Tag: outdoor sculpture

Pride of Picton – Michaelmas Daisies

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date October 21, 2013
6 Comments on Pride of Picton – Michaelmas Daisies

Near one of England’s most beautiful landscapes, the Malvern Hills is the village of Colwall, where we found the National Collection of Asters. The Picton Gardens and nursery which snuggle in beneath the hills is the place to go if you like Michaelmas Daisies. If you are already a fan you will become a bigger fan when you realise the vast range of flower colours, and how many different sized and shaped plants there are. If you were not a fan and went there you would come out a lifetime fan!

Even the gate welcomes you with a daisy!

Now follow us around as we explore this 2 acre autumn garden. The first set of photos were taken within ten minutes of starting out and already we had discovered the huge range of colours asters are painted in. But this garden is not just a collection of Michaelmas Daisies but a beautifully designed illustration of how good a garden can look in October. The yellows of Helianthum, Kniphofia and Rudbeckia all contrast with the pinks and purples of the Asters and grasses such as Miscanthus provide a perfect foil.

We had already come across Cotinus and Rhus which gave rich jewels of deep coloured foliage adding structure to the borders. Shrubs and trees featured more as we moved on, enticed by this gently curving pathway. Acers, deciduous Euonymus and Cornus fwere the stars here before the path led us out of the trees, with the woven apples sitting in the border, to the next section of the garden.

This area featured smaller shrubs punctuated by taller trees such as a rich gold and bronze Sorbus amid areas of perennials, a large percentage of which were of course Asters.

Beneath the peeling trunk of an Acer griseum these two woven youngsters were enjoying leisure time in the garden, the young girl quietly absorbed while her brother concentrates on perfecting his hand stands.

Even though we were emerged in Asters we could not help but be impressed by the incredible variety of texture in the bark of the trees.

The only way to finish this post is to indulge in a rich mix of Asters.

Tags asters, autumn, autumn colours, foliage, foliage plants, garden photography, gardening, grasses, Michaelmas Daisies, outdoor sculpture, shrubs, trees

garden design garden photography garden pools gardening hardy perennials renovation Shropshire succulents village gardens

Renovating the Rill Garden

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date September 18, 2013
10 Comments on Renovating the Rill Garden

Our Rill Garden was beginning to look a little jaded, mostly due to the edging paving sinking and coming loose. In places the level of the edging was uneven and sloping randomly. We decided it needed a revamp. The first job was to take the old edging paving up and clean off the old concrete. It took no time to get up the edging but it took a long time to chip off all the old concrete and chip off each bit until the back of the slabs were clean enough to re-lay.

“Matilda”, our sculptured figure admires our handiwork. She looks satisfied with how we have cleaned up the slabs.

We had to get the plants up so we lifted them pots and all into some of our plastic garden trugs. They need dividing so this proved to be a good opportunity.

After a few days we had relaid the slabs, all perfectly level and even looking, but we did discover a problem for when we put the pump back in which provides a gentle movement to the surface of the water in the rill, it failed to work so this will need replacing.

So, let us have a look at our Rill Garden now it has been re-vitalised.

Tags garden photography, gardening, outdoor sculpture, rills, water gardening, water gardens, water in the garden

architecture garden design garden photography gardening gardens open to the public Land Art landscapes ornamental trees and shrubs outdoor sculpture

A Sculpted Landscape – Boughton House

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date September 11, 2013
2 Comments on A Sculpted Landscape – Boughton House

We were planning our journey to the North Norfolk coast to visit a couple of RSPB nature reserves and were seeking somewhere to visit on the way. We came across Boughton House marked on our map so googled it to find our more. We were so glad we did! The buildings were of a beautiful simple architectural style with French influences. Even the stable blocks impressed. Soft gentle lines and delicate grey-brown coloured stone.

We discovered that the grounds around the house were sculpted in the C18 in an unusual manner and recently more landforms were added by Kim Wilkie, a modern landscape architect and one of our favourites.

But to get to the grounds we passed through a courtyard of cobbles and gravel which featured some subtle planting combinations in containers. The strange alien-like fruits belong to the grey leaved plant, which was completely unknown to us.

Off into the parkland and we came across long avenues of lime trees and huge canal features, constructed way back in the C18. These original features were supposed to have been inspired by Versailles.

Of course the problem with all these sloping areas of grass is mowing them. When originally conceived the landowners would not have required their grass to be cut as short as modern gardeners want. So their scythes were perfectly up to the job. The gardeners at Boughton today use ingenious remote-controlled mowers with caterpillar tracks instead of wheels to give extra grip on the steep gradients.

As we reached the far end of these long canals we passed a larger lake and gained views of the house at the far end of a vast expanse of lawn.

The modern landforms fitted so well into the original landscapes that it was hard to see identify where one finished and another started.

This stimulating piece of land art was based on the structure of the spiral in nature such as the framework that gives sea shells their strength. It gave us a feeling of satisfaction as it seemed so settled into the landscape and invited exploration.

Sitting together nearby were “The Mount” and “Orpheus”, two landforms that matched, were based on the same pyramidal shape, juxtaposed perfectly but were conceived and constructed 3 centuries apart.

Kim Wilkie’s “Orpheus” is a hole in the ground which mirrors “The Mount” in both shape and dimensions.

Although it was along way down to the bottom of Orpheus the path that led you there was very gentle and seemed almost level. Without effort we easily found ourselves at the bottom looking into the black water of the square pool.

To understand the scale of the landform, see if you can spot Jude, The Undergardener in the two photos below. Clue – she has a blue-grey jumper on.

Next we climbed “The Mount” which was the exact opposite experience. It afforded us a different perspective on the landscape through which we had walked.

Boughton though had more to offer. After a quick coffee break, with cake as well of course, we explored the more intimate gardens closer to the house. But that is another story for my next posting.

Tags Boughton Garden, Boughton House, garden photography, gardening, land art, land forms, landscape movement, landscapes, ornamental trees, outdoor sculpture, trees

Cheshire climbing plants fruit and veg garden design garden photography gardening grow your own hardy perennials Hardy Plant Society HPS kitchen gardens Land Art ornamental trees and shrubs outdoor sculpture roses village gardens

A garden to make you smile.

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date August 23, 2013
1 Comment on A garden to make you smile.

On a blustery, heavily overcast day last weekend we visited two gardens on a day out with our friends from the Shropshire Branch of the Hardy Plant Society. Bumping down a narrow south Cheshire lane that twisted and turned a little too much for comfort, found us at “The Rowans”, a one acre garden loosely based on an Italianate theme. The elements reminiscent of the Italian styled gardens appeared in the structured garden rooms and the use of ornament especially sculpture, but I felt the theme of happiness was much more in evidence.

There were signs scattered throughout the garden to inform and delight.

Humour was potently presented in ornament and statuary. Animals dominated!

But not all the entertaining was performed by animals – there were lots of varied bits and pieces to find amongst the plantings and hanging from the branches of trees.

The planting was not of rare or desirable plants but quite ordinary plants well grown and well put together.

We particularly liked the dense planting in an old wheelbarrow and a miniature pool in a blue glazed pot. Oh, and of course we enjoyed seeing how someone else grows their veggies!

We enjoyed a refreshing cup of tea or two before leaving and left with a promise of some seeds of two plants we liked. The kindness of gardeners shows no bounds.

We then took off back down the bumpy lanes to find our afternoon treat, a woodland garden that is the province of two of our Hardy Plant Society friends. So in my next posting you should find us there enjoying a tasty Hardy Plant Society lunch.

Tags Cheshire, foliage, fruit and veg, fruit and vegetable growing, garden ornament, garden photography, gardening, ornamental trees, outdoor sculpture, Shropshire Hardy Plant Society, shrubs

garden design garden photography gardening outdoor sculpture recycling Shropshire succulents wise watering

A Ladder Garden

Our garden is too full – we have nowhere left to grow the plants we keep finding and wanting to take under our gardening wings. So we need ideas for more gardens. We are going up!

Take an old rickety wooden ladder, too old and battered to trust. We cut it in half and fixed it against the sides of two of our sheds.

We found this strange collection of objects at various interesting outlets nearby. Two French wire baskets, a cast iron drain pipe top and a kettle used by gypsies to boil water over open fires.

And now for the planting! We need plants that require little looking after and won’t be constantly calling out to be watered. Succulents are the answer.

A little job well done I think! A little bit of garden sculpture. Some recycling and some re-using. Now we can just enjoy them as we pass by or visit the sheds.

Tags garden photography, gardening, outdoor sculpture, re-using, recycling, succulents, wise watering

community gardening fruit and veg garden photography gardening gardens open to the public grow your own hardy perennials Hardy Plant Society herbs HPS kitchen gardens Land Art meadows National Garden Scheme NGS outdoor sculpture Shrewsbury Shropshire

Allotment Open Day 2013

Sunday July 14th was the day we opened our allotment community gardens for everyone to come and have a look at what we get up to, and to help raise money for charities under the auspices of the National Garden Scheme. We are proud to be part of this great scheme and we love seeing our lotties featured in their famous Yellow Book.

Visitors were greeted by committee members Di and Jill, who took the entry fees and gave out tickets, trail sheets, children’s quiz sheets and competition voting forms (more about that later).

The allotmenteers had been busy the week prior to our opening mowing the grass, edging and weeding the communal borders and ensuring their own plots were looking at their best. And it did look good! As chairman I felt proud of what was achieved that week.

Bunting was hung from sheds and a pair of galvanised watering cans planted up with diascias and blue fescue grasses decorated the entrance to the central grass pathway. We made sure all information signs were clear and visible.

Some members even provided extra little sitting areas alongside their plots with shade over comfy seats. Phil and Doreen created an outdoor lounge. It looked brilliant and drew many admirers and many visitors stopped off for a rest and a chat.

A popular part of our day is the tea shop which we create around our communal huts enhanced with gazebos and an assortment of tables and chairs all brought in for the day by lottie members. Sherlie, an allotmenteer and florist, added beautiful floral decorations to the centre of each table. Members bake all week prior to the event and the array of cakes is stunning and oh so tempting.

A feature of our open days is the involvement of our visitors in selecting the winners of our annual site competitions. Each year we hold a scarecrow competition and the theme this year was occupations and as always our members’ imaginations ran wild. We were treated to the sight of a scarecrow undertaker, a pilot, a school crossing lady, a farm labourer, a lumberjack, a nurse, a doctor a tractor driver

I had the rather over-ambitious idea that I could make a “Biggles the Pilot” scarecrow, which was quite a task and needed the help of gardening mate Pete to put it up on top of our central arbor. Pete is a good foot taller than me!

We persuaded one of our newer members to open her shed for all to see as it has such a beautiful interior. We call it the “Chic Shed”. It is painted all white inside with a storage bench with padded seat on top, a lovely dresser and even colouring books, pencils and crayons etc for her granddaughter.

2013 07 15_1971

Another competition this year was a new one and again we asked our visitors to choose the winners. It was for land art/sculpture and it proved to be very popular with lots of pieces for our guests to consider.

Jude the Undergardener won this competition with her woven twisted willow.

2013 07 15_1959

For the children on our site we held a competition where we asked them to plant up an item of footwear, and we saw colourful flowers grown in slippers, boots and wellies. In the pictures below they are shown lined up in front of the two mini-allotments grown for display in the town square later.

As well as the tea shop we had a plants sale table where Jude, aka Mrs Greenbench or The Undergardener, sold plants she had raised from seeds and cuttings, both herbaceous perennials, herbs and vegetables. We had a display from Linton, one of Shropshire’s Master Composters who answered visitors’ queries concerning their composting.

So just how successful was the day? We had lots of visitors many of whom stayed all day and obviously enjoyed their walk around, helping us choose our competition winners and indulging in the offerings of the tea shop and the plant stall. We raised £1065 to send in to the National Garden Scheme, a figure of which we are most proud.

Tags allotments, community gardening, fruit and veg, gardening, land art, master composters, meadows, NGS, outdoor sculpture, scarecrows, Yellow Book

garden photography gardening gardens open to the public hardy perennials July Land Art meadows National Trust outdoor sculpture The National Trust

Charlecote Park – a wander in the heat.

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date July 27, 2013
4 Comments on Charlecote Park – a wander in the heat.

We are in the middle of a very uncharacteristic period of weather, very hot and dry by day and night. Normally in our summer we are glad to see a temperature hovering around the 20 mark but this year we have had three weeks around the 30 mark and just one short shower in that time.

So when we visited Charlecote Park in Warwickshire we wandered around at a slow ambling speed, about tortoise speed. But we enjoyed it until the heat and humidity got the better of us and we succumbed to our third ice cream of the day and gave up. But I have a few pics to show you to give an idea of the beauty of the place.

Once we had walked up the main driveway of dusty gravel we passed under the gatehouse portal and the main house itself was revealed.

First task was to find the coffee shop for the usual coffee and cakes. The restaurant itself was housed in the Orangery but before reaching it we came across this eccentric aviary. After a refreshing break in the orangery we discovered another eccentric feature, which turned out to be a woven willow children’s play tunnel decorated brightly with ribbons.

We were fascinated by this ancient walnut tree with several branches which had rooted where they touched the ground having fallen down. Butterflies were revelling in the sunny warmth of the day.

We decided that the coolest place to be was alongside the river passing through the parkland. We were treated by the site of the bright electric blue flash of a kingfisher darting across close to the water surface.

As we made our way back to the car park through meadows of dry grasses and occasional splashes of colour from wildflowers we discovered this old split-chestnut fence and unusual gate.

We didn’t really get a chance to appreciate Charlecote Park fully as we were defeated by the heat, having spent the previous day at an outdoor festival but we saw enough to ensure our return in the near future.

Tags Charlecote Park, garden photography, gardening, meadows, National Trust, outdoor sculpture

climbing plants colours garden design garden photography gardening grow your own half-hardy perennials hardy perennials Hardy Plant Society HPS July ornamental trees and shrubs outdoor sculpture poppies roses Shropshire succulents village gardens

A min-group day out – part two.

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date July 25, 2013
1 Comment on A min-group day out – part two.

So we are still in the little Shropshire village of Ruyton-XI-Towns and we are moving on from Jill’s lovely garden to a neighbour’s garden. We are told this garden has to be seen to be believed as a brilliant example of how to squeeze in lots of top quality plants into a long, twisting space sometimes narrowing to just a path width.

The narrow borders are full to the brim with interesting plants and any vertical surface covered in climbers especially clematis and roses, many of which are richly scented.

We were impressed with the colour of this little selection of poppies and their tissue paper petals that unfurled from loose buds.

Our third garden delight of the day was a different kettle of fish all together. It belonged to Chris, another “Hardy Planter” and was out of the village along a narrow country lane with verges rich with native flowers. As we neared our destination cultivated self seeded plants added an extra depth to the colours within the grasses of the verge beneath the hedge.

This garden had a delightful little nursery in the shade of mature trees close to the lawn where we sat to enjoy our tea and cakes. We could see what was awaiting us in the nursery and we were tempted by an unusual pink flowered Geranium phaeum and a Lysimachia “Firecracker”.

What struck us about the garden was the way shrubs and trees had been used to create frames, gateways and doorways to tempt your footsteps. The low afternoon sun created deep shadows and brightness that invited you onwards.

Closer to little interesting features and details caught our eye.

We wandered back down the lane after a good wander around, an enjoyable break for tea and cake and after making a few purchases in the little nursery and we were delighted to see that self-seeders from the garden were making their way down the hedgerow and verges.

Tags foliage plants, fruit and veg, garden photography, gardening, ornamental trees, outdoor sculpture, poppies, roses, sculpture

colours fruit and veg garden design garden photography gardening grow your own half-hardy perennials hardy perennials Hardy Plant Society HPS ornamental grasses ornamental trees and shrubs outdoor sculpture roses Shropshire village gardens

A mini-group day out – part one Jill’s garden

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date July 19, 2013

“What is a mini-group?” I hear you asking. Well they are area groups within the Shropshire branch of the Hardy Plant Society. We live just south of Shrewsbury so fit into the Shrewsbury Mini-Group but we could equally belong to the South Shropshire group. Perhaps we ought to select the most interesting sounding visits planned by both groups and have extra gardens to visit.

Last month our little group visited two of our member’s gardens plus a garden of a neighbouring house. They were all in the little village of Ruyton-XI-Towns. It is a village we have driven through but never stopped in and once parked up we wandered down looking for Jill’s garden, our first stop for the day. In fact we were parked only a few metres from there. We passed through the front garden which was small but packed with plants with lots of colour and texture and then around the side of the house where again every possible place for a plant had plants in it. Pots and interesting containers were everywhere we looked.

As we reached the end of the house the view that met us stopped us in our tracks. This was going to be a real treat! The garden was full of colour and had strong design elements, with paths that invited exploration, arches and frames to encourage you to go through them and pieces of sculpture and interesting natural objects to stop the eye.

Jill is a gardener who can put plants together beautifully taking leaf texture and shape into consideration alongside flower colour. When we looked in more detail at the planting we discovered a few special plants, ones we couldn’t recognise and a few of those that you have to dig deep into the recesses of your memory to recall their names.

From Jill’s garden we all wandered down the village street to a neighbour who had a garden that was best described as long, thin and wriggling, never more than a couple of metres wide and often only wide enough for a plant fringed path. Despite of this the gardener had packed in dozens of fragrant roses and clematis clambering up any surface or tall plant. This will be the subject of my next post where we will also enjoy the third garden we visited that day, where we ended the day with tea on the lawn. How civilised is that?!

Tags foliage plants, fruit and veg, fruit and vegetable growing, garden photography, gardening, grasses, grown your own, Hardy Plant Society, outdoor sculpture, Shropshire Hardy Plant Society, shrubs

climbing plants colours garden design garden photography gardening half-hardy perennials hardy perennials Hardy Plant Society HPS ornamental trees and shrubs outdoor sculpture photography Powis roses shrubs town gardens trees

Two Welshpool Town Gardens

June’s Hardy Plant Society garden visit took us to two little town gardens. The first garden was truly tiny and the second slightly less tiny. They were perfect if very different examples of what it is possible to achieve in such small spaces. The secret to them both was wriggly paths leading the eyes and feet around to discover hidden secrets.

The tiniest of the two had planting at all levels from tiny specimens right by your toes to trees above your head and the borders were full of unusual plants. Little surprises.

The gardeners here even found room for an alpine house, a fruit cage and a couple of little water features.

Humour is essential in any garden however small.

Humour reigned supreme in the second garden we visited that morning. There were interesting arches, grottoes, seating areas all surrounded in lush planting.

Hidden throughout this little patch were containers planted up skilfully to give surprises wherever we turned.

Deep in the heart of this little paradise we came across a cool enclosed garden where we found ourselves in for a real treat – a little glimpse of the Far East.

This garden was tightly fitted within a group of houses close by the town’s main church and occasionally we caught glimpses of these other buildings through the foliage.

Atop one of the many little outbuildings lived a very healthy and happy green roof.

This was a very special garden – a place to relax and become engulfed in plants. In the afternoon we met again as a group to enjoy a very different garden in a very different setting. We found ourselves out in the open high up on a hillside with big skies above a wide view. This garden features in my next post.