Thursday, September 18, 2008

Gramineusement vôtre!

L’équinoxe nous sonne le glas de l’été, l’automne est déjà là! Son arrivée nous apporte les matins embus de fraîcheur et les brumes mystérieuses qui givrent les toiles d’araignées de rosée. Les bordures, quelque peu ternies en fin d’été s’illuminent soudain d’or et de paillettes, c’est la grande valse des graminées qui ouvre son jeu!

D’un coté, les grandes dames et les grands ducs de la Pampas, Cortaderia selloana, toujours aussi impressionnants de leur stature et de leur générosité, mais quelque peu démodés aux yeux des Anglais qui les cultivent de moins en moins. On les trouvent trop raides et surtout trop clichées. On ôse peut-être encore planter la variété ‘Rendatleri’ aux plumes rose cuivré dans les grands domaines, mais du haut de ses échasses de ses 4 mètres elle est souvent bien trop grande pour le jardin moderne. Deux variétés, de taille plus réduite méritent à mon avis, un peu plus d'attention et une place dans la bordure : ‘Icalma’ particulière de ses épis fournis comme des queues de lapin brunes (à gauche) et ‘Patagonia’ dorée et légère et au feuillage bleuté (à droite). La plus élégante des Cortaderia n'en n’est pas une des Pampas cependant. Elle est d’origine Néo-Zélandaise où on l’appelle toetoe, c’est la Cortaderia richardii. Sans aucun doute la plus merveilleuse des graminées, elle commande toute l’attention et doit être placée contre un fond vert sombre pour être appréciée à son meilleur. Elle est débordante et demandante cependant et seuls ceux choyés d'espace grandioses pourront l'accomoder.

D'allure semblable mais beaucoup plus populaire parce que plus réduite de taille, la Stipa gigantea a aussi belle figure. Elle fleurit longtemps celle-là, étirant ses grandes tiges dès juin, de beaux épis légers qu'elle gardera au moins jusqu'à noël. C'est une graminée au feuillage persistant qui nous vient d'Espagne et qui malheureusement, comme l'herbe de la Pampas, manque un peu de rusticité dans les climats continentaux. N'ayez de déceptions cependant, braves jardininers nordiques qui rêvez de démesure, il y a toujours le Miscanthus sur lequel jeter son dévolu! Et s'il est moins impressionnant que la Cortaderia, il n'en est pas plus laid pour autant, au contraire, il est plus léger et mobile et sait jouer avec le vent. Pour les fous de hauteur, 'Giganteus' est le cultivar a adopter, mais il ne fleuri pas et moi je lui préfère 'Malepartus', la variété la plus belle et la plus élégante de tous les grands Miscanthus. Je l'ai vu briller de ses 2m50 dans les jardins du Domaine Joly de Lotbinière, Québec (zone 4) il y a quelques années déjà et depuis je le convoite et le courtise et il me réjoui toujours de sa généreuse floraison argentée.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Ginger bread anyone?

I have a new best friend. She is called ‘Tara’ and comes from Nepal. She is most elegant, a svelte figure with an arched back and strong legs; she would be right at home on a high fashion runway. She has a bright complexion, exotic looks and smells faintly of gardenia, she could have been the queen of Sheba. She has a very flighty personality yet she is a completely devoted character; she is a ginger!
I bought my first ornamental ginger two years ago from the wonderful Architectural Plants nursery in Horsham. I had already admired tropical gingers but I hadn’t realized that there were many hardy ones we can grow here in our mild temperate climate.
I already knew of the diminutive Roscoea, a pretty plant indeed but not one that makes a great statement in the garden. It does have the exotic look of the family Zingiberaceae with its large fleshy orchid-like blooms and strappy leaves clasping the stem, and really I do love it, but it cannot compare to its larger relatives. I discovered the ginger family through its tropical species. I had encountered them in my travels to Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore (where a whole section of the Botanical Gardens is devoted to them). I also learned a lot about them when staying and working with friends in North Queensland three years ago. It was Suzie and Alan who introduced me to their native backscratcher ginger, Tapenochilos annanassae, the beehive ginger, Zingiber spectabile and most exciting and impressive of all, the stately Torch ginger, Etlingera elatior. This last one I recognized as ‘La Rose de Porcelaine’ from a photograph I had seen many years before in a French gardening magazine. It had caught my imagination as a teenager and it was somewhat unreal an experience to see it in the flesh, also perhaps because its large waxy flower didn't look quite real in itself.
Apart from these beauties, I had also acquainted with gingers in my kitchen. Apart from the ginger root (Zingiber officinale) which I use profusely in my cooking (delicious grated on a toast with melted cheddar on top - I promise, try it!), there is also cardamom (the seeds of Elettaria cardamomum), galangal (the root of Alpinia galanga) and tumeric (the powdered root of Curcuma longa), to use as spices. I think cardamom is grossely underused. It has a most wonderful citrus-meet-cedar-meet-ginger fragrance. It is one of the mysterious spices that gives Indian food its unique flavour. Here, I use it mostly in sweet cooking as I think its lemoney taste goes well with fruits and cakes. I first discovered it through a poppy seed bread recipe and have been faithful to it since. See what you make of it:


Poppy seed bread

125 g granulated sugar
125 g light brown sugar
3 large eggs (or 4 medium)
140 g spelt or wholemeal flour
140 g plain flour
250 mL vegetable oil (sunflower or rapeseed)
125 mL milk (soya is fine)
75 g poppy seeds
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. each of cinnamon, crushed cardamom seeds
½ tsp. allspice, powdered ginger

oven: 350F/180C

Mix the sugars with the eggs. Add the oil in a slow and steady trickle, beating as you go along. Mix the flour with the baking powder the poppy seeds and the spices, then incorporate this mix into the mixture, alternating with the milk. Put in an extra large bread pan (30 cm X 15 cm, no smaller otherwise the edge of the cake burns before the centre is cooked) and bake until it is soft and tender in the middle, approximately 60 minutes.

Sorry we are getting sidetracked, the belly takes over the brain so fast sometimes! I was about to extol the virtues of the hardy gingers, not so much for their edible properties as for their ornemamental ones - although - before I do this, I feel the urge to mention just one last edible ginger, a hardy one this time and one that I have been growing for a couple of years with great success. I visited Japan a few years ago and for a month experienced its culinary exoticism. On one occasion I was presented a pale pink teardrop-shaped sliced pickle which was absolutely delicious, similar to pickled ginger we get in the west, but with a more fruity taste and a crunchier texture. I enquired about it and was told it was 'myoga' - as I don't speak Japanese, this could have meant anything to me. I was eager to find out more and seeing my vivid interest, the host took me to the garden to show me the plant. It looked just like a dwarf ginger but had no flowers, or at least it didn't seem to...until my host pointed them out, hiding amongst the foliage, just coming out of the ground. I recognized the shape of the pickle and realized that that was what I had been eating, the flower buds! I didn't hear of myoga after that for a long time, I hadn't been able to source it upon returning here and had not researched it further. Then two years ago, whilst perusing through the list of the excellent nusery Crûg Farm, I cam across it, Zingiber myoga! It wasn't long before I had paid them a visit and bought myself a nice pot full of it. It said on the label that the hardiness was unknown, but I knew it would survive here, for when I had seen in Japan I was in Hakodate, Hokkaido, where temperatures can drop to -15C. Not only did it survive the last two winters, it thrived (like other gingers, it positively romps away when happy) and I now have three large patches of it giving me, as I write this, my very own myoga to pickle in rice wine vinegar - how so special!
Sorry, once again we are neglecting our hardy ornemental gingers! If 'Tara' is the most impressive of all the hardy Hedychiums, there are many more to excite our senses. I don't grow many others at the moment, only H. flavescens, which hasn't flowered being in its first year (gingers do grow fast, but usually need a settling period before they begin flowering). Tony Schilling, who introduced 'Tara' from a wild collection in Nepal also brought back a lovely plant he called 'Stephen' (right). I don't grow it but have been told it does very well in the United Kingdom. I used to have H. densiflorum 'Assam Orange' in my previous garden, but the rabbits found out how tasty it was when I was on leave and ate my small clump, root and all. It is quite similar in colour to 'Tara' but it has slenderer spikes. It is different enough that I should really like to have it again.
Then there is H. yunnanense, which I have admired at the entrance of the RHS Wisley but haven't encountered for sale yet. It looks similar to the tropical butterfly ginger, H. coronarium but is hardier and freer flowering in a cool climate. It doesn't have the same powerful scent but a subtle exotic fragrance nonetheless.
Kew Gardens has a really nice collection of rarer hardy gingers by the herbarium and this makes me want to try and source more for next year. What about you? Ginger beer anyone?

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Fire burning bright

'Torch lily', 'Red Hot Poker', 'Satan's embers'; such are the firey names given to the South African Kniphofia, and how appropriate they all are! No other perennial can rival this amazing plant for boldness of colour and stature. From the first flower in June till the last one in October, there is always a poker to brighten up the garden.
People often associate the Kniphofia with a a tawdry mix of deep burned orange and yellow, but there are some marvelous hybrids of various colours to choose from nowadays. Take for example the wonderful 'Rich Echos' (above) with a mixture of lemon, bronze and pale orange, the equally elegant 'Timothy' in its dark salmon robe (below, in one of Clive Nichols's beautiful photographs of Pettifers) or the most intense of them all, 'Lord Roberts' (below). The argumentative person might like to point out to me that not all Kniphofias are vibrant, that there are some which display quite cool shades of cream and green that couldn't even ignite a dry pile of straw, and I have to agree for the most scrumptious I possess, 'Coolknip', is indeed positively icy looking. Even if it cannot match the vibrant orange and red ones in terms of sheer drama I wouldn't be without it for it is a very special plant. I bought it from plantwoman extraordinaire Ellen Hornig who runs Seneca Hill Perennials in Upstate New York, USA. She herself had received it from a friend in California, so it has made a long journey to come all the way here in my English garden. It is a most impressive poker with stately green flowers very late in the summer (or more likely this year, early autumn). As I am writing it has yet to show its flower buds through the foliage and it probably won't do so until the end of the month. I like that because it extends the season. I have many other kniphfias in bloom at the moment, including the similar but smaller 'Percy's Pride', so 'Coolknip' can wait a little longer.
Apart from 'Percy's Pride' I've got K. uvaria 'Nobilis' putting up a show at the moment. This is, I believe, the tallest of all Kniphofias, and although mine is quite tall at about 6 ft, the ones at Kew Gardens had to be seen to be believed this year, they must have topped a good 9 ft - the sight of them in the Cambridge Cottage garden transfixed me for a moment. How I wish I had had a camera handy! Next year perhaps. In the meantime there is also the smart 'Toffee Nosed' in flower in the cutting border. It is one of the most elegant forms with slender flowers of various shades of cream and bronze - well done to the person who named it so cleverly!
The one small snag about Kniphofias is their strappy foliage, which can be a little overwhelming or untidy in some varieties. Those I have mentioned so far are pretty neat in growth generally and there are several others which are good, two of which are even outstanding: Kniphofia caulescens with large blue rosettes and the king of all of them, K. northiae with huge succulent leaves like a hardy aloe (right).
There are of course some smaller daintier forms than the ones I have mentioned so far such as 'Little Maid', 'Bressingham Comet' and 'Nancy's Red' which I used to grow and loved. I tired of them evntually though, they just lack the punch I want from Kniphofia. They are too posé and polite somehow - and lets admit it, if one felt so inclined to refine one's taste it would be better to start collecting bone china tea cups - much less work on the long run!