A Tatton takeout

At the RHS Tatton Park Flower Show, wandering around soaking up the beautiful, the amusing, the interesting, the eccentric and the downright incomprehensible, I found myself next to a little knot of people in deep discussion about the show garden we happened to be looking at at the time.

'Well - I dunno,' seemed to be the general consensus. 'It's not really something you'd have in your own garden, is it?'

I hear this opinion a lot. Generally, I want to shake the people who express it: it is, in most cases, entirely missing the point.

A show garden is not something you lift lock stock and barrel and plonk down in your average suburban back garden, any more than you would stick the original Damien Hirst shark tank in your hallway. They are works of interpretative art: depictions of a mood, a feeling, a style, an idea.

I love shows because it's the horticultural equivalent of visiting an art gallery, and just as uplifting. The wonderful thing about this particular art form is that it can address so many different aspects of life: from the narrow - experimenting with a new planting style, say - to the very broad indeed - an abstract representation of the journey through the rehabilitation process from dysfunctional criminal to thoughtful and integrated member of society, as we had in the HMP Everthorpe garden this year.

Of course you wouldn't have it in your garden: but to say it therefore lacks impact is like questioning the relevance of Van Gogh just because you don't have one in your living room.

If you're looking for relevance to your own garden, it's not all or nothing: just as you can decide to decorate the bedroom in Mondrian-style abstraction or Monet-style chocolate box, you can create your garden with your perceptions heightened and sharpened by what you've seen.

However: gardeners are prone to be rather practical. And I almost always bring a bit of every show I visit back home - even if it's just a snatch of an idea here and there, or a special planting combination.

And there were, it must be said, lots of things at this year's show I just coveted. Here, if I could have had them, is what I would have stuffed into the back of the poor long-suffering family estate and hot-footed it off with back down to Somerset.

Sue Beesley's plants

All of them. Every single one. In more or less the same arrangement they were in this garden. In fact I'll now completely contradict myself by saying I wanted to dig this garden up wholesale and take it away: I have just the perfect spot for it. Sumptuous, and one of my two favourite gardens at the show; the other one was....

Daniela Coray's meadow

An urban orchard, to be precise: but just my kind of thing, a spangled, jewel-like sunshine-filled space full of flowers, bees and loveliness.

The oak sleeper edging in 'Chocolate Orange'

The garden as a whole didn't do it for me: but those sleepers are just the thing for shoring up the steep banks on either side of my quarry garden.

The water harp from Blathánna Fiáine an Inbhir

Those 'strings' are actually water. Clever, and beautiful too.

The stacked log wall

from Perspective by Chalon Kitchens

So simple: so effective. And dead easy given a chainsaw and a lot of logs...

The wooden lean-to

from the Oxfam Garden, When the Waters Rise

Sweet chestnut poles, simply wedged together: it even had a green roof full of herbs on one half. Rustic, charming, and looked like it had been there forever.

That Mini

Birmingham City Council's display for the RHS National Flowerbed Competition: what's not to like?

The hanging pods in show feature Portach


You couldn't keep visitors out of it (I had to queue to take this picture).

One of the planted water bowls from Waterside Nurseries


I keep seeing these and can't help wanting one, maybe just outside my door. The perfect small pond: just wish those plant labels were a bit smaller, but hey-ho, mustn't quibble.

Papaver 'Peony Black', from the Botanic Nursery, Wiltshire


Mmmmm.......

The herb garden from Hooksgreen Herbs


Just the effect I need to create tumbling over my rockery: they had a fine china-blue flowering chicory there too which really caught my eye.

My poor car is going to be creaking at the seams (and my garden is going to be rather stuffed with that lot in it); but my, it'll be gorgeous when I get it all home.

July flowers

There was a full moon last night. I didn't realise until I switched off the telly and wandered outside to give the dogs a stretch: I ended up transfixed by the sight of my garden in full flower and bathed in silver light.

It may be past the summer equinox but for me July is the height of summer, the only time of the year when you can experience evenings like that. Everything is just at that perfect point of maturity, and bursting into flower with an unstoppable energy.

Next month it'll be nowhere near as good - is anyone's garden at its best in August, I wonder? - so I'm determined to the most of this month while I can. Not only am I going to take more time out just to look at all those flowers - that's pretty much the point of it, after all - but I'm also going to make the most of those exquisite summer's evenings. Especially after the moon comes out.

Thanks to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers Bloom Day!

Postcard from Hampton Court: Sunday

So... farewell then, Hampton Court.

It's been a good one and will live on in the memory for its mega edible garden, for my money the best yet of the centrepieces replacing the old Daily Mail pavilion; and for its evocations of scenes as distant as an Afghan battlefield and as close as a chalk stream in Hampshire. Conceptual gardens broke out of their box and made a bid for the mainstream; and the small gardens reached a quality and integrity that will be hard to match in subsequent years.

But - as usual - the stars of the show were the plants. So as a final flourish here's my last postcard, celebrating all that was wonderful in the Floral Marquee. Let's do it all again next year.

Postcard from Hampton Court: Saturday

Canna 'Cleopatra'

from Hart Canna, on their stall in the Plant Heritage marquee
One of several gorgeous cannas that caught my eye (also into my notebook went the water cannas with their slender spear-like leaves and vibrant flowers: 'Endeavour' was a particularly lovely soft red).

Keith and Christine Hayward have been working for years to eradicate the rampant canna virus, imported with stock from the Netherlands and now so widespread that almost every canna you buy ends up sickly, striped and puckered with disease (I once bought one from a Chelsea garden sell-off, in the days when they did such things, which looked lovely when purchased - only to succumb a few weeks later).

The Haywards however have taken the only responsible approach: take what little unaffected stock remains, and propagate that, developing a range of virus-free canna: probably the only ones in the country you can be pretty much absolutely sure won't develop the disease.

I've followed their progress in this over several years, since they nearly went out of business because of the virus but pulled themselves back from the brink. So I was really pleased to see their stand in the Plant Heritage marquee, full of vividly-flowered cannas with stripes and striations only where they were meant to be. Huge congratulations to both Keith and Christine for their achievement: and it's good to see cannas looking healthy again.

Postcard from Hampton Court: Friday

This gentle joke was tucked away in a corner of the Pococks Roses stand in the Wonderland of Roses marquee. It made me smile: especially since the rose it was referring to was right next door.


Rosa 'Nostalgia' (Pococks Roses)

Postcard from Hampton Court: Thursday

Plant combination of the week goes to The Stone Roses Garden, designed by Stephen Reilly and Donna Taplin(small garden: silver-gilt)

Dreamy and feminine, but with just the right notes of earthy purple, and those roses were sumptuous: it's not often I like pink roses but for these, I would make an exception.

Rosa 'Burgundy Ice'
Stipa tenuissima
Astelia 'Silver Spear'
Pittosporum tenuifolium 'Tom Thumb'
Verbena bonariensis
Acanthus spinosus
Betula ermanii

Postcard from Hampton Court: Wednesday

'Picturesque', designed by Melissa Jolly (Conceptual Garden: Gold)
So clever: a series of plantings inspired by famous paintings, in this case Rousseau's 'Jungle Sunset'. Here's the original:

I also loved 'Natural Spheres' based on the Kandinsky painting, exploiting the naturally spherical shape of plants like alliums and echinops as well as artificial spheres such as trimmed box balls. Other plant 'paintings' included a Damien Hirst airplants-in-a-glass-box and Monet's waterlilies.

All in all, it was an inspired and delightful play on the concepts of garden and art, and still makes me smile.

Postcard from Hampton Court: Tuesday

The World Vision Garden
I'm not usually that sure about what you might call 'land art'. I tend to find myself wondering how you're going to mow an inverted grass cone, and other such imagination-killing practicalities.

But in this case: to hell with the mowing conundrum. Marry land art with a sheet of water and you have absolute sculptural perfection.

The thought behind the garden was that the mound above the water represented the children who have all they need; the sunken grassy pit was those in poverty. The screens fragment the view and from only one perspective is the sphere seen, in reflection, as a perfect whole.

Oh yes - and the planting was subtle, understated and, I thought, sublime, especially against the brooding slatey greys of the (recycled plastic, though you wouldn't know it) screens.


A little planting list for the notebook:

Allium giganteum, Ammi majus, Deschampsia cespitosa "Goldschleier', Gaura lindheimeri "Whirling Butterflies', Nassella tenuissima, Stipa gigantea, Thalictrum flavum ssp. glaucum x rochebrunianum 'Elin', Verbena "Lavender Spires", Verbena bonariensis, Veronicastrum virginicum "Fascination"

Postcard from Hampton Court: Press Day

The garden that wasn't: a 'show feature' rather than a show garden, 'A Garden By Night' is easy to miss as it isn't in the show brochure and only a sign outside an otherwise unremarkable tent at the end of the main avenue of show gardens announces its existence.

But don't miss it: it's quite unlike anything I've ever seen at a flower show before.

Inside a tent, the blazing sun outside blacked out, you entered a twilight world of shadows where you fully expected bats to swoop through the dusk catching moths. And it elevated garden lighting to an art form: Neil Wilkins, glass sculptor, is a very, very talented man. Pure theatre.

End of month view: June

It's been a month of making progress, if slow: the mad rush of spring has calmed and I'm just planting out the last of my young plants (looking a bit the worse for wear, I have to say: this drought-ridden spring hasn't been kind to plants in pots).

But for now I can enjoy the garden burgeoning into colour, everything growing at the rate of knots, and my earlier work coming - sometimes - good.

It won't surprise anyone who knows me that the veg garden is seeing most of the action: so that's where I'm concentrating for my end-of-month stocktake this time.

There have been a few surprises as I'm trialling one or two veg varieties this year: first up is an amazing pea, due to make its debut in the Thompson & Morgan catalogue next year I believe. If you're not yet convinced that veg can be as beautiful as ornamentals, take a look at this:

The all-important taste test, of course, has yet to come: at the moment the pods are rather a muddy purple tinged green, not unattractive but not exactly wow-value either. We'll see: just love those flowers though.

Another splash of colour is the double row of marigolds I sowed on both sides of my onion bed:

I'm so doing this again: it makes me smile every time I see it. It's supposed to deter onion fly too: they get confused by the strong scent of the calendula. Well - there aren't any onion flies as far as I can see: so it seems to be working so far.

The spuds haven't been so lucky.

I've never had early blight on the new potatoes before. It's making my heart sink for my so-far hale and hearty maincrops. I should know, of course, that in damp and rainy Somerset the chances of escaping fungal disease of any kind are pretty close to zero: but such an early arrival has come as something of a surprise. The spuds themselves don't seem affected: these are 'Foremost', nice enough, but rather bland for my taste.

And finally: a visit to the engine room.

Packed with growbags this year: there are over 20 in there, at last count. It's not how I usually do it - I'm a big fan of growing in soil in the greenhouse borders as a rule, as plants look after themselves so much better. But this is the greenhouse I inherited (rather than the one I brought back from the allotment: that's still being planted up with cucumbers, melons and sweet peppers). So it's on a hard standing, and I didn't have much choice.

Fortunately I was after some experiments to do for t'other blog, so I've got all sorts of things going on in here: product reviews, trying out different supports, you name it. Oh, and those baskets in the back are my sweet potatoes: all of them T65 this year after they won my undying support by producing my best crop last season.

Elsewhere, the whole garden is getting decidedly woolly around the edges, and I am, frankly, dreading July: it's hedge-cutting month, and strim-the-undergrowth month, so I'm looking down the wrong end of a lot of hours strapped to either strimmer or hedge-trimmer. I have half a mile of hedge here: this is no small undertaking. Here's what we're looking at: the back slope gives some idea of the jungle-like undergrowth:


...and here's a typical hedge.

Luckily they're not all quite that tall, but since they're all hazel-dominated mixed hedges they're pretty much this overgrown. Wish me luck.

Thanks as always to Helen at The Patient Gardener for hosting the EOMV!

Not the colorado beetle

My poor new potatoes are suffering a nasty attack of early blight. Not quite as nasty as late blight, as the tubers don't seem to get particularly badly hit, though the top growth is looking decidedly anaemic, not to say acne-ridden.

But that's not what was worrying me this morning. As I bent to the fork to hoick the next lot of 'Foremost' into the colander I spotted this pair clamped to a leaf.

'Oh, my goodness,' I thought (or less printable words to that effect). 'I've got colorado beetle!'

This is one of the alien invaders that everyone's very, very nervous about. They skeletonise potato plants (and tomatoes, and aubergines): if you think blight is bad, it is as a minor sniffle compared to the colorado beetle.

The pest is established in France already: it can only be a matter of time before it skips the Channel. It's certainly notifiable.

Now, normally the internet has just one function in these circumstances: convincing you that the headache you've suffered from all day is not a hangover but a terminal brain tumour. For once, though, it served to calm an over-heated imagination and demonstrate that actually, what you've got is rather less alarming than what you thought you'd got.

So on my way to the Defra website to send a panicky email to the appropriate authorities I discovered that this is what a real colorado beetle larva looks like.

(Released under commons licence)
As you can see, nothing like my little fellas. However the question remains unsolved: they are ugly little blighters and keep reminding me of ticks with the way they're squat and tenacious and hold on with all their feet at the front. Here's another pic.



So - any ideas? What have I got here? And should I - as I suspect I should - be doing something about them? Answers on a postcard (or failing that, in the comments section) please...

Plant of the month: June

Hemerocallis dumortieri

Every time I see this plant it takes my breath away. And that's not something I say very often about daylilies.

Most hemerocallis are, let's face it, a bit vulgar. A bit in-yer-face, look at me, let it all hang out and let's see who can talk the loudest. If they were people they'd wear braces and you'd know within five minutes of meeting them how much they earned and that they had a Ferrari and/or 4x4 Landcruiser in the garage.

There seems to be a competition among breeders at the moment to see who can produce the biggest flowers, the largest petals, the brightest colours. More recently there's been a fad for wierd petal shapes. They couldn't stop at the quite-attractive spider types: oh, no. They had to have twisted petals or ones that droop like strips of wet newspaper or ones with frilly edges. Over 400 new varieties were added to the RHS Plantfinder last year alone, for heaven's sake.

Well: we've all been here before. Petunias, double hollyhocks, those poor benighted begonias you see in the garden centres churned out by the gazillion with day-glo colours and choking on their own flowers. I don't think the daylily hybridising factory has gone quite that far... yet. But they're getting there.

Despite all the overbreeding I do have a soft spot for hemerocallis. They count as edibles in my garden: when I'm feeling exotic I snap off a flower bud as I wander by and munch it as I walk, or wow the local kids by inviting them to eat a petal or two.

If you're very, very careful, and avoid the hoi polloi like the plague, there's an elite class of daylily which is untouched by all the common-as-muck excess: a group which maintains its elegance, its poise and its exquisite beauty with a haughty froideur that elevates to a definite cut above.

Hemerocallis dumortieri is perhaps the most genuinely classy daylily of them all. Not for her the bigger-is-better brigade: she knows that all the best things come in small packages. Her flowers are just the right shade of buttery yellow and she knows she has no need for frills and flounces: like so many things in life, she's all the more eloquent for her simplicity.

She doesn't overdo the tastefulness though. Like most girls with instinctive style, she knows that if you're going to carry off a look - if you're going to tip the balance from pretty to drop-dead gorgeous - you need to give it one well-judged flash of brilliance. With H. dumortieri it's her wine-dark buds, emerging in abundance from the foliage (also, in its slender strappiness - so fine in comparison to the thuggish clumps daylies usually form - sheer perfection).

An exquisite blend of Dubonnet and coke, the eruption of yellow from within is a real tour de force. For a final, definitive coup d'elegance the burgundy is retained as a brush stroke of contrast on the back of just the right number of yellow petals.

She doesn't even do that mildly irritating thing other daylilies do, casting off their spent flowers in drooping rags which if left hanging about spoil the appearance of the plant within hours. The spent flowers here are discreetly borne: you have to seek them out among the profusion of new growth if you are to dead-head and keep the display at its full, dazzling splendour.

This is a daylily to covet, arriving fashionably early in the season, stealing the show long before the crowd turns up. I can't even fault her for being high-maintenance: in fact my clump has been here since before I arrived, evidence that she can cope with many, many years of neglect and still come back to give of her best.

All in all, this daylily has a lesson for all those plant breeders out there. If you're looking to create something that will really captivate hearts, just remember: less is more.

June flowers

This June has been more flaming than it probably ought to have been: but luckily last weekend's big downpours have doused some of the worst and brought things back to balmy perfection.

I do love this time of year. The question is not whether you can find enough flowers in the garden to take pictures of; but which are the best of the dozens and dozens scattered in such generosity you hardly know where to look first.

It's the season of luxury flowers: lilies - can there ever be a more glamorous flower than a lily? - dinnerplate oriental poppies and large-flowered clematis unfurling their open faces to the sky.

And roses; my once sickly-looking rose bushes have responded to my winter pruning - much needed, as they were hopelessly neglected like everything else in this garden - by throwing out lusty new stems and big fat blooms. Unfortunately they're mostly rather grandmotherly, but we'll forgive them that for their sheer abundance.

Even the veggies are flowering: vegetables are so pretty if you look at them properly. And the annuals I sowed so carefully earlier in the year. It really is a time when all is good in the garden: a time to step back, take pleasure in what you have and smile.

Thanks go as always to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day!

Garden words: The June review

How to Make Your Own Drinks
Susy Atkins
A little word of caution: this is not a book about gardening. Nor is it written by a gardener: Susy Atkins writes about wine, and very well at that, but I'm not sure she enjoys getting her hands muddy that much.

So let's not expect this book to do more than it promises. It won't tell you how to grow the plants you make drinks from: but then there are dozens of other books which will help you there.

She gives just one page to 'the garden and orchard'; and recommends growing grapes and rhubarb, among the largest and most thuggish of all fruit and veg plants, on a 'spacious, sunny balcony' in a city. Hmm. That's 'spacious balcony' as in 'roof garden', then. And she suggests offering to help friends and neighbours on their allotments in exchange for crops - but not actually getting an allotment yourself.

But this is carping: and, as I say, expecting the book to do something other than it sets out to do.

Because the big strength of this book is that it gets you to take another look at your kitchen garden. As Susy points out, 'it takes a small but significant mind-shift to start making drinks instead of food from home-grown produce. You've perhaps never thought of making wine out of your much-treasured rhubarb - only crumbles or fruit fools. Blackcurrants are for pies and jam, but what about cordials or crème de cassis?'

This paragraph alone had the effect of setting several dozen pennies clattering loudly to the ground in my head. It was a revelation, and to be honest I felt pretty damn stupid.

I go to such trouble to grow my own, and the family's food, so my kids can eat well and so I know where my food has come from. But whyever don't I do the same for drink, too? We pour so much junky sugary squash down our throats, to say nothing of sulphite-packed wine and beer, without a second thought; but, and it took Susy's book to point it out to me, there is another way.

Her brief introductory pages - the ones which try to talk about gardening when they should just avoid the subject, really - also include some much more useful advice on using preserved fruits and vegetables for making drink (sloes are better after freezing; and you can make wine from dried fruit, though Susy is less than enthusiastic about it). And there's an extremely useful list of which drinks ingredients are in season when, so you can plan your cordials, ahem, accordingly.

On the whole, though, these opening chapters are padding: a lot of the tips given fall into the category of the bleedin' obvious - I didn't really need to be told that farmers' markets are a good place to buy fresh produce, or that when you're foraging you should wear long sleeves to avoid getting stung.

The book gets into its stride, though, when you reach the bit Susy is really interested in. From her 'ten essential bits of kit' to the list of extra ingredients you might need - some of them rather unusual: I've never heard of pectic enzyme - this is must-read stuff for the beginner drinks maker. Similarly she's great on wine-making: fermenting, racking off, ageing wine - it's all here. This is where Susy clearly feels most comfortable: when the recipes start, things get even better.

So far I've made just one: elderflower cordial, the recipe for which will be appearing on m'other blog in the next few days. It's turned out wonderful, despite my initial scepticism about including limes in the mix. Next time I might play around with the quantities of sugar - we found it a little sweet, though that's personal taste. But it was astonishingly easy, taking me just half an hour to brew a couple of litres, and one thing's for sure: we'll definitely be making it again.

Others I can't wait to try: lavender lemonade, blackcurrant cordial, blackberry cordial and cherryade. Next year, when I'm feeling braver, I may turn alcoholic: mead, quince vodka, creme de cassis and raspberry gin are all high on the list: sloe gin is also here. There are wines, beers, teas, tisanes and infusions, too.

This is a book which has changed the way I use my kitchen garden - and that doesn't happen very often. I can see it becoming much scribbled on (like all my favourite recipe books) and slightly sticky over the years. I'm looking forward to it.

Wild at heart

I came back from a recent weekend hiking over the chalk downlands of Oxfordshire aching rather more than expected in joint and muscle but also puzzling over the distinctions we make between wild flowers and garden flowers.

A sort of pinkish vetchy sort of thing.... wildflower identification never was my strong point

When is a wild flower not a wild flower? When does it cross the line and become a flower that is somehow more acceptable: somehow not untidy, pretty even?

Common toadflax (Linaria vulgaris)

Is a cornflower a 'wildflower', or a 'garden flower'? When we buy garden wildflower mixes, do the plants that grow become, de facto, garden flowers? Or are they still somehow 'wild'?

Common knapweed (Centaurea nigra)

It was brought home even more forcefully because what I optimistically call my top field (mainly because it is home to my chickens) has been gradually filling up with flowers all season. That's because - to the horror of the local farmers - I haven't been mowing it. First, I just couldn't be bothered; second, I didn't have the time; and third, I just couldn't bring myself to cut down all the wildflowers.

Dog rose (Rosa canina)

In both Oxfordshire, where my poor walking companion had to endure frequent pauses for me to take the photos on this page, and the top field, the flowers are classic chalk downland wildflowers. That's a protected habitat under the UK Biodiversity Action Plan, which is as good an indication as any of the quality and diversity of the plants, insects and animals which live there.

Field poppy (Papaver rhoeas)

This weekend I had small blue butterflies flitting around my head as I made the trek back and forth to the chicken run. The air is buzzing with insects; not just bees, but hoverflies and little funny-looking blue flies and big clumsy may bugs. The field is surging with life (unlike the barley field next door), and in my gardener's book, that's just as it should be.

Fox and cubs (Pilosella aurantiaca)

And never mind the wildlife: the whole thing has been a picture of loveliness. First it was a powder-blue sheen of bluebells and ajuga, later sprinkled liberally with starry speedwells; pink campion and white campion danced with ox-eye daisies, cow parsley and jack-by-the-hedge later on, with clover and sheets of yellow buttercups skipping at their feet.

Meadow cranesbill (Geranium pratense)

Of course some 'wild' flowers are deemed acceptable: few gardens are without their foxgloves or forget-me-nots. But why do we go to the effort of growing Ammi majus - lovely as it is - when cow parsley is every bit as beautiful and rather more statuesque? Not to say easier to grow?

Comfrey (Symphytum officinale)

Don't you lose your heart to red field poppies every bit as much as to oriental poppies? But why are field poppies 'wild'? And why are cornflowers and corncockles relegated to the 'wildflower' bits of the garden? Why aren't they allowed to hold their own with the penstemons and the salvias and the astrantias?

Hesperis matronalis... I think

It strikes me as all rather arbitrary. I suppose I should take heart from the fact that there are wildflower bits of anyone's garden; it wasn't so long ago that Beth Chatto was almost disqualified at an RHS show for daring to bring Helleborus foetidus, deemed 'wild' and therefore undeserving of appreciation. At least these days we're allowed to have 'wild' flowers in our gardens.

But I do feel sad that we are divided and labelled. We are 'wildlife gardeners' - or we are other sorts of gardener. I don't consider myself a 'wildlife gardener', whatever that is; I love having wildlife in my garden, yet I do my own thing and don't garden around them (and am quite horrible to a lot of wildlife, especially if it's furry and tries to eat my lettuces).

White campion (Silene latifolia)

If anything, I'm a kitchen gardener; but I also love to grow flowers. I like having wild things in my garden, too, and even like several of the so-called weeds (wildflowers?), as long as they behave themselves, more or less. I hoick a lot of them out as well: but then I dug up a rose bush last week because I didn't like it and it was in the wrong place. So does that make roses weeds in my garden? No, of course not; and neither are cow parsley or cranesbills, though I treat them much the same in that I grow them where I like them, and pull them out where I don't.

Guelder rose (Viburnum opulus)

Well: these were idle thoughts, and rather rambly ones, and I don't pretend to have any answers. But I do make a plea for everyone to stop all this pigeonholing. Personally, I shall grow campion and cranesbills among my cosmos and crocosmia, and hang the consequences. They're just far too pretty to leave out.