On Mar 18, 8:58*pm, Jake wrote:
On Sun, 18 Mar 2012 18:48:47 +0000, Pendrag0n wrote:
Hello all,

I have seen a few local gardens with decent heathers that seem to
flower all year, if you can call them flowers, sort of mauve, purple,
white etc. Probably up to about 50cm. Any ideas on what I should get
to plant and forget, hopefully quick growing. Along the side of the
house etc.

Not much of a gardener as is quite apparent

TIA

PS: The soil round here seem to retain the water for ages. I pinched
some of the farmers field for a couple of pot plants and they never
seem to dry!! Whereas the composty stuff I had before needed watering
every few days. It's not clay.

There are lots of different types of heather. Some need an acid soil
whilst others will tolerate more alkaline ones. There are heathers
that will flower at different times of the year and so it is possible
to get all year flowering using a mix of types. However this will
depend on the soil in the area you want to plant. Just because there
are acid loving heathers thriving in the next street doesn't mean you
necessarily have acid soil. In my garden, I have very acid soil at one
point and about 75 feet away the soil is alkaline. I blame the
chickens that used to live here.

Heather flowers aren't massive - they're little rugby balls massed
along a stem. But they're food for bees and fairly easy to maintain -
you just trim the flowering branches back once a plant has stopped
flowering - if you don't do this they will quickly get leggy and look
bad.

So I suggest your first step is to find out what the pH of your soil
is. 6.9 or under is acid, 7 is neutral and 7.1 upwards is alkaline.
You can buy testing kits in garden centres and DIY places.

Once you know the pH you know what types of heather you can buy. It's
then a simple case of visiting your local garden centre or finding a
nursery online to select a selection of varieties that flower at
different times. You can go for a single colour (pink/purple/white are
the main ones) and achieve what looks like a single plant type
flowering all year or you can choose a mix of colours. Avoid erica
arborea though - this is the "tree heather" and will grow to a metre
or more high.

Hint - heathers in the right conditions will take off quite quickly.
You can often buy 6-packs of 3" pots for the same price as 1 x 6" pot.
Choose decent 3" pots and you'll get more for your money and within a
year or so they'll have caught up with, and probably got bigger than,
the 6" ones.

After planting, mulch with bark (which gives a lovely effect behind
the flowers) and give a periodic feed with ericaceous plant food.

Incidentally, however well you look after them and trim them after
flowering each year, the plants will eventually get a bit leggy. At
this point, I just lift them, make the hole they came out of a bit
bigger and bury them again a bit deeper.

Cheers, Jake
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Urgling happily from the dryer end of Swansea Bay.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

You don't say which side of the house, Is it N. S. E. or W. does it
get any rain?