Time to cut back

IT IS time to get out and start pruning. Dogwoods grown for their coloured stems can be cut hard back to an outward facing bud around 5cm above old wood.

Don't worry that this is too much: the shrub will recover quickly and produce lots of stems during the next few months to provide plenty of bright colour for a winter bed.

The dogwood or Cornus family is large and includes shrubs and trees, but the species usually grown for their coloured stems are: Cornus alba, Cornus sanguinea and cornus sericea, formally called Cornus stolonifera.

The alba dogwoods generally have red stems with the brightest being C.alba Sibirica. C.alba Elegantissima has white edged leaves while C.alba Kesselringii has dark, almost black stems which look good grown with red and yellow stemmed species.

Cornus sericea Flaviramea has yellow stems with especially good colour when grown in an open position, while Cornus sanguinea Winter Beauty has stems of bright gold, yellow and pink. This shrub was a Dutch introduction and has a long season of interest, with soft green leaves in summer which turn golden in autumn before falling to reveal its winter hues.

While out with the secateurs and shears, butterfly bush Buddleja davidii can also be tackled. This fast growing shrub can reach a considerable height and needs to be treated hard if it is to stay within bounds and give a good show of blooms.

This species was named after French missionary Abbe Armand David who discovered it in China in 1869. While some cultivars form low-spreading shrubs, some of the vigorous types can grow 2.4m/8ft in one season. Popular cultivars include Black Knight with dark purple flowers, Nanho Blue with deep-blue blooms and white-flowered White Profusion. Take each stem back to a low outward facing bud.

If the weather is too bad to go outside, seed sowing can begin inside. Some annuals are slow to germinate and grow and benefit from an early sowing. These include busy lizzie, verbena, lobelia and antirrhinum, all of which need warmth to germinate, 15-18'C/60-65'F, and will need to be potted up and grown on before planting out at the end of May.

Perennials can also be sown this month.

Penstemon seed, for example, can be lightly scattered over the surface of a tray of damp compost and covered with a thin layer of compost or vermiculite.

As with the annuals above, warmth is required for germination after which the seedlings can be transplanted and gradually hardened off before planting.

The popular tall perennial Verbena bonariensis can be tricky to grow from seed and may take up to three months to germinate.

The seed should be sown on to free draining damp compost and covered with a sprinkling of compost or vermiculite. The container then needs to be sealed inside a polythene bag and kept at 15-20'C/59/58'F until after germination which may be erratic.

Seedlings should be transplanted into individual pots once they are big enough to handle and grown on and hardened off before planting outside. Although they sound hard to grow, these tall verbenas are worth the effort because they look so lovely growing through other plants in the garden and last well into autumn.

York Florists

A COUPLE of weeks ago I wrote about the new geranium catalogue from Vernons and mentioned that a fancy-leafed variety, York Florist, named after the Ancient Society of York Florists, was now available.

Arthur Robinson, secretary of the society, has written to let me know the plant was found among seedlings he was given by Terry Walker, a keen geranium hybridist and member of the society.

Mr Walker saw that one of the seedlings was particularly good and contacted Vernons. It has been a winner at several shows and a small display of the plants will be seen this year at the Ancient Society's July show.

The plant has been wrongly named as York Florist in the Vernons catalogue but will in the future be correctly included as York Florists.

Updated: 08:46 Saturday, March 12, 2005