Savill Gardens - Botanical 2

I somehow missed out these pictures but some of them were taken around or in the temperate house. I've never really seen the point of the temperate house but I liked it yesterday.



Gunnera again - they specialise in this

 

Happy! Saville Gardens - Botanical

Yesterday I decided it was a long time since I had been to the Savill Gardens and I would have a brisk walk around. To my surprise - I enjoyed it enormously and spent a good hour walking all over the place. I think it was due to the autumn morning light. It's subtle and golden. There were sculptures on display and I tried to photograph the best aspect of the ones I liked. There were also some flowers. With inspired planting, Dahlias look great at this time of year. This first picture shows the wonderful light. My next post with be the pictures of the sculptures.

Too much light, from wherever I stood.

Sculpture - belongs in the other post

Can't remember the name of it, but what fascinating forms!

Aspirin is good for plants, and so is cinnamon

James Wong writes in the Guardian:

Simply take a teaspoon of cinnamon from your spice rack and pop it into a litre of lukewarm water. Drop in half a 300 mg soluble aspirin tablet, give the mixture a good stir, let it cool to room temperature, and you are done. When it comes to planting time, soak your seeds and cuttings for an hour or two beforehand. This will potentially give you higher germination rates, lower risks of infections and improve the plants' overall vigour. In fact, just watering newly sown seeds or cuttings with this bit of kitchen chemistry may be enough to trigger these benefits. It's like having green fingers in a bottle.

(explains science - aspirin can turn on the genes that express the plant's defence system, helping them stave off infections (ie rotting), while also boosting the growth of roots... Cinnamon is the bark of a tropical tree that has evolved a range of potent natural antifungal and antibacterial chemicals to stave off the rampant growth of pathogens in the tropical rainforest. ...it can work wonders for damping off ... and prevent new cuttings from rotting in the cool conditions and low light levels at this time of year (February).)