Time to adapt – EDP Newspaper July 19th 2008
Posted on | June 19, 2008 | No Comments
Gardeners love to complain. It’s one of our great British traditions, but the extreme weather patterns of 2007 and 2008 have given even the most patient among us ample opportunity to whinge with the best.
Last year may be remembered for the summer deluge, but the truth is that in spring of 2007 Britain was still suffering from the tail end of the 2006 drought! Many gardeners are confused by our weather especially as we have been told in recent years to be prepared for drought conditions.
During the winter before last an area of the Exotic Garden was converted into a xerophytic garden in preparation for the looming drought conditions forecast, only to be followed by some of the heaviest summer rains in years! Luckily the ground here was prepared with several feet of sandy gravel which drained the water away quickly, stopping the arid plants from rotting.
The considered response from the Met Office was that last year’s weather conditions were “consistent with climate predictions”. This is also how the Royal Horticultural Society views the situation. As a result, it encourages gardeners to adapt their gardens to the milder, wetter winters and hotter, drier summers that are anticipated. Unfortunately, dealing with an increase in erratic weather events, such as flooding, will be rather more difficult.
While gardeners have always thrived on certainty in the past, the onset of climate change appears to mean that uncertainty is now the only certainty! Unpredictable seasonal temperatures and rainfall combined with extreme events such as drought, flooding and storms are bringing new challenges to gardeners everywhere.
Every year I hear more complaints about spring. It is either ‘late’ or ‘unusually cold,’ ‘abnormally dry’ or ‘fantastically wet’. No one is ever willing to admit that there is now no such thing as a normal spring. Welcome to global warming! The effects on the Exotic Garden are very evident.
In my 26 years of living here I have found many more plants not only surviving our winters but thriving. Until about five years ago plants such as the towering banana Musa basjoo were annually wrapped with insulation in November to stave off killer winter frosts.
Now these stately stalwarts of the garden are allowed to die back naturally, forming a skirt of dry foliage around the trunks. Many visitors to the garden ask what would happen if we did get a killer frost? Wouldn’t I be annoyed that I hadn’t made the effort to protect them?
In the case of Musa basjoo, if they were to get cut down by frost, they would re-grow from the base the following spring. Hence this is a risk I am willing to take, but a risk that appears to be becoming less so as the decades progress. Living in the city obviously does make a difference as the ambient temperature is often a degree or two warmer than in the country because buildings act like a heat sink radiating heat back out again on cold nights and equally keeping gardens hotter in warm weather.
My garden in Thorpe Hamlet is on a hillside facing south, dropping about 60ft from back to front, and surrounded by tall trees on three sides which helps create a mild microclimate.
Last winter -4C was recorded here for a short period in the lower garden while in the xerophytic garden some 50ft higher, temperatures barely dropped below 0C, allowing many plants such as the beautiful dark purple Aeonium Zwartkop to come through the winter without a mark – something I have never seen before, although I have been growing Tradescantia fluminensis – the common house plant, Wandering Jew, for many years now with only light winter dieback.
Milder winters are certainly a boon for the more borderline plants that many of us like to grow, but cool summers, of the kind so far experienced this year, equally have a strong effect on plants and their growth habit. In a good summer (warm or hot) Cannas for instance will grow (depending on variety) to a good height, often flowering in high summer at 6-7ft tall, but this year many are starting to flower at far more diminutive proportions due to our recent cold spring and summer nights.
I have many Cannas which should be very tall and lush by this time of year, attempting to flower at a mere 1m (3ft). Last year my crop of the annually grown Ricinus communis, which are usually tall statuesque plants from 6-10ft tall were an absolute failure.
As they were planted at the back of the borders to give height and colour and dramatic leaf shape, they were lost behind other taller plants and as a result gave no show at all. This year I hope the weather warms up enough in the weeks to come for these stars to perform.
Like many things in life, being a successful gardener is about learning from your experiences, both good and bad, and the last couple of years have provided plenty of insight into gardening conditions to come and being prepared to adapt to the n ew situation we find ourselves in.
What ever the rest of the summer weather throws at us, a preparedness and acceptance that we are heading into unknown territory now and into the future is vital. Like it or not, severely unpredictable weather is here to stay and adds great fuel to one of our greatest garden pastimes – complaining about the weather!
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