Gardener and Photographer with a love of Roses and a magpie-eye for all things Horticultural
We've been here before, the double borders created by Piet Oudolf at Wisley, combining perennials with grasses, wave after wave - and the equally dramatic planting around the lake, concentric arcs of repeated blocks, catching the low autumn sun. The Piet Oudolf Borders pre-date the Glasshouse and are relatively mature now, evolving along their considerable…
Continue reading ➞ Piet Oudolf & Tom Stuart-Smith at Wisley
Echinacea Hot Papaya These magnificent blooms are the first ever orange-red double coneflowers - the colour stays true and doesn't fade. The fragrant flowers are borne on strong stems are excellent for cutting. Attracts butterflies in a wide variety of garden settings. Full sun, moist but very well-drained soils. Flowering June-September/October. Height and spread 80cm…
Continue reading ➞ No shrinking violet.. Echinacea Hot Papaya
Piet Oudolf Borders at RHS Wisley Much that one can say about prairie style planting and especially the combination of grasses with late season perennials, is that the show doesn't stop when the blooms die and the rot sets in - add low, slanting sun, a stiff breeze for animation and later, frost and snow…
Continue reading ➞ Live and let die…
Napping quietly on Stokesia Klaus Jellito. Sch.....
I can just about get to the front door, after three hours of potting and pottering, pretty much everything has a new winter home... A maintenance day today - bright blue skies, chill, the wicked wind has died down and I've lots of plants to pot up into more suitable containers before the weather really…
A very pretty evergreen perennial, with strap-like leaves and these starry sprays of pale pink flowers. Schizostylis deserves to be much better known for its ability to bloom in autumn and puts on a good show despite worsening weather. The plants resemble small clumps of fragile gladioli with long thin foliage and upright flower-spikes, each…
Continue reading ➞ Sch….. Schizostylis coccinea Jennifer
Anemone Wild Swan In flower from May to November, growing knee-high, and with refined foliage (more Anemone sylvestris than Anemone x hybrida), the standout feature of this relatively new introduction is the reverse of the otherwise pure white bloom - a three painted flashes of liac-purple. With flowers held above the foliage on wiry stems,…
Continue reading ➞ A swan? Me a swan? Ah, go on!
Tricyrtis macropoda (of the lily family) The Toad Lilies, so-called because of their spotted flowers, are sound perennials, preferring a soil that does not dry out, and containing a good stint of humus. They do well in the north, but the cooler the district the more sun should be available to them, to hasten their…
Sissinghurst, now owned by the National Trust, the former home and exceptional gardens of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson From 'The Gardens of England and Ireland' by Patrick Taylor The garden at Sissinghurst, famous as it is, has become for many people more an idea, a myth, than reality. Yet to visit the garden (especially when it…
Continue reading ➞ Late summer at Sissinghurst
The Teddington Gardener 