Join the capital’s green party: how to keep your plants alive now

There’s been a bloom boom — from what to buy now and how not to kill it, Samuel Fishwick has a gardeners’ guide
Constant gardeners: brothers Harry and Dave Rich (@therichbrothers)
Samuel Fishwick @Fish_o_wick15 September 2020

Everyone discovered they were gardeners this year. Just as quickly, everyone discovered they couldn’t tell a garden fork from a hosepipe. “I am a constant gardener,” I thought, surveying my little patch of Peckham in April with satisfaction and gently peeling a slug from the echinacea. Two months later my confidence had gone the way of my echinacea and wilted.

Gardening was listed as the second most popular lockdown activity people planned to do after watching TV, according to a survey by GlobalData in May, ahead of cooking, reading and exercising. The gardening app Candide saw an average increase in new members of 60 per cent during lockdown compared with the same period of last year. Months of lockdown idleness (or just a desperate need to escape a WFH desk) made landscape architects of us all. Bulbs were bulk ordered. Gardeners’ World was watched. Royal Horticultural Society subscriptions were gifted.

But let’s face it, we need expert guidance. “People keep fiddling with their irrigation systems and then thinking they’ve broken them,” laughs Nick Learoyd, 27, a garden consultant for whom business has boomed during lockdown. “I had to travel a 45-minute cycle journey to Kensal Rise just to plug in a battery.” That’s the gardener’s equivalent of a callout to IT to find that you simply needed to turn the computer off and on. But amateur errors are rife. “Deadheading is probably the massive one people forget,” says George Brooke, founder of landscape consultants The Outsiders. “If you take the dead heads off, the plant keeps thinking it needs to keep reproducing. Ergo, if you keep nipping flowers off it will keep flowering.”

The raison d’etre of the lockdown gardener is varied. Some wanted to grow vegetables, perhaps more in hope than expectation that they’d be able to live off the land and avoid the supermarket scrum. “At the moment the things to plant are salad leaves, chard, spring onions and purple broccoli,” says Amanda Brame, head of horticulture at Petersham Nurseries. “If you sow now you’ll get a harvest of lettuce and chard almost immediately, but others will sit as hardy winter plants to get a harvest from in March.”

Ferns are good now, according to The Nunhead Gardener, which has just expanded

Others simply wanted to take time to slow down, step away from the screen and create something aesthetic from scratch. “Cyclamen, winter pansies, heathers, hellebores are good right now, while ferns are great — the other thing that’s looking good now is grasses, which are all starting to flower,” says Peter Milne, co-founder of The Nunhead Gardener, which this week opened a second site in Camberwell.

Peace of mind is a natural side-effect of gardening — a boon in stressful times. The gardening charity Thrive found that 43 per cent of people agreed that gardening helped their mental health. A lonely nation is crying out for help in flexing our green fingers. An Englishman’s home may be his garden, but that didn’t stop the majority of us feeling totally clueless as we stepped into our tiny little Eden projects. And look, most of us don’t have an actual garden. We were stuffing pot plants onto balconies. We were cramming hardy erigeron daisies into front patios. Personal trainers — of the garden variety — have sprouted to fill the gap. Take Nick Cutsumpas, 28, Gwyneth Paltrow’s green-fingered guru of choice and a full-time “plant coach”. The dashing New Yorker dishes out advice on the upkeep of indoor ZZ plants, golden pothos and philodendron to the internet (not heard of these plants? You need the guru). He offers advice like: Create Your “Greenprint” (“You don’t choose the plants, they choose you.) But for those who prefer their advice a little earthier, take a look at our guide.

The hot gardeners to follow

If you want an Instagram account that melds the lofty arts of horticulture and mindfulness, Gayla Trail (@yougrowgirl) is a repository of calming content and helpful how-tos.

Gayla Trail (@yougrowgirl)

Timothy Hammond, aka @bigcitygardener, is a must-follow for anyone who can only rent a space the size of a shoebox.

Timothy Hammond @bigcitygardener

Irritatingly handsome, Nick Cutsumpas (@farmernicknyc) is Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop At-Home guru and was a contestant on Netflix’s The Big Flower Fight.

Nick Cutsumpas @farmernicknyc

Brothers Harry and Dave Rich, main, (@therichbrothers) won gold at the Chelsea Flower Show last year, have designed gardens for Habitat and Chanel and enjoy an on-screen rivalry with TV OG Charlie Dimmock in the BBC’s Garden Rescue.

Amanda Brame (@amanda.brame) is a font of floral wisdom, from indoor blooms to the great outdoors.

Amanda Brame of Petersham Nurseries

Alexander Hoyle trained at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Drop by @kewplantsman on Twitter or @alexander.hoyle on Instagram for plants and peacocks.

Alexander Hoyle @alexander.hoyle

What to buy and how not to kill it

Don't worry about winter looming or summer waning: it’s planting season. Cheesewood is an evergreen shrub with interesting tones and tints of colours to its leaves and stems that will add weight and structure to your garden, says Milne.

Brame, Milne and Brooke recommend showy hydrangeas. Underplant with Mexican daisy, or erigeron, another hardy plant that brings life to lifeless plant beds.

No beds? No problem. Pot liberally. Hellebore, skimmia and winter pansies can bring life to containers. Underplant with miniature narcissus, tulip species, hyacinths, snowdrops and crocus bulbs (it’s bulb season too while the soil is still warm).

If you’re planting in pots, fill with water-retaining compost like Daylesford, which contains a lot of wool, says Brame. If you’re worried about pesky critters digging up your bulbs, lay a thin layer of paraweb or chicken wire under the surface of the soil to keep squirrels away. Also, play hardball. “If you don’t water a plant after that first bedding, their roots become further reaching,” says Learoyd.

What if I don’t have a garden?

“With indoor plants the key is to ask what plants are going to be recommended for the environment,” says Milne. Most don’t want direct sunlight, he says, adding that watering can be a tricky balance: “Most want to be watered really well when they do get watered and then left to drain, and left alone until the soil is bone dry, before you water them again.”

For people who are busy, there are a few stalwart hardy plants: snake plant, ZZ plant and aspidistra (the latter thrived in smoky, dark Victorian houses and is nicknamed the cast iron plant). When they become too big and need new pots, see it as a chance for a refresh and give them to a friend with a garden to plant in their beds.

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