‘Microclimateology’ – my little plan for global domination

OK, I admit it

I am responsible

for this early flowering stuff.

(On twitter everyone is saying how soon everything is coming into flower!)

Rest easy, I am not exactly a Bond-style villain

for whom heating this world up is part of a cunning scheme to control the entire universe

Nor am I personally emiting enough greenhouse gasses (!!) to cause global warming.

I mean the ‘early flowering stuff’ in these pics  of course.

In fact, I am the greenest person I know.

But in my own small way I do control my own little universe. My gardening universe.

I could, to start with, buy a house with a sunny garden or a shady one. Its remarkable in our experience how few people think of something so simple!

Or whatever I have landed myself with gardening wise I could try in some small way to change or to improve its growing circumstances.

For example in a windy garden I could create shelter by planting a big thick hedge to filter the wind. So much more effective and cheaper than a wall.

Or I could simply take advantage of the local climate within my garden, the play of sun and shade, wind and calm, frost and shelter, the microclimate in fact, to plant whatever I want to grow exactly where it is best suited to grow.

Like growing Camellias where their frosted blooms are not hit by the early sun which damages and browns them.

The effects of a change of location are considerable.

Here a simple Euphorbia characias, sited in an east-west wind tunnel

is slowly unfirling its heads of flower. But just yards away its cousin sheltered by a juniper to the north and east

is already in full flower!

So why did I plant one in each place? Why break my own rule?

Well in fact I planted a number of them in this entire area. Repetition in planting being ‘a good thing’ since it avoids a bitty effect and assists in creating a restful unity in garden design!

The plus is also that within your garden you get staggered flowering of the same species and so an extended period of display.

But it is a conscious decision, done with the knowledge of what plants will do and cope with and really want!

Plantsmanship in fact.

And the exception that proves the use of a very useful rule!

Move over Blofeld

(I do, by the way, have a cat!)

R

Robert Webber

The Hegarty Webber Partnership

 

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Tags: Euphorbia characias, microclimate, Plantsmanship, repetition, Robert Webber, The Hegarty Webber Partnership, unity in garden design

Category: Design Bites, Garden Planning, General Gardening Stuff, The Planty Stuff