Bloomin' Lovely

At Bloom's of Bressingham known for their island bed garden style and the introduction of over 200 perennial cultivars.

Perhaps you have a few plants that got their start at Bloom's in your garden.

1920s – Dianthus ‘Oakington’
1930s – Phlox ‘Oakington Blue Eyes’
1950s – Achillea ‘Moonshine’, Heucherella ‘Bridget Bloom’, Heuchera Bressingham hybrids
1960s – Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’, Geranium ‘Ballerina’, Kniphofia ‘Bressingham Comet’
1970s - Astilbe ‘Sprite’ (1994 PPA Perennial Plant of the Year), Phlox ‘Eva Cullum’
1980s – Leucanthemum ‘Snowcap’, Bergenia ‘Bressingham Ruby’, Phlox ‘Franz Schubert’, Achillea ‘Anthea’
1990s – Lavandula ‘Blue Cushion’, Polemonium ‘Brise d’Anjou’
2000s – Geranium ‘Rozanne’ (2008 PPA Perennial Plant of the Year), Campanula ‘Blue Waterfall’

Perrenial Portraits

The Beth Chatto Gardens date back only to 1960 when Beth and Andrew Chatto turned an overgrown rural property into the lush display gardens and thriving nursery found there today.

Walking the grounds one travels through the gravel garden, down to the water garden, through the woodland area and scree garden, and finally to the nursery full of wonderful perennial specimens.

Many of the same plants seemed to pop up at every garden we visited. For reasons of hardiness or personal taste those much seen, popular perennials are not so prevalent in gardens in our area. Perhaps it is time to branch out and give some of the zone appropriate ones a try. Sea holly, or Erygium, for example was in nearly every garden on our tour. It provides a lovely architectural structure for more delicate companion plants in a garden bed.

Bergenia in xeriscaping. Look at this very healthy crop here in the gravel garden. Who knew it would work so well in a dry situation? The gravel garden has never been artificially watered since its creation in 1991 except in the case of establishing new plants.

Persicarias are prevalent all through English gardens. The only one familiar to us is known as an invasive field weed, which likely accounts for its lack of popularity in gardens in the US. Cultivated varieties are truly lovely enmasse as found here pond-side.

Gunnera. Love it. Probably not going to happen here in zone 4, but we would grow it if we could. Like this guy. Impressive, eh?

Hmm.. some one did not get the memo about purple loosestrife. Do not try this at home. Really! If you are ever in doubt when trying to identify this naughty invasive look for the square stems which distinguish purple loosestrife from its benign look alikes such as fireweed. And to be fair...we did not look closely enough to see if this plant was indeed loosestrife, but thought we would sneak in a PSA about it because, as always we want you to be careful out there.

Clever nurserymen or women display plants-for-sale in combinations that would never occur to us, yet look truly stunning. We are very susceptible to the power of suggestion.

Ms. Chatto's personal succulent collection. Wonderful, but not for sale.

Beth Chatto. A remarkable woman with a very green thumb.

Bonnets and Bustles

We were in the neighborhood so we stopped for the morning in Lacock. This unique village is owned by the National Trust and is to be preserved as is. In effect the entire town is a museum. No one owns homes or businesses. Buildings are leased only. No signs of modern life such as overhead wires are allowed. It is indeed a very scenic place as evidenced by its selection for use as a setting in many TV and movie productions. The recent BBC series Cranford starring a regular who's who of brit actors prominently featured the streets and buildings of Lacock. Other productions at least partially set in Lacock include: Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Moll Flanders, and many of the Harry Potter movies.

The cauldron in the warming room at Lacock Abbey is of particular interest to Potterites.















This little black hen was our curious companion throughout a relaxed and lovely luncheon in the courtyard of the Angel Inn. Walnut and Stilton pate. Yum!

Meanwhile Back at the Ranch

The tomatoes are plump and red as true tomatoes should be. Sliced, diced, BLTed, and eaten right off the vine - Wisconsin 55, Juliet, and the lovely Jaune Flamme are the stars of the August community garden plot.

Oh yes, let's not forget the ever tasty Garden of Eden green beans, a favorite of the Duncan Creek deer herd, and the bountiful Black Beauty zucchini.

Ha Ha

Lancelot "Capability" Brown was responsible for the Brownian landscape style characterized by the use of water, trees, grass, and animals to create a naturalistic scene.

His style of smooth undulating grass, which would run straight to the house, clumps, belts and scattering of trees and his serpentine lakes formed by invisibly damming small rivers, were a new style within the English landscape, a "gardenless" form of landscape gardening, which swept away almost all the remnants of previous formally patterned styles. - Wikipedia

At Corsham Court Brown started the job of creating the pastoral scene seen from this amazing Elizabethan house in 1760, but it was Henry Repton who after 45 years completed the focal point of the picture, the lake.

How did the animals stay nicely in the scene without straying? Why is there no fence to spoil the view? At the edge of the lawn a long, steep ditch forms an invisible barrier called a ha ha.
Clever trick, eh?

Corsham Court houses magnificent art collected by Sir Paul Methuen. The manor and park remain in the care of the Methuen family.

For the trivia file: Lancelot Brown's nickname Capability came from his fondness of speaking about a country estate having great capability for improvement. Richard Owen Cambridge, the English poet and satirical author, declared that he hoped to die before Brown so that he could "see heaven before it was 'improved'".

This week's vocabulary challenge: Use the word serpentine in casual conversation or while making chit chat with your dentist, hairdresser, neighbor, co-worker, spouse, or at the grocery checkout counter. Let us know how that goes.

Getting Back on the White Horse

Or rather, the white coach back in England.

Before we move on to Suffolk let's take a look at the amazing white horses of Wiltshire.

We passed the Cherhill horse several times as we traveled from our home base in Devizes to gardens around the region.

The Wiltshire Countryside is famous for its white horse chalk hill figures. It is thought that there have been 13 white horses in existence in Wiltshire, but only 8 are still visible today.
Cut in 1780 by Dr. Christopher Alsop (or the mad doctor as he was known locally) the Cherhill, or Oldbury, white horse measures 129ft by 142ft and is best viewed from the main A4 road between Calne and Beckhampton.
Dr Alsop is supposed to have shouted his instructions from the village by megaphone to the workman on the Cherhill Down, who planted white flags to mark the outline.
A unique attraction of the Cherhill horse was its eye. Measuring four feet in diameter, Aslop filled the eye with glass bottles embedded into the turf face down. This gave the effect that the eye was shimmering when the sun hit it and could be seen for miles around. By 1872 all the bottles had been stolen by tourists and souvenir hunters. - visitwiltshire.co.uk

For your trivia file: Leucippotomy is the art of carving white horses in chalk upland areas, particularly as practised in southern England.

Unfortunately our route did not pass by the premier example of gigantotomy in England, the Cerne Abbas giant.

Blink

We know your eyes are glazed over from our, as one tour participant put it (even though he later tried to deny saying it), "death march through English garden history".

Imagine what it was like to be the ones getting on the coach every morning at a too early hour and schlepping through one or more gardens a day every day for two weeks. Well, actually it was wonderful in an exhausting kind of way.

To cleanse your palate, so to speak, here is a fun line of Fred merchandise seen at Target this summer.










We are not the only ones with a Target "problem". This post from Target Addict popped up in our Fred/Target research.

We can quit anytime we want to.

Jekyll* Speaks

A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust. - Gertrude Jekyll




In garden arrangement, as in all other kinds of decorative work, one has not only to acquire a knowledge of what to do, but also to gain some wisdom in perceiving what it is well to let alone. - Gertrude Jekyll

It is no use asking me or anyone else how to dig... Better to go and watch a man digging, and then take a spade and try to do it. - Gertrude Jekyll

The lesson I have thoroughly learnt, and wish to pass on to others, is to know the enduring happiness that the love of a garden gives. - Gertrude Jekyll

There is a lovable quality about the actual tools. One feels so kindly to the thing that enables the hand to obey the brain. Moreover, one feels a good deal of respect for it; without it the brain and the hand would be helpless. - Gertrude Jekyll

There is no spot of ground, however arid, bare or ugly, that cannot be tamed into such a state as may give an impression of beauty and delight. - Gertrude Jekyll

What is one to say about June, the time of perfect young summer, the fulfillment of the promise of the earlier months, and with as yet no sign to remind one that its fresh young beauty will ever fade. - Gertrude Jekyll

The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies. - Gertrude Jekyll


* Jekyll rhymes with treacle.

Teamwork

An early twentieth century collaboration between Gertrude Jekyll and architect Edward Lutyens lead to the restoration of the formal gardens of Hestercombe. The plantings in of the Great Plat are atributed to Jekyll while Lutyens' detailed stonework provides the hardscaped structure of the garden. Also seen here are the Victorian Terrace and the Orangery.










Hestercombe garden was one of Gertrude's commissions with Lutyens. In 1904-8 he designed new gardens to the south of the house providing the detailed layout and she supplied the planting plans, enhancing, enriching and complementing his 'hard' landscaping and his intended views.

The principal feature is the Great Plat, a large, sunken garden with stone quadrant steps at each corner leading down into the garden. Geometric-shaped panels of lawn enclosed by stone flags extend diagonally across the garden from each corner, meeting at a central sundial. Beds are planted with gladioli and delphiniums. On either side of the lawns are stone-lined rills with three pairs of small circular pools planted around with white calla lilies. The pools are of varied depths to accommodate different water plant species. The rills discharge down small stepped cascades into tanks adorned with erigeron.

A pergola planted with roses and clematis encloses the south side of the Great Plat. It contains a stone-flagged walk and gives views north across the gardens to the house, and over the park to the countryside. - English Heritage website






















For your trivia file - Gertrude Jekyll was born at 2 Grafton Street, Mayfair, London, the fifth of the seven children of Captain Edward Joseph Hill Jekyll, an officer in the Grenadier Guards, and his wife Julia Hammersley. Her younger brother, the Reverend Walter Jekyll, was a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, who borrowed the family name for his famous novella Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.