Tag: herbaceous plants

Another Yellow Book Garden: Windsor Cottage

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date April 24, 2017
4 Comments on Another Yellow Book Garden: Windsor Cottage

Looking back to a sunny summer’s day!

Off down the A49 trunk road into Herefordshire for another visit to enjoy a fellow NGS, Yellow book garden. Windsor Cottage is near the village of Dilwyn and described as a wildlife friendly half-acre garden which has just completed a 5 year redesign.

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This proved to be garden full of very special plants beautifully grown by a couple of keen, energetic gardeners who were so keen to share their garden with us. They are both artists and their use of colour and planting companions displayed their creative flair.

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In order to share our enjoyment of Windsor Cottage with you I have created this gallery. Please click on the first picture and navigate using the arrows.

So this was a garden of great plants, two great plantspeople and an atmosphere of peacefulness and relaxation.

Tags cottage gardens, hardy perennials, herbaceous plants, Herefordshire, Herefordshire gardens, mixed borders, NGS, NGS gardens

colours garden design garden designers garden photography gardening gardens gardens open to the public grasses hardy perennials Norfolk ornamental grasses ornamental trees and shrubs

Bressingham Gardens – 2 – Using Grasses.

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date December 18, 2016
1 Comment on Bressingham Gardens – 2 – Using Grasses.

In this second report of our visit to the gardens at Bressingham I am going to look at the use of grasses throughout the gardens. As the batch of shots below illustrate, grasses here are beautifully integrated into the mixed borders and enhance their partners’ attributes. The grasses add movement, sound and an element of delicacy to the whole garden.

The Bloms family created the gardens here at Bressingham not only to show the use of perennials and grasses but also coniferous evergreens. It is here they display all the many new cultivars of grasses and perennial herbaceous plants that they have bred over the decades. They also pioneered the use of island beds in garden design where for the first time herbaceous borders were designed to be seen from all around and the island beds of plantings were designed to be islands within seas of lawn.

Grasses especially varieties and cultivars of Miscanthus are an integral part of the gardens here including the island beds. There is a large collection of Miscanthus which impressed and delighted me as it is a grass family that I love to see and love to use in our garden. It is a great multi-season group of plants.

Here are a few shots of the Miscanthus collection, but it was hard to do justice with the camera to illustrate the subtle variations in colour, height texture and growth habits of these grasses, the colours in all the different flowers and the leaf stripes and variegations.

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Using grasses in clumps, blocks, rivers and ribbons adds drama to the garden, but equally a single specimen partnered with a shrub, tree or herbaceous plant can increase the aesthetic value of both the grass and its partner.

Here are a couple of ideas seen at Bressingham using grasses in ribbons and rivers.

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We enjoyed finding effective planting partnerships involving grasses with other classes of plant.

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We came away full of new ideas and a list of Miscanthus we look forward to adding to our Avocet patch.

Tags Blooms, Blooms of Bressingham, Bressingham, Bressingham Gardens, Foggy Bottom, grasses, hardy perennials, herbaceous borders, herbaceous plants, island beds, island borders, mixed borders, ornamental grasses, perennials

colours garden design garden photography gardening gardens gardens open to the public grasses hardy perennials light light quality ornamental grasses ornamental trees and shrubs trees

Bressingham Gardens – 1 – Colour Combinations and Conifers

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date December 15, 2016
3 Comments on Bressingham Gardens – 1 – Colour Combinations and Conifers

Jude and I have a book in which we write and keep our bucket list, or really bucket lists. We keep lists of places to visit, gardens to visit and activities to try out. We add to them throughout each year and revamp and edit them at the beginning of each new year.

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Our gardens to visit list has contained one particular garden we wished to visit for 3 or 4 years and it was in the summer of 2016 that we finally successfully got there, The Bressingham Gardens. We looked forward to seeing how they used grasses throughout the gardens and to experiencing enjoying so many beautiful herbaceous perennials. We also hoped that the on-site nursery would give us access to some unusual perennials bred at Bressingham and difficult to get elsewhere, and we particularly hoped to buy some Sea Hollies. Blooms are particularly well-known for their Achillea, Crocosmia and Kniphofia developments, such as C. Lucifer and K. Toffee Nose.

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These expansive gardens are like a calm green sea of short cut grass broken up by island beds exploding with colourful mixed plantings.

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Areas of shade are essential in any open aspect garden, and here small deciduous trees are used throughout to add small patches of shade along pathways, and most of these trees have interesting coloured foliage to add another layer of interest.

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We enjoyed the richness of warm colours working together beautifully when caught by the sunshine, and contrasting colours shining out in the borders.

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Coniferous evergreens are a special feature of the gardens as they are a particular love of Adrian Bloom one of the family who designed, maintain and own the gardens at Bressingham. Here they appear in every shade of yellow, green and blue with shapes of all sorts some extreme shape, from narrow, upright sentinels to drooping waterfalls. They also feature within the tall windbreaks planted all around the site to protect the wide ranging plantings within the gardens.

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In my next blog we will return to the gardens at Bressingham and take a look at how grasses are used to good effects. A big disappointmetn at Bressingham is that the nursery there has been sold to a massive national chain of garden centres, so the plants were the same old same old! So sad!

Tags Blooms, Blooms of Bressingham, Bressingham, Bressingham Gardens, conifers, Crocosmia Lucifer, crocosmias, hardy perennials, hardy plants, herbaceous borders, herbaceous plants, island beds, island borders, mixed borders, Norfolk, ornamental grasses, ornamental shrubs, ornamental trees

climbing plants colours flowering bulbs garden design garden photography garden pools gardens gardens open to the public lakes meadows ornamental trees and shrubs outdoor sculpture Powis Powys trees water garden water in the garden

A garden reborn – Glansevern Hall

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date July 27, 2015
1 Comment on A garden reborn – Glansevern Hall

In this post we will be looking back to a garden visit we made in mid-May when we visited a garden near Welshpool just over the border into Wales but still only a half hour drive away. The last time we had visited the gardens at Glansevern Hall was about ten years ago when the current owners had just started to rejuvenate the run down gardens.

We arrived to find everything improved so much so that some areas were hard to recognise. It is now a garden of real atmosphere, a truly romantic garden. After parking up in a car park which was a clearing among beautiful mature trees, we entered the garden through a courtyard which would have originally have been the stable block of the hall. Planting in narrow borders at the base of the wall included some interesting plants and some great ironwork.

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Once outside the courtyard several garden rooms contained exciting plant combinations and swathes of colour and texture.

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We discovered more wonderful ironwork too!

In contrast to the irregularly shaped beds we came across circular beds planted in very different styles.

A pergola covered in Laburnum with its bright yellow racemes was a real surprise to find as we began finding our way to the informal meadow areas and their collection of interesting trees and shrubs.

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This weeping specimen tree took some identifying. We had never seen one before but eventually came to the conclusion that it was a Weeping Mulberry, Morus alba pendula. A real beauty. The sculpture and the Viburnums were much easier to identify.

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The gardens close to the hall itself were much more formal and had an “arts and crafts” feel to them. The colours of the planting were most unusual in different pale shades of blue around the front and shades of yellow along the side borders.

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Moving away from the hall we walked beneath a wonderfully colourful and highly scented pergola swathed in Wisteria with its long white and blue racemes of flowers. Beneath the narrow borders were full of purple headed Alliums.

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After a quick break for coffee and cakes we traced the path around the lake which was surrounded by specimen trees many rare or unusual, some we had never seen before and a couple we had never even heard of!

We had a great day at Glansevern and came away amazed at how much work had been done developing the gardens into such a romantic place.

Tags garden metalwork, gardens open to the public, Glansevern Hall, herbaceous borders, herbaceous plants, ornamental grasses, pergola, Powis, Powys, wisteria

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Three Welsh Gardens – Part Three – A Garden of Two Halves

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date July 9, 2014
4 Comments on Three Welsh Gardens – Part Three – A Garden of Two Halves

We visited another garden in the countryside of Powis, our neighbouring county. It proved to be very much a garden of two halves. We approached “Cil y Wennol” on foot up a gently sloping curved driveway with trees on both sides dotted around in grass. Closer to the more formal front garden there were interesting land forms with a small meadow facing the sun on an embankment. Moon Daisies shone out almost glaring in the sunshine. As you have gathered from that statement we were experiencing bright sunshine.

This Betula with its beautifully coloured peeling bark had enticed us up the long drive where we were greeted by this bank of smiling daisies.

The front garden was a typical cottage style with interesting plants such as Astrantias, Lilies and Irises dotted throughout.

We had now realised that we had visited this garden years ago so we were not surprised by the sudden change in the garden design that greeted us as we entered the back garden. Here the design was much more modern. It was a garden to explore slowly taking advantage of the invitations presented through good design.

One path invited us into woodland, a relief for a while from the brightness and warmth of the sun. We were impressed by how a beautiful woodland can be created with the commonest of tree species. It proved you don’t have to have rarities to impress. Here the gardeners grew just native Birches, Rowans, Cherries and a few non-natives to add a touch of spice. A lovely atmosphere pervaded this space.

Leaving the woodland we were again presented with several options, different paths to take with different views and different plants.

Closer to the house a gravel area gave a completely different feel. Here were neatly trimmed conifers and Cotinus with their skirts lifted to expose twisted limbs. Soft planting among these features reflected the planting in the nearby borders.

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Moving around the side of the property we found another path to take through gap in the hedge where we discovered a swimming pool overlooked by a summerhouse.

We walked from here along a narrow path below a wall with soft planting above, beautifully backlit by the sun.

This was most definitely a garden of many parts beautifully linked with winding paths found through enticing arches and gaps in hedging.

Leaving the garden along the central pathway of the front cottage garden we enjoyed the view behind this wonderful gate. A great garden – it was good to return.

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