Category: National Garden Scheme

Whitlenge Nursery and Gardens – an NGS opening

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date May 9, 2019
1 Comment on Whitlenge Nursery and Gardens – an NGS opening

One of our first NGS garden visits this year was to Whitlenge Garden and Nursery near Kidderminster in the West Midlands. The gardens were show gardens for the owner, a garden designer/landscaper, but we still enjoyed parts of it, including some plant combinations and some landscaping ideas mostly. being a designer’s show garden it didn’t have a coherent feel to it and it lacked flow. But there were so many ideas for visitors to pick up on.

Here I will share our wanderings around the garden with you for you to enjoy.

Please click on the first photo and then navigate using the arrows.

Tags archways, designer gardens, foliage combinations, foliage plants, garden paths, National Garden Scheme, NGS, NGS gardens, pathway, plant combinations, water features

garden design garden paths garden photography garden pools garden seat garden seating gardening gardens gardens open to the public hardy perennials lakes National Garden Scheme NGS ornamental trees and shrubs outdoor sculpture pathways Shropshire shrubs spring gardening trees Yellow Book Gardens

The NGS get together at Hodnet

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date April 12, 2019

Every year in late March we attend a get together with the NGS county organiser and the garden openers. This year was our friend Allison’s first year as county organiser and as her garden is small she had to arrange an alternative venue. To everyone’s delight the owner of Hodnet Hall and Gardens offered the use of his restaurant and also allowed us free range of the gardens. We were in for a treat!

To start off with we were warmly greeted by the car park attendants, Martin and George, then after parking up as we reached the courtyard fronting the restaurant building, we received more warm welcomes from Allison, our County Organiser, and Sir Algernon Heber-Percy the owner of the hall and its garden. He formally welcomed us all with a humorous speech. After informative talks by representatives of MacMillan Nurses and Horatio’s Gardens we indulged in a sumptuous meal.

Then we were left to explore the gardens, all 60 acres of it! We began our exploration by following a small flight of stone steps into an area of tall mature trees and then moved on to take a slow wander around the string of lakes and back to the borders below the hall itself.

I will continue the tour by sharing a gallery of photographs with you. As usual click on the first pic and navigate using the arrows.

So that was our day out at Hodnet Hall – a great time was had by all! I wonder what next year’s NGS get together will entail!

For information Hodnet Hall is open for the NGS but does have other opening dates throughout the year so do check them out.

Tags flowering shrubs, Hodnet Hall and Gardens, Lakes, National Garden Scheme, NGS, ornamental shrubs, ornamental trees, spring, spring garden, trees and shrubs, water features

autumn autumn colours garden design garden paths garden photography garden ponds gardening gardens hardy perennials National Garden Scheme natural pest control nurseries ornamental trees and shrubs outdoor sculpture Shropshire shrubs town gardens trees Yellow Book Gardens

Another NGS Yellow Book Shropshire Garden – Sunningdale

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 21, 2019
4 Comments on Another NGS Yellow Book Shropshire Garden – Sunningdale

I would like now to look back to the summer gone to share some visits and re-visits to other National Garden Scheme (NGS) gardens from a town garden to a huge old garden in North Wales.

The garden at Sunningdale is a half acre town garden in the north Shropshire market town of Wem. Friends had recommended the garden to us so as the garden opening season is coming to an end we decided to make the half hour journey northward up the A49.

We received a warm and very cheerful welcome as we took a path through an open gateway, which took us around the side of the house to reveal a garden that invites visitors to wander. We discovered some interesting bits and pieces on our way around the side of the villa. Plus of course some exciting colours from flowering plants.

This delicate tall elegant yellow flowered plant was unknown to us and luckily labelled, Dendromecon rigida, the Poppy Tree. What a treat it always is to discover new plants.

Interesting pruning techniques and styles by the owners had breathed new life into otherwise rather dull conifers. Conifers are carved into recesses for seats or entranceways to another part of the garden, or simply to frame a piece of sculpture.

These solid conifers have been carefully trimmed in a way that implies almost drawing with shears. Beautiful!

To share the rest of this lovely garden I shall finish of with a gallery which follows our wanderings discovering so many different aspects of the garden. Enjoy by simply clicking on the first photo then navigating using the arrows.

Tags cloud pruning, garden ponds, garden pools, NGS, NGS gardens, pergola, topiary., town gardens, water in the garden, Yellow Book Gardens

flowering bulbs garden design garden photography garden seat garden seating gardening gardens gardens open to the public grasses hardy perennials Herefordshire irises kitchen gardens log piles logs National Garden Scheme NGS nurseries ornamental grasses ornamental trees and shrubs spring bulbs trees village gardens Winter Gardening winter gardens Yellow Book Gardens

Snowdrops and Creative Pruning – Ivy Croft Garden

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date June 28, 2018
3 Comments on Snowdrops and Creative Pruning – Ivy Croft Garden

I often publish posts about summer days out in winter to help us warm up so as we are in the middle of an exceptionally hot period of weather I shall do the opposite and publish this post I wrote in the winter in the hope it may cool us down!

There were two main reasons we wanted to visit Ivy Croft Garden and Nursery to look at, firstly their huge collection of snowdrops and secondly their imaginative pruning techniques. Both these elements are highlights of the February garden. We drove down to Herefordshire with gardening friends Pete and Sherlie who had never visited the garden before. We had been once before several years ago, when it was still quite early on in the development stage. We were looking forward to seeing what it was like after so many years.

The garden which was started in 1997, surrounds the cottage which has a formal area close to the house partly enclosed by an ivy hedge. Further afield the garden becomes less formal and a wander around gave us the chance to look at its pond, willow and dogwood collections, a perry pear orchard and a vegetable garden enclosed with trained fruit trees.

The area around the house featured many flowering bulbs and in the spring and summer alpines would take over. A colourful Acer griseum stood with two variegated Hollies in a circular bed surrounded by a gravel pathway.

The pruned features we discovered as we parked up included a pleached limes, box balls and all were neatly presented.

An amazing selection of ivies made up the ivy hedge which surround two sides of the formal garden around the cottage. It was a beautiful, unusual feature to welcome visitors.

The huge work shed had a unique humorous tough, buttresses created by training and pruning yew trees. Close by stood this beautiful white barked birch tree.

As we walked away from the pleached limes and box ball topiary, we wandered through the wide selection of rare and unusual snowdrops. Beyond this border was a trellis-like “fedge”, a living hedge made from willow.

Shrubs with coloured stems and trees with coloured bark are strong features of the winter garden, and Ivycroft had some fine examples of both. Coloured stems were provided by Salix and Cornus, whereas the coloured bark appeared on Betulas and Prunus.

Little details reward those who take a closer look, a catkin, a flower or an old seed pod.

As mentioned earlier Snowdrops were a special feature of the gardens at Ivy Croft, but we also enjoyed cyclamen, miniature daffodils and hellebores. Colours shone from shrubs too, Hamamelis, Daphne mezereum and Hedera helix in its shrubby form.

We certainly had plenty to enjoy at Ivy Croft and it had changed so much since our last visit over 10 years ago. We will certainly be visiting once again when it opens again for a day in the spring.

Tags cornus, dogwoods, flowering bulbs, gardens of Herefordshire, Herefordshire, Herefordshire gardens, hollies, log piles, pleached limes, pleaching, salix, snowdrops, spring bulbs, topiary., willow

garden photography gardening gardens gardens open to the public landscapes light light quality National Garden Scheme NGS ornamental trees and shrubs trees water in the garden Winter Gardening winter gardens woodland woodlands Yellow Book Gardens

Early Spring Light in a Woodland Garden

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date April 29, 2018

March at the Dingle woodland garden at The Dingle and Nursery near Welshpool proved to be a time with special light when the sun appeared for odd periods. I am sharing some of my photos taken of the landscape and the light playing with it. I hope you enjoy them!

Tags gardens of Powys, gardens of Wales, Mid Wales, ornamental trees, Powis, Powys, The Dingle Nurseries, The Dingle Welshpool, Wales, winter, winter garden, winter gardening, winter gardens, woodland garden, woodland gardening

flowering bulbs garden paths garden photography gardening gardens gardens open to the public National Garden Scheme nurseries ornamental trees and shrubs pathways Powis Powys trees Wales Winter Gardening winter gardens woodland woodlands Yellow Book Gardens

The Dingle Garden in Welshpool – March

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date April 5, 2018
1 Comment on The Dingle Garden in Welshpool – March

We returned to the Dingle Garden and Nurseries for the third time this year, hoping for signs of spring but having experienced such bad weather recently we were expecting few changes at all. We always enjoy a wander around the nursery anyway so that would make up for any disappointments. In particular we enjoy their collections of trees and shrubs.

We soon spotted shrubs we had looked at in detail on our last visit when buds were fattening but not displaying signs of opening. On this our March visit things had not developed at all. However some shrubs further down the slope towards the lake where there was more shelter were in fact in the first stages of bursting into leaf.

The light on this visit allowed the colour and texture of the bark on trees show up far better than in February.

Deciduous Euonymus such as our native Euonymus europaeus, display their heavily textured bark when they are bare of foliage, and Euonymus alatus is a particular star with its winged stems.

A few shrubs had open flowers and looked very special, like gems, among so much deep green of the many evergreens growing on the slopes. Hellebores and flowering bulbs added splashes of colour amongst the undergrowth. The tiny insignificant flowers of Euphorbias sat snuggled into the bright green bracts.

The common native Hazel, Corylus avellena, is far from ordinary. It is an exceptional plant as it gives so much to our gardens. If you plant a contorted variety then you get the strangest of winter skeletons, but with others you get sturdy upright growth and this growth provides us with our bean poles for the allotment. In the first months of each year they delight us with their catkins which look like little lime-green lambs’ tales. These are the male flowers producing mists of pollen on breezy warm days but if you look very closely you may be lucky enough to find a female flower which is a minute deep red flower like a miniature sea anemone.

Buds were just beginning to show the early signs of fattening up when we made our visit in February so we were so pleased to find some fresh brightly coloured leaves beginning to burst forth from them this month.

Fresh growth had appeared from clumps of perennials, with Hemerocallis way ahead of others with the brightest and most advanced growth of all.

Evergreen shrubs have produced new foliage which looks so young with glossy surfaces and extra bright colours.

As we wandered the pathways enjoying the freshness of new growth and bursting buds, we were distracted by surprises and unexpected features, such as this old tumbled-down summer house and a deep fissure in the path where rushing floodwater had flowed beneath the path removing materials.

The stream which we enjoyed watching last month tumbling beneath the wooden footbridge had turned into an angry torrent of water, so noisy that we could hear it from far off. Wherever we were inside the woodland garden we could hear running water rushing down slopes, along tiny streams and over pathways.

Let us hope that by the time of our next visit the garden will be much dryer and the water passing down the site will be back within its banks.

Tags bark colour, coloured stems, flower buds, gardens of Powys, gardens of Wales, leaf buds, Powis, Powys, shrubs in winter, texture, textured bark, The Dingle Nurseries, The Dingle Welshpool, winter, winter garden, winter gardening

colours garden design garden photography garden ponds gardening gardens gardens open to the public light log piles National Garden Scheme NGS nurseries ornamental trees and shrubs outdoor sculpture Powis Powys shrubs trees Wales Winter Gardening winter gardens Yellow Book Gardens

The Dingle Gardens Welshpool – January

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 21, 2018

Here we are back visiting our chosen garden each month, with our garden for 2018 being the attached garden at The Dingle Nurseries near Welshpool. This garden is of a totally different scale, atmosphere and style to Attingham Park, our garden for 2017. The garden is open every day of the year bar Christmas Day and on odd days the fees go to the National Garden Scheme.

The nursery is stocked with perennials, shrubs and trees but specialises mostly in the last two, and it is from here that we tend to buy our trees and shrubs. This is a nursery we are delighted to have on our dooorstep. As we move through the entrance we always enjoy the displays of plants with current interest and similarly plants for winter interest and displayed in the first few rows of plants.

So, here we are on the 14th January with our first visit to our new garden, arriving on a dull lightly overcast day. Having never visited before this deep into winter, we entered through the wooden gate green with algae and followed the gravel paths into the garden, not quite knowing what to expect. We enjoy surprises in the gardens we visit!

Evergreens both coniferous and broadleaves lined the paths and are planted in thoughtful groupings. In the first photo a dark, glossy leaved Pittosporum “Tom Thumb” sits comfortably with a Euphorbia, a Brachyglottis and a Hebe. In the second picture two conifers illustrate how different they can be in texture, colour and form.

Early in our wanderings we found this lovely rustic seat which is slowly being eroded away by the weather. Close by the seat glowed the pale green flowers of a Helleborus foetidus.

Hydrangeas appear throughout the garden in the autumn showing their colourful inflorescences in pinks, white and blues, while throughout the winter these colours fade to biscuits, gingers and ivory. In some flowers hints of blues and pinks remain.

Out of season flowers appear here and there on odd shrubs, on others leaf buds promise fresh growth in the spring while berries hang as remnants of their winter harvest.

When tree surgery work is carried out in the Dingle Garden logs are left as habitats for the many forms of wildlife that maintain a healthy ecosystem in the garden.

At the lowest point of the gardens a calm lake affords us a place to stop awhile to look around its banks. A bog garden at one end looks dull and dark at this time of year, with just the deep brown of dead leaves of Gunnera and Lysichiton americanus rising above the mud.

Recent heavy snowfall has caused damage to trees and shrubs, breaking branches of all sizes and crushing foliage. Strong winter winds have added to the damage.

To share more of my photos taken during our wandering and enjoyment of the gardens at the Dingle I have created the following gallery. Enjoy the pictures. The next visit to this garden will be in February.

Tags conifers, evergreens, gardens of Powys, ornamental shrubs, ornamental trees, Powis, Powys, shrubs and trees, The Dingle Welshpool, Welsh gardens, Welshpool

garden arches garden design garden furniture garden garden arches garden paths garden photography garden ponds garden pools garden seat garden seating gardening gardens National Garden Scheme NGS ornamental trees and shrubs outdoor sculpture pathways sculpture trees village gardens water in the garden Yellow Book Gardens

Ruthall Manor – well worth the wait.

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 13, 2018
2 Comments on Ruthall Manor – well worth the wait.

We go for years intending to visit a garden but sometimes circumstances dictate otherwise. This is what happened with Ruthall Manor, a Shropshire Yellow Book Garden. After years we finally visited earlier this year in June. The wait was so worth while!

First impressions count for a lot when you visit a garden, and a good garden can quickly reveal its qualities and general level of care. Atmosphere, special places and surprises will reveal themselves later and more slowly. A good garden will keep on giving.

Ruthall Manor soon made us feel warmly welcomed and involved in the plantings and design. It had the added bonus of some original interesting sculptural pieces beautifully positioned within plantings or out on their own as centres of attention.

Pathways, arches and gateways encouraged us to explore further, around the next corner, through a hedge or border or into the next garden area.

I thought that the best way to share as many pieces of sculpture and artifacts as possible I would create this gallery for you to enjoy. The variety of pieces was so large that we just did not now what to expect around the next corner.

In the end of course good plants well chosen, cared for and partnered thoughtfully are what gives a garden its true quality.

So Ruthall Manor was certainly worth waiting so long to go and visit. What an enjoyable afternoon!

Tags garden arches, garden furniture, garden paths, garden sculpture, garden seating, gardens seats, National Garden Scheme, NGS, outdoor sculpture, Yellow Book, Yellow Book Gardens

autumn autumn colours garden design garden photography gardening gardens gardens open to the public lakes National Garden Scheme NGS nurseries ornamental trees and shrubs Powis Powys shrubs trees Wales water in the garden Yellow Book Gardens

The Dingle Gardens Month by Month 2018

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 5, 2018
2 Comments on The Dingle Gardens Month by Month 2018

My chosen garden f0r my monthly visits in 2018 is so much smaller than Attingham Park which we enjoyed throughout 2017. The Dingle is a Nursery just over the border into Wales situated on the edge of the market town of Welshpool. The garden is accessed through a little wooden gate in the bottom left corner of the nursery where a large selection of Acer shrubs are displayed for sale. It is a garden centred around a huge collection of shrubs and trees, many unusual, growing on a gentle slope down to a lake.

The garden like ours opens at times under the auspices of the National Garden Scheme, but opens every other day of the year bar Christmas Day. I have already featured the gardens four times in my past posts. Here are a few photos to give you a taste of what we might discover during the year.

I hope these few photos will give you an appetite for the 12 posts to come about The Dingle in 2018.

Tags gardens of Powys, gardens of Wales, Powis, Powys, shrubs, The Dingle Nurseries, The Dingle Welshpool, trees, trees and shrubs

architecture garden design garden designers garden photography garden ponds garden pools gardening gardens grasses hardy perennials meadows National Garden Scheme NGS ornamental grasses ornamental trees and shrubs outdoor sculpture reflections sculpture Tom Stuart-Smith trees Uncategorized walled gardens water garden water in the garden Yellow Book Gardens

Cogshall Grange – a Cheshire garden designed by Tom Stuart-Smith

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date November 26, 2017
4 Comments on Cogshall Grange – a Cheshire garden designed by Tom Stuart-Smith

Sometimes when you find a garden in the National Garden Scheme’s Yellow Book, you just know it is going to be a special place. Such was the case with the gardens at Cogshall Grange in Cheshire. The description in the book was so inviting and the reality matched it perfectly. It had been designed by Tom Stuart-Smith, one of our favourite garden designers and featured both formal and informal elements, woodland borders, a walled garden, modern herbaceous planting, wildflower meadows and an orchard, all set in the grounds of a Georgian country house.

Jude and I traveled up to Cheshire with friends Pete and Sherlie who also love the work of Tom S-S, so we all arrived full of anticipation.

As we moved from room to room in the garden discovering each feature the atmosphere and mood changed and we were constantly presented with fresh perspectives. This garden was a true garden experience.

We were really looking forward to seeing inside the walled garden which was where the influence of Tom Stuart-Smith was clearly to be seen, but of course we started with coffee and cake to get us in the mood. We discovered and enjoyed interesting small areas of planting as we made our way towards the walled garden, a delicately planted container, some beautifully pruned box and some varied, well chosen plant combinations.

Just as the garden was a careful amalgam of traditional parkland and modern perennial planting so the country house was a combination of old and modern architecture.

The walled garden was where the influence of Tom S-S could be seen and felt most strongly, with his very personal planting style and choice of plants mostly hardy perennials. The atmosphere was so gentle and calming. There was so much to photograph within its walls that the only way to do it any justice at all is through a gallery for you to peruse at your own pace. Please as usual click on the first shot and navigate using the arrows. I hope you can identify the very special feeling of this space.

We left the walled garden via a gateway which led us into gentle meadows of wildflower planting.

Walking back to the car to begin our homeward journey, we continued to make discoveries, some grassland had been cut to contrast with the longer uncut areas which were dotted with sculpture such as this beautiful stone seat.

This beautiful garden excelled!