Month: August 2022

A warm weekend in the middle of July saw us driving towards the Shropshire and Staffordshire border to visit an NGS open garden.

Little did we know how small the garden was. The driveway seemed quite long for an estate house but when we went into the back garden we were quite surprised. We could see the whole garden in one view, just mixed plant borders around a tiny lawn just big enough to accommodate a small bistro set at its centre.

Unperturbed I set about taking some photos to try to find points of interest. Here they are. Coffee and cake stretched our visit to half an hour!

We certainly appreciated the lilies and roses.

The lilies and roses are integrated into the mixed borders around the lawn. In amongst them are lots of perennials and occasional biennials.

A few interesting little touches gave the borders a lift.

So we did enjoy this little garden after all and it goes to show that give a patch a chance and there be more to it than expected.

The last day of July this year was a strange day as our good friend Mark Zennick handed over the reins of his superb collection of Day Lilies to two ladies with a love of these wonderful plants.

The collection usually has between 250 and 300 different hemerocallis and we now have a fair collection at home probably about thirty or so, all bought from Mark at his New Hope Gardens nursery. They are so reliable and easy plants to look after.

To celebrate this last visit to see Mark with his collection I am sharing a gallery of some of our favourites there.

We hope that the new owners of this amazing collection give everyone a chance to visit New Hope and perhaps purchase a few more hemerocallis to grow in their gardens.

As this is our final year opening our garden under the auspices of the NGS, we are reaching important milestones. We have already held our final Open Day and now we have entertained our last group visit to our garden. A wonderfully cheerful WI group of 21 spent a very warm, sunny evening discovering the delights of our garden and the delights of Jude’s cakes.

There was so much laughter and several members of the group commented on how happy the garden made them feel.

One visitor wrote in the Visitors’ Book, “A very interesting fascinating garden” and another “A very enjoyable evening, so much to see and admire, a credit to you both.”

So that really was the end of an era, ten years of opening our garden for NGS Open Days and visits from groups, mostly gardening clubs but also wildlife societies, U3A groups, WIs and many individuals and couples. We did this partly to share our patch but also to raise money for the NGS nursing and health charities.

All of our fundraising events will finish by the end of this year, as we still have six garden talks to present to garden clubs around the Marches and and North Wales during the autumn and early winter.

The last time we visited the gardens at Trentham on the outskirts of the city of Stoke-on-Trent was just after the Covid 19 lockdown period and we were so disappointed. The lack of volunteers to help the employed gardeners seemed to be at the root of it but during that time the whole complex came up for sale.

We recently thought we would return in the hope of seeing enough of an improvement to make the journey worthwhile.

Things had improved but invasive weed problems still persisted with mare’s tail, annual weed grasses and rosebay still spoiling borders.

The best part now is the lakeside walk where meadow planting by Nigel Dunnett is once again providing colour and attracting pollinators.

The area designed by Piet Oudolf is showing signs of its previous glory but you need to look past the weeds which is so disheartening! Here are a few photos.

Similarly the original Italian Garden redesigned and planted by Tom Stuart-Smith is spoilt by so many weeds, but again it is possible to find some joy there.

So we did see some hopeful signs of revival on this visit to Trentham Gardens but sadly still plenty of disappointment. We will return in the future and hope for better things to come.