Bedazzled by bedding

Right, time to put on your sunglasses, folks.

Yesterday was one of the highlights of my year: the entirely unmissable Thompson & Morgan sneak preview press day for all us hacks to see what they're planning to bring in to the catalogue for 2011.

T&M have a huge breeding programme: sometimes misguided (step forward, the frankly mutant mophead hydrangea produced this year with one single flower head 10" across on an upright stem) but mostly pushing the limits in an occasionally groundbreaking and always interesting way, especially among fruit and veg which is why I trekked all the way up to Ipswich to go have a look. Four hours it took me to get back. Four hours. They closed two junctions of the M25 in case you're interested. Now that's dedication.

Anyway: the veg come later but for now I just want to indulge a little. T&M also have a well-deserved reputation for the most spectacular bedding: not usually my cup of tea at all but when you're there surrounded by the most eye-spinning profusion of flowers you can't help but be won over. Well, all right, I can leave the magenta petunias (and the ones striped yellow and pink.... bedding truly is the last refuge of spectacularly unashamed bad taste).

But many were really genuinely pretty plants, and quite a few will be finding their way into my patio pots next year.

Petunia 'Phantom': now this is a well wierd one. Kind of intriguing in its own rather spooky way.

Actually I think I preferred the flowers when they're just emerging, a sultry near-black.

Zinnia haageana 'Chippendale' paired with Rudbeckia 'Cappuccino'.

...and the equally sunshiny Calendula 'Neon'

Another Rudbeckia, this time 'Cherry Brandy'. Described as the first red rudbeckia ever bred but I'm sceptical: looks more bronze to me. Still lovely though.

Isn't this pretty? And it's a Zinnia: 'Zahara Starlight Rose', to be precise. Zinnias have always been temperamental for me but I might have another go if they're going to look this good.

A little soothing pastel to cool things down a bit: Salvia farinacea 'Fairy Queen'

This dwarf sunflower, called 'Chocosun' for reasons that entirely elude me, grows just three feet tall but looks lovely planted en masse.

Verbena 'Peaches and Cream'

...naaah. That was all getting much too tasteful. Here's Salvia horminium 'Marble Arch Mixed': now you couldn't miss that, could you?

Miz-maz-maze

House-hunting at the weekend: there has been progress. But I'm not going to tell you about it as I'm highly superstitious and since it's all built on very shifting sands anyway there's no guarantee that the tottering edifice (the buying-and-selling malarkey, not the house) will stay upright for the required length of time. Here's a moral: never buy, or sell, a house in a credit crunch.

The house-hunting involved staying at my mum's in Wiltshire (that's a clue, by the way). And that meant a visit to my very favourite stately home, Wilton House. I discovered that since my last visit the children of the previous Earl of Pembroke, including the 18th Earl of Pembroke and current resident at Wilton, who is also for reasons which are unclear the 15th Earl of Montgomery, have created a miz-maze in honour of their father, who died in 2003.

We went on a little hunt for the maze, which is buried deep in woodland behind the garden, and eventually discovered it nestled in a clearing. The girls spent most of the time scampering around the granite set paths, but we just absorbed the atmosphere: there is something about a miz-maze which is entirely other-worldly and quite apart from the usual amusement-park variety with hedges and lost children and what not.

Nobody actually knows what miz-mazes were for: they've been around since Roman times, and the Tudors were quite keen on them too. They're labyrinths: that means the paths don't have 'stems' but just curl around each other until you get to the centre. This reduces the chance of getting lost but increases the general sense of mystic meaning that pervades such designs.

There are links with witches, who would gather at the sites of miz-mazes; and they're also highly symbolic to Christians who see them as a journey to the central higher truth. Monks are rumoured to have crawled on their hands and knees to the centre of them as a penance. I don't know about all that: but I do know that this one, modern as it was, speaks of primitive meaning and deeper significances than a simple turf path in a wood.

There are a handful of surviving ancient miz-mazes in the country: one near Fordingbridge, in Hampshire, and another on a hill fort somewhere near Winchester. Apparently in the really old ones - made entirely of turf with no hard-landscaped paths - the passage of feet wore the pattern of the labyrinth more deeply and indelibly in to the ground.

But they're enjoying something of a comeback: the miz-maze at Mount Ephraim is probably the best-known example, but is rather un-authentically modern (if gorgeously pretty) in that it uses perennials to divide off the paths and some of the paths have dead ends - which I understand is Not Done in labyrinthine circles.

I rather like the idea of cutting a turf maze into a lawn: probably the easiest way to create a miz-maze. To reproduce the full symbolism you should have nine circles and the path should flow without hindrance back and forth right to the centre. And placing it in a clearing in woodland seems to help, too. As a memorial - as it's been used here - it was deeply meaningful, largely through its simplicity. I've always wanted to be buried under an oak tree when my time is up: I think I may add a miz-maze for good measure, too.

Hampton Court 2010: The Floral Marquee

The show is over: but on my way out I had a little photo-frenzy snapping all the plants I've admired during the week on my many visits to the Floral Marquee - this year bigger, better and more conveniently-located than ever before. Enjoy.

Postcard from Hampton Court: Sunday

The Pansy Project: Best Conceptual Garden

Sometimes the simplest ideas are by far the best.

Postcard from Hampton Court: Saturday

The small garden I'd most like to take home with me: Urban Serenity, by David Neale (Gold).

I surprised myself with how much I liked this one, actually: it was a bit 'boy' for my usual taste what with all those crisp lines and bachelor decking, but it was the planting that won me over. I particularly liked these 'floating' planters in the middle of the water feature, filled with nothing but foliage: but what foliage. Podophyllums, an epimedium and an iris or two: not much colour but some truly subtle contrasts of foliage and texture. Serene, soothing, tranquil. And a lesson in why too much colour (other than green) is bad for the nerves.

Postcard from Hampton Court: Friday

Hot, hot, hoooottttt..... This is weather the Reflections of Thailand garden was made for. If you go across the bridge and round the back it's lovely and cool and shady in a jungly sort of way: I do like the planting on this garden. Here it's bat plant (Tacca chantrieri) teamed with a spectacular alocasia and a ferny sort of plant which designer James Clarke said he'd grabbed off the trolley to use as a filler. Some filler.

This one won not only the only gold medal in the show (everyone a bit stumped by that: not by the fact that this garden won a gold, but that none of the other large show gardens else did. I thought the judges were pretty harsh this year).... but also Best in Show. Any snide comments about hotel gardens are easily squashed by a closer look at the planting: quite sublime, and for a foodie like me fascinating what with lotus lilies, turmeric, kaffir limes and lemongrass. Fantastic.

The view from the office

I should apologise for my prolonged absence: life, or rather a series of RHS flower shows, got a little in the way of blogging for a while. And I've sold my house, so I'm a bit preoccupied by my state of flat-out panic about our imminent homelessness. Of which more later.

But for now I'm sitting in the press tent at the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show and this is the view from my window. I'm not entirely sure life gets much better than this: so I resolve to turn my mind away from estate agents for a day or two and just enjoy. See you later!

Perfect partners #6

Trollius 'Alabaster', Iris sibirica 'Dreaming Yellow', and Rodgersia aesculifolia

as seen in 'Music On The Moors', winner of Best Courtyard Garden Chelsea 2010

Plant of the month: May

Euphorbia polychroma

Did you ever see anything so like summer?

I grow many euphorbias, which love my dry, sandy soil. E. martinii for its smoky flowers and burgundy stems, the slightly tender E. mellifera (clobbered by this winter's frosts but I hope recovering), E. cyparissias 'Fens Ruby' which I'm forever having to dig out of places it shouldn't be, but I forgive it anything for its feathery burgundy foliage in spring; E. myrsinites to snake around the skirts of other plants, and a few self-seeded E. robbiae from who knows where.

I love them when they're flowering, but for the rest of the year they can look a little gaunt, I find. That's fine in my jungle garden where wierd and gaunt-looking plants abound, but not so happy in the cottagey riot of summer flowers elsewhere. So I tend to hide the foliage behind other things.

Not so Euphorbia polychroma. This is the Jeeves of the plant world: a plant which in a garden full of the unruly, the mischievous and the downright contrary always, always, knows the right thing to do.

In spring, just when you need a foil to your muscari and crocuses, the clear lime-green foliage starts frothing up from the ground. Gradually it expands like a delicate bubble: never too quickly, as it would never be so rude as to outshine the tulips or the daffodils, but just quickly enough to provide a green backdrop at just the right scale.

Then finally, when it reaches a neat and tidy naturally domed shape of such perfect uniformity that nobody believes I don't clip it, and just when the tulips are going over and you're starting to want something else to look at, the acid yellow flowers appear - in reality, of course, bracts that attract attention to the inconspicuous true flowers in the centre. They are of a brilliant purity that reminds you of the sun even when there isn't any in the sky: and when there is, they glow with a luminescence of sunshiny joy that they make me smile every time I look at them.

They last a satisfyingly long time but not so long as to outstay their welcome. I grow an apricot rose behind it, and the brightest yellows last, obligingly, just long enough to combine rather fetchingly with the orangey shades of the rose. Then, like all good performers, it knows when to stop hogging the limelight and retires gracefully into the wings as the bracts fade back to green. Even then it judges its role perfectly, providing a green of just the right shade to set off the daylilies, rock roses and potentilla that also tumble around it.

There it stays, good-natured and accommodating to the last. It keeps its dignity and poise well into winter and sometimes into spring too if heavy rains haven't bent the branches out of shape, looking terribly sculptural with a good frost.

The only time it's even remotely demanding is when you need to snip away each branch right to the ground in early spring just as the new shoots come through (wearing gloves, as one of this plant's few faux pas is to emit an irritating sap when pruned). Then you wait for the whole thing to happen all over again. There's no better-behaved plant in my garden.

Postcard from Chelsea: Saturday

A little wander through the Floral Pavilion for you just before it's all taken to bits and Chelsea is over for another year....

Postcard from Chelsea: Friday

One of my very favourite small gardens: the Global Stone Bee Friendly Plants Garden, designed by Janey Auchincloss and Paul Hammond. I'm not entirely sure why it 'only' got a silver: the planting was delightful and there were some great ideas - a crinkle-crankle box hedge, a funky multi-storey herb garden and a sunken centre leading to a fountain. Janey's friend tells me they got marked down because of the fountain was too high, which seems a bit rough.

Here's a bit more of that planting: just can't get enough of it...

Postcard from Chelsea: Wednesday

The structure I would most like to nick from Chelsea and take home: Roger Platts' wooden summer house from The M&G Garden. Traditional, classic, and utterly beautiful.

Wouldn't you like to be sitting having tea right there?

And the craftsmanship was superb. This finally made my carpenter hubby understand the point of Chelsea. Carved from Sussex oak by 'a local craftsman' (who clearly wants to stay anonymous - don't know why, I'd be shouting it from the rooftops if I'd made this), it's held together with traditional oak pegs and perfect proportions.

Postcard from Chelsea: Medals day

The Daily Telegraph Garden won Best in Show for the second time running - though unlike last year's rather cool and unengaging garden I totally fell in love with Andy Sturgeon's passionate, warm design.

The write-up goes on about Southern Cape fynbos and Mediterranean maquis in a rather overblown travel guide sort of way that entirely fails to do justice to what is so engaging about this garden. I could go on for ages about all the things I loved most about it: but I'll just pick out a couple that everyone could borrow easily to adapt in their own garden.

• The first is the echoes that run right through the planting. For example: he picks up the silver spikes of those Verbascum bombyciferum 'Polarsommar' with relatively low-growing Eryngium giganteum nestling by the ground and then echoes it again in the tall, stately Onopordium acanthium at the back (now I know where all those onopordums I saw at Crocus earlier this year were destined for). The result is a three-layer planting with symmetry running like a thread to draw your eye through the garden.



• The second is the simple trick of picking up the colours of your hard landscaping (in this case, corten steel) very precisely in your planting. Here's a pic to prove the point. I have yet to find out what the cultivar of these bearded irises is: but when I do, I shall acquire some forthwith (and hopefully some corten steel to go with it: it is a match made in heaven).

• And last but not least: quite simply, the planting was sublime. Quite a muted palette of silver, bronze and purple: which has now become one of my all-time favourite combinations. This is the one which is going in my notebook so that one day I can nick it pretty much wholesale for my garden.

I haven't quite got it all yet, but a good start would be:

Verbascum 'Clementine'
Salvia nemorosa 'Caradonna'
Euphorbia 'Blue Haze'
Euphorbia mellifera
Geum 'Cooky'
Eryngium giganteum
Libertia peregrinans
Nepeta racemosa 'Walkers Low'
Ozothamnus ledifolius
Stipa tenuissima

Postcard from Chelsea: Build-up day

The Great Pavilion is slowly filling up with flowers.... though it always amazes me how late they leave it to finalise their displays. Most of the stands are still only half-finished by the night before judging; and right now, the whole place looks like a building site (even more so than Main Avenue does outside).

I'm having a slightly odd Chelsea this year as I'm spending most of it in an edit suite in an obscure back street nearby watching the lovely James do his thing as elegantly and wittily as ever, if rather disjointedly as we're cutting his links together with footage in a telly sort of way. You too can hear his wise words on BBCi (aka Red Button, aka the nice people who have employed me as part of the team covering the show this year).

But I'm back in the showground on Wednesday for a swanky party... all will be revealed in a multiple postcard winging its way to you then.

Wordless Wednesday

Euphorbia mellifera (I think)

as seen at Vann, near Godalming, Surrey

May flowers

Now, let's see. What's in flower this month?

Oh blimey, I can't be bothered to list all that lot. Right, so what isn't in flower this month?

Answer: not much. May is such a wonderful, wonderful month to be in the garden, especially after all that bleak midwinter hoo-hah. It does your heart good to walk among the tulips and the forget-me-nots and the first roses of summer and just drink in all that colour.

But I must choose which ones to take photographs of this month as Carol at the topically-named May Dreams Gardens is hosting Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day: it's probably easier to choose what to leave out than what to leave in.

I feel a slideshow coming on.

Perfect partners #5

Tulipa 'Chinatown', Heuchera 'Beaujolais' and Anemanthele lessoniana

as seen in the Floral Pavilion at the Malvern Spring Gardening Show

Malvern flowers

Never mind the show gardens: at Malvern it was the Floral Pavilion which just blew me away.

Every bit as good as bigger shows like Chelsea and Hampton Court, I was like a kid let loose in a sweetshop: actually I was entirely paralysed when I first went in as I just wanted everything I saw.

To save the bank balance I contented myself with taking photos of my very, very favourites. Well, mostly: I will admit three more scented geraniums and a Gillenia trifoliata somehow found their way into my bag.

So here were the ones that got away:


Camassia leichtlinii 'Pink Selection'
(Avon Bulbs)

Euphorbia dulcis 'Chamaeleon'
(Claire Austin Hardy Plants)

Paris quadrifolia
(Mary Green at The Walled Garden, Lancs)

Hosta 'White Feather'
(actually, I didn't want this one, but I thought it was proof if proof were needed that breeders always push it that little bit too far)

Dicentra 'Bleeding Hearts'
(Cath's Garden Plants)

Epimedium 'Amber Queen'
(Edrom Nursery)

Trillium sulcatum
(Chris Cooke Plants)

Didn't we have a luvverly day, the day we went to Malvern...

Yes, I was there too...!

What an occasion. Herb-tasting shenanigans from the Three Men and Jekka, bloggers galore, and even Princess Anne joined in the fun.

Much chatting was done: a special mention must go to Frances and Gail, who made the heroic journey all the way from Tennessee just to get rained on yet were utterly delightful about it all and didn't moan a bit about their sudden transition from shorts-and-tshirts temperatures to something requiring thick jumpers (though being in close proximity to genuine, 24-carat royalty I hope made up for it a bit). Also the lovely Ewa who joined us from Poland (presumably quite at home climate-wise) and Yolanda Elizabet who turns out to be an irrepressibly effervescent Dutchish person. And very many thanks to the ever-fabulous VP, who organised it all, and Helen, who bravely opened her gorgeous garden and home to us so we could eat pizza and sit on her stairs.

Right, before this all starts getting unbearably luvvie I shall stop there, and talk about the show: which is why, of course, we were all there.

It was the first time I've ever been to Malvern: a revelation to see the change of plant palette from the high-summer iris, alliums and agapanthus of Chelsea and Hampton Court, to the spring aquilegia, geums and dicentra of Malvern. Medals were much in evidence, though just two golds - to the 'Recovery and Wellbeing Garden', from the Birmingham and Solihull Mental Health NHS Foundation Trust (a little heavy on the chicken house, in my view, but lots of robustly healthy veg) and the rather gorgeous 'The Youth of Old Age', from Graduate Gardeners Ltd., which also won best in show.

But medals shmedals: here are the ones you've all been waiting for.

The Constant Gardener Awards for Malvern 2010

Plant of the Show 2010: Rheum palmatum

with hostas and coppery young leaves of Cotinus 'Grace' in 'The Youth of Old Age' (gold, best in show)

and teamed with Dicentra spectabilis 'Alba': 'ReSource Garden' (Silver-Gilt)

Planting Scheme I'd Most Like to Take Home: The Inside Out Garden (Silver)

It's not just because it's got veg in it- honest. The elegant, sweeping curves were echoed on the other side in aquilegia, swelling box balls and lavender. Heavenly.

Most Original Use of Plants: ReSource Garden (Silver-Gilt)

That's single-stemmed Cercis canadensis 'Forest Pansy' used as punctuation to pale lilac iris and Cirsium rivulare 'Atropurpureum'

Best re-working of a tired theme: The sedum roof in 'As Time Goes By' (Silver)

No boring-but-eco-friendly tile-effect sedum matting here: these are individual sedum plug plants (plus a few houseleeks) chosen for their variations in foliage texture and planted lovingly into capillary matting on a small shed roof. There was a life and movement to the planting you never find on mass-produced sedum roofs - and it made me want to do it myself

Most covetable paving: The Woodland Edge Garden (Silver)

Well, OK, it's decking, but I loved that contrast between the sawn logs and the circular decking.

Wackiest paving idea of the year: 10 Green Bottles Might Just Build A Wall
(School garden)

Yes, those are cut-off lemonade bottles. So wierd it almost works.

Fence of the year: The Owl & The Pussycat (Silver)


Hand-woven by the designer and heart-breakingly beautiful.

Highly Commended: The Morgan Garden

The one redeeming feature in an otherwise lamentably blokey garden: an exquisite espaliered apple tree 'fence' in full blossom

Sculpture of the Year: The Owl from 'The Owl & The Pussycat' (Silver)


Isn't he gorgeous?

And finally.... Bonkers Idea of the Year: Hansel & Gretel Fairytale Garden (Silver-Gilt)


That is toast on that roof. Real toast.

I am told by Deb (who hobnobs with royalty: it is she meeting Princess Anne in the main picture) that the designer cooked the toast and nailed it to the roof, only to have a flock of crows descend on it moments later and strip the lot off again. He did not give up and go find some plastic toast: no, he went out and bought another load of bread, toasted it again, nailed it on and this time laquered it in place.

Bonkers, or what?