Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2024 i Gardens Illustrated Magazine

As early spring approaches, gardeners get busy planning all the things they would like to grow this year, so we thought this was the perfect time to create an exciting issue focused on plants and planting. For starters, Fergus Garrett has chosen the ultimate list of his 50 favourite plants (page 20), with the esteemed head gardener of Great Dixter choosing treasures he grows, would love to grow or couldn’t live without. Award-winning designer Jo Thompson starts her new series on container planting with three simple but beautiful ideas for early spring pots (page 60). We journey to Sparoza in Greece, where a series of remarkable women have carved an experimental dry garden out of a hostile, scrubby hillside, using Mediterranean plants from all over the world (page 42); and…

3 Plants Before Time Visit Wisley to discover fascinating houseplants among fossils and footprints. Saturday 3 February – Sunday 10 March, 10am-3.45pm (opens 9.30am weekends). RHS Garden Wisley, Woking, Surrey GU23 6QB. rhs.org.uk 6 Herbalist Walk, Talk and Tea Dive into the world of medicinal plants and their healing properties with an expert herbalist. Tuesday 6 February, 11am-12.30pm. £15. One Garden Brighton, Stanmer Park, Lewes Road, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 9SE. onegardenbrighton.com 28 Early Flowering Perennials with Rosy Hardy A talk on the attributes of 24 early flowering perennials. Wednesday 28 February, 10.30am-12.30pm. £22.50. Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants, Whitchurch, Hampshire RG28 7FA. hardysplants.co.uk…

IN BRIEF What Experimental dry garden, owned by the Goulandris Natural History Museum, and is the headquarters of the Mediterranean Garden Society. Where 30km east of central Athens, Greece. Size Four acres. Soil Alkaline. Intensively gardened areas have mostly the terra rosa soil of the Mesogeian plain over which the garden looks, but the wild hillside above has thin, stony soil. Climate Mediterranean (long, hot summers; short, rainy winters). Hardiness zone USDA 9. Just east of Athens, overlooking the Mesogeian plain, lies a unique garden -Sparoza. Established in the 1960s by the renowned British urban planner Jacky Tyrwhitt, around her private home, it is an organic, experimental, dry garden with a treasure trove of nearly 1,000 different Greek native and Mediterranean climate-zone plants. It has also been the headquarters of the Mediterranean Garden Society (MGS)…

• Eranthis that are sold as dry tubers by bulb merchants tend to be E. cilicica. They don’t like becoming desiccated, so get them as early as possible and soak in water for 24 hours before planting. Even so, success may be low. It’s preferable to source growing plants in spring. • Ideal conditions seem to be light well-drained loam that’s alkaline to neutral, without too much competition from dense vegetation. Sparse grass under deciduous trees is an ideal growing location, so long as there’s plenty of light in spring – winter aconites go dormant as the canopy develops, and the next you’ll see of them is their stems heaving out of the ground in January. Where winter aconites thrive they can spread over wide areas and form golden carpets.…

Dr Mark Spencer reckons that plants are woven into the fibre of his being. “I’ve been obsessed with them since I was a toddler growing up in rural Warwickshire,” he says. “I dream about them and I navigate my way around towns and cities by remembering something that’s growing on a street corner.” Certainly, his every waking hour is spent working with plant material, whether he is advising on invasive species, teaching a class on plant identification, looking after the unique herbarium samples at London’s renowned natural history institute, the Linnean Society, or studying flora to help piece together what has happened at a crime scene. This latter endeavour – forensic botany – has become one of Mark’s specialities over the past 15 years, ever since he received a chance…

PLANTS NURSERY If someone told you they had raised, say, a dodo, or a dinosaur, you’d find it hard to believe, but Andrew Shaw has done just that – resurrected an extinct species. Founder of the Rare British Plants Nursery, he specialises in cultivating endangered native plants, and last year, he brought York groundsel back from the dead. Endemic to England, in fact, to York – meaning it only grew there – York groundsel (Senecio eboracensis) could once be found growing wild on wastelands, train tracks, footpaths and car parks around the city. The last-known plant died in 2003, and there were no examples left in cultivation. But Kew’s Millennium Seed Bank, did have some 20-year-old seeds in cold storage, which they sent to Andrew and which, miraculously, he got…

Jo Thompson Designer Jo starts a new container series, page 60. “Taking a new look at pots and colour through the year, with something for everyone and every budget, has been the dream challenge.” Hannah McVicar Hannah illustrates our guide to creating a seeded perennial meadow, page 76. “It was such a delight to bring Sam Taylor-Hunt’s seeded perennial meadow to life with my drawings.” John Campbell John photographs an unusual nursery for rare British native plants, page 88. “Andrew’s passion for these lesser-known wild plants opened my eyes to the need to conserve them.” CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Charlotte Harris Charlotte co-founded the values-driven landscape design practice Harris Bugg Studio with Hugo Bugg in 2017. She has won three Gold medals at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, as well as Best…

Who has inspired your career? We have shared a career from college to our current position at Knepp – we’re horticultural partners in crime. A huge influence for both of us has been a network of incredible professional women gardeners in Sussex, with whom we have worked for years, sharing jobs, knowledge and raising families. Favourite garden The Old Vicarage in Firle, East Sussex at the foot of the South Downs. It was designed by Lanning Roper and was the first garden we worked in together. Moy still cares for it today and has done so for 18 years. It is a dreamy series of walled gardens, tended with love for generations, which you can feel in every corner. Worthwhile tips Use a good-quality moisturiser, with SPF. Get to know…

Plants SPRING BEAUTY The breathtaking beauty in the tiniest of spring bulbs never fails to enchant. Here, Narcissus ‘Minnow’ and N. ‘Elka’ sprinkle palest yellow cheer across a shallow bronze bowl, creating the perfect, classic, spring colour combination with the blues of Scilla luciliae and S. siberica. This planting is designed to be placed on a table or raised wall so that these small spring jewels can be admired in all their beauty in this little mini-meadow. How to achieve the look Container and composition Small spring bulbs are so beautiful, but their diminutive size means they can be easily overlooked in the garden, so it’s a really good idea to place them in containers, which can be positioned at a higher level. This bronze ’charger’ is a wide, shallow…

PLANTING DESIGN As a garden designer and soft landscaper, I’ve put together my fair share of beautiful borders, planting countless spring bulbs, small pots and bareroot roses. But recently my imagination has been set alight by a completely new way of creating riotously colourful beds of herbaceous plants, with a planting style and process known as a seeded perennial meadow (SPM). You may have seen SPMs used to amazing effect by Professors James Hitchmough and Nigel Dunnett at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, created for the 2012 London Olympics. Since then, SPMs have started popping up in botanical gardens, such as Oxford and RHS Garden Wisley, and large charity-held estates, including Chatsworth House. What is an SPM? An SPM is, in short, an area of dense planting that returns every…

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You can find plenty more events to enjoy by going to our online diary. Scan this QR code with your phone camera or go to gardensillustrated.com/gardenevents OUT & ABOUT BEAUTY IN BIODIVERSITY Kew’s annual orchid festival returns to the Princess of Wales Conservatory from 3 February to 3 March. The conservatory will be filled with installations showcasing orchids and the amazing biodiversity of Madagascar. From spiny forests to succulent woodlands, visitors will be treated to a huge horticultural display alongside some of the Malagasy orchids that are cared for at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Entry included with a garden ticket; slots must be booked. More information at kew.org Talking point TRUE COST OF VALENTINE'S DAY Valentine’s Day is synonymous with red roses, but the Spring Summer Autumn Winter Collective (SSAW)…

PLANTS FESTIVAL E ach October, volunteers in the market town of Shepton Mallet in Somerset plant thousands of snowdrop bulbs on roadsides, roundabouts, in schools and in other public places. In February, the opening of those flowers coincides with the Shepton Mallet Snowdrop Festival, which takes over the market town. The festival draws an international crowd of snowdrop devotees and many dress up for the occasion. Chalkboard signs, beautifully illustrated with snowdrops, draw visitors through the streets and direct them to the various venues that host the event. Garden designer Dan Pearson is patron, and there are snowdrop-related tours, talks, activities and competitions, as well as open gardens, including nearby Yeo Valley Organic Garden, featuring swathes of white flowers. In the hall of a local junior school, an assembly of…

Katy Merrington's top 10 plant books Katy Merrington, cultural gardener at The Hepworth Wakefield, rummages through her bookshelves to choose her ultimate list of titles for planting inspiration and plant identification as well as mind-opening essays, explorations and missives on plants THE GRASMERE JOURNALS by Dorothy Wordsworth Oxford Paperbacks (1993) ISBN 978-0192831309 The plants that fill our favourite landscapes can embody the season for us and make a place and moment special. Dorothy Wordsworth captured her love for the plants around her in the journal that she began in May 1800, while sharing Dove Cottage in Grasmere in the Lake District with her brother, the poet William Wordsworth. The diary was written solely for her brother to enjoy, and it inspired some of his poems. It is made up of…