The Monthly Newsletter of Cliveden Gardens

Please take one September 2019

The monthly newsletter of Cliveden Gardens

Hedge cutting galore

The team are busy cutting all the laurel around the gardens at the moment—along both sides of the service drive. Commonly known as cherry laurel, Prunus laurocerasus is widely used as a hedging plant. Where it is left to grow and the flowering wood is not removed, it produces small white flowers and glossy cherry-like fruit. It is worth pointing out here that the true laurel is Laurus nobilis, commonly known as bay (which we use in cooking) and these two plants are in different families— bay is in the Lauraceae family whereas cherry laurel is in the Roseaceae family. The common box, Buxus sempervirens , seen beside the chapel and either side of Hedsor Gate has had its annual ‘cloud prune’. Cloud pruning is a Japanese method of training trees and shrubs into shapes resembling clouds, also known as ‘Niwaki’. You can see in the photo (below right) what an excellent job Liam, Theo and Ewa have made.

Now is the time to take a walk through the Long Garden to admire the sharp geometric shapes of the topiary (above right). This year it was a real team effort with many of the team cutting the topiary for the first time and doing a fantastic job. In the next month we will have the Parterre box hedge to string out and cut, all 2.5 miles of it! Then onto the hedging in the Long Garden , not to mention the yew pyramids on the Parterre and lots more laurel to cut and of course then it will be time for the autumn bedding changeover! Phew.. never a quiet time in the gardens at Cliveden.

Time to prune

Wisteria is normally pruned twice a year, Jan/Feb and again in the summer around July/Aug. We are only just starting to do ours now at the end of August. Cut back whippy green shoots of the current year’s growth to within five or six buds of the main branch, this will prevent it from getting too big and invading gutters and windows and to encourage it to form flower buds rather than green growth. You can tie in any main lateral growths and cut back when they reach allotted space. When dormant in Jan/Feb cut back to within two or three buds and it’s these which will bear the coming season’s flowers. Garden highlights

We have plenty of late summer interest here in the gardens at Cliveden in both flower and leaf form. For those of you in the overflow car park next to the Water Garden, one cannot help but notice a tree dripping in small red seedpods. This is Koelreuteria paniculata (below middle), common names include Pride of India and Goldenrain Tree. This native of China has large panicles of small yellow flowers in July/August followed by bladder-like fruits you see today. Another plant that will be in full flower this month is Kirengeshoma palmata (below left), again hailing from the orient, you can see this in the Water Garden if you walk from the maze keeping the water on your right, it’s in a bed looking across to the pagoda. Thriving in a deep, humus rich, lime free soil, the delightful cool yellow ‘shuttlecock-like’ flowers with clear green palmate leaves is a sight to lift your spirit. Nearby on the water edge is a superb tree native to Japan and China. Cercidiphyllum japonicum, the ‘Katsura Tree’ having pale yellow or smoky pink autumnal colouring at the same time a pungent smell of burnt sugar pervades the air. Another one of my favourites in the Water Garden is situated in a group on the other side of the island. Acer palmatum ‘Shishigashira’ (below right) a slow growing tree with a distinctive upright growth. Beautiful when the buds break in spring, attractive, finely cut, dark green leaves all summer turning into a blaze of reds and gold in the autumn. No wonder it was one of Christopher Lloyd’s favourite ‘anchor’ plants.

V L A R O O S E V E L T A Word search: royalty, world leaders and I L S R O F U M O M L L S politicians have strolled through C O T G E D W A R D V I I Cliveden’s grounds. T Y O L L O Y S O L I Z M Astor Gandhi O D R L I H C R U H C A E R G O G Z I V E G R O E G Churchill Lloyd George M E G H A N M A R K L E H G O A A B V I C T O R I A Edward VII Meghan Markle

N R N N E D W A R O V P N Elizabeth II Profumo A G D S T O E G S R I I D

H E H C H U R C H I L L I George VI Roosevelt G O I H I L L E R A W D E R V E L I Z O M U F O R P Victoria

Remember to keep up the dead heading of flowers to keep the blooms coming into the autumn. Lots of lovely spring bulbs will be for sale so plant up some pots for a fantastic show of spring colour.