Crocus time

I used to be a bit dismissive of crocuses, not really worth the effort I thought. But an amazing display in my local park last year changed my mind.

Snowdrops are exciting because there’s almost nothing else in flower at the time. But they’re white and you have to get down on your hands and knees to see them. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s worth the effort, but when you come across a lawn of crocuses in their tricolour array of white, yellow and purple it can stop you in your tracks.

Crocus Pickwick

Crocuses are easy to grow. They don’t mind sun or a bit of shade, as long as the soil isn’t too wet in winter. They do well under deciduous trees as the have finished flowering by the time the trees have leafed-up. They also look good in grass and as they die back earlier than daffodils they don’t interrupt your mowing regime as much.

Crocus tommassianius Barr’s Purple

Although crocuses are very tolerant of the vagaries of British weather they will only open up in the sun. They are an early source of nectar and are magnets for bees on warm sunny days. And they can have a tendency to keel over in heavy rain.

Introduced to Britain by the Romans, the saffron crocus, Crocus sativus, was used as a dye. There are over 200 named varieties of crocus. Their taxonomy (classification) is complex and has changed many times since the Romans.

We are used to seeing crocus as small bright pops of colour in our gardens but some gardens showcase them in style by planting literally thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands). One of the most magnificent spectacles is at Ham House in London.

Ham House gardens

Ham House gardens

Even the most meticulous plans can experience the odd hiccup however.

Ham House gardens

If you haven’t got acres to show off your crocuses they look pretty good in pots, especially when combined with other early spring bulbs. I found all these at Sissinghurst just before the first lockdown.

Crocuses also come in yellow by the way, I just don’t seem to have many photos of them.

The cooler weather means crocuses will still be looking good for a couple of weeks yet. Some good places to see them:

Ham House - free with a National Trust card

Sissinghurst - also National Trust

Kew Gardens - naturally

Inkpen Crocus Field in Berkshire

2023, a year in photos

I googled “what will 2023 be famous for?” There were some forecasts - war, climate catastrophe, financial turbulence and technological change - so far, so predictable. But a fashion trend for blackened teeth thankfully hasn’t come to pass (or did I miss it?).

Wimbledon Common in January

The year started with a famously cold January. It was a near record of eight days in a row of freezing temperatures. Whilst Wimbledon Common looked fab in the heavy frost the weather took its toll in the garden. Many people lost plants, in particular Hebes, Erigeron karvinskianus and Penstemons. They were hard to replace initially as the frost had affected so many gardens as well as suppliers in the UK and Europe.

Cyclamen at Wakehurst Place in February

One answer to this is to plant a winter garden, full of plants that look their best at this time of year. I went to visit Wakehurst Place which has a fairly new winter garden. It didn’t disappoint and partly as a response to this we have developed a couple of winter borders in my local park.

Magnificent magnolia in Bushy Park in March

A persistent easterly wind in March and April meant that spring felt like a long time coming but finally, after a few false starts, I got on a plane for the first time in three years to go to the garden island of Madeira.

Fanal Forest, Madeira, in April

There were gardens aplenty on the island but one of the most fascinating sights was the ancient laurel forest on the north slope. Subject to frequent fog and mist the trees were already mature when the Spanish arrived in the 14th century. It is an eerie place and, as I found, it’s very easy to get lost.

Bluebells in the Surrey Hills in May

May was a busy month. The weather warmed up a little and I found a great new bluebell wood in the Surrey Hills. The sun also came out for the Chelsea Flower Show and there was only one garden everyone was talking about - Sarah Price’s iris garden. It wasn’t overrated, almost worth the ticket price on its own.

Chelsea Flower Show in May

Also in May I finished planting a new garden in Wimbledon. Throughout the year I have continued as a volunteer gardener in my local park. Luckily the summer wasn’t quite as scorching as 2022. The ox-eye daisies in a wildflower part of the park were stunning in June.

Ox-eye daisies in June

All through 2023 I have been learning how to use a 3D design software package. It has been challenging to say the least but considerable progress has been made. I’m not sure I’ll ever reach guru status, but it’s good to get to a stage where clients can see their prospective gardens in 3D and even walk through them. I haven’t had a client yet say they prefer the old hand-drawn way of doing things.

Cedar greenhouse in July

In July I caught up with a friend who I’d helped with the layout of her garden ahead of the installation of a new greenhouse.

Waterperry Gardens in August

In August there was an overload of garden visits to Ham House, Waterperry Gardens and the best garden I’ve seen in a long time, Le Jardin Plume.

Le Jardin Plume, Normandy in August

Whilst in France I also visited the garden festival at Chaumont and the formal gardens at Chenonceau.

Chenonceau in September

Autumn took a long time to arrive, an unexpected heatwave followed by what seemed like endless rain, and then finally, some spectacular colour. Piet Oudolf describes a fifth season, somewhere between summer and autumn. The garden at the Hepworth Wakefield is a great example of how good a garden can look at this inbetween time.

Allium sphareocephalon and Perovskia in October

And my photographic year ends there, somewhat abruptly. The big camera is out of action and the camera on my phone doesn’t really cut it as a replacement. Normal service will be resumed shortly, hopefully in time for some winter photography.

Wimbledon planting project

In the summer of 2017 I was contacted by A and M and asked to design a new planting scheme for their back garden.

Although the lawn was in very good condition, and even had a mowing strip, most of the rest of the planting left quite a bit to be desired.

Some of the shrubs had been pruned in a supermarket carpark style and the weeds had been left to their own devices for quite some time. There were also a couple of dead and dying trees to take out.

We had a huge clear out of most of the shrubs, a tree surgeon took care of the dead and dying trees, grinding out the stumps where necessary, and then followed the mother of all weeding sessions. Finally the garden was ready for planting.

The colour palette was based partly on some of the plants already in the garden, mostly blue and purple. The rest of the scheme was a cheeky combination of white, orange and dusky pink.

There wasn’t much to see in the first autumn but by March, despite the Beast from the East, and the Mini-beast, the bulbs were making a brave appearance.

The first of the perennials to get going was Geum Totally Tangerine, so good it flowered twice. This was followed by Papaver Patty’s Plum, almost good enough to eat.a

Despite the scorching sunshine and relentlessly high temperatures, and thanks to a lot of watering the rest of the perennials flowered through June and July.

The weeding was relentless. That’s what happens when weeds are left unattended and then you fertilize the soil and water the germinated seedlings.

Some plants, including the delicate Echinacea pallida, suffered at the paws of a youg dog. And some were trampled to death, yes really, by pigeons scavenging underneath the bird feeder.

The planting has performed really well, despite the extreme weather of 2018. Now in September, it’s still looking good.

We’re looking at doing a bit of editing. Some parts of the garden are shadier than I thought, and some drier, even though there’s an irrigation sytstem. And some of the plants savaged by the puppy need to be replaced.

But this is all part and parcel of gardening. Nothing stays the same, some things do better and some things do worse than you expect.

I’ll leave most of the perennials standing through the winter and cut them all back in February. That will be a good time to move some of the grasses from the shade to the sun.

Fingers crossed there won’t be quite as many weeds in 2019, and hopefully the weather will be a bit more benign….

Lukesland Gardens

I feel very lucky to have friends with friends with amazing gardens. Last weekend I stayed with John and Lorna Howell, owners of Lukesland in Devon.

The garden covers around 26 acres of woodland, streams, arboreta (there's more than one), rhododendrons, azaleas, wild flowers and a kitchen garden.

The garden was started by the Matthews family in the 1860s, followed by the McAndrews in the 1870s, but has been tended to and developed by the Howell family since the 1930s.

The garden has become known for some of its "Champion" trees, which means they are the oldest, tallest or with the largest girth in the county or country. The high level of rainfall, acidic soil and mildish climate makes it ideal for Camellias, Rhododendrons, Azaleas and Magnolias.

.I was told the Rhododendrons were past their best by the end of May but they still looked pretty good to me. However, this is prime Azalea flowering time, the reflections in some of the ponds were particularly stunning, better than the Isabella Plantation I think.

For me the streams and ponds are the highlight of the gardens. Addicombe Brook tumbles through the garden over cascades and Dartmoor granite rocks. It's not without hazard though as floods in recent years have washed away paths, bridges and sculpture and silted up ponds. They've been rebuilt and restored and you'd never know there'd been such devastation.

The wild flowers are also particularly attractive. There are bluebells in the Beech wood and in the Pinetum where they flower in the open with grasses, and along the stream with Red Campion.

The dampness means plants like Iris sibirica, asiatic Primulas, Gunnera and ferns thrive here, as well as some of the trees like the giant coastal Redwoods from the USA.

Lukesland is particularly well known for its three large Davidia involucrata, also known as the Hankerchief Tree, which were flowering during my visit. Unfortunately none of my photos could do them justice but if you're in the area in late spring seeing them is worth a visit on their own.

Although the tea room was busy (and yes I can recommend all the cakes as I tried most of them whilst serving the tea...) the gardens are so large it's easy to find a quiet spot to yourself.

One of the advantages of staying overnight is the opportunity to get up at the crack of dawn and wander around on your own, although the weather conspired against me and I didn't quite get the mist and low sunlight I was hoping for. Next time maybe...

The gardens are only open in the spring and then again in the autumn as the foliage of the Rhododendrons, Azaleas and Acers is stunning I'm told.

This garden is maintained by Lorna and John, John's mother Rosemary (who runs the guided tours) and three very part-time gardeners. Hats off to them all.

Lukesland - http://www.lukesland.co.uk/Index.htm

You can rent a cottage in the grounds - https://www.helpfulholidays.co.uk/cottage/Devon-East-Anstey/The-Clock-House-976251.html

Many thanks to John and Lorna and Rosemary and Desna (and Rob..).

2018 - A good year?

Is 2018 - a good year to remember, or not? Maybe not for some reasons, but, politics aside, ignoring natural and man-made disasters, bad tempers and bad news in general, here is the good news round up of 2018 in the small corner of the world occupied by Arthur Road Landscapes.

A new year, a new day and a new camera on the beautiful island of Barbados. Not too much in the way or horticulture here but when the landscape looks like this who needs a garden?

But of course I couldn’t resist another visit to Hunte’s Gardens.

Having cleverly avoided the Beast from the East, but running full pelt into the Mini-beast, I made a beeline for the Palm House at Kew for a bit of warmth and humidity.

The cold winter and the sudden arrival of a very warm, but late, spring (who knew what was to come?) meant a very good year for bluebells. This little woodland of oak and ash was discovered by my parents in deepest Berkshire.

May means Chelsea. This was my favourite garden, by Sarah Price. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but definitely mine, I’m just waiting for a commission for somewhere in the Med…

At the end of May I visited Lukesland on the edge of Dartmoor. Spring was a little later here so this Wisteria was still in its full glory.

June sees the climax of our native wild flowers. Driving around Surrey I love the road side verges covered primarily in ox-eye daisies. Parts of the M25 are quite spectacular, something to enjoy whilst sitting out a traffic jam. It’s quite tricky finding somewhere to park and photograph them (I haven’t stopped to take any photos on the M25 I hasten to add).

The heat wave started around the middle of June I seem to remember. I went to Loseley Park before the weather began to take its toll and the White Garden here was looking splendid. Of course the thing about white gardens is that they’re not completely white.

July and August seem to have been swallowed up in a blaze of sweltering heat and guilt about using a hosepipe (sorry/not sorry) but at the end of summer I went to The Homewood in Surrey. I hadn’t expected much of the garden but even I was charmed by the heather, Scots pines and rhododendrons.

A very busy autumn meant little time for visiting gardens but I did manage to get the odd half hour or so on Wimbledon Common. Being outside in bright sunshine whenever possible is my way of dealing with short days and long dark nights.

This is beginning to sound like I haven’t done much work in 2018. Well it’s been a funny old year, a mixture of feast and famine. This sweet little courtyard in Twickenham was completed early in the year. The owners are bird mad so hopefully this spring will see a few new residents in the bird boxes.

A large back garden project which has taken a couple of years, was finally planted in October. There’s not too much to see plant-wise at the moment but I’m looking forward to seeing it develop next year.

Maybe not a vintage year but not a bad one either.

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