The latest Joseph Atkin Aberglasney gardening column

The latest Aberglasney gardening column (as featured in the South Wales Evening Post and the Carmarthen Journal) by Joseph Atkin, head gardener at Aberglasney House and Gardens in the Tywi Valley.
When you visit a garden such as Aberglasney, you will notice that the emphasis is now very much on conservation and education.
When I first went to Kew Gardens in London, I knew conservation was very much on the agenda. What I did not fully appreciate was the key role that all gardeners have to play in plant conservation.
Yes, we can all grow British natives in our gardens and create wildlife areas, but what about further afield?
When you look in your own gardens, you will notice that many if not all of the cultivated plants are actually foreign.
Many will come from all over the world - such far flung places as China and Australia.
A trip to the local roundabout will probably show you Phormium and Cordyline from Australasia, Viburnum from China and many other plants that are very exotic but now seem commonplace.
So, by growing these plants (which are often very scarce in the wild), we are actually conservationists ourselves.
How many of us have a Gingko tree or Prunus serrula (Tibetan Cherry) in our garden or street?
Both of which are very rare.
So, besides travelling around the world helping conservationist to save rare plants, what can we do as gardeners?
There are a number of things we can do, such as growing plants from specialist nurseries.
Rare in the wild does not necessarily mean expensive or hard to grow. In fact, many of the new bulb plantings and Hydrangea at Aberglasney are quite rare but will be very easy to grow.
One of the most exciting new plantings we are making is a Wollemi Pine (see picture above) which is the most famous new plant to be found this decade.
It is very similar looking to a Monkey Puzzle, but less vicious and more graceful. It has really nice new buds which ooze white resin - a character that you won’t see in other plants.
What is so special about it?
It’s one of the world's oldest and rarest plants, dating back to the time of the dinosaurs with less than 100 adult trees known to exist in the wild.
This plant is now freely available to buy, reasonably priced and a percentage of the profit is donated to the plant’s conservation worldwide. What this means is that gardeners like us can enjoy very rare plants that are collected and produced sustainably.
This project has been going for quite some time, and it is great to see the Wollemi Pine in plenty of public gardens.
It will also make a great plant in the larger home gardens, being evergreen.
As a gardener, it is great fun to able to tell people the history of a plant and where in the world it came from. With the help of the internet, it is now quite easy to check where plants came from, so we can all be botanists and conservationist.
Tips for the Week
Look for some wild foreign plants in your garden and find out where they come from.
Keep clearing up the leaves. It’s hard work, but it really helps the lawn and borders.
Remove any garden waste to compost heaps and clean up old pots etc as they are a haven for slugs and snails.
Keep looking for seed that you might want to collect.
Now is a great time to sow tree and perennial seed - outside in a cold frame is often best.
Late summer to autumn is a good time to prune Magnolia. It is pretty much last chance this week.