This Month in the Garden (July) with Derek Cox.

A question, which seems to crop up at regular intervals on Radio Leicester’s ‘Down to Earth’ gardening program, is how to control weeds without the use of chemicals. The only non-chemical way of controlling weeds is by using a hoe in flower borders and a weed widger in the lawn. I feed my lawn during late April and this year I had to wait until we had rain during early June before I applied Verdone lawn weed killer. A lawn weed killer is only formulated to use on a lawn, if used in a border it will probably kill perennials and soft stemmed shrubs. I must admit that I rarely use a hoe, as I much prefer to go through the border on my hands and knees to pull, or dig out weeds with a trowel. Many of you will consider this to be tedious and a waste of time, but weeding by hand, I can see if any unusual tree, shrub, or perennial seedlings have appeared amongst the numerous plants I grow in my garden. So far this year I have come across the seedlings of nine Japanese Maples, five Walnut trees (no doubt from walnuts that squirrels have buried) and three Dactylorhiza hybrids (hardy orchids). My most interesting find so far this year has been a native violet whose leaves had a broad cream edge. There are no variegated forms of our native violet in the RHS Plant Finder, so I shall have to see if it is prone to reversion, if not, I shall introduce it to the trade. I have a group of Lupin ‘Polar Princess’ in a sunlit border and this year it has produce 23 outstanding spires of pure white flowers. Last year ‘Polar Princess’ became infested with black fly, to remedy this, during late April I sprayed the plants with Provado Ultimate Bug Killer and so far there is no sign of black fly, or slug damage. During a visit to Helen Osborn at Churchview Nursery in Barkby I spotted a super nonstop Begonia, which had bright orange flowers, I purchased a dozen to plant in my snowdrop bed to contrast with the yellow and cream foliage of the shrubs behind them. I had better point out that I plant snowdrops 6 inches (15cm) below ground level, so after pulling off their dead foliage, I spread fresh compost over the bed and it is then ready for planting. During late April, as soon as the weather turned warmer, all the nine varieties of Pieris I grow in my garden produced a wonderful display of red new growth. The most outstanding of these being the cream variegated forms ‘Flaming Silver’, ‘Carnival’ and ‘Havilla’. Then disaster stuck, we had a late frost, which turned all the new growth brown, I pruned the plants to remove the frosted growth and as soon as it rained during the second week in June, the Pieris produced a second spurt of new growth and once more look magnificent. In my garden, there are four plants of Clematis Montana, which flower during May and June. Two of these are outstanding and worth mentioning. The first is ‘Freda’ a bicolor pink, which grows up and into a 20 feet (6m) tall American thorn; this is left to do its own thing. The other and my favorite is ‘Mayleen’, which I grow on a 4-foot (1.2m) chain link fence where it forms a 20 feet (6m) long curtain of large, pale pink flowers. Montana Clematis should, if they get out of hand,  be pruned as soon as they have finished flowering during late June, or early July.