Category: Gardening

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English Or Spanish Bluebells

Bluebells at Sunnyhurst Wood

I’m very fond of bluebells. I’ve been teased for smiling away tears when, spotting two or three in flower in the USA, my mind turned to the hundreds of thousands I was missing back at home.

My first memory of bluebells was seeing a mass of flowers covering a hillside in Sunnyhurst Wood, in my home county, Lancashire. My Dad – the kind of person who’d bring home owl pellets to show his kids what the bird had been eating – would have known they were in flower and had taken us out exploring.  Continue reading “English Or Spanish Bluebells”

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Creative Combination Planting At Chihuly’s Garden And Glass, Seattle

Chihuly Garden And Glass In Seattle

We travelled to Seattle last May to see this unusual garden at its peak, when the perennials were in bloom. The underplanting feels as if an artist has laid out the plants by magic, with the sweep of a brush.

Combination planting

Underplanting is the idea of planting a garden in layers, with shrubs growing beneath trees, and shorter perennials and bulbs underneath them. The designer  thinks about the height and spread of each plant, their colours and textures, then combines them in the most pleasing way. I’ve seen many attempts but rarely seen the effect better realised.  Continue reading “Creative Combination Planting At Chihuly’s Garden And Glass, Seattle”

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The Healing Urban Garden

Healing Urban Garden, Hampton Court

I’ve been meaning to share this picture of the HUG (the Healing Urban Garden) designed by Rae Wilkinson for the Hampton Court Flower Show. The garden looks much more open viewed from the front, but from this angle, it’s easier to see the style of the planting, which is densely packed and surprisingly linear. That’s the part of the garden that fascinates me.

It’s an interesting, textural effect, reminding me of the rows commonly used in crop gardens, such as cutting gardens or kitchen gardens. I wonder if for some people, the sense of order and rhythm underpinning the design makes it more relaxing? If asked beforehand, I’d have said I preferred plants to mingle together naturally, but something in my pattern-loving nature responds to the technique, especially as it’s not rigidly applied.

The plants included lots of aromatic perennials and healing herbs, such as lavender, artemisia, thyme, stachys, rosemary, salvia, allium, eryngium and nepeta. The calming, subtle colour palette of silver, blue and green was lifted by purple, the bronzy foliage of head-high, multi-stemmed trees and lavender, the latter carried through to the walls and accessories.  Continue reading “The Healing Urban Garden”