Gardener and Photographer with a love of Roses and a magpie-eye for all things Horticultural
Bougainvillea in rich orange and the more usual purple but not in Madeira - these colourful climbers are much, much closer to home - I've saved the air fare and didn't have to book a Boutique Hotel this time - but I still get to enjoy a taste of the fantastic flora I saw bedecking…
Continue reading ➞ Madeira? Not this time…
Cobaea scandens - the cup and saucer vine - is more commonly found with creamy-green-to-rich purple-fading-to-pale-lavender flowers though also in a ghostly white. Tender here in the UK, it is grown as an annual though these examples, in the Cutting Garden at Petersham Nurseries, survived through the mild and wet winter and continued to grow…
Continue reading ➞ Cobaea scandens – the cup and saucer vine with an eye on world domination
I'm thinking about climbing plants - for use in a myriad ways in the garden and it is a huge topic. Plants for sun and shade, large and small, with the promise of scent and flower in every month of the year. I think I ought to restrict myself to those gems which are in…
Continue reading ➞ Climbers for every occasion (Part 1: Spring and early Summer)
Nearly time for the annual Wisteria Blossom Show - some, like this example, are almost there - others are just showing plump, silky buds on a bare fretwork of stems, but a few more days of warmth and sunshine and it will be Showtime! A divine few weeks of peppery-scented intense blues, ghostly blues and…
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/
Ipomoea Heavenly Blue (Morning Glory) Just beginning to get going, now the days are getting shorter, this twining climber with large sky blue trumpet flowers is already up to the top of a 2m obelisk with inquisitive green wands waving round in the breeze (all tucked up now). A beautiful late season climber that still…
Continue reading ➞ Heavenly Blue
Passiflora caerulea White Lightning After the rain, thunder and accompanying light show earlier this evening, this seemed appropriate - in name at least. An unusual flower and very likely all the component parts play some role in the life-cycle of this vigorous climber. This pale cultivar (Constance Elliott is another) is on the wrong side…
Continue reading ➞ White Lightning
The wisteria blossom is almost over, a brief but intense affair, but before it goes altogether, a look at one last display at the RHS gardens at Wisley, taken a week or so ago. On a sturdy pillar, twin pillars in fact, a glamorous, deeply fragrant display that you can get right up close to…
Continue reading ➞ Brief Encounter
Clematis Mrs Cholmondeley, in my garden today 'This blowsy old girl makes a splendid show.' 'A (blue) large-flowered clematis that simply can't stop flowering. From tip to tip the early flowers are very large, but because of the narrow sepals and large gaps between them towards the base, one's impression is not so much of…
Continue reading ➞ This blowsy old girl makes a splendid show
The Teddington Gardener 