School excursion

Now I don’t often write up notes about gardens visited or even work done away from the Ardeche garden. But this seems like a good place to take notes of designs and colour schemes that are striking and of note.

First garden visit with Andrew this week was out to Beth Chatto’s in Essex. We principally went out to have a good snook around her gravel and scree gardens. But we managed a good hike around the rest of her property as well.

First combination that I thought worth trying to emulate was to match the alliums with the nepeta. I have had a tentative go at this in the little flower bed near the lawn. But the nepeta isn’t quite out yet, and the alliums weren’t happy in this slightly damper environment.

So I shall give it a go in the shade garden instead. They would go well with all the flowering thyme we have right now. These are images from her scree garden near the house. Flowering thyme is something one takes for granted. But it does so well here against the pebbles.

And this little bed was particularly winning. Hidden in here were some divine pulsatillas which have such great seed heads. We missed the flowering season (and I suspect being this early a flower it will be yellow) but if those seed heads stay on for ages, it will be well worth investing in them.

I wouldn’t have lingered as long over these plants had I been on my own. But the courtyard on our property is crying out for some careful planting.

These irises in the gravel garden have given me a good idea where to plant the two irises I bought from the plant fair at the festival of small nurseries at the Garden History Museum. I don’t want them so hidden in a planting scheme that they go un-noticed. And their foliage is so pert and strong that it would be a shame to lose them after the flowers are over.

Out in the main garden the first big clump of flowers you see are my new favourites. Now don’t go comparing my mighty clump of three plants with this swathe. But I can’t wait for mine to bulk out and emulate the magnificence of this display. Am I gushing? Too much tea. I shall try to be more restrained.

The other star plants of the visit proved to be the euphorbias. No surpsrise there as this is the season for admiring them. All that acid green. The ones in the gravel garden are the plants I have been trying to track down at three nurseries now: euphorbia polychroma major. And it’s not fair that I can’t find them. Apparently they self-seed like mad and everyone has scads of the stuff around every single garden we have visited this week. I shall search on. It provides such a refreshing contrast even in this page of mauve.

The euphorbias even look good with the ferns in the woodland garden. And it’s definitely an idea worth persuing. Shuttlecock ferns? Not sure, but I like the upright clumps here in this picture.

We managed to get around the garden without so much as a drop, but as soon as it came to assuaging plant lust in the nursery it bucketed down. We were not to be deterred mind you. I managed to find my elusive hedge of calamagrostis Karl Foersters for the new path; a few pulsatillas and two very expensive pots of kniphofias. Why so pricey? Because they have green flowers. Bliss. I have always loved seeing red hot pokers in gardens, but found the colours way too loud. Green ones will do nicely among the grasses on the bank above the pool. But at the rate I am going, they will have to be nursed and divided and carefully built up over the seasons.