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Postcard from Chelsea #6: Little stars

28 Saturday May 2016

Posted by sallynex in new plants, shows

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alpines, Diamond Jubilee Award, Great Pavilion, hepatica, RHS Chelsea Flower Show

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The Ashwood Nurseries exhibit, easy winner of the Diamond Jubilee award this year

The talk of the Pavilion this year was not the giant Pullman carriage at the Bowdens stand – but a diminutive little tumble of starry flowers spangling the mossy ground beneath Japanese cherries, pussy willows and artfully-placed branches of larch.

It’s the first time the consummate plantsman John Massey has brought his collection of hepaticas to Chelsea and they caused quite the stir, scooping the Diamond Jubilee Award for best display. They certainly made me see hepaticas in a whole new light: I’d always rather glanced past them before, convinced they were fussy little alpines which needed more care than I could sensibly give them. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

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Love this way of displaying the perfection of the flowers

Hepaticas are spring-flowering woodlanders (these had been held back for Chelsea: normally they’re in flower in February) for planting under deciduous shrubs and trees. They’re tolerant of all soils, but best where they have spring sunshine but summer shade. H. nobilis and H. transsylvanica are the ones for growing outside; there are many more to explore once you get hooked but you’ll need an alpine house. The Asian and American species, like teeny tiny H. insularis and even teenier H. henryi, are very, very special but need the care and attention to match.

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H. nobilis var pyrenaica ‘Stained Glass’

John has been working on developing interspecies hybrids, aiming at plentiful flowers but also bringing out the beauties of the foliage: I hadn’t realised hepatica leaves were quite so lovely. They are three-cornered, like a tricorn hat, and come in attractive variegations reminding me a little of the leaf patterning on cyclamen.

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H. ‘Ashwood Charm’

Two of the new varieties bred at Ashwood Nurseries and shown here for the first time were H. nobilis var pyrenaica ‘Stained Glass’, with quite the most gorgeous leaves, and H. ‘Ashwood Charm’ which earned its name in spades with a froth of exquisite little white flowers. Get your order in now to beat the rush (it’s http://www.ashwoodnurseries.com). My guess is that there will be a lot of hepatica talk come next spring: these are plants whose moment in the sun has arrived.

Postcard from Chelsea #5: Shiny new plants

27 Friday May 2016

Posted by sallynex in new plants, shows

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new plants, Plant of the Year, RHS Chelsea Flower Show

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Clematis chiisanensis ‘Amber’: Plant of the Year 2016

The Plant of the Year competition at Chelsea has only been running a few years, but it’s really shone the spotlight on one of the things the show has always done well.

New plants first seen at Chelsea include favourites like Geranium ‘Rosanne’ and the ‘Yak’ (yakushimanum) rhododendron hybrids, as well as uncounted classic roses: in short, some of the best and widely-grown plants in the world.

Now the best new releases of the season compete for the chance to be crowned as the one to watch for this year. The worthy winner, from Taylors Clematis, was the somewhat unpronounceable but very beautiful Clematis chiinanensis ‘Amber’. It even flowers twice a year, to add good value to its considerable charms.

Here are a few more of the new arrivals on the horticultural scene this year. Not all were finalists in the Plant of the Year competition but all, I hope you agree, look likely to have an illustrious future in our gardens ahead of them.

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Iris ‘Libellule Jaune’ from Cayeux Iris

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Leucanthemum vulgare ‘Lollipop’ Wyndford Farm Plants

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Cirsium rivulare ‘Frosted Magic’ Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants

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Rosa ‘Roald Dahl’ David Austin Roses

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Clematis ‘Volunteer’ Raymond Evison

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Rhododendron ‘Huisman’s Sun Star’ Millais Nurseries

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Chrysanthemum ‘Rossano Charlotte’ National Chrysanthemum Society

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Acer ‘Moonrise’ Hillier Nurseries

Postcard from Chelsea #4: Visions of loveliness

26 Thursday May 2016

Posted by sallynex in design, shows

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Hay Joung Hwang, planting combinations, RHS Chelsea Flower Show

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Planting combination of the week for me was this soft confection of ethereal pastels from Hay Joung Hwang on the LG Smart Garden: Eremurus robustus, Digitalis purpurea ‘Alba’, Geranium phaeum ‘Album’, Phlox divaricata ‘Clouds of Perfume’, Persicaria bistorta ‘Superba’, Rosa ‘Royal Philharmonic’, and Iris ‘Jane Phillips’. Just sublime.

Postcard from Chelsea #3: Floating pretty

25 Wednesday May 2016

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artisan gardens, best artisan garden, RHS Chelsea Flower Show, Sarah Eberle, tropical

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It takes some doing to create a garden in a 7m x 5m space which is so complex, so detailed and so atmospheric it can take you halfway across the world in a second.

But so it is with Sarah Eberle’s lushly planted slice of the Mekong Delta for Viking Cruises – winner of a gold medal and Best Artisan garden (by miles, if I had my way). So luxuriant, so densely-planted, so detailed is it that there’s just no way to do it justice with a few snatched pictures – so you’ll have to take my word for it. It’s a true piece of theatre.

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The planting floats in flat-bottomed traditional Cambodian fishing boats, dripping leaves and flowers over the sides into the water beneath. A riotous mix of dahlias, gloriosa lilies, philodendrons and orchids crammed into every inch of space conjures up the steamy South Asian jungle in a few deft sweeps of exotic, tropical-looking foliage and flowers.

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And I did love that there were vegetables here too. I’m always on the lookout for veg at Chelsea and these were as lush as the flowers that surrounded them. Some veg just have that jungly look, so it wasn’t a surprise to see gourds, okra and aubergines. But who knew cabbage and spinach could look exotic? Must add dahlias to the cabbage patch next year….

 

Postcard from Chelsea #2: Best in Show

24 Tuesday May 2016

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Andy Sturgeon, best in show, RHS Chelsea Flower Show

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Well: Andy Sturgeon has done it again with his dinosaur-inspired creation for the Daily Telegraph. It’s huge, sculptural, dramatic, monumental…. and…. oh dear. Not my kind of thing at all.

I really like Andy’s designs as a rule: the last time he won, in 2010, was with a garden I still talk about today. It had a similarly strong design, with sparse, beautiful, well-considered planting, and a haunting sense of atmosphere. It left you with the kind of images that stay on the retina for years afterwards.

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Now there’s a trip hazard waiting to happen…

This one may stay in my mind for all the wrong reasons. The bold design was, for me, just a bit too bold, a bit too in-yer-face. It kept pulling my eye away from the extraordinary planting I’d rather be looking at, full of beauties I’d never come across before. When you have star plants like this, it’s a crime to have your attention dragged away so you can look at a load of white limestone instead.

Anyway. What do I know. It was all undeniably very ambitious: Andy has shouldered the task of telling the history of the world in a garden, no less, from dinosaurs onwards, bronze stegosaurus plates and all.

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For me, though, it was the plants which swung it: my, but they’re special. Their names are like a rollcall of the rare and exotic and sent me scurrying for my plant encyclopedias: Anizoganthus (kangaroo paw) and gaunt, sparse Corokia x virgata I’m familiar with, but the tufty red spires of Echium russicum, grassy Poa labillardierei and Ephedra fragilis, delicate Bulbine frutescens… all had me rifling feverishly through the pages.

The effect was so ethereal, otherworldly, alien: a world of sparse, twisted stems and delicate, shy flowers in silvers and tangerine oranges, so unfamiliar you could believe a stegosaurus might walk around the corner at any minute. It convinced better, in fact, than any amount of firepits and paving.

Postcard from Chelsea #1: Press Day

23 Monday May 2016

Posted by sallynex in shows

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press day, RHS Chelsea Flower Show

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And a lovely time was had by all….!!

Guernsey, Garden Isle #3: Of clematis, clematis and more clematis

01 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by sallynex in overseas gardens, shows

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clematis, commercial horticulture, cuttings, glasshouses, guernsey, Guernsey Clematis, Raymond Evison, RHS Chelsea Flower Show

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Guernsey Clematis: where three million clematis plants start their lives each year

As privileges go, it doesn’t get much better than a personal guided tour around Guernsey Clematis by the great Raymond Evison himself.

I have met Raymond on lots of occasions at Chelsea: he is a true gentleman, of the unfailingly courteous kind, and his air of urbane charm rather disguises the fact that he is a sharp and very savvy businessman. He has succeeded in keeping his world-beating clematis nursery not only going but wildly successful, while keeping it on its home island of Guernsey.

It’s a feat many good plantsmen haven’t been able to pull off, and Raymond himself admits it hasn’t been easy, but any business that supplies 25% of the world’s – yes, the world’s – clematis supply is a success by anyone’s standards.

It was fascinating to see how you go about producing millions and millions of top-quality plants, while also running a commercial breeding operation which is about the only one at the moment producing new clematis anywhere. And all from an island nine miles by five miles with an erratic ferry service. Respect.
Here’s how he does it:

Once the stock plants (in the photo above) have begun putting out serious growth in spring, they’re given a haircut by something similar to a huge horizontal hedgecutter hanging off bars across the greenhouse roof. This slices off the top 15cm or so, ready to be turned into cuttings by rows of ladies wielding very sharp razorblades.

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Here’s what they produce: doesn’t look much, does it? It’s an internodal cutting, and those ladies will be producing 25,000-40,000 of them every single day.

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Stage two and each cutting is popped into Raymond’s home-made equivalent of the Jiffy-7: a bit like a soil block. The making of these is automated too – in what Raymond calls the ‘sausage machine’.

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Next stop, a whole greenhouse full of white polythene-covered propagators. These have an opening at one end so you can see in: they’re checked daily and when there are signs of growth (usually within three weeks) there will be more ventilation cuts made in the polythene until the whole thing is opened up.

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Plants ready for despatch: once dug up from the beds, the roots are washed and graded, and the leaves cut off. Then they go over to a man in a corner with a microscope: he’ll check plants from each batch for any tiny interlopers which might be trying to hitch a lift (Western flower thrip is a particular menace, apparently, and all but impossible to spot unless you’re at the business end of a microscope)

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And here’s the finished product, passed as pest- and disease-free, 600 in a box, and in this case off to North Caroline in the US to be potted up and grown on before sale. They don’t look much like clematis at the moment: but give them a year and they’ll be smothered in flowers and looking a million dollars. Amazing.

I did get a little look at the breeding operation too, but I’m afraid Raymond would have to shoot me if I revealed what he’s up to. A few facts and figures though:

• 2,500 crosses a year, done via hand pollination with paintbrushes
• from which 25,000-35,000 seeds sown – about a third germinate
• About 6,000-8,000 new seedlings are grown on and assessed for several years (it takes 8-10 years to produce a new clematis variety)
• qualities which are prized include ability to flower up the stem (rather than just at the top), compact, with a ‘pick me up and buy me’ quality: clematis have to flower within the first 60cm or they won’t sell in garden centres
• Current breeding goals are better reds, truer blues, as many doubles as possible, and a new strain of late-flowering, small-flowered clematis which bloom earlier in the season too

What I can say is that he’s releasing two new varieties at Chelsea this year: Volunteer, a container clematis in delicate mauve streaked plum purple; and Tekla, a deep pinky-red with deep red anthers and a late spring flowerer with a second flush in mid to late summer. It grows to 1.5m (5ft) and like all Raymond’s clematis is smothered in flowers from top to bottom.

Both will be on the Guernsey Clematis Chelsea stand: and do look out for the plant support Raymond has the Volunteer growing through. It’s not often I get excited about a plant support, but this one is a work of art and a thing of beauty. That’s all I’m saying.

Food for thought

11 Friday Mar 2016

Posted by sallynex in shows

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bird feeder, Edible Garden Show, innovations, new gardening products, raised beds, sauna, soil blockers, wormeries

Off to Warwickshire at the weekend to visit the Edible Garden Show, making a welcome return to its original home at Stoneleigh Park after an ill-advised foray into London for a year or two. That means the smallholding section is back (yay!) with proper pigs and a few chickens, some sheep and a few goats. Right up my street: when you start to grow your own food, assuming you’re not vegetarian, it’s not long before you start eyeing up a few livestock too.

Anyway: despite getting very distracted by piggies (my latest obsession: more later) I was really here for the kitchen gardening. Specifically, to see what’s new: this is a great show for tapping into the zeitgeist as anyone who has anything that’s a bit innovative to do with kitchen gardening shows up.

So here are a few things which caught my eye this year:

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Sometimes the simple ideas are the best. Take an ordinary plastic drinks bottle: fill with birdseed: replace the lid with this handy little screw-on tray: turn it upside down and hey presto: you have a bird feeder.

sauna
About as luxury-end as the bird feeder was thrifty: but I did like the idea of a garden sauna. I had a sauna once, in Finland: it involved jumping into the Baltic Sea afterwards, which I could have done without, but the sauna bit was pretty fabulous and made you feel like you were playing a starring role in a Scandi-noir movie. This one retails for a shade short of £13k but that includes absolutely everything except the towels, and lets you choose from a range of finishes.

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Now never mind all this fantasy gardening: let’s get down to the nitty gritty. I have for some time been agonising about the amount of plastic in my garden: in fact so much so that I’m on a bit of a crusade about it (I may shortly start banging on about it at more length on this very blog). So I was intrigued to see that soil blocks are now available in a more manageable size. Previously they’ve been whopping great tools requiring you to stand up to use them: for sedentary gardeners there are now these fantastic little gizmos. They make blocks up to 10cm across: no plastic module trays, no root disturbance. I will be giving these a try…

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Whenever you see something and find yourself thinking, ‘Why hasn’t someone thought of this before?’ you know you’re onto a good thing. This is the Garden Tower: it might look like a big plastic planter: but in fact it’s a wormery. The central pipe is perforated: you fill it with kitchen waste and worms, and the outer pockets with compost to plant up as normal. Then the worms – as well as making worm poo compost and worm wee plant feed as they would in a conventional wormery – travel back and forth between compost and kitchen waste, pulling the nutrient-rich compost with them to feed your plants. Fantastic idea.

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Now these caught my eye partly because they were circular – and I’m a sucker for a non-square bed – but also because there were people picking them up and walking off with them tucked under their arm. Not what you’d expect to do with a raised bed. But then most raised beds are made from heavy-duty scaffold boards and the like (part of the reason for the predilection for squares and rectangles): whereas Grow Rings are made from lightweight, flexible polypropylene. I wouldn’t like to vouch for their durability, but the man assured me they’ll last for five years. And you can stack them: put down a large (4ft diameter) one, fill with compost, then pop a smaller 55cm diameter one on top for a double-height tower effect with a much deeper root run in the centre. You can put them up in seconds, on a patio, a patch of grass, pretty much anywhere you want some growing space, really. Perfect for lazy gardeners – or just those who aren’t that good at woodwork.

Wordless Wednesday: Spring flowers

02 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by sallynex in shows, wordless wednesday

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iris reticulata, rhs spring flower show, spring, spring bulbs

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As seen at the RHS Early Spring Plant Fair

Snowdrop heaven

25 Thursday Feb 2016

Posted by sallynex in shows

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Avon Bulbs, galanthophiles, Galanthus, RHS Spring Show, snowdrops

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Galanthus ‘Diggory’

Spotted these on the Avon Bulbs stand at the RHS Spring Flower show last week, so I thought I’d share.

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G. ‘Wendy’s Gold’

I’m not much of a galanthophile myself – certainly not enough to pay the four-figure sums currently changing hands for just one bulb of the rarest kinds – but I could see how people get bewitched.

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G. ‘Lady Beatrix Stanley’

You still wouldn’t find me nose down backside up in some muddy corner of a bleak winter garden just to see them, mind you: and I’m quite happy with my single Galanthus nivalis and the occasional self-seeded double. But these ones were displayed in near-perfect circumstances: under cover (tick!) at eye height (tick!) and each set in beautiful isolation so you could really appreciate every nuance of marking and petal (tick, tick, tick!) Just lovely.

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