Jane Powers gets down and shrubbery with garden guru John Cushnie
I never really liked the word "shrub". To my ears it has always seemed a squat, blobby and undignified word. Not that I've given it much thought over the years. I'm mentioning it only because I've been reading John Cushnie, getting all worked up about it: "Shrub is a lovely word, sliding between the teeth with a soft landing to conjure up the image of a sumptuously bushy plant."
Goodness me! I never imagined it that way. But isn't that what's great about language? One man's "shrub" is another man's, well, "shrub". All of which is just a sort of silly way of telling you that John Cushnie, our wonderfully opinionated and knowledgeable Northern garden writer and broadcaster, has gone and written another book - about shrubs.
Not only is he ecstatic about the way that the word sounds, he is also rather keen on the items themselves. "I love shrubs!" he tells me. "There are shrubs for every single situation: really dry, really wet, shady, for growing on a balcony ... You can have shrubs for 12 months of the year. It'd be a pretty pathetic garden that didn't have shrubs."
But shrubs, I commiserate with him, are not as fashionable as they have been in the past. Twenty years ago, gardeners knew their shrubs and were proud of it (I remember one man telling me that they were more "sophisticated" than perennials). But now, in many instances, they've been pushed to the back of the horticultural wardrobe, while bamboos, ferns and other architectural plants are what the chic garden is wearing. That is, if it's not perennials and grasses, with the odd bit of meadow or prairie.
"Prairie gardening!" explodes Cushnie. "If I had a prairie I would have a buffalo on it," he snorts. And as for miniature meadows, and ornamental grasses, he is equally scathing. "By and large, most grasses are boring!"
I don't agree, but I love a person to have opinions (for limited segments of time), especially when those opinions have been formed in the course of a career as venerable as John Cushnie's.
He began gardening more than 50 years ago at the family home in Lurgan, went to Greenmount horticultural college, worked in the industry in England, and returned to Northern Ireland as a horticultural adviser in the Department of Agriculture. He found himself on Radio Ulster's Gardeners' Corner in 1968 when the usual Department chap was unavailable.
Now, he's a regular panellist on BBC radio's Gardeners' Question Time, he writes on gardening for several publications, including the Irish Garden magazine, and he has published three earlier books, Ground Cover, How to Garden and Trees for the Garden (the latter being re-issued in paperback this month by Kyle Cathie, £19.99). He has also co-authored two books with other members of the Gardeners' Question Time team. When he's not writing, broadcasting, or gardening on his two acres in Co Down, he runs a landscaping and contracting business in the North. When a man has that volume of experience, it's worth paying attention.
So when Cushnie says: "Shrubs are the bones of the garden," it's time to start listening. He proves this ably in his book, where, after an introductory lesson on choosing and caring for them, he suggests shrubs for every situation: for sunny and shady walls, for acid and lime soils, for edging paths, for hedging, for under trees and just about anywhere else you might have room for a shrub. He even offers suggestions of child-proof species for play areas, among them the quick-to-rejuvenate butterfly bush (Buddleja davidii), the resilient, springy-stemmed shrubby potentillas and the ground-covering Juniperus conferta - which is tolerant of being walked on.
As you would expect from one who is so unimpressed by today's fashions, Cushnie would like to see some of the forgotten favourites returning to the garden, such as lilacs and tree peonies. Of the latter, he says: "I think they went out because they became very expensive. And heathers have to come back. They fell into decline with conifers. And fuchsias: apart from fuchsia societies, people don't grow them. Hydrangeas have fallen by the wayside, but for late autumn colour you will not beat a hydrangea. The flower's dead but it still has this lovely mauvey tone. Plants like that, they should not be seasonal or fashionable, they should just be there all the time."
The important thing, says Cushnie, is to "check what the shrub likes. There's no sense in putting it in the wrong conditions: acid-loving into alkaline or vice versa, or something that isn't hardy into a tough spot 500 foot up a mountainside. And check the height and spread, give it enough space. When someone plants a big shrub in a corner where it just hasn't a chance, it's almost like watching someone smacking a child!"
Ouch. That's the Cushnie message. Love your shrubs. Treat them well and let them loose in your garden. Give shrubs a chance.
Shrubs for the Garden by John Cushnie is published by Kyle Cathie, £25 in UK