Roots & Radicles 5 (Guest Write-Up): Playing hard to propagate at Sir Harold Hillier Gardens
I’m Maggie and I recently went along to the fifth YPS Roots & Radicles event that took place at the Sir Harold Hillier Gardens in Hampshire. I work as a head gardener of a private garden called Bramdean House near here so I was very excited to hear that Barry Clarke the propagator would be giving a tour - a great chance to get a more of an insight of the garden there from an insiders point of view and to brush up on my propagation skills - rarely do I find one propagator the same, so it’s always interesting to hear and learn about different approaches. Barry has worked at Hillier for over 20 years, once a trained ballet dancer he has gone from being an entomologist to running his own nursery. He himself has 6 National Plant Collection including Lobelia (species one), Rubus (through his love of entomology) and Calycanthus. He was incredibly generous with his time and even having spent several hours with him I felt that it was still a fraction of his vast fount of knowledge, being the propagator of such a diverse plant collection he was well versed in propagating a huge range of unusual trees and shrubs. A great aspect of the workshop also is that it is attended by like-minded enthusiasts and through conversation and discussion the experience was enriched further.
Here are some of the highlights from the day:
Spit as a rooting substance
Propagation can seem like wizardry and mysticism, to add to this he told us that the success rate of Clematis montana internodal could be enhanced by using spit?! This was related to him by Clematis montana collection holder, dubious at first he himself has found this to be true. Male spit is apparently the best.
Plant Heritage National Collection Holders - a great source of information for propagators
Plant Heritage National Collection holders are one of the best places to seek advice about growing or propagating a particular genus. They spend a degree of time specialising in a particular plant group and as a result of this often know and hold niche and unique knowledge.
Grafting for all levels
Some of us were surprised to hear him advocating for people to do more grafting. When I was a Wisley Diploma student and had to learn grafting I spent half the time cutting my own hands than my material, and although I managed to do it well enough to pass my exams (with a lot of blood stained plasters), I had always told myself that it was perhaps a specialist skill that was not for me and that someone else could be a master grafter. Turns out I was not alone in this thought, but because of this it had become a dying art. Barry’s confidence and enthusiasm that it is not as hard as everyone thinks and has many merits, has made me rethink again about adopting grafting as another way to propagate.
If one found the thought of grafting hard his suggestion was to start with a bud cutting as he felt that was the easiest and most accessible. The important thing was getting heat around the graft union. If one didn’t have fancy facilities like at Kew one could embrace the DIY spirit of rigging up a system with a warming cable and pipe insulators. A dark room for grafts is best so something like a shed/ garage could be ideal. It is the aftercare of bringing the plant on after the graft union has been made that is the trickiest (one has to be a bit more attentive to them at this stage especially in terms of watering).
This led us onto talking about rootstock and how there was validity in growing ones own root stock as there is not a ready supplier to buy these from, and how some trees grow well from seed e.g. Cercidiphyllum. Most trees did not work like apples and pears where the size and vigour could be controlled by the rootstock, it is more about finding the right host parent.
What’s the advantage, why graft then? One can get bigger and quicker to mature plants and that it can be the best method for slow to grow or hard to propagate trees. E.g. grafting a magnolia you can be having it to flower after one year rather than 8-9 years.
We observed different rootstock - silver birch Betula utilis var. jacquemontii are often grafted onto Betula pendula. Knowing ones plant group types is useful - for oaks one had to be careful that one uses like for like e.g. red oaks can only be grafted with red oaks and white oak with white oak etc. A stand of low growing Prunus incisa ‘Oshidori’ looked like it was apple wedge grafted onto a Colt or Prunus incisa rootstock. Taxodium and Metasequoia are interchangeable.
There has been a huge problem with Rhododendron and the fungal disease Phytophora as many gardeners know of which Rhododendron ponticum the invasive one is the most susceptible and has traditionally been used as a rootstock for many Rhododendron cultivars. Rhododendron ‘Cunningham’s White’ has been a saviour as an alternative rootstock as it has been found to be Phytophora resistant. Amazingly Hillier has managed to phase this disease out of the garden and is mindful of the use of certain plants that can help carry and spread the disease like Viburnum tinus.
Bud grafting or chip budding is best done July - September and tape around grafts should be left on for at least 8 weeks, but best to check plants on an individual basis. He demonstrates this on a Cercidiphyllum japonicum ‘Rotfuchs’ and we marvelled at just how small the bud was and how this technique could still be conducted with such a tiny specimen.
The book he recommends on grafting is The Bench Grafter’s Handbook: Principles and Practice by Brian Humphrey
The trials, errors and pitfalls of grafting:
Taping the union - although there are lots of biodegradable tape on the market, he did not find them so good as the tape can’t tell when the union is actually ready and may not give enough time before it disintegrates. Often he is wary of what these tapes biodegrade down to and if it’s just breaking down into more micro-plastics.
He doesn’t think rooting powder is good for people but because of the nature of the woody material he propagates he does use one called Rhizopon (only usable by professionals who have a spraying certificate) and they come in different hormone percentages from 0.5% to 2%. There does seem to be a lot more organic and alternative rooting powders on the market now that is probably worth exploring.
Tips on a range of easy to difficult to propagate plants
Blue Bamboo
Hillier is cultivating a blue bamboo collection - these tell you themselves how easy it is just to come from division, after dividing and lifting some up he put them in pure sand with barely any watering and they still grew. They are planted in place with 3ft of plastic barrier around them to stop them from overly spreading.