Month: March 2018

Plealey Garden Party – a look back to summer

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date March 26, 2018

It often feels good to look back to a summer’s day especially when we are in the grips of an exceptionally long and cold winter. We had been asked by the organisers of the Plealey Garden Party to set up a stall to sell some of our plants. So we prepared our seedlings and young plants from cuttings and nurtured them until the event, when we priced them up, spruced them up and boxed them up for the journey to the other end of our hamlet.

The day of the garden party dawned bright and sunny and warmed up as the day moved on, perfect weather for it! This is the highlight of the hamlet’s year when all fifty households get together with friends, relatives and visitors from nearby villages for an afternoon. The afternoon also raises money for local charities. It is usually held in Well Lane but builders working along it prevented this from happening in 2017. Luckily a resident volunteered her garden for this one.

We loaded up one of our neighbours'(Chris and June) Landrover with trays of plants and Chris delivered them for us as we took a leisurely wander down the road following the trail of bunting. The vehicle certainly made life so much easier for us.

We put our folding table together and laid the plants out as we planned how to display them to look enticing or at least at their best. We were situated in the beautiful dappled shade of old apple and pear trees which was to prove a boon as the day warmed up.

In a short while we were all set and stood back to admire our handiwork. We were pleased with our efforts and hoped the sun would bring out the visitors/punters.

This is the view we had from our seats behind our plants, and the welcoming view for the visitors.

The stallholders waited patiently for the tea party to be declared officially open and the people arrived, mostly young families and couples. The local ukelele band burst into life and entertained us all afternoon, and luckily they thought to bring along a gazebo to protect themselves from the sunshine or the rain just in case.

The weather brought in a good crowd who stayed for a long time and enjoyed the refreshments in the hot weather. The tables were beautifully decorated with small posies from the garden.

A popular visitor to our hamlet’s event was this horse and cart which we often see passing by our front garden. What a delightful and peaceful mode of transport to explore the narrow country lanes around Plealey.

It turned out to be a very successful afternoon with lots of visitors who spent plenty of money that was then sent to the chosen charities. Next year the party will be back in its usual location of Well Lane so we hope the success continues.

Tags community, community spirit, garden parties, garden party, Plealey, village community, village life

flowering bulbs garden design garden photography gardening gardens gardens open to the public hardy perennials irises light quality National Trust ornamental grasses ornamental trees and shrubs shrubs spring bulbs The National Trust trees Winter Gardening winter gardens

A Favourite Winter Garden – Dunham Massey

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date March 18, 2018
3 Comments on A Favourite Winter Garden – Dunham Massey

This will be our third visit to the relatively new winter garden at Dunham Massey, a National Trust property in Cheshire, our neighbouring county to the north of our home county, Shropshire. The leaflets concerning the garden refer to it as a “Curiosity Garden”, while inside is written, “Forget hibernating until spring, Dunham Massey’s Winter Garden is wide awake with colour.”

The leaflet then invites us to “Take a refreshing walk in the Winter Garden along meandering paths with shocking red cornus and brilliant white birch trees trees glittering in the winter sun. Discover bright winter berries, late flowering scented shrubs and thousands of snowdrops and iris in the new year.”

We approached the winter garden by meandering along gravel paths across a shallow valley, when upon passing through the first red-bricked outbuildings we discovered some of the best pleaching we had ever seen. It stops us in our tracks on every visit.

The pleached limes look a few decades old and possess the ubiquitous knobbles from where the new wands of growth spurt in the spring after their annual pollarding.

Shrubs come into their own in the winter season with their coloured stems, their scent and beautiful hanging flower clusters.

Early flowering bulbs add much of the colour in the garden in February. Sunlight catches them and highlights their bright colours.

All winter gardens open to the public make strong features of trees with coloured, textured bark, Betulas, Acers and Prunus.

Shrubs with coloured stems provide effective partner planting for these trees, especially Cornus and Salix varieties. The gardeners at Dunham Massey are adept at transparency pruning, effectively lifting the akirts of shrubs and small trees to expose their trunks and lower branches.

The one plantingcategory that sorts out the best winter gardens from the average is the good creative use of ground cover. It is all too easy to use bark mulch but there are good interesting plants that can cover the ground and add new dimensions to planting schemes. Dunham Massey is on the way to sorting this well, using Carex, Bergenia, Ophiopogon, ferns and Pachysandra.

So there we have it, a thoroughly inspiring visit to one of our favourite winter gardens.

Tags acers., bergenias, betula, birches, carex, cornus, dogwoods, ferns, flowering bulbs, groundcover, shrubs in winter, snowdrops, winter, winter garden, winter gardening, witch hazels

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A canal-side garden in winter – John’s Garden Part 1

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date March 12, 2018
2 Comments on A canal-side garden in winter – John’s Garden Part 1

We have visited “John’s Garden” before in the height of summer and really enjoyed it, so much so that we were determined to re-visit at different times of the year. We imagined it would be an effective all-year garden. Mid-February and John opened his garden on a cold and wet winters day, so we went along with garden-loving friends Pete and Sherlie.

We started with a hot mug of coffee in the nursery coffee shop to warm us up, so with added warmth and lots of excitement and anticipation we wandered down the drive from Ashwood Nurseries to his own 3 acre-garden.

The garden has the advantage of boasting a canal, the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal, running along its length – not many gardeners could say that about their patch!

An unusual hedge greeted us as we entered the garden, a long cloud pruned hedge, beautifully sculpted. A slate pathway at its end took us into a colourful area full of winter interest. Hamamelis and small deciduous trees were the stars, supported ably by ferns, bergenias, snowdrops and a variety of small-leaved shrubs trained as spheres.

We left this little garden behind and crossed an open lawned area dotted with topiary specimens and trees with interesting bark, coloured, textured or peeling. We joined up with the gardens bordering the canal, the sort of background gardeners can only dream of.

After a close up look at these trees and touching their bark, we followed the canal-side borders into the main gardens. Here grasses mingled with dogwoods and Willows, both pollarded and coppiced to enhanced their stem colours. Conifers of all sorts of shapes, colours and sizes began to appear here becoming strong features of this garden during the winter months. John is a master at transparency pruning which brings out the trees attributes. Interestingly he prunes both deciduous trees and shrubs and coniferous specimens too, which makes them look so much more interesting and they add so much to borders.

John is also a master of topiarising shrubs to emphasise their beauty and give structural elements throughout the garden. All sorts of conifers and evergreen shrubs have been given this treatment.

In part two of my post all about our winter visit to John’s Garden, we will move along the canal borders before returning along the opposite side of the patch, while along the way discovering a pool, sculpture and a terrace and lots more exciting plants and plant pairings.

Tags cloud pruning, conifers, creative pruning, deciduous trees, garden sculpture, hamamelis, outdoor sculpture, shrubs in winter, snowdrops, topiary., transparency pruning, winter, winter garden, winter gardening, winter gardens, witch hazels

garden photography gardening gardens ornamental trees and shrubs outdoor sculpture spring bulbs trees Wales Winter Gardening winter gardens woodland woodlands

The Dingle Garden in Welshpool – February

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date March 7, 2018
1 Comment on The Dingle Garden in Welshpool – February

Back to Welshpool to explore The Dingle Gardens for February, we expected little change since our January visit as the weather had remained very similar.

We were greeted by a stunning wooden owl sculpture! Soon we noticed there were lots of signs of new growth, buds forming on trees and shrubs and a few beginning to burst into leaf.

Rhodendrons and Azaleas have strong looking buds both leaves and flowers showing well.

Some of the many small evergreen shrubs are showing off new fresh growth with Hebes sporting new coloured foliage along with some conifers who show off new coloured needles.

We spotted one Buddleja which was holding onto seed heads from last autumn alongside fairly advanced fresh silver foliage. We wondered what would happen to this growth if a frost suddenly covered it.

A few plants had splashes of green showing where leaf buds were beginning to burst, especially Hydrangeas

We didn’t expect to come across many flowers but there were a few to delight the eye and sometimes the nose too.

The bracts and tiny flowers of Euphorbias were brightening up showing glaucous and lime green colours.

So February proved to be more interesting than we had predicted. We hope to see the first signs of spring on our next visit in March.

Tags conifers, deciduous trees, gardens of Powys, gardens of Wales, Powis, Powys, rhododendrons, shrubs in winter, The Dingle Welshpool, Welsh gardens, winter, winter garden, winter gardening

colours flowering bulbs garden design garden photography gardening gardens grasses hardy perennials irises light light quality ornamental grasses ornamental trees and shrubs roses Shrewsbury Shropshire shrubs South Shropshire spring bulbs Winter Gardening winter gardens

My Garden Journal 2018 – February

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date March 1, 2018
2 Comments on My Garden Journal 2018 – February

Part two of my 2018 Garden Journal sees us still freezing cold and struggling to get time in the garden.

I opened my February entries by noting, “February is the month when we feel that the quality of the light improves and makes us feel better and there are definite signs of the days lengthening. Early bulbs begin flowering and others are showing strong leaf growth.”

I next sought out another quote from Dan Pearson’s book, “Natural Selection” and was pleased to find this one, “Making room for the winter garden is every bit as important as managing a garden that draws your attention in the dark months.”

Turning over to the next double page spread I write about newly acquired plants.

“It is always an enjoyable time planting newly acquired plants but it is an extra-special experience doing so in February. We were delighted to find good healthy specimens of two fastigiate plants, a Taxus baccata “Fastigiata Robusta” and an Ilex crenata “Fastigiata”. The only two fastigiate plants we have already established at Avocet are a Berberis and an Oak, Berberis thunbergia fastigiata atropurpurea “Helmond Pillar” , (a tall thin shrub with a long thin name!” and Quercus palustris “Green Pillar” which despite its name is grown for its deep red autumn colour.”

“We also recently planted a Viburnum with a very different growth habit to our fastigiate purchases. It is a low growing shrub with a very open, airy growth and sweetly scented flowers in April. It is also described as “almost evergreen”, so we will wait and see exactly how ours behaves. We already have a good collection of Viburnums around our Avocet patch.”

Some of my watercolour sketches of Hellebores and details of their petals feature on the next page.

“Hellebores peak in February adding a richness with the deep reds and purples as well as cheeriness with their yellow flowers.”

“I love turning up each flower to reveal its beauty, its colours and markings of spots and streaks.”

On the opposite page I looked at some of our grasses with winter interest and share some photos of them.

“In late February we begin to cut down “deciduous” grasses, choosing the right time to avoid cutting through this year’s new growth. Evergreen grasses especially varieties of Carex come into their own especially when partnered with evergreen foliage plants such as ferns, bergenias and arums.”

Moving on to the final double page spread for February, I considered coloured stemmed Dogwoods and a look at roses as they give their final points of interest before they are pruned and begin to grow anew for this year.

“The coloured stems of Dogwoods add so much colour to the winter borders. We use them to catch the rays of the low sun which helps them to glow and liven up our garden.”

I finished off my February journal entries by featuring roses and a very special plant, special because it is a dogwood that occurred in our garden as a chance seedling of Midwinter Fire crossed with one of our other Cornus plants. We have grown it on and now take lots of cuttings hoping to bulk it up. We hope to be able then to sell them at our open days. Very exciting!

I wrote, “Our Cornus Midwinter Fire throws up new plants from runners and occasionally a few from seed. The runners are identical to the parent plant but the seedlings can vary a lot. We pot the seedlings on and then plant them out on our allotment plot to allow us to identify “star plants”. We have one which is far redder than its parents and has better autumn colour. We are propagating these (see below). We have named it Cornus “Arabella’s Crimson” after our granddaughter.”

My final page is about roses and yellow flowers of the February garden. The yellow flowers are Jasminum nudiflorum, Cornus mas and a pale yellow rose bud. I wrote “Sparkling spots of yellow flowers brighten up the February weather, fighting against this month’s greys.”

“Late February is the time when we begin pruning our bush roses in readiness for the new growing season. We always find wrinkled rose hips and even the odd flower bud.