The growth of interest in grasses has given a whole new dimension to gardening allowing us to soften our borders, listen to their sounds, enjoy their movement and the special way they catch the light.
These three photos were taken in our garden in late December to show how important they are in our gardens.
Since I had a major operation to rebuild my right leg, I find myself being able to tackle things I have not done for years and I am gaining confidence to have a go at them. Jude and I have not visited London for decades because of my disabilities, but the time came in early autumn to give it a go. So we relied on daughter, Jo and son-in-law Rob, to organise our London adventure and guide us through our time there.
We managed and it felt wonderful! I think Jude, Jo and Rob were as delighted by it all as I was. I also realised a life’s dream! We spent an evening at Ronnie Scott’s in Soho. It was just as good as I expected and an experience that stays with me every moment.
But lots else happened, not just the world’s most famous jazz club!
The hotel we stayed in, Citizen M Tower Bridge, afforded us the most special of views looking out over the Thames and straight at The Tower.
On our first evening in the Capital we wandered towards the Thames to dine in a restaurant on its banks. There is something very special about cities at night.
After a good night’s sleep in our i-Pad controlled room, we took a taxi to the Tate Modern, and that will be the subject of my next London post.
Here we are in October, my 10th visit to my garden journal this year. I love October, with its special rich light and the fire and flame colours of foliage on trees, shrubs and perennial plants alike.
The first words in my October journal were, “With October came our first signs of Autumn, foliage on perennials, shrubs and trees are all colouring up – yellows, oranges and reds. Green is becoming a far less dominant colour.” I have taken lots of colourful photos to share what we can see each time we wander out into our garden.
On the next page my photos one of the most colourful of all autumnal shrubs, the deciduous Euonymus, and I wrote, Our deciduous Euonymus are at their best in October, foliage and berries.”
Over on the next double page spread and on the following page too, I continued to look at our current projects.
I wrote, “Moving on with our project, creating a new border to replace our rather jaded foliage bed, we positioned the plants in pots, moved them around until they looked just right. The planting could then get underway.”
“We decided that for another autumn and winter task we would re-design our Hot Border which was looking a little jaded. This simple decision soon became far more complicated. We ended up making the bold decision to move the new Hot Garden to a completely different part of our patch. But first we had to finish work on the new bed featured on the opposite page. Bulbs had to be planted and an access path made along the backof the border plus a couple of Liriope muscari needed planting.”
“A selection of bulbs and a few more Carex get planted.”
“Ian, our gardener, creates a new acess path for the back of the new border.”
“Two Liriope muscari now enjoy their new home.”
Moving on to the next double page spread I share the beginnings of developing the new front border to replace the original Hot Garden. I wrote,“As Ian trimmed our Lavender Hedge, I began stripping out the original Hot Border. As I dug plants up, Jude repotted any we wished to keep, if necessary splitting them up too.”
The front border soon looked empty and Ian improved the soil by double digging and and incorporating organic compost and forking it all through. It is now easily workable and feels a perfect texture.
On the opposite page to our front border adventures I shared some of my paintings of October seedheads, created using graphite pencil and Japanese water colour brush pens.
I wrote, “When the sun shines bright on a dry October day, its rays catch each delicate seedhead atop the fine stems of perennials. The slightest breeze invite these lightweight beige, bronze, ginger and coffee seedheads to dance.”
The final double page spread brings colour back as we look at what is in flower during the last few days of the month. I wrote, “In contrast to the subtle colours of dried grasses and seed heads our late flowering climbers, shrubs and perennials are so bright!”
“Sharp contrasts give the garden added depth as the autumn sum dips lower in the sky.”
So we see the end of October with reasonable temperatures holding up and plenty of dry days to get out into the garden and get busy.
October to my mind is the first month of the Autumn, whatever the metereological office says about September taking that role. We shall see what aspects of this new season we found and experienced when we took our October wander around the sloping woodland gardens of The Dingle near Welshpool.
The light was beautiful as we started to wander around the garden and it was the sort of light that lit up the colours of the foliage, emphasising that autumn had certainly arrived.
It certainly wasn’t just autumn foliage that was there to fascinate us, flowering perennials and shrubs were performing well too.
Several members of the Eunymus family both deciduous and evergreen grow happily in the woodland garden. They display such unusual berries usually orange with pink highlights.
The leaves of this fern reflected the shape of the Rhus foliage, a special variety with lovely cut leaves, Rhus typhina lancianata.
Fallen foliage beneath our feet looked like a Persian rug of many colours.
Autumn is also the season for fungi!
So there we have our look at The Dingle gardens for October, a colourful time of the year. Next month perhaps many leaves will be down leaving trees as skeletons.
During our family holiday on Anglesey in the middle of May we spent a few days discovering ancient pre-historic sites on the island. The walk to a fortified hut group took us through this beautiful patch of woodland growing happily on a gentle slope. I hope you enjoy the photos I took.
The beautiful light worked as a spotlight to help intensify the colour of the flowers and the bright greens of the many ferns.
What a spectacular little patch of woodland, a real treat to walk through and enjoy the trees and the flowers growing beneath them.
As members of the RHS we often visit their gardens and their partner gardens. Sadly it is a long journey to get to any of their main gardens so we do not visit as often as we would like. We make an effort to visit at least two each year.
In 2017 the two we selected were Hyde Hall in Essex and Harlow Carr in Yorkshire, two very different gardens, one in the south and one in the north. The first we visited was Hyde Hall which is the furthest away of all their gardens so we have only ever explored it once before. We made this journey in the middle of the summer and were looking forward in particular to seeing how the Dry Garden had developed as this was a new venture when we originally visited this garden. When we journey down to Essex we usually pay a visit to the garden of the great lady of British gardening, Beth Chatto, but this time we did not have time. But we will go to her garden soon when I will post about her incredible garden when we do. For now though we will concentrate on the gardens of Hyde Hall.
It is rarely possible to admire the planting within a car park, but at Hyde Hall the planting was worth looking at and photographing. It was based on new style perennial planting which had such a gentle calming effect on us as we walked from the car to the garden. Grasses and airy perennials were the mainstay of the plantings.
Once inside the gardens themselves, the quality of planting and the brilliant way in which plant partners were grouped were of the highest quality.
Grasses feature strongly at Hyde Hall adding texture to the landscape where grass is cut selectively, but different ornamental cultivars are used for structure and their architectural presence, and in mixed plantings for contrast, movement and for visitors to touch and stroke.
In places we could identify where plants had been chosen to take advantage of the light from the sun, using its brightness to encourage us to see reflection, shimmering light, glossy textures and contrasting patterns. Essex is dry and sunny particularly compared to our Shropshire climate. Using the brightness of the sun and the dryness of the climate to enhance gardens is so clever and not often done well. Hyde Hall is the star in this department.
In my second post about this wonderful RHS garden I shall focus on their famous Dry Garden, but for now I want to explore the way light is used so effectively in some areas. Light can emphasise glossiness of foliage, it can emphasise the interplay of light and shade and it can emphasise texture.
Mid-December saw the sudden arrival of snow a rare occurrence in recent years. The last time we can remember having any appreciable snow fall in December was back in 2010 and 2011. Sadly I am still recovering from my surgery so really haven’t been able to get out there and enjoy the white stuff. However it did give me the chance to send Jude the Undergardener out with my trusty Nikon, so this post will feature all her photographs.
They are pretty good for someone who says she can’t use a camera! Methinks the lady objects too much! Jude the Undergardener has such a good eye for a picture!
Seedheads of perennials gain caps of snow and ice, and light finds places to make sparkle.
Twiggy skeletons of shrubs that had lost their leaves managed to catch balls of snow in their branches.
Evergreen trees and shrubs gather much more snow and ice around them like thick duvets.
Sculptures scattered around the garden change as they absorb the snow.
Surprise flowers add tiny patches of colour among the whiteness, roses throwing up surprises through to the end of the year. Similarly the colours of fruits and berries pop up from the snow like “jack-in-the-box”, but this will only last until our winter thrushes consume them.
Structures that blend into the background for the rest of the year come to the fore when winter arrives but even more so when snow covers the garden in white. These structures include trained fruit trees, trellises, evergreen climbers and pollarded trees.
Looking out of the garden into our borrowed landscape showed that the countryside too had put on a new coat. Looking into the garden there are very special moments in time to catch. This leaf may at any time fall to the ground in a gentle breeze.
While walking around our local National Trust parklands, Attingham Park, we usually finish our regular wanderings by walking along the wide paths mown and nibbled short and neat by the teeth of the parkland sheep. This is the deer park and we do indeed regularly enjoy watching the large herd of Fallow Deer who wander confidently close to the many visitors walking their territory.
The low December sunbeams give them coats of gold. Their mottled, spotted and dashed patterning is beautiful but developed to be functional, as camouflage against their habitat background.
The autumn light can be very special at the beginning of the day but even more so as the days draws to a close. As we ended a parkland walk in late November we watched as the last rays of the sun tried to seek a way through the heavily needled branches of this huge and very ancient Cedar. Simply beautiful!
Our November visit to see the changing faces of this lovely Shropshire/Staffordshire border garden saw us arriving in sunshine but we were to be treated to a magnificent sky later in the day.
The grass below our feet was wet with the heavy dew from the night hours and it sparkled and glowed in the low autumnal rays of the sun. We just knew we were in for a good day! The two signs near to where we parked up hinted at the joys of autumn we would find and also at the fact that a painting course was being held in the gardens. There always seems to be something going on here as well as the beauty of the garden itself.
We always love the first few minutes of our visits here, when we get the first views out across the garden and get an idea of what the day may have in store for us. We immediately noticed that the Viburnum which we have never been able to identify had now lost the vibrancy of its red-purple hanging foliage and there was no sign of the richly glossy red and black berries. Instead a white feather hung to one of the last remaining leaves. Nearby in the border leading to the tea house yellow dominated, foliage of a tall Calamagrostis grass, an out of season golden yellow Phlomis whorl of flowers and the delicate seedheads of Agapanthus.
Looking out from the tea shop through its large panoramic window we noticed the light glistening on the dew still hanging on covering the grass and the outdoor seats and tables. As I took the pics of the dew Jude the Undergardener/ Mrs Greenbench looked out from the warmth enjoying tea and cake and the beautiful seasonal table centre bouquet.
As we re-entered the chill we noticed that the Nerine outside the cafe which we enjoyed in flower last month was parading its glossy black berries. Dew on the deeaply pleated Melianthus leaves increased their glaucous hue. The gardeners were busy cutting, taking under cover or protecting the tender plants around the cafe terrace. In the hot borders many tender perennials such as Dahlia, Salvias and Echiums were already safely put away leaving swathes of bare cold soil in their wake.
Seed heads have darkened and the scaffolding of stems have become more skeletal during the late autumn and produced a beauty all of their own for our delectation.
Leaves and fruit add richness and depth to the more limited November colour palette.
Side by side two completely different plants, one an Aesculus, one a Fuchsia present the same pinkish-cream colour, the first within its leaf and the second in its faded pink flowers. Beautiful to see them side by side!
Without a doubt my favourite family of shrubs is the deciduous Euonymus and they are always such exciting plants with unusual stems, bark, flowers and berries. Naturally I was delighted to come across this beautiful little shrub, Eouonymus alatus nana with beautiful subtle pink colouring to the autumn foliage and deep purple with orange flowers and berries.
So our eleventh visit to Dorothy Clive was such a worthwhile, even exciting day for us with such an unusual sky event lighting up the gardens for a little while. Our next visit in December will be the final one so we will see what the year end brings to this wonderful place.
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