English Bluebells

One of the many things I really miss from England is the seas of bluebells, that make such a spectacular sight in woods during the spring. I remember the first time I ever saw bluebells. It was possible to walk from my home, to some woodland where bluebells grow. It was an exciting walk and as we got nearer to the wood, we would start to find the odd bluebell flower, that somebody had picked and dropped on their way home. I don't know if we were allowed to pick bluebells that grew wild, but everybody did. Bluebells don't last long once picked so it's much better to leave them where they are or have some in your garden. I really wanted some bluebells in my garden in Sweden. All you get here is blue wood anemones and a small native bluebell, but they're just not in the same league! Somebody in England was going to send me some bluebell bulbs, but it never happened and as it turned out, they were Spanish bluebells. The Spanish bluebell is a menace that easily hybridises with the English bluebell and is slowly but surely eradicating the native plants. I definitely don't want Spanish bluebells. If seeds from any of mine were to find their way into the nearby forest, I want them to be pure English bluebells. I found loads to buy online, but I just couldn't be sure that if I ordered them, I was not going to get Spanish or hybrid bluebells. In the end, I ordered 40 bulbs from a small nursery here in Sweden.

#English #Bluebell #Bulbs

It was quite late in the year, the twenty-sixth of November. Luckily the snow that had come earlier in the month had melted away and the ground wasn't frozen. Some years it has snowed at the end of October and not melted until the next spring. Anyway, I got to work planting my 40 bulbs in the small 'woodland' area of my garden. It doesn't sound like many bulbs, but scrambling around in the cold, in amongst the tightly growing trees, it felt like a lot. I even planted a few in other areas of the garden, just to give a better chance of success. As far as I could see from what I'd read, English bluebells should be able to stand the winter here, but I wasn't sure, especially as I've not seen a single bluebell in Sweden. The long winter has finally ended and ever since the snow and ice disappeared, I've been examining the areas when I think I planted the bluebells. At last, the first leaves have started to appear.

This is the 2nd of May and you can just make out a couple of green shoots. Ten days later, I have found 16 bluebells in four different areas. The area above was the main part of the garden where I wanted to have bluebells. So far, I've found 9 here, but they are still coming through. I expect that within a week, all those that are alive will have come up. Time will tell....

Sweet Chestnut Tree

When I moved to Sweden, I noticed quite a difference in the plants that grow here in the wild, compared to in England. There are blueberry and Lingon plants everywhere, but not a blackberry in sight. I found blue and white wood anemones, but not a single bluebell anywhere. There are lots more pine trees, but the only horse chestnut trees are found in parks and roadsides. I haven't found one horse chestnut tree in the forests and not a sweet chestnut tree to be seen anywhere. When I asked why these plants and trees are not found in this part of Sweden (Borlänge, Dalarna), I was told that they didn't grow here. Well that's not true as I found out when I tried to grow these plants and trees in my garden. It might not be easy, but it can be done. The chestnut in the photo above (Oct 2011) was grown indoors from a nut that I had in my fridge. It was one of several that started to shoot and I potted up. I think I planted 3 or 4 outside when the spring came. This one is the only one still alive. What usually happened was that the top of the plant would either die back or be eaten by deer and new growth each spring would come from much lower down the stem. Had I protected the tree from the cold winters and deer, it probably would have done much better. Anyway, as the years went by, the roots got stronger and the tree grew more each year and now the top does not die back, but I do have to protect the tree from deer with wire netting.

This is how the tree looked at midsummer 2015 and as you can see, I don't have any protection around the tree during the summer. Unfortunately, the next summer, a deer decided to rub it's antlers against the tree, causing a lot of damage and almost completely removing the bark around the middle of the tree. There was just a thin strip of bark left at the back of the tree. All the information I could find about such damage said that the tree would die, at least above the stripped bark. The tree seemed ok and I hoped that the bark at the back of the tree would be enough to keep it alive, until I noticed that the bark had dried out and cracked in two. I read up about doing a bridge graft - grafting a small branch across the damaged area, but I didn't have a long enough branch to do it. In the end, I decided the only option was to tape over the damage and cross my fingers.



The tree grew as if nothing had happened. The tape provided a warm, damp environment, which allowed the tiny strip of cambium layer to quickly increase in size and almost grew halfway around the tree. When I removed the tape, this is what I found...

The cambium growth looked very thick and healthy, but where the new growth hadn't reached, the bare wood had a bit of black mold. I decided that it would be best to leave the tape off over the winter. I wrapped some wire netting around the trunk and at the top of the tree to protect it from deer and waited for winter.