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Sacha[_3_] · 05-07-2008, 11:09 PM posted to uk.rec.gardening

On 5/7/08 22:35, in article , "Bob Hobden"
wrote:

"Nick Maclaren" wrote after
"Bob Hobden" writes:
|
| So it's well drained, if it's also sunny how about Albizia julibrissin,
the
| Silk Tree. Can take the cold to a point, -12°C in a friends garden, but
not
| cold with wet roots hence my comment about well drained. Similar but
| slightly bigger eventually is Acacia dealbata what we call Mimosa
| (N.Americans call the other one Mimosa)

Summers are too bloody cold for the former - I have one, but it isn't
growing, as the new wood fails to ripen enough to come through the
winter. Acacia dealbata isn't much easier in most parts.

I've got a few I've grown from seed from a friends tree (in SW. France) and
they have grown well outside all year, I've just planted the first out in an
Aunts garden in Isleworth. I notice there are now a couple planted out
across the River at Kew too. Around this area I wonder if they would do
well, certainly Acacia dealbata does and flowers well, it's now quite common
and some are becoming large trees.
As I said, region of the Country, aspect, and position count a lot.
We are only 17 miles W. of London, the warmest part of mainland UK.

A friend of ours had one in a French garden in a hamlet outside a town
called Chauffailles in the Rhone-Alpes - think I've got the district right.
It's pretty damp there and opposite their garden was a big forest of
chestnut trees IIRC. The mists were stupendous. They hadan Albizia there
for years but one snowy winter did it in. It wasn't the cold as far as they
could tell, it was the considerable fall of snow that then melted into the
Albizia's roots for days and days on end, keeping it not just cold but
soaking wet.

--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon