Gardeners’ Question Time
Anne Swithinbank
A keen fruit, vegetable and houseplant grower, Anne was formerly the glasshouse supervisor at RHS Garden Wisley.
James Wong
Botanist, broadcaster and writer, James loves to grow unusual, edible and medicinal plants from around the world.
Bob Flowerdew
Bob is an organic gardener and has designed his garden to produce lots of veg, fruit and cut flowers.
Q My plot gets no sun from October to February – help!
Teresa, Devon
A JAMES SAYS I’m very jealous – you have the perfect site to grow my favourite group of plants. Woodland species are adapted to low light conditions and will love your mild Devon climate and sheltered site. Add that to the extra rainfall you get in the South West, and you’ll be able to create a magical elfin forest of mosses and ferns that would be almost impossible to achieve elsewhere.
You can choose from two styles. You can mimic a native forest floor, with delicate primroses and dog’s-tooth violets dotted between hart’s tongue and hard ferns, under a canopy of silver birches.
Or you could go full-on cloud forest by creating a structure of tree ferns underplanted with mind-your-own-business and hardy orchids. You can even plant these on the tree fern trunks in your climate, for a really jungly look. Tree ferns can be pricey, so a cheaper alternative is tetrapanax, which in very mild climates will grow quickly to create small trees with huge tropical leaves up to 1m across. A I too have a mainly
