Golden Gleam jubilee

Press, 29 August 1980, Page 5

Golden Gleam jubilee

GARDENER’S DIARY

Derrick Rooney

A picture in an old gardening magazine was a reminder to look out this spring for seeds of the good old trailing nasturtium, “Golden Gleam,” the kind • with yellow double flowers. Though I do not usually grow many annuals (one perennial that will give. years of pleasure is a better buy than a tray of annuals that will last a few months only). I think “Golden Gleam” or one of its hybrids may be just the thing to train up. an old fruit tree to fill the lacuna after the “Felicite et Perpetue” rose, which is already there, has finished flowering. The Gleam hybrid nasturtiums are less popular today than they used to be, no doubt because

smaller gardens need smaller plants, and the modern strains of nasturtium are bushy and compact. Where space is available the Gleams are some of the most satisfying annuals to grow. If soil and situation are right, they will spread madly in all directions, flinging out trailers that can be 4m long by summer’s end. They are just as good as pea straw (and prettier) for a mulch under shrubs, and they do not mind a little shade — light, dappled shade, that is, not a dense overhead canopy. In light shade the leaves are a little more lush, the flower colours more intense, and the ratio of leaves to flowers better. This spring would not

be a bad time to revive the Gleam nasturtiums, because 1980 is their jubilee year. No-one knows the parentage or the exact provenance of “Golden Gleam.” J. C. Bodger, principal of a large Californian seed company, found it growing, some time in the 19205, in a small private garden in Los Angeles. The owner of the garden knew nothing about the plants, other than that the seed had come “from Mexico.”

Bodger began to multiply the stock on one of his company’s “seed ranches,” and it was in 1930, exactly half a century ago, that he launched the strain by sending trial packages to leading seedsmen in the United States

and Europe. By 1931 Bodger’s had a ton of seed ready to sell; two years later the firm was selling 10 tons, and failing to meet the demand. Cuthbertson’s of Marks Tey grew the strain in England and exhibited it in 1931 at the Chelsea flower show where, as the cliche goes, it was a sensation. A year later Cuthbertson’s sent seeds to Wisley for trial, and the strain won an Award of Merit. The award was well deserved. “Golden Gleam” is a vigorous and adaptable plant. There are several ways of treating it. If the tips are pinched out when the shoots are about 12in long, branches will spring out of every joint and the plants will become a sheet

of yellow flowers, and stay fairly compact.

The vihe-like stems can be trained ;up netting to make a dense, if shortlived, hedge. Or the plants can be left to their own devices to trail about every which way, and.that is the way I like them best. Nasturtiums associate very well with roses.' especially old roses, and with fruit trees. There are old garden wives’ tales that if you grow nasturtiums up your peach trees you will ‘have no leaf curl, and if - you grow them up your apple trees the woolly aphids will pack ,up' arid depart.