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Restoration, Conservation and
Management of Historic Gardens and Landscape
Following the design, construction and planting process we offer a
comprehensive plant husbandry and garden management service.
Climbers & Ramblers
“Clip & Trim”
Skilled gardeners as opposed
to landscape gardeners are in short supply. Consequently whilst labour capable
of sweeping leaves, mowing lawns and trimming hedges is freely available so
very often the rest of the garden is subjected to the “clip and
trim” regimes of the landscape gardener.
“Clip &
Trim” conveniently forgets that plants vary hugely in their
requirement for pruning; forgets that not all plants need to be trimmed
like a box hedge into geometric shapes; and worst of all forgets that
plants fall into two different categories those that flower on the last year’s
wood and those that flower on the current year’s growth. “Clip
and Trim” conveniently ignores the fact that many of the rules for
pruning have changed over the last fifteen years of global warming and consequential
all year round growth.
The upshot, “Clip
& Trim” produces a ‘municipal landscape’ of tidy rounded
shrubs set against tracts of bare earth and swept to distraction paths.
These horticultural deserts
are not real gardens in the “gardening” sense of the word.
Climbers
Climbers are particularly
subject to the abuses of “clip and trim”. Climbing roses are in reality tall
upright shrubs, they do climb per se. It is necessary to train the uprights
horizontally as far as is possible to allow the plant to produce flowering
growth across the height and spread of the plant, or if you prefer, from
bottom to top.
The most practical means of
supporting upright growth that has been pulled down horizontally is tie the
shoots on to galvanised wire with soft string.
Alternatively trellises or
frames in all their abundant forms may be more extravagantly used to fulfil
the same requirement.
To complicate the issue
there are two seasons for training and pruning climbers. Midsummer for all
those once flowring (summer flowering) varieties; and late winter/early
spring for those climbers that flower recurrently and on the current year’s
growth.
“Clip &
Trim” rarely realises the significance of whether the plant is once
or recurrent flowering, the result new growth is invariably hacked off
indiscriminately to “tidy” the plant which disappoints the
flowing summer only because the growth on which it would have flowered was
cut off in its prime.
Ramblers & Scramblers
Ramblers in the wild grow in
a heap; long, lax, arching branches simply pile up one on top of the other.
This growth type is used to advantage when seeking to cover over or around
for example arches, pergolas, swags, old apple trees or indeed anywhere
where stiff branches of climbers would simply snap if they were contorted
to fit the desired shape.
There are recurrent flowring
ramblers e.g. Phylis Byde or The New Dawn but the majority are once
flowring only.
The same rules for pruning
and training one flowering and recurrent flowering climbers apply to
ramblers.
Rose Training & Pruning Service
Robert Mattock ®Roses
offers a service that deploys skilled rose growers to train and prune the
climbers:
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On galvanised
wire strained on vine eyes set into drilled and plugged fixings.
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Trellis, frames, obelisks, pergolas etc
Costs are calculated per plant and vary as per the height and
breadth of the climber. Please
contact our offices for estimates.
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