Innholdsfortegnelse for January 2023 i Gardens Illustrated Magazine

As each new year starts, I can't help but look back on the previous growing season, ponder what I could have done differently and despair about what I never got around to doing. It's an impulse that leads to long periods standing at the window, staring out at my silent, still plot of bare sticks and seedheads, trying to conjure in my mind the version of the garden I wished I had achieved. The one I might yet achieve this year if I were to lift that plant, and move that one over there, and redo that section completely. At times like these, inspiration in the form of expert plant picks is invaluable, and I know I will find the best and most sustainable suggestions in our 100 plants feature…

ON THE LOOKOUT This month, the RSPB is asking us all to spend an hour in our gardens counting birds as part of its annual Big Garden Birdwatch. Last year's count showed a rise in the numbers of several familiar feathered friends, including the greenfinch (pictured) and the house sparrow, which was 2022's most-recorded bird, although numbers for many were down from the first count in 1979. This yearly snapshot helps the RSPB keep track of how birds are coping with the challenges of a changing world, informing the ways in which it can take action to protect and preserve our wildlife. To find out how to get involved in this year's Big Garden Birdwatch (27-29 January), head to rspb.org.uk/birdwatch Fundamental floristry Hone your floristry skills at Bath Flower School's…

Tidy greenhouse During the colder months of winter, it's important to maintain hygiene in the greenhouse. Regularly remove dead leaves and detritus from overwintering plants and cuttings to reduce the chance of fungal infections. Prune roses Prune shrub, bush and climbing roses now while dormant, hard pruning back to strong growth or thinning and tying in lax stems as required. As a general rule, shrub and rambling roses require less pruning than floribunda and hybrid teas. Prioritise removing dead, dying and diseased wood. Plan summer pots Decide on summer pot combinations, making sure you have the existing plants you will require or are ready to order specific species and cultivars to ensure your containers are a success. Prune fruit While dormant, winter prune apple and pear trees, along with vines,…

Nourish II, £19,950, Michael Speller, 07930 480347, spellersculptures.com Two Thrills, From £500, Diana Roles, dianaroles.co.uk Stone Balancing Garden Sculpture, From £1,450, Adrian Gray, 07305 898546, stonebalancing.com Search for Enlightenment, £327,000 per pair, Simon Gudgeon, 07779 712298, simongudgeon.com Watchful Stag, £3,550, Andrew Kay, 07740 306412, andrewkaysculpture.co.uk Medbourne Outdoor Obelisk Sculpture, From £375, Arthur Francis, 01858 419940, afsculpture.uk Swirl, From £19,000, Ben Barrell, 07970 872435, barrellsculpture.co.uk Kernal, From £18,226, David Harber, 01235 859300, davidharber.co.uk Braganca, From £1,675, Garden Art and Sculpture, 07501 213800, gardenartandsculpture.co.uk…

Catherine Horwood Catherine celebrates the life of plantswoman Beth Chatto, page 42. “Her philosophy on plant ecology and climate change was way ahead of its time” Sabrina Rothe Sabrina photographs a German snowdrop garden, page 66. “The outstanding collection of snowdrops is the shining star in January among all the evergreens and special collection of ferns.” Marian Boswall Designer Marian visits a sustainably designed garden in the South of France that has been planted for wildlife, page 72. “There are lessons for us all here in creating beauty in an austere environment.” CONTRIBUTING EDITORS James Basson James lives in the South of France where he runs Scape Design, a practice specialising in low-maintenance and dry gardens. He is a fervent advocate for creating sustainable landscapes. The winner of four Chelsea…

1 Entwined: Plants in Contemporary Painting View artwork by leading British painters in this curated exhibition, supported by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, whose botanists provide commentary on the pieces. Until 28 January, Wednesday to Saturday, llam-4pm. Free. Huddersfield Art Gallery, Unit 7, The Piazza Shopping Centre, Princess Alexandra Walk, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire HD12RS.Tel 01484 221964, kirklees.gov.uk/beta/museums-and-galleries/huddersfield-art-gallery.aspx 2 Winter Sculpture Exhibition Sculptures in a variety of styles are waiting to be discovered at the Winter Sculpture Exhibition at RHS Garden Rosemoor. More than 120 pieces by 32 artists are on show, with many for sale. Until 31 January, 10am-4pm. Admission free with garden entry (£12.95). RHS Garden Rosemoor, Great Torrington, Devon EX38 8PH.Tel 01805 624067, rhs.org.uk 3 Your Garden in Winter From propagation to preparations for the year ahead, this…

At Hermannshof, we use the German system of garden habitats to select plants according to their habitat requirements, sociability and aesthetic qualities. This is essential to achieve long-term, ecologically balanced and low-maintenance horticultural plant communities in gardens and urban green spaces. With climate change, this will become even more important for future planting design. My selection of 100 beautiful and sustainable plants is categorised according to growing conditions and use. For long-lasting interest 1 AMSONIA ‘BLUE ICE’ A neat mound of narrow, dark-green foliage is topped with large clusters of vivid, lavender-blue flowers. An amazingly vigorous plant with excellent yellow autumn colour. Height (H) 40cm. Spread (S) 40cm. Conditions (C) Well-drained soil; full sun to part shade. Season of interest (SI) May – November. Hardiness ratings (HR) RHS H4, USDA…

Paolo Arrigo can't sit still. A fourth-generation London Italian, he wears his multiculturalism on his sleeve, enthusing wildly about all his passions from slow food, endangered vegetables and biodiversity to foraging, cooking from scratch and accordion-playing. He talks quickly and with conviction, always in a hurry to stand up for what he believes in and to get things done. His company, Seeds of Italy, is a full-time job, but he also gives 50 talks a year to groups, sits on several volunteer committees, has just trained as a St John Ambulance operational events first aider and has even gone to the Ukrainian border three times over the past year to drive refugees to safety. When he cares, he acts. For Paolo, gardening and food are indistinguishable. Seeds of Italy, which…

Olympic National Park, Washington, USA There are stunning temperate rainforests in the west of the Olympic National Park, especially around Quinault and Hoh, where you will find trails with giant Sitka spruce and red cedar so thickly draped in moss and epiphytes that the effect is positively prehistoric. The park also has excellent displays of wildflowers above the treeline, starting at around 1,300m. According to the renowned American plantsman and plant collector Dan Hinkley, the road that leads to Hurricane Ridge, in the northern Olympics, is the only place in the park where you can drive on a paved road from sea level to alpine meadow, through wildflower displays that vary from year to year depending on the amount of snow that falls. “Great drifts of our native Erythronium montanum (pictured)…

Tom Massey Sensitive approach With excessive heat and subsequent drought in the summer, along with more frequent storms and an increase in unpredictable weather events, resilient garden design has become really important. We need to be designing gardens that can tolerate current conditions but are also adaptable and able to deal with the climate of the future, which could be significantly different in a matter of years London, for example, is predicted to be more like Barcelona by 2050. The RHS has banned the use of the word ‘pest’, encouraging gardeners to value all forms of life in the garden, and to see our gardens as part of a wider ecosystem and landscape. The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is often a good way to measure trends in garden design, and…

GRANDI GIARDINI ITALIANI: THE ESSENCE OF PARADISE by Judith Wade, Delfina Rattazzi and Caterina Napoleone Franco Maria Ricci, £67 ISBN 979-1280294050 This magnificent celebration of the work of Grandi Giardini Italiani serves as both a history of Italian gardens and a visitors’ guide. Helena Attlee is a freelance writer. Italy had shown little or no interest in its gardens for years by the time Judith Wade founded Grandi Giardini Italiani (Great Italian Gardens) in 1997. The rate of attrition had been high since the Second World War made luxuries such as gardeners unaffordable, and important historic gardens all over Italy had been sliding ever closer to dereliction. Grandi Giardini Italiani turned the tide, inspiring owners to pay for their gardens’ upkeep by opening their gates to the public and offering…

Prints charming Becky Crowley is a woman of many talents. The former cut-flower grower at Chatsworth House describes herself as part-gardener and part-artist, and combines her day job as a designer of cut-flower gardens with her passion for botanical photography. Later this month she's reopening her online shop, which offers a range of beautiful images of her intricate displays of seasonal flowers. Printed on archival paper, they're available in three sizes, with prices starting at £42. Gardens Illustrated readers can get an exclusive 10 per cent discount on all prints until 31 March 2023 using the code Gardensillustrated10%. beckycrowley.com…

Earliest garden memory I remember my parents’ pretty basic attempt at growing vegetables. I think it only lasted a season, but at the age of seven or eight, I was fascinated to discover that we could grow our own food and particularly excited by the meagre crop of carrots. Horticultural heroes Plantswoman Beth Chatto and head gardeners Fergus Garrett and Tom Coward are all huge inspirations to me. I admire Fergus and Tom for their passion and commitment to projects at a single location, something I've tried to emulate in my own career. And Beth's mantra, ‘right plant, right place’, constantly resonates with me. Favourite landscape and garden that has influenced you Stourhead, Gravetye Manor, Oudolf Field at Hauser & Wirth, Somerset, and Great Dixter all spring to mind. I…

• Box blight flourishes in damp and humid conditions where good air flow is restricted. It is therefore no surprise that it ran wild through old hedges where decades of clipping at the same height made incredibly dense plants. Furthermore, our love of summerflowering herbaceous plants spilling over formal box hedges helped compound the issue. Tell-tale signs were the yellowing and death of the foliage, then the stem tips, which spread across the plant. Yet blight feels somewhat tame in comparison to the damage caused by the caterpillar of the box tree moth, which feeds at such speed that whole box balls have been defoliated in 48 hours. • The caterpillar is large and quite easy to spot, not dissimilar to the cabbage white caterpillar. In my own west London…

Great gardens take time and vision, and many are lost along the way. But not the Arboretum Park Härle, near Bonn in western Germany. This is a collectors’ garden, which combined with excellent plantsmanship, has matured into a welldesigned space, with a very English flavour. Its story begins in 1921, when Carl Hä3rle bought land around his summer house with plans to create a woodland garden. However, it was two of Carl's daughters, Maria and Regina, who were the real driving forces behind the garden. They took over care of the garden from their father's death in 1950 until their own respective deaths in 1996 and 2000. Maria, in particular, made numerous trips to the UK to visit gardens and to add to her growing plant collection. “We have huge…

Growing organically, cutting down on watering, and using local materials with a low-carbon footprint are more and more important KRISTINA CLODE Jo Thompson Shifts in colour I'm seeing in clients an ever-increasing willingness to consider more soft, as opposed to hard, landscaping: planting areas coming up to the house with a sensible amount of terrace space for dining, and very much moving away from the notion of sweeping terraces across the back of the house simply for the sake of it. This is right across the board, from small gardens through to larger plots; the idea of gleaming, paved ostentation is firmly out of the window. My planting style has always been natural and romantic, and I'm delighted to see that this is now considered mainstream. The key to the…

A FLOWER A DAY by Miranda Janatka Batsford. £20 ISBN 978-1849947176 Every day, a different species of flower bursts into bloom somewhere in the world, and Janatka highlights the fascinating facts behind a selection. EXPERIENCING OLMSTED Timber Press, £40 ISBN 978-1643260365 An exploration of the 200 spaces, including New York's Central Park, created by Frederick Law Olmsted often dubbed the father of American landscape architecture. GRASPING THE NETTLE by Tamsin Westhorpe Orphans Publishing, £14.99 ISBN 978-1903360514 A humorous memoir about makiri; a living from horticulture, with a cast of colourful characters and a host of gardening exploits. MEXICAN PLANTS Kew Publishing, £9.99 ISBN 978-1842467671 A celebration of Mexican plants, including orchids, cacti, marigolds and dahlias, showcased through 40 stunning paintings from the Kew archives. RHS ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GARDENING (NEW EDITION)…