Island Life June July 2015 June July 2015 | Page 52

GARDENING

IN THE GARDEN
With Tina Hughes

Top of the pots
O

ne of the best ways to improve soil, retain
moisture and reduce weeding is to keep the
soil well mulched. Depending on the type
of plants and effect you want to create a wide variety
of materials can be used. Bark chippings, gravel,
well rotted compost, straw, even grass clippings are
all suitable. Mulches can be highly ornamental as
well as functional, and one area where I think their
potential has not been fully explored is around
container grown specimen plants.
Over the years I’ve built up a collection of large
specimen plants in pots. To reduce maintenance
I prefer to grow them without adding much other
than a few spring bulbs. This means there’s a
large dull expanse of bare soil to cover and I enjoy
coming up with different ornamental mulching
materials to enhance the overall effect of the plant
and the container. Stones and slate are obvious
choices. Available in a huge range of natural
colours to harmonise or contrast with the pots, the
plants or even the flowers they’re always a safe bet,
but the relatively small area in a container lends
itself to more creative possibilities.
Pots offer the perfect chance to experiment and
create a theme; a tiny seaside garden perhaps
with a mulch of all those lovely sea shells you’ve
collected, but never used, fragments of sea worn
glass and other flotsam such as small pieces of
driftwood. Corks are an entertaining possibility
although these are harder to come by these days.
They work nicely under a small standard rosemary,
olive or lemon tree in a Mediterranean themed
scheme. Pine cones are one of my personal
favourites, they’re light and free to collect. Some
years ago I planted a beautiful Victorian copper
with ornamental grasses and covered the compost
with cones collected from a Macrocarpa, arranged
in concentric circles the effect was interesting and
restful and kept weeding to a minimum.

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