Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2018 i Gardens Illustrated Magazine

I’m delighted that in this issue of Garden Illustrated multi award-winning designer Sarah Price has written about her 100 favourite plants. Best known for her critically acclaimed and intensely beautiful planting at the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London, Sarah’s plant selections make many a heart – including mine – skip a beat. Her carefully edited list is both inspirational and practical, and includes annuals, bulbs, climbers, grasses, perennials, British wildflowers, shrubs and trees. From simple and resilient plants, to those that transition the seasons well, repeat flowerers, self-seeders and plants that are easy and lovely in equal measure, you’ll want a notebook and pencil to hand. The list includes some well-known favourites; think the chequered plum and white bells of Fritillaria melagris, as well as lesser-known cultivars of familiar…

The RHS Chelsea Flower Show showcases not just the best garden designs and designers but also the best plants, and nursery Hortus Loci is a key grower for the show gardens. Working in close partnership with designers, the growing and sourcing of plants begins as much as a year before the show, reaching a frenzy of logistics once the garden builds begin in early May. Our Reader Day will give you a behind-the-scenes preview of the plants being grown for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2018, just before they head off for the showground. You’ll get a sneak peek at what’s likely to be this year’s must-have plant, as well as an insight into the planning and growing process. Nurserymen Mark Straver and Michael Buck will talk about how they…

In the Netherlands, especially in the northern provinces of Friesland and Groningen, you find a special type of flora, known as stinzenplanten, growing around old manor houses (or stinzen as they’re called in Friesland) and other older country gardens. These are spring plants, mainly, but not exclusively, bulbs and tubers that were imported into the Netherlands from the 16th century onwards and have naturalised so well we tend to think of them as natives. They’re plants we cherish because they belong to our cultural heritage and many of the bulbs and perennials I’ve chosen this month fall into this category. Gardens and parks that feature these stinzenplanten among communities of native plants are protected and restored and one especially good example is Stinze Stiens Garden, in Stiens, Friesland. Once home…

Annuals 1 ERIGERON ANNUUS Myriad simple, fine-rayed, white daisies appear to float in mid air. Self-seeds vigorously, a desirable trait only for wilder areas where there is plenty of competition. Height (H) 1.5m. Spread (S) 40cm. Conditions (C) Dry sun. Season of interest (SI) July to November. Hardiness rating (HR) RHS H4, USDA 3a-8b† . 2 PAPAVER DUBIUM SUBSP. LECOQII ‘ALBIFLORUM’ Luminous in sunshine, its clear-pink petals float just above the fresh growth of early summer. Poppies are at their best when sown direct, emerging with surprise and spontaneity. H 50cm. S 30cm. C Fertile, well-drained soil; full sun. Not great on wet clay soil. SI May to June. HR USDA 6a-9b. 3 PHACELIA TANACETIFOLIA A green manure I sow for its soft lavender-blue flowers, that are decoratively shaped like…

1 Galanthus ‘Straffan’ Also known as ‘The O’Mahoney’ this tall Irish snowdrop has chunky flowers with grooves on the inner segments. Reliable once settled. 25cm. AGM*. 2 G. ‘Hill Poë’ This pinnate Irish double, with five outer petals, was found growing under a walnut tree at Riverston, Co Tipperary in 1911 by James Hill Poë. It needs good drainage and flowers late in the season. 14cm. 3 G. ‘Brenda Troyle’ This early-flowering hybrid, with a broad inverted ‘V’ at the apex, was found on the Acton family estate in Co Wicklow. It has large, rounded flowers, a honey scent and grey-blue leaves. 20cm. 4 G. ikariae ‘Emerald Isle’ This Irish snowdrop has broad, green markings on the outer segments and is almost entirely green on the inner segments. It was…

GARDEN MASTERCLASS A place to learn, share and experience knowledge, skills and ideas. Garden designer Annie Guilfoyle and horticulturist, writer and researcher Noel Kingsbury are delighted to announce the 2018 Garden Masterclass schedule, running from April to November. With new tutors and new venues to add to the list please check our website for all the dates and course details. Bringing together gardeners and designers with the very best and most innovative people in the gardening world through one-day workshops in different parts of the British Isles. Each workshop is organised around a specific topic, and designed to help participants learn, create and apply new knowledge and skills. Tutors: Helen & James Basson; Tom Brown; Jimi Blake; Hugo Bugg; Ursula Cholmeley; Marina Christopher; Nigel Dunnett; Annie Guilfoyle; Charlotte Harris;…

FLEUR VAN ZONNEVELD Fleur begins a new series of plantman’s favourites on page 24. “I have so many favourites that choosing only ten plants each month is truly a challenge.” JAMES ALEXANDER - SINCLAIR James shares his ideas for hedges on page 96. “A beautifully clipped hedge is like a well-cut suit – subtle, understated but effortlessly elegant.” ANNIE GATTI Annie compiles our monthly design news on page 93. “Garden designers get ideas from such a wide range of places, objects, materials and images. I love the process of selection each month.”…

Our journey to the Italian Lakes will take us to some of the finest lakeside and island gardens of this uniquely beautiful region. We will travel mostly by boat, discovering landscapes of quiet enchantment and sublime grandeur. While our days will be infused with exquisite light, by night we will revel in the fin de siècle atmosphere of our lakeside hotels. The warm, humid microclimate results in exceptional growing conditions, with much to enthuse the plantsman. Combining great botanical interest with the fascinating history of the gardens’ origins, our tour will move from the Renaissance to the 20th century through compelling and often neglected chapters of Italian garden history with visits including the baroque splendours of Isola Bella and Villa del Balbianello, perched atop a small wooded peninsula, and the…

Dumfries and Galloway lies in the tranquil southwest corner of Scotland. Often overlooked in the rush to the Highlands and Islands, this lush, low-lying region has diverse natural beauty, a rich romantic history, traces of the poet Robert Burns and a mild microclimate, warmed by the Gulf Stream. Little-known historic estates with notable collections of uncommon trees, an impressive botanic garden and specialist nurseries, such as the late Michael Wickenden’s Cally Gardens, put this region on my horticultural map. Here, rich, free-draining, lime-free soil and high rainfall provide optimum growing conditions for ‘champion’ trees, rhododendrons, camellias and magnolias. You can breathe the scent of the sea, wander through towering evergreen woodlands, tiptoe through carpets of naturalised snowdrops and shelter beneath swaying palms all in the same afternoon. Inspiration for the…

CULTIVATING PLACE Average length 50 minutes How often is it released Weekly Link cultivatingplace.com Host Jennifer Jewell puts the culture back into horticulture and explores the different ways gardens and gardening have, and continue to have, an impact in a wider sense. Have you ever taken the time to consider why you spend time cultivating the garden and exploring the gardens of others? Perhaps not to any great length, but for garden writer Jennifer Jewell, host of Cultivating Place, this question is at the heart of every conversation featured on her podcast. Broadcast on public radio in California each week, its full title is Cultivating Place: conversations on natural history and the human impulse to garden, and it is based on two beliefs. The first is that horticulture is on…

1 G. ‘Margaret Owen’ Hester loves the elegant flowers of this hybrid, which was named for the English galanthophile Margaret Owen. She bought this at one of Margaret’s famed snowdrop lunches, held annually at her garden, The Patch in Shropshire, to coincide with the end of the flowering season. The lunch would be followed by an open day and sale. 28cm. 2 G. ‘Erway’ This mid-season snowdrop, which often makes two scapes per bulb, is easy to recognise from a distance because of its long, olive-green ovary. 16cm. 3 G. ‘Fly Fishing’ This early-flowering snowdrop, found by Avon Bulbs, is named for its long pedicel (or flower stem), which suggests a fishing line. It has an exceptionally long scape and upright spathe (the green bract that originally enclosed the flower…

Castanea sativa sweet chestnut Sweet chestnuts feel like native trees, but this is perhaps because they have been in the UK for so long. In fact they are native to southern Europe and Asia Minor, but were brought here by the Romans, who planted them across the empire. Sweet chestnut is loved for its edible nuts, collected as they fall in autumn and delicious roasted. In parts of the Mediterranean such as Corsica where it is mountainous and impossible to grow wheat, sweet chestnuts are grown in vast numbers and the nuts ground down to make flour, which has become a staple in the local diet. In the UK the tree is found in woodlands and parkland, and is particularly common in the southeast of England, where it was once…

Where would our gardens be without hedges? They are our boundaries, our walls, our dividing screens, our guardians, our supports and our skeletons. In spring they burst into fresh clean growth, in summer they shelter nesting birds and provide a solid background for our borders, and in winter they carry the snow and give architecture to our frosted gardens. To answer my own question, therefore, we would be up the creek and in the soup. The history of the hedge is one of protection rather than ornamentation, beginning when man evolved enough to keep animals. It was generally considered a bad idea to have your sheep/goats/cattle/horses/ children wandering off unchallenged, so the field boundary hedge was invented. Initially, it was formed from thorny branches cut from nearby trees, but in…

THE BOOK OF SEEDS: A LIFE-SIZE GUIDE TO SIX HUNDRED SPECIES FROM AROUND THE WORLD Consultant editor Paul Smith Ivy Press, £30 ISBN 978-1782405207 Written by expert botanists and biologists, the book is a beautifully illustrated overview of the importance and diversity of seeds. Reviewer John Hoyland is a plantsman and garden writer. The Book of Seeds is an engrossing account of the importance of seeds and how they have evolved since they first appeared over 240 million years ago. As a source of food, as a means of climate regulation and even as flood defence, seeds are essential to the survival of life on earth. It’s the work of a group of writers, scientists and researchers associated with Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) under the editorship of Paul Smith,…

Every issue we aim to give you plenty of planting inspiration – but in February we go all out to promote the gardening year and the approach of spring with our 100 must-have plants feature (see page 37). This year designer Sarah Price has made the selection. Renowned for her painterly, romantic planting schemes, her selection offers lots of ideas to pick and choose from. To help get any new planting ideas sorted, online nursery Crocus.co.uk is offering readers a 15 per cent discount across its plant, bulb and seed range. HOW TO ORDER Go to crocus.co.uk to make your selection of plants, bulbs and seeds. To receive your discount, enter the code GARDENS15 when prompted. Your 15 per cent discount will be applied at the checkout stage. DELIVERY Standard…

PERILLA ALPACA SOCKS Perfect socks for the busy gardener. Gorgeous, short ribbed and three-quarter, 75% alpaca socks with soft cushioned sole, ribbed sides and hand-linked toes for supreme comfort. Alpaca is as soft as cashmere but more hard wearing and keep feet at a perfect temperature. Fabulous palette of colours. 01886 853 615 perilla.co.uk BUFFERS Monmouth-based Buffers is a mail-order company specialising in locally made designer fleece clothing, using the latest super soft anti-pill fleece in a variety of fashionable and colourful styles. To see the range, please visit our website. 01600 712744 buffersfleece.com BARKA PARKA Stop wasting money on beds that don’t last. Add your pets to the worldwide Barka Parka family enjoying lifelong comfort and support. Fantastic size range. Our beds are hand-made to…

JAMES BASSON James lives in the South of France where he runs Scape Design with his wife Helen and is a passionate advocate for dry gardens and for creating sustainable landscapes. The winner of four Chelsea Gold medals, he was awarded Best in Show in 2017. FERGUS GARRETT Fergus was appointed head gardener at Great Dixter by Christopher Lloyd in 1993. He is passionate about passing on his knowledge through student and volunteer programmes at Dixter and through worldwide lectures. He was awarded an RHS Associate of Honour in 2008. ANNA PAVORD Anna’s books include her bestseller The Tulip and most recently Landskipping. For 30 years she was The Independent’s gardening correspondent. In 2000 the RHS awarded her the Veitch Memorial Medal. She lives and gardens in Dorset. DAN PEARSON…

SEEING THE WHITE Woodlands carpeted in white can mean only one thing: snowdrop season is here and the chance to explore some of the gardens opening for the National Garden Scheme Snowdrop Festival 2018. More than 100 gardens, including Welford Park in Berkshire (pictured), will open this year, some with as many as 300 named snowdrop cultivars, as well as other early spring flowers. The entrance fee to the snowdrop gardens will contribute to the many charities supported by the NGS, including Marie Curie and Hospice UK. Find full details at ngs.org.uk/snowdrops…

VIBURNUM X BODNANTENSE ‘CHARLES LAMONT’ In winter this viburnum produces blooms of fragrant pink flowers that over time fade to a lighter tint. It is far lovelier than the better known V. x bodnantense ‘Dawn’, and just a few branches will fill your home with a sweet-smelling scent. To maintain strong and beautiful productive growth it’s important you prune after flowering but do so very carefully; at the most remove just a few old branches. AGM*. Height 2.5m. Origin Taken from a seedling raised at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, in 1933. Conditions Moderately fertile, humus-rich soil; full sun to full shade. Hardiness RHS H6, USDA 6a-9b† . Season Winter to early spring. LEUCOJUM VERNUM For the past few years a virulent snowdrop epidemic has been sweeping the Netherlands. It…

Earliest garden memory We both have similar memories of running mud pie factories and conducting the herbaceous borders as if each of the plants were part of an orchestra. Who has inspired your career? Beatrix Havergal – a brilliant horticulturist and passionate educator, who founded Waterperry School of Horticulture in 1932; Lady Eve Balfour a British farmer, educator and organic gardening pioneer and a founding figure in the organic movement; Vita Sackville-West for her love of abundance and wild fun, and Nancy Lancaster for a bit of glamour. How did you meet and what sparked your idea of working together? We met through a friend. We were both working in the world of gardens and realised we shared a similar philosophy about gardens and growing – a belief in a…

Coosheen, a garden on the edge of Cork city in the south of Ireland, is sheltered from the salty winds whipping off the Atlantic by a boundary of beech hedging. When Hester and Paddy Forde originally moved into the chalet house there, they inherited a few apple trees and some grass – level at the back and sloping at the front. Thirty years later, the two-part garden is a multi-layered plantsman’s delight, where each plant has been selected for its form, colour or scent. Inspired by visits to the Dublin garden that formerly belonged to the author and horticulturist Helen Dillon, Hester combines bulbs with perennials, evergreens and grasses. Her passion for snowdrops has created a garden that draws you out, even on the coldest of winter days. Where did…

PLANT PROFILE What Deciduous or evergreen shrubs, most with highly fragrant flowers. Origins Europe, Asia and North Africa. Many cultivars are of garden origin. Season Winter-, spring- and summer-flowering species and cultivars. Those that flower in winter are the best known. Hardiness Garden hardy, RHS H4-6 and USDA 4a-9b depending on species or cultivar. Size Dwarf- to medium-sized shrubs from 45cm to 2.4m in height. Conditions Sheltered situation on reasonably moist neutral to alkaline soil, with some exceptions. Most prefer partial shade and dislike hot, dry situations. *Holds an Award of Garden Merit from the Royal Horticultural Society.† Hardiness ratings given where available. Many gardeners love plants that are a challenge, both to grow and to source. I remember one keen plantsman telling me that half the enjoyment of any…

I LOVE THE CAMARADERIE AT SHOWS, BUT I REALLY MISS ENJOYING SPRING. FOR A NURSERYMAN IT IS THE MOST STRESSFUL TIME OF YEAR When Paul Barney’s ship sank he was furious. “I felt such rage that my life was about to end when I had only just got started.” He was travelling home from an Estonian willow conference on that night in 1994 when disaster struck. The incident killed 852 people, and Paul was moments from death himself when he was finally winched to safety from an upturned life raft six traumatic hours later. The path that brought him to that fateful point was by no means straightforward. He had a bohemian upbringing in rural Berkshire, surrounded by cats, dogs, chickens and guinea pigs. “There was home brew in the…

Innovative green cladding on a Singapore hotel has won architecture firm WOHA one of the Urban Land Institute’s 2017-18 Global Awards for Excellence. The main façade of the 27-storey Oasia Hotel Downtown is lined with greenery entwined around vertical grid panels in five shades of red. The greenery is enhanced by the 30m-tall Sky Terrace cut three-dimensionally into the building like a huge window, providing natural ventilation as well as habitats for birds and insects. The building is also capped with a rooftop garden. oasiahotels.com…

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PEONIES: BEAUTIFUL VARIETIES FOR HOME AND GARDEN by Jane Eastoe, photographs by Georgianna Lane Timber Press, £21.99 ISBN 978-1423648314 Recommended cultivars with basic growing information. CHARLES DOWDING’S VEG JOURNAL: EXPERT NO-DIG ADVICE, MONTH BY MONTH by Charles Dowding Frances Lincoln, £9.99 ISBN 978-0711239289 Monthly crop calendar and seasonal check-list. THE WILD BOOK: OUTDOOR ACTIVITIES TO UNLEASH YOUR INNER CHILD by David Scarfe Orion Publishing Group, £16.99 ISBN 978-1409172727 Full of fun, easy-to-do outdoor games and activities. BLOOD, SWEAT AND SCONES: TWO DECADES AT CROOK HALL by Keith James Bell Troubador Publishing, £7.99 ISBN 978-1788035286 The story behind Crook Hall and its transformation from home to tourist attraction. THE HERBALL’S GUIDE TO BOTANICAL DRINKS by Michael Isted Jacqui Small, £20 ISBN 978-1847809278 A history on the alchemy and use of plants…

1 CHIRK CASTLE, NATIONAL TRUST Chase away those winter blues with a walk around Chirk Castle’s award-winning gardens and take in the carpet of delicate snowdrops in the Pleasure Ground. Warm your hands over the fire in the Woodsman’s Hut, enjoy early spring bulbs throughout the gardens, explore the medieval tower or warm up in the 1920s splendour of the East Wing. chirkcastle@nationaltrust.org.uk | nationaltrust.org.uk/chirk-castle 2 CHIPPENHAM PARK More than 35 acres of spectacular woodland, lakes and formal gardens. A magnificent display of snowdrops, aconites and hellebores followed by vast numbers of daffodils and blossoms. Licensed tearoom with hot food and cakes. £5 entry. Nr Newmarket, CB7 5PT. 10 February – 9 March & 17 – 30 March. 10am - 4pm i nfo@chippenhamparkevents.co.uk | 01638 721416 3 GREEN ISLAND GARDENS Twenty acres…

1. RV ROGER LTD Traditional third generation nursery, growing a huge range of heritage roses, fruit trees and hardy nursery stock in the Vale of Pickering, North Yorkshire. Multiple RHS Gold Medal awards. Plant Centre open all year round. rvroger.co.uk | 01751 472226 2. KEN MUIR As a family business with over 50 years experience, we at Ken Muir pride ourselves on providing only the highest-quality fruit trees, soft fruits, canes and vines. One of our key aims is to share our knowledge and expertise. kenmuir.co.uk | 01255 830181 3. ORNAMENTAL TREES Family run business specialising in ornamental trees, fruit trees and large shrubs. Over 550 varieties to choose from, offered in various sizes from young plants to mature specimen trees up to 6 metres. ornamental-trees.co.uk | 01943 660870 4. WEASDALE NURSERIES LTD…

ANY FOOL CAN GET A TENDER PLANT THROUGH THE FIRST HALF OF WINTER. IT IS THESE LAST DAYS THAT COUNT, WHEN YOU HAVE TO MANAGE THE SLOW AWAKENING It is a dangerous time for the somnolent. Warm days and lengthening days will have them stirring in their stores and there will be a great temptation, after months of mean trickles that kept the soil just this side of dust, to give everything a good drenching. Leaves are crisp, stems are withered; tubers and rhizomes shrivel with every passable day. Those salvias look as though they are past saving, and some of them are, but the best chance of the survivors is that you keep your head well into March. We may be about to have our coldest weather. I freely…