Category: garden design

A Bouquet for May

May has been overall cooler than we expected and wished for and it has been far wetter than we had hoped for and wanted but the garden has loved it, revelling in the dampness and the special quality of the light that late spring/early summer delivers. This light makes the gardener feel happier too. Neither Jude the Undergardener nor I can cope with dull weather very well.

Bluebells and Bowles Golden Sedge sit on the shower room window sill, whilst in the lounge fireplace Aquilegias, Red Campion, Cow Parsley, Bistort and Wallflowers add life to the slate fireplace. These bouquets illustrate how we balance cultivated plants with our own natives.

Growth is lush – greens are rich. Flowers burst with bright colours and are generous with their exuberance. Enjoy my May gallery. Just click on any shot and follow the arrows.

Tags foliage, fruit and veg, fruit and vegetable growing, garden photography, gardening, grown your own, May, outdoor sculpture, shrubs, spring bulbs

colours garden design garden photography gardening hardy perennials ornamental trees and shrubs Yorkshire

Stillingfleet Lodge Gardens – a very special place.

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date May 26, 2013
5 Comments on Stillingfleet Lodge Gardens – a very special place.

While in Yorkshire last summer we visited a small and very special garden, full of ideas to be taken home. Ideas on planting and design. This is a garden of many “rooms” each with its own character and atmosphere. Stillingfleet Lodge Gardens, just 6 miles south of the city of York, has been described by Alys Fowler as “One of the country’s finest cottage gardens.”

It is a garden where the plantsmanship and passion of the owner is felt and can be touched. She works closely with nature and understands how caring for a garden and caring for wildlife should go hand-in-hand.

Look carefully at the picture below and see if you can spot a delicate iris.

We were particularly taken with the meadows as they included some interesting additions beyond native species. At the time of our visit the last few flowers were left on the top of the flower stalks of Camassias in whites, creams and blues. We were interested to see that Rosa rugosa were planted in the meadows. When we spoke to the gardener she informed us that they were simply strimmed down along with the grasses and herbaceous materials and they re-grew each spring, flowering successfully every year.

Of all the many garden rooms we discovered we particularly liked the yellow/golden garden full of bright foliage and yellow flowers. The overall feel was of being inside a chartreuse world glowing and warm.

Other areas were more formal with cut box edging, neat lawns and rills. There was a veritable feast of seats of all descriptions on which to rest and absorb all the different atmospheres in these rooms. In complete contrast to the formal gardens were the informal pond and wildlife meadows.

As usual a particular favourite sitting place was the tea shop! Situated in a secluded courtyard with gentle sculptures and calming borders the teashop lived in a beautiful old outbuilding. To illustrate what a friendly place Stillingfleet Lodge is we only have to go into the teashop. Here there is all you need to make tea or coffee and plates of fresh, home baked cakes and biscuits and an honesty box with a price list alongside. True faith in the honest character of the visiting gardeners. Work by local crafts people was also beautifully displayed here.

Tags foliage, foliage plants, garden photography, gardening, organic gardening, shrubs, Vale of York, Yorkshire

colours garden design garden photography gardening Hardy Plant Society HPS ornamental trees and shrubs shrubs spring gardening

A very special honeysuckle!

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date May 19, 2013
5 Comments on A very special honeysuckle!

Mention honeysuckle to anyone and the immediate image that forms in our minds is the scented clambering climber. Mention honeysuckle to gardeners and they will also think of the winter flowering scented shrubs such as Lonicera purpusii or Lonicera frangantissima.

But just look at this beauty growing in our back garden. Delicately scented pink flowers that resemble miniature lilac blooms on a scraggy untidy growing shrub. It is in flower now in May and will have red berries shining along its stems in the autumn where its flowers are now.

We have been enjoying its colour and scent each spring for the last 10 years and totally forgotten its name. We decided this year to find out what it was. The answer was to take a few photos along to our Shropshire Hardy Plant and ask Joe our plant guru. I thought it was a Lonicera (honeysuckle), Jude the Undergardener thought it was a Syringa (lilac) and other Hardy Plant friends thought it was a Daphne.

Joe had a close look and came up with the ID after just a few seconds thought. Lonicera rupicola var. syringantha, a honeysuckle with flowers like a lilac. It grows untidily to about 7 or 8 feet so ours is well on its way to being fully grown. Several hardy planters have asked for cuttings which we need to take in June, so it will be a productive shrub this year.

Enjoy my gallery of photos of this special shrub and imagine its scent. Just click on any pic to get started.

Tags flowering shrubs, gardening, honeysuckle, lonicera, shrubs

colours garden design garden photography gardening hardy perennials spring gardening

Primroses – more unsung heroes of the spring garden

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date May 15, 2013
7 Comments on Primroses – more unsung heroes of the spring garden

Following on from my posts about celandines and pulmonarias I am now urging us all to take more notice of primroses and all their spring-flowering cousins with which we can grace our spring borders.

The most beautiful of all are our natives, the Wild Primrose, the Oxlip and the Cowslip. Plant these in your garden and if they like you they will gently spread and wherever they ends up they will never look out-of-place. The primrose will flower earliest of the pair but the cowslips and oxlips will not be far behind. We have clumps of our natives throughout our garden and look forward with great expectations each spring.

There are so many cultivated relatives of these natives and relatives of plants from around the world that you can have so many different forms and colours. If you are lucky you will find that some cross with the natives and produce new colour strains.

On a recent visit to the RHS garden up in Yorkshire, Harlow Car, we found many different ones and were amazed in particular by the miniature jewels in the alpine house and in the alpine features around it. My next post will feature these.

Tags cpwslips, garden photography, gardening, oxlips, primroses, spring, spring garden

colours garden design garden photography gardening hardy perennials spring gardening

Pulmonarias – unsung heroes of the spring garden.

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date May 11, 2013
15 Comments on Pulmonarias – unsung heroes of the spring garden.

Some plants become taken for granted and fail to be fully appreciated. I recently posted about celandines and got lots of favourable comments, so today I shall feature the wonderful pulmonarias with their subtle flowers and unusual foliage.

Here is the classic pulmonaria seen in so many British gardens with flowers in both pink and blue on the same plant and bristled leaves splodged with silver. We grow them in almost every border in our patch but they really prefer a little shade.

The best way to sing the praises of pulmonarias and hopefully encourage a few more gardeners to go out and get some for their own gardens is to put together a little gallery of photos of our plants to show their subtle beauty.

Just click on a photo and follow the journey to see if you are convinced.

Tags foliage, foliage plants, garden photography, gardening, pulmonarias, spring, spring flowers, spring garden

colours flowering bulbs fruit and veg garden design garden photography garden wildlife gardening grasses hardy perennials Land Art ornamental grasses ornamental trees and shrubs outdoor sculpture photography Shropshire shrubs spring bulbs spring gardening wildlife

A Bouquet for April

At last spring has arrived in the garden and taken it by storm. Buds are bursting, birds are nesting and bees buzzing searching the blooms.

Any bouquet for April will have to embrace flowering bulbs.

And how about adding a few bursting buds of trees and shrubs? Our miniature chestnut, the sweetly scented daphne flowers and the froth of snow-white amelanchier flowers.

All around the garden fresh fruit blossom promise beautifully scented and delicious, delicate flavours. The pinks of apple blossom and whites of plums. Oh so tasty!

The insects are appreciating these new signs of life too, in particular the bees and butterflies. This little bee knows that there is something good awaiting him inside the tulip once it opens. He is just a centimetre or so long and coloured a rich gingery orange.

I shall finish off by inviting you to enjoy a little gallery of garden delights taken on the last day of April.

Dusky pink primula hides in arum and stipa leaves.

Copper sculpture with copper leaved phormium.

Kingcups on the dge of the wildlife pond.

Tags amelanchier, apples, foliage, fruit and veg, fruit blossom, fruit., garden photography, garden wildlife, gardening, grasses, insects, ornamental trees, outdoor sculpture, sculpture, spring bulbs, spring flowers, spring garden

colours garden design garden photography gardening ornamental trees and shrubs shrubs

Flowering Quince

At the bottom of our drive alongside the gateposts we grow a beautiful flowering quince. It grows alongside a low wall and its cheery blooms peek through the trellis that sits atop the stonework.

It is a very friendly, bright and cheerful plant to say welcome to visitors.

It flowers often throughout the year but at the moment it looks splendid as the first flush of blooms were killed by ice and snow and remain as mauve mummified blooms alongside vibrant fresh red blooms.

With the sun shining through the blooms the red is even brighter.

The new buds perch along the bare branches like little birds on a twig.

Then the buds extend ready to burst.

So that is the flower that says welcome to our home and garden! There is only one problem with it – it has long vicious spines awaiting the unsuspecting gardener.

Tags flowering quince, flowering shrubs, garden photography, gardening, shrubs

colours garden design garden photography gardening hardy perennials Winter Gardening winter gardens

Celebrating Celandines

Some plants are taken too much for granted and do not get the recognition they deserve. The celandine is just such a plant. Rarely does it find itself in a top ten favourite plant list But when it appears in spring it is a very special plants worthy of celebration. Along our lane sides they shine looking like gold sovereigns glowing in the fresh green of the new year’s grasses.

In our garden alongside the central path sits a bronze leaved selection found by the one and only Christopher Lloyd in a patch of our native celandine in his own garden, Great Dixter. It is called Brazen Hussy and it has the shiniest foliage I have ever seen. It glows so much that taking a photo of it upsets the camera’s metering system and it seems impossible to show the depth of the purple colouring. We love it. We have patches along the water’s edge in our wildlife pond and in the shade border.

We have an orange-flowered variety which has not inherited the family’s ability to spread and in some people’s minds become a nuisance. It keeps us on tenterhooks each spring – we think we have lost it but just as we have given up hope it suddenly springs into rich orange flowers.

Tags foliage, foliage plants, garden photography, gardening, spring flowers, winter gardens

colours garden design garden photography gardening hardy perennials spring gardening Winter Gardening

A close-up look at the Hellebores in our garden.

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date April 8, 2013
15 Comments on A close-up look at the Hellebores in our garden.

Hellebores never fail to amaze. They flower early and continue in bloom for a long time. They present an unusual range of colours and markings on their petals which can vary in shape. We tend to choose reds and purples, plain and spotted and whites and creams mostly plain.

Let us start by venturing out into the borders armed with flower trug and secateurs, ignoring the chill in the air and nipping off a collection of flowers in a variety of colours.

The individuality of each is best appreciated by displaying them floating in a shallow bowl of water.

Now for a real challenge – looking closely and trying to show their character in water colours. I have chosen the deepest blue-mauve, the yellow-green and the pale yellow with purple streaks.

Tags garden photography, gardening, hellebores, sketch pad, winter gardens

colours garden design garden photography gardening gardens open to the public hardy perennials meadows outdoor sculpture photography

Breezy Knees

Enough of this cold, wet, miserable weather! Let’s transport ourselves back to warmer times and brighter days in the wonderful Vale of York.

Breezy Knees. What a great name for a nursery! We came across it in an article written by Roy Lancaster for the RHS members’ magazine, “The Garden” and he highly recommended it. So when travelling around the Vale of York and finding ourselves close to it we just had to go and have a peruse. It also has a garden to wander around attached to it, which highlighted many of the unusual herbaceous perennials it sold.

How about this for a bench?

The nursery is less than ten years old and created on open farmland, very open hence its quirky name. We arrived at the end of a period of rain and the day before had seen the nursery’s show gardens closed as much of it was flooded. From the nursery to the gardens entails a ten minute walk between fields and we soon discovered the relevance of its name.

The garden is a collection of small garden rooms displaying different types of garden styles and conditions, from an annual meadow to a rose garden and from raised beds to double borders. The most unusual is the “Rogues Gallery” where garden thugs live together and warn us of their behaviour.

We began our exploration of Breezy Knees with a wander along an enticing path cut through the Spring Meadow, and then moved on through the show gardens discovering some beautiful plants along the way.

If you are up that way, make sure you drop in to Breezy Knees. It will be worth it.

A sense of humour always adds an extra element to any garden. Breezy Knees certainly had plenty to offer. As well as their long bench we were delighted to come across this pair of wonder wellies! Jude the Undergardener looks as if she is checking to see if they are her size!