Laetitia Maklouf

Statistically it’s more likely to snow in Easter than it is at Christmas, so here are some ideas for protecting any tender plants in your garden.

Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash — Photo by freestocks.org on Unsplash

Moving containers in and out of greenhouses, and wrapping everything else in ghostly white fleece for the winter is a time-consuming job, which is why the ordinary gardener might wish to avoid having anything too tender in the border.

Having said this, most of us have one or two things that need attention in order to see them through the winter; obviously anything that advertises itself as frost tender, but also, particularly if you live in cold areas, anything in a container, where the roots are surrounded by cold pot, and then chilly air rather than the warmth of proper ‘underground’, and anything in an exposed area or ‘frost pocket’, where cold air whooshes past, or sits, motionless and unforgiving for long periods.

The preventative measures are well worth the effort. For pots, a layer of old bubble wrap around the sides, secured with duct tape and string will provide extra insulation, and a bit of a pot shuffle, so that all of your containers are grouped together, is a good idea. I am rather Martha Stewarty about it and have a sort of ‘kit bag’ of fleece and bubble wrap with string, ready to go when the forecast warns. Here are details of my cold weather kit.

The other thing is to get the pot bases off the ground with pot feet to avoid waterlogging. I enjoy being pretty over the top with my pot feet - I love them; the cuter the better. Anything frost tender can be wrapped in horticultural fleece (not pretty, but neither are dead plants) until the danger of death has passed. Finally, mulching thickly with a 2-3 inch layer of compost will provide an extra duvet for the roots of all plants, and the chance of a cosy winter.

x Laetitia

There’s a point that comes in the year, usually towards the beginning of September, when I stop watering my containers. It’s not a conscious decision, just a slow, metaphorical and physical drying up of my motivation for hauling watering cans around and faffing with hoses.

Here is a closeup of the Gardena drip irrigation system at the base of my baby yew hedge.

Ultimately I justify this behaviour with the imminent changing of the seasons, in which I remove the gone-over, summer bounty from my containers and let them lie fallow for a while before planting them up with bulbs. Oh, and then there’s the holidays, when on top of packing and organising three small people, there is the spectre of having to educate some poor, unsuspecting neighbour in the watering of my containers; having to make sure all of them are grouped together for ease and hoping against hope that said neighbour will care enough to do the job properly.

So when Gardena approached me to try out their automatic watering systems, I jumped at the opportunity to avoid the sadness of dried out, gone over containers, and the worry of neighbourly negligence (however benign!)

Gardena sent me two kits:

1. A micro drip system for a hedge (or shrub border, with 25 metres of irrigation)

2. A micro drip system kit for several separate containers (7 pots and 3 troughs)

I have never been good with unboxing, sorting, reading instruction manuals and getting things working…the very thought of it makes me glaze over a bit, but the product boxes have incredibly clear pictorial diagrams which are perfect for someone like me who loathes instruction booklets in eighty seven languages

(although if you love instruction booklets in eighty seven languages, then you’ll also be fine, because there are plenty of those inside the box).

Friends, it took me a total of FIFTEEN minutes to set up the drip feed irrigation system! Yes, it was that easy. The system is a simple one – a sturdy plastic hose with little holes in it that you attach to the hose coming from your nearest tap, which you then peg down at the base of your plants.

Here is the connecting mechanism thingy which you use to attach whatever hose you have coming from your tap, to the irrigation hose.

It’s controlled by a very simple battery operated computer, which you can set to come on whenever you want, for as long as you want.

I set mine to water for an hour, every day, AT FOUR AM! (you have no idea how happy this makes me. The fact that my hedge and containers will be watered before sunrise, so that not a drop has a chance to evaporate, and then again in the evening, once the world has cooled down, makes me feel ridiculously smug and yes, I DO hate myself just a bit). My yew hedge was planted last autumn as a set of three year old whips, so this will be its first summer in my front garden, and it’s really great to know that I won’t have to think about watering it at all.

The second kit took slightly longer to set up, because it involves a bit more planning.

Three containers set up with the Gardena drip irrigation system. You can just about see the thin black tubing going from one pot to the next.

I have six or seven containers on my terrace – four of them full of this beautiful argyranthemum, and the other two containing my lilac lollipop trees, and I put them into two separate groups either side of my steps. This kit uses exactly the same technology as the hedge kit; a battery powered computer that you attach to your tap, and then a sturdy hose to which you attach smaller flexible tubes which you peg down at the base of your plants.

You simply decide the way you want it to work , and then you snip the narrow tubing, and attach little drip-feed attachment things to it (they go in easily)…it’s really not a chore, SWEAR. Again, the idea is to use as little water as possible by using dripping water rather than a flood – the water comes out in a tiny trickle directly into the compost in each pot. Because you’re not dousing each pot with water there is no run-off and therefore less waste. And because you can set the timer to water at 4am (or whenever you want) there is none of the evaporation that happens when you reactively water with a hose, from above, in the middle of a boiling hot day.

The pegs keep the tubing nice and close to the base of the plants.

This was SUCH a simple system to set up and get going. I love the fact that I can change the programming according to the weather (it’s tipping down with rain right now!) This is a really simple, easy way to conserve water and cut down on time spent on watering, and, more importantly, WORRYING! Highly recommended. You can see the kits in action on my Instagram stories, saved in the highlight called ‘Waterwise’.

x Laetitia