Savill Garden is a special places. Wandering around, its paths leads you to surprises, gentle places, sudden views and unexpected delights.
Tag: ornamental trees
For our second post about the Savill Gardens we shall discover the colours, shapes and textures of the Winter Garden. Although planted with winter interest in mind when we explored in the autumn it was full of interest.
The third and final visit to the Savill Gardens will feature a selection of images from around the gentle walk we took through these stunning gardens. We had looked forward to visiting these gardens for years and when we finally did we were not disappointed in any way.
At last we have got around to visiting the Savill Garden. It was worth waiting for! The new visitor reception is an amazing building, a single storey space under a long, sinuous roof shaped like the tail of a Whale.
The Savill Garden is situated on the edge of Great Windsor Park and is just a small part of the Royal Landscape. We followed the recommended path around the garden so that we could see the effects of Autumn throughout.
In most areas of the garden, Savill had the typical look and feel of a stately home garden, both in plants grown, choice of design features and border arrangements, but hints of newer thinking were showing through, such as the use of grasses and new perennial plantings.
A true highlight of our visit to the Savill Gardens was the surprise at coming across this modern water feature. It looked good and it sounded good.
Although we visited the gardens at Savill in the Autumn one of the most colourful areas was the Winter Garden, already showing many interesting features. So the next post will be about the winter Garden in Autumn.
This is the penultimate garden wander for the year and what a colourful one it is. The weather has turned cold with daytime temperatures failing to reach double figures and night time temperatures only just above freezing. Some days though do please the camera, with deep blue skies in between storms.
This rich red oriental poppy never fails to impress even this late in the year.
Several of the plants that feature in the November garden seem to sport odd shaped flowers. The Strawberry Tree, Arbutus unedo has flowers that hang like pearly cream bells. Cyclamen hederifolium have curious fly away petals while Shystostylus flowers hang on gently curving stems.
Roses seem to be blooming away giving us brightness for most of the year. Many that started blooming in late May are still flowering now and they are producing buds in readiness to flower right through to the end of the year.
At the moment I pass the wonderfully colourful corner of the Shed Bed, where grasses have coloured up intermingled with the dries flower heads of Eryngium and Agastache. It has to be my favourite November patch in the garden.
Having passed my favourite corner I pass our trees as I go down to to the bottom of the garden to feed the chicks. Their bark textures and colours change every day. This birch’s chocolate coloured bark is peeling back to reveal snow white smooth bark below, like a white shirt beneath jacket collars.
It seems to be a special year for cotoneaster berries, with every variety covered thickly in readiness for arrival of the winter migrant thrushes.
There is something very special about the freshness of the flowers of the Fatsia, with their creamy, greeny whitish colours. They always look to me as if they should smell of vanilla and be edible!
There are difficult decisions to be made in the November garden. Which seed heads to cut down and which to leave for their looks and wildlife value is perhaps the most difficult. How could you possible cut this clematis down when it looks this good? We tend now to leave perennials standing unless or until they fall and become soggy. Once they do this they endanger the lives of the plants they may be smothering. To me the idea of “putting the garden to bed for winter” just doesn’t add up. A garden is for 12 months, all of them
Wrapping the greenhouse in its winter jacket of bubble-wrap is the least favourite of all of our gardening tasks. This Novenber we started on a cold day knowing that as we added the thermal layer to the greenhouse we would heat up as well. But the sun came out and we got too hot. We started off wearing fleece jackets over jumpers but by the time we had finished we had shed both these layers and were down to tee-shirts.
First we collected the rolls of wrap from their summer quarters – the woodshed, and piled them up outside
Next we attempted to begin hanging it inside the greenhouse over specially positioned strings and wires. The bubblewrap then attacked Jude, the Undergardener.
Eventually Jude managed to overcome the wrap and get on with the job in hand, lining the sides and then hanging it over strings tied across the roof. Soon the temperature increased.
I hope these plants appreciate it!
Let’s us finish our November wander with a couple of richly coloured beautifully lit views across borders, and a quick look across our borrowed landscape.
This is the last of my “Go South” posts and as promised it features a garden. Well after all those coastal posts in this series it was only a matter of time before we visited a garden. And boy what a garden it was!
Nymans was created by one of the great supporters of the English plant collectors and it shows in the variety of plants and in the difficulty in identifying some of them.
Nymans is a garden to delight any plantsman who will leave with a list of must-haves. It will also make any good gardener desire his very own areboretum just to plant the rare and special trees spotted at Nymans.
I am not a great fan of coniferous evergreens but these three display diversity in their foliage colour and in their structure and shape.
In the shade of deciduous trees the shapes of their trunks are revealed.
Walking around this varied and surprising garden is like walking through the pages of a good book on garden design. Here you can find every principle of design shown in all its glory. Any gardener, whatever the size of their garden could adapt ideas to be found on a walk about at Nymans.
Framing a view …..
Using a structure to invite you onwards ….
Planting in trios ………………..
Drawing the eye …………
Using structures as an invitation and to support plants to provide shade from the sun ……………
Much of the house belonging to the gardens at Nymans is now in ruins, but they somehow suit the garden. They provide a good foil for planting.
The ruins provided some oportunities to photograph little details and patterns.
But the gardens of Nymans aren’t all about big views and big trees. Richly coloured traditionally proportioned double herbaceous borders excite the eye of the visitor.
There was so much to see at Nymans that another post will appear soon.
As allotment gardeners we enjoy late summer and early autumn as the busiest harvesting time, but lots more food is coming into readiness in our ornamental gardens and parks. Nuts, seeds and berries provide feasts for wildlife and feasts for our eyes.
Sweet Chestnut awaiting the attention of squirrels in Pittville Park in Cheltenham.
Onopordum seed heads against a blue sky in our garden.
Drooping Dieramas.
Black umbellifer seeds.
Crataegus berries and autumn foliage.
A host of Arum Lilies.
Jude “The Undergardener” mystified by an unknown chestnut.
The chestnut had spiky golf balls as nut capsules.
Mad clashing colours on Euonymous europaeus.
Crocosmia Lucifer graceful stems with its ginger coloured seeds.
Let us now have a wander around our garden and spot red berries, and photograph them before the Mistle Thrushes, Redwings and Fieldfares gorge on them.
But unlike Henry Ford we do grow our berries in more than one colour!
White Dogwood.
Two-tone Hypericum.
Musky purple grapes.
This unusual cream berried Cotoneaster always confuses garden visitors. (C. rothchildsiana)
Close to Welshpool, just a half hour from home across the Welsh border, are our favourite nursery and garden centre, The Dingle and The Derwen, part of the same family. They sell unusual trees and shrubs and many good-value perennials all locally grown. But hidden away in the Dingle nursery, through a little wooden gate is a wonderful sloping garden. The garden is mostly a wonderful collection of unusual trees and shrubs on a gentle slope down to a lake, so a visit in the autumn is an assault on the senses.
The nursery which is now over 40 years old, grows thousands of plants on its 150 acres of Welsh countryside. We rarely come away without a gem – and they give free coffee away too!
The garden itself extends to just four acres, but those four acres feel much larger than expected with a complex network of paths which give occasional views which are wide and stunning. This is good garden design.
As the paths take us around corners they feature interesting, colourful shrubs and trees to delight the eye before enticing us to find out what is around the next corner.
Being on a slope, the garden’s many seats are most warmly welcomed by aching legs.
Some of the seating provides cover which proved useful a few times as showers burst from the dark sky just visible through gaps in the trees.
Coloured, textured foliage and bark keep the interest of the plant lover in us going strong and enticing us around each corner.
As in any good garden little cameos stop us in our tracks and catch the eye.
The lake at the lowest point of the garden, provides a restful place – restful to the eye and restful to the legs.
Strong contrasts in foliage colour show up in the brighter weather as we work our way back up the paths to the gate.
As in any garden specialising in trees and shrubs the stars of the autumn are the Acers.
Back up the top of the garden we pass through the little wooden gate and are tempted for a perusal of the colourful nursery beds.
Just for a change we have no words just photographs to enjoy. A few sneak in near the end though!
If only you could smell the leaves below! They are from the tree called Cercidyphilum and they smell so sweet. I think they smell of toffee apples, Jude thinks they smell of candyfloss while others think the scents reminiscent of brittle toffee, burnt sugar, in fact anything sweet and sticky!
The most underrated plants for autum leaf colour must be the grasses. They very rarely get a mention in relation to autumn colour, so let’s put it right.
The tenth post in this series of wanders around our garden already! Just two to go! What shall I do for a monthly garden post instead next year? Any ideas for me?
October started off with days of endless heavy rain but after a fortnight it changed to steady drizzle. A bit of sun would be welcome right now.
The first frosts have visited us forcing us to bring the Aeoniums, Echeverias and our other tender plants under cover. We shall have to keep them safe in the “bubble wrapped” greenhouse, by giving them virtually no water and removing any dry or damaged foliage and when the temperatures drops below -15 C give them additional snug coverings of fleece and bubble-wrap. Another sign of autumn is the log delivery which was tipped off the back of a truck onto our drive mid-month. We sorted them and stacked them around the front door. The wonderfully evocative woody aroma of oak and birch trees mixes with the sweet scents of the woodland floor. The scents of the season.
We visited the gardens at our favourite nursery yesterday, The Dingle at Welshpool, a superb autumn garden on a sloping hillside leading down to lakes. (Look out for my post in the next week or so) As usual we returned with a few acquisitions – a tiny orange Kniphofia, Cornus canadensis and Clerondendron bungeii.
We have planted the Kniphofia with a trio of bronze-leaved grasses and near to our darkest blue Agapanthus. As the “poker” is flowering now, its head of tubular orange flowers glows alongside the Agapanthus’ developing seed heads of blue and pewter.
Sometimes autumn hues aren’t just provided by deciduous trees changing the colours of their leaves but by foliage on perennials, grasses and shrubs. Euphorbias are a fine example, as are grasses which have the added bonus of seed heads. Look out for the pic of our Pentstemon Huskers Red which always surprises with its deep red autumn explosions.
But amongst all this red hot foliage we mustn’t lose sight of the flowers that continue to add colour to the garden. There are now fewer so each one is a precious jewel.
I shall finish off with a few pics of autumn coloured leaves, just what you expect in October! And then take a look at one border and take a walk down just one of our many grass paths.
Flooding and its problems have dominated our allotment month. For the third time this year our allotment site has been under water. Rotten potatoes, bark paths washed away, rows of seedlings washed onto other plots and onto pathways and items stored in sheds ruined. This is sadly becoming a regular occurence. We have a meeting with the town council next week so perhaps we can come away with some positive news for the allotment members.
But let’s concentrate on the positives of our lovely site. The people and the plants. This is our friend Sherlie with a monster cabbage!
Phil had never grown apples until four years ago when he asked me to help him set up a row of cordon apples and pears and teach him the necessary skills. Now look at what he has achieved this year!
Our wander with camera in hand took us through the Autumn Garden over to our plot and then across to the Winter Garden via the Spring and Summer Gardens.
The Autumn Garden, appropriately, is now looking wonderful with late season flowers looking colourful amongst foliage the colour of fire.
Butterflies, bees and hoverflies were flocking to the asters in this garden for the first fortnight this month but as the weather turned colder they rapidly disappeared. Buddlejas flower profusely around the site during the summer attracting beneficial insects and pollinators, but this orange one flowers in the autumn.
We grow a variety of Sorbus trees here and they provide wonderful foils for late flowering perennials.
The stars here though have to be the Echinacea.
Around the trees in the Birch Grove fairies have been at work. So many plot holders have been taking photos of their handywork.
On our own plot we are still picking autumn raspberries. The three varieties of kale we are growing are looking quite colourful as is a sole sunflower – the only sun to be seen up on the lotties at the moment. The day these pics were taken was dark and overcast.
A little bit of extra colour can be found in the leaves of our blackberry bramble.
The crops that we will be harvesting during the winter and early spring are coming along nicely. Leeks, parsnips, carrots and celeriac.
The Winter Garden is an oasis of brightness with most of the colours coming from foliage.
I shall finish my October wander with some great news. Three Bowbrook Allotment Community gardeners were invited to the Mayor’s Award Ceremony earlier in the month. Dave, on the left, received his certificate and cup for the Best Front Garden in Shrewsbury and Sue and Paul collected their award for Best Half Allotment in Shrewsbury. Well done to them!
greenbenchramblings 