18 St Johns Avenue, Brentwood
Essex, CM14 5DF, England.
E-mail: roger@themagnolias.co.uk

It has been a year of considerable disappointments, some small achievements and a modicum of excitement.

March 2003 has apparently broken all records for sunshine. Here it has been combined with no damaging gales or severe frosts, which resulted in our best display yet from our three sizeable tree magnolias. They are a Magnolia campbellii, 28 years from planting a 2 foot high seedling and two quite different M. sargentiana robusta seedlings of similar size, planted couple of years later. One of these is a very pale pink and the other much darker. See the Gallery pages for more pictures.

There has also been the very first flowering of a seedling tree Magnolia bought as M. campbellii var. mollicomata. The plant was bought fifteen years ago from Derek Fox, grown in his garden, Volpaia at Hockley in Essex. Derek has sadly been in poor health over recent years and his garden no longer opens to the public.

Similar circumstances, to last year, of a day forecast to be wet throughout, has given me the chance to put fingers (one, occasionally two) to my key board to write a garden review of 2002.

Much that I said of visitor numbers, last year, remains the same, although I think they were slightly up on 2001, but because we didn’t pay for advertising we made a small profit, which will have slightly offset our garden expenses.

Early in the year we rebuilt and strengthened the footway of the pagoda balcony, which was a good job out of the way.

The season bought the usual successes and failures with plants.

The Itea pictured in the Gallery pages died suddenly, probably of the wet winter, but it was in an area where previous sudden deaths of woody plants have occurred.

Plant purchases through the year were not vast overall due to lack of planting spaces, but we did buy a few things especially in the early spring.

Purchases included a few more Epimediums, replacement double Hellebores, plus a few other woodland things.

We have removed three old and very large shrubs to let a little more light in, a Buddleia alternifolia, Azara microphylla and an Elaeagnus x ebbingei ‘Limelight’

Our Koi had a few problems in the spring with knocks turning to ulcers. The authorities seem to agree that poor removal of solid waste products is a primary cause, so additional water-straining technology has been added. Topical treatment seemed to be improving the least affected fish, but in the end antibiotic injections had to be administered to clear up the outbreak. From what I can see under the winter polythene covers at the moment there doesn’t seem to be a new outbreak this year. Unfortunately we are incredibly weak at resisting buying new small fish when we see one at our favourite dealers, so I think we are several times the recommended stocking level for a pond of 2,500 gallons  already. We will have to sell or otherwise get rid of some in due course. We have joined the Crouch Valley Koi Club. We are told, they run a very good auction, where we may be able to sell some fish, if we are strong enough to part with any of our fishy friends. Of course going to the auction has its own risk of buying, rather than selling!

We have discovered that individual fish have vastly different growth rates. From one small fish not having grown appreciably in 15 months or so, to others more than doubling their length in less time. We had a couple of mortalities, one of which was somewhat unusual. Linda is sure she saw one of our better fish feeding well with all the others when ten minutes later it was dead on the bottom of the pond. We tried to revive it with fish artificial respiration, moving it by hand through the water and the use of an air-stone, but to no avail. There was no sign of damage to the fish, nor signs of parasites or any reason externally for its demise. It may have had a heart attack or something internal. Alternatively we did read that occasionally fish swimming fast, crash and die especially in the frenzy of mealtimes, in heavily stocked ponds

For Christmas Linda’s sister gave us a Hippeastrum in a cylindrical glass vase with some polished black stones to anchor the plant. My strange mind immediately dismissed the vase’s primary design use, but saw it as an opportunity to attempt some underwater photography. The Hippeastrum was therefore potted in a conventional pot and compost, and various attempts were made at underwater fish pictures. These have not been hugely successful due I think to lack of light. With the use of the flash on the camera, reflections from within the cylindrical vase spoil the pictures. With the flash disabled the pictures are a little blurred, which I think is due to the camera setting a longer aperture time, which does not freeze the fishes rapid movements. However the experiment was interesting and fun. We will try again when the winter covers are off and there is more natural light.

The Magnolias have set up thousands of flower buds as usual. The three big tree ones should be especially good if the weather is reasonably kind.

Our five different Daphne bholua clones are especially nice at the moment, scenting the air all around on milder days. Unfortunately they’ll probably be past their best by our first open day of 16^th March. Our Camellias have started in earnest, but as there are so many in the garden, with their very long flowering period, they will be superb in March and April.

Hope to meet some of you in person this season.

Another gardening year is upon us, and today is raining, so I have a little time to tell you about the successes and inevitable failures of last year.

Garden visitor numbers were not fantastic, but weren’t too bad considering we didn’t have the benefit of advertising from the National Gardens Scheme. Our own bought advertising in local papers was singularly unsuccessful.

Because we wanted to know whether this website was generating any visitors, we canvassed as many as possible on what form of advertising brought them to the garden. Only one couple said the paid adverts, with none from the website, despite a good number of hits. The majority of visitors were from word of mouth; repeats from previous years, phoning up first for dates, or our posters. There was also a good number from seeing a kind, free mention of us, regularly, in a 'what’s on' in Warley column in a local paper. We won’t bother with paying for adverts this year.

The tub of Lilium auratum was twice as good as the previous year, and our imported USA grown Lilium tetraploid ‘Black Beauty’ bulb has grown to the size of a small grapefruit in two years.

Most of our exciting new Epimedium species and varieties did well and are now planted out. A very large approx. thirty year old Pieris formosa forrestii finally died after showing signs of declining health for a couple of years. The space it occupied is now home for some of the new Epimediums and other shade tolerant plants.

Several of our best Hellebores, some featured in pictures last spring, e.g. the doubles, collapsed in mid flowering and are either dead or very much reduced in size. We are not sure what happened. I had put a dressing of bone meal around all the Hellebores, Snowdrops and Leucojums in the garden, which I do annually, some two or three weeks earlier. The soil conditions might have been too wet for some individual plants, as most were fine, but as it was mostly the best ones which were affected. It could be, I was more generous with the bone meal on my favourites, to the point of damaging them.

In the summer we had a major fish mortality, with almost all of several recent purchases of nice small Israeli and Japanese Koi dieing. We are not sure what the disease or parasite was but it left Goldfish and Tench unaffected, while killing some of our Golden Rudd. However the four or five Rudd left, spawned, and we now have a hundred or more inch and a quarter babies in tanks indoors.

We didn’t let the loss of the baby Koi destroy our interest in these fabulous pond fish. In August we made a decision to try and improve our twenty-year-old, 2,500 gallon purpose built Koi pond. Over the years most of our original fish had died. We didn’t feel inclined to put new fish into it without some improvements to the water conditions. This has involved new filtration as well as improving the existing system. As with many projects one may undertake, it took on a life of its own exceeding the original imagined cost several times over.

Because the pond is in the shade of the house and a large Magnolia it has, whilst being quite sheltered, always been rather on the cool side. In order to keep the fish active throughout the winter we have installed a 3Kw electric heater in the return pipe from the original twenty year old, filter chambers. We have also covered the pond to keep the heat in, using a layer of bubble wrap, resting on a net six inches above the water, plus a horticultural polythene tunnel cover supported on home grown bamboo arches over the top.

We have found that these covers alone raise the pond water temperature by up to 10°C above average air temperatures.

We have the heater on a time switch coming on at night on Economy 7, with an hour’s top up in the afternoon, to stop a potential serious temperature fluctuation. This has easily managed to keep the water temperature above 13.5°C (55°F) most of the time for the winter so far.The fish have kept feeding well, and some have actually grown a little.

Having read the Koi books and magazines I understand the fishes’ immune systems gradually shut down below 50°F, leading to health problems associated with Koi in the spring. This was our main reason for installing heating and covers.

We have bought some nice 6-10 inch Japanese Koi, without going too silly, as we are still not completely confident, due to our past mixed success.

We are very much looking forward to the spring when the covers come off and we can see our fish properly.

Talking of looking forward to the spring, our Magnolia campbellii, now 27 years from planting, has budded up for its second best display yet (frosts permitting). Our two very different M. sargentiana robusta are also well budded, so visitors to our March open days should be in for an especially spectacular display. As mentioned before, we were in a book of gardens open to the public, now out of print, whose criteria for gardens to be included was they should be worth driving 50 miles to see. I don’t know of many within 50 miles of us with flowering ‘tree’ Magnolias! Perhaps if you live close enough you will be our first garden visitor, through seeing our website.

Well if you live in the UK, I expect like me, you've just had it with all this rain. Plants still seem later than usual. We did have one or two sunny days, one of which fortunately fell on a garden open day. We only had a few visitors but they were impressed by all the Magnolia blooms which seemed to open after just a few hours of warmth. Easter Sunday saw a few more visitors, thank goodness. 

Despite the depressing weather many plants have sprung into growth, ready for the legions of slugs and snails to devour their succulent new shoots. I am one of a dedicated band of gardeners, with concerns about wildlife in mind, who have turned their back on chemical control of these pests. Instead I wander about with a powerful torch, collecting and destroying these creatures by the application of an irresistible force to the pest against an immovable object (my boot and path). Some snails however are brought indoors and fed to our two European Glass Lizards.They are about three foot long, giant slow worms. This year I started my nocturnal forays at the beginning of April spending an average of about half an hour a night, what ever the weather, to collect what I can find before the rechargeable torch runs out. This was an earlier start than in recent years as I have been anticipating extra problems, due to the excessive wet. We have historically been complimented on our large collection of relatively undamaged Hostas, and I didn't wantthis to change. I can recommend these nocturnal perambulations, as not only do you keep molluscs (and vine weevils, lily beetles etc.) under control, but you can often spot things of interest or requiring attention that may be missed in day light. I think it must be because the brain is focused only on that small pool of light from the torch.

Magnolias and Camellias have been the mainstay of the floral display throughout April, but by far the most asked about plant has been Lathraea clandestina, which has never been better. For those of you who don't know this plant , it is a parasite having no leaves of its own, deriving all of its nourishment from the roots of a host tree. It produces patches of blue, purple hooded flowers for two or three months in spring. I introduced it to the garden over thirty years ago from a small piece extricated from the abandoned gardens of Warley Place, (Ellen Willmott's garden), some time before it was taken over as anature reserve by The Essex Naturalist Trust. Back home a root of a young willow tree was exposed, then scraped to allow access for the parasite. The piece of Lathraea was placed on top and the soil put back over the top. An author I read recently suggests it is probably seeds within the piece of plant which actually goes on to start the new colony, I really don't know. It has however spread quite widely within our garden and is certainly able to utilize other host plants. It has exploding seed capsules able to propel the seeds some yards. These go off with an audible crack on hot sunny days in the summer. I am sure Lathraea is now growing on various maples in the garden, but curiously there seems several extra luxuriant patches amongst the canes of several bamboos (possibly a host?). It doesn't appear to harm or even reduce the vigor of host trees at all, and I hope it caries on increasing in the garden as it has been very showy this year. It has already moved over thirty yards from its original introduction site, without my assistance.

Thank goodness March is over at last. I am sure this cold and wet month has meant plants are on average two weeks behind last year. We had no magnolia flowers fully open in March this year, while there were loads last year. Our two March open days were disappointing as to numbers of visitors, but I couldn't blame people for not venturing far. I don't think I would have gone garden visiting myself. However the visitors who we did get were keen and interesting to talk to. Everybody seemed impressed with the garden and the flowers that were out. They also enjoyed the tail end of the Snowdrop and Spring Snowflake display, which is normally over by then. Amongst the highlights for March were Sycopsis sinensis, a yellow flowered, evergreen shrub in the Hamamellis family; the earlier Camellias and the many different hybrid Hellebores. 

Linda and I had an exciting nursery trip down to Hampshire, buying some more bamboos, and some newer Chinese and hybrid Epimediums.

So far there are not too many plants which look like they have suffered, due to the extraordinarily wet winter and early spring, but this is probably due to the garden being on a slope. I dare say that plants whose roots have drowned, may show symptoms later.

Its now the end of the third week of February, the weather has gone cold again and we woke up this morning to snow. Up until now we had been enjoying a good early spring display of Snowdrops, Spring Snowflakes, Hellebores and various early flowering shrubs. We have also had about two weeks without heavy rain, which has allowed us to get on outside, preparing the garden for our first open day on 18th March. One of the jobs completed recently was the installation of a dragon ornament, spouting water into the top of our three joined, concrete ponds. This feature has replaced a large china frog which had unfortunately started to break up due to frosts. I have repaired what I could of the frog and he will do service, peering out from under a shrub, for the warmer months in the future. 

We have carried out a modest amount of new planting, of five new Magnolia varieties, including two yellows (not there is nearly enough space) a bamboo and various perennials. Our areas of grass get still smaller! 

The Nerium oleander plants we planted out last summer in a very sheltered spot don't look too happy, but we knew it would be a gamble, as the species is from the Mediterranean region. Perhaps a colder spell will hold stuff back, so we may not get a lot of damage from late spring frosts. We will see.

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