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The first garden visit this year with the Hardy Plant Society Shropshire Group was to north Shropshire to a town called Wem. The garden was called Sunningdale and we were really looking forward to seeing the garden once again. We have visited twice before but the last time was about ten years ago so we were looking forward to discovering what changes had been made. The first development being this original sign on the brick wall which was angled into the garden entrance.

We met the owner, Sue, just inside the front gate to the garden. She welcomed us and suggested we start our tour to the left and around to the back of the house. Along this narrow pathway there was much to draw the eye, the reddest of roses, a multicoloured succulent and containers of magnificent hostas.

The passageway alongside the house led us to a newly redeveloped area with a strong Japanese theme. A long shelter painted in black housed interesting seats and artefacts and gave views over the gravel area with the expected plants especially acers and miniature conifers.

The twisting conifer below had such soft needles and green cones at the top of each branch.

From there we could see colourful irises, lupins, and a yellow flowered jasmine all worth a closer look.

Throughout the garden after passing through the pergola there were so many points of interest from oversized hanging conkers to a ceramic frog and plants that drew our attention.

We wandered along a straight path along the one border of the garden to discover what extra horticultural treats we had in store. We began with a closer study of a lilac with oversized flower heads.

I will finish now with a photo of a beautiful hardy fuchsia in all its floral glory.

We returned to wander around the show gardens at Bridgemere Garden Centre towards the end of August. Our visit came after weeks of drought and very high temperatures so we wondered how the gardens had faired.

As usual we started our wanderings at the ‘Cottage Garden’ to see what was happening.

Dahlias were performing so strongly alongside an apple tree laden with colourful blushed fruit.

On the opposite side of the wide pathway that leads us towards the pond and onwards, shrubs were showing the effects of the drought.

The border beneath a dying prunus tree was looking as if we haven’t had a drought for months and looked so good. At this time of year as spring bulbs have disappeared and pulmonaria have ceased flowering, this garden has become a beautiful foliage space, featuring hostas, pulmonaria and ferns. On the opposite side of the gravel path a single spotted flower attracted us both, a tricyrtis or Toad Lily plant.

Once again we noticed plants nearby that were suffering from the drought conditions. A hemerocallis had drooped and yellowed whereas the nearby clump of eupatorium and the large acer behind it both looked healthy in spite of the recent weather.

The pond was our next port of call which was suffering from an attack of duck weed and drooping Gunnera manicata leaves.

Tree fern fronds have dried up and in some cases dropped off the hard stems/trunks. Water iris have turned a pale shade of brown but are sporting healthy seed pods.

We left the pond behind and made our way towards the Winter Garden and the RHS Chelsea 2025 Peoples’ Choice award winning garden looking out for sufferers and survivors of the drought. It was interesting to see how the many plants here have faired and comparing them with our garden at home. Both autumn crocus and Rudbeckia ‘Lemon Queen’ have faired well and were covered in blooms.

Hydrangea generally have been mixed in their response to the dry, but with this H. aspera ‘Anthony Bullivant’ which looked dead from a distance but close up there were signs of new growth. There is still hope for our gardens!?

In the Winter Garden things looked mixed with dried up plants alongside healthy specimens. The acers looked good and healthy but other plants look as if autumn had already arrived and the betula had completely lost its leaves.

We noticed that throughout all the gardens some perennials were looking so good as if they were ignoring the dry.

We called in at the Anne Marie Powell award winning garden and immediately stopped to look at these pea-like flowers and unusual looking colourful pods. We couldn’t remember its name so were so pleased to find a label – it was Collutea medea Copper Beauty. The thing that we liked the most in this garden this month was the variety of healthy looking foliage.

Overall we were interested in seeing how the garden has dealt with the drought.

Here we are back at Plas Cadnant, The Hidden Garden of Anglesey where in Part One I covered the walk down from the Welcome Buildings through the double borders and the slow descent down the Ravine. I was looking forward to the collection of unusual ferns and walking down to the mountain stream. Here in the Lower Valley the first feature we reached was the Reflecting Pool with interesting plants all around the area.

The photos below are of a large and very healthy specimen of Podophyllum ‘Spotted Dotty’ and the Reflecting Pool with a row of Dalmera peltata lined up on its edge.

Primulas and Oxalis add gentle spots of colour among all the restful greens here including lots of unusual ferns and some native flowering plants such as bluebells and red campion.

The long upward gradient awaited us as we rested by the stream, but we still had plenty to look forward to on the journey, the Upper Valley Garden, Ann’s Seat and Valley View, Mrs Fanning Evan’s Secret Garden and the long Raised Border.

The slope up was quite steep to start with as the path meandered its way uphill. It was a good job that there were a few seats to use for short rests on our way. This wooden bench was surrounded by our native woodland bulb bluebells, which were not only good to look at with their stunning shade of blue with hints of pink and purple, but they also had such a rich sweet scent from the flowers.

Soon we reached the level where flowering woodland shrubs, mainly rhododendrons and azaleas, provided much colour. Narrower footpaths meandered through the shrubs which afforded us beautiful close up views of the flowers and also a chance to enjoy the rich aromas. The brightness of the flowers could have been a bit overpowering but the rich foliage of small trees such as acers added some respite and a beauty of their own.

The massive foliage of the Gunnera, often called giant rhubarb, looked so good alongside the smaller but much glossier leaves of rhododendrons and laurels and the excessively cut fronds of ferns including tree ferns. It all had a tropical atmosphere but with the calls and songs of native birds.

As the gravel paths among the brightly coloured pinks and reds of the rhodos and azaleas gave way to more open woodland plantings, with paler more subtle colours of yet more ferns and trees.

When we reached the stone wall that ran across the garden the path led us through an archway into the next section of garden. As we passed through the entrance we stopped to admire a very smart pyramidal piece of topiary. but first we just had to admire this very high backed bench. Of course Jude had to try it out for size and we took the advantage of a rest and to peruse the garden map to see where else we had to go.

We were looking forward to exploring the ‘Secret Garden’ of Mrs Fanning Evans, which was just the other side of the beautiful stone wall.

Mrs Fanning Evans was the last gardener at Plas Cadnant before it was abandoned until its rescue and restoration. This patch of garden is the only remaining feature of the original 1940’s planting. The remaining plants are a Magnolia x soulangiana, Eucryphia ‘Nymansay’ and Buddleia alternifolia and they certainly have survived well but are showing their age.

Nearby looking across across an area of grass, we spotted a large rectangular pool with a white seat overlooking it. This was too tempting so we walked across the grass to get a closer look. We couldn’t work out what the deep pink flowering plants were around its margins. They were bergenias, very floriferous ones.

We had virtually completed our tour of this superb garden, having just the raised border to enjoy before we found ourselves back at the cafe and just had time for a quick cup of coffee before it closed and we then made our way back to the hotel.

Well we are off again to the Bridgemere Garden Centre Show Gardens near Woore in Northern Shropshire, the opposite end of the county to our place. It was a warm dry day overcast at times with the sun bursting through whenever a gap in the cloud cover allowed it to. Just perfect for a day of appreciation of plants and a day that makes my camera happy.

The Cottage Garden was the first port of call as usual being just inside the entrance gate. It immediately looked so colourful, much more so than in any other month up to now. The fruit trees were heavily laden and perennials flowering profusely adding up to a pure cottage garden style.

As usual we next made our way towards the pond area not expecting to see much change, but we had such a surprise when we looked at the area around the pond. On the way we enjoyed looking at the hostas and pulmonarias in the bed with a very unhealthy looking champion cherry tree at its centre. The cherry is dying quite rapidly now with bare branches at the top and down towards halfway. The subtle planting beneath it however was worth a close look.

Sunshine lit up the foliage and flowers of plants around the pool, astilbes, hostas, iris, ligularia and even a water lily.

There were so many colourful areas within the show gardens, sometimes provided by flowering or berrying shrubs, others by perennials planted in large groups such as agapanthus and hemerocallis

The flowers that dominated the show gardens this month were dahlias, the reliable late summer and early autumn stars, particularly those with interesting coloured foliage supporting the flowers.

We particularly like to see their flowers working well with contrasting foliage colours and we prefer by far the more single flowers rather than the hefty oversized doubles. There are so many different forms of flower here so all visitors can find those they like best.

In one part of the garden dahlias are planted in single cultivars borders surrounded by short box edging.

There were a few cultivars that I didn’t like at all, mostly those flowers which seemed oversized or showing weak colours.

Even if there were no dahlias to be seen there were colourful patches of perennials and shrubs throughout the gardens.

In some cases the cameos that attracted us consisted only of colourful foliage that sat well together.

We were drawn towards a patch of Rosa rugosa partly because of its flowers but mostly because of its colourful large spherical hips.

I will finish off with the most colourful and most interesting border of all in July, a border that had failed to attract us on previous occasions. An herbaceous border planted with a carefully selected groups of perennials. The Lutyens seat adds extra interest and a place to see and listen to the noise of the many insects attracted to the plantings.

July was to be month dominated by the weather, specifically the lack of rain. We had no precipitation until mid-month and the garden was suffering, lawns went brown, shrubs and trees had browning leaves and the whole garden looked lacklustre. It was so disheartening.

At the beginning of the month we set up our live moth trap to see what was around hoping for a better result than we had in June. Above the photos of some of the moths that turned up attracted by the mercury lamp, I noted that, “We experienced the Summer Solstice about about a week ago so our days and nights are of similar lengths. Early July was a time of high daytime and nighttime temperatures, sometimes of over 30 degrees C.

Midweek of the first week in July we put out our live moth trap and it attracted a reasonable number of moths including a colourful beetle, never seen here before.”

Swallow Tailed Moth. Elephant Hawk-moth

Large Yellow Underwing Drinker Moth

Burying Beetle

Over the page I shared another of my “30 second sketches.” I wrote “Another of my 30 second sketches drawn using a 0.3 Fineliner. In such a short time I couldn’t draw all of the seed heads.”

Alongside you can see my coloured sketch of our Nectaroscordum, and about this onion I wrote, “Nectaroscordum, the onion with an identity crisis, was first discovered almost 200 years ago.

It was known as ‘Allium siculum’ from its discovery until it had a name change and became ‘Nectaroscordum siculum’.

Recently botanist using DNA studies decided it was an allium after all, so currently we know it as Allium siculum just as it was in the beginning. The name Nectaroscordum is now considered a ‘subsection’.

The next page features one of our most colourful and reliable perennials in our garden, where I wrote, “Throughout the garden, both front and back in almost every border, the plants giving us so much colour is the family of Day Lilies or Hemerocallis. Below the photographs show just a few of our collection.”

We return to a bulb for the next page, a Cammassia. I wrote, “While pulling up some dried stems in the Prairie Garden I accidentally pulled out a two foot stem of a Cammassia complete with bulb, so taking advantage of seeing the whole plant I decided to draw it.

The bulb was just a just a youngster which must have become separated from the mother bulb. It was a rich orange colour from which grew a single root curled like a pig’s tail. Two seed pods still in their green colouring held onto the top of the stem.”

The drawings below show on the left the whole stem which measured 25 inches in height and to its right a coloured sketch showing more detail of the top of the stem down to the bulb together with its root and dried skin with the middle marked by a broken line. The coloured sketched was drawn using Japanese brush pens.

The following page is about some of our climbers currently looking good in the garden. I noted that, “I was wandering around the garden taking photos of climbing plants, in particular our honeysuckles, clematis and ivies featuring only those climbing on one section of fence in the Shade Garden. The one photo though is a more unusual climber, delicate, variegated with deep pink stems, Ampelopsis elegans.”

Below the first four photos are of a lemon coloured honeysuckle, flowers and berries.

The three photos below are of Clematis ‘Queen Mother’ which flowers reliably and prolifically, with beautiful purple bell flowers.

The three photos above show two different ivies and the delicate climber ‘Ampelopsis elegans’. The final two photos related to this journal show a thornless blackberry called Oregon Thornless and a jasmine called Jasminum officinale ‘Clotted Cream’.

The page opposite the climbers page is concerned with colour in our garden. I noted that, “By mid-July there is colour wherever you look, mostly flowers but some shrubs, climbers and trees are showing colourful berries. Out with my camera I looked for interesting patches of colour, or longer views. The three blue poppies are ceramic. We saw these in the ‘Himalayan. Sculpture Garden’ near Rippon in Yorkshire, and bought some to position in the Shade Garden, just where we had failed to grow them in the past.”

Below are some of the photos I took from around the garden.

“When considering colour in the summer garden we often just think of flowering plants, but in July one shrub adds lots of colour through its berries. Hypericum inodorum come with berries in a variety of colours and there are often beautiful golden flowers among the berries. Below are some of our varieties in many of our borders.”

That is it for July. My Garden Journal will return in August.