• Now is the time buy and decorate a “living” Christmas tree. These live trees with roots will need a large container to hold the root ball while indoors. Water regularly so the roots don’t dry out, but don’t allow water to sit for extended periods in the bottom of the container. “Living” Christmas trees need to be planted outside before Jan. 1. Choose a location that is suited for your tree in terms of size and sunlight. Next year, add some lights!

• Paperwhite narcissus are blooming in the garden and in my greenhouse — just in time for the holidays. Whether you use live plants or cut stems, the beautiful, fragrant flowers add elegance to any holiday occasion. Because the fragrance is strong, it’s best to use these away from food and food serving areas.

• This is the best time of year to move and transplant trees and shrubs. Your success rate will be close to 100 percent because of the cooler, wetter weather.

• Keep the bird feeders full. Your feathered friends are depending on you as a primary food source. When hard freezes are predicted, be sure to empty the water from birdbaths to prevent cracking.

• December is a great time to buy and plant perennials, shrubs and trees. Just be sure that the soil is not muddy.

• In the vegetable garden, plant onion sets now.

• I love amaryllis. This large bulb is easy to grow and produces huge trumpet shaped flowers during the holidays. Amaryllis grow in bright light, moist soil and cool conditions. Remove flowers as they fade.

• Did you know that poinsettias are not poisonous? In fact, the Aztecs used these plants for dyes and medicine. But, they are not edible either. Accidental ingestion will cause a tummy ache.

• Prune rose “Knockout” now. Use hedge trimmers to cut these hardy shrubs 8 to 12 inches from the ground. If your roses are still blooming like mine, wait until after Christmas.

Todd Goulding provides residential landscape design consultations. Contact him at 345-0719, GouldingDesignGroup.com or on Facebook.

MAKE your Christmas indoor plants last into the new year with a little TLC, says Hannah Stephenson

The poinsettia looked fantastic in the garden centre, its healthy red bracts providing some festive cheer.

But once you got it home, it only took a few days for the leaves to wilt and no amount of watering would bring them back.

I’ve heard this scenario so many times and it’s not just poinsettias which can prove so disappointing during the Christmas period.

Forced hyacinths have been known to have stunted growth or just topple over, cyclamen fade and die before they’ve had a chance to flourish, while the flowers of orchids may be over before they’ve had a real chance to bloom, particularly if you over-water them.

Just be aware that many classic Christmas plants flourish outdoors and don’t like warm rooms, draughts, radiators or lack of light.

As a rule, plants including cyclamen, pot chrysanthemums, Christmas cacti and indoor azaleas are happiest in a cool room such as a chilly hallway or even out on a porch where there is little or no heating.

They all like regular watering so their compost doesn’t dry out, but they don’t like being over-watered.

Poinsettias (Euphorbia pulcherrima) you buy from the garden centre are likely to have been given artificial conditions to thrive at Christmas, such as special lighting and blackout blinds, as in the UK they would naturally flower at around Easter, when days and nights are of equal length.

They need comfortable, warm room temperatures of 18-24C (64-75F) and hate draughts so don’t place them in the hall or near a door where the draught comes through.

Poinsettias like bright filtered light but not direct sunshine, which can damage them. Wait until the leaves just show signs of wilting, then give the compost a good soak, but don’t let plants stand in water.

Christmas cacti seem to do best if you neglect them, watering them sparingly from the bottom maybe once a week, but don’t let the roots sit in water.

These plants also don’t like being moved so if they’re on a windowsill, don’t turn them around or move them to another room if they’re in bud because those buds are likely to fall off if the plants are given a change of scenery.

The only plant which can take plenty of water is the indoor azalea, which can be watered every day so that the rootball remains moist. Sit the pot in a bowl of water for a few minutes, then tip the excess away.

It’s ericaceous (lime-hating) so give it soft water, if you can. It likes bright light but not direct sunlight.

After flowering, and once all danger of frost has passed, azaleas can be repotted in ericaceous compost before placing outdoors in a shady spot for summer, but you will need to keep watering them regularly and give them a liquid feed formulated for lime-hating plants and they should survive. They’ll need bringing back into the house before the first autumn frosts.

Other plants which will provide some festive cheer but do need cool conditions include cineraria and calceolaria, although you can place them in shady corners to brighten the scene temporarily, as these will be the plants that you’ll throw away once they’ve finished flowering, unlike some of the longer-term houseplants.

Forced bulbs, including hyacinths and narcissi, are among my favourite plants at Christmas and beyond, providing delicious scent and striking colour to any room in the house.

If you’ve forced your own hyacinths, you should move them inside as soon as the buds are showing their true colour.

Things go wrong if you bring them in too soon, which will result in flowers on stunted stems which are dwarfed by the foliage.

Keep forced bulbs in a cool room with plenty of light, away from radiators or other direct heat, with minimal watering, and they should see you through the festive season but don’t expect them to last too long.

If you’ve bought forced bulbs from a shop, once flowering is over you can throw them away as they won’t transfer well to the garden.

John Lewis is chief executive of Letchworth Garden City Heritage Foundation

Communities must be involved in new towns from the outset: Development partnerships are a great idea as long as there is local involvement threaded through the governance of the partnership. The days of commandeering swathes of land without consultation and involving local people in the process are long gone.

Think long-term when it comes to finances: Unlike garden cities, the new towns were unable to capture land value for the benefit of the town itself as the value had to be returned to the Treasury. Letchworth has been able to capture value and retain the income streams for the benefit of residents, this is the critical difference. And this is the model that needs to be revisited as a solution to ensuring long term management of new places.

Katy Lock is the garden cities advocate at the Town and County Planning Association

We need to de-risk investment: While the government’s announcements should go some way to facilitate this, we still need them to provide certainty on funding and delivery mechanisms to reassure investors that upfront investment will pay off over the long term. Models such as the Netherlands’ infrastructure investment model where the Dutch municipal bank provided finance for development at low rates of interest to be paid back over 15 years could be useful in Britain.

Richard Blyth is head of policy and practice at the Royal Town Planning Institute

There is no distinction between new towns and garden cities: All large scale new development needs to solve the key question of what work are people going to do who live there, and where is this work to be located. The Howard concept was really about linking a series of garden cities, which partly by design and partly by accident has actually happened in Cambridge, Royston, Letchworth, Hitchin, Stevenage, Welwyn Garden City and now Kings Cross.

Investment in transport is essential to make planning work: I doubt that any garden city can be remotely self contained these days so what matters is how they relate to existing places and to each other. This requires the government to swallow really hard and plan transport investment along with housing policy.

Robin Hoyles is group land and planning director at Crest Nicholson

Garden cities were mostly designed before mass car ownership unlike the new towns: The rise in car ownership is one of the greatest challenges we face in delivering 21st century garden cities and we are encouraging our masterplanners to think innovatively about how the car will be incorporated successfully into our future large scale schemes. Rear parking courts that have become the norm across developments for the last 10 years are not welcomed by residents who wish to park outside of their front door. It means they park in undesignated spaces where there is not adequate space. The garden city approach gives us the opportunity to take into account where people wish to park and adapt the streetscape accordingly.

Handing open spaces over to local authorities might not be the answer: From past experience we have discovered that whether the management of the open space is handed over to a management company or a residents association there are challenges, especially in terms of the long term maintenance. As a result we have investigating new and innovative ways to manage these spaces by learning from trusts and assessing structures at Letchworth, Hampstead garden suburb and elsewhere. We are hoping to create a board of management type structure which would have 2 tiers. Depending on the size of the development the board of management would compromise 4 experts from backgrounds such as estate management, planning, architecture or law who would offer independent professional advice. The second tier would be a group of elected residents to provide some democracy in the process.

Colin Wiles is a housing consultant with more than 30 years’ experience in the social housing sector

We have come a long way from the original vision of garden cities: The original vision of the garden city was an estate of 6,000 acres of which only 1,000 was built upon. The city would be surrounded by farmland that would produce its food, and provide the town with goods from factories and workshops and waste would be recycled and used on the land. It’s a very modern concept (a true eco-town in fact!), although the vision was never fully realised. So yes, there is a distinction between garden cities and new towns in terms of the original vision, but in truth there is not a great deal to distinguish between Welwyn and Stevenage, except that the former features better design and is greener.

Sabine Coady Schäbitz is the director of the Collaborative Centre for the Built Environment (CCBE) at the University of Northampton

Would new garden cities be seen as an imposition from above or an expression of local ambitions? Would people actually want to live in completely new garden cities? Or would they prefer to see improvements and additions to the places they currently live in – making them more liveable? Overall there is a lot of opposition to large scale development or even just development in this country – despite the obvious need. This is something which needs to be acknowledged and worked with.

Kevin Thompson is chief executive of North Hertfordshire Homes (NHH)

There are two separate debates going on in this sphere: One is whether we have the capacity to develop and implement large scale new town projects and the other is whether they are a good thing. I don’t believe that previous generations that built new towns, garden cities or large scale social housebuilding after the wars were better at it, or less restricted by financial, legislative or capacity issues or the availability of land than we would be. The government is already trying to release public land for housebuilding. It has enough of it to create two cities the size of Leicester.

As to whether they are a good thing, the consensus seems to be they would be, providing the scale was sufficient for them to be sustainable. I don’t think this is utopian. Principles we would probably all hold to is that sustainable development needs to be based on environmental, economic and social components. Ebeneezer’s three magnets, in other words.

It is possible to be pro-regeneration and pro-new development: We must have the right housing in the right place. Empty homes are not necessarily the result of council or government social engineering, but the consequence of unemployment and demographic changes. For both new and old communities jobs, transport and schools are essential. Where urban areas can be regenerated we should do so, and we have a sad history of demolition but it should not be a stick to beat those looking to do other things in the right place for them.

John Hoad is head of planning at Campaign to Protect Rural England

Garden cities and new towns have a lot to teach us about collective social action to meet housing need: However they are very much of history and a particular time. Currently government tools are inadequate to create workable new settlements. We have no effective strategic planning to find suitable locations, we cannot acquire land for public use at existing use values and thus deliver land value capture to create the basis for infrastructure investment. The public sector thus cannot create the infrastructure framework for efficient private investment.

We have to be practical about what works now: It seems we are best working with the grain – organic development of existing cities and towns under strong planning control to prevent edge of town sprawl and waste of land – that creates the right incentives for landowners and counters the pure, individual, market decision making by the land owner. So even if we go for new towns we will need strong green belt and countryside protection policy to create compact energy efficient urban forms.

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• Now is the time buy and decorate a “living” Christmas tree. These live trees with roots will need a large container to hold the root ball while indoors. Water regularly so the roots don’t dry out, but don’t allow water to sit for extended periods in the bottom of the container. “Living” Christmas trees need to be planted outside before Jan. 1. Choose a location that is suited for your tree in terms of size and sunlight. Next year, add some lights!

• Paperwhite narcissus are blooming in the garden and in my greenhouse — just in time for the holidays. Whether you use live plants or cut stems, the beautiful, fragrant flowers add elegance to any holiday occasion. Because the fragrance is strong, it’s best to use these away from food and food serving areas.

• This is the best time of year to move and transplant trees and shrubs. Your success rate will be close to 100 percent because of the cooler, wetter weather.

• Keep the bird feeders full. Your feathered friends are depending on you as a primary food source. When hard freezes are predicted, be sure to empty the water from birdbaths to prevent cracking.

• December is a great time to buy and plant perennials, shrubs and trees. Just be sure that the soil is not muddy.

• In the vegetable garden, plant onion sets now.

• I love amaryllis. This large bulb is easy to grow and produces huge trumpet shaped flowers during the holidays. Amaryllis grow in bright light, moist soil and cool conditions. Remove flowers as they fade.

• Did you know that poinsettias are not poisonous? In fact, the Aztecs used these plants for dyes and medicine. But, they are not edible either. Accidental ingestion will cause a tummy ache.

• Prune rose “Knockout” now. Use hedge trimmers to cut these hardy shrubs 8 to 12 inches from the ground. If your roses are still blooming like mine, wait until after Christmas.

Todd Goulding provides residential landscape design consultations. Contact him at 345-0719, GouldingDesignGroup.com or on Facebook.

YOU don’t have to buy expensive Christmas garlands and wreaths when you can make your own from garden material, Hannah Stephenson reports

If you’ve bought the Christmas tree and now have little left in your budget for wreaths, baubles and other festive garlands, just take a walk in the garden to find some twigs, sprigs and berries which will make pretty adornments – and save you pounds.

Ideal material for adding natural beauty to festive scenes indoors include crab apples, hazel, dogwood, berried ivy, holly, silver birch stems, as well as a variety of seedheads and pine cones.

Pre-lit man-made Christmas paper trees are all the rage this year, but you can create a similar pretty adornment at a fraction of the cost with half a dozen thick stems of willow or birch, tied together with florist’s wire and festive ribbon or raffia and placed in a large indoor trough or pot filled with moist compost and decorative stones as a mulch on the top.

Wind a selection of Christmas lights around the branches, which will give any corner a focal point and takes up less room than a regular tree in a smaller space, or will add a festive glow in another room away from your main tree. If you’re using Christmas lights, don’t add extra water to your pots.

Clippings from your Christmas tree can make the base of a fabulous wreath, using a wire frame wrapped in moss, secured by florist’s wire. Take the tree clippings and feed them into the frame from their stems, making sure all the sprigs face the same way. Again secure with thin wire, circling it all the way around the frame, and then add holly or other evergreen additions, along with pine cones which you can secure with wire or glue, baubles and colourful ribbon for a bow at the top or bottom.

The colourful stems of dogwood also make an easy indoor or outdoor wreath. Weave the most colourful stems together, wiring the first one to create the frame and then weaving subsequent stems around it.

Holly spheres are also easy to make, using a dry oasis ball, strong curling ribbon or raffia and florist’s wire. When you are picking your holly, use end pieces, allowing for two to three pairs of leaves and then trim the bottom pair of leaves off so you have an inch of clear stem.

Pierce the ribbon with a piece of wire so you can thread the wire and ribbon right through the centre of the oasis ball, knotting the ribbon or making it into a loop at the bottom and securing it further by threading more wire through the loop and into the oasis, to secure the decoration when it is suspended.

At the top of the ball, wind the ribbon up to stop it becoming too creased and secure with a paperclip, which you can hold with one hand while inserting foliage with the other.

Starting at the top of the sphere, put in pieces of holly around 2.5-3in long, adding small bits of conifer as you go, working around the ball until it is all covered. By eye, make sure the foliage is even and fill in any gaps with other evergreens. Thuja ‘Rheingold’ is a great ornamental golden conifer to stick between the holly sprigs. You can also use ivy with clusters of berries, leaving the last two leaves of the ivy and the berries, which will fill it out and give the sphere a different dimension.

Other bits and pieces can also be added including seedheads and cones, which may be better glued on. Tie a bow at the top of the sphere with the remaining ribbon and then suspend it from your hanging basket bracket.

Festive natural baubles can be hung off shelves and door handles by making a ball out of chicken wire and then covering it with moss from the garden, secured with florist’s wire, and then adding either sprigs of berries or decorative seedheads. If you want a bit of sparkle, add a spray of glitter to the berries or a little fake snow on to the moss.

And at the Christmas table, create your own festive place settings with dried fruits or small bundles of cinnamon sticks, gluing small cones to the base so they can stand upright, to take florist card holders. The same natural materials can then be added to your Christmas crackers to match.

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By Heather Prince
www.thegrowingplace.com

December 13, 2012 6:34PM

Goldmops falsecypress as it looks in gardens now has pretty chartreuse foliage making
a nice bright impact in winter, but proper watering is important to get it established. | Courtesy of Heather Prince

We’ve had a few rain showers, but in many areas, drought conditions are still present. The ground is not yet frozen, so many evergreen plants could benefit with a drink.

Recent light rains might not have penetrated very far. Check your soil moisture by pushing your fingers down a few inches under any mulch or use a small trowel to dig down. Feel the soil; is it moist or dry and crumbling? If it’s moist, leave it be, but if your soil is dry, consider watering.

Evergreens, especially newly planted ones, will benefit from supplemental watering until the ground freezes. This might not occur in our area until after Christmas. For trees, use a slow trickle from a hose for 20 to 30 minutes, and about 15 minutes for shrubs.

Consider mulching your plants to keep the soil evenly moist. A two- to three-inch layer of mulch in the root zone, but not against trunks or stems, will benefit the plants. By giving your evergreens a little extra care now, you’ll be able to enjoy them for many years to come.

Garden Tip is courtesy of Heather Prince, The Growing Place, 630-355-4000, www.thegrowingplace.com

YOU don’t have to buy expensive Christmas garlands and wreaths when you can make your own from garden material, Hannah Stephenson reports

If you’ve bought the Christmas tree and now have little left in your budget for wreaths, baubles and other festive garlands, just take a walk in the garden to find some twigs, sprigs and berries which will make pretty adornments – and save you pounds.

Ideal material for adding natural beauty to festive scenes indoors include crab apples, hazel, dogwood, berried ivy, holly, silver birch stems, as well as a variety of seedheads and pine cones.

Pre-lit man-made Christmas paper trees are all the rage this year, but you can create a similar pretty adornment at a fraction of the cost with half a dozen thick stems of willow or birch, tied together with florist’s wire and festive ribbon or raffia and placed in a large indoor trough or pot filled with moist compost and decorative stones as a mulch on the top.

Wind a selection of Christmas lights around the branches, which will give any corner a focal point and takes up less room than a regular tree in a smaller space, or will add a festive glow in another room away from your main tree. If you’re using Christmas lights, don’t add extra water to your pots.

Clippings from your Christmas tree can make the base of a fabulous wreath, using a wire frame wrapped in moss, secured by florist’s wire. Take the tree clippings and feed them into the frame from their stems, making sure all the sprigs face the same way. Again secure with thin wire, circling it all the way around the frame, and then add holly or other evergreen additions, along with pine cones which you can secure with wire or glue, baubles and colourful ribbon for a bow at the top or bottom.

The colourful stems of dogwood also make an easy indoor or outdoor wreath. Weave the most colourful stems together, wiring the first one to create the frame and then weaving subsequent stems around it.

Holly spheres are also easy to make, using a dry oasis ball, strong curling ribbon or raffia and florist’s wire. When you are picking your holly, use end pieces, allowing for two to three pairs of leaves and then trim the bottom pair of leaves off so you have an inch of clear stem.

Pierce the ribbon with a piece of wire so you can thread the wire and ribbon right through the centre of the oasis ball, knotting the ribbon or making it into a loop at the bottom and securing it further by threading more wire through the loop and into the oasis, to secure the decoration when it is suspended.

At the top of the ball, wind the ribbon up to stop it becoming too creased and secure with a paperclip, which you can hold with one hand while inserting foliage with the other.

Starting at the top of the sphere, put in pieces of holly around 2.5-3in long, adding small bits of conifer as you go, working around the ball until it is all covered. By eye, make sure the foliage is even and fill in any gaps with other evergreens. Thuja ‘Rheingold’ is a great ornamental golden conifer to stick between the holly sprigs. You can also use ivy with clusters of berries, leaving the last two leaves of the ivy and the berries, which will fill it out and give the sphere a different dimension.

Other bits and pieces can also be added including seedheads and cones, which may be better glued on. Tie a bow at the top of the sphere with the remaining ribbon and then suspend it from your hanging basket bracket.

Festive natural baubles can be hung off shelves and door handles by making a ball out of chicken wire and then covering it with moss from the garden, secured with florist’s wire, and then adding either sprigs of berries or decorative seedheads. If you want a bit of sparkle, add a spray of glitter to the berries or a little fake snow on to the moss.

And at the Christmas table, create your own festive place settings with dried fruits or small bundles of cinnamon sticks, gluing small cones to the base so they can stand upright, to take florist card holders. The same natural materials can then be added to your Christmas crackers to match.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only “trusted” sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note – if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.