

Uplighting is the most commonly used garden lighting technique, for shrub borders and trees especially. By uplighting trees, one exploits a unique opportunity to add vertical emphasis and drama in a garden lighting scheme. Trees with an open habit allow light to fully display the branch structure, while the contrast of colour between subjects can be emphasised. The light coloured bark of a silver birch, the coppery stems of Prunus serrula Tai-Haku, the golden fern-like foliage of Gleditsia triacanthos “Sunburst” or the subtle green and white striped bark of Acer pensylvanicum are all examples of good lighting subjects.