Gardener and Photographer with a love of Roses and a magpie-eye for all things Horticultural
A chance remark and the right alignment of dates and here we are, wandering through these remarkable gardens created in the midst of a wooded valley, bisected by a tributary of the River Lune, a showcase for the imagination and talent of garden designer Arabella Lennox Boyd. Up North, in the village of Caton outside…
David Austin roses would seem to have the most extensive, comprehensive and probably expensive rose breeding program of any rose nursery in the world (I may be biased but it likely to be true!). After making between fifty thousand and sixty thousand crosses each year - one rose with another and more complicated crosses from…
Continue reading ➞ Time Travel: The Trial Beds at David Austin Roses – A glimpse of the future…
The Long Garden, Lion Garden, Victorian Garden and The Renaissance Gardens at David Austin's home ground at Albrighton in Shropshire. The site is home to these magnificent 2-acre gardens, the extensive plant centre, shop and restaurant as well as the business-end of things, the breeding glasshouses and trial beds, the production nursery for all of…
I arrived at Petersham Nurseries 45 minutes earlier than necessary with a view to taking a few pictures - and I am a speedy photographer - so here is a little gallery of plants that are both conveniently for sale or at home in the Cutting Garden (a practical resource for so much of the…
Take a 6m by 6m space, add a rustic chestnut pergola, a wildflower meadow, fragrant roses, annuals, perennials and grasses, herbs, climbers ramblers and vines, tree ferns and a little bedding in there too - the whole contents of a cutting garden with plants for sun and shade but everything speaking of June; an Indian…
Continue reading ➞ Petersham Nurseries at the recent Grow London Garden Fair – a little video
This long pergola with brick pillars and timber beams is clothed with some beautifully trained rambling and climbing roses. Beautiful monsters like Rosa filipes Kiftsgate ought to swamp the entire structure and much else besides but with the love and careful treatment these specimens are given, a multitude of flowers hug the cross beams and…
A full planting of annuals, biennials, meadow grasses and wild flowers, bulbs, perennials, roses, climbers and ramblers, herbs and traditional bedding plants - a delicious tumble of colours and fragrances. Petersham Nurseries in miniature, with Indian carts and terracotta, rustic chestnut pergola, hoggin floor, kokedama and edible flowers. A magical garden created for the Grow…
Thomas Broom, Rosie Bines and Amanda Brame of Petersham Nurseries, who have created this wild Eden, a distillation of Petersham Nurseries for the Grow London Garden Fair on Hampstead Heath, open on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. .... as the marquee empties and lights are switched off, the garden waits for the first visitors tomorrow. I'm…
A pilgrimage to these gardens, for which, so far as the roses are concerned, we have Graham Stuart Thomas to thank principally and for the last 40+ years, the National Trust for preserving and enhancing his original collection of Old Roses. Mottisfont holds the National Collection of Shrub Roses. I met Jonny Bass, the head…
Continue reading ➞ A return to Mottisfont Abbey; an Old Rose Pilgrimage
The Teddington Gardener 