They came, they saw, they splashed around in the water (at the Trailfinders Australian  Garden), they recited punk poetry (John Cooper Clarke in the Foreign and Colonial Investments Garden), they served up celebrity pizzas (Jamie Oliver in the Children’s Society Garden), then they left.

So went the first day of the Chelsea Flower Show 2010. Monday is press day, but it is also the day when celebrities are invited to mill around in order to add some glamour to the proceedings.  The only problem is that when they look too young, you wonder if they really do any gardening at all. If too old, you keep trying to remember which episode of Midsomer murders they appeared in.  Jim Carter and Derek Jacobi did a turn round the Great Pavilion, where the tulips threatened to blow under the heat.  A handsomely suited and booted Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen could be overheard air kissing:  ‘Darling, I can’t get enough of you today’.

I always feel it’s my duty to look at the main show gardens first, because these are deemed to be the most important

part of the show by most of the gardening press, but I always feel rather torn.  There seem to be two kinds of Chelsea Flower Show goers: those who go for the plants and those who go for the show gardens.  In the end, the part that thrills me most is the Great Pavilion: delicate bulbs and dazzling displays alike.  I want to take them all home and have a go at growing them myself. Dibleys Nursery has a new streptocarpus, Peter Beales a new rose… more on that tomorrow. Read more…

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I have my potatoes chitting in the greenhouse, ready to go out on Good Friday (the traditional day to plant spuds, this year 2nd April).  My husband is feeling very pleased with himself because he managed to find a variety called ‘Record’ which a potato expert in Aberdeen once told him was THE very best potato to roast (whatever variety you chose, a little  goose fat never goes amiss).

While pondering the merits of different potatoes, I noticed that the Guardian newspaper has sparked an impassioned debate over the best way to mash potatoes, recieving over 260 comments on the blog. http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/mar/15/best-mashed-potato-method.

How much milk or butter? Should we follow Delia Smith’s demented idea and use an electric whisk?  What about food wizard Heston Blumenthal’s strange looking goo?  Then there is the perennial issue of Waxy vs. Floury potato.

When I first started growing potatoes, I grew girly waxy, salad varieties, shunning those floury things, beloved by blokes to accompany stew, that fall apart when you boil them.   All that changed when I interviewed potato guru Alan Romans, author of the definitive tome on spuds ‘The Potato Book’.  Don’t boil potatoes, he chided, steam them! Nothing falls apart when you steam it, and besides, floury potatoes have a better favour than waxy ones.  How right he was.  I suppose floury potatoes are something you grow into, rather like whisky or Chanel No. 5.

So, where does Mr Romans stand on the great mashed potato debate? His resounding answer to the readers of this blog: ‘Arran Victory’.  They are dry, tasty, fine textured and not yellow’.  There you have it, the master has spoken.

Not all potatoes perform well on all soils.  King Edwards prefers heavy soil, but our allotment has rather sandy soil (well suited to ‘Picasso’). It’s best to ask other people around you what has grown well for them.

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I have a beautiful shrub in my front garden which is admired by all who see it in flower.  So much so, that when it’s in full swing in May, I put a large name label on it so that people can read what it is, which at least stops some of them from knocking on the door to find out what’s making the red fireworks.  The name of the plant I’m talking about is Callistemon Viminalis ‘ Captain Cook.’  I put it in 16 years ago, when we first moved to this house – back then it was something of a novelty (the Australian man who ran our local plant shop also introduced me to tree ferns).  Thankfully, these days you can find different species of Callistemon in all good garden centres, but people are still worried about how to look after them.

Seed, branch and cutting of bottlebrush

In their native Australia, bottlebrushes come in different shapes and sizes: some with weeping habit, others with pink rather than red flowers.  They tend to cross-fertilise in the wild, so, if you want a true replica of the plant you are looking at, the only way to do it is with cuttings. It is possible to take cuttings from semi-ripe wood in July or August, but I’ve found that on the whole these have a very poor success rate compared to other shrubs.

The best method for Callistemon seems to be propagation by seed.

I’m sowing two lots in the greenhouse this February, the first is  Callistemon Rigidus from Johnson’s seeds.  The seed is so fine it should be sown on the surface of finely sieved compost.   Unlike other seeds, bottlebrush seems to like sitting in a tray of water while it’s making its mind up to germinate.  Take the seed tray out of the water once the seedlings have emerged and pot them on individually.   The other batch I’m sowing in the greenhouse is from seed taken from the plant in my front garden.  If you look at a bottle brush stem, you will see two (occasionally three) different groups of round seedheads.  Those produced the previous year are the group closest to the tip, those produced two years ago, and the most viable in fact, are the seed heads further along the stem.

Seeds of callistemon are released after a day or two

In order to collect the seed you will have to cut a stem then bring it into the greenhouse.  After a day or two, the seed pods open and release their fine, dusty seed.  These are sown as per above.

Bottlebrushes tolerate a range of soils (though they are not keen on chalk).  They do need some frost protection, especially if you live further north, and young plants are more vulnerable to the cold than older ones.   Once it gets going, Callistemon could not be an easier and less demanding plant, responding well to a good prune in late summer if you need to keep it in shape.

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