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How to add more plants to your garden – and for free

Horticulturist Paul Atkinson at propagation glasshouse - Joanna Kossak
Horticulturist Paul Atkinson at propagation glasshouse - Joanna Kossak

If you want more plantings for your garden but your economic prospects are looking as dismal as the winter weather, the answer is simple: take hardwood cuttings.

These are taken at this time of year, when the plant’s stem is woody, as opposed to softwood and semi-ripe cuttings that are taken later in the year. Hardy shrubs including fruits, climbers and trees are all good for taking hardwood cuttings from.

The range of plants is far wider than commonly supposed, too, says Paul Atkinson (above) of the propagation team at RHS Wisley in Surrey. “Lots of people think hardwood cuttings are just from deciduous plants, but you can do both deciduous and evergreens,” he says. However, Atkinson advises that evergreens can need a bit more nurturing than deciduous cuttings.

At Wisley, the hardwood cuttings range includes cornus, salix, gooseberry, potentilla, pyracantha, currants, roses, buddleja, deutzia, philadelphus, lonicera, camellia, jasmine, elaeagnus and sambucus.

Chris Sharples, florist and head gardener at the Watts Gallery in Surrey, also takes cuttings from lavender and rosemary. The RHS says other evergreens that can be done at this time of the year include holly, cotoneaster, privet and skimmia.

Chris Sharples, florist and head gardener at the Watts Gallery in Surrey - Andy Newbold
Chris Sharples, florist and head gardener at the Watts Gallery in Surrey - Andy Newbold

Advantages of hardwood cuttings

Hardwood cuttings have several advantages over softer propagation. Firstly, you can do them in the winter when you are not quite so busy in the garden. Deciduous cuttings also require less effort than softer propagation, says Atkinson: “Deciduous hardwood cuttings are the easiest to do because there’s no heating or technical equipment required. The main advantage is that they don’t depend on the weather so much, whereas our success rate with semi-ripes can be down to the weather.”

With hardwood, you take your cutting, prepare it, then pretty much leave it alone.

“I do hardwood cuttings because they are easy and I’m a bit slapdash and disorganised,” says Sharples. “If you do softwood and semi-ripe cuttings in the summer and then forget about them, that’s not good.”

Not everything will take, however. The Wisley team mostly propagates deciduous hardwood and has a 98 per cent success rate. Sharples uses an outdoor trench method for deciduous and evergreen and has a 70 per cent to 100 per cent strike rate.

Lavender
Lavender

“You have to bear in mind that you’ll have failures,” says Atkinson. “Don’t feel guilty [or disheartened] because even here at Wisley things don’t always work out. You can grow cuttings perfectly every year and then one year they won’t take. You can be the best horticulturalist in the world but you can still be caught out because in the end, nature is in charge, not you.”

Patience is key

The drawback with hardwood cuttings is that they are much slower to take root. If you take a cutting now, it may not start rooting until spring and it will be a year or so before you can transplant it into the garden or a two-litre pot. You need a lot of patience and this is where most of us fail, says Atkinson.

“The long wait is down to patience, but this is where people make a mistake. They see a flush of green growth and go to pot up the cuttings and find there are no roots. You can just put them straight back but people throw the cuttings away because they think they’re dead. Whereas the green is just a spurt of energy and then they will put a root down.”

Sharples agrees that the key is to step back a bit: “I think the issue is that we’re all used to ‘in a flash gardening’, whereas when I was a kid someone would give you a cutting and you’d go away and plant it and then you would wait for it to grow.”

Protection from the elements

When it comes to evergreen hardwood cuttings, opinions can differ. Atkinson says that they require a little more attention than deciduous cuttings, and need to be treated more like semi-ripes, which are generally taken in late summer to early autumn. This is because they do not go dormant, so they need moisture and protection from the elements.

Horticulturist Paul Atkinson - Joanna Kossak
Horticulturist Paul Atkinson - Joanna Kossak

This is especially true if you live in a harsher climate, where even your deciduous cuttings may need the extra protection of a cold frame, horticultural fleece, or unheated greenhouse during the winter.

Sharples, however, is slightly more gung-ho, planting deciduous and evergreens in an unprotected trench in the garden. “We don’t have a greenhouse at the Watts Gallery so I have to put them all outside,” he says.

“I did some Lavandula angustifolia this time last year and some of the cuttings flowered this year. I just put them straight into the ground. I don’t use hormone rooting powder, I’m not that organised. I did 10 and they all took. I’m doing the same this year. Rosemary and sage strike well too.”

Another big success was Vitis coignetiae (crimson glory vine). “I put five hardwood cuttings of pencil thickness and 12 inches in length into a mix of general compost and loam in a long tom pot I had lying around, then put it outside. I’ve just planted them out this year,” says Sharples.

Trial and error

In the end, there is no one way to take cuttings and the key is just to try. “We say to our students that you can read lots of horticulture books and they’ll all tell you slightly different methods of doing things,” says Atkinson.

“There’s no right and wrong method. I’d say that if something works for you, then stick with it. Never be afraid to experiment. We’ll say, ‘Let’s try this,’ and then blow me down, it works. Or we’ll try something and it fails and then we’ll think, ‘Let’s try it a different way.’”

Sharples agrees. “Don’t be afraid to give it a go. Hardwood cuttings don’t cost you anything so what have you got to lose? It’s like when people say ‘Oh, I can’t paint,’ but how do you know that? You probably haven’t picked up a paintbrush since you were six. If you give it a go, you may turn out to be an impressionist.”