Erica 'Kramer's Red' (Heath) // "Lucky", Easy to Grow, Low Shrub For VALUABLE Early Season Color

Well good morning and welcome to Over the Vest Nurseries. It's a beautiful sunny morning, we're here in the shipping department and we're getting ready as you see to send out even more plants to our partnering garden centers that are located right throughout our region, that's the mid-atlantic and northeastern states of the US. Now if you're a returning subscriber welcome back, but if you haven't yet subscribed to our channel, can I suggest that now might be a good time to do so, and if when you're viewing our videos that we have here on this channel, if you like what we have on there, it would be really great if you could kindly click the like icon too, because that helps to make the information available for other people as well. Now one of the fun things that I get to do here on the nursery is to look over the wagon loads of plants as they've been loaded on the carts ready to go out to the various garden centers. That happens of course right through the whole of the gardening year, and it's fantastic to be able to see the range of plants that we can have in our gardens from very early in the season, right through the springtime, through the summer, into the fall, and believe it or not even into the wintertime too. And of course the essence of every good garden is to have plenty of interest through the whole of the year, and if you're looking for something that's rather special, something that you can have in your garden at the very early part of the spring season, and even flowering during the winter months too, I'd like to show you a special variety of Heath that we're very fond of here. And this is what I'm talking about, this is Erica Dahliensis Cramer's Red. Now it's called Red, but really when you look at the flowers here they're more like a deep pink color. But the fantastic thing about this plant is that it makes a little low-growing mound, a carpeting mound really, of bright evergreen foliage that then comes alive in wintertime and the very early part of the spring, in stretching in to the earlier part of the spring season, and so gives very valuable color, easy to look after color, at a time of year when there isn't a whole lot else happening in the garden. So if you look out through your window or walk through your front door and look over your garden and think things are a little on the dull side, this would be a perfect plant for you to be able to use to brighten things up during that dull and dreary time. It makes a great plant for putting into containers too. Wonderful in window boxes, in planters, in pots by the front door, just about anywhere where you can use this very wind-resistant color. Now the interesting thing about Heath's and Heather's generally is that they live in high exposed windy locations, so if you've got a bed somewhere in your garden that is fairly exposed, that's open, when you look at these closely you'll see that they have little fine needle-like foliage that means that it's able to withstand blustery conditions. So if your garden is in an exposed situation, this is another good reason to grow it. But above all, it's that early season color, and also the fact that I mentioned earlier that it's low maintenance, it's salt resistant, and this variety of all of the Erica varieties that we grow here on the nursery, is for us probably the easiest and most reliable variety that we grow, so it's got a lot going for it. And what's more, it's a great little plant for going out and snipping off just a few of these flowering sprigs too. All you need really is this strip off the leaves off the bottom and you can put this in a bud vase or a little flower arrangement and as you see will bring valuable color at that time of year too. Now as for growing it, we have on our tags here that it's zone 6. We actually think that it's probably hardier than that, so it's probably zone 5, but we tend to be a little conservative with our zone ratings, so until we've had experience of people growing it in the zone 5, we'll make sure that we have just on the tag of zone 6. But as I say, I think it'll probably be fine in zone 5. Now also, it grows on an average soil as long as it's free-draining and preferably one that's on the acid side of neutral. Ideally somewhere around about 4.5 to 5.5 and just on the acid side of neutral which of course is 6.5. One of the things about this type of Erica is that it is more lime tolerant than a lot of the others, so even if your soil is a little on the limey side, I think you'll find that it will do well. The one thing that is important with it, as I mentioned a minute or two ago, is that it is in good well-drained conditions, doesn't like to have its feet in wet soil, and try to avoid clay-based soils too. In fact one of the things about this is that it loves to grow in a humus rich soil, so I would when I'm planting it, certainly mix in plenty of chopped pine bark, peat, that sort of thing. It's got a very fibrous root system that grows up near the surface and spreads out, so it's very good for growing in elevated places, things like hillsides, raised beds, even a mound if you're in doubt about your drainage, raise the soil up a little bit, add in that organic matter, that pine bark I was talking about, and you'll find then that it will grow very well in those sorts of situations. Also it's good to put down a layer of mulch too, that helps to get it going through the hotter periods of our summer. August for instance is when we get a lot of hot, dry, humid weather, and these are cool living plants that have their ancestries in the European situations. For instance this is a hybrid between two different species, one that comes from the Alpine regions of the Alps, and the other one is what's known as the Irish heather, which is native to the Mediterranean areas, northern France to Spain and Portugal, and is found also on the western side of Ireland, growing on cliffs and in heathland areas like that. So as you see, the hotter periods in the summertime is something that we have to care about, and putting down that mulch and perhaps giving it a little bit extra supplementary watering during that tougher time will get them through. There's also one other thing that I want to mention that's important about these. Now as we're beginning to move towards springtime, you will see some of the flowers on these plants are just starting to go over, and this is the perfect time to go in now with a pair of shears to trim back the growths, that will keep them nice and bushy and compact, it will stimulate plenty of young fresh growth, and then in that young growth it'll set the flower buds, which of course will then flower next winter and early spring. So going through and giving them a haircut is one of the maintenance things, of which is very little else to do, but one of the maintenance things that really will mean that it looks at its best. The important thing is to do it immediately after it finishes flowering, because on those young growths that are produced, it will start producing its flower buds during the summertime, and if you leave it too late, you might be cutting off some of the embryonic flower buds. And another thing that's important to mention too, is that believe it or not, these are also seldom bothered by deer. So if you've got trouble in your garden with deer coming in, those rascals browsing on your plants, you can plant these Erica's like this, and they normally don't bother with them. And just to let you know, that if you plant them out in the garden, and shear them back regularly after they finish flowering, they'll make clumps that are about two and a half to three foot wide, and if you wanted to make a drift of ground cover, which of course would be really beautiful, you would put them in at about two, two and a half foot centers, they'll then grow together to make a beautiful carpet of this dark green foliage, and then of course all of these gorgeous flowers that start arriving at a time, a very welcome time of year, and would also of course also help to set off other things that might be in your garden that would have winter interest too, the likes of these red stemmed dogwoods. And the other interesting thing to say is that this is a variety that was developed way up the northern part of Germany in Schleswig- Holstein by a well-known heather enthusiast called Kurt Kramer. Kurt has developed some wonderful varieties in the recent years, and in 1981 he bred this one. He crossed two individual varieties, one of that species I was telling you about, Carnia, the one that comes from the Alpine regions in the Alps, and a particular variety that was selected in Scotland called My Turn Ruby, and another variety called Brightness of the Irish Heather, and from those it bred this one that has tremendous hybrid vigor, and that's what we like about it, in that it's really got nice vigor, and therefore establishes and grows very well in the garden. Now as you see this is the sort of thing that you could do at home, very simple really, just a planter, make sure you've got good drainage in the bottom of it, and then as a centerpiece this is a little slow growing Arborvitae here, one called Little Giant, and then as you see I'm using four plants of the Erica as a kind of carpet, and this is a sort of planter that could sit outside the front of your house on a patio or a deck, even on a balcony if you didn't have a garden, and because heathers love to have what they say the wind in their hair, that comes from their native origins where they're up usually in fairly exposed positions, this is the sort of plant that will put up with quite a lot of fluctuating temperatures. Now it's also interesting in the introduction, you'll have probably heard me call it as Erica Darleansis Kramers Red, the Darleansis part is interesting, that comes from the nursery in Derbyshire in England near Matlock where the original very first hybrid of the two species I was talking about was identified. That nursery which was run by a man called James Smith was very famous at and around the turn of last century. The Victorians loved heathers and heaths as you see, and he was famous for exporting a lot of rhododendrons, but particularly heathers and heaths all over the British Isles, all over Europe, and I'm told as far away as India too, and what's interesting those canny Victorians had nothing to learn, he used as his promotion the term lucky Scotch heather, picking up on the superstitions in Scotland where heather is a particularly lucky plant to have, and that goes back to ancient times the Druids regarded heaths and heathers as sacred plants, it's said that if you find a white one in nature which is rare, that that's where the fairies are buried, and it's also interesting that even today bridesmen when they're getting married will often take a sprig of heather and put it in their bouquets. Lots of interesting things including a story about Queen Victoria and her famous companion John Brown, apparently they were out one day in the Highlands and he spotted a little white heather growing amongst the normal purple ones, he jumped off and picked it because in the Highlands it's very lucky if you spot just like a four-leaf clover, it's very lucky if you spot a white heather, and that then goes to the thing where even today growing heaths and heathers in your garden is regarded as being lucky. So now you know that you can enjoy this beautiful, hardy, easy to grow, and very wind-resistant variety, and bring yourself some good luck into your life as well. So it's an excellent variety, one that incidentally has been awarded the Award of Garden Merit by the Royal Horticultural Society, and as I think you can see we're very fond of it, and it's one that we think you should probably think about growing in your garden too. This is Erica Cramer's Red, a beautiful, very early flowering, and very useful plant for you to perhaps think about having somewhere around your home. This is David Wilson, enjoy your gardening, it's good for us, and it's very good for our environment too.