Gardener and Photographer with a love of Roses and a magpie-eye for all things Horticultural
Look up! These are, for the most part, big trees in the landscape, tall, towering forms with blossoms in crystalline white, glacial and very probably played by Tilda Swinton in the movie - but there are elsewhere, blushes of pink too, still cool but not so icy and with one, a definite warm, deep-rose. All…
Continue reading ➞ Magnolias – a New Ice Age at The Savill Garden
For no reason, this little entry, save for the whimsy of a pretty picture. A table laid for a Piedmont-inspired lunch at Petersham Nurseries. Meanwhile in the Tea House, hyacinths scent the air and all manner of climbers clamber about (Jasmine, Trachelospermum jasminoides, Passiflora), vying with the Dicksonia Tree Ferns for your attention. Tall urns…
Continue reading ➞ Time for lunch… or a spot of tea?
A pageant of colour - rhododendrons and camellias, hellebores and pulmonarias, cherry blossom, crocus, narcissus, daphne and more - but which group of plants is missing from this gallery. It's a biggie?! Links http://www.theroyallandscape.co.uk/gardens-and-landscape/the-savill-garden http://www.theroyallandscape.co.uk/seasonal-highlights/the-savill-garden/march-and-april/ http://www.theroyallandscape.co.uk/visitor-information/the-savill-building/
Rosa mulliganii, the rose used at the centre of the White Garden at Sissinghurst, threading its way over a filigree pergola. Vigorous, yet delicate and beautiful, a tracery of stems creating windows through into the garden. And (above) here it is in Kew Gardens. A Monster of a Plant.... A huge abundance of bright rose…
Continue reading ➞ Rosa mulliganii – roses and the Sissinghurst Technique
No, I haven't taken to canoeing home but I was cycling along the towpath towards Teddington this evening - and stopped to take these photographs, upriver and into the setting sun. Lovely.
Dark and brooding things here - Heuchera Binoche (bottom right, near matt purple-black leaves, blackcurrant liquorish), Ceanothus Blue Sapphire (top, eventually forming a mound just 2' tall, with bright blue flowers) and my favourite, Primula Kennedy Innisfree - fabulous dark, velvety red flowers displayed against bronze-purple foliage... I've used Heuchera Binoche in large container display…
Continue reading ➞ Dark and brooding foliage, deep velvety flowers
How to grow: Lily of the valley To Carol Klein, this plant is the very essence of May. Carol Klein The Telegraph 12:01AM BST 01 May 2004 Today, May Day, people all over France will be following Gallic tradition and giving deliciously fragrant posies of muguets des bois as love tokens. The scent of muguet,…
Continue reading ➞ The worst of all delicious weeds – Convallaria majalis
Simple, scented displays here, grouped on tables and terraces in a garden in Kew:- Narcissus Tête à Tête, white Hyacinths (either Aiolos or Carnegie, I forget which - most probably Carnegie, here), taller early-flowering daffodils, primrose-coloured and scented Wall flowers (Sugar Rush - a variety in bloom from Autumn through to Spring) and primroses in pale…
Continue reading ➞ Simple ideas for scented spring containers
The Teddington Gardener 