greenbenchramblings

Back to John’s Garden for our eighth visit of the year. At home we continue to struggle with a long drought period with extra high temperatures, so we looked forward to studying a garden where watering is allowed and carried out.

After a quick coffee from the “Oss Box” and suitably refreshed we took off on our journey.

In the borders in front of the glasshouse we were immediately impressed by the grasses which although looking such a good feature in their own right they also enhance anything they grow with.

John likes to plant rivers of grasses to link areas of planting and encourage your eye to move through the borders.

We kept our eyes open for other grasses throughout the rest of the garden and found many good specimens and groupings.

The lawn grass varied in colour from beige to emerald green. Borders get watered frequently and any overspray goes onto the grass alongside. Any grass further away gets baked! The close up photo of a Verbena bonariensis looks impressive against the dead looking grass area. The yellow grass looks good with this beautiful weed too.

We will now look out for some more distant views along borders and down the garden.

By planting perennials with well chosen shrubs enhances both.

I will finish off with a few of my favourite shots taken on that day in July. The first pair are all about colour!

The second pair are all about

Our next visit to John’s Garden will be sometime in September.

As promised in my report on our June issue of our monthly visit to John’s Garden, I am moving on now to look at his wildlife gardens.

After looking around John’s Garden we followed a grassed pathway with birches to our left and a few other specimen trees to our right such as Acer griseum and Salix britenzis. The path took us up a slope towards large areas of colourful meadow.

In some areas a particular plant takes over giving swathes of colour as below where yellow dominates one place.

By following our mown grass path around and through the meadow we occasionally came across features designed to attract the wildlife such as logpiles and insect hotels. Logpiles are excellent at attracting beetles as well as mammals, amphibians and all sorts of minbeasts, but most importantly of all beetles. such as Violet Ground Beetles which are superb pest controllers. As for Insect Hotels they attract insects, birds, amphibians and mammals who find there shelter food and places to rear their young.

This is a wonderful place for wildlife with well chosen wildflowers and a mix of grasses. In places Yellow Rattle had been sown to reduce the amount tough grass species and let more wildflowers take hold.

When we returned to John’s Garden at Ashwood Nursery for our July visit, we were looking forward to seeing a garden in the drought which had been watered as it is allowed to water plants here as in the nursery itself.

This first set of pictures shows the part of Adam’s Garden closest to the main garden. Here are the loveliest of plant groups.

We next passed through the little wooden gate into the main section of John’s Garden and straight away we were aware of the difference between grass next to the borders which have been watered and the rest of the grass. Water overspray has kept the areas closest to borders green and healthy looking whereas the remaining grass is brown and totally dried out.

The first area we came across is home to many ferns shrubs and other shade loving perennials.

John uses lots of conifers throughout his garden and trims them to give them such strong characters. Colour combinations are a great strength of John’s gardening skills.

The patio area is so full of strong colour this month as it is every month with an area of brightly planted containers and selections of aeoniums and pelargoniums.

I love aeoniums and have built a large collection and likewise Jude has a collection of pelargoniums. We were pleased to see these two which we have not added to our collections yet, Aeonium canariense palmense and Pelargonium “Bridget Stisse”.

I will conclude this July report on our monthly visit to John’s Garden with a few general shots, but first here are a couple of colourful specimens.

Two colourful views along borders.

We can now look forward to our August tour of this most amazing place.

We made our way out towards the West Midlands from our home in South Shropshire on 23rd May on what was to become a warm, bright day. As has become our habit on arrival we ordered coffees from the converted horsebox on the grassed area where picnic tables allowed us to sit outside for coffee in the fresh air. The horse box is called ‘The Oss Box’ and is a converted horse box with the characteristics of a vintage Citroen van.

Once refreshed we made our way through Adam’s Garden, this time keeping to the left side boundary fence where a beautifully fresh looking meadow of fine mixed grasses was coloured in with purple lupins and shining yellow meadow buttercups.

At the end of the long thin meadow we encountered two beautifully planted mixed borders.

Iris were definitely strongly featured in John’s Garden on this visit, showing some rich coloured specimens deserving of close up study. The first two photos show examples of bearded iris but the third with their much flatter flowers are Iris ensata which enjoy moister conditions. Bearded iris much prefer to live in dry patches in the garden.

One of the elements of this garden that help make it special is that there is beauty in the detail but equally in the long views. You can concentrate on the detail of a plant then look up and be absorbed by the beauty of a long or wide view.

Bright colours always managed to lift a planting area especially on bright days when such colours glow. Orange is perhaps the strongest of all such colours

We will return in June with perhaps another bright blue sky day.