Southern gardens

Start of a week’s garden adventure to Devon, Dorset and Cornwall. Down first to Knoll Gardens to buy some more stipa plants. And fall for these lovely Salvia Caradona plants. Too exquisite be believed. Hope I can take plenty of cuttings from them. If I want a good drift it will take a few years to bulk up the area I have in mind. For now they will have to lurk in the sage and thyme bed until a garden can be found for them.

Rain was alas a feature of the entire week’s trek as well. So this is going to be reduced to a photo essay. Or a confession of a kitchen garden addict as I seem to be. The Lost Gardens of Heligan had me snapping endlessly at espaliered this and glasshouse grown that. And the rows of endless veg all perfectly weeded and immaculately planted had me drooling and dreaming of an under gardener at least. (Heligan uses an army of volunteers. And if I had lived anywhere in the district I would have gladly given a day of my life a week to work there as well. Those wealthy Victorian landowners understood the excess of veg like no other social class.)

I loved how they even managed to organise the beehives to suit the strictures of form and content. Nothing was left to chance. Dare we take up beekeeping in our old age?

And I could murder these rhubarb pots. Who cares that I don’t even fancy rhubarb. The design is in everything.

Colaton Fishacre was a National Trust property on the coast. Also a lovely garden. And put our slopes to shame. I can’t find many pictures to show as it was raining rather well. But the libertia grew abundantly and I wonder if it is hardy. Their planting was positively precipitous. But not half as much as the gardens at the Eden Project.

What a clever group of marketers they have at Eden. If they had merely called it the Eden Gardens they wouldn’t have half the number of screaming and excited children as they do. It is a tourism mega destination. And that means crowds. But so glad we went. The biodomes were more educational than pleasurable (almost as crowded as the show gardens at Chelsea) but it was the outdoor gardens around the domes that held our interest most.

I wouldn’t have missed it. But probably won’t go again. Not so the gardens at Wisley in Hampshire; which draws me back every few months or so. And that’s not just because they have a plant shop that makes you yearn to fill a pantechnicon of plants and drive them straight down to Marsanoux. It is being given the chance to see their big borders and large ornamental grass displays at every time of the year that has me captivated. And things look lush and lovely right now. But I can see how ornamental grasses need something like nepetas or salvias to mix up the green. Piet Oudolf’s borders are stunning. But do much better in August and September than June.

Armed with just a few things from Wisley, it was time to head out to our garden and see just what two solid weeks of rain could do.