Tag: succulents

John’s Garden – Ashwood Nurseries.

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date July 25, 2016
2 Comments on John’s Garden – Ashwood Nurseries.

We have wanted to visit John’s Garden for a long time but have never been able to attend on any of his open days, so when we noticed that a private visit was planned for the Shropshire Group of the Hardy Plant Society we were determined to go along. It is always worth going on these garden visits which give the chance to share the experience with your friends and also share their joint expertise and interest.

John Massey is well known for breeding his own strains of Hellebores and more recently Hepaticas too. He is also an excellent speaker and he has spoken to our Shropshire HPS group several times.

As we wandered down the drive to his bungalow we stopped to admire this imaginatively clipped hedge like billowing clouds. Opposite this was a lawned area with a small collection of interesting trees and some crazy sheep sculptures grazing the grass.

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As we entered the main garden there was more smart pruning deserving a closer look, including this Pyrus salicifolia shaped into an umbrella.

Let us take a quick look at a few photos of garden vistas, views which tempted us onwards.

Sculpture featured strongly in John’s garden and here is a selection for you to enjoy.

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Some well-chosen and carefully placed sculptures adorned the area around a beautiful pool. The planting was intriguing too and called out for closer examination.

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A second much smaller water feature was surrounded by a collection of beautiful plants. The little fountain raised the water just a few inches before it dropped back creating gentle ripples and a relaxing sound.

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The area of garden around the back of the house was partly covered with a large pergola over paved areas. Imaginatively planted containers and plenty of seats made this a restful area inviting the visitor to sit and relax to enjoy the succulents and alpines. From the paved area a lawned areas sloped gently down to the canal, a lovely feature acting as the boundary to a garden.

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John and his garden team seem very good at putting plants together especially using foliage as the link pulling the design together.

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As in any good garden however good plant combinations and plant communities are, there are always individual specimens that draw the visiting gardener in for a closer look.

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We really enjoyed our leisurely walk around John’s Garden particularly as we were accompanied by John himself, who was such a generous, knowledgeable and humorous guide. We were lucky to share this garden with the owner and chief gardener.

But I shall leave you with two surprises we had during our journey, a totally unexpected border, a newly built stumpery and a lovely close-up view of a frog on top of a topiary sphere!

Tags Ashwood Nurseries, cloud pruning, garden sculpture, John's Garden, ornamental trees, outdoor sculpture, sculpture, stumpery, succulents, trees and shrubs

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My Garden Journal in May

Just as I completed my journal for June I realised that I had not yet posted “My Garden Journal for May”, so here it is now for you to enjoy! The June journal report won’t be far behind!

Summer creeping in can only mean that our May garden is changing by the day. Exuberance in every border with things growing before your eyes. A month of excitement! I began my May entry in my garden journal by writing,

“May means exuberance! It is the month when our garden shows us the ability it has to surprise. It shows off its strength and its artistic talents. Growth is so rapid and colour so exciting, that we are aware of what our garden means to us and also aware of its power that Mother Nature possesses and uses with pride and to excess!”

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I then turn to looking back at my original garden journey recording the first few years that we have lived and gardened at Avocet.

“Looking back in my garden journal that recorded the early years at Avocet, I read a paragraph that shows just how similar May is now.

“The garden is bursting with life – butterflies including Holly Blues, bees and so many birds. Suddenly the garden is alive with birds giving extra colour, sound and movement. There seems to be so many finches – Goldfinches, Chaffinches and Greenfinches. Swifts, Swallows and House Martins swoop overhead especially in the evening.”

Sadly though there are far fewer Swifts, Swallows and House Martins overhead. So many have not survived their long migrations. What does the future hold for these beautiful acrobats?”

Turning over the page of my journal and we see the next two pages feature Acers and Roses.

“Acers are one of the many stars of the May garden, a month when their foliage and stems are delicate and colourful.”

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“May means Roses and by the middle of the month we have many buds and pioneer blooms. Reds and pinks dominate at the moment. Yellows and oranges are still to come.”

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I moved on to look at one of the climbers we enjoy in our garden and at the grasses that have now started to grow rapidly.

“Think of climbers early in the summer garden and Clematis is the first plant to spring to mind.”

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“Grasses are growing quickly now and the myriad shades of green move skyward in our borders.”

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Turning over again and succulents are discussed. These are a recent interest and I have only been growing them and propagating them for a few years.

Succulent plants are an interest that has grown over the last few years. Beginning with Aeoniums and Echeverias I soon branched out.”

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“Troughs of succulents grace the Rill Garden in May and on into October when the risk of frost mean that they retreat to the warmth of our greenhouse.”

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When we turn over next we see that I talk of Hostas and in particular those growing in our Bog Garden. The bog garden is so full of life at the moment with plants growing appreciably by the day.

“Hostas are one of the more subtle of our garden favourites both their foliage and later in the year their flowers. The Bog Garden next to our Wildlife Pond and snuggled up to it is a place of rapid growth in May.”

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White is not a colour I particularly appreciate in the garden and as a result I do not use it much.

“White is not my favourite colour in the garden. I particularly do not like white painted garden furniture or white painted fences, trellises or walls. We tend to paint our seats in ivory or cream which are much softer colours particularly on bright sunny days. Our fences we paint in browns and trellis work in gentle shades of green which acts as a great foil for our plants. I think this dislike of white is to do with our weather as it can work so well in other countries. Where flowers are concerned I appreciate them most in May when white can look good with the brightness of fresh foliage. Below are photos of a few particularly good white flowers, Viburnums, Cornus, white Bluebells, Iberis and Camassias. Some of these are the purest of white where others have gentle hints of colour. The Camassia has a green tint to it and the Iberis the gentlest hint of pink.”

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As we leave May behind we can look forward to the longest day, the time when day and night share equal number of hours.

Tags acers., aeomiums, bog garden, bog plants, clematis, climbers, climbing plants, Echeveria, echeverias, gardens in May, hostas, May, ornamental grasses, roses, succulents, the garden in May, white flowers, white in the harden

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Special Succulents

I have a special interest in succulents and have grown a good selection over the last few years. My interest in them has been a recent one and began with the purchase of an Aeonium arboreum Schwarzkopf which we nurtured for a year and it began to become tree-like. A couple of Echeveria joined in and I haven’t looked back. In this post I shall include some cacti as well for fans of those spiky cousins.

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At a recent visit to Winterbourne House Botanical Gardens in Birmingham we discovered a greenhouse full of succulents. After a look at what the displays outside had to offer, things began to look promising.

I decided to concentrate on the textures, patterns and colours of their fleshy leaves. Enjoy my gallery of succulent pics.

When we paid a visit to Ashwood Nurseries recently I was taken with the raised bed displays either side of the entrance as they were mostly planted up with succulents, including several Aeoniums and Echeverias. So here is a gallery of shots all taken in the raised beds.

Tags aeomiums, aeonium, cacti, Crassula, Echeveria, echeverias, glasshouses, succulents, Winterbourne House Gardens

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Succulents in Pots

It is always good to have little projects to get on with in the garden. My latest little project was to create a pair of succulent pots. We already have pots of succulents dotted or hopefully arranged around our Rill Garden. Here we feature several different Aeoniums, Echeverias and Sempervivum. They grow happily here because it is south facing and gets extra light reflected off the glass of our garden room.

We thought it about time we introduced some more succulents for added interest for our garden visitors on our open days, so bought a pair of beautifully shaped terracotta bowl-shaped pots and went off to our local nursery, Love Plants, to get an interesting selection of different succulents. We looked for different leaf colours, textures and shapes. A few had the bonus of brightly coloured flowers too. They have such wonderful names too – much too difficult to remember, Oscularia deltoides, Sempervivum jovibarba alionii, Echeveria elegans, Pachyphytum “Dark Red”, Pachyphytum bracteosum and Sedum x rubrotinctum.

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So we gathered together everything we needed on the table in the Rill Garden and got to work.

We mixed up a suitable growing medium by combining equal quantities of a soil based compost and horticultural grit. We hoped this would be free draining while just holding enough moisture to keep the plants happy.

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We then covered the drainage hole with crocks and added a shallow layer of my compost mix, ready to arrange the plants to their best advantage.

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Some of the plants we put in the pots were our own cuttings. The picture on the left shows how new plants have grown from leaf cuttings. The plant on the right was grown from an offset.

Once satisfied with the arrangement we filled in between the plants with the compost mixture and topped it off with a mulch of horticultural grit.

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Whenever you deal with succulents bits fall off and each bit can become a cutting. Other pieces we deliberately took as cutting material.

The photo below shows a leaf cutting taken from an Echeveria which is now forming tiny plants at its base. This is an easy way to make new plants albeit rather slow. It is a process requiring a lot of patience but not much skill.

And here they are in situ, alongside our rill, our new succulent planters.

Tags Echeveria, garden containers, gardening, gardening in pots, Sedum, succulents

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Yellow Book Gardens 2 – Radnor Cottage

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date April 23, 2015
5 Comments on Yellow Book Gardens 2 – Radnor Cottage

Our second visit to an NGS Yellow Book garden for 2015 was just a few days after the first of the year to Bury Court Farmhouse, and was to a garden in South Shropshire near to the village of Clun.

Radnor Cottage sits on a steep hillside with broad views over the countryside. We visited on a bright sunny day with temperatures in the upper teens and this surprising Spring weather brought out lots of garden visitors.

We hadn’t been to Radnor Cottage for many years so really couldn’t remember what to expect. The garden owners described it as a semi-wild woodland garden so the plants of this season looked good in their setting. As we walked slowly up the steep gravel driveway we spotted wetland areas to our right and a mini-arboretum to our left, but we passed these by in search of the sign indicating “TEAS”.

While fetching the teas I spotted this bright yellow leaved Berberis which we were pleased to see looked so fresh and lively as we have just planted one in our front garden in the Hot Garden. We enjoyed our tea and cake sat among a vast array of containers planted up with Sempervivums and other cushion alpines.

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I have a soft spot for Celandines so I just had to stop for a close look at this double form.

We began our tour of the garden meandering up a steep slope with typical Spring planting among the close cut grass. We liked the juxtaposition of the formal box balls and the gentle naturalistic planting on the grassed bank. William Robinson would have enjoyed this garden! Species Tulips, Anemones, Muscari and other spring bulbs were to be discovered from the narrow gravel paths.

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We found a little veggie patch hidden behind a beech hedge.

We then moved back down the drive to explore the wet area with a series of pools beneath old trees. Banks of daffodils flanked the grass paths. These grass paths appeared as we rounded corners presenting a choice of ways to go each time.

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Leaving the wetland we crossed the gravel drive and entered the mini-arboretum. Buds were bursting and bark glowing in the sunshine.

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Apart from the fact that it was on a steeply sloping hillside, we could not remember the garden at Radnor Cottage at all, so it was just as if we were visiting it for the first time.

Tags Clun, fruit and vegetable growing, ornamental trees, Shropshire, South Shropshire, spring, spring bulbs, spring flowers, spring garden, succulents, water gardening, water in the garden

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Yellow Book Gardens 1 – Bury Court Farmhouse

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date April 20, 2015
2 Comments on Yellow Book Gardens 1 – Bury Court Farmhouse

Our first National Garden Scheme’s Yellow Book garden of 2015 was to Bury Court Farmhouse in the Herefordshire village of Wigmore. We always look forward to our visits to other gardens which open to the public under the auspices of the NGS because of course we open for the Yellow Book too. We were particularly keen to see what other gardens looked like in April as our first opening this year is on 16th April.

To celebrate our first NGS garden of the year the sun came out and the temperature shot up to 17 degrees way above anything we have so far experienced in 2015. We drove down through the beautiful Shropshire Hills and into Herefordshire a county with such beautiful villages among beautiful countryside. We were directed into a rough grassed car park riddled with muddy puddles. We had to seek out a space for our car among dead farm machinery slowly decaying and being taken over by Mother Nature. A cheerful welcome awaited us at the garden gate. Spot the horse shoe hanging from the NGS sign.

We passed through a five barred gate into a courtyard with narrow borders around its perimeter and a rectangular bed in the centre all planted with cheerful spring bulbs and early flowering perennials and shrubs. Hyacinths, Vincas, Celandines, Doffodils and Tulips.

We were amused by the owl family and the bird bath.

The garden boasted a small productive patch with leeks and broad beans already growing well and cloches warming up soil for future crops. A lawned area alongside was bordered by a tall hedge which allowed woodland plants to grow in its shade.

At the front of the house was a large sunny lawn with island beds full of brightly coloured spring flowering plants. Primroses, Primulas and bulbs especially Hyacinths and Narcissi.

This beautiful bronze statue of a hare was basking in the sunshine among blue Anemones.

The borders around this sunny lawn were truly mixed borders with herbaceous planting, shrubs and trees giving interest at every level.

Right in the centre of this lawned area was a clue to the original use of the imposing stone built building in the centre of the garden. It had originally been a farm growing apples to make cider. The photos below show the mill stone that would have been used to crush the cider apples. Ponies were used to pull the stones around a groove.

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So our first Yellow Book garden of 2015 was certainly worth a visit with its cheerful planting and it served very nice tea and cakes!

Tags daffodils, Hereford, Herefordshire, Herefordshire gardens, National Garden Scheme, NGS, ornamental trees, spring, spring bulbs, spring flowers, spring garden, succulents, water gardens, water in the garden

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Our New Planting Boxes

We must all have parts of our garden which disappoint us every time we pass by. Our disappointing bit is a part of the garden we not only walk past but also drive past as we enter our property and it is the first thing visitors see. We have a gateway at the end of our drive with a walk creating a funnel effect. Sadly this wall is not made from beautiful stone or old brick but dingy old 1960’s reconstituted stone or perhaps even concrete. It is an eyesore and at last we have got around to doing something about it – it has only taken 11 years to get started!

We decided to paint the wall a pale cream to match the house and then place some planters in front of it. We hope this will create a feeling of a warm welcome as you enter the driveway.

We bought three personalised planting boxes and a trug and went off to our favourite nursery, where after our usual coffee and carrot cake we bought a selection of perennials for the boxes and alpines for the trug. We bought 3 each of five different perennials and planted them out with our own seedlings of grasses which Jude had nurtured and brought on to suitable size. The perennial hardy herbaceous plants we bought were Catananche caerulea “Alba” with white flowers similar to cornflowers with the added interest of contrasting dark purple centres and yellow stamens, Salvia superba with its bright purple-blue spikes of flowers, Knautia macedonica with deep red “pin cushion” flowers, Veronica longifolia “Blue” the tallest of all with its elegant spikes held 3 feet high and the lovely white daisy Leucanthemum superbum “Alaska”. Fingers crossed now that they thrive in our boxes and give a warm welcome to our summer visitors.

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As well as the boxes we had a wooden trug stenciled with the words “born to garden”. This was a saying I first saw when visiting a Yellow Book open garden a few years ago. There the phrase was on a sign cut from wood and displayed on the inside wall of a summer house. I sought out the gardener to ask where he had found the sign but he was unable to help as it was a gift. And I have been looking out for it ever since. when we ordered our personalised boxes it seemed a good opportunity to make our own version.

We planted a selection of alpines and succulents in it after adding a mixture of grit and multi-purpose compost – Frankenia thymifolia with its small pink flowers, Sedum glaucophyllum “Lizard a succulent which forms a low mound of rosettes with tiny white flowers in the summer, Delosperma nubigenum with its vivid yellow daisy like flowers, Sempervivum x fauconetti a house leek with a spider web covering, a yellow flowered alpine Potentilla and the tiny daisy Erigeron karvinskianus “Profusion”.

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We left all the new plants to settle into their new homes in the shelter of our wood-store before putting them in their final homes by the newly painted new gateway wall.

Just a month later they look like this – can’t wait to see them in flower!

Tags container gardening, garden photography, gardening, grasses, hardy perennials, Houseleeks, succulents

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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

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Superstore Succulents

More impulse buying! Plants again but not from our usual places of temptation, nurseries and garden centres. On recent visit to Ikea to buy curtains and cushions we discovered some succulents being sold as house plants. As we already have a selection of Aeoniums and Echeveria which we grow outside in pots in “The Rill Garden” in the warmer months and overwinter them in the cool end of the greenhouse, we imagined a couple of these would be useful and colourful additions. So we bought seven! Typical gardeners’ impulse buying!

They make a pretty colourful bunch!

These are the three Crassula we bought, with their slightly curled, glaucous leaves subtly edged in red.

This Crassula sports mahogany tinted leaves which are shiny and rounded, in fact almost tubular.

This close-up view of the Echeveria illustrates its metallic, pinky purple flattened succulent leaves.

The Haworthia is almost like a clump of tiny Aloe, its grass-green leaves spiky with tiny saw-tooth ends.

So we now await warmer, sunnier days when we can plant our new succulents in pots outside and see how they fare.

Tags Crassula, Echeveria, Haworthia, succulents

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House Leeks – modest little gems.

Post author By greenbenchramblings
Post date February 6, 2012

We love the humble Houseleeks. We grow them in pots, on the slate scree bed, in alpine troughs, on our old oak stump and even on an old brick. They are so simple, really just spiky little cabbages, but they have something special about them. Is it the subtle nature of their colours? Is it their reliability? Is it because they are there to delight the eye all year round? Or is it simply the variety? It certainly isn’t the flowers which grow up on oversized stalks and then make the plant fall over. They are called Houseleeks because people grew them on the roofs of their outside privies as they will tolerate such dry growing conditions. Perhaps the extra insulation helped too!

Just like the first Ford cars which you could buy in any colour as along as it was black, so with the Houseleeks you can have them in any colour as long as it is green. Green with varying depths and hints of red, black, purple or blue. And of course we mustn’t forget brown! Being succulents they like it dry and their colours seem richer in late summer when it is often at its driest in the garden.

The correct name for the Houseleek is Sempervivum and they originate from Europe and Asia. There are hundreds of named varieties but we choose them for their interesting colour or texture, not by name, as so many of them are so similar. We buy what we fancy. Some we choose because of their colours but others for their white spider’s web covering or fringing of bristles. Favourites are those with dark colours towards the points of the leaves.

All the pictures in this blog were taken in February which shows how useful an addition to the winter garden these little plants are. There can’t be many succulents that are useful plants with winter interest. The first couple of photos show the Sempervivums growing on our stump, the first enjoying the company of an icy green lichen and the second with the dead brown fronds of a fern.

When a Sempervivum flowers, sending the tall stem from the centre of a rosette, it dies, but the dead rosette is soon replaced with new offsets. This plant on the slate scree bed is still holding on to its flower stem surging from the now-dead rosette. Soon we shall pull it out and in the spring new rosettes will fill the gap. We leave late flower stems on the plants as they provide interesting structure. The subtle colouring of its rosettes work beautifully with its slate grey background.