Tag: herbaceous plants

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autumn colours flowering bulbs garden photography gardening gardens hardy perennials

Crocosmias – the brightest stars of the mid-summer garden

When wandering around our garden in mid-August we were surprised by how many crocosmias were flowering even though the earlier varieties such as C. ‘Lucifer’ had already faded and were producing their rather beautifully structured and coloured seed heads which will last for months and provide good cutting material. The gallery below features those crocosmias that we enjoy in our garden through August, September and into October for their flowers and then onwards through winter for their stuctural seedheads.

 

So I decided to wander around the garden with my camera and take photos of each different one, for you to enjoy as a gallery. As usual click on the first picture and then navigate using the arrows.

 

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Into Wales for a Post Lockdown Garden Visit

We never expected to find a beautiful garden at the end of a long narrow farm track with grass down its centre, but we did! We were going to visit an NGS garden in the neighbouring county of Powys. The garden in question was ‘Moel-y-Gwelltyn-Ucha, a steeply terraced cottage garden situated at 900 feet above sea level, a truly challenging spot to create a garden.

When we finally arrived at the property we parked close to the five bar gate to the garden and  were warmly greeted by the owners/gardeners. Walking alongside the cottage walls the planting against them gave us an idea of what was to come so we couldn’t wait to get started.

This was a garden with a superior borrowed landscape, gently rolling farmland and the sounds of birdsong, lost lambs and old tractors.

The garden itself also had a peaceful atmosphere which made us feel very relaxed. Gravel paths followed the contours of the slope and the terraces and by following each one and exploring around every corner the garden revealed more and more of its secrets.

A large wildlife pond took up a position centre stage. We came across it several times during our exploration and it sat beautifully within the overall design of the garden.

Surprises always add so much to a garden’s character.

 

Some interesting plants stopped us in our tracks as we moved around the garden, all beautifully healthy and in many cases very well matched to partners.

        

I shall continue with a few views of the garden from each level.

     

Two final photos of superb plant combinations.

 

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colours garden design garden photography gardening gardens hardy perennials ornamental trees and shrubs Shropshire

My Garden Journal 2020 – August

Back for another delve into my garden journal, this time to see what I had entered during the month of August. Enjoy sharing it with me!

I began by looking at a few of our colourful borders, “August, the traditional summer holiday month, but to us it is more a time to sit back and enjoy our garden”

Below are the four photos featured on this page.

On the opposite page white blooms are featured, “Until a few years ago I did not enjoy white plants in the garden but recently I have developed a liking for them.” The photos show “White blooms with coloured centres.”

 

Turning over the page are a selection of photos of some of our Hypericum inodorum shrubs, “This month several of our trees and shrubs have finished flowering and their berries are colouring up.”

Two plants feature on the opposite page to the hypericum, a lily and a fritillery, where I shared a photo and an i-Pad sketch.

The next collection of plants to be featured are daylilies or hemerocallis, of which we have over thirty different cultivars. I wrote, “Our collection of Hemerocallis adds so much to our garden, where we have planted them in virtually every border. Each individual flower lasts but one day but more keep coming to replace them. You can eat them too!”

 

On the page opposite I shared a watercolour painting of the beautiful Lysimachia ‘Firecracker’.

Over the page to the next double  page spread we discover photos of agapanthus on the left hand page and a little rodent visitor to our garden on the right. About agapanthus I wrote, “My flowering plant of the month of August is agapanthus. We grow a collection in our gravel garden called the ‘Beth Chatto Border.”

About the rodent I wrote, “Common Shrew live throughout our patch, surviving for just one year they live heir life at speed. We see them as they rush from one border to another, not wishing to be spotted by one of our many birds of prey who frequent our garden, Kestrel, Sparrow Hawk, Owls and Merlin. We welcome shrews as they enjoy slugs and snails as snacks.”

I really enjoyed the challenge of sketching a Common Shrew using watercolour paints and fibre pens.

My journal for August finishes with more pictures of colourful plant combinations and communities we have created in our garden. “Our patch is a very colourful place in mid-summer with each border home to a variety of flowering herbaceous perennials.”

We will see my garden journal again in September.

 

 

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garden photography gardening hardy perennials spring spring gardening succulents

Gardening in lockdown – Jude’s micro-nursery plants sort out

We sell lots of plants mostly perennials and shrubs when we open our garden and when we give talks to clubs and societies. I take the shrub cuttings and Jude deals with seed sowing and looking after plant divisions and self seeded perennials.

The greenhouse is almost exclusively used to sow and then grow on Jude’s perennial seeds.

 

As they reach a suitable size they are potted on and then hardened off in trays outside. This also allows us to water them from below.

 

Cuttings taken from succulents are also kept in the greenhouse until they are large enough to pot on and move outside. Perennials end up on the shelves in Jude’s little nursery which has a label saying “Jude’s Micro-nursery”.

At about the same time dahlias are potted on when they show good new growth after their winter rest. Begonias are hardened off too.

 

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Return to Waterperry – part 2

As promised I am back sharing with you our summer time visit to the gardens at Waterperry.

Through this wooden gate we discovered a formal garden divided into four sections all featuring interesting and unusual alpines. The golden crocus lookalikes are Sternbergia lutea. Since seeing this beautiful patch we ordered a dozen for our own garden.

The orange flowers looking somewhat like Pentstemon pinifolia ‘Wisley Fire’ was in fact Zauschneria californica ‘Dublin’. Again, although we already grow P. ‘Wisley Fire’ we have bought the Zauschneria too and planted it in scree,

Occasionally when exploring gardens we come across seats that really surprise and impress and here at Waterperry we did just that. The first, the ‘Head Gardener’ seat seems to suit me! I want one! Jude obviously equally enjoyed the other.

 

As well as garden seats we discovered a spherical stone water feature which had the thinnest film of water seeping over its edge and down the sides. Completely different but again rather interesting was this thatched dovecote.

These metal and glass screens looked equally good close-up as they did from a distance. The light altered their colours as we moved around them.

I will finish this report on our return visit to Waterperry Gardens with photos of this beautiful figure sculpture sitting on top of the wall and a stunning piece of cloud pruning.

 

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colours garden photography gardening gardens grasses hardy perennials light light quality ornamental grasses ornamental trees and shrubs Shrewsbury Shropshire shrubs trees village gardens Winter Gardening winter gardens

My Garden Journal 2019 – December

My Garden Journal 2019 comes to an end this month, so here are the entries for December.

On the first page I wrote, “December sees most of the berries stripped from our shrubs and trees by dozens of  thrushes including migrants who like our winter weather. A few berries remain to enhance he odd flowers, the grasses, seed-heads and evergreen shrubs.”

Over onto the next page I feature some of the more unusual and very subtle coloured foliage in our December patch.

I wrote, “Unusual coloured foliage of our evergreen shrubs come to the fore even on the dullest of days. Bronzes, browns, blushes, purples, blues, greys and greens with flecks of yellow.”

 

Over onto the third page for December and I talk of how much there is to see in our garden if you look down at your feet! “In our garden in winter it pays to look down. Silver glows and glistens at our feet. Silver leaf markings take on so many shapes and patterns.”

     

So just one final page for my December entries for 2019! Maybe my next year’s garden journal will be completely different?

 

For the last page of my 2019 Garden Journal I wrote, “I love sunny winter days when the low sun catches the colour and texture of twig and bark.” Then I featured a collection of ten photos of the light doing just that to a few of our trees and shrubs.

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colours flowering bulbs garden design garden designers garden photography gardening gardens half-hardy perennials hardy perennials meadows National Garden Scheme NGS Yorkshire

The Sheffield Gardens – Part 2 – James Hitchmough’s patch

So during our weekend up in Sheffield after visiting the garden of Nigel Dunnett, we moved on to explore the garden of his colleague, Professor James Hitchmough. This garden was half way up a steep narrow road near the city centre with terraced houses on both sides.

An NGS sign pointed us through a gateway, where a path took us through the side garden where a wooden gate opened up to reveal the back garden, where glimpses of yellow, orange and red invited us to explore further.

These colourful glimpses hinted at the array of South African bulbs such as watsonias and gladioli, which formed part of a garden that was one low growing meadow below a few gnarled old apple trees. This was no surprise as James Hitchmough is the pioneer of seed sown meadows mixed with such bulbs, but his public gardens such as the one at Wisley tend to be so much larger than his own little patch.

It is a gentle garden with foliage playing an important role and many blues, pinks and whites adding some subtlety.

This was a small but so interesting and atmospheric too.

 

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autumn autumn colours colours garden design garden furniture garden paths garden photography gardening gardens gardens open to the public grasses hardy perennials light light quality National Garden Scheme NGS nurseries ornamental grasses ornamental trees and shrubs pathways shrubs South Shropshire walled gardens Yellow Book Gardens

Seasonal visits to two very different gardens – Autumn at Wildegoose

This is the last visit to the smaller of our two gardens that we have been visiting throughout 2019, so please enjoy my report on Wildegoose Nursery and Garden which we visited on its last open day of the year. We spoke to Jack one of the owners who looked very glad that the season was ending and the nursery closing for another year. He and Laura and the twins were off on holiday the day after our visit.

The colours of the autumn flowers was so intensely beautiful and the light on the day of our visit enriched them further. The bright pink Persicaria amplexicaulis in a new cultivar to me, ‘Amethyst’.

 

There were signs of autumn to remind us of the season! Pumpkins and gourds, trees and shrubs showing unusual shades of pink-red.

  

In places the dying seedheads of perennials contrast beautifully with the autumn leaves on the shrubs.

 

I shall finish off this report of our visit with a gallery of my photos. As usual just click on the first photo and then navigate using the arrows.

For my next post in this series we will return to Bodnant, the bigger of our two gardens this year.

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A Tale of Two Gardens – Part 2 – Esme’s Garden

After enjoying a couple of hours and fine refreshments at Nancy’s home town garden we drove a short way to her other garden which is dedicated to her mother-in-law, Esme.

Through a gap between two rows of terraced cottages we discovered a narrow grass pathway between hedges on one side and gardens on the other. An open gate within the hedge invited us to enter the magical world of Esme’s Garden.

We thought Nancy’s home garden was something special but what awaited us at Esme’s was simply amazing, a large beautifully designed space packed with interest. Again the planting was beautifully and thoughtfully put together and the use of foliage exceptional. A network of paths, arches and path junctions directed us around borders packed with trees, shrubs and herbaceous perennials.

 

There were Gothic touches throughout the garden and Nancy herself had created a great folly at the bottom of the garden, which impressed us all.

There is so much to enjoy at Esme’s Garden that I think the best way to share the garden with you is to create a gallery of my photos. As usual click on the first pic then navigate using the arrows.

 

 

So now I have shared both of Nancy’s gardens with you and I now presume like me you think she is one amazing gardener. Just thinking about creating and maintaining two gardens makes me breathless!

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My Garden Journal 2019 – June

As we reach the half way point in the year the garden really comes to life with bright green fresh growth and so much colour from flowers, herbaceous perennials, shrubs and  climbers especially roses and clematis. I began by writing, “At the beginning of June we were still worried about how dry the garden still was and longed for some rain. Luckily a few days into June and this is exactly what happened. And luckier still was that the planned group visits to our garden at that time were not interrupted by wet weather. After rain, until the droplets on their flowers and buds dry off, make roses look sad and dejected.”

I then shared a batch of Rose pics.

 

The next double page spread featured wider shots of borders and plant communities.

I wrote, “I decided it would be a good idea to go out with my camera in hand to take wide shots of the garden borders to give an impression of the whole garden. But, as the overcast sky and rain didn’t go away, I went out into the heavy rain and took the shots I wanted.”

“Plant-a-Boxes – end of drive”                 “Herbaceous Violas – front door”

Then followed a set of 4 photos of our “Beth Chatto Garden”.

   

Next a set of photos of the Shrub Borders, and the New Garden finishing with a photo of out Hare who guards the lawn daisies.

“The New Garden”

“Our Hare Sculpture who guards the lawn daisies.”

Below are four photos of our Beth Chatto Garden.

“The Beth Chatto Garden”

The last two pics on this page show the Shed Roof Garden and the new Foliage Garden by the shed.

Turning over the page we move into the back garden, where I wrote, “To access the back garden you can go either side of the house. Access to the left and you can enjoy the “Shade Border” featuring ferns. Once in the back there are two paths to choose from both of which will take you the length of the garden.”

“Taking any pathway will present enticing views into the borders.”

 

Onto the next page I wrote, “The new Hot Garden has settled well and already giving pleasure.”

 

   

“Arabella’s Garden is now lush with growth and gives pleasure to her when she visits. She checks on it every time.”

 

Over the page I share my pencil crayon sketches of two of our smaller grasses, both Briza.

The final page for this month shows the Bog garden and the show of Alliums which dominates two borders in Jun. I wrote, “At the very bottom of the central path to its left lies the Bog Garden and the Wildlife Pond. Lush, colourful foliage is the order of the day, the tall reeds and Irises adding height.”

“Various Alliums dominate the Chicken Garden and Secret Garden throughout June and will continue into July.”

So there we have my June entries into my Garden Journal 2019, a great month in our garden.