Garden Studios

A good wash and brush up just isn’t something that need be reserved for gentlemen in those early 20th-century films and novels where Brylcreem was de rigeur and 2 whalebone hairbrushes were applied to the backswept locks. There are plants inside the garden that take advantage of a little bit grooming, too. I’m thinking particularly of birch trees.

Silver birches are great garden trees. Their root system isn’t excessive in its spread, nor is it greedy inside the absorption of soil nutrients, and the leaf canopy is adequately light as to create dappled instead of dense shade, which means other plants can grow happily around and about it.  

At this time of year the silver birch’s main attribute – the brilliant bark – is a genuine bonus within the garden and there are several different shades to select from.  Betula ermanii is peachy cream, Betula utilis ‘Jacquemontii’ is a fresh, chalky white, and there are numerous others in varying shades, all with attractive peeling bark.

The trouble is that at the moment of year, especially due to the wet weather during the last few weeks, the white bark can play host to a covering of green algae, which dulls its appearance and robs it of much of its elegance.

But there’s a simple remedy for this – an efficient old-fashioned wash and brush up!

Take yourself out into the garden with a bucket of warm water and a soft brush and/or cloth and wash down the trunks of your birch trees.

You will find the fairway covering comes off easily. So will a number of lumps of peeling bark, but they are going to reveal creamier or whiter bark underneath, that is even brighter than that at the surface.

Now the downside of here is that the water will for sure find its way up your arm in the event you reach as high as you’re able to to wash the trunk and the thicker lower branches that you may reach, but there’s no gain without pain – and the pain for this reason amounts to not more than a little bit discomfort.

As a reward to your trouble you will discover you have got a superb-barked tree that suddenly leaps out from the gloom to cheer you up on a lifeless winter’s day.

And if you’d like to boost the peak of the top of branches (referred to as the crown of the tree) so you and your mower can pass underneath more easily, now could be the time to do it. At any time between October and February you’re safe to chop branches from a birch tree, but leave the job until spring and you may discover that the sap is rising and the cut surfaces will “bleed”.

This does the tree no good in any respect – weakening it and disfiguring the trunk. 

So do the job now.

Off you go then, bucket in hand. The job will take you quarter-hour at most but you’ll have a miles brighter outlook to point out for it. 

Don’t miss Alan’s gardening column today and each day within the Daily Express. For more info on his range of gardening products, visit alantitchmarsh.com.