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Gardening On Chalk And Lime Soil
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Commencer à lireLongueur: 218 pages2 heures
- Éditeur:
- Stevenson Press
- Sortie:
- Jul 14, 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781528762632
- Format:
- Livre
Description
This book contains a classic guide to growing plants and shrubs on chalk- and lime-rich soil, as commonly found in England and Ireland. It describes the differences and problems these soil types pose for the gardener, as well as offering advice on what plants should be used and the different techniques required for their cultivation. This volume will be of considerable utility to gardeners working with these tricky soil conditions and it would make for a handy addition to collections of gardening literature. Contents include: “Calcareous Soils and Their Situation and Types”, “The Improvement and Maintenance of Calcareous Soils”, “The Flower Garden”, “Ferns”, “Perennials and Annual Plants Recommended for a Calcareous Soil”, “Plants not Recommended”, “Bulbous Plants”, “Bulbous and Tuberous Plants that will Grow Well on Lime”, etc. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new introduction on the history of gardening.
Informations sur le livre
Gardening On Chalk And Lime Soil
Longueur: 218 pages2 heures
Description
This book contains a classic guide to growing plants and shrubs on chalk- and lime-rich soil, as commonly found in England and Ireland. It describes the differences and problems these soil types pose for the gardener, as well as offering advice on what plants should be used and the different techniques required for their cultivation. This volume will be of considerable utility to gardeners working with these tricky soil conditions and it would make for a handy addition to collections of gardening literature. Contents include: “Calcareous Soils and Their Situation and Types”, “The Improvement and Maintenance of Calcareous Soils”, “The Flower Garden”, “Ferns”, “Perennials and Annual Plants Recommended for a Calcareous Soil”, “Plants not Recommended”, “Bulbous Plants”, “Bulbous and Tuberous Plants that will Grow Well on Lime”, etc. Many vintage books such as this are increasingly scarce and expensive. It is with this in mind that we are republishing this volume now in an affordable, modern, high-quality edition complete with a specially-commissioned new introduction on the history of gardening.
- Éditeur:
- Stevenson Press
- Sortie:
- Jul 14, 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781528762632
- Format:
- Livre
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Gardening On Chalk And Lime Soil - Robert Jackson
SOIL
CHAPTER I
CALCAREOUS SOILS THEIR SITUATION AND TYPES
WHEN a man talks to me about the exhibition quality of the Roses he can grow, of the superb colour of his herbaceous border, or if he is that most prejudiced of all persons, the specialist, about the extraordinary success he has had in growing, let us say, Armeria cephalotes, my first question to him is always: What sort of soil are you on?
After all, no man need boast too much about his Roses when his soil is a well-worked clay. If he has a naturally rich, sandy loam and cannot produce a herbaceous border of dazzling beauty, he ought to hide his head in shame. And what praise can anyone expect for growing the Armeria in a garden on lightish soil in a warm locality?
Soil, as we all know, is not everything in gardening, but admitting the claims of climate, rainfall, aspect and situation, it remains the most important of all considerations.
Let it be said at once that the gardener on chalk or other lime soils has a lot to contend with. But he has certainly no more difficult a task than the man who attempts to make a garden out of a clay that has never known the cultivator’s implements, or at best was worked years and years before. A man who gardens in Middlesex, not many miles from the centre of London, told me the story of a gardener in his village who committed suicide many years ago, and left behind him on a slip of paper the single word Clay.
The story is apocryphal, perhaps, but it ought to cheer those—and they are many—engaged on the always exasperating, sometimes heart-breaking, job of trying to make something of a garden on chalky soil, especially if the district is a cold one and the position exposed to the cold drying winds from the East and North-east.
Lime in dominant proportions in a soil brings with it many and peculiar difficulties, but nevertheless, as a general rule, a limy soil is infinitely preferable to one that is acid.
We cannot all garden where we would like to. Whenever we hear of, or read about, someone rich enough to be able to make a garden and build a house (for that is the sensible order of procedure) where he will, we think that person is lucky indeed. Only a few of us can hope to be so fortunate—until at all events we reach an age when we content ourselves with garden-loving, and leave gardenmaking to younger people. Consequently, those who live in a district where the soil contains a large percentage of chalk or lime have no alternative but to make the best of it.
The task of making a garden on calcareous soil is not easy, but given patience and skill the limits set by such conditions are not overwhelming. It is important always to reflect that the ingredients of any soil are no more important in gardening than good cultivation and drainage. There is an old horticultural saying that the spade is usually victorious over the season. It is worth remembering and repeating.
Before speaking of the various types of chalk and limy soil, those who do garden on such land may like to have indicated, briefly, the extent of the chalk and lime country in England.
Chalk is, of course, predominant in the Southeast of England. If, on the map, a line is drawn from Hunstanton on the East to Lyme Regis in the South, most of the land to the South of the line is of a chalky nature. Albion, the name by which England was known in Roman times, is supposed to be derived from the Latin albus, in reference to the white cliffs on the South coast which, as of old, still make a great impression on visitors to these islands.
The Downs, extending through Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex and Kent, are probably the best known of all the chalk formations, just as the Cots-wolds in Gloucestershire, those delightful hills that form part of the valleys of the Severn and the Thames, are perhaps the best known of the limestone ranges. Salisbury Plain is on a chalk range, and the Downs at Marlborough, and other parts of Wiltshire, are also on rock chalk.
From Marlborough, running in a North-easterly direction to the Northerly coast of Norfolk, is a broad band of chalk. The Beech-clad Chilterns; the Cambridge Gog-Magog Hills; and the East Anglian Heights, stretching to the East coast near the Wash, all form part of it.
A few miles to the North of the chalk band is another of limestone, a formation much the same in shape, which also takes a North-easterly direction and is equally broad. Starting in the South at Portland Bill, this oolite or limestone range runs up through parts of the counties of Somerset, Dorset, Gloucester, Oxford, Buckingham, Bedford, Huntingdon, Northampton, and, going directly North, into Lincoln. Limestone formation occurs again in Lincolnshire further East, where there are the chalky Wolds, and again North of the Humber, in Yorkshire, we find the Wolds and Moors, stretching almost unbroken as far as Whitby before turning West across the North and into the Northerly part of the West Ridings; they form, for the fertile Plain of York, welcome shelter from the biting winds that sweep across the North Sea.
Besides all these districts, there are the limestone areas of varying types (mainly magnesian and carboniferous limestone) in Northumberland, Yorkshire, Westmorland, Derby, Nottingham, Warwick, Lancashire and Durham, in total a considerable area of country where gardeners may have to cultivate soil that is limy to a certain degree.
When I stressed that a limy soil is infinitely to be preferred to an acid soil, I was not moved to do so by undue optimism. I have no wish to raise false hopes about the possibilities of calcareous soils. The fact is that, except where the depth of soil is negligible, chalk and limy land supports a pleasingly varied natural flora.
Of trees, we have the Beech in the South, the Ash in the North of England and the Wild Cherry (Prunus Cerasus). Among shrubs, we may find the common Spindle (Euonymus europaeus), the Guelder Rose (Viburnum Lontana), Box (Buxus sempervirens), Buckthorn (Rhamnus cathartica), Dogwood (Cornus sanguinea), Maple (Acer campestre), Traveller’s Joy (Clematis Vitalba) and others. Of herbaceous plants there is a host: the Sheep’s Scabious (Scabiosa Columbiana), Vetches (Vicia), Dropwort (Spiraea Filipendula), Viper’s Bugloss (Echium vulgare), Bladder Campion (Silene Cucubalus), Honesty (Lunaria biennis), Pasque Flower (Anemone Pulsatilla), the Salad Burnet (Poterium Sanguisorba), Campanula glomerata, Veronica spicata, Anthyllis Vulneraria, Gentiana Amarella, Senecio campestris, the Cheddar Pink (Dianthus caesius), the Chalk Milkwort (Polygala calcarea) and many more, pleasing and otherwise—an interesting and instructive catalogue of plants that we know grow freely and naturally in a calcareous soil. Hence we are safe in assuming that, properly tended, calcareous soil has great possibilities.
Geologists tell us that there are few if any areas in the whole world where so many different rock systems are evident as in the British Isles. A glance at a coloured geological map of Great Britain confirms what we are told; it is like a patchwork quilt. Similarly, limestone itself exhibits characteristics almost as diverse.
The purest of all limestone and the most common form of lime in this country is chalk. Chalk may contain nearly 100 per cent calcium carbonate. The same is true of carboniferous limestone. On the other hand, there are rocks like sandy limestone where the calcium forms considerably less than half the composition.
So it is with limy soils. Technically, all soils contain lime—even the soils where plants like Rhododendrons and other so-called lime-haters
flourish. Usually the lime is the merest trace and such soils may be considered, from a gardening point of view, to be lime-free. At the other end of the scale there are hungry soils that, having been produced from the chalk rocks underneath, contain an extremely high proportion of lime. Where that type of soil is thin—that is to say, where the depth does not exceed 2, 3 or 4 inches—and the subsoil is of chalk, then the gardener needs a good deal of sympathy. Some of the chalky loams in Lincolnshire, Dorset and East Yorkshire are like that, and are cold and terribly sticky during Winter into the bargain.
Between the two extreme types are to be found a wide range of soils of varying composition and texture, calcareous to some degree, all calling for somewhat differing treatment, and all capable of supporting such a considerable variety of plants, shrubs and trees as will with satisfaction furnish the garden of the keen horticultural enthusiast aware of the wealth of plants that will thrive within our shores.
Whence came the soil? The answer is that it was formed through the disintegration of the various rocks that have gone to build up the earth. If the question had been Whence came the limy soil of such and such a district?
the answer would have been more complicated, since the soil may have been deposited from a distance instead of formed from the rock it overlies. That, however, is not a matter of great moment to us. What is important is to recognize that limy soil does exist over a rock formation that is neither limestone nor chalk. Vice versa, we find that soil overlying limestone is not always calcareous. This may be due to two factors: the soil may have been leached of calcium by the rain, or it may be a deposit from another region. In either case, provided the soil is of sufficient depth, the gardener on such land may count himself very fortunate.
Besides soils which consist of chalk or lime in bulk, there are many loams—soils made up of a mixture of clay and sand—which have calcium carbonate in their composition. Of all the limy soils, these light brown chalky varieties are the most desirable, for with cultivation they can be transformed into veritable Gardens of Eden.
Lime and clay is yet another mixture; these calcareous soils are known as marls and are found in Cheshire, Worcestershire and Staffordshire, among other places. Some marls are calcareous to a high degree, but in many places, on the Surrey border of Berkshire, for instance, the lime content falls to well below 5 per cent. They must be considered, however, as lime-haters refuse to grow on them.
Still another type is the mixture of sand and lime, a soil that arises primarily through the disintegration of limestones of a sandy character.
The warp
type of land of certain parts of Eastern England also must not be overlooked—a soil usually rich in calcium, upon which Potatoes are grown successfully in parts of Lincolnshire and around the Wash.
But whatever the type, whatever the percentage of calcium, provided it does not rise too high, the gardener who is prepared to go to a little trouble need not be too anxious about his possible failure.
The illusion that chalk and lime soil are poor mediums has been held too long by many gardeners. Mr. Mark Fenwick on Cotswold lime soil and Major F. C. Stern and other enthusiasts on Sussex chalk have done much to dispel the illusion, but even they have only partly succeeded in banishing it from the minds of many. What Major Stern himself has done should convince the unbelievers. In the space of a few years, he has created at Goring-on-Sea a most beautiful garden out of what one would imagine to be the most unpromising spot in the world save the desert—a disused chalk-pit.
He and others have pointed the way, but it is not everyone who has time and such a comprehensive knowledge of plants, plus the willingness to experiment and the necessary resources to make their chalky soils fruitful. Nevertheless, if we garden on a much more modest scale and in less promising surroundings, all of us can profit by their high example.
CHAPTER II
THE IMPROVEMENT AND MAINTENANCE
OF CALCAREOUS SOILS
EVEN before thinking about what plants he may or may not grow, the gardener on chalk or lime ought to get at the outset a clear idea of limitations set by his soil, so that he can endeavour to improve it and make good the various deficiencies.
If his soil is very calcareous, he must be prepared to adopt somewhat lengthy and sweeping measures to counteract the excessive alkalinity, dryness and other disabilities. There is no soil not capable of some improvement, and even where the proportion of lime or chalk is small, work on it will be essential if the garden is to yield maximum results.
In the preceding chapter the question was asked: Whence came the soil?
Now comes the further and even more important question: What is soil?
or more accurately: What is good soil?
Once the ideal has been defined, we may get some notion of the state of perfection after which we are striving.
So complex is the nature of the soil that it is not easy to say in precise terms what good soil is. Some gardeners find it difficult to understand that the soil is not merely earth, as lifeless as the proverbial door-nail. Apart from being made up of disintegrated rocks, the soil, as Sir A. Daniel Hall has so aptly described it, is a busy and complex laboratory where a multitude of minute organisms are always at work.
Though for a good many years highly skilled workers have studied it scientifically, and have even given soil study a name of its own—pedology—yet not all soil problems have been solved. Neither are we certain that all the requirements of plants are fully understood.
Great advances have, of course, been made. We know, for example, that most plants require certain essential foods before they will thrive satisfactorily. Water, of course, they must have, and oxygen and carbon dioxide they get from the air. The remaining foods that are necessary for plant-life—phosphorus, potassium, iron, nitrogen, lime, sodium, sulphur and magnesium, to set down the most important—must all be available in the soil if plants are to be grown satisfactorily.
Soils may be compared with human beings. They have their good qualities and their bad, very often all inextricably mixed up. The perfect soil is as rare as the perfect human being.
The first imperfection of chalk and lime soil must be obviously the excessive calcium content. Plants need lime, but the amount present in a fairly calcareous soil is more than enough for the majority.
When a man is on chalk or lime, it does not
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