Gardener and Photographer with a love of Roses and a magpie-eye for all things Horticultural
Newby Hall & Gardens, Ripon A week exploring North Yorkshire and much to see was there! Newby Hall & Gardens, near Ripon, was near the top of the list of attractions and a real plant hunters delight with much that is rare and unusual. The National Collection of Cornus kousa, a whole garden of salvias…
Continue reading ➞ A Yorkshire Tale
No garden is complete in autumn without a Michelmas daisy and Aster tongolensis 'Berggarten' is an immensely pretty one. A creeping, mat forming perennial it is quite different from the taller, more familiar species and starts flowering right at the start of summer. Its fine- petalled, lavender-blue daisy rays are dotted with soft orange centres…
Continue reading ➞ The nights are drawing in…
Veronica Royal Candles (Back), Salvia Caradonna (Centre), Veronica Inspires Pink (front row) An effective antidote to blobby planting in the garden (unbroken domes, crowns & mounds), these plants will add an intensity of colour, particularly with Salvias such as Caradonna, Mainacht, Ostfriedland, and that much-needed vertical accent to your border schemes. Add low evening sunlight...
A fresh, rain-soaked hardy lily. In Orange. Nothing more needed here..
Red Hot Poker Primrose/Orchid Primrose/Vial's Primrose Primrose vialii AGM Red-tipped pyramids of pink cover the woodland floor when Primula vialii is in flower. This award-winning plant is excellent for late spring and early summer colour. plant in groups in fertile, moisture-retentive, sheltered sites cool and humid conditions in the open or part shade It emerges late in…
Continue reading ➞ Woodland Drama
A bouquet of roses, ancient and modern, to feed the soul and the senses.
Poppies in July Sylvia Plath Little poppies, little hell flames, Do you do no harm? You flicker. I cannot touch you. I put my hands among the flames. Nothing Burns. And it exhausts me to watch you Flickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth. A mouth…
Continue reading ➞ Little Hell Flames…
Astrantia 'Roma' Astrantia 'Roma', a delightful and very useful herbaceous perennial, was exerting some kind of magic on the bees while I was working (my Roehampton project), this afternoon. Nearby drifts of Geraneum and Nepeta were a-buzz, with much busy-ness from one flower to another and another - By contrast, Hattie's Pincushion must be insatiably delicious…
Continue reading ➞ Sleepy Bees
Digitalis 'Foxtrot' I am utterly taken by the beauty of this muted, charming, fluted foxglove; something the plant breeders have got right methinks (something new and different but still a beautiful garden plant). Your marks? I'll give it a '10', darling.
The Teddington Gardener 