slugs – My Japanesque Garden

the rain to the wind said, ‘You push and I’ll pelt.’ They smote so that the flowers actually knelt, And lay lodged – though not dead ~ Robert Frost

After the wettest July on record, August has more or less followed suit with some of the lowest temperatures interspersed with average ones. So how does the garden grow?

^{potted cottage annuals battling on despite the slugs & rains}

With the potted cottage plants, its been necessary to vigilantly empty containers of excess water as well as check for slugs and snails that have many niches amongst the crowded dais. And as well as suffering gastropod demolition, the softer petalled annuals of geranium, petunia and nicotiana have struggled in the wet, dull days. Surprisingly the hostas here have survived well perhaps because most are the tougher leaved varieties whilst the Tagetes have offered themselves up as sacrificial plants instead.

I seem to have a clematis curse having never been very successful with the few I’ve tried and just as Ville de Lyon was about to burst its many blooms, the pot it shares with Photinia ‘Louise‘ became severely waterlogged so the result was inevitable decay of the vine. I suspected my emptying of used coffee grounds into the pot earlier in the year was responsible for poor drainage and further research confirms this:

coffee grounds provide valuable nutrients to your potted plants. However, avoid applying coffee grounds on your potted plants directly since this might impair growth, promote fungal overgrowth and facilitate excessive moisture retention ~ plants heaven

In the back garden, it’s also been a real task to deter slugs from lettuce, perennial spinach and beetroot leaves. To that end, I’ve been trialling some copper mesh around potted Japanese hostas and one planted ‘café au lait’ dahlia and so far it looks to be successful.

The silver lining to these days of rain has been the lush growth of most vegetables and a resultant bountiful harvest of French beans, Charlotte potatoes, mange tout peas. and even some few yellow dwarf beans Meanwhile leeks and onions are fattening up, and the ‘painted lady’ runner bean flowers are now producing their crop.

Since this was the first serious year of planting I knew there would be gaps and like ‘Johnny apple seed’ planted any leftover nasturtium seeds I had in stock, including the climbing variety which has boldly gone along the stonewall veg bed, down the cascade and on into the lower pond. A welcome flowery filler just waiting for the cabbage whites and blackfly!

Another seed sown plant that I’m thrilled with is Anise hyssop. Aside from pulling in the pollinators for the vegetables, the purple line of them along the lower veg bed makes a stunning contrast with the red and white flowers of runner bean

Despite my best intentions not to make plant purchases I have splashed out on some late perennials as the garden was very much in need of autumn interest. These included several Persicarias for the cascade beds as well as Japanese anemones, Sedums and Chrysanthemums

^{the reluctant invalid – rescued female blackbird fledgling}

And when not gardening, or being busy with builder buddy trialling the cascade plumbing (more of that in another post) I’ve been acting as nurse/guardian for a fledgling blackbird. I rescued her from the middle of the main road (after stopping the traffic), thinking she could die in peace in a pre-used rat cage in the greenhouse. Instead she grew stronger day by day, despite one broken leg and some feather damage and after two weeks or so insisted on her freedom!

A scrolling view through the gardens in August

annuals brightening up the potted cottage garden
along with balcony mixtures of dwarf varieties
including potted anise hyssop for the bees
?shrill/common carder bee defying the damp
white lychnis bloom after the rain
roses blooms have struggled through the wet weather
defying the slugs ? ID hosta ‘gold standard’
reaching for the sky light, perennial sweet peas
an abundance of Tom Thumb fuchsias
Snakeroot plant awaiting its turn to flower in autumn
into the Japanesque back garden
dwarf Japanese white pine – a most welcome birthday gift
the Far sight shrubbery with acer and Spirea providing some colour
prolific harvest of climbing French beans
garlands of trailing nasturtiums along the veg beds
nasturtium dipping its toes in the lower pond
autumnal colour of the early Korean Forsythia
lovely soft-leaved Chinese Mahonia preparing itself for winter flowering

As a child I was too impatient to wait and see what the fuchsia bud would reveal and so I would prematurely pop them! With some of that same eagerness in Spring, I’ll scrape the gravel topping in the hosta pots, to seek out the first signs of them putting their snouts above the soil.

purple sheathed hosta ‘snouts’ in mid-April

Once they first appear, hostas soon rush to unsheath their spiral-bound leaves and they do so with a great deal of elegance, which is why I like to keep my few potted hostas within eyesight so I can appreciate the changes.

“In late winter/early spring the keeled slug migrates towards the surface of the soil where it can do untold damage to emerging shoots and leaves. ~ British Hosta Society

Another reason to keep hostas potted is that the opportunistic gastropods will find it harder to reach them, especially as mine are situated on gravel. Even early in the year there is one type ready and waiting for hostas to emerge:

I first happened upon Hostas when tending a mostly shade garden and they were an ideal and obvious planting choice. Those with gold pigmentation however tolerate more sun and more sun means more flowers. The glaucous leaved though are bluer in the shade so it all depends on what we want from our hostas. What they want most from us is plentiful, regular, summer feeds and watering. Too often they are relegated to dry shade corners, their tongued leaves full of holes and simply gasping.

Foliage is mostly why we treasure these Plantain Lily plants, although there’s the added bonus of slender spikes of blooms, bell, funnel or star-shaped, in pretty pastels from white through to lilac. And with such accessible stamens, they attract pollen crunching pollinators too.

Before leaving London I cashed up hostas ‘Halcyon’ and H. Fortunei Hyacinthina at a summer fair and replaced them in my new home with the variegated ‘Patriot‘, ‘Dream Queen‘ a tetraploid (double the normal chromosomes) with thicker, tougher, more slug resistant leaves plus a nameless all green one from a local plant sale. ¹And a gardener who was dividing some big blue varieties gave me one that he thought was ‘Big Daddy’.²

There are about 25 species of hostas. Most originate from Japan and are called Giboshi.

“Different species grow in different environments – some grow near water around rivers and swamps, some in flat fields, while others find a little dirt in cracks and cling on mountain sides”. Hosta Collecting in Japan

With so much hybridizing since, there are now hundreds of garden varieties with all sorts of fanciful names. My ambition is to try and obtain one or two originals and savour them for my upcoming Japanese style garden. But whatever their species origins, hostas with their restrained colour palette are perfect plants for this theme.

Postscript:
1. Further research on the nameless one confirmed it is Hosta ventricosa – the Blue Plantain lily
2. Not blue enough for’Big Daddy’ but likely another giant hosta ‘Empress Wu’

Further Reading:
Hosta species update ~ W. George Schmid