Does this look a familiar sight to you this autumn?

The sunshine tempted me out for a long walk yesterday but I was struck by the extent of the damage to the horse chestnut trees in the South East. Even from a distance it’s clear that many of them are dying and certainly I hadn’t taken on board just how many have been affected in this area. In fact we did not see one healthy specimen all day.
It seems that our poor horse chestnuts are being hit by a double whammy; many are infected by a bleeding canker which scientists have now identified as Pseudomonas syringae. Research has not yet revealed how the disease spreads and enters a tree, but once it does, its effects can be catastrophic for the trees, as we now see. The second culprit is the leaf miner moth, which, although not fatal to trees, it can seriously weaken them by attacking the leaves.
Apart from the obvious scarring of the countryside that the death of so many of our finest trees would cause, will future generations of children be deprived of the pleasure of playing conkers?

What to do about Japanese knotweed?

Have you got Japanese knotweed in your garden? Kate Hodson (the Woodstock stationer) www.thewoodstockstationer.co.uk inspired me to do my next blog on this. She cannot find a solution to the problem in her garden and she is not alone.

The chances are if you have Japanese knotweed in your garden you will know about it because it is very, very invasive and almost impossible to eradicate. Glyphosate is the best weedkiller on the market as it is ‘systemic.’ This means it penetrates through the whole plant and travels to the roots. You will need a very strong solution and are likely only to ‘keep it under control’ using this method. There’s a great deal of information on the web about Japanese knotweed, but the Japanese knotweed alliance organisation has a particularly informative one:

www.cabi.org/japaneseknotweedalliance

Recently there has been news coverage of a new herbicide that may help:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jan/06/wildlife-travelandtransport

And there is a possibliity that a plant-eating predators from Japan may be introduced:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7531221.stm
Only time will tell if these are the solutions to a problem that has become entrenched in the British countryside.

Lighting in garden design

A garden is not just for daytime and there is more to lighting your garden than putting up a floodlight to deter intruders. Garden designers see (or rather should see) the gardens they are designing as a ‘picture’ and that idea is often reserved for daylight hours. But if we ignore the outside after dark we often pass up an opportunity for a more dramatic ‘picture.’
The point is illustrated by this garden that we have recently designed using new energy efficient LED lighting:

It should make no difference if your garden is large or small, modern or traditional - adding lighting can make an enormous difference. To create an extra 'room outside,' that popular expression in garden designing these days, a good lighting scheme can transform the daylight scene to something practical without compromising beauty.
All this assumes, of course that there is something worth emphasising in your out door room. The before picture of this same garden will illustrate the point:

Like so many people, the owners put the shed at the bottom of the garden (see previous blog on this subject) and would probably not want to have their shed subtly lit! Must better the elegant silver birch as a focal point.

But where is the shed now?

Hidden behind the bamboo!

For more information on cost saving low energy lighting contact Adrian@haysham.co.uk