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Cuttings (Filed: 14/07/2001)

Tulip replacements, the meaning of Nigella and why we hate ants by Jonquil Cargill

Topical tips from head gardeners

PENSTEMONS are the perfect plants to replace spent tulips. We use 'Evelyn', 'Garnet', 'Sour Grapes' and 'Burford Seedling' for late summer colour. It's possible to take penstemon cuttings throughout the year - using the new side-shoots - so it's easy to raise new plants. The best way to preserve penstemons in the border is to keep all the top growth intact through the winter - cut them back hard in late April. We also grow many deutzias, which are very hardy and flower well, as long as you remove three quarters of the old wood after flowering.

Anne and John Chambers, owners of Kiftsgate Court, Gloucestershire

The naming of plants

Nigella damascena (love-in-a-mist). Nigella comes from the Latin niger (black), and -ella, which means little. It refers to the colour of its little black seeds.

The species-name damascena refers to its eastern origins, "from Damascus". The family to which it belongs is the jaw-breaking Ranunculaceae, "little-frog family" (Latin rana, "frog"), referring to the fact that many species grow in marshy places. Perhaps someone has already grown a Nigella domestica in honour of television's domestic goddess (domestica, "often used as a house plant", from domus, "house").

Ants Lasius niger/Lasius Flavu

Why we hate them

Ants can steal whole rows of vegetable seeds, destroy seedlings, tunnel under plants and stop roots getting established - or even uproot plants. They will throw up dry soil over the lawn and infest fruit trees. They love the honeydew excreted by aphids, so will protect them from predators.

What's to be done

If you can find the nest, dig it out and pour boiling water on it. Ants are worst in dry, dusty, unimproved or neglected soil, so add lots of muck and compost. Sow seeds only when conditions are perfect and keep them well watered, or sow in modules and transplant seedlings when they are least vulnerable to attack. Never let your soil dry out.

Plant creeping pennyroyal (Mentha pulegium) and tansy (Tanacetum vulgare) as deterrents. Wrapping grease bands around apple and pear tree trunks can save fruit trees.

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2001

Answers

Important note: keep tansy in pots and cut off the flowerheads as soon as they appear. You have to get a contract with the mob to kill the stuff and it spreads both via underground roots and generous seeding. Just ask Borogrove.

I'd apply the same caution to pennroyal and any other mint. Also watch out for artemisias--some of them are almost impossible to eradicate and they travel long distances too!

-- Anonymous, July 20, 2001