Winter Border Workshop at Petersham Nurseries

I have a workshop this week where we will delve into turning our gardens, in the chill months ahead, into winter borders filled with interesting plants, colours and textures. Anchor plants with attractive foliage, the tracery and silhouettes of seedheads and dried stems and flower heads, and ornamental fruit, evergreen shrubs with scented flowers for…

Kew Gardens – a taste of Autumn in late October

A beautiful cycle ride along the towpath from Teddington Lock, past Petersham Meadows, Richmond and on towards Kew, with Syon House on the opposite bank. 12km enjoying the start of autumn. Clocks back this weekend, and the coldest October day in 10 years, so hats, gloves and scarves were the order of the day. Isleworth,…

A very colourful April, this year, at Petersham Nurseries – springtime bulbs pretty much everywhere …

A few images from April 2018 featuring the Cutting Garden and Petersham House Gardens and more specifically the bulbs planted in great parallel swathes in the working Cutting Garden and then more expansively throughout the gardens of the House itself. A memory-jogger for me, given my workshop on Spring Bulbs together but boy, has it…

April at Great Dixter, reprise, for a spring-flowering extravaganza and a lot of inspiration

These images were taken on a visit on the 20th April this year to the gardens at Great Dixter in East Sussex. I had been to the charming and gently planted King John's Nursery beforehand, and there is some memorable naturalizing of spring bulbs and primroses in the old orchard that is quite superlative. But…

A late-September taste of the gardens at RHS Wisley

A mid-week, late morning, late September tour of the RHS Gardens at Wisley. Blue skies peppered liberally with white clouds (today was a brighter, warmer clearer-skies day than yesterday, but probably overbright for my photographic skills so here we are ...) It is still quite definitely late summer, rather than full-on Autumn. Very few of…

Purple

May I refer you to Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple Sometimes more blue, or lilac, lavender, rose, red, but a not pure blue, or pink depending on which is closest, a varied palette - cool, rich, and elegant tones.  Thug, the Petersham Cat, rounding up proceedings. I rest my case ...

Pink

  Pink, by far the biggest gallery with more photos to choose from than with the others, orange, yellow, blue and white. All images taken in 2015, though concentrating on the summer and through until September. I had to stop somewhere. Hellebores early on, and a little Cherry blossom, though i could have majored on…

Blue

OK, so there is a touch of rose-making-the-blue-purple going on here too though I have weeded out the more obvious not-blues, but the theme, from palest to the boldest, with some blue-grey foliage too, is a cool blue palette. Fruit, leaf and flower all contribute and I refer you once again to Gertrude Jekyll. In…

Yellow

  From the palest blush, soft cool primrose, sulphurous, acid, gaudy, bright, golden, and adorning the garden right the way through the year - this is a richly diverse palette and can be used to many an effect. I've been reading Gertrude Jekyll's book on colour schemes in the flower garden and she is extraordinarily…