Episode 173: plants behind glass at Hidcote

The plant shelter at Hidcote. Photograph: National Trust/Jonathan Buckley.

The plant shelter at Hidcote. Photograph: National Trust/Jonathan Buckley.

Transcript

Episode 173

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Jane: Warning this is not a drill, this episode will induce high levels of greenhouse envy. This is On The Ledge, the podcast that puts houseplants in the spotlight and I'm your host, Jane Perrone. I'm joined this week by Lottie Allen, the Head Gardener at the amazing arts and crafts garden that is Hidcote in Gloucestershire, in the Cotswolds, to find out what's looking good right now in their plant shelter. A not-so-grand name for a wonderful greenhouse that houses all kinds of delights, some of which you'll have heard of, others of which will blow your tiny mind. We'll update on the On The Ledge sowalong and I'm answering a question, appropriately enough in the run-up to Valentine's Day, about the String of Hearts.

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Jane: Quick reminder, there's no show next week but I am going to be guesting in another couple of podcasts, so do keep an eye on my social media. I'll be putting those out on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram as they are launched, so if you're missing my voice next week you can still hear it! I'm also going to be joining in with the houseplant Zoom series for Terrain in the US on February 25^th^ at 16:00 EST. You can hear me talking with Melissa Lowry, who's a buyer and enthusiastic plant parent, and we're going to be talking about the trends coming up for the houseplant world this year and answering your questions. There's a $10 suggested donation to a local organisation that's a non-profit helping urban farmers, so check out the show notes for details of that Zoom. You can join me at 16:00 EST on 25th February for a really interesting chat about the future of houseplants.

Thanks to those of you who've left reviews recently. CatMMJ from the US, Majoylind from the US, who thinks that my sound effect of water pouring onto a plant is actually me pouring a cup of tea! That's a really interesting idea! I'm gonna have to record myself pouring a cup of tea and then you can compare the two sounds and see how they are different! I'll do that for the next episode. You can see how it sounds! Also, thanks to HRefner, from the US, for your review. Apparently I'm both "sensible and fun"! That pretty much is what was always written on my school report! Thank you to one of my Patreon subscribers, Lisa, who sent me a lovely thank you note about the show and Lisa wrote: "I'm more than happy to spend the equivalent of a cup of coffee each month on something that's presented by such a consummate professional in a fun and friendly way. You make some cold and dark days and nights in Sweden all the more bearable". Thank you, Lisa, that's a lovely message! If you want to get in on the Patreon action, then you can check out my show notes for details of how to do that. For as little as a dollar or a pound a month, you can help to support the show and that's exactly what Maria did. Maria became a Crazy Plant Person, while Lisa and Gwyn have both become Ledge-ends this week. So, welcome, welcome to you three lovely people and, as I say, if you can't donate, then leave a review, tell a friend, shout out from the rooftops or you could buy some of my merch. You can find On The Ledge T-shirts, my lovely, legendary poster, mouse mats and more, all over my shop, which you'll find at janeperrone.com - there's a link in the top right-hand corner, just click there and it'll take you through to all the lovely merch.

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Jane: At a time when travel, for most of us, is not on the cards, I decided to take you on a virtual journey to a famous English garden and its wonderful greenhouse. The National Trust's garden, Hidcote, in Gloucestershire, England, is world-famous and, outside a pandemic, welcomes thousands of visitors every year. It was designed by an American plant hunter in the early 1900s and he packed it full of plants that he found on his travels around the world. As this here podcast is focused on indoor plants, I wanted to ask Head Gardener, Lottie Allen, about Hidcote's plant shelter, the glorious structure, where so many of the gardens more tender plants are grown. I'd urge you to take a look at the show notes as you listen, for pictures of the plant shelter and many of the plants we talk about. Lottie used to be a head gardener at another National Trust garden, St Michael's Mount, and I should just explain what that garden is like because it may not be something you've come across. St Michael's Mount, in Cornwall, in the UK, is a tidal island. It's a garden on a near-vertical slope on a very steep mound with a medieval church and castle at the top and it's home to some incredible plants, including lots of succulents. So, with that context in mind, let's begin my chat with Lottie Allen and find out about all the lush delights of Hidcote's plant shelter, plus some top tips on keeping succulents happy over winter.

Lottie: My name is Lottie Allen, I'm Head Gardener here at Hidcote and have been here for just over eighteen months. I've worked for the National Trust for nearly 20 years and have seen a variety of different gardens. Hidcote really embodies all of those different gardens that I've worked in.

Jane: Wow, Hidcote! I haven't been, I'm ashamed to say, and I'm sure many of my listeners have heard of Hidcote but lots of them are not in the UK, so can you just fill us in on what kind of garden Hidcote is, where it is and what it's like?

Lottie: It's a garden that's in the middle of the Cotswolds which has benefits and drawbacks. It's in a pretty chilly, cold top-of-a-hill situation, but having said that, it has a lot of benefits and we have some amazing microclimates within the garden, which I think is what the creator of Hidcote was really quite well persuaded with this garden. Lawrence Johnson, along with his mother, bought Hidcote in 1907. It was very much an 18th century kind of farmhouse with a garden, but not very exciting, just a piece of land really. From then on, Lawrence Johnson developed the garden and created a series of garden rooms that extend in all directions from the house. The house is not particularly spectacular but sits amazingly well in its setting. Lawrence Johnson was a naturalised Englishman. Both his parents came from America, he came over to England in 1893 with his mother and from there learned more and more about England and where he chose to finally live and settle, and Hidcote was a huge part of that. The rooms go from very small, intimate spaces that have got hedging on all sides, to large areas like the Theatre Lawn, which is one large, big, open space that is also bounded by yew hedging but in a much larger concept. The idea of the garden is very much rooms that you can look into and views into the garden, as well as taking some of the wider setting and using some of the fields beyond the garden.

Jane: Sounds glorious! We're here though to talk about the plant shelter, which is the domain where I'm sure many of my listeners would be heading first, as enthusiasts of plants behind glass. This is far grander, I'm sure, than anything that I can offer in my own modest garden! How big is the plant shelter and what kind of things are in there?

Lottie: The plant shelter is, off the top of my head, about 30 metres by five or six metres. Its main range runs from east to west and it has glass on the southern front but it has a solid wall on the back, on the northern aspect.

Jane: Well, it sounds perfect for so many plants. I bet it's a nice place to retire to on chillier days! Do you find things to go and do in the plant shelter if the weather's terrible?

Lottie: It's definitely one that you don't need to draw straws on when the opportunity presents itself. It's a lovely space, nicely protected, but it's got a particularly interesting structure in itself in that it was designed, I imagine, by Johnson himself. He had studied architecture in America before he came here and the south front, that is glazed, actually can be removed and, as I was talking about the garden rooms, it becomes another room in the garden during the summertime because it has that kind of open aspect, which we then plant along the front and we can bring pots right to the front of it so that they're cascading out into the garden.

Jane: Sounds gorgeous and is everything in pots, or are there beds in there as well?

Lottie: Yes, there are some beds, although I think the foundations to some extent contain those beds but there's also a lot of pots which helps us with displays in terms of being able to move things around as things are flowering or looking their best.

Jane: What's looking good right now? We're now recording in the start of February.

Lottie: There's not a huge amount. We have done some work in there recently but one thing that is absolutely incredibly striking at the moment is the Hardenbergia violacea. It's just so vivid in its colour. It's got those pendant racemes of these purple flowers just all over it at the moment. They're looking spectacular.

Jane: Is that a big plant in a bed or...?

Lottie: It's been trained up one of the pillars, so once we get to the summer time and the glazed fronts come off it does a bit of both. It's this evergreen climber that's twining its way up the pillar and we did do quite a hard cut on it last year, so it's still making its way back up the pillar if you like, but still looking stunning and, as I say, flowering really well.

Jane: Is that one of the challenges of a protected environment like that? I'm thinking back to my RHS Level Two here, a protected environment, of the challenge of a protected environment, that things grow so well that you do need to hack them back a bit occasionally and get things back under control because you've got a limited space. You've got a roof on there that's not movable and even though you can take the front off in the summer, there's only so much space?

Lottie: Yes, a number of climbers make their way to the top and seem to feel like they'd be better outside, but I don't think they then would think that when they get to the cold weather in the winter. But things like the jasmine, which has that incredible heady scent in the middle of summer, is amazing but was a real tyrant this year because it had gone way up over the top of the pillars and then it just created this mass, which we then found a pigeon nesting in and various things, so we do try and keep things a little bit more in control and we run that balance all the time. Johnson was an incredible plants person and he would have wanted to have filled it with innumerable varieties of plants and we want to do the same, but you also want to be able to look after them well and encourage them to grow in the way that we can look after them, so that they're not making that plant health problem, they're not harbouring disease or bugs, or anything like that.

Jane: That must be an issue, with pests. Is it just a question of vigilance, or do you do any pre-emptive pest control?

Lottie: We do a bit of pre-emptive. We use the SB Plant Invigorator over the wintertime and then, once we get to a point where bio-controls can work, so we use things like parasitic wasps, we can introduce those in, but by the time the summer comes, it's not just windows that are open, whole fronts are, so how well we keep them remains to be seen. We also encourage and create habitats for ladybirds to hibernate, and things like that, so they're ready to come out in the summertime and help us keep those bugs down.

Jane: Yes, it is a real issue when you're in that enclosed environment and I guess, in the summer, you've got the benefit, as you say, of things popping in to help you out. It must be a lovely and cozy place to be in the winter. What temperature is it heated to and how is it heated?

Lottie: That's a really interesting question. Up until last winter, into the spring, we were heating it with oil and we were using an awful lot of oil. So this year, as part of our kind of reduction in the use of production of carbon, we've actually stopped heating it, which will have a significant change, hopefully not too detrimental. I think it will help us with the pests and diseases because we've already noticed that things have at least become more dormant even if they haven't disappeared completely, but it does mean that there are certain things that we won't be able to grow in the beds. It doesn't necessarily mean we won't be able to grow them in pots and then keep them in what we are still heating the glasshouse, so we would be able to keep them there and then bring them and display them in the plant shelter. So, we've gone from a situation where we were heating it, roughly, about seven degrees above whatever the outside temperature is. It's a significant difference and I know that there will be some casualties, unfortunately, but we have taken propagation material of the things that we know we want to sustain.

Jane: Yes, I know from years ago, living in a house with oil-powered central heating, it's expensive and also, from an environmental point of view, that's a brave decision that you've made and a good one. As you say, I'm presuming that wall at the back is holding on to some heat on sunny days which is helping with the temperature as well?

Lottie: I think so, yes. I think there is something in that. It's not outside, there's some protection there. Interestingly, I don't actually know what the wall is made from, it's timber-clad on the back, but I was reading recently that Johnson's design was actually timber enclosed with three inches of sawdust, so again I don't suspect that's what this is now, but that would have been a way of insulating the building as well. The long-term plan is that, once we can find a way of actually heating that without using oil or any other types of those materials, then we will get back to heating it. Johnson was all about growing things in the right place at the right time, so actually, if we can create those conditions, that's what we would want to do. He was very keen on growing them under the conditions that suit them best.

Jane: Yes, I think that's a wise thing and I always say that to people with houseplants. If you've got a really, really dark north-facing home then if you want to grow cacti and succulents you're going to have to put some work in and invest in some grow lights. The sun is where it is and therefore you've got to compensate, but why not try growing a lot of the wonderful things that will grow in north-facing windowsills? It kind of makes sense, rather than fighting against the climate and the conditions that you've got.

Lottie: Yes, definitely. His quote is: "Choose always the best variety or the best strain, do not be content with the second or third best and grow it under the conditions that suit it best" and I think that perfectly sums that up.

Jane: Tell me a bit more about some of the plants you've got growing in the plant shelter. Are there any things that are your particular favourites?

Lottie: Yes, there are. There are some wonderful things, I think from the gardens I've worked in previously, so I was at Coleton Fishacre down in south Devon and, more recently, I was on St Michael's Mount down in west Cornwall, and that's picked up my love of these more protected plants, particularly succulents, but also things like the Jovellana violacea, which is one that we know Lawrence Johnson brought to the garden as well and that's such a wonderful little sub shrub. I think it grows in a little bit of a mess, but the flowers themselves are these little nodding bells that are generally pale purple with a yellow throat and then there's dark purple spots in it. They're just the most amazing flowers when they're in flower. Then we've got things like Begonias. We've got what was Begonia fuchsioides and Begonia luxurians, so the fuchsioides always catches people out, they always think it's an Escallonia but it's actually the fuchsioides and then the luxurians is that palmate style leaves that come off this red cane stem.

Jane: I know it well. I presume you might have managed to keep yours alive over winter, but I have had that plant about three times now and I've never got it through a winter, Begonia luxurians. I can get it to two or three feet tall and then over winter it just fades away.

Lottie: Well, we'll see because, as I've told you, we're not heating the plant shelter. That's one of a number we've got, fortunately. We use them also in the red borders out in the main garden. This particular one, looking at it, looks like it's very healthy, whereas, interestingly, the Begonia fuchsioides looks like we're going to certainly have to prune it hard back to let it come again, and if not, replace the plant. It'll be interesting to see with the temperatures this year, they're a bit lower than they were last year, so that, combined with the fact that we're not heating it, may see a different side to that. Those are the more permanent features. We've also got things like the Roldana petasitis, so it's a really velvety, huge leaves of an evergreen shrub. Which, again, I grew on the mount outside - we were lucky enough that the climate just about tolerated - whereas here, they're huge leaves and it's really loving being just in there and a bit more protected. We've also got a huge range of succulents, everything from the Agaves, which tend to go out and around the lily pool just in front of the plant shelter, right through to things like the Crassula ovata. We've got 'Gollum, so it's got those amazing tubular leaves that I've been told look a little bit like Shrek ears coming off the plant. The equivalent, as well, with the Crassula ovata, the standard Money Tree, some big, big examples of those that are currently in pot. So we're debating about what we do with them because they're just getting to the point where they can't keep moving in and out in quite the way we would have done with smaller plants.

Jane: That can get huge, can't it? I'm always seeing them on Facebook Marketplace, people saying "We're moving and we can't take it with us", it's some giant specimen, I really hope somebody does buy it, but I often do think "Are you going to have to pay somebody to take this away?" because it's so huge. They do get enormous, don't they, and lovely, but quite unwieldy once you've got a really, really heavy, tall succulent plant. I've got a variegated one, which is tiny, and I'm thinking "Will this variegated version get so big?". I'm not sure whether it will or not.

Lottie: Well, that might be the key, mightn't it? The variegated version you might be able to keep to a more contained specimen.

Jane: Yes, I'm thinking that might be the case. We shall see because I haven't got much more floor space for big plants. I'm hoping it does stay small!

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Jane: More from Lottie and the Hidcote plant shelter shortly but now it's time for Question of the Week and it concerns Ceropegia linearis subsp. Woodii. Sometimes I wonder whether I should just make a whole podcast episode of me saying the Latin names of plants! I don't know. Would that be a good thing to go to sleep to? I've been listening to some sleep-inducing, deliberately sleep-inducing podcasts, as opposed to my own podcast which may induce sleep for other reasons! I was just thinking, could you have just a show of me reading out Latin names? I don't know! Let me know what you think! Anyway, back to the question, which came from Stephanie.

Stephanie recently got an eight-inch, full pot of String of Hearts, as that Ceropegia is commonly known, and it sounds like it's arrived in a bit of a tangle and Stephanie wants to know whether to untangle it a bit to see if it will trail down more or leave it super tangled and full on top and just let it grow as it wants? Well, we've all been there! I think most of us who have grown either Ceropegia linearis or indeed Curio Rowleyanus, the String of Pearls, would have had this experience of buying a plant mail order and it arriving and looking like my hair in the morning; a terribly tangled mess and wondering what to do! It's hard in the case of both these plants because the stems really are so thin and wire-like and the leaves get hooked around one another and it's very, very hard to disentangle.

Now, do you want to spend several hours untangling your plant? Well, some people might find it a relaxing mindfulness activity, others of you would find it pure torture! It really depends on you and your personality and how much time you have to hand. Personally, I'd rather chew my own leg off, as we say here, so I tend to take the approach of trying to do a little bit of teasing out of any stems that can easily be disentangled and then a bit of brutal chopping of anything that's in a real knot and using that to propagate, then that can be given to somebody else or added back into the top of the pot and then just letting the plant grow.

It's worth bearing in mind that String of Hearts, this subspecies of Ceropegia linearis, in its native climes would probably be growing knots in a delightfully straight trailing manner. It would probably be dragging itself all over the place and in a real scramble. We kind of know that from just looking at the plant because we can see those tiny pea-sized, round aerial tubers that tend to grow along the length of the stem here and there. They are designed to root into the ground so, of course, the plant is scrambling over the ground and where it finds a little pocket of soil it may well put out one of those tubers which will then be able to grow across the ground, so that if the plant gets attacked by a pest, or damaged in some way, it's got various growth points that continue to support it, so it's a clever tactic on the part of the plant. All this is telling us that in nature, it's not in a beautiful straight line like you see on Instagram.

One option that you can do with a String of Hearts - I've never seen this done with Curio rowleyanus, the String of Pearls, actually, but maybe it's possible - but certainly with String of Hearts, what you can do is train it round a hoop, or some kind of wire trellis set-up, and that does look rather nice that way. I don't really like String of Hearts when you see it as a really thin, trailing, droopy, set of a few stems I quite like it full. So, what I've done with my variegated String of Hearts is I've just taken the - what's the word for it - the swag, I guess you could say, the swag of stems and I've just looped them back up and pinned them down into the pot with an unfurled paper clip and I've kept that damp and it will root from there. Even if there aren't any aerial tubers on that stretch of stem it will root and then eventually I can cut it so that I've got double the amount of stems coming out of the pot.

So, there's different ways of handling this plant and I think, if you're happy with it as it is, Stephanie, I would just leave it as it is, let it grow. It will start to trail because there's not an expansive soil around it to grow in, so it's going to start trailing, and if you leave it like that you will have that full top. If you're the kind of person that has issues with tangle, I know some people do have issues with seeing tangled things, I'm just thinking of my husband here because he gets very confused by my ability to tangle headphones cables, my headphone cables always look like a bowl of spaghetti because they're always tangled and he's just mystified by a) how I managed to get them in that state and b) why I don't untangle them, until they're so bad that, literally, it's about two inches long and then I might untangle it. So, what I'm trying to say is, it depends on your mental outlook on life, whether tangled stems are going to be a problem for you, or not, and I think that's absolutely fine either way, the plant will be fine either way and don't stress, basically!

I do like the plant to be quite full and I think the benefit of having a more full plant is that if you have one very, very long stem, it puts a lot of pressure on that one particular stem. Whereas, if you have lots of shorter stems, coming over the top of the pot, it kind of equals things out and means that your plant is less likely to topple over or have problems because it's got this tremendous weight of one single stem.

I hope that's helpful, Stephanie, String of Hearts is such a wonderful plant and so many of us grow it now and there are many, many useful pieces of advice out there on growing this plant. If you do want to make it look fuller there are many ways of doing it, many ways of propagating this plant, from growing from seed to the thing I've described with pinning the stems back into the pot. You can also try the butterfly method of propagation, where you take individual leaf nodes and pin those down in a pot, with a bit of stem attached to either side and two leaves, that can be really good. I don't have the time to maintain that kind of thing right now, so I haven't bothered with that, but my loop-it-back-in-the-pot technique takes about five seconds, which is about all I have to sort them out at the moment, so that works for me! So, give it a whirl, see what you can do and that's the great thing about this kind of trailing plant, it is so incredibly flexible and you can experiment with it in lots of different ways.

So, I hope that helps, Stephanie, and if you've got a question for On The Ledge do drop me a line ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. A shout-out now if you are in the Cambridge area of the UK. I've been contacted by somebody whose wife is a paramedic in Cambridge and they're looking for houseplant cuttings to grow on, to cheer up the paramedics in their office or restroom. So, if you are in the Cambridge area and you have some cuttings to spare, then contact @robsalmonphoto on Instagram to arrange your donation. I'll put a link to Rob Salmon's Instagram profile in the show notes, so please, if you can, if you're in the Cambridge area and you have some plants spare, please do offer that up for the paramedics of Cambridgeshire because I bet they need it right now. Something green to look at could be a great comfort at what must be a horrendous time.

Let's head back to my chat with Lottie Allen and I want to pick her brains about succulent care in winter.

Jane: I wanted to tap into your succulent expertise. Can you just tell us... St Michael's Mount another garden I've not been to, but it's an amazing garden, the climate is mild enough that you've got some lovely outdoor succulents and that, presumably, enhanced your love of succulents? Can you give us some tips on succulent care over the winter? This is when it all goes pear-shaped for some people and they find they really struggle. Are there any key things that we need to look out for?

Lottie: I think the key one is watering and it's something that we had to be careful with, on the Mount, because the mount is a core of granite and has this amazing ability to shed water. So, in some places there was water not quite pouring, but you could tell it was going down through the bedrock, and then every now and again you just find patches that would hold the water a bit more, and they weren't as good, and you wouldn't be able to grow the succulents in those spaces. Fortunately, the main part of the garden had that free-flowing nature, so it remained relatively dry in the wintertime. I think that is the key, almost not watering at all rather than trying to water a little, because they just don't like it. I suppose the difficult part is that you get things like Aeoniums. They're in their growing period in the middle of winter, we saw it all the time on the Mount, where things just looked their absolute best right in the middle of winter. You might have these ferocious gales all around you, but they were shining bright and there was no one to see them! So you have to kind of play with that a little bit. I would say definitely it's the watering more so, I think, than the cold. Obviously, there's that element, that they don't want to see the frost, they don't want to see the snow, so you do need to protect them, but actually I think it's the water content that people need to be mindful of.

Jane: I've got some cacti and succulents sitting next to me in the office and my Opuntia monacantha is drooping terribly but I have given it some water over the winter, but not much, and I'm thinking: "I'd rather just let it droop a little bit than allow it to get too much water and then rot," so I'm less worried about drooping through lack of water, or a bit of shrivelling, because I know I can bring them back from that, whereas it's the mushy mess that you don't want to see.

Lottie: No, we were looking at the Roldana this morning and it's just starting to slightly show a little bit of drooping but we would rather that than to give it some water. Then we've got a week of what looks to be quite cold weather coming up, which it just wouldn't thank us for, at the end of it.

Jane: Yes, exactly. I want to pick your brains about Agaves. In my unheated greenhouse I have about a dozen Agaves of not great size, relatively modest specimens a few years old, but some of them are getting a bit bigger and I've got this nascent plan for some of them to go outside in a what is basically a brick raised bed which gets very dry in the summer and currentlyhas Calamagrostis Karl Foerster in it, but that's kind of getting to the end of its life, and I'm thinking I might just risk it, putting a couple of Agaves in these raised beds. What words of wisdom can you give me on that? Is it worth the risk? I'm in Bedfordshire, by the way, I should say, which is quite dry.

Lottie: Quite dry, yes. I think of all the succulents, the Agaves are the one that people see and think they're the most tender things that you need to look after and, actually, they're a lot more robust and resilient than we give them credit. I'm not going to make any promises on any of it. Saying that, if you're able to plant them in really well-drained - and you can control that by that raised bed -- containerized-type idea, then I think they've got a good chance. We had snow on the Mount, back in 2018 I think it was, and we had a lot of losses, which was really sad, but we had a lot that came back and the Mount is looking glorious now. It was a lot to do with that contact of the snow sitting on things. I don't think it was the roots because a lot of things did actually start to regenerate. So I think it's that keeping a protection over it of some sort, so there's no contact with it, but the actual air temperature I think they can deal with a lot more than we would otherwise think.

Jane: I did see a picture of some Agaves in a garden near me which, the more tender Agaves they covered over with little clear plastic umbrellas, which look very cute, to keep the snow we've had recently off them, so I'll see. I may get to the point where the Agaves just can't fit into the greenhouse any more because it's not a very big space, so it may just have to happen through practicalities. It will be a gamble, but I think it'll be quite fun if it does work and, importantly, they will be more or less out of the way of people getting their eyes poked out, which is always a factor with Agaves!

Lottie: That's always a difficult one, yes, and the bigger they grow, the more chance that people can get them in their eyes as well.

Jane: I know, I know, they are absolutely lethal, aren't they? Working with succulents, as you have, have you had any close calls in that department of injuring yourself?

Lottie: I seem to remember one of my first weeks on the Mount I managed to put my knee on one Agave which went into a bit of cartilage, or I don't know what it did, but I was quite sore for a couple of weeks before I could get back into it. They're always a bit more of a risk, I think, particularly Agaves but also some of the Aloes, they can be problematic at times, if you're not careful. I think you sometimes just have to be a bit rigorous about it and just get in and cut what you need and accept that you might damage the odd bit but actually you're just trying to do the best for them. Some of the Puyas are particularly difficult. In fact the Puya chilensis, which we have got at Hidcote, it's a small specimen, we had some giant-sized ones on the Mount but I think they're known as the "sheep eaters", or something, because they've got those spiky and spiny leaves that if sheep get too close to then, unfortunately, they can't get away from them. Yes, there's some pretty nasty-looking succulents but it's those ones that you want to admire from afar rather than get too close to.

Jane: Yes, there's a cactus called the horse something... basically horses land on it and injure themselves. I can't think what it's called. The horse something cactus. I want to say nobbler but it's not nobbler, it's something else [horse crippler!] Clearly there's great potential for injury which, as somebody who's a bit accident-prone, is worrying. I still managed to survive and it's worth the risk, I find. So, what are you up to in the plant shelter now, at this time of year? Are there any particular jobs that you've got to do - other than, obviously, manufacturing jobs just so you can go in there and be warm! - but is there anything you're really getting on top of at this time of year?

Lottie: We've just done some work in there, actually. Things do, once they get going, they get going well, so you need to keep them in check. So, we've had a few bits and pieces that we've needed to prune off. We had a very large Lilly Pilly that was almost up to the ceiling, so we've actually had that out. We've had some good-sized plants. Again, these things take over once they're in a pot and you get to a point where you can't keep moving them in and out, so they need to go in the beds.

Jane: You need to tell me about the Lilly Pilly. I've not heard of this. Has it got one of these consonant-filled names?

Lottie: Yes, it's Syzygium, however you pronounce that!? That's why I remember Lilly Pilly!

Jane: Yes, exactly! Just say Lilly Pilly! I love Latin names but that sounds a nightmare.

Lottie: It's sort of an evergreen. If you can imagine, it looks a bit like the indoor fig, it looks a bit like that, but very, very shiny-leaved and with an almost bronze tint to it and they have these amazing fruits and then seed pods, which apparently you can eat. Apparently, they will grow outside in slightly warmer conditions, further south in this country,, I mean, and it was a lovely specimen, lovely foliage, but unfortunately it had its top taken out a couple of times and so, again, another pigeon had found its way in there and, all in all, it was taking up far too much room for the size of the plant shelter, you need to have some scale with it, so we took that out. It was also infested with scale and all sorts of things, so it helped us out by taking that out and replacing it with various things. We've got some very large Kalanchoethat we want to put in, we've got things like the Radiator Aloe, we've got some brilliant specimens of that that I'd like to see planted in the beds there, so there's various different bits of planting that we'll get to as the months go on. We've just done some work just pruning back the climbers that we had in various spaces just as they're covering the walls. So, it's a bit of general maintenance really, but with a few bits taken away from it, we're just trying to reassess what we can put in there just to give a bit more vibrance and colour to it.

Jane: Obviously your working life is taken up with plants - do you have any indoor plants at home, or is the plant shelter quite enough for you?

Lottie: I have a small number. I took the opportunity - at the start of the first lockdown, there was a small number of us working all the way through. but I was having to work from home for some of that - so I did take the opportunity of a few cuttings of various Aeoniums, various Echeveria and some Sempervirens, things like Aeonium barbatus and the Aeonium arboreum that I was able to take a few cuttings of and just trim them back and took those home and was quite happy to grow those on. So, yes, we have we have things like that at home, which is a nice connection for me.

Jane: I find Aeoniums the most impossible succulent to keep alive indoors. A bit like the Agaves, they just seem to be needing those cooler temperatures over the winter. Perhaps it's just me? Do you have a cool place to keep them in your house, where they are happy?

Lottie: Yes, we've got an unheated conservatory, so that seems to be the place that they are most happy. I wouldn't say they're in any way the same that we were growing on the Mount and even in the plant shelter here. There's one particular, huge Arboreum and that's really doing well and is just about to flower. It's a really mature specimen so it's throwing out flower heads, which is always quite unusual for Aeoniums for people to see. The concept of them flowering often people miss, but they'll be lovely yellow towers of flowers. So, mine at home aren't quite like that, but I'm working on it!

Jane: I'm throwing this on you completely unprepared, but perhaps you might be able to help with a question from a listener which has come in. I think I know the answer but I want to just run it past you. A listener called Natalie got in touch about succulents in winter and, as we've already said, the rule is generally don't water, keep it very dry over the winter unless the plant is actively growing. Her question is that she's got succulents, she's got a Kalanchoe humiliswhich is flowering away, and she's wondering whether that means that she needs to up the watering because it's in active growth, as in flowering is part of the active growth cycle, and she's worrying she hasn't given it any water since November and she's not sure what to do, any thoughts on that? If it's flowering, presumably, it is in active growth and therefore it does need a bit more water than it would do if it was completely dormant?

Lottie: Yes, I would say so, I think that is the thing, isn't it? If you can see they're in active growth, I would definitely not necessarily keep water away from it completely, but I think I would just be very mindful to make sure that whatever you water, and leave it to sit but not for too long, but then let it dry out and don't water until it's completely dried out again before the next round. I think it's so easy to just keep adding a bit more water and not actually know what the roots are doing in the pot. So, that would be my thoughts.

Jane: What do you do about feeding succulents? They don't need a lot of feed, do they, but do you have a particular regime in the plant shelter for feeding the succulents?

Lottie: My team use the SB Invigorator at the start of the year but that's not then later into the year. There are some liquid feeds that we will use, but my experience on the Mount is that they are much better without anything, but that was with them in ground conditions that the soil has its own minerals in it, whereas we're talking about a very artificial space that is more compost than it is soil, so for that reason I think a small bit but, again, on a very, very limited basis.

Jane: Yes, I think you're always better going under than over on these things, aren't you? They're just evolved to cope with a dearth of supplies and they're not designed to cope with too much water or too much food, it doesn't suit them, does it?

Lottie: It doesn't, no.

Jane: That's a useful thing because I know with my succulent collection I've got things that are flowering now and I'm kind of like, "Oh gosh, that's completely dry. Should I be..." as I've had a similar worry, but I guess, as you say, if they're flowering, presumably that means they're fairly happy and life is going okay, so don't drown them in water?

Lottie: Yes, we've got things like the Christmas Cactus. We've got a splendid version in the glasshouse at the moment, and it's flowering its socks off. I wouldn't necessarily not water it, I think I'd just be very careful about how much it had at any one time.

Jane: Thank you so much for joining me today, Lottie, it's been really fantastic to hear all about the plant shelter and I will make an appointment in my diary to come and visit you once conditions allow because it's a great gap in my horticultural education, not having been to Hidcote. Thank you so much for joining me and enjoy your hanging out. I'm sure you're working very hard, you're not hanging out, you're working non-stop, but enjoy the delights of a winter glasshouse because it is a wonderful thing.

Lottie: Thank you. Thank you Jane.

Jane: Thank you to Lottie Allen there, a wonderful guest, and you can find out more about Lottie and about Hidcote and the plants we mentioned in the show notes at janeperrone.com. Before we go, let's have a quick round-up on what's been going on with the On The Ledge sowalong. I asked for recommendations from US listeners of places to get Monstera deliciosa seeds and you didn't disappoint. Several of you suggested Plantflix on Etsy, and Growing Hope, and I'll put links to both of those into the show notes and I'm going to add them on to my US seed buying list as well. You'll find that and the UK version in the show notes too.

Lots of you have been getting cracking, receiving your seeds through the post that you've already ordered and seeing results. Tulaval's plants on Instagram has already seen germination on Lithops, that's the stone plant, just four days after sowing. That's incredible! They must have been lovely fresh seeds. AntipopFPV, who listens to On The Ledge on my YouTube channel, is sowing Cape sundew and Adenium for the first time and the seeds of Monstera bolivia that they were lucky enough to get. Well that sounds incredible - well done to you! Catherine on Instagram has sown Winter Thyme, Wild Thyme and purple artichokes. Mmm, do love an artichoke! Amanda's being very careful with her Gesneriad seed, she wrote, "Don't sneeze while sowing Gesneriad seed!" So right because it is dust-like! If you do have very fine seed, one thing you can do is mix it with some dry, fine silver sand, as it's known, and then that makes it much easier to sow evenly.

Some of you have been showing off your past On The Ledge sowalong successes in the Facebook group. Elizabeth showed off a lovely picture of her succulent, Faucaria, which came from a February 1st 2020 sowing, while Zoe's been showing off some other OTLsowalong babies from the first sowalong in February 2018. This year Zoe's going to try a Ponytail Palm and some Sundews - sounds exciting! Oh, and one final plea from Sidney on the Facebook group Houseplant Fans of On The Ledge. Sidney is asking where to get Anthurium seeds in the US. Now, this isn't that easy because any Aroid seed generally tends to need to be sown very fresh, so they're not that easy to get hold of, but thanks to Andy for already making a couple of suggestions on that thread. If you've got any extra ideas then please let me know, or join the Facebook group to comment on that particular post.

Well, that wraps up the show for this week. Reminder no show on February 19th 2021. Next week's half-term here in the UK, so I shall be spending the week titivating my house plants and hanging out with my family. Oh and it's my birthday as well, so I may be eating a small amount of cake and drinking a small amount of bubbly liquid. I couldn't possibly comment further! I'll be back on Friday the 26th when I will be holding a small celebration for the fourth anniversary of the podcast. Yes, four lovely, long years! In the meantime, let me just say thank you to you all. You are all outstanding human beings - never forget that. Bye!

[music]

Jane: The music you heard in this episode was Roll Jordan Roll by The Joy Drops, An Instrument the Boy Called Happy Day, Gokarna by Samuel Corwin and Friends by Jahzzar. All tracks are licensed under Creative Commons. Visit janeperrone.com for details.

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Lottie Allen. Photograph: National Trust.

Lottie Allen. Photograph: National Trust.


I’m joined by Lottie Allen, head gardener at Hidcote in the Cotswolds, England, to learn about growing plants behind glass at this famous Arts and Crafts garden. Plus I answer a question about untangling a string of hearts, and we get a sowalong update.

Sowalong essentials

#OTLswalong is an annual podcast project encouraging listeners to sow and grow houseplant seeds. If you are getting started sowing seeds for 2021, I want to know! Post your pics and info on social media using #OTLsowalong and #OnTheLedgePodcast, and onto the podcast’s Facebook group, Houseplant Fans of On The Ledge. If you were one of the people seeking Monstera deliciosa seeds in the US, many listeners recommend Plantflix on Etsy and Growing Hope on Etsy. You can listen to all the sowalong-themed episodes here.

Plantflix has also written a useful guide to how not to be scammed when buying seeds online. Check it out!

Hardenbergia violacea. Photograph: Eran Finkle on Flickr.

Check out the notes below as you listen… and scroll down for more images of the Plant Shelter.

Jovellana violacea. Photograph: Dick Culbert on Flickr.

Roldana petasitis. Photograph: John Rusk on Flickr.

Roldana petasitis. Photograph: John Rusk on Flickr.

Check out the photographs below for more views inside and outside the Plant Shelter. Photographs all copyright the National Trust.

Calling all Cambridge UK-based listeners!

@robsalmonphoto and @rubys_reno are collecting houseplant cuttings to donate to local paramedics to enjoy in their restroom. If you are local and can help do get in touch with either of them to arrange your donation.

Question of the week

Stephanie wanted to know whether she needs to untangle her newly-purchased Ceropegia linearis subsp. woodii aka string of hearts. Simple answer - it’s a matter of taste! This plant would grow in a tangled mess in the wild, so it depends on the kind of aesthetic you want to achieve, and leaving the plant tangled certainly won’t affect its growth.

Want to ask me a question? Email ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. The more information you can include, the better - pictures of your plant, details of your location and how long you have had the plant are always useful to help solve your issue!

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Contributions from On The Ledge listeners help to pay for all the things that have made the show possible over the last few years: equipment, travel expenses, editing, admin support and transcription.

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CREDITS

This week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, An Instrument the Boy Called Happy Day, Gokarna by Samuel Corwin and Sundown by Josh Woodward.

Growing under glassJane PerroneBegonia, greenhouses & polytunnelsComment