Gardening Page

As promised.........Hampton Court

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 20:10:53 GMT

I've just got back from the show after a horrible return journey around Britains motorway system (it wasn't great going, either!) and it's getting close to my bedtime, but I promised you pictures so pictures you must have.

Here's a selection to give you a flavour of this great gardening event. You have to love Hampton Court: it's got something for everyone - the garden enthusiast, the shopper, the kids, the plantaholic, the wine drinker, the art collector.....

More tomorrow when I've had a chance to sort myself out.

Tags: gardens, flowers, plants, Hampton Court, RHS, flower show

Hampton Court 2008 Preview

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 16:51:51 GMT

Almost as exciting as sorting the AOL software to allow me to continue to write this blog, is the upcoming Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, which we have preview tickets for tomorrow.

We are treating it as a treat for our 30th wedding anniversery on Tuesday: that's how broke we are these days!

Watch out for the definative review pictures tomorrow night.....only on AOL

Wild orchids

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:09:35 GMT

We commonly walk the poodle in a number of local country parks in mid Bedfordshire, one of our favourites being in Marsdon Vale, where old brick clay pits have been transformed into a marvelous landscape over the last decade or so.

This park has large open water areas, marginal sections full of water birds, grassland, woods and shrub. Many wild flowers are doing well here and the orchids are a joy.

The poodle loves it, hunting rabbits, chasing pheasants and generally making a nuisance of herself. We get some excercise too and a chance to talk and recharge the proverbial batteries.

The park is well managed with a light, but very effective touch. The best orchids this year are flowering in an area which until recently was a huge thicket of thorn bushes. These have been cut to ground level and are regenerating but other plants are taking advantage of the clear space to flower while it is still open to the light.

Saturday off? Unheard of!

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 13:23:55 GMT

Staturday off to enjoy the sunshine. This is my first Saturday at home this year; normally I am on appointments visiting clients but today no-one wants to see me so we have been out walking the dog and idling in the garden.

Earlier we went to the lakes at Marston Vale and oh, how I wish I had taken my camera: there were wild orchids everywhere, hundreds of them in at least two species. No-one else seemed to notice but Chantal and I were like two kids in a sweetie shop.

Back at home we picked a couple of dozen Elder Flower heads to make cordial before a quiet lunch in the garden. Although we have not grown as much in the vegetable garden as we normally would we were able to use archichokes, salads in three varieties, chives, tomatoes and a few herbs.

I am very upset with AOL software at the moment. I cannot get into Gardening Chat and only by using the old version 9.0 can I edit this Blog. I've no idea what to do about it and have not done my normal Wednesday chat for months (including the 5 weeks when AOL shut down my account!). I despear of ever getting AOL 9VR working: we have 4 computors and it doesn't work on any of them.

We have advertised our greenhouse on Ebay (also a Gazebo and Haddonstone fountain)so I must clear it out today. To avoid this and any other productive task I spent some while taking close-ups of flowers in the garden. Here's a selection..........

No just wet, but chilli

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:17:34 GMT

It has been an especially strange growing year for us; with our house sale on, off and on again I have never been sure what seeds would be worth sowing and what gardening should be done.

I have never grown Chilli peppers and could not resist an offer by Dobies to try a selection. The young plants arrived with one damaged, but I potted them all up and planted the ailing variety especially deeply. They have all thrived in the warm, humid climate of the conservatory and I have forgotten which was the delicate one.

The earliest of the five is Bulgarian Carrot, which now supports one pepper nearly 2-inches long. It has many more flowers on it but is one of the smallest plants and seems reluctant to branch. Even smaller, but bushy and with plenty of large pale green leaves is Big Sun. It has many buds but as yet no open flowers.

Hercules and Orange Cayanne are about the same size and have branched reasonably well with the latter earliest to flower. Thai Dragon is by far the tallest and has been flowering for a while. I trust the fading blossoms warn of hot fruits to come!

I always say you never stop learning and I am delighted to be growing this selection of Chillis for the first time, even though I am not a great fan of them in cooking. I am sure we will find people to try them out once we start harvesting.

On my visits to clients this weekend I had to force myself to get on, rather than stop on my way to take photographs of the many fine plants I spotted flowering in front gardens. I took a few pictures from my own garden for you though......

Chelsea ramblings

Mon, 26 May 2008 17:42:14 GMT

I have just returned from Chelsea Flower Show and now look forward to the next opportunity to immerse myself in the gardening world at the RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show in July. As a garden designer I always make a bee-line for the show gardens, starting with the big boys in and around the Main Avenue. The smaller Urban and Courtyard gardens can be equally as interesting in their way, but with many inexperienced designers and landscapers using them as a platform to launch the show careers, they can be a little disappointing to the technically minded visitor.

People who know I attend regularly often ask about trends and fashion illustrated in the gardens at Chelsea and this year a number of themes emerged, and not always the obvious ones. I expected to see a large number of very worthy techniques, demonstrating ways to conserve water, adjust to climate change and protect the planet. This was largely left to the educational establishments like Writtle, Merrist Wood and Capel Manor colleges and to Harpenden’s Rothamsted Research Institute, while the gardeners got on with the gardening. Saving the planet was last year’s idea, it seemed.

The use of colour, or rather lack of it, this year was interesting. Green was “in” in a big way, with foliage texture and plant shape adding interest. When colour did get a look in here it tended to be with highlights of white. Other gardens had a broader colour palette with the addition of purple and blue but in very subdued, sombre even, shades. The few that bucked this trend were often outrageously bright and discordant.

Shrubs and trees seemed to be reduced to simple sculptural elements, contributing little but form and height. Discussing why this should be my wife opinioned that many designers just did not have the plant knowledge to use them in a more dominant role. It’s easier to make a bold design statement with a few hundred herbaceous plants under a tree, but in the real world this would not make for attractive year-round gardens.

Water was much in evidence and I am struggling to think of any garden which did not have a water feature of some sort. Splashing fountains, waves on the beach, peaceful pools and gentle wall mounted features were everywhere and as an important natural element I am keen to see water used. One garden was almost entirely an open pool with lilies, while others punctuated the design with several small ponds, often interconnected or with individual water-filled troughs. An Australian garden featured a clever infinity pond with very precisely installed black granite edges for the water to spill over. Adjacent decking was constructed almost at water level with overlapping and merging edges.

I have always enjoyed the technique of softening and contrasting strongly defined geometry with informal planting and this style was the other major feature of the show gardens. Mostly this was in the form of parallel lines and interlocking rectangles but there were a few examples of circles and arcs being used in a similar way. I always feel this gives the structure necessary to give year-round interest while allowing unlimited opportunity for informally within these strictly defined spaces.

We only had four hours at the show this year and for the final hour or so we wandered happily around the plant stands within the Great Pavilion, the huge marquee that dominates the site. Perfect plants astound the senses and you begin to take it for granted that every display will be superb. A full day is not enough to do justice to this part of the show and in an hour we could only scratch the surface of what was on offer. The temptation to arrange a return visit the next day was almost overwhelming.

There were some stunning sights at the show; clever ideas, beautifully put together and often with no expense spared to achieve the desired effect for just four days in May. Several provided me with inspiration and techniques to adapt in the gardens we create but at the end of the day most visitors recognise this is a show and while gardens may be awe-inspiring in that context they can be completely unsuitable for the average home. This is the cat-walk of UK horticulture and I love it!

Chelsea Flower Show Preview.

Mon, 19 May 2008 16:16:05 GMT

I 've just arrived back from the show and thought you might like to see a selection of the highlights. Only on AOL!

Don't give up on me......life got in the way

Sun, 11 May 2008 11:19:10 GMT

When I last wrote an item here there was snow on the ground and I was looking forward to moving home.

Since then we have moved most of our worldly possessions to France, only to be told on our return that the UK house sale had fallen through. In the mean time AOL turned off our broadband connection so we have been largely out of contact.

Now that we seem to be stuck in sunny Bedfordshire for a while I have got back into gardening with the front garden, lawns and vegetable gardens my main priority. The front has been weeded, pruned and planted to make it more presentable to the next buyer.

I had to borrow a mower from work as ours, together with the rotavator and the strimmer are now in France. The lawn looks so much better when it is cut and makes the garden look huge, but there are areas of weed that need attention soon.

The vegetable garden consists of two beds, each 8m x 5m and surrounded by brick paths for ease of access. There is also a 14' x 8' greenhouse and, until a couple of weeks ago, a great deal of weeds. Having sowed very little seed this year because of our plans to move, I have had to pull out the stops to get some plants in the ground.

We have artichokes and strawberries established and these just needed tidying, weeding and feeding. I bought a dozen asparagus crowns from Dobbies and a big pot of lettuce plants from Wyevale to start me off, soon adding cherry tomato plants and direct sowing more salads. In the greenhouse pots of cougettes and sweet corn have now germinated so the garden will soon be back up to speed.

There are plenty of weeds amongst the flower borders too and in spite of regularly asking for volenteers on Gardening Chat I am having to cope all on my own. Pride of the borders this morning as we enjoyed breakfast outside before I came to work: Olearia scilloniensis. This and a selection of other plants in flower in my garden are shown here for this entry.

At work we have been busy as usual and I have just started working with my 35th client of the year. Many, but not all, have wanted garden design plans produced and several have already been constructed and planted. Three teams are working hard on my projects, a high propotion this year in north London.

Sorry for the gap in entries

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 15:03:30 GMT

I have been receiving emails wondering where I have got to. It's nice to know there is someone out there and I am grateful for the concern. I've had my eyes treated for cataracts and while they were at it they thought it would be fun to replace my lenses with new ones. So now I can hardly read the monitor: it will improve, they tell me!

In the mean time, we have moved to our wonderful new office in a Finnish log cabin at the other side of the garden centre and after months of trying should have the phones sorted tomorrow: thanks for that, BT.

And did I mention we are moving gardens, er, homes? In a couple of weeks we are shifting most of our stuff out to France where we have a house in the Loire Valley, while at the same time selling our home in Greenfield (Beds) and moving to a smaller place in Stotfold (also Beds).

With all this fun and games on the go, clients to satisfy and gardens to be designed, I have had little time for my own garden although the seed I sowed a few weeks ago have produced plants which now need potting. Normally I would be in the middle of the spring production line and the greenhouse would be full. but the greenhouse is overdue for dismantling and moving so I have been holding myself back.

And the weather! Snow over Easter and two weeks later we have it again. In between the temperatures have been high: all in all, a tricky spring for the gardener. Magnolias and other spring-flowering shrubs were looking a little worst for wear this morning.

Spring garden and nursery visits

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 17:31:21 GMT

With the spring calling we have been irresistibly drawn out to the garden, or more specifically, other peoples gardens and nurseries.

This little group of photographs are from a trip we did recently to the Valley Gardens, part of the Royal Gardens Windsor but open to the public.

Huge Magnolias and Camellias were coming in to flower alongside drifts of Daffodils and other spring flowering plants.

As a lad, I spent some time working in this park and although much of my time was wasted endlessly raking leaves and piling them on the beds, I did experience much that I hold dear to me to this day.

Now is a great time to visit and if you hurry, the main car park on the A30 is being renovated and there are no charges. Now that's what I call a bargain: world class gardens there for the taking!