With only a day and a bit of the old year to go, it seems timely to review my horticultural year: in my own garden, in my clients’ gardens and when visiting gardens and shows. So, rattling through, month by month, here goes with the first six months of the year.
January
After Christmas at Kew on the evening of New Year’s Day, it was time to admire the gardens by day, particularly the newly planted winter garden. I popped back yesterday morning to see that the plants in this image from a year ago have filled out considerably. Fridays mornings at NT Osterley were sunny and crisp, the ghost bramble in the Garden House an unusual addition to the winter display. Back at Kew, I did a couple of ‘mossing’ sessions in the Princess of Wales Conservatory to prepare for the February orchid festival themed around Cameroon. Temperatures stayed below freezing for several days at the end of the month, making life difficult for these Egyptian geese at the pond on Kew Green. In my clients’ gardens, I applied mulch and found a way to rescue a broken Whichford pot with wallflowers. Garden reading: The Jewel Garden by Monty and Sarah Don reveals the hard work and hard times behind the Long Meadow of today.
February
At NT Osterley and East Lambrook Manor Gardens carpets of Crocus tommasianus heralded spring, whilst in my garden the watermelon pink of the flowering quince (Chaenomeles x superba Pink Lady) brought colour to an otherwise drab palette. On the feline front cheeky Seamus was caught posing beside the pansies on my neighbours’ front windowsill and a magnificent lion with a mane of colourful orchids roared out from the centrepiece of the festival display at RBG, Kew. The sunlight highlighted the trunks of the cherry trees (Prunus serrula) in the winter garden at Sir Harold Hillier Arboretum and Gardens. The Garden Press Event at the Business Design Centre in Islington was both sociable and informative, introducing new products and trends to the gardening media fraternity. A kind friend allowed me to use two plots on her allotment this year where I’ve grown potatoes and chard successfully and cauliflower and lettuce rather less successfully! I’ve sadly had to concede that there aren’t enough hours in the day to cope properly with a veg plot elsewhere and have decided not to proceed with it in 2024. In this image I’m making a fuss of working cocker spaniel Molly before mulching one of the beds with cardboard and well-rotted horse manure in preparation for adopting the no-dig system.
March
A gardening challenge this year has been to enliven the third ‘room’ of a client’s garden with woodland style planting beneath the silver birches. As the year has progressed I’ve introduced Brunnera macrophylla: both the species and Jack Frost and have planted dozens of Scilla sibirica and Tete-a-tete daffodils. More daffodils feature in this posed shot of Seamus in his favourite lookout spot, tail curled nonchalantly beneath the window ledge. I used the image during a one day CityLit course in cyanotype printing later in the month. I enjoyed refreshing a narrow Kew front garden by adding Nandina domestica Lemon and Lime between three Rosa Bonica plants which went on to flower profusely (and pinkly) throughout the summer. As the month wore on, I photographed the daffodils naturalised at NT Osterley between the walled garden and the rear of the Garden House, in my garden and amidst the hellebores in the terraced woodland border at my Monday morning client’s garden near Richmond Green. The annual carpet of scillas in front of Kew Palace and a pot of Scilla bifolia lend a blue note to the end of the month.
April
Parks and gardens style it might be, but the formal planting in St James’s Park on 2 April was stunning. Later that day I began chitting the seed potatoes and it was warm enough the next morning for Seamus to recline beside the pond. The stately stone pine, Pinus pinea, on the south west side of Richmond Green was stop 4 on the trail of Richmond’s Trees which a friend and I followed using the book of that name published in November 2022. I greeted the arrival of tulip season using my new Canon compact camera, in time for a mid month expedition to RHS Bridgewater in the rain (more tulips) and the next day a drier Piet Oudolf planting at the Trentham Estate (fritillary close-up). Back home I explored the Fulham Palace Walled Garden and admired the naturalised tulips beneath the cherries near Kew’s Davies Exploration House before walking down to the natural area of the Gardens to see, smell and photograph the bluebells. For the first time I tried a winter/spring windowbox combination of Bellis perennis and daffodils, the latter being rather longer stemmed than I’d anticipated. I’ve gone for a similar theme this year, with Narcissus ‘Golden Bells’ which I hope will be daintier. I noticed today that they are already nosing through and the first of the daisy flowers has emerged. Barely a week after the trip north I headed to East Sussex to see the tulips at Sarah Raven’s Perch Hill where the delicate shades of the glass bud vases in the shop caught my eye as did a pink themed tulip container featuring Merlot and Flaming Flag. The next day at NT Osterley we all donned protective headgear and fed the heavy duty shredder with rhododendron prunings, the resulting material which we later used to replenish the surface of the path through the winter garden. I completed the month with a garden rich stay in Cornwall’s Roseland peninsula, amply documented in the pages of this blog. On returning home on the last day of the month, the garden rewarded me with wisteria, sweet rocket about to bloom (Hesperis matronalis) and pots of tulips.
May
Having spent much of April either away or out for the day on garden visits, I caught up with client work including mowing in this Richmond garden. The bluebells in Kew were a joy as ever. I always look out for the deep rosy flowers of this special chestnut in Mrs Child’s garden at NT Osterley where the pots beside the entrance to the walled garden overflowed with a red white and blue combination: I forgot to ask whether it was to mark the Coronation on 6 May. Before standing to marshal for Richmond Ranelagh running club’s half marathon, I sneaked a peek at the nearby garden dedicated to Alexander Pope located beside the river in Twickenham. The pale yellow of Mrs Banks’ rose were a gentle backdrop for alliums and forget-me-nots and a cheeky squirrel posed on one of the elegant benches inscribed with quotations from Pope. At home, Seamus relaxed on the damp soil and I photographed the Ballerina tulips. April showers threatened my client’s fundraising plant sale for the Red Cross but we succeeded in selling most of the stock, all raised from seed or cuttings by Gill plus a few plants from cuttings or divisions from my garden. The car boot was brimful after a plant buying morning at North Hill Nurseries, stocking up for clients. Stood in crates through its central path, the new stock made my garden look especially full and verdant. It was great to be back volunteering in Pensford Field on a Saturday morning weeding around the base of the fruit trees and anticipating the flowering of the wildflower meadow as well as enjoying a talk by the beekeepers who passed around a comb and wax cells from the hives. At NT Hinton Ampner in Hampshire I noticed a china rose in flower very like my own Bengal Crimson, a precious purchase from Great Dixter a few years ago. In the Rock Garden at RBG, Kew a Ceanothus cascades over an arch. Eliza Doolittle clothed in moss greets visitors en route to the Chelsea Flower Show. Back at NT Osterley, head gardener Andy Eddy chats with fellow volunteers beside the abut to be planted vegetable bed in the walled garden, irises framing the walkway at the end of the cutting garden. By 26 May my garden is burgeoning, watched over by one of my precious metal hens. I returned to the gardens on Kew Green open for the NGS (white alliums) and Ramster Garden near Godalming (candelabra primroses) before ending the month with a session at a client’s garden where the Geum, Lychnis and Nandina I planted the previous November were holding their own alongside a beautiful pink rose.
June
I visited three historic gardens in June: Luton Hoo Walled Garden, Long Barn and Upton Grey, the last of which is to be the subject of a blog post early in 2024. For the last 20 years the owners of this property in north Hampshire have devoted their time to restoring the garden using Gertrude Jekyll’s original planting plans. The sight of the red-roofed house rising up behind a generously planted herbaceous border reminded me of one of the classic views of Great Dixter. At Pensford Field the wildflower meadow was at full throttle, the oxeye daisies dominating for a few weeks. In the garden at home, the roses revelled in the warm sunshine as did Seamus and the sweetpeas were a temporary triumph until powdery mildew set in a few weeks later. Every year, on the Tuesday closest to midsummer evening, my group at the running club undertakes the Richmond Park ponds run, with the aim of finding as many of the park’s 21 (I think) ponds as possible. It was a warm’ limpid evening and we found more than half the ponds before dusk defeated us. In a client’s garden my planting from the year before in a shady corner had filled out and improved the appearance of a problem area. The Garden House planting at NT Osterley this summer was vibrant and fragrant, featuring lilies and pelargoniums. I was impressed with the bold modern planting in a garden opened for the NGS in East Sheen, grasses softening the structure given by evergreen balls along the border’s edge where it met the lawn.
Reading matter this month: A Country Life publication from 1966, Miss Jekyll, Portrait of a Great Gardener by Betty Massingham, photographed here alongside a bloom from my Gertrude Jekyll climbing rose planted in 2022.
Kew Gardens, 30 December 2023
Next time: July to December 2023