Celebrating gardens, photography and a creative life
Water laps almost up to an expanse of high quality oak decking, but we hardly see it because our eyes travel between the flowers and the seating area. The plants in the foreground include a mix of lilac scabious and agastache, red achillea and the glaucous leaves of cerinthe major (honeywort). Continue reading “Raised By Rivers Garden Designed By Nicola Oakey”
Last year I shared pictures of the courtyard garden at Cothay Manor. This post is take two, about the rest of the garden. I’m skimping on the words this time around, and concentrating on the pictures. Continue reading “Cothay Manor Garden”
Today, I’m offering you a picture to dream over: Clematis ‘Perle d’Azur, Rosa ‘Rêve d’Or’ (the pale apricot climber) and Stachys byzantina with a pink moss rose and papaver at RHS Rosemoor.
Clematis and roses have been planted together in cottage gardens for centuries.
The art of combination planting is to mix plants that will extend the flowering season (just how many buds are there on the moss rose?); be harmonious in colour and contrasting in height and texture (the soft lamb’s ear, the prickly roses) and in flower shape. The lamb’s ear brings its spires; the poppy, cups; the roses are rosettes, and the clematis are single, open flowers. The clematis provides height and a mass of purple-blue, which goes so well with the pastel pinks and apricots. There’s a climbing rose too. For good measure, the roses throw scent into the mix. Continue reading “Classic Combination Planting: Clematis With Roses”
Gertude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens created a kitchen garden with herbs, vegetables and flowers for cutting on The Holy Island of Lindisfarne. We found these sweet peas overlooking the garden from a string trellis, one summer evening.
For more about Lindisfarne’s garden, visit the National Trust website.
The display gardens at Bressingham inspire gardeners by showing how some of the company’s most popular plants can be grown in a rhythmic style of planting. Here, foliage plants, grasses, crocosmia, aster and eupatorium make lovely companions for pink echinaceas.
If I was using a macro lens rather than an iPhone, I’d be able to isolate the spidery flowers of cleome against a nicely diffused, neutral background. As it is, I’ve learned to appreciate the impressionistic quality the iPhone can give. It’s nice that our eyes can drift along the flower border and make out some of the annuals: pink and red cosmos and blue cornflowers (Centaura cyanus). And I’m often impressed how well the iPhone captures colours, especially the blues, which my old camera struggled with. Continue reading “Impressions: Cutting Garden At Arley Hall And Gardens”
Susan Rushton 