Container Gardening with Harriet Rycroft, week 1

September 15, 2015 Andrew OBrien

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It can be easy to get carried away when window shopping for containers. With such a wealth of variety in size and shape – not to mention price – I find I’ve often created a wish list that far exceeds my budget, let alone my available space.

And then to complicate any decision further, there are the different materials and finishes to be considered, each with their own characteristic textures: ceramics (including glass), glazed or unglazed, metals, wood, stone, as well as all manner of plastics and resins. I’ve just been exploring the possibilities of making my own containers using hypertufa – a mix of perlite, cement and sphagnum peat moss – and plan to give it a go once I’ve decided upon a sustainable alternative to the organic element. Everyone has their own favourites, and I tend to be drawn towards terracotta and zinc galvanised containers, whilst shying away from plastic.

Materials snob? Possibly, though this isn't snootiness at the notion of mass production, but rather sadness at the cynicism of flooding the market with “containers” that are little more than giant injection-molded buckets with poorly finished seams, not to mention the apparent willingness of the general gardening public to buy the hideous things. It is pleasing to surround yourself with objects and materials which reflect the ethos and values you hold, in the garden, as with every other space in your life. Terracotta speaks to me of the earth, of craftsmanship and skill, while galvanised iron objects possess the rugged honesty of the early-industrial period. Both materials, along with stone and wood, achieve a beautiful patina with the passage of time, while plastic merely bleaches and becomes brittle.

So far, I seem to have made a good job of proving my opening statement. All this fuss over the pot, when I'm really far more interested in the plant than on the object in which its root system will make a home. But, while it can’t be denied that a sympathetic match between container and contents can produce a pleasing effect, there is one exception to all of this: the upcycled container, the old box, tin or broken bit of crockery, destined for landfill but given at least a temporary reprieve, pressed into service as the custodian of a plant’s delicate parts. However humdrum its origins, I can’t help but find the combination of faded utility and luxuriant growth immensely compelling, hopeful and encouraging.

No room for the rubber duck. © Sara Venn

It’s the end of the first week of the Container Planting course at My Garden School. Harriet’s video talk and notes saw her at pains to have us consider our objectives in relation this form of gardening, whilst providing a comprehensive overview of the “whys and wheres” of using containers within the garden. Underpinning all I detected an exhortation to adopt a conscientiously purposeful approach, which could present me with a minor challenge, relying as I do rather on instinct and whim in this area. For the first week’s assignment, we were asked to find photos of four containers we’d like to use, explaining what had drawn us to them, where we would consider siting them within the garden, and why.

Here’s my selection.

The Whichford Pot

There’s nothing quite like a well-made vintage or handmade terracotta pot. I’ll settle for mass produced terracotta if I have to, but I'm not a huge fan of those ugly square rims.

Whichford pots aren’t exactly cheap, but having been to the pottery and seen the care and attention to detail that goes into each one, I have no qualms about parting with the money, even if I can’t afford to do it that often. And it’s not an astronomical outlay – we’re talking eight quid for a 7 inch pot, as opposed to £1.50 for a bog standard diy shed effort – buy one a month and give up the ciggies, or Sky+. Actually that would equate to several small pots, or something more fancy.

Whichford terracotta is unlike the smooth, flat stuff you might be used to. It’s a richer, orangey brown colour, a more tactile, open texture, which reminds me of biscuits (ginger nuts, to be specific). They often incorporate text into the design, whether simply manufacturer’s name around the pot, or a quote from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and I’m a sucker for words in the garden.

The pot I’ve chosen for my imaginary shopping list is from the Shakespeare range, featuring a line from one of Puck’s speeches around the rim. I’d have it next to the kitchen door, planted with wild thyme, and other aromatic spices, well within reach when I need something to perk up what I’m cooking.

The trefoil pot

A few years ago, I spotted this container in an issue of Gardens Illustrated, and its haunted me ever since. The article appeared again in the special edition magazine from the publishers under the title “Pots of Style” (still available from the website), so at least I can look at a picture of it, even if I can't find anything similar to what must be a pretty one-off piece in the shops.

The mottled grey and white material is glass reinforced concrete, although at first glance you might be forgiven for mistaking it for galvanised steel. The plants perfectly complement the container – Sedum 'Cape Blanco', Anthemis marschalliana, Jovibarba allionii and Lampranthus spectabilis, planting by Sarah Price.

This is clearly too small to be placed on the ground, too large for the windowsill, and the wrong shape for the shelves of the etagere. But its a perfect colour complement for the slate table in the courtyard, and I could sit and gaze at it while enjoying my morning coffee.

The broken teapot

This is an object with great sentimental value, but one that has sadly outlived its original purpose. I bought it during my first year at university, and it has been my constant companion for a quarter of a century, playing a central role in the many tea ceremonies that punctuate my day. But the glaze has finally cracked in many places, and it has become rather more porous than is useful in a teapot, an article inside which it is useful for the tea to remain until required it, at which point it should exit via the spout, not through various hairline cracks about the perimeter. Unable to bear parting with it, I decide to re-imagine it as a planter, although to date I've yet to find the perfect companion for its slightly awkward nature, and am currently stuck in a kind of limbo of indecision.

It is the perfect size for the outdoor window ledge, or the top of the hideous plastic gas meter cover which I try to obscure from view with an arrangement of pots in containers.

The old boot

I get through a work boots at an alarming rate; something to do with unusually mobile toes. It's a bit annoying – they split and start letting in water, or develop a weakness in some unrepairable spot, but seem otherwise perfectly sound. It's seems a shame to get rid of them, but I can't really have dozens of pairs of old boots cluttering up the place. It has struck me that, with an appropriate lining, and some drainage holes, they would make excellent plant pots – and I'm not the only gardener to have worked this out. Lucy Adams, head gardener at Doddington Place in Kent, created an entire display for this years Chelsea Fringe based around a tower of planted up wellington boots, an absolutely stellar display where the bright colours of the wellies clashed appealingly with the flowers.

My old work boots are less extrovert, I think, but I don’t see why one or two planted up couldn’t nestle perfectly happily towards the front of an arrangement of pots.

Harriet’s notes for week 1 of the course are downloadable at the time of writing from this link.

In the meantime, do have a look at the My Garden School website, which isstill running its Back to School campaign for 15% off all £145.00 4 week online courses in October. (Course start dates: Wednesday 7 October 2015). Click here and remember to use the code MGSBTS at the checkout for the discount.

Wisley Flower Show 2015

September 8, 2015 Andrew OBrien

A quick dash to the Wisley Flower Show, there to spend a couple of pleasant hours mooching about, cooing over plants, saying hello to friends and most definitely not buying anything, the last of which objectives I failed conspicuously to achieve, lumbering back past the RHS Lindley Library towards the car laden with numerous bags of flaars. Hopeless. In my defence, some of them (previous edits read “most”, then “many”) are bound for clients’ gardens, and I entertain every possible hope that they may, at some point in the future, reach them.

Here are my highlights from a brief visit.

It was great to catch up with David on the Binny’s stand (we’d managed to miss each other at Chelsea and for some reason not crossed paths over social media) and to hear how things are going for them. The stand is looking wonderful – an inviting mix of delicate flowers like Geum 'Totally Tangerine' and white japanese anemones, with some wonderfully detail in the foliage, all shades of green and red, with Heuchera 'Green Spice', Rodgersia 'Bronze Peacock' and Tiarella 'Spring Symphony'. And, just in case you hadn't got the green and red thing, the great, dramatic form of Begonia luxurians. I loved the short, vertical accents of the Euonymus japonicus 'Green Rocket' across the stand and, nestling in amongst it all, the wonderful small white flower and acid green leaf of Geranium nodosum 'Silverwood', a great plant for dappled shade.

Not too far away on the stand of Madrona Nurseries from Ashford in Kent, I found the colourful arrow-headed leaves of Persicaria 'Purple Fantasy'...

...just a few steps away from its relative Persicaria odorata from Hooksgreen Herbs. This is used in South East Asian cooking as a coriander substitute, and was nestled among a wealth of other wonderful looking edibles. Had the temperature had been hotter, the smell would have been fabulous, but as it was, the volatile oils stayed put and I had to content myself with the sight of all these fine herbs jostling for space. I particularly loved the inclusion of variegated ground elder Aegopodium podagraria 'Variegata' which, though not as rampant as the non variegated version, can get a bit lively in the borders.

I’m not entirely sure what’s got into me this year, but I keep finding myself drawn towards orange flowers, and it was the sight of these amazing dahlias at Pheasant Acre Plants that drew me away from the herbs. I'm not sure my photography skills were quite up to representing the vibrancy of the colours, but they were breathtaking, perfectly complemented by the lively form of the blooms.

The Plant Specialist have put together a splendid display of late summer daisies, grasses and prairie-style perennials, where I discovered the hollyhock (Alcaea)/mallow (Malva) cross x Alcalthaea suffrutescens 'Parkallee' . Why didn’t I buy this? I was distracted by something else (more of that in a bit), but know it will be haunting my dreams tonight.

x Alcathaea suffrutescens 'Parkallee'

Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants were as inundated with keen plant buyers as always - so much so that I could barely see Rob when I arrived and didn’t get to say ‘hello’ (sorry Rob). The display and the quality of the plants was as stellar as we’ve come to expect, and also as correct – I was reminded that I've been referring to Aster divaricatus several times in the past couple of weeks, when it’s been reclassified as Eurybia. Shame on me (though, to be fair, it’s still Aster in the Wisley plant shop). I was particularly taken with two plants, both of which boast flowers that, in their natural form, appear to have been caught in a force ten gale. Perhaps they reminds me of my hair.

My own haul consisted of two plants I've been trying to track down for months, and was half hoping to find in stock today – both for other people’s gardens, sadly. Firstly, Althaea cannabina, a wonderful, tall, airy pink-flowered mallow-type specimen, whose presence distracted me from buying the Alcathaea at The Plant Specialist.

Secondly, Tiarella 'Sugar and Spice'. I know everyone says that so many of these cultivars are the same, but there’s nothing quite like the leaf on this – a large, oak leaf shape, deep glossy green, with a dark maroon splash in the centre – and everywhere seems to have been out of stock all year, even at the RHS shows. Six of these came home with me, courtesy of Heucheraholics.

And then, having stuffed my face with pelargonium cake and generally got under the feet of Heather and Fran on the Fibrex Nursery stand as they tried to serve the great and the good, I started treating myself to more plants I’ve had a hankering after: three pelargoniums, P. 'Renate Parsley' (new to me), the very beautiful but slightly difficult 'Ardens', and the scented 'Charity', with its variegated cut leaf and orangey scent. And, on an impulse, the evergreen fern Asplenium trichomanes, largely because it looks a bit like the maidenhair fern Adiantum capillus-veneris, which I am remarkably good at killing, in the hope that it might be slightly better at evading my homicidal tendencies.

Not a bad collection of booty, considering I wasn’t supposed to be buying anything. Sadly, though, in spite of seeing it growing down by the glasshouse, still no sign of Amsonia hubrichtii for sale. I’ll keep looking...

Container Gardening course with My Garden School

September 2, 2015 Andrew OBrien

Spring containers in the porch at Great Dixter. An inspiration at any time of year

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There’s always something to learn with gardening. By which I mean, about gardening, not through gardening, although Gertrude Jekyll was undoubtedly bang on the money when she opined that “a garden is a grand teacher”. Rather, I'm thinking about my own continual process of horticultural education, and the efforts I need to go to in order to keep my gardening brain fed. I love my work as a self employed gardener with my own list of clients, but if there's one element missing, it’s the regular input of peers, and the mentoring presence of people with more wisdom and knowledge to impart than I can imagine myself ever being in possession of. That’s one way in which social media has been a godsend – a veritable army of exactly these folk, ready to cheer and to chide as necessary, as enthusiastic and abundantly generous with their superior knowledge as I could wish. And, by some miracle of the modern age, they all live in my phone.

This is wonderful when I need to ask a question, or feel the need of some encouragement or affirmation. But in order to build my knowledge I need to supplement this with some more structured learning, and so I resolved this year to start taking courses on certain subjects, one of these being container gardening.

Containers can be tricky things. Rarely will you get away with bunging a plant in a pot and forgetting about it, unless you have a penchant for brown, dead looking things. Containers are an ideal solution for people who don’t have a traditional “garden” where you can’t plant in the ground – perhaps only a windowsill or balcony. They’re also great in that you can fine tune the growing medium and the conditions to the particular requirement of the plant you wish to grow, but you’ll need to remember that that plant is more dependent upon your attention when it comes to feeding and watering than it might be had you planted it in the ground. There’s less of a buffer against the temperature fluctuations, too, so you’ll need to be fairly constantly watchful for what the weather might throw at you – under the wrong conditions, container-grown plants can go over with alarming speed.

And then, there’s choosing the type of container, planting for succession, and arranging groups of containers in a pleasing display. Anyone who’s dashed home from a visit to Great Dixter, full of enthusiasm and dying to have a go, will be aware that it’s not as easy as it looks.

I have several books on container gardening by a variety of authors, but if there’s one person in the country who really knows the subject, it has to be Harriet Rycroft, until recently head gardener at Whichford Pottery. I met Harriet a couple of years ago on a visit to Whichford in the Cotswold countryside – a fascinating place for the story of the pots and the wonderful variety of forms and texture, but rendered even more so by the flamboyantly joyful planting combinations bursting out wherever I looked. Harriet is one of the generous souls I alluded to above, and we often chat on Twitter, but there's a limit to how much you can quiz a person, even on their specialist subject. Really, I needed to steal Harriet’s gardening brain to gain her knowledge, but how to achieve this without imposing some measure of inconvenience upon the good lady was beyond me.

And then she announced the Container Planting course at My Garden School – a little jig may have escaped me in my joy. This is a four week course, with video tutorials, detailed course notes and regular assignments, and one-to-one contact with the tutor through a virtual classroom – I can ask as many questions as I like without feeling bad about it. I’ll be posting again here as I go through the course – which begins for me today – to let you know more about the course as I work my way through it. I hope you’ll join me again to find out how I’m getting on.

In the meantime, do have a look at the My Garden School website, which is has just launched a Back to School campaign for 15% off all £145.00 4 week online courses in September and October. (Course start dates: Wednesday, 2 September / Wednesday, 7 October 2015). Click here and remember to use the code MGSBTS at the checkout for the discount.

Too early for the A word

August 31, 2015 Andrew OBrien

This is the first year I can recall where I’ve not risked the ire of my fellow human beings with a premature mentioning of the A word. Hot weather saps my energy; while I’ll put a brave face on it for work, I’m keenly looking for the first signs of the change in season from the end of July. In recent weeks there’s been a stampede of people throwing up their hands in despair at the early onset of autumn, but while I’d be delighted to find their angst justified, I think it more likely that we're having a bit of a wet end to summer after a protracted hot, dry spell. It is, after all, still August. And this is, after all, England.

That’s not to suggest we shouldn’t expect to see signs of the approaching season; the night-time temperature is beginning to drop away from the uncomfortably clammy, while several mornings this past week have seen me pulling up the blinds to discover a fresh, chill mist knocking at the glass. Above all this, the thoughts of the gardener are beginning to turn from what can still be achieved in the beds and borders this year, to how best to prepare for the next.

One thing in particular will help with my own garden in a year from now – I need to face up to the truth about molluscs. I’ve been in denial, having evidently been at pains to create the perfect environment for snails in particular, although slugs too are well represented. Over the past few years I’ve adopted a fairly hands-off gardening style here; fine as long as I was happy to stand back and watch the dynamics within the borders, leaving the plants to their own devices, though it does naturally favour a survival-of-the-fittest scenario. Consequently, I have a late summer bed of flowering thugs – solidagos, Japanese anemones and crocosmias – while most of the charming asters, echinaceas and heleniums have been grazed to the ground by the battalions of snails emerging nightly from the heaps of lush foliage encouraged by my neglect. One tiny pocket of resistance against the endless onslaught is being offered up by Aster divaricatus. Rain battered and, by now, going over, it must taste disgusting to snails, for which I am immensely grateful. Its presence is a minor reprieve I surely don’t deserve.

Aster divaricatus, bravely soldiering on, albeit a tad dishevelled

From hereon in, then, a more interventionist approach is called for, which means gardening here in the same way I garden everywhere else. In other words, tidily, or at least being strategic about which areas I allow to become untidy. The forest of under-performing acanthus is to go – who knows, it may even flower better if I stick it in a less luxuriant spot – which will have the dual effect of removing a vast snail hotel, whilst freeing up a whopping great spot at the end of a bed into which I can plant something exciting. The geraniums will also be cut back – I don’t have anything too invasive (in the ground, at least – I have a specimen of the ridiculously vigorous pink flowered 'Claridge Druce' confined to a large pot), but they’ve been allowed to sprawl a bit this year. Except the phaeums, which I did subject to a Chelsea Chop.

I’m starting to get concerned that things might begin to look a little organised; will I in a few months – horror of horrors – find myself in the position of having “put the garden to bed for winter”? I think I should perhaps just take this one step at a time.

Anemone x hybrida 'Königen Charlotte'. A right bruiser.

Enchanter’s nightshade

August 23, 2015 Andrew OBrien

As fond of weeds and wildflowers as I am, it wasn’t without a wry smile that I acknowledged the arrival of this plant in a bed from which I’d only recently been congratulating myself for liberating from ground elder.

Circaea lutetiana, or enchanter’s nightshade, has a similar creeping habit to that carrot which fills some gardeners with horror, but which I’ve always found myself able to tolerate, as long as it doesn’t object to a triple whammy of vigorous forking and pulling out, and a good strimming of its aerial parts when the urge comes upon me.

The botanical name possessing twice the magical power of the common (Circe being the sorceress of Homer’s Odyssey, and Lutetia referencing an old Latin name for Paris, the ‘Witch City’), Circaea isn’t part of the nightshade family (Solanaceae) at all, but rather a relative of willowherbs and the evening primrose (Onagraceae). It’s generally described as being “not particularly toxic”, so you probably won’t want to be dashing out to gather it up by the armful for pesto. As a plant of woodland glades and edges, it revels in slightly damp, light shade, and can establish large colonies if allowed to grow unchecked, in which situations it might reach its full height of around 60 centimetres, though I’ve rarely encountered it in a garden at more than a third of that size. While its underground rhizomes will take it only so far, its hairy oval seed capsules facilitate any designs it might have on wider conquest; towards the end of summer, it’s not uncommon for the dog owner to find several in the coat of their furry friend.

Although it’s not tiresome to pull out, it’s probably not something the gardener would want to encourage, unless in a woodland setting. That said, when in flower, I find it rather pretty – above the spear-shaped, opposite green leaves a spire-like raceme, rather openly (some might say ungenerously) populated with tiny flowers (reminiscent of some of the less abundantly-floriferous heucheras). The flowers themselves are white, sometimes with a pink tinge, and have two, deeply divided petals.

A large patch of the stuff in your borders is probably not be what you want, then. But if you should catch the odd plant out of the corner of your eye, flowering daintily away in some forgotten leaf litter under a large shrub, you might want to leave it be. Noone likes to run the risk of upsetting an enchantress.

A perfect time to trim the lavender

August 13, 2015 Andrew OBrien

Work in someone else’s garden for any length of time, and you soon become familiar with the rhythms of your clients domestic life – part of them, in fact. So I took in my stride the arrival of a lorry to empty the septic tank. “He usually comes very early, even before you get here”, my client told me, almost apologetically. Whatever the reason for the tardy arrival of the night-soil porter, it was enough for me to know I’d be present for the duration of the fragrant operation. I planned my day accordingly, intending to be as far as possible from the area in question when the time came. Or at least upwind of it.

What a stroke of luck, then, that I should have returned after a week's break to find the lavender going over. In this exposed garden – windy, often sun-baked, with a thinnish layer of soil over flinty clay – Mediterranean plants like to grow leggy. To mitigate this I try my darndest to be ruthless in removing flowers as early as possible so the plants can concentrate on arranging themselves into pleasing, fat pebble shapes. I just have to be convincing when explaining to the client why this is necessary. Nothing convinces the bees – just the one sting today though, and that was only because I knelt on the poor thing.

The first lavender bed was a bit too close to the action. We planted Lavandula angustifolia 'Imperial Gem' – it reaches 40 to 50cm in height, with a deep purple colour to thumb-length flower spikes atop grey green foliage. It also has a good scent, but not that astringent note that you get from the hybrid L. x intermedia hybrids. Today, I think I would have been glad of that. Instead, I made a tactical retreat, and found something to do in another border.

There’s more spiraea to grow up to the right of the hedge at the back. A bit short just now.

Musk mallow

July 31, 2015 Andrew OBrien

It seems to be a month for happening across plants with deeply cut leaves. This cheery customer has made its presence known in several gardens – sadly, not mine – over the past few weeks, having certainly found its way there of its own accord. If God loves a cheerful giver, then the gardener can spare the odd warm fuzzy for the generous self-sower, particularly in the case of one as pretty as Malva moschata f. alba, the white form of the musk mallow.

Standing at around 60cm high (two feet in old money), with five pure white, crepey-textured petals surrounding the typically exotic-looking pistil and stamen arrangement of the mallow and hollyhock family tinged, in this case, with the pale pink of the anthers. Although some of the flowers are born in the leaf axils, a characteristic of this plant is the collection of fat, round flower buds with pointed tips, opening in order from the outer edge towards the centre.

In the border, this achieves an effect of white, butterfly-like flowers floating over frothy fresh green foliage, in much the same way as Cosmos bipinnatus 'Purity', or one of the white flowered forms of Nigella damascene ('Miss Jekyll White', for example), while in height occupying a position somewhere between the two.

Weedy? Not particularly, it would seem, although its prowess at seeding itself about has been referred to above. I think its somewhat refined features might cause the discerning to refer to it being in possession of more ‘garden-worthy’ credentials than certain of its burlier relatives – certainly rather more genteel than Malva sylvestris with its whopping great leaves. Now there’s a plant that invites itself in, smokes your pipe, drinks your brandy and sticks its feet up on your table.

The white musk mallow is an altogether more restrained affair, albeit one that found its own way in uninvited. That said, you can be sure I’ll be saving seed as soon as it appears ripe.

Old lady plants

July 24, 2015 Andrew OBrien

Let’s get something straight at the outset. I have no desire to disparage old ladies. Civilisation, in my opinion, has been built, sustained, and will long survive largely due to the influence of old ladies. Sadly though, and for reasons unfathmomable to me, old ladies don’t, on the whole, get to write history books, and so their part in the shaping of the modern world remains, for the most part, unacknowledged.

However, having thusly tabled my preemptive defence against a charge of disrespect towards the elderly and female, I find myself unable to deny that I have, on more than once occasion, sought to impugn the reputation of a group of ornamental annuals, perennials and shrubs by applying to them the soubriquet ‘Old Lady Plants’ – albeit a pattern of behaviour not seriously indulged in since childhood.

What qualifies as an Old Lady Plant? Anything with large blooms, the blousy, the frou-frou. The mophead hydrangea is an archetype, though the hollyhock and paeony fall comfortably into the same group. Somewhat confusingly, smaller flowered specimens are not excluded, so brightly coloured fuchsias, trailing dwarf campanulas and the charteuse splash of Alchemilla mollis would be equally welcome, as would any flower that you might find scenting soap, or drawer liners. Lavender, and Lily-of-the-valley, then.

But the characteristic possessed of the most excellent recommendation to my childish sense of logic, was that the plant should be found growing in the garden of the old lady who lived on the corner of the street in which I grew up. Old lady? She was probably sixty, if that. You have to hang around a bit longer to be an old lady these days. You can be a mad cat woman as soon as you like, though, unless you’re a feller. In which case, should you find yourself living on your own, you’d best get a dog if you want to avoid suspicion and abuse from the local ragamuffinry.

Looking back, I wonder if it was possible that I was trying to define cottage garden style, while never having heard of the concept? Or perhaps, at the very least, making some effort to distinguish this particular garden aesthetic from the other fashionable look of the seventies and eighties, the one heavily reliant upon bedding plants and pampas grass. I remember proudly tending rows of alyssum and african marigolds along the front edge of the narrow flower beds which edged our back lawn. I don’t remember anything except bare soil between those rows and the fence behind, except a deep red paeony at one end, and a choisya at the other, the latter of which, mum would say, wrinkling her nose, “smells of cats”.

The thing is, having looked with disdain upon these plants in my youth, I now love each and every one. Perhaps I’m slowly transforming into and old lady?

I think I probably flatter myself.

Cut-leaf cranesbill

July 16, 2015 Andrew OBrien

The rear third of my garden is a wilderness, in which long meadow grasses and wildflowers frolic with abandon. I imagine the neighbours must hate it – this being the only part of the garden they can see from their windows. Bill, on the other hand, loves it, sniffing about for traces of fox and cat, and self-medicating by consuming vast quantities of cleavers – which makes him immediately sick – and then reappearing with the fur around his muzzle ebellished with clusters of tiny green seed capsules. I know he will complain with plaintive whines as I pull these free, but the memory of this procedure never seems to deter him from repeated forays into the undergrowth.

The wildflowers here are, of course, not the kind of wildflower that anyone seems to want – certainly not to be found as constituents of the more fashionable of wildflower mixes you might find in a garden centre or online, but rufty tufty native fare. You know – weeds. So if goosegrass isn’t your thing, we can do you buttercup, dock, woundwort, rosebay willowherb, ribwort plantain, and several varieties of thistle. And nettles. Lots of nettles.

And romping through this lot a kind of wild geranium that I haven’t noticed here abouts before. I’m used to working in the company of Herb Robert, with its pink flowers and red stems like strawberry bootlaces (I’m noticing an increasing habit to draw my metaphors from either the confectioners or the cake shop), but what struck me most about this obvious relative of that worthy weed was the discrepancy in size between the leaves (up to two and a half inches round, and so heavily dissected that the lobes appear almost like antlers), and the pink flowers which, by comparison, are tiny. This is Geranium dissectum, the cut-leaf cransebill, and the disparity just mentioned appears ludicrous, like some comic character in a cartoon strip with a burly frame and shrunken head. But the flower itslef, with its is five heart-shaped, sugar-pink petals, contrasting with the noticably hairy sepals, is exquisite.

The Plants for a Future database records a whole host of medicinal uses, both internally and externally, and both the leaves and roots are rich in tannins, and can be used to create a brown dye. All parts of the plant are edible, though it’s probably not something you’d want to seek out as a delicacy.

It’s all gone over now, at least in my garden, doubtless a few weeks early due to the particuarly dry conditions. This is rather a shame as I’d have liked to have got some better pictures of it. Looks like I’ll have to wait until next year, though I have my camera ready in case I catch it lurking in the shade under a hedge somewhere before this summer’s out.

RHS Hampton Court Flower Show 2015, part 1

June 30, 2015 Andrew OBrien

They could at least have turned the fountains on for me

I have been fortunate enough to have spent the past two days at Hampton Court, helping Fibrex Nurseries to set up in the Floral Marquee on Sunday (another gold winning display for them, hurrah!), and attending press day on Monday. 2015 is the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Show at Hampton Court. This is a truly stunning location, bisected by the the Long Water with its fountains, spanned by four pontoons, with the royal palace forming the focal point at the end. No matter how warm it gets – and, to my memory, Hampton Court is always hot and sunny (clearly I’ve blocked out the rainy years) – there’s always a cool breeze by the water, and a shady spot to sit beneath the lime trees which flank it in avenues on either bank, an ideal place to pause and to mull over the many things to see during the day.

This year the Show has been organised into three zones: Grow, Inspire and Feast (or respectively, Plants, Gardens, and Grub, if I was in charge of things. Fortunately for the RHS, I’m not). The first of these, the Grow zone, consists of the plant village, Floral Marquee and Plant Heritage areas, and here you’ll find wonderful plants, details of national collections and a wealth of expertise generously given from many of the best nurseries in the UK. You could easily spend your entire visit here, but just over the water the Inspire zone beckons, playing host to the show gardens and the trade stands, the Festival of Roses marquee and the Country Living pavilion. Further up the path from the smaller Summer Gardens you enter the Feast zone. Initially, I’ll admit I felt a little disgruntled. In the past this whole section has been given over to small gardens, so to discover that half of them had been replaced with cafes and restaurants could give the impression that the horticultural and design aspects of the show are being dumbed down in favour of commercial considerations. However, there’s more to Feast than eateries – the presence of the the Cookery Theatre and a full programme of talks from speakers including Alys Fowler, James Wong and Greg Wallace indicates that the RHS are looking to ramp up their evangelical efforts concerning the link between plot and plate, which can only be a good thing. On Monday, I narrowly missed a demonstration given to a group of schoolchildren by Raymond Blanc in the children’s community garden of Henri Le Worm (I would have loved to have attended, but couldn’t quite tear myself away from the plants in the Floral Marquee).

One final general note before I get on to specifics, which I record here largely for my own benefit in the hope that it might also be useful for someone else. Navigation is a big issue for me around the showground – on past visits I’ve lost my bearings and only discovered a huge section just before I was due to leave. It really helps to carry a map of the Show with you, but if you don’t fancy paying almost a fiver for the catalogue in which it appears (much of which is available for free on the RHS’s excellent website), then use your phone to take a photo of one of the free-standing maps along the main route. Without a map, the rule of thumb is this – if you’ve not yet made your way over the water and to the opposite gate to the one by which you entered, you haven’t seen all there is to see. (Coming from the car park end via the Long Water Gate, the place where I would invariably get confused is a little choke point at the lower end of the Summer gardens, which takes you through an avenue of trees before opening out into an area leading down towards the conceptual gardens and the Thames Gate.)

Onto the gardens. There are over thirty in all over four categories, show, historical, conceptual and summer gardens. Here is a taste of those that made the biggest impact on me.

Green roofed wheelie bins and permeable paving on the Community Street

The Community Street, designed by Nigel Dunnett, illustrates the current RHS campaign, Greening Grey Britain, which is promoting the use of plants to enliven the hard, grey areas of our towns and cities, transforming unloved areas of harsh concrete and paving into healthy, productive and engaging spaces for the whole community. As housing density increases and our natural green space is eroded, this is a vital initiative if we’re to preserve our wellness and sanity in an increasingly crowded world, and I’ve been keen to see how the issues are addressed at the show.

All rather grey on the Community Street

You enter the space through a recreation of a very grey, rather unloved street in Bristol, complete with abandoned car, litter and a fridge in one of the front gardens. Wall art depicts three of the main issues with our grey city space – rainwater runoff and consequent flooding, the urban heat island effect, and particulate pollution of the air. The garden goes on to demonstrate – with many information boards and an army of keen planty evangelists – how an informed use of horticulture coupled with appropriate hard landscaping can combat each of these problems.

Detail from the Community Street

Plenty of places for bugs and bees to set up home on the Community Street

Wildlife friendly hawthorn hedge and log piles on the Community Street

The planting here was magnificently bold, dense and rich, and if Nigel Dunnett takes the props for coming up with the ideas, then great credit must also go to Kitty Wilkins and her army of volunteers for implementing the intricately detailed plans.

Detail from the Macmillan Legacy Garden by Ann-Marie Powell

The Macmillan Legacy Garden is the gentlest tour-de-force. Ann-Marie Powell has created a tranquil, edge-of-woodland space, lush foliage and white birch bark contributing to a soothing pallet of greens and whites – which just happen to be the sponsor's primary brand colours, also including copper/apricot tones from their secondary pallet in the planting, for example with the verbascums and the russet tones in the epimedium foliage.

Detail from the Macmillan Legacy Garden by Ann-Marie Powell

As a response to the turbulent and emotional journey followed by any family whose life has been touched by cancer, it’s a perfect place in which to seek sanctuary, to pick your way through the plants across the ribbons of water which weave through the paving, past the avenue of birches with their seating, and across the stepping stones to the seclusion offered by the softly rounded structure whose surface has been planted with ivies and ferns and other woodland plants.

Detail from the Macmillan Legacy Garden by Ann-Marie Powell

A lush and slightly sinister note is introduced by the arisaemas, and perhaps even the gunnera has a slightly spikey, other-worldly feel which suggests elements of confusion and uncertainty. Maybe it’s easy to read too much into the individual choices of plants, but the overall effect manages to be at the same time soothing and stimulating. Just the kind of place I'd like to wander in, lost in thought.

Detail from the Hadlow College ‘Green Seam’ Garden by Stuart Charles Towner and Bethany Williams

It was interesting to see my old college represented, Hadlow’s ‘Green Seam’ garden, designed by Stuart Charles Towner and Bethany Williams winning Best in Show. This garden presents us with an allegory of how horticulture can play a part in improving the lives of those living in areas of social and economical deprivation, mirroring the work of the Hadlow Group with the Betteshanger Sustainable Parks initiative seeking to bring regeneration to the ex-mining community near Deal in east Kent. Big business and politics, rather than grassroots gardening, but it was encouraging to see the designers illustrate nature’s ability to reclaim post-industrial sites by depicting the colonisation of the old spoil heaps by pioneering wildflower species.

Detail from the Hadlow College ‘Green Seam’ Garden by Stuart Charles Towner and Bethany Williams

Another particularly accomplished effort was Vestra Wealth’s Encore – A Music Lover’s Garden, by Paul Martin. A sinuous path of consolidated hoggin between Corten steel edging winds through a landscape of sandstone rocks and lush planting, accompanied by a narrow rill, before descending into a small amphitheatre for musical performances surrounded by a curved pool.

Detail from Vestra Wealth’s Encore Garden by Paul Martin

Some beautiful rusted steel sculptures nestle among the plants, their shape and form reminding me of pollen grains under the microscope.

Detail from Vestra Wealth’s Encore Garden by Paul Martin

The small space from Squires Garden Centres – Urban Oasis by Mark Charles might not win great plaudits for originality of design, but I loved it.Neat boundary hedges, cottage garden borders, with the centre of the lawn given over to a wildflower meadow and bounded by a mown grass path, and a red brick path leading between twin seating areas to catch the morning and the evening sun, it represents a vision of what is achievable in a typical small domestic garden. A wonderful, wildlife-friendly space.

Detail from Squires Garden Centres – Urban Oasis by Mark Charles

I would have liked to have seen more in the way of community gardens. Not to say there weren’t community spaces – there were some beautifully designed ones incorporating many a thoughtful idea but, as with Chris Beardshaw’s garden at Chelsea this year, they were posh, expensive ones, clearly designed by professional garden designers. While I’m aware that one of the reasons to come to an RHS show is to see how the professionals can push boundaries and use the latest, cutting edge techniques, materials and thinking, I can’t help but think that including more grassroots gardens, created from the ground-up by enthusiastic end users, would help to circumvent the uncomfortable feeling that these gardens are being bestowed upon grateful paupers by professionals, however well informed and intentioned (last year’s A Space to Connect and Grow from Jeni Cairns and Sophie Antonelli was a great example of how to get this right). While I think this could be a valid criticism of spaces like the Community Street and the Vestra Wealth garden, it’s less applicable to the Macmillan Legacy Garden which, while being conceived partly as a communal space and undeniably high end, is not designed as a living space, but more of a therapeutic space rather like the gardens of the Maggie’s Centres.

In past years, there’s been a definite feeling that people without pots of money to throw at the garden were being catered for. I wonder if that might have been lost a bit this year. It would also be good to see more on elegantly practical solutions to the kind of real-world problems that the garden and home can throw up, as with Mike Harvey’s A Room with a View from 2013’s Show, which built a wonderfully terraced garden on the spoil heap of soil excavated for the foundations of a typical home extension.

These small criticisms aside, it was good to see that the Conceptual gardens section is as bonkers as ever. It might not be everyone's cup of tea – not everything here is always my cup of tea, to be honest – but it’s good to see some interesting ideas being explored. I’ve always been fascinated by the concept of synaesthesia, ever since hearing in a university lecture how the composer Oliver Messiaen, who experienced the condition, once demanded that the violins should play a particular section of his score “a little more pink”. So it was fantastic to experience the DialAFlight: Synaesthesia Garden by Sarah Wilson, which presents a heady mix of sensory stimulation with a creative combination of coloured lights, projected trigger words, sculpture and planting, inside a white canvass dome representing the mind of the synaesthete. Sadly I was enjoying myself so much I neglected to take any decent photos (please do let me know if you have any and I’ll feature one or two here, with appropriate credits, of course!).

Another garden I found particularly powerful in this section was Steve Smith’s SMART Vision garden, which portrays the attitudes of society to those suffering from mental health issues by enclosing the entire space in an austere, grey wall, wrapped in yellow and black hazard tape. Through peepholes in the wall you glimpse a tranquil space inside, a white, zen like circle of raked gravel surrounded by lush tree ferns and foliage plants, prehistoric flora that shows the resilience of nature left to its own devices. The inner walls are mirrored, so the space inside appears vast, and a strange feeling of fellowship succeeded the initial shock of discovering that you weren't the only person peering in on spying many other inquiring eyes among the plants.

Detail from Steve Smith’s SMART Vision Garden

Please click here to read the next part of my blog on RHS Hampton Court Flower Show 2015.

RHS Hampton Court Flower Show 2015, part 2

June 30, 2015 Andrew OBrien

Why would you go to a flower show – for the the gardens, or for the plants? It’s true that some people go for the experience – event and retail marketing seems to be all about ‘experiences’ and ‘destinations’ now – but while these are animals I can identify in a crowd, quaffing their fizz* and seemingly more interested in being seen than in seeing, I have little to no real understanding of them. So...gardens, or plants? The show gardens can be inspiring, stimulating, frustrating and disappointing – I’m sure on occasion I’ve felt all of these emotions while pondering a single garden. But as for the plants on displayed in the floral marquee? I’d have no option but to laugh in the face of anyone who would dare to suggest that they are ever anything less than wondrous.

Wonderful textures and plants on the Todd’s Botanics stand

While working in the Floral Marquee on Sunday, I’d spent a lot of time trying not to tread on the trailing parts of Geranium 'Dusky Crug', one of my all-time favourite cransebills, which was on the beautifully planted stand of Todd’s Botanics. All purple, chocolate foliage and soft pink flowers, it’s like a deliciously sepia version of a vibrant garden favourite.

Geranium 'Dusky Crug', Todd’s Botanics

Imagine my delight on finding the very similar Geranium 'Dusky Rose' at Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants – so similar in fact that I’m having trouble telling the difference, and will have to wait till someone more knowledgeable can enlighten me!

Geranium 'Dusky Rose', Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants

Cosmos sulphureum 'Diablo', Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants

The Hardy’s display also featured the fabulously flame orange of Cosmos sulphureus 'Diablo' – I’ll definitely be growing this next year –

Verbascum 'Firedance', Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants

and, while we’re on the subject of the infernal, the metre high flower spikes of Verbascum 'Firedance'.

A few plants appeared to be following me around. This is a common experience at flower shows – you engage with a particular variety, and then can’t help noticing it as you move around the marquee, and even out into the showground.

The first of these was an interesting Rose 'Hot Chocolate', first sighted by me on the stand of Madrona Nursery, and then seen again in the marquee for the Festival of Roses. It’s a floribunda rose with a long flowering season, about 90cm high, with very good disease resistance, striking blooms of a deep coppery red shade on deep green leaves. Yet another for my wish list.

Rosa 'Hot Chocolate', Madrona Nurseries

Rosa 'Hot Chocolate'

Another apparently ubiquitous rose was 'Blue for You'. Not being a huge fan of roses in the lilac areas of the colour spectrum, it’s a source of interest to me that I've managed to end up planting both 'Twice in a Blue Moon' and 'Harry Edland' in our own garden. Perhaps I should go for this one and make it a clear hat-trick.

My next planty stalker was Hydrangea arborescens 'Invincibelle', which looks to me very much like a pink tinged Annabelle. I wonder if it does the green and cream colour change thing like the better known variety?

Hydrangea arborescens 'Invincibelle', The Big Plant Nursery

There was another pink tinged hydrangea on the stand of the Big Plant Nursery, with the vomit-inducing cultivar name 'Love You Kiss'. If you can keep hold of your dinner, however, it’s an attractive lacecap, with a reddish tinge around the rim of the petals.

Hydrangea 'Love You Kiss', The Big Plant Nursery

It’s always good to see local nurseries, and another Kent representative is Plantbase. Graeme had brought his party piece, the terrifying Solamnum pyracanthum, with its violet flowers, glaucous foliage and bright orange spikes. The Sid Vicious of potatoes.

Solanum pyracanthum, Plantbase

There was also my favourite tea tree plant, Leptospermum scoparium 'Red Damask'.

Leptospermum scoparium 'Damask Red', Plantbase

By now, it was probably time to cool off after all these hot colours. Nowhere better for this than the display of heucheras, heucherellas and tiarellas from Plantagogo. I was charmed by the dark purples and silver tones of Heucherella 'Cracked Ice', with its creamy white flowers.

Heucherella 'Cracked Ice', Plantagogo

A similar cooling effect can be had with Heuchera 'Silver Celebration'.

Heuchera 'Silver Celebration', Plantagogo

I was also interested to see the new introduction, Tiarella 'Emerald Ellie' – not a million miles away from 'Sugar and Spice'.

Tiarella 'Emerald Ellie', Plantagogo

While on Sunday I was busy assisting Heather and Fran of Fibrex Nurseries with their pelargonium display, Richard was putting the finishing touches to the adjacent stand featuring their ferns and specimens from the national collection of Hedera (ivies) which they hold. A lush and shady work of art, I’ll be carrying a photograph of this around with me to flourish on the very next occasion (there will be several) when someone looks bored or rolls their eyes upon my suggesting ivies for their dark, north facing wall or fence.

Ivies and ferns, Fibrex Nurseries

I’m keen to go an explore both of these collections on the nursery – if I can just avoid being waylaid by pelargoniums – but the selection on show here demonstrated the range and variety available, and what can be achieved in a small space.

Ferns Asplenium scolopendrium and Adiantum venustrum surround a terracotta pot filled with Hedera helix 'Goldfinch', Fibrex nurseries

Hedera helix 'Ivalace', Fibrex Nurseries

The splendidly named Hedera 'Pink and Curly', Fibrex Nurseries

Hedera helix 'Spetchley', Fibrex Nurseries

And what of the pelargoniums? Here I have to exercise some restraint, else I’d be posting photos of everything in the display!

The first spot goes to regal Pelargonium 'Beryl Reid', with its outrageously frou-frou ruffles – salmon pink with maroon centres. Gloriously flouncy.

Regal Pelargonium 'Beryl Reid', Fibrex Nurseries

Still with the regals, I met two similar varieties, 'Fringed Aztec' and 'Arnside Fringed Aztec', both with large white blooms with respectively red and deep pink markings in the centres.

Regal Pelargonium 'Fringed Aztec', Fibrex Nurseries

Regal Pelargonium 'Arnside Fringed Aztec', Fibrex Nurseries

Possibly as showy, but more delicate, is 'Fairy Orchid', with carmine blotches to the top of the two upper petals, and the characteristic ‘false eyelash’ markings to the centre of the flower.

Angel Pelargonium 'Fairy Orchid', Fibrex Nurseries

Used on the display for its fabulous cut foliage, Pelargonium 'Charity' has vivid green variagated leaves, with an orange citrus scent. The mauve flowers are probably the least spectacular thing about this plant.

Scented Pelargonium 'Charity', Fibrex Nurseries

Scented Pelargonium 'Ardwick Cinnamon', Fibrex Nurseries

My final offering from the Floral Marquee is an unassuming plant, that takes hold of you by stealth. I’m rather fond of its compact habit and small, glaucous leaves, a perfect backdrop to its small white flowers. But its the unexpectedly spicy scent of cinnamon from the crushed foliage that really sets this particular pellie apart. One that needs to be smelled to be believed.

All this has left me with the not unpleasant task of prioritising my plant wish list. I have a feeling that they're not all going to fit back in the greenhouse come winter, but that’s a worry for another day.

Please click here to read the first part of my blog on RHS Hampton Court Flower Show 2015.

* This isn’t to suggest that gardeners eschew the quaffing of fizz. In fact, we’re far from an abstemious lot, and are as good at this as we are at tracking down and consuming cake. It’s just that we do this as an adjunct to viewing gardens and drooling over plants, not an alternative.

Salvia ‘Kate Glen'

June 27, 2015 Andrew OBrien

Salvia plugs on the potting bench. (The beer is for the slugs!)

Those awfully nice people at Unwins have sent me some plants to review.

Having been warned of their imminent arrival, today the postman brought me a small cardboard box continain three healthy looking plugs of Salvia 'Kate Glen'. Unwins are the sole distributor of this variety in the UK, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the plants perform.

I’m assuming that this is the same cultivar of Salvia nemorosa described on the website of Lambley Nursery in Australia, owned by David Glenn, who named the variety after his daughter. If this is the case, a letter 'n' appears to have gone astray somewhere in the journey from the antipodes, but the description of the plants seems to be more or less the same.

I’m particularly excited about these plants as I’ve recently had a run in with some voracious rabbits in one of my client’s gardens – rabbits who stubbornly refuse to read the literature which advises whether or not they should find a particular plant palatable. They’ve had a good go at just about everything, with the exception, I’ve noticed, of the achillea. While I now view lists of rabbit-resistant plants – on many of which salvia appears – with a degree of cynicism, I find that I’m encouraged by the rabbits’ apparent lack of enthusiasm for a plant with strongly scented leaves. Perhaps the salvias, like the achillea, will survive the onslaught of the critters.

Rabbit resistance is all very well, but unless you plant something with some aesthetic merit, you might as well cultivate a field of thistles. Salvia 'Kate Glen purports to reach a good 90cm in height, with bright green leaves on deep purple stems, and two-tone flower spikes – half the total height of the plant – pink in bud at the top, and opening violet lower down. The flowering period is reputedly long – well into autumn, apparently, and the plants are drought tolerant and frost hardy. Having initially potted the plugs on into 9cm pots, I’ll be trialling them in my garden at home before I consider exposing them to a site plagued by fearsome Leporidae. Here, we’ve only the slugs and snails to worry about. And a famously ravenous border terrier.

I’ll post again later on in the summer to let you know how they’re getting on.

Hole Park Gardens

June 13, 2015 Andrew OBrien

To Hole Park near Rolvenden this afternoon, ostensibly to have a good nosey around the gardens under the expert guidance of senior gardener Louise Nicholls, although today I was just as interested in the cake and company. I’ve had cause to observe in the past what a fantastic cadre of gardening folk congregate on Twitter (and lately, Facebook too – though perhaps I’m a little late to the party on that particular platform), and today I got to meet several of them in person. Happily, I can report that, once again, I found them just as friendly, supportive, and knowledgeable in real life as they are online. And to think, someone once said that social media was no good for gardeners.

A gathering of gardeners among the generously airy planting in the Millennium Garden

There are three species of newt found in Britain. Apparently, they all live in here

But first things first - the cake had to be earned, and the prospect of refreshment was held out before us by Lou as an incentive to keep us moving through the garden – a necessary cruelty, since as a group we displayed on more than one occasion an inclination to linger in a particular space, the better to appreciate it in all its fulness. However, the desire to tarry in any one spot being incompatible with the imperative to gain an overview of a large garden within a set period of time, we were kept moving.

Rocky pauses to fondle a geranium

The gardens at Hole Park cover 15 acres, laid out and planted in the inter-war years by the great grandfather of the current owner, and featuring many distinct garden spaces (“garden room” doesn’t seem an appropriate phrase when including lawns, meadows and woodland). These include a tropical border, a sunken Italianate garden sitting between two long herbaceous borders, a lawn with exquisitely pruned standard wisterias, the rockery, camellia walk, wildflower meadows (known as the Policy) and bluebell wood with a brick ice house, and a formal lawn complete with yew topiary, a pool with fountains and a stunning backdrop of the wealden landscape. I made a rough running tally of at least 15 separate spaces – though I’ve probably missed one or two – all bound together by miles of tightly clipped yew hedging and views out into the Kentish countryside. And to keep all of this in check – just two and a half full time staff, including head gardener Quentin Stark. This is bordering on feat of superhuman degree – although I did notice that Lou drinks an awful lot of coffee.

Lou, coffee mug in hand, demonstrating that at least the sundial doesn’t wobble

The estate occupies a position on the map almost exactly half way between Sissinghurst and Great Dixter, although I’m not entirely convinced how useful it is to make a comparison with either of these. In feel and ambiance, it seems to me to be more akin to the gardens of its other near neighbour, Scotney Castle, only without the single, breathtakingly romantic picture-postcard view (the picture postcard view here, from the front of the house with a windmill on the left and a monument on the right, harks back to an earlier age of landscape design). It possesses a similar rolling topography, the sudden, Rousham-like plunge of the land towards the water course in the valley – perhaps a much wilder interpretation of a picturesque landscape than the national trust property – after all, Hole Park is a much later garden. We were of course too late for the magnolias and the bluebells in the woods, but we caught the tail-end of the display of the azaleas and rhododendrons, again providing echoes of Scotney. There’s also a similar interplay between parkland and garden – the more intimate, enclosed spaces opening out onto wide lawns, with the Policy, the dell and the woodland beyond.

The gardeners do a fabulous job of tending the formal hedges, lawns and border in the vicinity of the house. But it’s in the less manicured areas where the magic really starts to happen, along the grassy paths mown through swathes of wildflowers, in the glades and rides in the woodland area, beneath a giant gunnera beckoning from the further side of a pond apparently filled with vichyssoise, and fringed with candelabra primulas. These are the places I want to come back to and explore.

The gunnera and Persicaria 'Red Dragon' framing the pond of leek and potato soup

The long-awaited cake, by the way, was excellent.

With thanks to Louise Nicholls for leading the day, Quentin Stark and Edward Barham and the AllHorts Facebook group for their support.

Lou is planning to trek to Machu Pichu next year on behalf of Marie Curie. Do visit her justgiving page if you’d like to make a donation in support.

Running for Perennial

June 4, 2015 Andrew OBrien

On 12 July 2015 I shall be running the British 10K through the streets of London in aid of Perennial, the Gardeners Royal Benevolent Society. I run regularly – albeit rather slowly – enjoying the time and space it gives me to think things through, and often wondering if there can be any conceivable link between the enjoyment I get from plodding along pavements and country lanes, and that which I feel when engaged in horticultural pursuits. This post has been languishing half written in my draft folder for over a year now. Time to polish it it up and share it with you.

Running and gardening. Two activities you might not consider to occupy much common ground. I enjoy both, though I'm not about to advocate that every gardener should take up running. And I certainly can’t claim ever to have attempted indulging in the one while simultaneously being immersed in the other – in fact, rather than dashing about at breakneck speed on the other end of a hoe, it could be argued that I can be a bit too cerebral in my own garden; it’s good to stop and think, and dream about how the garden could be, but the vision won’t even begin to be realised until you get down to it. And as for gardening while out running, I couldn’t so much as hazard a guess how that might be done.

But, for me at any rate, there are similarities between running and gardening; if not in the outworking of each, then in the processes I observe within myself, as well as in some of the external factors which govern the results of my efforts.

There are three things about running – three limiting factors, if you like. Breath. Legs. Mind. When I get these three in balance and under control, I almost feel as though I’m flying, speeding through the landscape powered by nothing other than sunlight and my own body’s energy, each foot strike simulataneously grounding me to the earth and pushing me off from it. But the three things are not often in balance, and they’re rarely under my control; either I’m not quite sucking in enough oxygen with each breath to power me efficiently through to the next, or my leg muscles are tight; the outside of one knee is grumbling (tight illiotibial band), the inside of the other is sore (tight inner quads), or my feet are thudding into the ground like jack hammers, but with none of that marvellously elastic recoil that powers me along on the good days (tight shins). And, on the rare occasions where I’m breathing well and my legs are springy and strong, my mind will start casting about for problems, running through increasingly neurotic self-diagnostic routines, and trying to convince me that a nice rest by the next field gate would be just the thing, and hardly knock anything off my time at all, if it didn’t help me to run the next leg even faster. The physical factors – hills, weather, ground conditions – can seem as nothing to the combined double whammy of body and brain when I’m out on a run.

As with running, so with gardening. It looks like an entirely physical occupation, but part of the attraction is the constant mental engagement with your garden. You’re continually on the lookout for signs, those points of information that alert you to the presence of a pest, disease, or some form of environmental stress. And, should you be in the fortunate position to have relieved your plants from the limiting factors which threaten to stunt their healthy grown – light, warmth, water, nutrition, the absence of nasty things – then you’ll no doubt be battling physical restrictions – insufficient space, quirks of design and landscaping, lack of time... a seemingly endless list, each item extending an accusatory finger in the direction of the gardener. I ask myself, (trying very hard not to sound too much like Carrie Bradshaw); with my own personal resources, how much of a limiting factor to the development of my garden am I?

That’s a big question, and probably one of the main reasons I’m often to be found standing up to my knees in goosegrass in the middle of a flower bed, apparently lost in reverie. I know my own abilities and vision place a limit on the potential of my garden, but I can take steps to minimise this effect. I can put in the time training, expanding my horticultural skills through reading, pracitising, and talking to more experienced gardeners, and – as with running – I can look after my own personal fitness level. I want to be supple enough to garden well into my old age, so I intend to keep active. I eat a good diet, I run, I stretch – I try not to take my body for granted. I even dabble with yoga from time to time – but if I’m a journeyman gardener, and a pretty bad runner, I’m utterly terrible at yoga. I’ll keep at it, though, in my own (unbendy) way.

I’ve had a few gardening related niggles – pulled muscles, sore knees, tennis elbow, nothing too serious, but enough to remind me how important our bodies are to us gardeners. But while we can do our utmost to guard against the injury and illness that would curtail or even put an end to our favourite activity, sometimes things can happen that are beyond our control – devastating to the keen gardener, and financially crippling to the professional. In such cases – as well as in instances where those dependent on a living in horticulture find themsselves in straightened circumstances for whatever reason – the charity Perennial is there to help, and I’m proud to be able to run for them in July. There are, of course, a wealth of good and deserving causes, but if you’re reading this it’s likely that you have some interest in gardens, and I would urge you to have a look at the Perennial website at perennial.org.uk to see the important work that they do. And if you’d like to sponsor me for the British 10k, please visit my justgiving page here.

RHS Chelsea 2015. Inside the Great Pavilion

May 25, 2015 Andrew OBrien

I’ve spent the past few days on the blog blathering on about the show gardens at Chelsea this year, and have still only scratched the surface, concentrating on some small details in a selection of the main avenue gardens. That’s not to say I didn’t spend time in the with the Artisan and Fresh gardens, but there’s only so much my mind can grapple with before my brain explodes, let alone my cameras memory card. Quite apart from which, the gardens are only part of the story, for, just as a space needs a human presence to qualify as a garden, its need for plants is arguably just as great. (Some argue that it’s entirely possibly to have a garden without plants. They are wrong.) Of course the Great Pavilion at the heart of the Chelsea showground is a true paradise for a plantsperson and, while I can only aspire to that moniker, it’s a source of endless fascination, inspiration and, I’ll admit, a certain degree of bewilderment to me.

I spend a lot of time ricocheting about the inside of the enormous tent, constantly losing my bearings, my attention being focused entirely on the plants, rather than where my feet are taking me. I try to keep a note of which nursery is responsible for which plant but, inevitably, I get carried away, and my camera is full of shots of orphaned specimens, which I then try to locate by the style of writing on the label, or some clue in the corner of the frame.

More informed plant folk will be able to tell you what was new, and what was interesting at Chelsea this year. As for me...well, I can only share with you photographs of those plants that caught my magpie eye, and hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

There were a couple of sock-exploding splashes of blue out on main avenue on the Royal Bank of Canada Garden by Matthew Wilson. One was Iris 'Mer du sud', and the other, seen here on the stand of Bluebell Cottage Gardens & Nursery, was from Anchusa 'Loddon Royalist' – a stunning blue flower, with reddish purple stems and bright green leaves.

Anchusa 'Loddon Royalist'. Bluebell Cottage Gardens & Nursery

The same display featured a chocolate leaved hardy geranium with pink flowers, which reminded me that I still have to buy 'Dusky Crug'. This one is 'Orkney Cherry'.

Geranium 'Orkney Cherry'. Bluebell Cottage Gardens & Nursery

Last year the RHS shows seemed to have been besieged by the admittedly splendid Geum 'Totally Tangerine', so it was pleasing to spend some time in the company of something else - a scarlet, semi-double flowered variety, Geum 'Flames of Passion'.

Geum 'Flames of Passion'. Bluebell Cottage Gardens & Nursery

Harveys Garden Plants had something entirely new to me – an exquisite red-stemmed Solomon’s Seal called, with unerring accuracy but little imagination, Polygonatum odoratum 'Red Stem'...

Polygonatum odoratum 'Red Stem'. Harveys Garden Plants.

...as well as something I seem to see at every RHS show, but of which I never tire, Tiarella 'Sugar & Spice'.

Tiarella 'Sugar & Spice'. Harveys Garden Plants.

The stand of Barnsdale Gardens posed a question in my mind regarding the naming of cultivars with a couple of well known persicarias side by side. Why would you give two such different plants of the same genus, but different species, the identical cultivar name? Persicaria bistorta 'Superba' grows to 90cm tall, with pale pink flowers, while its diminutive cousin Persicaria affinis 'Superba' grows to only 20cm in height. Sounds like a recipe for confusion!

Persicaria affinis 'Superba'. Barnsdale Gardens

Persicaria bistorta 'Superba'. Barnsdale Gardens

On to the stand of Hewitt-Cooper Carnivorous Plants, where I spent some minutes gazing at marvelously hairy. sundews. They look like precisely the kind of thing that would quickly expire in my care.

Drosera binata 'T form'. Hewitt-Cooper Carnivorous Plants

Drosera regia. Hewitt-Cooper Carnivorous Plants

Drosera cuineifolia Hewitt-Cooper Carnivorous Plants

And here’s where I really let myself down. So excited was I to see friendly plants and faces from Kentish parts – Dyson’s from Great Comp – I just snapped away and forgot to get any of the plant details. Still, they’re only round the corner, I have another excuse to go and visit now.

Salvias from Dyson’s Nurseries, Kent

Salvia 'Dyson’s Joy'. Dyson’s Nurseries, Kent

Salvias from Dyson’s Nurseries, Kent

The National Collection of Digitalis is held by The Botanic Nursery in Wiltshire, and their stand was a vision of spikes and spires in all manner of colours and textures. I practically ran up to it.

The Botanic Nursery stand with the plants from the National Collection of Digitalis.

Digitalis purpurea 'Pam’s Choice'. The Botanic Nursery

The texture of Digitalis 'Polkadot Pippa' is something I’d not encountered in a foxglove before, appearing as though somebody had knitted the flower or, better still, made it out of felt. This hybrid perennial foxglove is sterile, which makes for an extended flowering period and a longer lived plant, although it won’t establish colonies of pleasingly random offspring.

Digitalis 'Polkadot Pippa'. The Botanic Nursery

Avon Bulbs had at the very least three things that I’ve added to my plant wish list. Firstly, this honesty, Lunaria annua 'Chedglow', with deep, maroon leaves and almost violet flowers. I suspect it will cross-pollinate with the usual white and purple varieties, but it’s worth the effort, I think.

Lunaria annua 'Chedglow'. Avon Bulbs

Next, Topaeolum tricolor, a fragile-looking climber with vibrant orange, purple and yellow flowers sporting a long spur.

Tropaeolum tricolor. Avon Bulbs

And then I was rather keen on this creamy green allium, which appears to be too lazy to raise its flower above the foliage. I’m not quite sure where or how I’d use it, but it’s got me thinking.

Allium 'Ivory Queen'. Avon Bulbs

No visit to the Grand Pavilion would be complete without several trips to the stand of Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants, this year garnering a truly well-deserved 20th Chelsea gold for Rob and Rosy Hardy who labour so tirelessly to produce plants of such quality. Having been stunned by vivid cerulean blues elsewhere at the show, it was paler shades of that hue that really caught my eye here, notably Amsonia ciliata – a variety of the North American bluestar.

Amsonia ciliata. Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants

Also on the pale blue theme, how about Veronica gentianoides x intermedia? Rosy’s blog informs us that these can be quite variable, with the colour verging on the palest blue, almost a cold white, but the shade selected for the show was bang on the money.

Veronica gentianoides x intermedia. Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants

I can’t help but wonder if all this concentration on blue shades somehow forced my subconcious to compensate by grabbing a shot of the wonderful pink ragged robbin as I left the stand.

Lycnis flos-cuculi. Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants

All this was enough to make my head spin, not to mention to add several pages to the already lengthy tome that is my plant wish list. But my absolute highlight of Chelsea 2015 was being invited by the lovely folk at Fibrex Nurseries to help them with the set up of their display of pelargoniums, of which they hold the national collection. I was enormously relieved to discover that my inclusion in the proceedings didn’t count too dearly against them in the eyes of the judges, and they were able to continue their impressive run of gold medals. Of course, knowing my soft spot for these plants, I have a whole host of images from the Fibrex display, which I’m sure will form the body of another post. But to end this lengthy ramble, here are just a couple.

Pelargoniums from the national collection. Fibrex Nurseries

RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2015, part 2

May 19, 2015 Andrew OBrien

That in which the devil sits

Being the second part of my blogged coverage of RHS Chelsea 2015. Please click here for the first part

Detail from James Basson’s Perfume Grower's Garden in Grasse for L'Occitane

Continuing the theme of water and stone which runs through the gardens at Chelsea this year, James Basson has created A Perfumer’s Garden in Grasse for sponsors L’Occitane. Modelled around the communal space of a traditional Provencal lavoir, aromatic herbs and flowers tumble about in the semi-arid soil around a stone edged rill which feeds the main pool. For a Kentish gardener who spends much of his time keeping lavender in its fluffy, juvenile state, it was incredibly refreshing to see the Mediterranean plants given the freedom to grow long and leggy – you could almost imagine them shaking themselves free of the sandy ground and taking a loping stroll about the garden.

Detail from James Basson’s Perfume Grower's Garden in Grasse for L'Occitane

A small, blue-topped cafe table and chairs sit invitingly in the shade of an olive grove, while low mounds of thyme border the water channel, the stones of which provide a home for foliose lichens. Details, again.

Detail from James Basson’s Perfume Grower's Garden in Grasse for L'Occitane

The weather was pretty filthy while I stood here. But I was imagining it in the summer sun, the air filled with hum of bees and the complex bouquet of smells from the herbs. A place for midsummer dozes, poetry and...other things. Magic.

Detail from James Basson’s Perfume Grower's Garden in Grasse for L'Occitane

I’ve long been a fan of Chris Beardshaw’s show gardens, particularly impressed by the way he combines beautiful and practical gardens with community spaces. In fact, I think it’s the way that he puts communities of people at the heart of his design that informs the whole process and brings integrity and meaning into the spaces he creates. And if that sounds like waffle, it isn’t – gardens are entirely about people, utterly anthropocentric. Even Dan Pearson’s is a managed space. Chris’s Healthy City Garden for Morgan Stanley has been created for a community project in Poplar, East London, and it will be installed there once Chelsea is over. It’s a modern take on a formal knot garden, referencing the area’s historic ties with the shipping industry.