Other people's gardens as well as mine

[callmemadam]

Yesterday I went to my first NCCPG meeting in months. I felt guilty at letting them down by not being there to run the book stall but I just couldn't face going. At last I was resolved, it was nice to see the dear things and we had a good meeting.

Our speaker was Keith Wiley, who'd driven up from Devon with his wife, bringing a boxful of plants to sell. Keith is well known as the former head gardener at The Garden House, Buckland Monachorum. This was originally owned and designed by the late Lionel Fortescue and when Keith went there it was run as a traditional woodland and border garden. This was hard to manage with a staff of two and Keith introduced the naturalistic, self-balancing style for which he is now known. In a series of stunning slides he showed how the natural landscapes of Devon, California and South Africa had inspired him to reproduce the idea of this in the garden. For instance, an area designed as a 'South African' garden which had the style of the original but used plants from elsewhere. He has now left the Garden House (I think he fell out with the trustees) and is running a nursery while designing and building his own garden, free from all constraints. Well worth hearing.

Meanwhile in Dorset things are pretty waterlogged. I picked up some wood yesterday and that was about the limit of my gardening. The birds were making a terrible racket early in the morning and I'm sure I saw a deluded couple nest-building in a hedge. There was also a large bee zooming about. Down in town I have seen dwarf narcissi in flower already but here, apart from a couple of shrubs, the only flower out is the first hellebore,



a nice yellow one.

Comments

[richenda.livejournal.com]

The birds were making a terrible racket early in the morning and I'm sure I saw a deluded couple nest-building in a hedge


I've definitely seen two wrens, at least 50 yards apart,carrying nesting material.
Er - do I intrude or spam?
I think that I found you Sprying a day or two ago.
I'm never sure how to tell which people find it acceptable to surf LJ and which don't.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

All welcome to look at my garden.

[richenda.livejournal.com]

Surfing or spamming on in again- we have plenty of daffodil spikes, rosemary has been blossoming for over a month, and celnadines are leafing up wherever we look.

[coughingbear]

Oh, lovely hellebore! Mine seem to have died, but they were a very blotchy pinky colour, so I'm rather looking forward to choosing a couple of new ones.

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

So many hellebores are a rather indeterminate colour. Usually these are seed raised so it's always best to buy them in flower. There were some stunners on the display table yesterday, including doubles. My favourite here is white with maroon spots. I like spots on my foxgloves, too. I'm not so keen on the very dark varieties that are so fashionable as I like them to show up from a distance. Forgive me if I'm teaching my grandmother here but you can see in the photo that all the leaves have been taken off the plant, partly to show up the flower but mainly to avoid hellebore blackspot which looks revolting and eventually kills them.

[coughingbear]

That's really useful to know, as I think that may have been what killed the ones I had. I want paler ones too, as the pink ones didn't show up from the end of the garden. The yellow is gorgeous, so I will definitely look out for something like that.

Gravelly bits

[dovegreyreader.livejournal.com]

We used to live in Buckland Monachorum years ago and would often walk to the Garden House.Sadly we'd heard it is really missing Keith Wiley's input, vast areas of gravelly bits now.We're only a few miles away so should go and have another look this spring and see what's happening there

Re: Gravelly bits

[callmemadam.livejournal.com]

Hello, nice to meet you here. I got the impression the garden trustees had purist notions such as: if a garden is called The South African Graden, it must contain South African plants. It's not supposed to be a botanic garden so I don't see their problem. Possibly they found Keith Wiley had started to think of it as 'his' garden? After the talk someone told me that their best garden visit ever had been to The Garden House under the Wiley regime.