Post category: Easy-care basics
Most plants will not grow well in shade and we invite trouble by growing sun-lovers in the wrong place. Most plants need good light but some tolerate shade. If a plant that needs sunshine is planted in the shade, it will not grow well and will need to be moved. Avoid this effort, or the loss of the plant, by placing it correctly from the outset.
All plants need light but some have adapted to coping with less than full sunshine. These are mainly woodland plants that must make do with whatever light reaches the woodland floor. They have evolved strategies to cope with reduced light.
Avoid planting in shade, unless suited
Climbers have developed the ability to climb up host trees to reach the light. Under-storey plants like holly, laurel and rhododendron have often got darker foliage with greater amounts of green chlorophyll to make best use of the light that reaches them. Very often these are evergreen, which allows them to make growth early in the year before the leaves come on the deciduous trees overhead.
Some woodland floor plants have bulbous roots that allow them to grow very quickly early in the year, flower and produce seed before mid-summer. Many of the spring bulbs fit into this category. Some woodland plants have broad thin leaves to present as much surface area as possible to the light above.
At the same time, this flimsy foliage is protected from weather damage by the trees. For example, ferns are natural shade-lovers that generally open their fronds at the same time as the trees unfurl their protective leaves.
Many plants have also adapted to growing in the full glare of the sun. Without it, they will not flower well and might even die after a while. Many of these plants are natives of open grassland or scrub areas where there are no large trees to cast shade.
Avoid planting in shade, unless suited
Very often, plants that like full sunshine also like dry soil, but not always. Equally, the ones that like shade do not always like moist soil. In fact, many woodland plants are adapted to withstand drought caused by the competition of the tree roots – another excellent reason for getting all the growing done in the early part of the year and dying back to a bulbous root during the dry summer months!
While it is interesting and challenging to grow plants beyond the range of their cold tolerance, it increases the risk of frost damage and creates more work in protecting them – taking them indoors in winter, for instance. It is important to be aware of how the local climate behaves in the garden.
Avoid plants that do not tolerate frost
The nearer the garden is to the coast, and the further south, the longer the growing season and the less likely there will be severe winter frost. There are many plants that will survive light frost down to minus 5º Celsius and will suffer below minus 7º Celsius. The chances of going below this temperature increase dramatically inland and further north.
Try to find out exactly how frosty the area is by looking at other gardens. Plants like cordyline, hebe, fuchsia and pittosporum are good indicators of the relative mildness of the area. If they have grown to good size, the winters much be fairly consistently mild. If they are completely absent, the locality is prone to severe frost.
Because of the warming effect of the sea, it is possible to grow plants in coastal gardens that would not survive inland, although wind damage near the sea is generally more severe.
The damage caused by winter cold is influenced by other factors. Warm sunny summers encourage the development of tough woody growth and high sugar content in plant cells. Freezing will not occur until lower temperature levels are reached.
Plants growing in free-draining soil will have a longer growing season and complete their preparation for winter earlier than those on heavy soil. Plants growing on south-facing slopes suffer less because the extra warmth encourages better development of tissue.
Plants struggle if they are not in the correct soil conditions. Soil conditions can greatly affect the growth of plants. Some kinds like light, dry soil; others prefer heavy moist soil. Most plants like soil that is open and well-drained but does not dry out excessively in summer. Some plants need lots of organic humus in the soil. If the humus does not occur naturally, and you are not prepared to dig it in, simply avoid those plants.
Use only plants that are suited to the soil conditions of the garden. This will avoid having to move them when they fail to thrive, or having to remove a dead plant and go to the trouble of buying and planting something else.
It is important to realise that parts of the garden might vary. Dry spots can occur near walls where the rain cannot reach. Wet spots can result from poor drainage or compaction. It is important to choose plants that like the conditions available to them.
If acid-loving plants are grown on limy soil, they will require much more preparation for planting and more care in the following years. Acid-loving plants suffer from iron deficiency on limy soils; the youngest leaves turn yellow. Some lime-loving plants such as flowering cherries lack sufficient calcium on acidic soils.
Match the plant to the available conditions
A simple test can be carried out using kits that are available in any garden shop. Alternatively, look at local gardens to see whether rhododendrons are growing in the open soil.
For an easy-care garden, it is best to avoid planting lime-haters in limy soil, and it is best to be at least aware of the effort this will require.
Gardening is not an exact science. In approaching any aspect of gardening, there are a number of possible solutions. While the different approaches can be equally correct, some are easier than others. If you choose to take an easier path, the time and effort involved in gardening can be significantly reduced. Gardening can become less physically demanding and more mentally stimulating!
Some garden features require more time and effort than others. By eliminating, or reducing, the labour-intensive garden features and replacing them with labour-saving features, time and effort can be saved – without any reduction in the beauty or interest of the garden. In fact, the quality of the garden very often can be increased. However, the garden shown would have high labour requirements.
Introduction
Plants will succeed, and need less care, if the conditions are right. Plants are living organisms that want to stay alive and will do so if they have the right conditions. As gardeners, we are the providers of conditions for garden plants, and it is up to us to see that they are provided with suitable conditions. This means finding out the needs of plants and supplying them, if possible, and to avoid growing certain plants if we cannot provide the right conditions.
First of all, take note of the garden in terms of local climate, soil, size and situation. Then before buying a plant, find out what it needs. If the garden cannot provide it, forget about growing that particular plant. There are lots of others: equally beautiful, equally interesting!
Plants are fiercely competitive about staying alive: they compete vigorously with each other for space and light above the soil, and for nutrients and water below soil level. We can use the competitiveness of plants in the battle against weeds and therefore make life easier for ourselves. The garden shown will be much easier to keep.
Introduction
Equally, plants are far from helpless against pests and diseases. They have very good defence mechanisms against both – another aspect that we can take advantage of. But remember that plants can only defend themselves if they are growing well in the right conditions – the right plant in the right place.
Easy-care gardening is smarter gardening. It requires a little more thought to avoid physical effort and expense. Easy-care gardening is gardening with Nature, not gardening against Nature. Mother Nature always wins and the challenge for easy-care gardeners is to intervene as little as possible to achieve the desired results. Work with Nature – don’t fight it!
Weeds are a problem in every garden but if the competitive abilities of plants are used to the full extent, the chore of weeding can be greatly reduced.
Because a plant cannot move position to a more suitable place, it is forced to compete where it is growing. Competition for light and space takes place over ground, and for water and nutrients, below soil level.
Every plant competes for light, water and nutrients. Some are much better at the struggle than others. Trees, for example, are the top competitors, which explains how they managed to cover the Earth with dense forests – they would again, given the chance!
Plants compete well with weeds
The trunk of the tree holds the canopy of leaves higher than competing plants. In a mature broadleaf forest, the massive array of foliage traps eighty per cent of the sunlight and about the some proportion of rain. Down below, the smaller plants must get by with the remainder.
By way of complete contrast, tiny alpine plants are adapted for survival on the cold windswept slopes of mountains where, despite plenty of other difficulties, they have no competition. Their success depends on the ability to tolerate conditions that would kill other plants.
When they are planted in gardens without the harsh conditions to which they are adapted, they are easily swamped by bigger plants, even relatively small weeds such as annual meadow grass.
If we use garden plants to cover the ground and fill the available space, the plants we do not want – weeds – will not be as difficult, or as time-consuming, to deal with: that is the principle of ground cover.
Plants compete well with weeds
In a natural setting, there is rarely any bare soil to be seen. Even land slippages, and river banks stripped of vegetation by floodwaters, are quickly reclaimed. Any piece of bare ground is colonised by plants, especially the great opportunists of the plant world – the common weeds.
To clear the soil of weeds, and leave it bare, is to offer a further invitation which will be gratefully accepted. A general principle, the less bare soil in the garden, the less work of weeding. Bare soil can be covered up with desirable plants and mulches, or in some cases, it can be treated with chemical weedkillers.
All garden plants compete vigorously for space and resources. Trees, especially the large forest trees like oak, ash, beech, elm, lime, pine, horse chestnut, spruce and sweet chestnut, are very dominant, smaller trees less so but still capable of dominating in the absence of larger trees.
Shrubs are generally fast-growing and stake a claim to their space quickly. Perennial flowers do a lot of their competing below ground level by means of extensive roots. Annual flowers grow quickly to fill their allotted space.
It is important to realise that every plant, from the largest tree to small annual flowers, has potential for ground-covering. Very often, the term is applied only to low-growing, ground-hugging shrubs and perennial flowers. These are certainly good for the task, but it must be realised that all plants have this ability, if we care to use it.
For best results against weeds, one layer of plant ground cover is better than none, but two or more layers are even more effective.
Because plants have a hierarchy of size – large forest trees, smaller trees, shrubs, climbers, perennial flowers, annual flowers in that order – they arrange themselves under natural conditions in several layers of vegetation.
Plants compete well with weeds
In natural woodland, the top layer is the forest canopy of large trees. The under-storey layer contains the smaller trees like holly, yew, and hazel together with the trees of woodland clearings like cherry, hawthorn, crabapple and birch.
Lower again are the shrubs and climbers. Then, the perennial flowers and grasses that colonise the soil below ground with their extensive root systems, or bulbous roots. The last layer of all is the moss layer, usually ignored for garden purposes but it can be important. This consists of mosses, liverworts, lichens sometimes and small ferns. These compete for resources and can interfere with the germination of seeds of weed plants.
Each layer catches some sunlight for itself and thereby makes life more difficult for the plants below. We can use this feature of the competitive nature of plants to our advantage. Instead of setting up one layer of ground-cover plants to shade out weeds, why not have two or more layers?
The various layers of vegetation can easily be set up in garden woodland planting because it approximates to a natural woodland. Large gardens of two thousand square metres, or more, can easily accommodate some woodland planting.
The various layers of vegetation can easily be set up in garden woodland planting because it approximates to a natural woodland.
In any size of garden, mixed borders of trees, shrubs and perennial flowers compare to natural woodland edge, with shade-tolerant plants meeting those that enjoy full sunshine. It is possible to use the shade-tolerant kinds to underplant trees and shrubs, and to use the sun-lovers in front of the taller woody plants.
Some plants cannot tolerate wind exposure and these will be more trouble to care for and should be avoided in windy areas. Assess the level of wind exposure in the garden. Unsuitable plants will suffer severe damage, and this may create a lot of work with shelter screens and staking. If plants, such as the phormium shown, are chosen for their ability to resist wind exposure, a lot of expense, effort and repeat planting will be avoided.
Choose suitable plants in a windy area
Strong winds affect the growth of plants in a number of ways. Wind lowers the temperature of the air around plants and reduces their rate of growth. It causes moisture loss from the leaves during dry weather and increases the damaging effects of frost during cold spells.
Apart from these effects, wind can cause direct physical damage to leaves and stems. Young leaves are very soft and easily damaged during their expansion in springtime.
Plants that are adapted to withstand the effects of wind usually have small, often narrow waxy leaves. Heathers and needle-leaved conifers are wind-resistant, for example. Many grasses and other non-woody plants have flexible stems that bend and twist away from the wind. Trees that leaf up late in the spring like ash and sycamore are relatively wind-resistant.
Near the coast, the wind problem is more severe because of greater wind speed off the sea. Added to that is the salt spray carried by strong gales, and sometimes even sand. Some plants are well adapted to salt spray in their native habitats. They can be used near the seaside as ornamental plants in their own right, and also to protect less resistant plants.
If plants are too cramped for space, it will mean more work pruning, or even the task of removing them. Although it seems obvious that plants should have enough space available to them, it is very common to see gardens where plants never had the prospect of having enough space for their proper development, as shown.
Match plant size to the space
The amount of space available to any plant has a major influence on its success. Each plant species has a normal height and spread. Plants are competitive for space and they tend to grow into each other in the attempt to reach the light. The fast growers will usually squeeze out the smaller plants, but plants of even vigour just end up spoiling each other – becoming one-sided, or very lanky, for example.
It is very important to find out the likely eventual size of any plant before planting. When a plant gets too big for the space available to it, it must be pruned drastically, or removed. The original planting and the subsequent pruning, or removal, all involve wasted time and effort as well as the destruction or complete waste of a good plant.
The problem of adequate space is most acute with the largest plants, namely trees, but it can occur with shrubs as well and even with non-woody flowers when over-rampant kinds are put in the wrong place.
However, it is important to point out that achieving the correct spacing for plants is not as easy as all that. Waiting for the plants to reach mature size, and fill their allotted space, takes too long and there will be ugly gaps in the meantime.
On the other hand, although close planting fills up the space more quickly, the plants soon become too crowded. Short-lived shrubs, perennial flowers and annual flowers – can be used to fill some of the space in the early years.
The necessity for pest control can be largely avoided. We carry the erroneous impression that plants need to be constantly treated with sprays of all kinds against pests and diseases. This is not the case. Although plants appear fairly helpless in defending themselves, they have a formidable range of defences against both pests and diseases. Healthy plants can ward off pest attack; it is nearly always plants growing in unsuitable conditions that succumb.
The most obvious defence against pests are the various kinds of thorns, spines, stinging and irritant hairs. These prevent animals from grazing the stems and leaves of plants. Few gardens have problems with grazing animals, though some have deer and rabbits.
Plants resist pests
Many plants have hairy or sticky stems and leaves. These aim to slow down the movement of greenflies and other small pests. Another very effective trick of plants against sap-sucking insects is the natural pressure of the plant sap.
Sucking insects like to use the pressure of the sap to feed themselves but when the plant is growing actively, the pressure can be too great for comfort. When the plant is short of moisture, the sap will be thick with sugars and released at a slower rate after the cells are punctured by the insect’s feeding tube.
Some plants have distasteful substances, even poisons, in the sap. Foxglove contains poisonous digitoxin; rhubarb has poisonous oxalic acid in the leaves. Yew trees contain poisons called taxines. The seeds of spurges contain powerful laxatives.
Oak leaves, indeed many plants, contain tannins that are very bitter and dissuade many animals that would like to eat them. Even so, oak is an important food source for hundreds of animal species that have adapted to the bitter taste.
Few true pests
Despite the effectiveness of physical and chemical defences against the majority of potential pests, most plants are attacked successfully by a variety of animals, especially insects. However, the pests of any one plant species are usually relatively few in number.
Some plants have no pests at all, some are attacked occasionally, a few are prone to more frequent attack. It is important to realise that while an insect, or other pest, might cause light damage to plants on occasion, it cannot be considered a significant pest.
In fact, the number of really significant pests of ornamental plants – that is, those which cause severe damage to plants – is very few. They include slugs and snails, and greenflies, occasionally rabbits are a serious problem in country gardens. Vegetables and fruit are prey to a few others like caterpillars and root flies that frequently cause problems, and can be considered serious pests.
Plants have another solution to the problem of pest attack; they simply outgrow it. Strong-growing healthy plants quickly outgrow the damage caused by pests. A few holes in leaves, even though the plant can look bad, is not significant to a healthy plant. It is constantly producing new leaves that replace any losses.
Predators
Remember, too, that plants are not on their own in this struggle because the pests themselves are prone to the attacks of parasites and predators. There is a long list of these: ladybirds, lacewings, hoverflies, shield bugs(as shown), groundbeetles, wasps, chalcid wasps, capsids, anthocorids, spiders, ichneumon wasps, frogs, hedgehogs and birds.
Plants resist pests
In fact, every insect or other animal seen in the garden that is not identifiably a pest is a beneficial predator or parasite. If we favour the beneficial insects and animals, the task of keeping plants pest-free is relatively easy. Finally, we can simply not grow plants that are persistently attacked by pests.
Not all plants are dogged by disease problems – a lot of hassle can be avoided by choosing resistant kinds and encouraging good plant health, and by simply not growing the disease-prone kinds. Although the plant defence mechanisms against pests are perhaps more obvious, the defences against fungi are no less effective, and useful to the easy-care gardener. Defences against fungi are mainly barriers of one kind or another.
Leaves of healthy plants are usually coated with wax that prevents the germination of disease spores. Within the sap, there are substances that reduce the growth of fungi, including the tannin mentioned above. The bark of trees and the thick skin of stems, like the waxy coating of leaves, act as a barrier against fungi.
Plants resist diseases
Plants that are attacked by fungi sometimes react by allowing a section of the leaf around the affected area to die. This causes a leaf spot and, occasionally, the plant can react to a disease by dropping all of its leaves, producing a new crop when the worst of the disease attack is over.
As is the case with pests, strong-growing healthy plants are better able to resist diseases. If plants are growing in suitable conditions of soil, site and climate, they will grow well and better resist disease. For example, during dry weather with growth reduced, plants are less able to withstand mildew, watering helps.
Equally, mildew-prone plants should not be grown in overly dry soil. On the other hand, if plants are growing very rapidly in over-rich soil, their tissues will become soft and watery; they are likely to suffer cankers, grey mould and leaf spot diseases.
