 |
  |
 |
| Garden Layout - Plants - Tropaeolum
|
||
| The Tropaeolums include one of the most invaluable of summer annuals, the common nasturtium, Tropaeolum majus, a plant that really ought to have a home in every garden, just for the sheer volume of foliage and flowers each pea-sized seed can grow. Of the common nasturtiums, I grow several varieties in various locations throught the front and back garden, including a dwarf variety, Baby Salmon. | ||
| They can be left to scramble through other foliage or trained to climb up through larger plants or trelliswork. I like to grow them amongst the roses at the gate end of the kitchen bed, but also use them in dangly baskets and any other gaps I find in the summer planting. Once you've grown nasturtiums, they'll be with you always; they produce hundreds of seeds that find their way into the soil, or, as in my case, into the compost heap, and before you know it, they're springing up everywhere. |
 T. majus groing in kitchen bed |
|
| But there are other varieties that are not seen as often as the common nasturtium. One such is T. peregrinum, the Canary Creeper, which I love to grow against the dark green backdrop of the Irish Ivy on the western trellis. It's leaves, unlike the rounded saucers of the common nasturtium, are lobed into three parts, and the plant needs no encouragement to clamber all over the ivy, producing dozens of bright yellow flowers from July through to the frosts. Like its cousin, it's a prolific self-seeder and once you have it, it's with you always. | ||
 T. speciosum |
This plant, T. speciosum, aka the Scottish Flame Flower, took me more than 5 years to acquire. Eventually, a friend in Perth supplied me with a generous handful of live 'thongs' in the spring of 1999, and this is the first success after years of failed attempts to germinate the seeds, or to locate it in a local garden centre. It will spread as it becomes more established, and will, hopefully, clothe this entire fence panel with its rich red blooms. If anyone knows the trick of how to get the seed to germinate, I'd be delighted to learn. |
|
| It thrives in shade, so is ideal for a north or easterly facing wall, fence or hedge, and needs a poor preferably acidic soil, which I have acheived by preparing a 'pocket' for it at the rear of the pond, filled with a mixture of its native soil, my own soil and plenty of ericaceous compost. After waiting so long, it's a great sense of pride to see it flowering in my garden at long last. | The final Tropaeolum in my garden is T. tuberosum, which, as its name suggests, grows from a tuber. These 50-100mm long tubers produce a fairly vigourous climbing plant, with the most beautiful hooded orange and scarlet flowers throughout the summer. It grows to height of 1.8m, possibly more, and the tubers need to be spaced at least 150mm apart, as they will each produce a new crop of tubers to continue the growth in the following year. However, these tubers are not hardy, and need to be kept in a frost-free greenhouse before planting out, at a depth of 150mm, in late April or early May, when the danger of hard or prolonged frosts has passed. |  T. tuberosum |
|
||
 Back-a-Page |
 Home Page |
 Garden Guide |
 Layout |
Text, images, design and construction © cormaic web design - Last updated November 1st 2000