Syringa Week

In week 2009/18, we are a solid week ahead of the usual schedule, and Syringa vulgaris is back in flower, along with the different varieties of Prunus laurocerasus. We have three, or perhaps four, varieties of the latter growing here: a 'Caucasica' which I bought for its enormous, glossy, pale green leaves. Locally, there are people who plant Caucasica as hedges, which I consider an aesthetic disgrace, since the plants are so ungainly, so strange... so eccentric. They need a "normal" context - some rhododendrons, some perennials - so that you can appreciate their special character. Misusing them as a wall makes little sense. One cannot clip them into a flat surface, and they are too vigorous to keep as an unruly thicket. So I just have one, solitary Caucasica. It stands next to some Thuja, which allows it to enjoy its own showiness. Close by, at ground level, are a couple of 'Macrophylla' bushes. Their flowers are impressive, but I was not expecting their spreading habit, and am disappointed that they will not grow tall. Nearby is an 'Otto Luyken' which I was expecting to stay low. I have surrounded it with Astilbe and they seem to co-exist happily. Then there is a huge, very old P. laurocerasus of indeterminate ancestry. It may be an 'Otto Luyken' that curved up about 1.4 metres in height, but a more likely identification is that it is a 'Van Nes'. It has been remarkably robust, absorbing a couple of transplantings at an advanced age and now lives on top of a dessicated sandbank. Its only signs of stress are fungal attacks every winter that make its leaves look as if they have been shot through with small-calibre bullets, but it always recovers well in spring. The transplantings proved that it has a very shallow root system, andI shall be acting on that knowledge soon, using a Macrophylla to green up a difficult location above a soil drainage pipe. The general care advice is that all P. laurocerasus varieties should be pruned now, as they come into flower, so that they can recover during the summer. Out and about, we find that the woods finally turn green this week, and that the big Aesculus trees are putting up their candles. When one pays attention, one sees a lot of the peculiar little upward-pointing tufts that are the bud breaks of Cotoneaster x 'Watererii" or C. bullata. These shrubs seem to be out of fashion at the moment, as I hardly ever see them offered at nurseries, but one notices a lot of well-established examples. At my son's school, there is an enormous one, maybe 10 metres tall, with its long overhanging branches. The school probably dates from the late 1960s, so this one would be about 40 years old.