We made our monthly visit to John’s Garden at his Ashwoods Nursery quite early in the month and little did we know what an unexpected treat we were in for! I’ll return to that at the end.
The first photo shows what a wonderful sunny sky we had as we arrived, but this was a little confusing because it was so cold.
We were expecting to see plenty spring flowering bulbs and as John breeds hellebores (the legendary Ashwoods Strain) we were anticipating dozens of absolute beauties wherever we wandered.
So now for the hellebores!
John grows some unusual coloured Fritillaria imperialis and several other shade loving spring flowers, blooming away before the shade from deciduous trees increases with the opening of leaf buds.
This clump of cardamine looked so special caught in the sunlight with the canal as a backdrop.
Trees and shrubs always feature strongly at John’s Garden whatever time of year we visit, with some shrubs in flower when we visited in March.
Birches shine out strongly in John’s Garden as well as several other trees, both deciduous and evergreen.
Shadows of trees still in their silhouette forms cast beautiful shadows across the close cut grass.
The special treat I mentioned earlier will finish off our visit well. John is a well-known collector and breeder of hepaticas, little delicate beauties of deciduous woodland edges. The treat was that John had opened up his greenhouse containing his private collection of literally hundreds of gentle coloured specimens all in terracotta pots. John was there potting up seedlings in readiness for shows and plant fairs and we had a long chat with him when he explained his obsession and warned us about it. Jude has always wanted to have a go with these and John kindly shared his advice. He advised us to start with the nobilis type so obviously we came home with a selection, some budding up nicely.
Hearing such an enthusiast sharing his love of these specialities was an heartwarming experience.
greenbenchramblings 