Tag: gardening

Our Week in the North York Moors – Scampston Walled Garden and Parklands

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date February 21, 2025

We have visited Scampston Walled Garden once before not long after it was redesigned by Piet Oudolf one of our favourite garden designers who is also recognised as one of the best in Europe if not the world. He is very influential as a designer and we have several of his best in the UK. Our garden has hints of his influence in several areas, especially his use of grasses and hardy perennials.

We have visited Trentham Park which he designed, part of, Pentsthorpe Water Park gardens, The Oudolf Borders at RHS Wisley and the Oudolf Garden at Hauser and Wirth Galleries in Somerset.

In order to enter the main area of the Scampston Walled Garden we had to follow a pathway around three sides of the walled garden a border of interesting shrubs and perennials. Along one section was a wonderful hedge on stilts.

We followed the pathway until we reached the way in where we entered the Serpentine Garden featuring grasses called Molinia ‘Poul Petersen’ which are grown in parallel swathes within neatly mown lawn grass. In the centre four beautiful wooden seats sit below four trees, Phellodendron chinensis surrounded by Salvia verticillata ‘Purple Rain’. Such a simple but brilliant design!

Oudolf created topiary with yew to form square blocks and undulating hedges.

From this quiet space with its sculptural hedges we moved into the Perennial Meadow where the seedheads of perennials were the stars. At its centre is an old dipping pond.

Scampston was as good as we expected and has matured beautifully.

Tags flowers, garden, gardening, gardens, plants

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Bridgemere Show Gardens – our new year’s monthly visits – January 2025

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date February 10, 2025
2 Comments on Bridgemere Show Gardens – our new year’s monthly visits – January 2025

The show gardens at Bridgemere Garden Centre are situated alongside the sales area selling shrubs, and are described in a leaflet as “An award-winning day out for all”. It is now an RHS Partner Garden and is open all year. We decided we would visit monthly and report back as monthly posts in my greenbenchramblings.wordpress,com blog.

The 6 acres here are home to 15 individual gardens with extra planted areas and pathways to give a sense of cohesion. Several of the gardens were first seen at RHS Chelsea and RHS Tatton Park shows and many of those were awarded gold or silver gilt medals.

The first show garden we came across was “The Cottage Garden” which was complete with a little brick built cottage and a typical garden which would be busily worked to provide fruit, vegetables and cut flowers for the owners and their family.

We moved on from there towards the pond, finding many mature trees and shrubs along the way. We also searched for plants of the season.

First siting of the pond was this view below but we could hear the sounds of the waterfall. We love the sound of moving water be it freshwater of rivers and streams or the sound of moving tides at the beach.

This sign of winter reflects the gardeners’ wish to grow plants that are not hardy such as these Tree Ferns (below left). A complete contrast and much more attractive than plants wrapped tight are the red stems of Cornus nearby (below right).

From the pond area we made our way towards the Spring and Winter Garden, passing the “Bandstand Garden” and the “Folly Garden” along the way.

The sign for the Spring and Winter Garden described it as “A garden to savour and lift your spirits with pockets of spring colour and an abundance of fragrance.” This Witch Hazel, Hamamelis vernalis ‘Purpurea’ gave both colour and fragrance.

There were plenty more winter flowering shrubs as well as spring bulbs. But another Witch Hazel first caught my eye with its colours enriched by the winter sun, Hamamelis x intermedia ‘Old Copper|”.

The coloured stems of dogwoods, Cornus add vertical elements of colours mostly reds and greens.

Hellebores are one of the most popular winter flowering plants so we expected to see some in the Winter Garden. The white one was full of flowers but they kept their heads down.

Before we move onwards I will share with you two more flowering shrubs both fragrant but with very different aromas. On the left is Viburnum tinus and on the right Lonicera “Winter Beauty”.

After enjoying The Spring and Winter Garden, we made our way through the Tatton Garden where the structure of neatly trimmed hedges and topiary looked very sharp in the bright winter sun.

We made our way through several more gardens as we made for the exit and all the time we searched for typical winter garden features. I will finish with a gallery of some of them.

We will visit the show gardens again sometime in February the second of our monthly visits.

Tags flowers, garden, gardening, gardening-tips, plants

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My Garden Journal January 2025

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date February 1, 2025

A new month and a new year, January 2025. Let us hope that we gardeners and our gardens are dealt a better hand weatherwise than in 2023 and 2024.

I began this new year by writing, “January, a new month and a new year as well as we move into 2025. We hope this will be a kinder time for our garden and us looking after it.”

Then I considered some of the garden jobs for the month. “We tidied up the roof garden on the wood store” and then “We planted some new hellebores and revamped the planting beneath the stepover apples. Carex ‘Ice Dance’ became too invasive so we removed them and instead planted different carex cultivars to give variety.”

Onto the next double page spread I consider Birches and tree barks. I noted that, “I think Betulas, birches, are possibly the best tree for a smallish garden and so we have several specimens in both our front and back gardens. In winter on a sunny day they come to life. Their bark colour is accentuated and peeling bark turns orange.”

Still on the theme of trees my next page is all about variations of the properties of the bark of some of our trees, the colours, textures and patterns. Concerning this I wrote, “I wandered around our garden, camera in hand, to look at the trunks of our many trees and to compare their textures, colours and patterns. There were many worth photographing.”

Here I share nine of my photographs taken on that day.

The next double pages I looked at cloud pruning on the left page and opposite I showed a couple more garden jobs we completed in January.

“We have long admired cloud pruning of conifers often seen in Japanese gardens. In our garden we have cloud pruned a box hedge.Up until now we have never attempted to work with a conifer. We recently bought a cloud pruned pine, a Pinus nigra ‘Marie Bregeon’ and a Pinus nigra ‘Nana’ to cloud prune ourselves.”

Pinus nigra ‘Marie Bregeon’. Pinus nigra ‘Nana’

Tools of the trade Needle clump

Nearly there! All done!

On the opposite page I wrote that, “After too many days of frozen solid soil, when we passed mid-month the temperature shot up from -5C to +7C. So maybe we can get a fork or trowel in the soil.

We have now completed the planting of a variety of Carex plants beneath the stepover apples.”

“I fixed a solar light in the toolshed.”

Opposite the page about a couple of tasks is a more colourful page about Rose hips. I noted that, “Roses give us colourful blooms for many months starting late May flowering on into December. But roses don’t stop then. Several of ours give colourful hips in shades of red and orange and various shapes and sizes.”

My pencil crayon sketches below show the hips of Rosa ‘Summer Wine’ a climber and Rosa ‘Bobby James’ a rambler. The actual pencil crayons used were Derwent Inktense Crayons.

It is good to finish this month with some cheerful colours. We can now look forward to what February brings!

Tags flowers, garden, gardening, plants, pruning

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Our Week in the North York Moors – The Gardens at Yorkgate

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 28, 2025
1 Comment on Our Week in the North York Moors – The Gardens at Yorkgate

A garden we have always wanted to visit is Yorkgate on the northern edge of Leeds. Thus on our homeward journey after our week in the North Yorks Moors we took a short detour to allow us the chance to visit. The garden is now maintained by the charity, Perennial which ensures it has a healthy future.

The planting alongside the driveway to the carpark set the scene nicely for us. Naturally our first stop was the cafe where we had coffee and breakfast.

We were handed a simple plan of the garden so after leaving the restaurant we set off to discover what the garden had to offer.

Firstly I will create a small gallery of interesting plants.

The following selection of interesting plants is all about perennials, deserving of a close up look, the only exception is the rose and the miscanthus grass below.

Yorkgate is a garden where you must keep an eye out for longer views giving interest possibly group of plants but equally unusual garden features.

The garden presented us with surprises too, such as the way this shrub was shaped in such an unusual way. Later we found a similarly shaped climbing shrub on the gable end of a building.

A selection of garden cameos which lift a garden above the normal are found here frequently as we explore.

After waiting so long to visit the garden at Yorkgate, it was as good as we had anticipated. There are so many design and plant ideas, that it doesn’t matter how experienced a gardener you are, there is plenty to look at and lots of ideas to take away with you.

Tags flowers, garden, gardening, gardens, plants

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My Garden Journal 2024 December

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date January 13, 2025
1 Comment on My Garden Journal 2024 December

This will be my final visit to my Garden Journal in 2024 as I share my entries for December.

I began by writing “December is going to be a month of repairing all the damage that rough weather has caused in the garden. The worst affected plants are tall grasses and perennials, all bent flat to the ground.”

“Patches of the garden are now unrecognisable.”

Below I share eight photos of the destruction.

On the opposite page I considered hellebores especially the ones already flowering and I noted that, “Early flowering hellebores are such a special treat when they open up in December. There is a smaller range of colours now than in the new year. Some also have beautiful foliage.”

Over onto the next double page spread I featured hellebores with interesting foliage and opposite I look at gardening tasks for December.

I wrote, “The foliage of hellebores can vary so much in colour, texture and shape. Many are silver or delicately patterned.”

Delicate yellow pattern. Glaucous with jagged edges

Patterned foliage. Glaucous smooth foliage.

Palmate bright green foliage. Patterned foliage.

Most cut leaved of our hellebores. Removing old foliage.

Moving on to consider gardening tasks for the month, I wrote, “Throughout December we tried ticking jobs off our winter jobs list. This was totally in the hands of the weather.”

Bundling up clump of broken tall stems. Tidying fastigiate Yew.

Trimming ‘Buddleja lindleyana’.

The next page features our hollies. I wrote that, “When we revamped the two large terracotta pots by our front door we added a holly to each one. These new hollies called Ilex Golden King, have foliage of glossy gold and green. They sit alongside another holly called “Little Rascal”.

Little Rascal Black stemmed holly

Our native holly in our hedge. Topiary hollies

So December in the garden has come to an end and likewise the year 2024. My next report of “My Garden Journal” will be for January 2025.

Tags flowers, garden, gardening, hellebores, plants

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My Garden Journal 2024 November

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date December 14, 2024

In my Garden Journal 2024 I have reached November, where I began by writing, “November is all about leaves from its beginning, leaves turning shades of yellow, orange and red, leaves falling creating multi-coloured carpets covering the bark paths.”

Then I shared eight photos of November foliage.

Then we have a double page spread featuring one of my quick watercolour sketches of hypericum berries as they begin to go over, a few already being glossy black. On the opposite page I celebrate those plants that still give colour through their flowers.

“All these beautiful varied hypericum berries are slowly turning black so I decided to sketch the last berries still showing colour.”

I wrote, “In November it’s easy to concentrate on leaf colours and bright berries but we must not forget that many plants are still flowering.”

I then showed nine photos of just such flowers.

Over the next double page spread I take a look at some garden tasks and then consider grasses.

I wrote, “As the weather becomes drier but colder we remain as busy as ever. We finished off Arabella’s Garden and pollarded the quince.”

“Grasses come into their own as the light levels are lower. Our many grasses provide highlights of biscuit, ginger, brown and ivory in their seed heads. The top three photos below show different cultivars of miscanthus.

Panicum “North Wind” (left)

Molinia caerulea ssp. arundinacea ‘Transparent’ (Right)

Hackonechloa macra ‘Nicholas’ no name Stipa tenuissima

Over the page we have another double page featuring more autumn coloured foliage and opposite we look at surprise weather which covered the garden.

I wrote,“In the second half of the month the rich colours of autumn became much brighter.”

The weather is the subject of the final page of my November entries in my Garden Journal 2024.

I noted that, “Within a week of taking the photos on the previous page, the stunning colours were hidden by a fall of snow, first of the season.”

“The garden turns monochrome.”

Hopefully the snow will be short lived and we can defy cold temperatures and get outside again.

Tags autumn, flowers, garden, gardening, nature

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Our Week in North Yorkshire Moors – Part 1 Stopping off at RHS Bridgewater

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date November 21, 2024

As September ended and October began we took a week’s holiday in the North Yorkshire Moors where we stayed in a cottage on an isolated mixed farm hidden in the wilds.

We decided to stop on the journey up at RHS Bridgewater, the newest RHS garden, on the outskirts of Manchester. We had visited twice already so looked forward to seeing how it had developed.

The car park, roads and paths surrounded by gardens designed by Tom Stuart-Smith afforded visitors a very warm welcome, with grasses in their biscuit, coffee and ginger colours of early autumn, sitting below young deciduous trees.

We did not have long enough to explore the whole garden so decided to concentrate on just two areas, the walled garden and the Chinese Stream Garden. To get to the walled garden we walked closely along colourful herbaceous borders with occasional shrubs.

The photos below show tall white-flowered actaea to the left while on the right the border featured geranium and

Below one of my favourite perennials, sanguisorba is mingled in with an umbel possibly Selinum wallichianum to great effect. The small tree to the right is a Zanthoxylum simulans or the Sichuan Pepper.

We turned left into the first part of the walled gardens, the vegetable garden designed by the design team Harries Bugg. Sadly weeds had invaded several of the raised beds and the overall effect was of sadness and neglect. I did find a few interesting places though.

In total contrast to the garden above the Tom Stuart-Smith designed area of the walled garden was as good as we expected after enjoying it so much on our previous two visits. There were so many highlights deserving of a closer look.

The lean-to greenhouse in this part of the walled garden was a contrast to Tom S-S’s design around it.

The rest of Tom S-S’s area is so satisfying that picking out highlights is difficult, but I shall have a try.

We then made our way across the gardens towards the Chinese Stream Garden, which we had heard had moved on nicely now, so we arrived there with eager anticipation.

We were not disappointed. We saw how well the plants had become established and the stream had become a sparkling central feature running down the slope through the garden.

To make our way back to the car we approached the welcome building taking a circuitous route through the ‘Worsley Welcome Garden’.

From RHS Harlow Carr we made our way northward towards the North Yorkshire Moors, where we were going to stay in a converted barn in a valley side.

Tags england, garden, gardening, travel, Yorkshire

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A Short Break in Devon Yeo Valley Organic Garden

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date November 11, 2024

On the final day of our break in Devon we visited the organic gardens at Yeo Valley. The weather was far drier and warmer than the previous two so this visit seemed so much more casual.

The garden here was divided into several different ‘rooms’, each with its own atmosphere, design and planting choices. Quirkiness however featured throughout so it was a garden of surprises.

The beautiful planting throughout the gardens is full of inspiration. Planting combinations are a real feature of the garden.

Sculpture has a big part to play in making the gardens at Yeo Valley as interesting as they are. The pieces are in many different styles and are positioned to enhance the spaces around them and vice versa.

Several of the different planting areas featured large clumps or blocks of one or two plants, such as the grass border and this meadow. This makes for strong planting design.

Equally single plants can attract us in the same way. These individuals draw you in and entice you to take their portraits.

After we had explored what we thought was most of the garden, we discovered a couple of completely different areas, a meadow with a yurt and a gravel garden affording the opportunity to grow such different plants. We continued to come across more pieces of sculpture.

The gravel garden covered a larger area than most of the other areas giving opportunities to plant many different and interesting plants.

We enjoyed this garden because it was full of fun ideas, interesting planting and joyful sculptural pieces. We were so glad we finally made it to the Yeo Valley Organic Gardens. They were as good as we expected them to be!

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My Garden Journal 2024 October

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date November 8, 2024

When starting my garden journal for October 2024 I wrote “October is when autumn really gets going and evidence of the new season is all around us in our garden and in the countryside. The most obvious changes to look out for are changes in leaf colour and ripening fruits.

The main fruit for eating that we pick this month is the apple. We have 20 different apple varieties in the garden, 4 trained over arches, 4 stepovers and 12 cordons.”

“Crabapples are in our garden for their decorative qualities, but they also help desert apples to get pollinated effectively.”

“Autumn colours are starting to develop early in the month.”

Onto the next page where I looked at some of our sorbus varieties all in berry. I wrote, “Sorbus give the garden so many different coloured berries and autumnal leaves all together. They are closely linked to our native Rowan or Mountain Ash.”

On the page opposite I looked at other berried trees and shrubs where I wrote, “But it is not just sorbus that have coloured berries. There are plenty more – cotoneaster, lonicera, hypericum, holly and arum lily

Next page featured some of our hardy fuchsia and I noted that, “It’s amazing how you can discover plants that you have ignored for years. This is what happenedto us when we started to grow fuchsias again. This happened when we found plants F. “Thalia” and F’ microphylla at Stocktonbury Bury and Croft Castle respectively.”

The final photo in the set above we grow mostly for its unusual blue-grey foliage. It is almost worth growing just for its long name which I can never remember the whole of! Fuschia microphylla ssp. hemsleyana ‘Silver Lining’.

On the page oppsite the fuschias I feature roses! I wrote, “In some years some roses seem to keep flowering out of season, usually to the end of December. Hips are now getting fatter and redder. Sadly October’s strong winds snap off whole branches loaded with flowers and hips.”

Then I shared six photos of late flowers.

Next page ,which is the final page for this month, shows some of the garden tasks we found time to do. I noted that, “October has been a very difficult month with so much rain that the ground has been saturated. We had several jobs planned and then delayed by wind and rain. We had to repair wind damaged branches and tie in wild shoots. In the first photo Jude is tying in a wild rose branch. The other photos show us emptying and re-planting the Prairie Garden.”

I finished off the October entries into my garden journal with the words, “We now have to wait to find out if our work has been successful.”

Tags autumn, garden, gardening, nature, plants

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A Short Break in Devon – A Walk on the Wildside

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date November 3, 2024
1 Comment on A Short Break in Devon – A Walk on the Wildside

Our short break in Devon in mid-June presented us the chance of visiting a garden I had wanted to visit since it was first open, Wildside, the creation of the well-known horticulturalist Keith Wiley. Keith was originally head gardener of the nearby Garden House, a garden we really liked when we visited several years ago.

Keith moved to a flat site on which he and his wife would develop a garden and build a house. Sadly his wife died before the garden was completed, but Keith carried on with their plans. The key to his design ideas was to shape the land into hills and valleys, which created more habitats for planting.

Even on the short walk walk from the carpark to the garden entrance we found these stunning hydrangeas in flower.

Keith’s first purchase had been a small JCB style digger which allowed him to shape the land and start planting trees and shrubs. Gravel pathways meandered throughout the landscaped areas enabling us to see so much of his planting close up.

We arrived in torrential rain which just refused to stop or even give over a little, so it was no surprised that we were the only visitors. But this did mean that we were greeted by Keith himself. He gave us a lot of his time, telling us about how he had developed the garden and advised us on the best routes to take to enjoy what was currently looking at its best. The planting was on different layers with herbaceous plants looking colourful beneath shrubs and small trees.

We returned to the the garden entrance before exploring the opposite side of the garden following more instructions from Keith who suggested areas that we just had to see. Several parts of the garden on this side were planted to remind him of his travels.

The furthest parts of the garden illustrated just how serious some of the earthmoving exploits were.

As we were wandering around these parts of the landscape the winds increased and the rain became even stronger so we returned to the garden entrance and made our way back to the car. At the garden entrance we admired flower arrangements using materials from the garden.