Hardy Tropicals UK

Forum members will probably recall that I posted an article on exotics on Southampton parks last September.

At the time I stated that there were a large number of Musa Basjoo's growing in seperate areas and I posted a couple of pictures of these on the forum.

Well when I visited the parks this afternoon all of the Basjoos in the City parks have been dug up and dumped somewhere on a council tip.

To say I was annoyed was an understatment as these clumps of Basjoos gave Southampton parks a really nice tropical feel.

All of these plants have been replaced with orange Dahlias and the end result is total c...?

On asking a grounds person why they had been removed I got the idiotic answer that as they looked rubbish for 9 months of the year the council decided that they had to go.

Also he stated that the good people of Southampton [not me] had voted to get rid of this exotic junk and put decent plants with more color in instead.

Of coarse not everybody loves exotics but I would think that just one clump of Basjoos could have been left in a corner somewhere?

What next.......
All the palms and tree ferns that are still there thankfully?


billdango

criminal.good job they dont take that approach at morrab

Sure they've not just taken them away for winter storage? The people who dig them up just get told to dig them up and deliver them to site X, they don't get told what's going to happen to them when they get there.

Try asking for some of them and see what response you get.

Can't believe they didn't at least put them up for sale!?!?

Find out where they've been dumped and retrieve them

Sorry to hear this Bill.........

To be honest the musa's have a better chance of overwintering than the dahlias looking at previous years in my garden!

We just have to hope that the head gardener of the council knows what he's on about and theres method to his madness. But I bet he's had lots of old ladies saying 'why can't we have scented roses in those beds? or bright pinks'

I must point out here that I have nothing against Dahlias or any other flowers but with the lousy summer we have had down here in Southampton they look an absolute slug ridden mess.

Decent bedding looks great but you do need plants that can take a usually wet UK summer.

My beef here is that decent plants were given the heave ho for something cheap and tatty looking and I thought that the City council were above that.

Even without the Basjoos Southampton parks are the best I have ever seen and the loss of their best Exotics won't change my views on that.

I think the Banana plants should be reintroduced next year in a single large bed and looked after properly then the parks will look magnificent again and a credit to the City.

rgds billdango

Bill, i know we've had this conversation before, but if you want cheap and tatty, look at the placcy palms at Brighton Marina

flounder wrote:Bill, i know we've had this conversation before, but if you want cheap and tatty, look at the placcy palms at Brighton Marina

Yes thats true,nothing could look as c...... as that?

rgds billdango

Most of the council parks people are not proper gardeners & most have no clue. It's a shame that Southampton's crew got rid of the Musa, I'd send them an e mail Bill & tell them how you feel, you are a city council tax payer after all...

The ones in Portsmouth do seem to appreciate exotics better, but even here they are quite clueless. John Churcher, who has donated many plants to the parks department, bought them a couple of big tree ferns, instructing them that they needed to be well watered. They left them in a council greenhouse, unpotted, for a few months & surprise surprise never watered them resulting in dead tree ferns, which they THEN planted! The nice dead trunks can be seen in Victoria Park

Nathan wrote:Most of the council parks people are not proper gardeners & most have no clue. It's a shame that Southampton's crew got rid of the Musa, I'd send them an e mail Bill & tell them how you feel, you are a city council tax payer after all...

The ones in Portsmouth do seem to appreciate exotics better, but even here they are quite clueless. John Churcher, who has donated many plants to the parks department, bought them a couple of big tree ferns, instructing them that they needed to be well watered. They left them in a council greenhouse, unpotted, for a few months & surprise surprise never watered them resulting in dead tree ferns, which they THEN planted! The nice dead trunks can be seen in Victoria Park

What is needed is someone on the parks department who knows something about modern gardening.

Things have moved on since World war 2 and gardening needs to reflect this?

So many parks and gardens are still run by old fuddy duddys who are stuck in the days of Percy Thrower and can't think beyond rows of pansies and wallflowers.

What is needed is for us forum members to educate the younger generation of gardeners about the joys of exotic gardening and get things moving forward.

The UK has the perfect climate for many types of Exotics and although I do see some progress there does seem to me to be a lot of backsliding lately esp after the last 3 cold winters.

Besides rows of bedding is the most expensive way to garden and in a poor summer like this year with its never ending dull skies and constant deluges a total waste of tax payers hard earned dosh.

rgds billdango

Nathan wrote:Most of the council parks people are not proper gardeners & most have no clue.

Sadly Nathan its the case over here as well.

Back home in Darwin all of the council roadside plantings are yuk without any imagination, the plants are badly chosen for the site, badly planted and badly taken care of and if they dont die outright look sad and depressing. A case in point was the planting of an avenue of Syzygium nervosum, a dramatic and beautiful native rainforest tree. Sounds great in principle but they were planted in a crappe soil by th beach which is laden with salt winds and left to fend for themsleves without even supplementary watering. It was completely the wrong place to plant a tree that grows in dense rainforest and I knew they wouldnt survive...

I was so disappointed by this I called the council and voice my concerns that they were totally innapropriate to plant in that location but was more or less told I had no clue and to mind my own business, 2 years on only a handful are alive

Total waste of time and money not to mention plants, but also left a lot of people with a poor impression of a beautiful native tree that deserved to be more widely used.

Here in Hobart its just flowering bedding plants and those horrid coloured cabbage things, once again no imagination for the possibilities

Troppoz wrote: and those horrid coloured cabbage things,

Eeeew, yukk! Put it out locally that they're edible, maybe people will nick them?

Eatings too good for those suckers, besides dont want to get anyone sick after I hit them with glyphosate