Knifophia. A robust native of South Africa usually with a red/orange flower mid to late summer (UK). Modern hybridising has brought us a wider range of colours from greens and white through yellows to deep oranges. I must admit that although I don’t mind them I rarely get to put them in a scheme, a…
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Garden Visit: Wimpole Hall in late summer
One of my favorite local-ish gardens is NT Wimpole Hall. At this time of the year the wonderfully wide (3m at least) herbaceous borders flanking the walled kitchen garden are bursting with late summer colour. Shocking blue Salvia jostle with Hellianthus and Achillea while floaty Stipa gigantea wafts about in between them all. This time…
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Garden Visit: Wollerton Old Hall – Summer
A damp squib of a day really but as I only had one day free, that day it had to be. I have been to Wollerton Old Hall a few times, friends live 15 minutes along the A57 so it’s an easy place to find and visit. The car park was busy even though I…
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Visiting Gardens – II
I’ve been quite busy with designing and planting over the last few months, which is always good and brings an opportunity to look back at the garden visit archives here on the blog and to update some of them with new photos. Yet again I am adding and re-adding to the list of gardens to…
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Nursery Visit
Visiting nurseries and gardens are one of the big pleasures of being a garden designer. Somehow there is never enough time to see all of the nurseries or all of the gardens one wants to but in 2015 I’m making a concerted effort to see one or other, possibly both, every month. Rooting out excellent…
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Roses
I’m not a Rose aficionado in the same way I am an Iris aficionado despite my name(s) and my Mother’s passion for roses that saw the full length of one garden boundary fence smothered in them, I have avoided them for much of my life due to the often intense fragrance which would set me…
Continue ReadingInspirations from a Walled Garden – Wimpole Hall
I know I have banged on about Wimpole Hall on several occasions, it is my ‘local’ NT garden after all but it remains an inspiring place to go and is full of ideas to take home and try out, on a somewhat smaller scale of course!. When I say it is inspiring I am not…
Continue ReadingThe Dorothy Clive Gardens
REFLECTIONS UPON A GARDEN VISIT – written for the SGD student writing competition 2010. The Dorothy Clive Garden, Shropshire Shropshire is glorious country. Far enough off the beaten track to be truly unspoiled but filled with and close to, so many enticing garden greats that an offer of the use of a small, well appointed manor…
Continue ReadingGarden Visit: Anglesey Abbey
With the flurry of activity surrounding the Hard Landscape portfolio and Bespoke portfolio visits to winter gardens for shots to go into the Soft Landscape portfolio have all but been forgotten. But today, as the sun finally peaked out from the clouds, I felt I HAD to go to see the spectacular snowdrop display and…
Continue ReadingGarden Visit: RHS Wisely
A dreary day with some drizzle greeted me at RHS Wisely which is just off the M25 south of London. Amazingly the car park was half full. School visits and elderly groups making the most of the Autumn fair. Wisley has its great formal herbaceous borders edging the large formal pool, maybe that should be…
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