Category: Gardening

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Hebden Bridge’s Tiny Gardens: Pocket Planting as Folkart

Penstemon in a container garden

I hope you’ll find it in your heart to forgive me if I start with a digression.

While I welcome the Royal Horticulture Society spreading its presence in the North of England, I wonder if I am alone in seeing signs of failure to understand and fully celebrate life in the north, especially when I visit the young, still-developing RHS Bridgewater.

Perhaps the RHS’s powers-that-be are too far away or too used to a life of plenty to appreciate the creativity and fun in us – our type of fullness. An old Punch cartoon showing a BBC documentary film crew on location in the north comes to mind (even with the watermark you’ll get the gist).

Terraced house garden with art and bunting

Continue reading “Hebden Bridge’s Tiny Gardens: Pocket Planting as Folkart”

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On Display: Four Trends From The RHS Tatton Park Flower Show

The Balanced Garden, Tatton Park Flower Show
Soft, romantic planting in The Balanced Garden

Usually, my posts about flower shows focus on the plants, gardens and planting combinations I enjoyed best, or trends I picked out. Today, I’m taking a step back and illustrating the official trends from this year’s Tatton Park Flower Show.

To be honest, I’d not have guessed all four trends that the Royal Horticulture Society highlighted, but I didn’t have to as the RHS helpfully listed them online.

Trend one: Soft planting

Billowing clouds of grasses and soft pink colour palettes gave the show a romantic feel with plants spilling onto paths and tumbling over the edges of containers.

Continue reading “On Display: Four Trends From The RHS Tatton Park Flower Show”

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Alcalthaea: Crossing Hollyhocks with Other Mallows

x Alcalthaea suffrutescens hybrids with verbena bonariensis

x Alcalthaea suffrutescens, as the name kind of suggests, is a result of crossing Althaea, herbaceous perennials that include Althaea officinalis (the marsh mallow), with Alcea species (hollyhocks).

Now we’ve got that out of the way, we can relax and enjoy the floral fantasy they were creating outside one of the tea rooms at RHS Garden Bridgewater a few weeks ago. Continue reading “Alcalthaea: Crossing Hollyhocks with Other Mallows”

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Cottage Garden Plant Combinations From The Hampton Court Palace Show

Echinacea and Salvia
Echinacea and Salvia

At the Royal Horticulture Society’s Hampton Court Flower Show earlier this year, I had chance to indulge in one of my favourite pastimes – looking out for flowering plants that are companionable minglers. 

Catanache caerulea and Lychnis coronaria
Catanache caerulea and Lychnis coronaria

Floral threads included various colours and forms of Achillea, Campanula, Catanache, Digitalis (foxglove), Echinacea, Geranium, Knautia, Lychnis, Nepeta, Salvia, Scabious, Stachys and Verbena. Continue reading “Cottage Garden Plant Combinations From The Hampton Court Palace Show”

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Osa pulchra: a rare tropical plant that needs a midwife

Osa pulchra flowering at Kew

Last month I was lucky to see a rare tropical shrub/small tree, Osa pulchra, in full bloom. Huge, trumpet-shaped flowers hung just overhead, still and improbable, translucent against light pouring through the magnificent high roof of one of Kew Garden’s conservatories.

At the time I didn’t understand what I was looking at, but I knew it was special. To an observer I must have appeared like a human version of the His Master’s Voice dog. Continue reading “Osa pulchra: a rare tropical plant that needs a midwife”