Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2017 i Gardens Illustrated Magazine

In the 1990s, a new wave of nurserymen, including Piet Oudolf and Cassian Schmidt, outlined a new way of planting that was all about form and texture and claimed never to think about colour. It challenged traditional ideas about what made an incredible garden, and the idea became mainstream. In this issue of Gardens Illustrated , we visit a garden designed by the Belgian nurseryman Jan Spruyt that references many of these ideas, but that is a kaleidoscope of colour. A masterclass in clever combinations, at this time of year it’s full of autumn’s bruised tones (page 76). Landcraft, on Long Island, New York State, are gardens with a precise and painterly planting approach. Writer and plantsman Daniel J Hinkley visits the nurserymen-owners Dennis Schrader and Bill Smith (page 34),…

Persicaria orientalis Kiss-me-over-the-garden-gate is a lovely, lanky annual that is easily grown from seed. The catkin-like flowers are a dishevelled arrangement of lively pink blooms held atop flexible stems. It is useful for fitting in between perennials to add an extra layer of flowers and can also be woven through a long or deep border to create a sense of unity. To get good germination use fresh seed and give it a cold period. We sow seed outdoors directly into plugs and let the elements do their work, germination takes place in spring. Pot on as required and protect from slugs. Height 1.6m. Origin East Asia and Australia. Conditions Any good soil; sun. Hardiness RHS H3. Season Summer – autumn. Fuchsia magellanica ‘Lady Bacon’ In smaller gardens, plants should earn…

In this country we’re used to adding nuts to cakes, biscuits and puddings, but in Spain and Italy they’re also frequently used to thicken savoury sauces and add layers of flavour and texture. One of my favourite sauces is the Spanish romesco made with red peppers, garlic and hazelnuts, which goes wonderfully with braised leeks or seafood. However, I’ve recently become addicted to another red sauce: pesto alla trapanese. Pesto made with garlic, basil and pine nuts comes from the Italian town of Genoa; sailors from the port took the recipe to Trapani in Sicily where the locals adapted it to suit the ingredients to hand (ripe tomatoes and almonds) and pesto alla trapanese was born. It’s most commonly eaten with pasta but is also very good as a sauce…

1 Agastache ‘Apricot Sunrise’ Drought-tolerant, short-lived perennial that needs full sun and well-drained soils. 1m. USDA 6a-9b† . 2 Digitalis x valinii ‘Berry Canary’ Provides a long display of zesty blossoms on tall stems. Treated here as an annual. 1.2m. USDA 9a-10b. 3 Jasminum officinale Fiona Sunrise (= ‘Frojas’) Offers fragrant, white flowers, although it is possibly most useful in lending its chartreuse foliage to the scene. 6m. AGM*. RHS H5, USDA 7a-11. 4 Viburnum dilatatum ‘Michael Dodge’ Golden berries follow white summer flowers, adding depth to the autumn garden and food for birds when fully ripened. 3m. USDA 5a-8b. 5 Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Firetail’ Non-stop performance from June to October makes this Persicaria indispensable. 1.2m. RHS H7, USDA 5a-9b. 6 Pennisetum villosum A deciduous grass with soft plumes of white…

“On his hands and knees in the border, with dachshunds sleeping on a tweed jacket, was Christopher Lloyd. A few days later I received a letter asking if I’d be his head gardener” Nothing in my career has been planned,” says Romke van de Kaa. “My life has been a series of chance encounters and lucky twists of fortune. Like in a garden, it is sometimes better not to plan too much, to learn how to just let things happen.” Serendipity has taken Romke into beautiful gardens and to work with the great gardening personalities of the past 50 years. He is now a journalist in the Netherlands, and many Dutch gardeners will tell you that they get their gardening advice from Romke’s articles. Although as a child he had…

“Logs sprout bejewelled miniature toadstools – coral spots, dead man’s fingers and clusters of minute bracket fungi whose identity have me puzzled” Most early autumns a curious yellow curd appears scattered across our meadow. The patches are frothy and shapeless and look more like some excremental fall-out than anything living. It’s called ‘dog-vomit’ fungus, but that is an insulting misnomer. I prefer to be reminded of lightly cooked scrambled egg. And it’s not a fungus or even a plant, but a slime mould, a kind of organism that is now on a branch of its own on the great Tree of Life. Slime moulds are truly astonishing creatures. They spend much of the year as a swarm of microscopic, single-celled organisms browsing on yeasts and bacteria. Then in the autumn,…

URBAN REDEVELOPMENT The only way is up Wonderwoods, a 90m-high building clad in trees and shrubs, by Italian architects Stefano Boeri Architetti, was the winning design in a competition to redevelop part of the Dutch city of Utrecht. This vertical forest will be planted up with some 360 trees and more than 9,000 shrubs. It will cover a mixed-use building that will accommodate the Vertical Forest Hub, a research centre on worldwide, vertical-forest projects that will be open to the public. stefanoboeriarchitetti.net COMMUNITY SPACE Quiet corner Perfumier Jo Malone and homelessness charity St Mungo’s have partnered to transform a disused corner of a park in London’s Notting Hill into a richly scented community space. The Quiet Garden is the latest in a series of collaborative gardens created by the fragrance…

The personal stories of the unsung horticultural heroes who shape, run and care for some of Britain’s most iconic gardens. Reviewer Caroline Beck is a flower grower and garden writer. HEAD GARDENERS by Ambra Edwards, photographs by Charlie Hopkinson Pimpernel Press, £35 ISBN 978-191258743 I’ve always been jealous of head gardeners, while also being relieved I don’t have their job; even if they’ve clinched their position on the basis of their horticultural skill, they are likely to end up mired in a portfolio of roles from project manager, to events co-ordinator and PR guru. In her new book, multi-award-winning writer Ambra Edwards has profiled 14 head gardeners across Britain, managing places as distinct as cloistered Oxford colleges to the heavily trampled lawns of hallowed public gardens. What unites them is…

If you’ve read our plant profile on species pelargoniums (see page 52), we’re sure you will have been tempted by the gorgeous selection of colourful and delicate blooms. Enjoy your own collection with this series of offers from pelargonium expert Woottens of Wenhaston. As summer draws to a close you can bring your plants indoors to protect them from frost and enjoy them all year round. Offer Make your choice from the options shown on the right and below, which include species, scented or a combined collection. Plants are supplied fully established in 9cm pots with detailed care instructions. Prices include p&p. How to order • By phone 01502 478258, quoting code GIPEL17. • Online woottensplants.com. Click on the Special Offers tab to find these options. Please use the code…

1. ELGAR SHIRTS Our nightshirts are an investment in good sleep and wellbeing, made in comfortable cotton or linen shirting fabrics your skin will love. We make nightshirts for both men and women, available in stock sizes or made to order. elgarshirts.com | 01422 882346 2. NICHOLAS MOSSE Making hand-decorated earthenware since 1976. Visit our Irish Country Shop and café in County Kilkenny, Ireland or shop online. nicholasmosse.com | +353 (0)56 772 7505 3. BESPOKE PLANT SUPPORTS Exclusive 10% discount code: OCTOBER. Handmade plant supports sold direct to the public. Mild Steel and Galvanised Supports from £1.50. Curved Supports and Loop Stakes. bespokeplantsupports.co.uk | NE9 5EY 4. PERILLA 75% alpaca three-quarter socks with luxurious cushioned soles and ribbed sides are the perfect companions for gardeners. Lightweight, soft and hardwearing, alpaca keeps you warmer…

DANIEL J HINKLEY Daniel is an author, lecturer and consultant, who lives and gardens in the USA. He’s currently busy directing the renovation of his first garden, Heronswood, now owned by the Port Gamble S’Kllalam Tribe. On page 34 he travels to New York to visit a stunning garden on Long Island he knows well. “There is a palpable excitement to the garden of Dennis Schrader and Bill Smith that compels me to return time and again.” TOM COWARD Kew-trained Tom spent three years as assistant to Fergus Garrett at Great Dixter. He is now head gardener at Gravetye Manor in West Sussex where he is able to indulge his passion for growing fruit, and on page 70 he explains how he is preserving Gravetye’s historic apples. “I love the…

Earliest gardening memory I remember spending hours with my grandma on her farm, walking through the hay meadows and asking her to name all the different types of flowers and grasses. Have you always worked as a gardener? I used to be an account manager for an IT recruitment company. I left after three years and moved to New Zealand with my now wife and, stunned by the beauty of the country, realised that whatever job I did next absolutely had to be outdoors. On my return I studied for my RHS qualifications at evening classes, and started work at Yeo Valley Organic Garden. Horticultural heroes Charles Dowding for saving me from double digging! No dig is such a great ethos and one that should definitely be taken on board…

“ learned how to subdivide a I garden into separate spaces, to create surprises round every corner” In brief Name Goldhoorn Gardens. What Private Dutch garden divided by hedging into areas with rich planting, strong structure and a large, ornamental pond. Where Bant, Noordoostpolder, the Netherlands. Size 4,000 square metres. Climate Temperate. Soil Heavy, alkaline clay, improved with mushroom compost. Hardiness rating USDA 9. Elly Kloosterboer grew up not far from the garden, Goldhoorn, she has created on her husband’s family farm. Her parents moved to this area called Noordoostpolder in the early 1950s. Like many Dutch families, they came here to start a new life on land that had only been reclaimed from the sea in the 1930s. Her husband’s family were among the very first raft of…

APPLES FOR DIFFERENT USES AT GRAVETYE MANOR In Gravetye’s restaurant, cooking apples are always in demand and Chef likes to save some to use throughout winter. For this we hand pick the highest-quality fruit, and ‘Bramley’ and ‘Blenheim Orange’ are two of the favourites. Both have such characteristic flavours, which only seem to improve with storage.‘Annie Elizabeth’ has also proved to have excellent flavour and is one of the best for holding its shape with cooking. But even in a busy kitchen there is only so much fruit Chef can get through and so the bulk of our crop is made into juice. This means harvesting our big trees is quite simple as it doesn’t matter if the fruit gets a little bruised. We just lay out a dust…

If one had to think of the horticultural equivalent of the flared loon pant then it would probably be the rockery – if you have no idea what I am talking about then damn you for being so young and full of promise. Gardening, like life, is susceptible to the swaying vagaries of fashion and nothing has fallen so far as the rockery. Time was when every suburban garden had a pile of old stones in which alpines were cosseted and where, occasionally, gnomes cavorted as a homage to the mountains. Often this was just a way of getting rid of some inconvenient stones and the creations had a tendency to look like pet graveyards. Today, outside the gardens of enthusiasts, the alpine garden has been rather forgotten and dwarfed…

Blue skies, crisp mornings, slating light and gentle warmth; Autumn is a favoured time for gardeners, a chance to plant, pick and plan ahead. From planting spring bulbs to baskets brimming with fruit, and soil is still warm enough to add new plants to to border. It’s also a good time to think about protecting more tender plants by bringing them under shelter. NIWAKI Fruit picking season is upon us and the Niwaki Tripod Ladder is invaluable at this time of year. Selecting the correct size of tripod ladder for fruit trees is fairly straightforward – the safest height to work from is three steps from the top of the ladder, which gives you something to lean into, a firm base to hold on to and a convenient platform to…

One of the best-loved fruits, apples are probably the easiest tree fruits to grow and very popular with gardeners (see our feature on the apples grown at Gravetye Manor on page 70). Garden fruit specialist Pomona Fruits is offering readers a 20 per cent discount on a selection of cultivars. What to expect Trees supplied are grafted on to M26 semi-dwarfing rootstock, which will produce a tree that is easy to grow and easy to pick. Bush apple trees will grow to 2.4-3.6m in height and spread. Trees are supplied bare-rooted and at 1.2-1.5m high. Choose two different cultivars to ensure adequate pollination. Self-fertile cultivars do not require a pollinator. Triploids will not act as pollinators. How to order • By phone Call 01255 440410 with your credit or debit…

1. KEN MUIR As a family business with over 50 years experience, we pride ourselves on providing the highest quality fruit trees, soft fruits, canes and vines. We aim to help even novice gardeners feel comfortable growing their own fruit. kenmuir.co.uk | 01255 830181 2. HARE SPRING COTTAGE PLANTS Camassia bulbs available online now for delivery this autumn. harespringcottageplants.co.uk | 07792 376805 3. THORNCROFT CLEMATIS NURSERY With over 400 cultivars of clematis and other climbers, we grow high-quality plants, offer expert advice and an award-winning mail-order service. thorncroftclematis.co.uk | 01953 850407 4. BOTANY PLANTS East Northdown Nursery. Kent CT9 3TS and Mucklestone Nurseries, Staffordshire TF9 4FA. 3,000 different trees, shrubs and perennials. RHS plantfinder codes SEND and MMuc. botanyplants.co.uk | info@botanyplants.co.uk 5. WOOTTENS OF WENHASTON We have 25 years’ experience of growing high-quality herbaceous…

This year, snack bar producer Eat Natural, working in collaboration with the British Beekeepers Association, is stepping up its campaign to support the nation’s beekeeping heritage and create a new generation of beekeepers. Building on the success of last year’s Pollenation project, which saw 25 ‘new bees’ trained and equipped, Eat Natural is searching for 50 more would-be beekeepers. “Beekeeping is a wonderful pastime,” says Jane Moseley, who looks after Pollenation at Eat Natural, “but getting started isn’t cheap. The Pollenation ethos is to create a community from people who want to take up the craft but haven’t had the chance.” Entrants can sign up online and the lucky winners will be presented with a state-of-the-art Eat Natural hive and all the necessary beekeeping kit to go with it. Researchers…

“I like to have more manicured and designed areas close to the house; further away the garden is more relaxed and less specialised” Through experimentation with tropicals and unusual annuals and perennials the pair have illuminated the inherent hardiness of many plant species “We have different destinations within the garden. Some are more intensely planted to provide a more enhanced experience of the space” In brief Name The Gardens at Landcraft. What An imaginative and creative plant-driven garden, using a vast palette of hardy and tropical species. Where Mattituck, New York State, USA. Size Three acres. Soil Rich loamy clay over sand, pH6.7. Climate Warm and humid summers, very cold winters. Hardiness rating USDA 6. Although it may be considered an oversimplification by some, I find that…

In brief What A genus of tender plants, usually long-flowering and floriferous, that are the progenitors of the colourful ‘bedding geraniums’. Origin Most species are found in southern Africa, with a few in east Africa, Australasia and the islands of Madagascar, Saint Helena and Tristan de Cunha. Two are from the Middle East. Season April to October. In general a long-flowering genus and many species will flower for six months of the year. Size From a few centimetres to a couple of metres. Conditions Most need well-drained soil and prefer an open, sunny situation. Hardiness Frost tender. In Britain most species will need to overwinter in a coldframe or unheated greenhouse. Gardeners are always on the lookout for something new. Every year ‘improved’ forms of old favourites or strange hybrids…

1 Pennisetum alopecuroides An ornamental grass that stays relatively low. Although flower spikes eventually disintegrate, it remains a lovely parchment colour all winter. 1.2m. RHS H3, USDA 6a-9b† . 2 Imperata cylindrica ‘Rubra’ A red-coloured grass that goes well with late-flowering sedums. Not always easy, but does well on water-retentive soils. 40cm. RHS H4, USDA 5a-9b. 3 Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii ‘Goldsturm’ Long flowering and appears to be immune to all pests and diseases. A good cutting flower. 60cm. AGM*. RHS H6, USDA 3a-9b. 4 Amaranthus caudatus Annual that self-seeds abundantly, although it is still good practice to sow some every year to fill any unexpected gaps. Lovely with hot-coloured dahlias. 1.5m. RHS H2, USDA 2a-11. 5 Helianthemum ‘Lemon Queen’ A tall, unassuming perennial, that is a lovely shade of…

In brief What Private, rural garden that makes clever use of perennial planting. Designed by nurseryman Jan Spruyt as a low-maintenance, prairie-style garden. Where Sint-Amands, Belgium. Size 500 square metres. Soil Sandy, acidic loam improved by chalk. Climate Winters can be -14ºC; summers can reach 36ºC. Hardiness rating USDA 8. A garden full of flowers, bees and butterflies from March to November is what we all dream of. And if we were told that that same garden could be achieved with no watering, no dividing, and almost no pest control, we’d know for sure that the dream was too good to be true. Or would we? Annemie and Guy Brusselmans’ garden in Sint-Amands, a rural community between Antwerp and Brussels, proves that the dream is eminently achievable – and more…

PERFECT FOR PETALS 7-Tine Leaf Rake (1.65m), £37.95, Sneeboer, 0333 400 1500, harrodhorticultural.com HANDMADE Hay Rake (1.78m), £43, Hen & Hammock, 01993 823117, henandhammock.co.uk WIDE-REACHING Multi-Change Longspan Rake (58cm), £39.99 (excluding handle), Wolfgarten, 01869 363674, wolfgarten-tools.co.uk LIGHTWEIGHT Leaf Scoops, £6.49, Great Little Garden, 0333 003 0516, greatlittlegarden.co.uk ADJUSTABLE TINES Heavy Foliage Rake (30-50cm), £26.50 (excluding handle), Manufactum, 0800 096 0938, manufactum.co.uk BACK-SAVING Gator Grabber (85cm), £24.95, Organic Catalogue, 01932 878570, organiccatalogue.com CLASSIC STYLE Perseus Rake (1.55m), £87, Implementations, 024 7639 2497, implementations.co.uk DOUBLE ACTION De Wit Double Leaf Rake (1.7m), £44.99, De Wit, 01344 578111, crocus.co.uk HANDY SIZE Sophie Conran Rake (35.5cm), £16.99, Burgon & Ball, 0114 233 8262, burgonandball.com…

RHS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GARDEN DESIGN editor in chief Chris Young Dorling Kindersley, £30 ISBN 978-0241286135 Fully revised and revisited, this new edition is a useful companion for garden design. DOWN TO EARTH by Monty Don Dorling Kindersley, £17.99 ISBN 978-0241318270 Practical month-by-month advice on gardening from a popular gardener with years of hands-on experience. TONICS & TEAS by Rachel de Thample Kyle Books, £9.99 ISBN 978-0857834447 A collection of traditional and modern, home-grown remedies to help you stay healthy and feel energised throughout the day. AN ATLAS OF NATURAL BEAUTY by Victoire de Taillac and Ramdane Touhami Ebury Press, £20 ISBN 978-1785034947 A practical guide to nature-based beauty treatments. JAPANESE GARDENS AND LANDSCAPES, 1650-1950 by Wybe Kuitert University of Pennsylvania Press, £60 ISBN 978-0812244748 A detailed survey of Japanese gardens…

We associate bulbs and spring because that is when they have the bare earth to themselves Autumn is a manic time for bulbs. Either you are bulb rich and time poor and unopened boxes are sitting in the boot room, or you haven’t ordered enough or ordered in time and friends are making you jealous with reports of their unopened boxes and now you are trawling the internet for the last 50 of anything acceptable in existence. It is all about spring and our imaginations have leapfrogged the winter months. It is not that we are unaware of October’s charm, but we look up to the glowing trees and across to the burning horizons to see them. It is swansong in our minds when, really, the plants themselves have no…