Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival: Part 2

Plant Heritage etc.

Spending an afternoon chatting to people about plants ranks amongst my favourite pastimes. So volunteering in Plant Heritage’s seed shop on the final day of the show was a great pleasure. I arrived a couple of hours ahead of my 1pm start time and took in those parts of the show I had admired a few days earlier, and a few more I’d missed the first time: see below.

In February I spent an enjoyable day at Stone Pine, Plant Heritage‘s office next to RHS Wisley in Surrey, where I joined a team sorting seed collected by members for sale at 2024 shows. One member of that team was June James who holds the National Collection of Clivia. Those exuberant orange or yellow flowered houseplants occupy a glasshouse in her Hampshire garden. I was thrilled to find that the indefatigable June was my fellow volunteer in the seed shop. In between customers she explained the finer points of Clivia propagation.

As it was the final day of the show, the packets of seeds were being offered in a special offer of five for a suggested donation of £10. It was fun recommending combinations of plants for the tricky sites which customers described. The range of seeds was impressive, from common or garden love-in-a-mist and pot marigolds to some very unusual Clematis cultivars.

The seed shop was one element of a very large stand occupying much of the far end of the show’s huge marquee, the official title of which was Floral Marquee and Plant Heritage, highlighting the importance of the charity’s work in conserving cultivated garden plants for future generations. Two of the National Collections represented in other sections of the Plant Heritage display area were mini Hostas and Rosa Persica. Another section of the display encouraged plant lovers to consider starting a National Plant Collection of one of the 15 environmentally friendly plant groups that are not currently part of a National Plant Collection. Before the show, when I read about the plants needing a home, I got very excited and imagined squeezing more Caryopteris shrubs into my garden alongside the one shrub I already have. Or devoting a corner to the different cultivars of Origanum. Of course good sense prevailed and I realised I haven’t the room for such a venture, but how special it would be to curate one of these living plant libraries.

Just before closing time exhibitors sell off plants in scenes reminiscent of the January sales. On our stand, I bought a dainty flowered Sanguisorba and was kindly given a hot water plant (Achimenes) and an unnamed Pelargonium with very attractive leaf markings. June also has also given me the fruits from two plants in her Clivia collection: a challenge now to propagate them successfully and look forward to flowers in about four years’ time!

Clivia miniata seeds already germinating in seed case. From June at Plant Heritage seed shop at Hampton Court FS 7 July 24

I’ve not been involved in the de-rig of a plant show before and it was an eye-opener to see how quickly the show is dismantled as soon as the last customer leaves the show ground. We all donned hi-viz and packed up the trays of seeds and other elements of the stand: pots, books and jugs of cut flowers (examples of the plants whose seeds were on offer). On the neighbouring display I watched as the plants were extracted from the ‘borders’ in which they were ‘planted’, revealing the ‘Chelsea planting’ method, where plants in pots are temporarily plunged into compost for the week or so of the show.

I mentioned that I arrived early that day. Here are some highlights.

The Lion King Community Garden designed by Juliet Sargent was awarded a gold medal by the RHS. Its warm colour scheme echoed the rising sun backdrop featured in the spectacular opening number of the stage show. The dry hedge shown here beside the yellow seats, is both a useful barrier in a garden and a wildlife habitat.

Scallop shell symbols point towards a garden inspired by the Camino de Santiago, one route of which passes through the forests of Galicia in Northern Spain. The statue represents a pilgrim (presumably the showers in the guest house were occupied and she’s opted for a skinny dip en route?) Not pictured is the clever route around the garden lined on either side with sweet scented star jasmine, through which tantalising glimpses of the pool were visible.

The Oregon Garden was the first of two USA themed gardens. Also featuring a central pool, its planting was evocative of the state’s rugged landscape with pollinator-supporting plants chosen to illustrate its biodiversity.

The elegance of the Antebellum South was the atmosphere evoked in the pocket garden replicated in the first section of the Explore Charleston Garden, morphing via a mulch of crushed shell into a beach representing the wild wetlands surrounding the city which I learnt are called the Lowcountry.

Look out for a future blog post about Denman’s Garden in West Sussex which I visited in late April. A corner of the garden (with garden designer John Brookes captured in a pool of light at work at his desk) was replicated to promote the RHS partner gardens along with Furzey Gardens in the New Forest in Hampshire. I visited the latter garden many years ago with a dear friend who lives nearby. She often took her children there when they were small and they loved to play in the range of treehouses. The Minstead Trust maintains the garden and supports people with learning difficulties to lead independent lives.

With time slipping by until my volunteering session was due to start, I briefly took in the several borders created by graduates of the London College of Garden Design, to celebrate the diversity of the daisy family. Here were an evocation of the planting beside a Wiltshire chalk stream, a display of healing remedies, a wildlife friendly border and a border of seed-bearing species, specifically designed to attract birds.

Next time I’m back at Hampton Court, visiting the palace gardens after hours and discovering they hold three National Plant Collections!

Kew Gardens 23 July 2024

Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival: Part 1

Resilient Gardens

Two of my particular horticultural interests were more than satisfied at this year’s RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival: resilient gardening and plant diversity. I was lucky enough to visit the show twice: first as a punter on the second RHS members’ day and on the last day as a volunteer on the Plant Heritage stand. In this post I’m reporting on the gardens at the show which were planted with an eye to our changing climate.

Climate forward gardening, resilient gardening, sustainable gardening, gardening for climate change: all these expressions describe the same idea. Given the gradual changes in our climate: warmer wetter winters and dryer summers (well perhaps not so far this summer) and extreme weather events such as droughts or flooding, it is vitally urgent that we adapt our gardens to cope with such changes and design new gardens with this in mind. The eight gardens in the Resilient Pocket Planting category demonstrated this admirably. Knowing that your garden will be seen from 360 degrees must pose particular challenges to the designers, but each pocket worked from whatever angle you viewed it. Admittedly they were’t easy for an amateur to photograph, but then that wasn’t the point. Be it rainwater harvesting, biodiversity, food forests, using sustainable materials: the designers of these small spaces had it covered.

I loved the concept behind The Moonshadow Moth Garden. When I give my gardening for wildlife talks, I emphasise the importance of attracting moths into the garden with plants with pale flowers and evening scent. Moths’ importance as pollinators can get overlooked by the arguably more charismatic creatures like butterflies and bumble bees. The creamy flowerheads of Achillea millefolium provided lots of flat landing stages and the hazy purple tangle of Verbena officinalis Bampton made a sheltered habitat.

Conservation charity Buglife sponsored The B-Lines Garden to promote a network of nectar rich corridors for bees and other pollinators. By increasing the abundance and diversity of flowering plants in gardens, we can extend this network across the UK. I was chuffed to see that many of the plants I’ve used in the resilient pocket planting I made in my little front garden earlier this year, featured in this and several of the other pockets. Specifically in this image, the purple-speared Salvia nemorosa Caradonna. Also used in the B-Lines garden is the spiky-leaved Berkheya purpurea with which I had less success when I attempted without success to grow it in the back garden last year but I’m going to have another go with it knowing it’s going to attract in pollinators.

Perhaps the first thing that comes to mind when considering what constitutes a resilient garden is planting for drought tolerance, but given our increasingly wet winters, rain gardens which harvest rainwater and absorb stormwater are just as important. In The Ripple Effect Raingarden, stepping stones made a path across a central wet channel between low mounds planted with species that can withstand temporary waterlogging. Reading about this garden, I’ve learnt a new word ‘berm’, meaning a mound composed of soil and vegetation to slow and absorb stormwater. The designer of the garden, Sarah Cotterill, is based in Ballina, Co. Mayo and the limestone used for the stepping stones is typical of the rock formations found on the west coast of Ireland. In this image the pink flowers of are those of Rodgersia ‘Bronze Peacock’.

I enjoyed chatting to Becky Box the designer of the pocket based on The Edible Garden at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, where the garden will be re-located to the walled kitchen garden. She explained how she divides her time between her garden design work and working in the castle gardens. I loved the willow structures which represent the castle’s chimneys: not shown to best effect in this image I’m afraid.

The designers of the resilient planting pockets were mentored by the doyen of resilient gardening, Tom Massey, whose gardens at last year’s Hampton Court Show and this year’s Chelsea Flower Show have done so much to promote the importance of adapting our planting philosophy to accommodate the changing climate. The designer of the Food Forests garden, Marina Lindl, told me how helpful it had been to consult with Tom when preparing for the show. Sadly I didn’t photograph her garden which highlighted the idea of multi-layered planting from fruit-bearing trees down to root crops. I admired an attractive plant with purple leaves which she identified as tree spinach, Chenopodium giganteum.

I had a lovely surprise when I moved across the Long Water to where most of the show gardens were located. Manning The Climate-Forward Garden designed by Melanie Hick, was Emma Whitten, one of my fellow students from the class of 2017 of the RHS Level 2 Practical Horticulture course at Capel Manor’s Regents Park branch. A garden designer and landscaper herself, she and Melanie often work together on projects. This is a front garden where slightly raised beds surround a porous gravel area designed as a soakaway for sudden downpours. Within half an hour of chatting to Emma in bright sunshine, which showed off the colourful planting scheme wonderfully well, the heavens opened to an intensely heavy thunderstorm. Just the weather with which this garden and the Ripple Effect Garden were designed to cope.

I’ll close this post with an image from the Strive and Thrive resilient pocket planting . This vivid tapestry will be re-planted at a girls’ care home in Ealing. As I left the show on Sunday evening, the pockets were being emptied and whilst it was sad to see such beautiful creations dismantled, it was good to know they were all going to have permanent homes where their messages of resilience in the face of the challenge of climate change will continue to resonate.

Next time I’ll report on more highlights of the show and my wonderful afternoon volunteering in the seed shop section of the Plant Heritage stand in the Floral Marquee.

Kew Gardens, 12 July 2024

The Show Must Go On

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Chelsea Flower Show 21 May 2024: Part 2

Since my last visit to The Newt* in Somerset about three years ago, the Roman Museum and Villa experience has opened at the gardens. The Newt brought a corner of pre-earthquake Pompeii to Chelsea in the form of a replica of the colonnaded courtyard garden of a villa belonging to a wealthy Neapolitan as it might have looked in 78CE. Dominated by a mulberry tree, the garden is planted with species that might have been used in the 1st century. It was fun to see some well-known TV gardeners wittily depicted in frescoes inspired by Virgil’s Dido & Aeneas. Can you spot them here? **Answers below.

As well as having children vote for their favourite show garden, this year’s show featured a garden designed by students from a primary school in Fulham with designer Harry Holding: the No Adults Allowed Garden. To quote from the show’s programme:

…the garden is a celebration of the natural world and the joyous wonder children experience within beautiful landscapes.

I’d have loved to try the slide which led to an underwater den! In this image you can see the Chinese fringe tree (Chionanthus retusus) which I have since read won the RHS Tree of the Show.

The Balcony & Container Gardens category of the show is always a great place for ideas for small space gardening and here are a few of them. I confess it was the beautiful blue scatter cushions that first drew my eye to the Anywhere Courtyard! The centrepiece was a waterfall flowing out of a living wall of ferns and Fatsia.

The weather conditions (by this stage of the day steady rain!) were perfect to demonstrate the message of the Water Saving Garden with stylish blue water butts fitted to the wall fed by copper rain chains. The three subtly lit items of ‘wall art’ were vertically planted frames containing drought tolerant succulents.

Tree ferns (Dicksonia antarctica) and nasturtiums burst forth from the balcony of the Junglette Garden, the vibrant green and orange shades intensified by the deep charcoal backdrop and furniture.

Sustainability is at the heart of the garden designed by Tsuyako Asada of Alice Garden Design. The ‘living drain’ at the top of the wall of the Japanese townhouse allows rainwater to filter along yet another rain chain to the water tank beneath, with the overflow directed to the various planters. A large terracotta pot without a base is buried deep into the raised bed for use as a compost bin and the beds are mulched with chopped prunings and collected leaves (conserving moisture and keeping the soil warm). The planters are stuffed to approximately half way with cardboard and newspaper as a solution to the weight limitations associated with balcony gardening.

Highlights from the Great Pavilion follow: a feast of plants from both well-known names and smaller specialist growers.

I was very happy to see the No Name Nursery from Sandwich in Kent won a gold medal. I visited the nursery in September 2022.

Pollinators will flock to this single petalled Rosa moyesii Geranium.

Kevock Garden Plants from Midlothian displayed these moisture lovers. I enjoyed chatting to Kevock about their beautiful planting scheme for the stream-side Church Walk area at Hever Castle which I revisited in April.

The mother and daughter team behind Days of Dahlia, another exhibitor from Scotland, created this ethereal installation of cut flowers grown on their flower farm and displayed on botanically dyed silk.

One year I’ll try to go to the show twice: one day for the show gardens and another for the Great Pavilion. So many treasures, not enough time!

27 May 2024, Kew Gardens

*The Newt is the sponsor of this year’s Chelsea Flower Show.

** From left to right: Monty Don, Joe Swift and Arit Anderson

Showing up

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RHS Chelsea Flower Show 21 May 2024: Part 1

The route from Sloane Square station to the Royal Hospital, Chelsea is lined with flower show themed window displays. Roses, daisies and a panoply of picturesque edibles adorn the show-goers’ outfits. All this creates a growing sense of excitement as you approach the showground. I booked the tickets back in dreary November and here I am at last at the entrance to the greatest flower show in the world. Sadly, on Tuesday morning the weather was more dreary November than balmy May, but as soon as I reached the first show garden that faint niggle melts away.

The plot on the corner of Royal Hospital Way and Main Avenue (for this one week in May, the routes around the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea acquire street names) is occupied this year by The National Garden Scheme Garden designed by Tom Stuart-Smith. Celebrating the wonderful charity that raises funds for nursing and health charities, the garden is designed as a woodland edge garden. The green and white colour scheme felt immensely calming, with pale flowers in contrasting shapes lining the path to the oak hut. Coincidentally, one of the volunteers stewarding the garden I recognised as Sarah Pajwani, whose beautiful garden St Timothee in Pinckney’s Green, near Maidenhead, I visited in January. She kindly said she recognised me too. She explained that many of the herbaceous plants had been donated by NGS garden owners including Melica altissima Alba, the delicate grass at the bottom left of this image, which came from her garden.

Ann-Marie Powell designed the neighbouring garden, inspired by the legacy of Octavia Hill, a founder of the National Trust, who pioneered access to open spaces for urban workers. For the first time, the RHS has introduced a Children’s Choice Award for the garden voted as the best in show by a panel of young judges and this garden won the award. The children clearly loved the colourful planting designed to attract wildlife. The tactile hand-carved benches are made from reclaimed timber from National Trust sites. While we were admiring the garden, Andy Jasper, Director of Gardens and Parklands at National Trust, brought out a precious cutting from the Sycamore Gap tree to show us onlookers.

There’s a National Trust connection with the next port of call, the Bridgerton Garden, because NT Osterley, where I volunteer on Friday mornings, was used as a location in the latest season of the show. Here the romantic style planting softened the stonework structures and, like both the gardens I’ve already mentioned, featured foxgloves. As did its neighbour, The Burma Skincare Initiative Garden, which highlights the work of a partnership supporting Burmese healthcare workers to treat and manage skin disease. In this image a boardwalk snakes over a pool to a traditional Burmese stilt house, blue Anchusa azurea lining the path.

Several years ago, Kazuyuki Ishihara designed a garden featuring a garage housing a mini and using his trademark surfaces of living moss. A spectacular waterfall forms the backdrop to his garden this year, the graceful acers and Siberian irises giving colour in an otherwise green scene. To one side of the garden a living wall of sedum camouflages a building. At the next plot we chatted to a representative of Landform Consultants, the contractors who designed and constructed the garden for financial consultants, Killik & Co. It was fascinating to hear about the complicated logistics involved in constructing then dismantling a show garden. Landform are involved in several gardens across the show. I was interested to see Cirsium used in the planting scheme in this garden, the pollinator-friendly thistle flowers vividly cerise with the acid yellow of an Achillea.

15 or so years ago willow sculptor Tom Hare displayed several huge seedhead sculptures along the mini Broad Walk leading from Kew Gardens’ Elizabeth Gate to the Orangery restaurant. I spotted his trademark style in the willow waves which flow through the garden made for Freedom from Torture, between groups of drought resistant plants supplied by Beth Chatto’s Plants and Gardens, where one of the first gravel gardens was created. This garden will be moved to the North London HQ of the charity for use as a place for rest and rehabilitation by the survivors supported by the organisation. A bread oven presides over a sunken communal space, a pebble mosaic forming an eye-catching centrepiece. Like several other gardens at Chelsea this has been funded by Project Giving Back.

Where philanthropy and horticulture meet:
Project Giving Back is the vision of two private individuals who want to support a wide range of charitable causes whose work suffered during the global Covid-19 pandemic and continues to be affected by the economic downturn and cost-of-living crisis. The grant-making scheme gives UK-based charities and other charitable organisations the chance to apply for a fully-funded garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, subject to the usual RHS selection process. This is a unique opportunity for charities to raise awareness of and support for their work at the world’s most famous horticultural event.
Project Giving Back’s website

The other side of the climate change coin was tackled in the garden next door, Flood Re: The Flood Resilient Garden. Designed to harvest rainwater and minimise flooding during a period of exceptionally heavy rain, the central feature of the garden is a ‘swale’ where an ephemeral stream channels water into a pond. Additional tanks store water and the rain chains leading from the extra wide guttering are a stylish and effective alternative to downpipes. I loved the planting scheme: foxgloves and Verbascum in varying shades of pink with silvery poppies clustering at the foot of the spectacularly pollarded willow. Rodgersia with its deep pink zig-zag stems grows happily at the pond’s edge alongside Siberian Iris.

The World Child Cancer Garden is essentially a container garden formed of a series of circular raised beds of varying heights in a ‘keyhole’ shape, each with a gap leading to the hollow centre for access purposes. The beds themselves are made with interlocking 3D printed terracotta blocks, the soft reddish colour of which echoes paths of reclaimed brick and sets off the greyish leaves of aromatic plants such as Artemisia. We were intrigued to learn that the sculpted forms topping the posts punctuating the space were made from light tan leather, each designed to represent the five senses. Another garden financed by Project Giving Back, this calming space is to be re-located to the charity’s facility in Bristol accommodating families where a child is having cancer treatment.

I liked the soft lemon and apricot shades of the bearded Iris and Geum Tangerine Dream in the foreground of the next garden, again the work of Landform and sponsored by jewellers Boodles to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the National Gallery. I was intrigued to read since my visit that the metal canoe-like structures were inspired by the play of light on water in a canvas by Monet: ‘The Museum at Le Havre’.

Resilience was again the theme in the next garden on our tour of the show, co-designed by Tom Massey, the pioneer of this movement so important to address the challenges and opportunities faced by gardeners because of climate change. With wetter milder winters and hotter dryer summers, harvesting rainwater is becoming ever more important and the graceful funnel forms of the pavilion at the heart of The WaterAid Garden do just that. Tom Massey’s co-designer for this inspiring garden is architect Je Ahn. Before being raised into the air onto seemingly delicate pillars, the roof of each funnel was planted up. Enormously tall alder trees are planted around and through the eye-catching structure. Plants adapted to suit the damp conditions in this part of the garden: ragged robin, Siberian iris and Rodgersia, looked very at home. Foxgloves and Sanguisorba line the stone path leading to the pavilion. A conifer with a strongly horizontal silhouette, a form of Pinus, contrasts with the lighter greens of a field maple.

Whilst it’s not possible to walk onto and through these show gardens, the perspective that the average show-goer sees is often a path leading tantalisingly to a structure at the rear of the garden. In the National Autistic Society Garden the wooden boardwalk lined with the greyish-blue flowers of Camassia leads to a cork-block structure. Intended as a metaphor for the masking strategy adopted by some autistic people to blend in and be more accepted in society, the structure and the garden will be transferred in due course to a supported living site in Scotland. This is another garden built by Landform and financed by Project Giving Back. And another featuring a rain chain.

Two structures dominate the St James’s Piccadilly garden: one a recreation of a corner of the Sir Christopher Wren designed church itself, complete with vast arched window, and the other a circular timber cabin topped by a tall spire which, when the garden is re-located to the church’s garden, will be used for a drop-in counselling service. The bed which hugs the cabin exemplifies the largely green and white planting theme, with foxgloves, ferns (Blechnum spicant) and silvery Brunnera macrophylla Jack Frost clustered around the foot of a handsome Cornus kousa. The design incorporates a reference to artist Mary Delany* (1700-1788) to whom there is a memorial in the church. Her exquisite paper-cut flowers created using layers of coloured tissue paper on a black background can be seen in the British Museum. This and the next garden are financed by Project Giving Back.

I was happy to see the white-flowered Brunnera macrophylla Betty Bowring, used in the underplanting of more than 50 birch trees in Muscular Dystrophy UK’s forest bathing garden. As is always the way at Chelsea, some plants seem to crop up in several show gardens, and here again is the dainty white grass Melica altissima Alba. This garden generated a very serene atmosphere, which will be invaluable when it is recreated at the Institute of Developmental and Regenerative Medicine in Oxford.

Hard landscaping featuring jagged Welsh slate emulates a quarry cut into a hillside, with woodland giving way to a flooded pool in the Terrence Higgins Trust Bridge to 2030 garden. Pale coloured flowers and foliage give way to a more colourful scheme towards the centre of the garden, with a couple of plants seen elsewhere in the show: the wine-red poppy, Papaver somniferum Lauren’s Grape and the dark peach-pink spires of Verbascum Petra. The dots of red which lead the eye from the pale to the deeper shades were I later read, the almost circular flowerheads of Dianthus cruentus. Discovering plants I’ve not encountered before, whether species like this one or new cultivars, is for me one of the joys of the Chelsea Flower Show.

I’ve tried here to do justice to the eight sanctuary and eight show gardens at this year’s show, but I’ve realised, compiling this account of the show gardens, that I failed for some reason to photograph the Stroke Association’s Garden for Recovery. I must have been distracted by watching the process of Adam Frost presenting to camera and interviewing the designer, Miria Harris. I also remember that is was at this point that the rain began to fall, and indeed it rained for the rest of the day.

In the second part of this blog I’ll visit a children only garden, a Roman villa, the balcony and container gardens and explore the Great Pavilion.

Kew Gardens, 25 May 2024

*In 2022 David Austin Roses renamed the ‘Mortimer Sackler’ rose ‘Mary Delany’ in her honour.

Round-up of 2023: part 2 July to December

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Reviewing last year through images of the gardens I visited and worked in has emphasised to me how much of my life is occupied with gardens and gardening. And how uplifting it is to be involved in the gardening world on a day to day basis. I’m excited about the year to come, which I plan to make as fulfilling as the one that has just finished. Here’s a summary of the last six months of 2023.

July

Seamus luxuriated on the garden bench in the summer sun whilst at NT Osterley the produce was fattening up beautifully in the vegetable plot in the walled garden. I went to the RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival for the first time in several years to enjoy the show gardens and displays in the marquees. One highlight was the RHS Wildlife Garden designed by Jo Thompson, where the presence of dozens of small skipper butterflies was a testament to the wildlife friendly planting scheme. The assistance dog I captured in the photo was very taken with them too! At Pensford Field the wildflowers flourished and the trustees arranged summer activities including a butterfly talk and a summer picnic, the latter captured by a drone-borne camera. The daylilies and white Verbascums (V. chaixii Album) in the large herbaceous border in my Richmond client’s garden were a joyful sight. Hydrangeas and star jasmine attracted attention away from the parched lawn in another garden, which despite my best efforts has always struggled because of the shade cast and moisture taken by the mature trees in the neighbouring gardens.

August

Extreme heat then a damp start to the month saw off the sweetpeas with powdery mildew, but the rain freshened up the garden and turned it into something of a jungle for Seamus whose obsession with the residents of the pond intensified. My plant of the month was a tall intensely blue salvia (S. patens Guanajuato) which went on to flower well into November, despite an inauspicious start on the sale bench at North Hill Nurseries. Astrantia major also thrived, a seedling from a client’s garden the year before. I saved, then sowed, its seeds at the end of August and now have a dozen or so small plants which I hope will form part of the stock at a client’s charity plant sale in April.

A kind friend took me for a picnic tea at Highclere Castle, the location for Downton Abbey. The towers and turrets of the house rise dramatically from the surrounding parkland and meadows. Like many grand estates, the walled garden is located at some distance from the house. Here the dark greens of the parkland trees give way to colourful herbaceous borders.

From High Victorian style to the simplicity of the Arts & Crafts movement later in the month when I went to Rodmarton Manor and Kelmscott Manor. Inspired by a visit to the Emery Walker House in June, where I noticed a watercolour of Rodmarton, both the house and the garden are elegantly spare in style and very beautiful. William Morris’s spirit pervades Kelmscott Manor which has been lovingly restored by the Society of Antiquaries of London. The house dates from the C16 and is a treasure trove of furniture and textiles collected or designed and made by Morris and his family. This exercise of reviewing the past year has reminded me that both these properties deserve a separate blog post. Watch this space.

I entered some exhibits into The Kew Horticultural Society’s annual Flower & Produce Show on the Bank Holiday weekend and was delighted to receive two second prizes and one third for, respectively, a selection of herbaceous perennials, a single Annabelle hydrangea head and a vase of cup & saucer vine flowers. I’m afraid the produce from the allotment plot did not warrant competition with the high standard of the entries to the show.

September

Audley End in Essex was the venue for BBC Gardeners’ World Autumn fair and the first of these fairs I’ve attended. I went with a fellow freelance local gardener, Liz, and we had a great day chatting to the exhibitors. The palatial mansion formed an elegant backdrop to the show and I particularly liked a ‘dry’ show garden where sun-loving plants were planted into a substrate topped with pebbles, larger rounded stones providing variation in height and texture. Back at the allotment, my plot yielded a good crop of potatoes and in a client’s garden I was very happy to see how well my pot planting scheme had turned out. Zonal pelargoniums, Mexican fleabane (Erigeron karvinskianus), purple nemesia and Senecio cineraria ‘Silver Dust’ made for a generous and colourful display. At the rear of the same garden, Rudbeckia Goldsturm fulfilled the client’s brief for a bright colour scheme.

The splendid Lords’ Robing Room in the Palace of Westminster was the location for a recording of Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time for which I was fortunate to get free tickets through BBC shows and tours. The show was eventually aired in November, to coincide with the publication of a report into the state of the UK’s horticulture industry by the House of Lords’ Horticultural Sector Committee. It was fascinating to see the show being recorded and to hear the answers by the panel (Matthew Wilson, Dr Chris Thorogood and Christine Walkden) to the audience questions. At home, the China rose Rosa mutabilis which I’d planted in a large pot earlier in the summer, was awash with flowers, the lax petals ranging from pale lemon to watery pink. Caryopteris clandonensis proved once again to be the best flowering shrub at this time of year for attracting pollinators. We revelled in Tom Hart Dyke’s zest for the exotic specimens in his care in The World Garden at Lullingstone Castle when he welcomed a group of us from the Garden Media Guild.

Having heard Xa Tollemache speak at the Garden Museum in 2022 about A Garden Well Placed, her account of creating the garden at Helmingham Hall near Woodbridge in Suffolk, and how doing so inspired to become a professional garden designer, it was good to visit the place where her career began. The exuberantly planted walled garden complements the moated Elizabethan house which resembles something from a fairytale.

October

Giving a talk about wildlife gardening to the friends of Pensford Field conservation area was great fun and I’ve recently been invited back (in May) when I’ll be taking about adapting our gardens and gardening practices to the changing climate. Reading the biography of Ellen Willmott led to visiting Kingston Water Gardens when they opened for the NGS.

On the last day of the month I went to Leonardslee Lakes & Gardens in West Sussex to admire the autumn foliage reflected in the seven lakes which run through the landscaped estate. Sitting in the bird hide beside one of the lakes, we saw a female Sika deer and her fawn tread gently in front of us whilst we held our breath and savoured the magical experience. I was charmed too by the delightful scenes of Edwardian country life in the village and at the big house, captured in the 1:12 scale models in the ‘Beyond the Dolls’ House’ exhibition. The dense tapestry of planting almost obscures the Pulhamite stone structures which form the basis of the Rock Garden created in 1900. I was particularly interested to see this artificial material again, having so recently been to the Kingston Water Gardens where it was used for the area around the Fernery. Leonardslee is one of the three Sussex gardens associated with the Loder family.

The Loder family boasted many gifted gardeners. Combined, they founded three significant gardens in Sussex, passing down a love of plants and botany throughout generations.
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew website

Leonardslee is the creation of Sir Edmund Loder. His father Sir Robert started the garden at High Beeches which was further developed by brother Wilfrid and his son Giles. Another brother, Sir Edmund Loder, bought the Wakehurst estate in 1902, administered by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and home to part of its living collection of rare plants.

November

As we hurtled towards Christmas, there was still a surprising amount of colour evident in the garden at NT Osterley, due no doubt to the mild weather which characterised last autumn. On 17 November, two salvias shone out in the long border of the walled garden: Salvia Amistad and S. confertiflora. Earlier in the month the alluring but poisonous Aconitum napellus dominated a bed near the Garden House in Mrs Child’s Flower Garden. Visiting a friend in Oundle, Northants I couldn’t resist being photographed outside a houseplant shop whose strapline echoes my own sentiments. At home, Rosa Sceptr’d Isle flowered until late in the month and one afternoon the garden was illuminated by a rainbow which arced over the scarlet hips of Rosa Rambling Rector. We spent a morning planting bulbs in Pensford Field (snowdrops, native daffodils, snakehead fritillaries, wood anemones) and admired the autumnal tints ringing the wildlife pond.

December

Visiting family in south Somerset, I went to NT Montacute House and marvelled at the monumental cloud-pruned yews. As ever, the final garden visit of the year was to Christmas at Kew, where the lit trail didn’t disappoint.

With the start of the year dominated by domestic issues around a boiler failure and kitchen refurbishment, publication of this blog has taken far longer than intended. As I write this on a chilly February evening, I know that in the darkness outside, spring bulbs are nosing yup through the soil. Late last evening, I opened the back door and beyond the welcome sound of heavy rain (it’s been bone dry for a few weeks), I detected frogs croaking their welcome to the season to come.

Kew Gardens 7 February 2024

Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival 2023

5 July 2023

The designers of the show gardens in this year’s festival successfully conveyed the message that we gardeners cannot ignore the fact that our climate is becoming dryer and hotter. We need to put sustainability into practice by making our outside spaces resilient to such changes. Alongside this, and often as a consequence of gardening in this manner, we can attract and sustain the wildlife which would otherwise fall prey to climate change, pollution, the indiscriminate use of pesticides and the mania for covering our domestic open spaces with artificial grass or impermeable hard landscaping.

Tom Massey’s RHS Resilient Garden contained clever solutions to some of these threats. In the sunny front garden area, freshly dug gravel was replaced with recycled aggregate made from construction waste. ‘Rubblazzo’ paving made with such waste also featured. Rather than excess water produced by heavy rain storms overwhelming the sewage system, run-off was reduced by gathering the water into a wide shallow pool spanned by a boardwalk constructed from reclaimed timer. Day lilies, Agapanthus and (I think) Origanum vulgare contributed to a predominantly yellow, blue and mauve colour palette. To coincide with the unveiling of this inspirational garden, Tom Massey has penned a book for the RHS, Resilient Garden: Sustainable Gardening for a Changing Climate.

Unlike the Chelsea Flower Show where only invited guests get to step onto the show gardens, many of the Hampton Court gardens encouraged you to walk through them, a far more immersive experience than standing behind a rope and craning your neck to see the furthermost corners of the exhibit. The path in the RHS Wildlife Garden designed by Jo Thompson and Kate Bradbury replicated an old railway track with disused industrial land on one side (suggested by rusting machinery) and the rear portions of urban gardens on the other. If proof were needed that the clever planting in this garden was specifically designed to attract pollinators, the flowers of purple orchids and bergamot (Monarda didyma) were being mobbed by small skipper butterflies. The planting scheme included the native hawthorn, Crataegus monogyna, often cited as one of the best species for providing a food source for wildlife: nectar rich flowers in spring for invertebrates and juicy berries in the autumn for birds.

The winding path in Carol Klein’s RHS Iconic Horticultural Hero Garden passed six habitats: a bog garden representing wetlands, a small wood planted with beech trees, a native species rich hedgerow, a meadow blending grass and perennials, a rocky mountainside area for alpine species which merged into a shingly beach. The variety of species and cultivars used throughout was hugely impressive, as you’d expect from an expert plantswoman like Carol Klein, exemplified by these purple, mauve and silver shades in differing flower forms creating an exquisite painterly effect. There was even a vegetable patch and a greenhouse in which Carol could be seen sharing propagation technique tips with visitors. The plants used in the gravelly seaside garden were raised for the show by Beth Chatto’s Plants and Gardens. I loved the blend of mauves and deep pinks of Verbena officinalis var. grandiflora ‘Bampton’ and Allium sphaerocephalon punctuated occasionally with pops of yellow and flowing Stipa tenuissima.

A restful pool sat at the heart of the Cancer Research UK Legacy Garden designed by Paul Hervey-Brookes. Looking at the photographs now, it is hard to imagine that a month earlier this tranquil space would have been a construction site. The willows and hostas sprouting between the massive rocks edging the pool gave the garden an air of permanence and screened visitors onto the garden from the show hubbub a few metres away.

I enjoyed the theatricality of the Oregon Garden, where a mini vineyard sat alongside a colourful meadow bordering a miniature lake. White corncockle (Agrostemma githago) shone out alongside pink and yellow Achillea, the overall palette deepened by burgundy Hylotelephium (formerly Sedum).

The key components for attracting and protecting wildlife (food, water and shelter) could be seen in a couple of the smaller show gardens. In the Nurturing Nature in the City garden by Viriditas, the walls created from stone-filled gabions would provide ideal homes for solitary bumble-bees as well as cover for small mammals. Ponds in rectangular boxes made from scaffolding boards made habitats for amphibians and invertebrates and drought tolerant and nectar rich flowers such as Achillea and Salvia nemorosa Caradonna were attractive for bees and butterflies. I liked the free-standing vertical garden idea where climbers like honeysuckle (a favourite for night-flying insects like moths) were being encouraged to grow up railway sleepers and along strainer wire fitted between the sleepers.

More wildlife friendly and sustainable ideas were included in The Wildlife Trusts: Renters’ Retreat designed by Zoe Claymore. This was full of clever solutions for making a garden which might have to be packed up and moved to a new space: a mini-pond in a pot; steel raised beds that can be dismantled and moved elsewhere, a tree planted in a container. The densely planted ferns and Lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis) supplied cover for insects and small mammals whilst bees and hoverflies would be drawn to the nectar in the foxgloves (Digitalis purpurea).

Hedges make wonderful habitats for wildlife. The Traditional Townhouse Garden designed by Lucy Taylor Garden Design was surrounded by copper beech hedging, with the burgundy colour scheme repeated in the bark of Tibetan cherry trees planted into huge pale green containers, underplanted with Lady’s mantle. Oversized chairs of green metal picked up the colour of the containers. A shallow circular pond accessible for amphibians was set within a sedum filled square. A ‘black’ and white planting scheme framed a large bronze apple: the bright white of Gaura lindheimeri ‘Snowbird’ contrasting with the dark petals of Viola cornuta ‘Molly Sanderson’ and Cosmos atrosanguineus.

I believe I am right in saying that ever since the first RHS Hampton Court 30 years ago, rose growers have exhibited in their own marquee, rather than the enormously long Floral Marquee. This makes for a wonderfully concentrated experience of exquisite flowers and fragrance.

There are another two ways in which Hampton Court contrasts with Chelsea: dogs on leads are permitted and you can buy plants at the show as well as all manner of horticultural accoutrements. Many visitors arrive armed with plastic crate trolleys to accommodate their purchases. I bought a beautiful purple flowered Streptocarpus from Dibbeys of North Wales for a friend’s birthday. It was lovely to chat with Lincolnshire Pond plants who were awarded a gold medal for their display (as they had been in May at Chelsea). In an effort to minimise blanket weed in my pond, I bought oxygenator water shamrock (Marsilea quadrifolia) which I was interested to learn is an underwater fern. I also stocked up on allium bulbs to plant in the autumn from WS Warmenhoven: more Purple Sensation to bulk up those already in the garden. Their display of numerous cultivars arranged against a black background was stunning. Having reviewed my photos, I’m now wishing I had also bought Allium sphaerocephalon which also popped up in several of the show gardens.

This brief account of the day inevitably cannot do justice to a fantastic show which I so enjoyed returning to after an absence of several years. I’ll leave you with a few more images from the day.

Kew Gardens, 22 July 2023

Chelsea Flower Show 2023

23 May 2023

For the last three years I’ve treated myself to a ticket to the Chelsea Flower Show. The long suffering friends I go with are primed for an early start and late finish so as to squeeze maximum value from the day. Having said that I always come away knowing I haven’t covered every single inch of the place but I really think you’d need to be there for three days to see everything.

Inevitably I bring back dozens of photographs and leaflets from most of the show gardens. The plant lists in the latter and the BBC’s comprehensive coverage help me to identify which garden is which when I sort through the images. I’ll try in this post to give an overview of my impressions of this year’s show and to pick out some of my highlights.

Sustainability was a recurring theme in the show gardens, with for example a reduced use of cement in concrete mixes and some walls constructed from hay bales. The grant-giving charitable fund Project Giving Back has financed the creation of 15 of the gardens at the show. It’s a proviso of a successful application for funding that the garden has a life beyond the show and this year several of the gardens are to be re-located to hospitals, community gardens and health support centres.

The importance of attracting wildlife to the garden was also apparent with several gardens featuring wild flowers or, as some would have it, weeds! It was refreshing to see bees already foraging amidst the many single petalled flowers in many of the planting schemes, despite show gardens having been planted only up to three weeks before the show.

It’s always intriguing to spot plants that recur from garden to garden. The umbellifer Orlaya grandiflora recurred several times as did the shrub or small tree Cornus kousa. Plus another white-flowered shrub which I couldn’t identify: it had Viburnum-like flowers but leaves resembling a flowering currant. Another white flower, sweet or dame’s rocket, featured too: Hesperis matronalis.

The RHS featured horticultural heroines in the Floral Marquee with portraits of women who have made their mark in the history of gardening: Gertrude Jekyll, Ellen Willmott, Vita Sackville-West and Beth Chatto; in conservation: Wangari Muta Maathai* in botany: Janaki Ammal and botanical artist and intrepid traveller Marianne North.

Dozens of inspirational growers exhibit in the huge marquee including the three biggest names in roses: Peter Beale, Harkness Roses and David Austin. I loved the delicate species rose Rosa cymosa with its tiny white flowers. Hedgehog Plants’ exquisite Epimediums were another highlight along with Taylors Bulbs’ daffodils and the peonies and irises on the Claire Austin stand.

The balcony gardens are a good source of inspiration for small-space and container gardening. I enjoyed the plant theatre and shelving for pots on the timber-shingled wall of The Restorative Balcony Garden plus the ingenious shallow water feature or ‘water table’. The gentle colours of the planting in this garden were very appealing as well: a soothing space after a busy day at work. Warmer shades were used in the containers in The Platform Garden, contrasting with the backdrop of green tiling.

I always have to stand inside the posh greenhouses on display in the retail areas and fantasise about having a garden large enough to accommodate one!

Finally part of the fun of Chelsea is seeing the crews filming segments for the extensive BBC coverage of the show and watch the presenters going through their paces, seemingly unperturbed by the crowds massing around the show gardens. And then to catch up with the programmes later in the week to see the show gardens from the inside out.

Kew, 27 May 2023

*When I worked in the visitor information team at Kew Gardens, the then Prince of Wales planted a tree in commemoration of Wangari Muta Maathai (1940-2011) on a small mound near the Elizabeth Gate. I shall have to take a look to remind myself of the species of tree.

Here are more of my photos from the show

Cleve West’s Centrepoint Garden. This is one of the gardens funded by Project Giving Back.

Horatio’s Garden designed by Charlotte Harris and Hugo Bugg. Another Project Giving Back garden, this will be re-located to a spinal injuries unit in Sheffield.

The Biophilic Garden designed by Kazayuki Ishihara. Wonderful moss.

The Nurture Landscapes Garden designed By Sarah Price. Inspired by Benton End in Suffolk, home of artist Cedric Morris. Its muted colours reflect the irises bred by Cedric Morris.

The designers use inspiring plant combinations: here featuring Salvia Caradonna

Or individual plants stand out

One of the Sanctuary Gardens, The Boodles British Crafts Gardens featured my favourite water feature from the show. The surface ripples as though raindrops are falling into the water.

Even before you reach the show ground, the shop windows are decorated and The Sloane Club displays a tableau. This year it was Eliza Doolittle’s transformation from Covent Garden flower girl to a grand lady at Ascot.

The Garden Press Event 2023

Swapping my secateurs for a notebook and pencil two days ago, I headed east to the Business Design Centre in Islington to attend the Garden Press Event where companies showcase innovations in garden tools, machinery, accessories and materials to the garden media. This was my third GPE if I don’t count the two virtual events held during the pandemic. As well as tracking trends it’s a great opportunity to meet up with fellow members of the Garden Media Guild be they bloggers like myself, journalists, podcasters or social media influencers.

It was refreshing to see the huge emphasis on sustainability throughout the show and I’m highlighting some of the initiatives in this direction in this blog post as well as a nifty way to stop garden hose connectors from leaking and a collaboration between the National Trust and a garden centre chain.

I chatted to as many of the stands as I could identify promoting growing media free of peat. By 2024 no compost can be sold containing peat. This is not a moment too soon to protect unique habitats such as the Somerset Levels, which we’ve plundered for decades to produce potting compost for amateur and professional gardeners alike.

I buy masses of peat-free compost throughout the year for myself and for clients, for use in containers as well as for propagating plants so it was interesting to see the well-established brands and some newcomers. The RHS endorsed Sylvagrow peat free range is made by Melcourt who this year celebrate 40 years in the industry. Cumbria based Dalefoot is gaining a reputation for high quality (and expensive) peat free products based on bracken and the wool of Herdwick sheep. Two exhibitors use compressed coir (coconut husk) in compost blocks: Eazy Grow Compost from Eazy Gardening Ltd and Coco & Coir from Southern Trident. Once soaked in water these relatively light blocks transform into all purpose potting composts. It would certainly save lugging 40 and 50 litre bags of compost around. Southern Trident has also blended different nutrients into 9 litre blocks specifically for orchids and houseplants respectively. New Leaf peat free compost made in Northern Ireland is endorsed by garden designer and TV personality Diarmuid Gavin.

I was very taken by the attractive designs of the 100% recycled plastic bird feeders from Dutch company Singing Friend. They have developed a way to recycle the plastic lining of Tetrapak-type drinks cartons, making it into lightweight bird feeders in a neutral khaki shade retailing for less than £10. I love the story of this family company, now run by its third generation, being founded in 1951 by a man with a passion for birds. Their mission statement sums up the company philosophy well: We build a bridge between design and nature, and stimulate the creation of new living environments for birds, by people.

Continuing the sustainability theme, it was good to meet Chris Wiley of the Sustainable Plant Store, a new company selling eco-friendly alternatives to popular plants and garden products. I particularly liked the 8cm coir pots bound with natural latex as an alternative to the ubiquitous plastic flower pot. Another exhibitor proposing a substitute for plastic pots was Wool-Pots whose minimalist ecru coloured knitted ‘socks’ approx. 12 cm long can be filled with compost and stood on a terracotta saucer or stood en masse in a seed tray and used for potting on seedlings or growing cuttings and can then be planted straight into the ground. The wool will biodegrade in time and leaving the ‘lip’ proud of the soil is said to deter slugs and snails. At the moment the product is manufactured in Egypt in a factory which is SEDEX* certified and plants two trees for every order under their ‘plant one get one tree’ initiative. Wool-Pots ambition is to start its own factory in the UK.

I can’t be the only gardener to waste frustrating time each summer trying to fix a connector back on the end of a hose after it’s shot off under pressure. Qwickhose from Rivendale products have created a universal hose connector using a wing-lock system instead of the plastic teeth used in conventional connectors. Their starter set consists of two connectors, a tap connector and a nozzle spray to be stored in a neat wall mount which I shall fix to the shed wall this week. Unlike their competitors’ trademark yellow plastic, this product is a distinctive shade of blue. I got a pleasant surprise when I opened the carton to find it included a strip of recycled cotton embedded with tomato seeds!

One of the largest stands at the show was occupied by Blue Diamond Garden Centres which in 2022 began a five year collaboration with the National Trust. Naturally, as a garden volunteer with the Trust I was keen to find out more about this project. So it was fun to chat to Andy Jasper, National Head of Gardens and Parklands for the Trust. A fellow South Cornishman, he of course knows NT Osterley’s head gardener, Andy Eddy. The Blue Diamond/National Trust collaboration has resulted in several new lines including a collection of more than 60 flower seed varieties inspired by the Trust’s gardens, at least 10% of the retail selling price of which will be given to the Trust. The beauty of the Trust’s gardens is reflected in several ranges of bulbs, the collection of naturalising bulbs such as crocus and species tulips to be launched later in the year.

My favourite product on this beautifully designed stand was the box containing 14 herbaceous perennials in various sized pots inspired by the herbaceous border at NT Nymans in West Sussex. The cover of the container includes a plan of the planting scheme and a description of each plant. This bespoke collection includes Heuchera Lime Marmalade (which I love despite a client having told me after I planted it in his garden that it reminded him of lettuce!) and Rudbeckia Goldsturm. Close inspection of the plant descriptions revealed that they were all describing a Crocosmia, possibly Lucifer, but I think the exhibitors can be cut some slack for displaying a prototype containing placeholder text. The collections, which will also include the herbaceous border at Hill Top in Cumbria, the White Garden at Sissinghurst and the Red Borders at Hidcote will go on sale in April. These would be brilliant presents for someone moving into a brand new house with a blank page of a garden to plant up.

Another clever initiative arising out of this collaboration is the propagation of a limited number of specimens from two iconic trees at Trust properties: Isaac Newton’s Apple Tree from Woolsthorpe Manor, Lincs and the Ankerwyke Yew from the banks of the River Thames opposite Runnymede. The young trees are being raised in The National Trust Plant Conservation Centre based in a secret location in Devon and will be for sale in exclusive auctions in 2024. Blue Diamond is already selling a collection of the roses which can be seen in the rose garden at Powis Castle in Wales and is launching a new rose this summer: ‘Mottisfont’ is named for the home in Hampshire of the National Collection of old roses. From the photograph this new rose looks to be a beautiful multi-petalled rich deep pink.

My final shout out is to Niwaki who as always displayed their beautiful garden tools and accessories on a stylish stand. They displayed endless patience in answering my questions. The hori hori Japanese trowel remains my favourite garden tool and it was interesting to see a demonstration of its blade being sharpened with a diamond file. I also found out I’ve not been using the Crean Mate tool cleaning block properly: I should dip the tip of it in water before use. Thank you Niwaki for the selection of Japanese salad and vegetable seeds.

I’ve only scratched the surface here of what was on view at the GPE: makers of ladders, machine tools, plant foods were all there in force. It was a hugely enjoyable show and I’m only sorry there were a few Guild members I didn’t get to chat to on this occasion. Roll on next year’s show!

23 February 2023

Kew Gardens

*SEDEX stands for Supplier Ethical Data Exchange, an online system that allows suppliers to maintain data on ethical & responsible practices and allows them to share this information with their customers.

Points make prizes

On 27 August 2022 I won a silver cup! For the first time in my life! At the Kew Horticultural Society’s 77th Flower & Produce Show. (Cue the Archers’ theme tune).

Always held on the Saturday of the August bank holiday weekend, the show is a Kew institution and takes place on the smaller Kew Green, across the South Circular Road from St Ann’s Church. As detailed in the ‘Rules for Exhibitors’ I staged my three entries on the evening before the show. I was only the 3rd exhibitor to enter the large marquee furnished with white paper covered trestle tables. I was given one card per entry on which I wrote the number of the class of the entry and my name. I then found the relevant section of the tables and set out my exhibits, the card name side down. My original intention had been to enter the ‘Montello’ plum tomatoes which cropped really well in this summer’s heat. But I realised when I inspected them earlier that week that I’d already picked and eaten the largest and juiciest! Reading through the rules on the Society’s website, I identified some categories to enter and spent an hour or so on the Friday afternoon assembling my offerings. Which were:

Class 34. GRAPES 2 bunches grown outdoors. In 2020 I planted a grapevine (Vitis vinifera ‘Lakemont’) in a large terracotta pot and trained it across the south facing fence at the back of the garden. This is a seedless dessert grape and this year, like the tomatoes, it soaked up the sunshine and produced a couple of dozen bunches of rather small but intensely sweet grapes.

Class 44. PERENNIALS hardy, 3 or more different kinds in a vase or bowl. Opting for the informal look, I picked a couple of stems of five different flowers and popped them into a half pint milk bottle from the 1960s, embossed with ‘Lord Rayleigh’s Dairies’, which I keep on the kitchen windowsill and use for roses and sweet peas or cuttings waiting to be potted up. These are the flowers I picked:

Anaphalis margaritacea var. yedoensis: ‘Yedoan pearly everlasting flower’. I bought this in May 2021 from the wonderful nursery at Great Dixter. It is also grown in the cutting garden at Osterley. In the sunny position where it’s planted at the far right hand end of my garden, its foliage blends really well with the similarly greyish leaves of the late summer flowering shrub Caryopteris × clandonensis, whose mid blue flowers are just emerging this week.
Salvia x jamensis Nachtvlinder. The velvety deep purple flowers contrasted well with the white everlasting flowers. This plant came from Kew Gardens about ten years ago whilst I was working there, when they dismantled the planting of the outline of a giant man which had been created at the foot of the Pagoda as part of a summer festival.
Salvia uligonosa. ‘Bog sage’. Sky blue flowers top 2 metre high stems. Arguably too tall for my tiny garden, but at this time of year it flowers profusely and helps create a slightly jungly, overgrown atmosphere.
Anemone x hybrida ‘Honorine Jobert’ or Hon Jobs as they’re referred to in the nursery trade. I mentioned in my last blog that they’ve struggled a little to reach their usual 1-1.5 metre height, but thankfully there were plenty of the creamy white flowers to spare for my arrangement.
Verbena bonariensis added to the cottagey feel I was aiming for.

Class 61. FUCHSIAS a vase of mixed varieties or one variety. I picked several sprays of Fuchsia ‘Burning Embers’ which I’ve grown in a medium sized pot for about four years after buying it in a plant sale at Osterley. I cut it down to a low framework of woody stems after it finishes flowering and for months it looks as if it will never recover until during April new shoots appear and by midsummer it’s developed into a neat dome covered in a mass of dainty maroon bells.

Kitten Seamus alongside *Fuchsia* Burning embers

I returned to the show marquee the following afternoon with a friend, Liz, a fellow local gardener. Naturally, I was curious to see if any how my entries had fared under the judges’ scrutiny. Nul points for the grapes: the top three entries were wonderfully plump and juicy. But I was awarded second prize for the hardy perennials (3 points)- I was delighted, even when I noticed there were only two entries on display! The winner’s arrangement of Salvia Amistad was stunning. Turning to the table where I’d placed the vase of Fuchsias the evening before I was so excited to see a red rosette to indicate that I’d won First prize (4 points).

It was fun looking at all the beautiful fruit and vegetables entered in competition, as well as cakes, bread and crafts. Leaving the marquee, we walked around the stalls representing local organisations and selling crafts and plants and had tea and cake. And lovely chats with our respective clients, several of whom were enjoying the show and the sunny afternoon too. About to leave the show ground, I heard my name announced and was just in time to be presented with a handsome silver cup by Giles Fraser, the new vicar of St Ann’s. I had won the Kew Challenge Cup ‘for the first-time exhibitor gaining the most points in horticultural classes 1-64’.

The cup is in pride of place on the mantelpiece for the next 12 months and naturally I’m already planning which classes to enter into the 78th show in a year’s time.