The Chelsea Flower Show on a Rainy Wednesday – Part 2 – The Exhibits & Great Pavilion

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My last blog took a tour around some of the big gardens at Chelsea 2024, but of course there is much more to the show. Lining the avenues throughout the grounds are booths of varying sizes showcasing art, clothing, garden furnishings, tools, pots and planters, house plants, etc. while inside the Great Pavilion are nurseries and plant societies, floral designers and ecological/scientific displays. Let’s start with the spectacular floral acronym for the Royal Horticultural Society, as interpreted in UK-grown peonies by the upscale floral designer Pinstripes & Peonies.

Here is a small bit of the letter “S”. Imagine how much work it took to condition all those peonies and then insert them into the matrix using “eco-friendly principles”….. which I assume must mean floral-oasis-free, though I wasn’t able to confirm that.

Artists have long been a part of Chelsea, which is now in its 111th year. The best show off their works in small gardens, like Scots sculptor James Parker below. who chose rodgersia, Siberian iris and foxglove to complement his stacked slate and bronze pinecone sculptures.

David Harber Sculpture was nestled in a leafy setting as well.

The Clancy Workshop took a more lighthearted approach at Chelsea. Architect/artist Mike Clancy positions his sculptures, like these animals, between art and architecture using traditional and digital techniques.

I’ve taken the odd stroll through Harrod’s in London but I wasn’t aware there is also Harrod Horticultural – unrelated to the department store, but obviously benefiting at the show from the similarity in names.  Its horticultural line is an offshoot of its business as a long-time supplier of sport goalposts – including to the Olympics!

Garden buildings come in all shapes and sizes in England, and those displayed by Scotts of Shrapston, celebrating its 60th anniversary, seemed quite modest.

But it was the lovely landscaping around their shed that I loved featuring Siberian iris and an unusual umbellifer, Baltic parsley (Cenolothium denudatum).

At Garden Art Plus Limited, this 18th century French limestone trough with lion’s paws feet and mossy patina could be had for the trifling sum of £12,500.

Solus Decor started in “a humble single car garage in 1998” in Vancouver, B.C. where they now have an 18,000 sq ft location, and expanded to four locations worldwide from which they export to 35 countries. They make fire pits, fire tables and fire bowls, and if those get too… fiery…

…. they also have compact water fountains.   

As the rain increased, it was a pleasure to wander into the Great Pavilion where Pheasant Acre Plants were showing off their gladioli.

Barbados Horticultural Society displayed fabulous floral designs featuring warm-coloured tropical plants.

Moore & Moore Plants are woodland specialists and their exhibit was a lush celebration of ferns and flowering shade-lovers.  

I was enchanted with the stunning display of plant treasures by Kevock Garden Plants of Scotland, including many beautiful meconopsis species….

….. such as the rare, red M. staintonii.

Look at all those primulas!

The display was designed by Monica Wylie and I asked her to pose for me for this blog.

And what a serendipitous delight to find my Seattle ‘horty’ friend Sue Nevler and her husband Steve Gatti admiring the Kevock exhibit.  After hugs and introductions all round, Sue & I posed with Kevock’s owner David Rankin – with Himalayan poppies posing above us!  We were heading on to Tuscany to see our youngest son and Sue and Steve were heading to Malta, then France.

Grow just two things, but grow them very well. That could be the motto of Blackmore & Langdon’s, with their luscious begonias and delphiniums. And I swear I made the identical photo 32 years ago, when I was last at the Chelsea!

The Botanic Nursery in Wiltshire holds the National Collection of foxgloves, and it shows.

This delicate foxglove is Digitalis ‘Apple Blossom’.  

W.S. Warmenhoven displayed a trove of Amaryllis and Alliums in the pavilion. A family company established in the Netherlands in 1885, they grow  55 varieties of allium, something like a million bulbs in their fields and greenhouses. There, they sell the blooms as cut flowers at the Dutch Flower Auction and harvest the bulbs for their bulb business.

I’ve never grown Allium schubertii with its big, low-growing, starry globes, but I liked ‘Arctic Snow’.

Allium macleanii is a parent of  ‘Globemaster’ and I was delighted to photograph it. I wish I could source this one in Canada, because I find the other parent, A. cristophii or star-of-Persia attracts bees but ‘Globemaster’ doesn’t, presumably sterile and also not a big nectar producer. One of my reasons for growing alliums is their great attraction to bees.

Peter Beales Roses featured a tribute to the 200th anniversary of the Royal Navy Liveboat Institution (RNLI) in their exhibit, incorporating a small inshore lifeboat.and a splash of their commemorative apricot floribunda rose 200th With Courage at right.  

Not to be outdone, Harkness Roses introduced their ‘Chelsea Pensioner’ rose, which I asked this Pensioner to pose beside. For every bush sold, Harkness donates £2.50 to the care of the Chelsea Pensioners and their home.

Jacques Amand had two side-by-side exhibits displaying a large range of perennials, bulbs and small trees – and they won two Chelsea Gold Medals for their efforts.

Caley Brothers sells edible and medicinal mushrooms and wanted their Chelsea display “to inspire visitors to get growing their own delicious mushrooms through a series of easy to grow projects. Regardless of space, budget or season,” they say they have a mushroom project to suit every gardener – and have written their own book called “Project Mushroom”.   

Hampshire Carnivorous Plants is the UK’s largest grower of carnivorous plants. They had a colourful display featuring loads of pitcher plants (Sarracenia spp.) and maidenhair ferns and a Jurassic dinosaur. They also sell nepenthes, Venus flytraps (Dionaea muscipula) and sundews (Drosera); the latter at least, have been traced to the Jurassic Age.

What insect could resist the alluring pitchers of Sarracenia ‘Juthatip Soper’? 

We played along, not very convincingly, since we all know dinosaurs are herbivores, right? 

Driftwood Bonsai had a handsome display along the wall of the pavilion.

On the far wall, Kelnan Plants featured a lush display of South African natives, included many Resionaceae species.

As we were leaving to head to a pub lunch, I spied a visitor preparing to try on a garment at Original Fibres. It produces 100% European wool and linen clothing for men – I loved their springy planter design.

And I confess, I sneaked a photo of what might be the most beautiful garment I saw at the Chelsea on this rainy May Wednesday. But a little online detective work let me know that, sadly, I need to upgrade my shopping experience to Dolce & Gabbana. Because who wouldn’t want to stay dry under raindrops on spectacular wisteria blossoms?

And that’s a Chelsea wrap. I missed about one-third of the show, thanks to Mother Nature, jet lag and basic energy level, but I had a truly wonderful morning and sparked a little horticultural fire in my younger menfolk!  Stay tuned for future blogs on the Chelsea Physic Garden, the Garden Museum and the fabulous Moat in Bloom at London Bridge.

The Chelsea Flower Show on a Rainy Wednesday – Part 1 – The Gardens

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As gardeners, if we’re not complaining about drought we’re moaning about rain. But at the Chelsea on a rainy May day, the moaning only lasts a short while, so beautiful are the gardens. And who doesn’t want to pose with an umbrella beside a tower of flowers?

It was even more special because our London-based eldest son Doug, rear, and his partner Tommy were our guests – Chelsea novices who really enjoyed wandering the show.  In fact, the last time we attended the Chelsea was in 1992 when Doug was at Cambridge; thirty-two years later it was even more spectacular.

The rain was on-and-off but the crowds were thick around the show gardens, so I missed a few, including, alas, the Gold Winner – but there was lots to see on the 66-acre site including smaller garden installations and some 500 booths and exhibits, many under cover in the Great Pavilion.

Exhibitors like The Plant School from Northamptonshire, below, take special care, naturally, to design their booth around beautiful plants.

I loved this display from The Delphinium Society offering good ideas for plants to pair with delphiniums.

Tom Stuart-Smith’s garden for the National Garden Scheme was a cool, romantic, woodland-edge vision in white. According to the designer, the garden exemplified the “joy and associated health and wellbeing benefits of garden visiting that have been at the heart of the National Garden Scheme since 1927.” It was part of the project ‘Giving Back’ and following the show was slated to be relocated to a hospital in Cambridge where it will be sited at a Maggie’s Centre for people having treatment for cancer. The shed in the background was designed by architect Ben Stuart-Smith, Tom’s son, and created by woodworker Fenton Scott-Fielder.  Many of the plants were donated by National Garden Scheme owners. The white azalea is Rhododendron ‘Daviesii’.

The Octavia Hill Garden celebrated the social reformer and co-founder of the National Trust in 1894, Octavia Hill (1838-1912) who worked throughout her life to improve urban housing (she was the landlord of 3,000 tenancies) and protect green space. Interestingly it was Hill who coined the term “the green belt”, intending it to mean green space for the use of people, rather than a purely environmental concept. The Chelsea garden was designed by Ann-Marie Powell Gardens for garden centre retail group Blue Diamond and the National Trust and won a Silver-Gilt medal.  It was conceptualized as “a community urban wildlife garden” occupying “a series of open-air sitting rooms” in an urban brownfield and featured a warm-colour plant palette that was enhanced by the ochre-hued sandstone hardscape.  The sound of splashing water could be heard…. above the Chelsea rain.

Someone beside me asked what the spherical yellow flowers were and I said Craspedia or “billy buttons”, an excellent flower for arrangements and for drying.

The National Autistic Society Garden by Sophie Parmenter and Dido Milne tells the story of “autistic masking”. It was designed as an environment in which ‘masking’ – a conscious and subconscious coping strategy for dealing with a loud, overwhelming world – becomes possible, a way for autistic people to experience the beauty and sound of nature comfortably but fully. These candelabra primulas were in the garden’s ‘mossy dell’.

This video explains more about the Silver-Gilt-winning garden.

Designer Robert Myers called the garden below ‘St. James’s Piccadilly: Imagine the World to be Different’.  Reminiscent of the churchyard in the title, it is a contemplative haven set as sanctuary for city-dwellers and wildlife.  It “celebrates the significance of urban ‘pocket parks’ in London and other cities, often connected with historic churchyards, some bearing the scars of wartime bombing yet refusing to yield to destruction.”  The building is a “counselling cabin” like those used by the clergy.  The garden also contains seven species of plants that appeared in the ruins of St. James’s after wartime bombings, reminding visitors of nature’s resilience. Once the Chelsea ends, the plants will find a new home at St. Pancras Euston Road and the counselling cabin and other hardscaping will be installed in the restored garden in Piccadilly.   

The colourful RHS ‘No Adults Allowed Garden’ was designed by kids, for kids – specifically the students of the Sulivan Primary School in Fulham who will help in its transfer to their own school grounds after the show. And naturally, children love carnivorous plants!

The Chelsea Flower Show sponsor The Newt in Somerset (which I blogged about this January after visiting in 2023) commissioned ‘A Roman Garden’ with a formal courtyard filled with flowers and statuary.  Imagined in Pompeii in the 1st century CE, it is a colonnaded courtyard with a peristyle garden featuring 1,600 plants of 13 different varieties with a mulberry in the centre and medicinal plants such as chamomile, lavender, opium poppy and thyme.

Royal Hospital Way flanks the Royal Chelsea Hospital grounds, below. The word “hospital” refers to the ancient definition as an almshouse, rather than a medical facility. Founded in 1682 by King Charles II, it is an Old Soldiers’ retirement and nursing home for 300 veterans of the British Army and is run as an independent charity. Chelsea Pensioners in their ceremonial scarlet uniforms are a fixture at the show, as you’ll see in my next blog.

Gardens along Royal Hospital Way were themed as Sanctuary Gardens. The romantic space below inspired by the television series of the same name was The Bridgerton Garden, designed by Holly Johnson. On opening day, some of the show’s stars were in attendance – or so I read in gossip from Lady Whistledown herself!  And, spoiler alert, the garden is meant to reflect Penelope Featherington, “the central character of Bridgerton season 3 and her journey from being a wallflower to embracing her true self and stepping into the light.”

Who doesn’t love lupines in late May?  They were all over the Chelsea grounds but this variety, Lupinus ‘Masterpiece’ in the Bridgerton Garden, combined with campanulas, foxgloves and irises, captured visitors’ hearts. 

Next up was The Burma Skincare Initiative (BSI) Spirit of Partnership Garden, designed by Helen Olney, which won the Gold Medal in the Sanctuary Gardens.  BSI is a registered charity co-founded by London-based dermatologists, Su Lwin and Chris Griffiths in 2019 with the vision of creating equal access to quality skincare for the people of Myanmar. When Lwin and Griffiths visited the 2021 RHS Chelsea Flower Show, they were impressed by the global publicity that could be achieved for the charity by showcasing its work through the narrative of a Chelsea Garden.  The building at the top is an interpretation of a 14th century Burmese stupa, representing the challenging environment in which the BSI operates in strife-torn Myanmar.  

My favourite garden came next, ‘MOROTO no IE’ by Kazuyuki Ishihara, a Chelsea Flower Show veteran since 2006 and frequent Gold award-winner.  Born in Nagasaki-city, after he graduated from university, “he started to study the ‘Ikenobo’ style of Ikebana (Japanese flower arrangement with a long tradition), and his eyes were opened to the world of flowers. When he was 29, he started selling flowers on the street, inspired by the flower shops of Paris. Through floristry, he built up his artistic talent. In 1995 he created his own company, Kazahana Co. Ltd.”  Japanese maples and moss hummocks created a serene, green setting where the sound of water splashing from the central waterfall seemed to calm the hectic scene that is Chelsea. The Japanese concept of the ‘stroll garden’ was very much in display here – if only I could have jumped the barricade and…. strolled.

As with many Japanese gardens, colour was limited to mainly green, but the Siberian iris ‘Tropic Night’ added a sensuous note to the rocky water garden.

A stunning moss living wall on the garden’s exterior contained just one decorative touch, a small, wild-bee haven.

As I stood admiring it, a visitor asked if I wanted my photo at the moss wall. I said yes, and later thought about what I brought from Canada specifically to wear at the Chelsea, an old April Cornell flowered smock that I’d worn in the March 27, 1994 photo announcing my first garden column in a weekly series I would write for six years for the Toronto Sun. Thirty years? Not bad for a favourite garment.

‘Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees’, but trees do offer sanctuary, as was clear in this garden designed by Baz Grainger of Landform Consultants for wealth management firm Killik & Co. And in a fiduciary play on words, the garden’s ethos was described as “Saving: four oak planters represent our four main drivers to start saving and the oak indicating the importance of choosing a reliable and enduring savings partner, Planning: six structural stone pillars and six steel pergola crossbeams represent six key reasons to plan for the future. Investing: five trees represent five core investment goals.”  

I felt the need to do research on The Freedom from Torture Garden: a Sanctuary for Survivors, a garden designed by John Warland and Emma O’Connell. A charity, Freedom from Torture was established in 1985 as an offshoot of Amnesty International. In 2016, its five centres received 1,066 referrals for individuals from 76 countries including Sri Lanka, Iran, Afghanistan, Nigeria, DR Congo, Turkey, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria and Sudan. Virtually all clients are asylum seekers or refugees who have fled torture and persecution in their home countries. The centres involve horticultural therapy so the garden is a meaningful expression and, as part of the project Giving Back, the garden will be rebuilt at Freedom From Torture Headquarters at Finsbury Park, London.  I was very taken with these organic-shaped willow structures in a dry part of the garden.

A sunken communal seating space will allow survivors to sit together and share stories. In fact, those in FFT’s gardening group told their stories as research for the garden, which will grow edible and medicinal produce for harvest by those in the therapy programs. 

I didn’t get past the crowds to look at the Flood Re Garden, but while gazing through its side panel , I suddenly became aware of a man sitting in the foliage in front of me. He was talking about the power of certain plants to adapt to flooding – and I realized he was on camera. When I asked an attendant nearby, they told me he was James Wong of Gardener’s World, filming a segment for the show.

So it was fun to find the segment at 11:08 on this episode of Gardener’s World at the Chelsea and see what he looked like from the front!  I made a little screen grab below.

The World Child Cancer Nurturing Garden  designed by Giulio Giorgi was the RHS Environmental Innovation Award winner. It featured curvilinear raised beds made from perforated terracotta blocks planted with soft-touch plants, fragrant herbs, vibrant mosses and edible plants.  “Supporting emotional wellbeing, a child and a parent can stroll through the reclaimed brick path, which leads to scenic meadow surrounded by tall trees, perennials, annuals, and shrubs. At its heart lies a seating area, which is a restful place for children and their loved ones”.

The final garden in my collection is the Boodles Garden celebrating the 200th anniversary of the National Gallery. Taking inspiration from paintings at the gallery, it evokes the spirit of many significant artworks. The creative vision for the design takes from artistic elements, including colours, textures and ‘hidden details’ in paintings viewed during visits to the gallery. The sculptural arches are inspired by Canaletto and Claude’s element of repetition and perspective; water features define the space while reflecting the work of Renoir, Monet and Seurat; and the primarily-green garden plantings themselves “represent the artist’s brushstrokes and texture within pointillist and impressionist paintings”.

My great regret was missing the Gold Award-winning Water-Aid Garden by Tom Massey and Je Ahn celebrating rainwater harvesting. This video gives a sense of the designers’ intent.

My next blog will focus on the Chelsea Flower Show booths and the Grand Pavilion.

The Gate, the Grate, the Path

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We’ve now lived in our 1916 Toronto house for more than 40 years, making us one of the old-timers on the block. When we moved in back in 1983, there was a long driveway leading to a ramshackle garage which was too small for modern cars but just right for a family of raccoons who did not take kindly to being evicted. In fact, most of the driveway was too narrow for a car so we decided to create a side garden halfway down it in place of the last 40 feet of asphalt, bisected by a winding path behind a pretty arched gate. That was 1988. At the time, the publisher of Canadian Gardening magazine lived in the house behind me and thought my gate would make a good cover for the very first issue of the magazine, launched in 1990 and published for 25 years, finally closing down in 2015. Apart from writing stories for three of its editors in that quarter-century, they also became very good friends. And as you see, back in 1988 I was growing impatiens in the shade, as were most gardeners.

A few years later, I wrote a story on the gate and garden for Fine Gardening magazine, title page below. In the article, I tallied up the costs: $960 US for the gate and fence panels (the gate incorporated a “see-through” made from an old brass heating grate we found while renovating the house); $500 for the path, including breaking up and removing the asphalt as far as the driveway’s original limestone grit and laying down concrete pavers; and a load of topsoil and plants to bring the total to about $2,000. I cannot imagine doing this today for less than $10,000, likely more. Only 9-1/2 feet separated our house from the neighbour’s fence, so the path took up 3-1/2 feet with 3 feet of garden on either side. To complicate matters, a black walnut tree (Juglans nigra) that had likely been small when our house was built during the First World War was now a hulking 70-footer, its big trunk straddling the property line, the allelopathic juglone secreted by its leaves and roots toxic to certain plants growing underneath it.

As the years passed, the walnut tree needed periodic pruning and cabling. On one occasion, an arborist working in the branches above dropped a heavy branch onto the gate and broke the arch.  But even without it, the gate added a certain flair to the house – I even gave it a big Christmas wreath for several years. I had planted the two half-whiskey-barrels flanking the gate with ‘Green Velvet’ boxwood shrubs (a Canadian introduction) around 1990, though I was warned they wouldn’t survive the first winter. Not only did they survive that winter, they lived in the barrels with no care except an occasional summer watering and shearing for more than 30 years! And in the photo below you can see the first tendrils of a bird-seeded Boston ivy (Parthenocissus tricuspidata) beginning to climb the fence panel at right.

In 2010, I designed and had built a screen to hide the recycling and trash containers, staining it to match the gate and house.  (You can see the long crack forming in our old driveway here.)

I had designed a driveway utilities screen for a gardening client in the 1990s, so while I had contractors at the house rebuilding our sundeck, I thought it was a good chance to utilize the design myself. Because as much as I approve of recycling, I can’t stand the look of plastic bins.

Meanwhile, the little sideyard garden grew and I learned which plants can tolerate living under a black walnut. Dry shade was a more important consideration, since the area is rarely watered except by rain and the tree sucks up much ground moisture. The shiny groundcover leaves are European ginger (Asarum europaeum); uber-invasive lily-of-the-valley, front right, makes its home there; and native Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum biflorum), front left, does very well, too.  The tall shrub at left is alternate-leaf dogwood (Cornus alternifolia), my favourite native shrub and a seedling of one I planted in the back garden in the 1990s.  The boughs of white cedar (Thuja arborvitae) come from my neighbour’s tree over the fence.

Here is the alternate-leaf dogwood in flower on May 22, 2012.

Move a little further along the path in this 2013 photo and you can see the double iron arch I installed atop 4×4 posts, over which I grew what I purchased as a native bittersweet vine but turned out to be the invasive Asian counterpart. The paver path circles around our lower deck to become a patio adjoining a lily pond in the back garden.

I planted a few bulbs of Corydalis solida in 2011 and they now carpet the sunniest part of the path garden in spring, but die away quickly as the Solomon’s seals send their green spears up.

There are native spring ephemerals in the path too, like mayapple and Hepatica acutiloba, below.

Lily-of-the-valley grows here, often in carpets – as it does in the rest of my garden. It’s always strange for me to see garden centres selling a few pips in a pot for $. I could be a millionaire, I think! Then I remember I’d have to dig them out, which is much easier said than done. But they are lovely in a little vase and they do make a very fun and fragrant garden party hat, as I’ve blogged before.

Here, looking towards the gate from the deck are the Solomon seals in a photo from May 24, 2016. Note the thick trunks of the bittersweet vine coiling up the posts.

Just a little bit on Boston ivy, shown climbing onto the gate in July 2015. Because it adheres via adhesive sticker aerial roots, I’m never keen to let this invasive climb our house and attach to the old mortar. But I thought it might add some interest to the gate, so I’ve let it grow while keeping it trimmed.

Inserting the see-through grate into the gate wasn’t an original idea; I’d seen various versions on garden tours. But knowing it had come from this house made it special – and I liked the fact that it lost its shininess and took on a rusty patina.  It framed the garden beyond like a peek into a colourful jewel box.

As the Boston ivy continued its journey across the gate on Oct. 16, 2019, I let its tendrils feel their way. In autumn it turned crimson, trailing across the view through the grate of orange sumac and azure blue monkshood and sumac at the back of the garden.

Here is the long view on that day, showing the path littered with yellow autumn leaves from the black walnut and the garden beyond.

Notice how the juvenile probing leaves of Boston ivy are shaped very differently from the leaves on the older wood in the next photos. They’re almost heart-shaped….

…. compared with the three-lobed (tricuspid) foliage emerging from the older wood in 2020.

Boston ivy is one of the best species to show the effect of summer sunshine on the pigments of the autumn leaves. Where one leaf shades another, the shaded section does not turn red in fall, but reveals the accessory yellow photosynthetic pigments.

As the alien bittersweet vine grew across the iron arches, it framed the view to the garden in an intriguing way, but it also latched on to everything nearby, including the dogwood shrub and the house’s downpipes.  I had to use a stepladder to try to thin it out and prune it away from both.

But I did love walking down the shady path in June to see my neighbour’s beauty bush (Linnea amabilis, formerly Kolkwitzia) in full flower over the fence.

Alas, all that weight on the arches and the four old posts holding them up finally took its toll. The vine collapsed onto the path in summer 2021 and everything had to be chopped up, dug up and removed.  (And this man was not too thrilled to be doing it.) But bittersweet doesn’t give up easily; every year it sends up shoots (some through the deck boards) from bits of root left behind, reminding us that it would like to return.

And that crack in the driveway? Eventually it opened, cracked more and formed more openings that turned into ankle-turning crevices. So the driveway had to be replaced in 2022.   And with the old asphalt went the 1990 half-whiskey-barrels and the 30-year-old boxwoods, since it was impossible to work around them and the barrels had started to fall apart.            

Surface roots from the black walnut had been lifting the path’s concrete pavers for years until they became unsafe and I had to warn visitors to watch their step coming into the back garden. I knew the time had come to fix the path.

Black walnut is a tap-rooted tree, so the surface roots can take some cutting back before much damage is done to the canopy…

…. but the Toronto company I hired called “Leveled Ground” said they would not cut surface roots bigger than a “toonie”, about 1-1/2 inches in diameter. This offending root got cut.

In July 2023, a team of guys arrived to lift up all the pavers….

…. stacking them carefully in the new driveway.

With all the pavers removed, they laid down a new layer of limestone grit, atop the layer put down under the old path in 1988, atop the layer from the original First World War driveway.

Now the right side of the garden under the black walnut is a few inches higher than the newly leveled path.  After all the grit was laid down, they used a mechanical compactor to compress it, then put the old pavers back, adding sand between the cracks and using the compactor to compress the entire path again before sweeping it clean.

This is what the path looked like 2 weeks after Leveled Ground departed. Sturdy, flat and safe.

I’m not sure how long the old black walnut will last. For that matter, I’m not sure how long we’ll last in the house – many of our friends have opted to move into condominiums as they’ve aged. But I cannot imagine life without a garden, watching birds drinking in the pond, bees nectaring on flowers, leaves changing colour in autumn – and that old gate leading down the curving path to the joys beyond.   

Pooled Assets in Wiltshire

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While I was eating delicious, home-baked cake in Juliette Mead’s enchanting garden in the village of West Amesbury last June, I had no idea we were sitting just two miles from prehistoric Stonehenge.  It was only later, as we drove out on Stonehenge Avenue past this circular assemblage of 5,000-year-old stones arranged to mark the year’s winter and summer solstice, that I realized that the garden I’d just visited had once shared its chalky soil on the banks of the River Avon with people of the Stone Age. But I was not aware of that bit of geographic trivia when the family dog Ada led our Carex Tours group under a rose-wreathed timber arch into the garden behind the house.

Here, in a courtyard configured in the shelter of the U-shape of the house – originally a row of workers’ houses joined together which, from the road, still wear their original facades – were deep mixed borders and planting beds featuring multi-stemmed ‘Evereste’ crabapples forming the season’s fruit above early summer sages, alliums, irises and peonies.

Crimson roses clambered up the window frames and gold euphorbia gleamed in the afternoon sun.

I had spent the previous afternoon photographing gorgeous roses at Kew Gardens so I loved seeing Juliette’s collection.

In early June, the herbaceous colour palette in England seems to lean to lavenders, purples and blues, such as the Allium cristophii and Salvia nemorosa  paired below. 

But as an insect photographer, it was still tempting to want to photograph every bumble bee I saw, including this one on the starry allium flowers.

We were here on a Carex tour of “New Gardens of England”, including Dan Pearson & Huw Morgan’s Hillside and Oudolf Field at Hauser & Wirth nearby because, almost 20 years ago, shortly after buying the house, Juliette and her husband Guy Leech hired a friend, the Hertfordshire designer Tom Stuart-Smith, to re-imagine the landscape of their 3.5 acre property. In his career, he has become internationally renowned, working everywhere from India to Marrakech, won eight gold medals and three Best in Show awards at London’s annual Chelsea Flower Show, designed a garden for Queen Elizabeth’s 2002 Jubilee at Windsor Castle and been awarded the Order of the British Empire. But back then, Juliette and Guy had specific objectives: they wanted a lawn for their four children to play sports and host friends; Juliette wanted to cut flowers for bouquets; and Guy wanted a swimming pool, but not a small pool – he wanted to swim serious lengths, thus a minimum of 20 metres was his stipulation.  So, from the courtyard with its traditional deep borders and planting beds lush with grasses surrounding an alfresco dining area, we were led once again by Ada the Alsatian to the stunning walled garden surrounding the 21-metre (68.9 feet) swimming pool.  In the distance you can see the thatched, lime-washed cob wall that is a traditional feature in this part of England.

Though it’s difficult to discern without an overhead photo, the parterre arrangement of dozens of planting beds surrounding the pool has been described by Juliette as a Persian tapestry, and something she enjoys looking down on from the second floor, especially in winter. Phlomis russeliana is among the roster of hard-working plants that flower in June.  By stepping the garden down on this side of the pool and raising it on the far side, Tom Stuart-Smith enhanced the garden view from the house and underplayed the view of the swimming pool behind layers of plants. The new walls in the garden, including above the pool, are zinc-coated steel. At right are beech hedges with a large gap to display the view through meadows and trees to the River Avon.

As I walked around the pool, I was struck by the magical movement of the golden oats grass (Stipa gigantea – Celtica) used extensively in the garden, along with other grasses such as Panicum virgatum ‘Cloud Nine’, Miscanthus sinensis ‘Malepartus’and Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Hameln’.  Along with Molinia cultivars like ‘Transparent’ and ‘Skyracer’, Stipa gigantea is one of the best “scrim” or “screen” plants, adding a kinetic quality to a garden while offering a porous veil in front of the scene behind. Interestingly, Juliette was not keen on grasses and had to be talked into including them by Tom; they now make up 40% of the roster and their tawny forms provide much of the winter interest.

The timber decking around the pool has aged to a soft silvery-grey that enhances the turquoise Marbleite pool and looks lovely with the billowing ‘Walker’s Low’ catmint (Nepeta racemosa) that was in peak June bloom.  Looking out over the pool through the break in the beech hedge and a barely-visible iron fence, we see a meadow and trees that line the banks of the River Avon ninety metres away.

The windows at the back of the house look out onto the garden surrounding the sleek pool, which Juliette and Guy specified they did not want hidden behind a fence. Has an exercise setting ever looked so gorgeous? Behind the sun umbrella you can see the soft-grey, low zinc wall.

I seemed to be drawn to the golden oats (Stipa gigantea). What a fabulous grass – sadly not hardy for us in Toronto.

Purple catmint, turquoise pool, mauve sun lounger: this couldn’t be prettier or better coordinated.

 The planting beds around the pool, separated from each other by narrow grass paths, are at their best in mid-summer, but early June’s palette of meadow sage and catmint is dependable and romantic. Here you get a closer look at the thatched cob wall.

I had never come across horned spurge (Euphorbia cornigera) before, but it seems similar to moisture-loving E. palustris.

As I left the pool side of the house, I was struck by the beauty of the Chilean potato vine (Solanum crispum ‘Glasnevin’) climbing the house wall.

What a stunning vine.

Walking behind the house towards the river, I stood for a moment under the tulip-tree (Liriodendron tulipifera) in the lawn. It was the only tree that Tom Stuart-Smith kept from the previous landscape.

Then I walked around  small wetland niches with lush plantings at the bottom of the garden.

Tall stems of pink flowers would soon rise from masses of umbrella plant (Darmera peltata) flanking the water.

There were moisture-loving Siberian irises (Iris sibirica) down there….

…… and luscious Japanese irises (I. ensata) too.  

I walked to the edge of the River Avon, which reflected the idyllic green glades on its shores.  Later, I learned that there are actually nine Avon Rivers in Great Britain, including the one running through Shakespeare’s Stratford-Upon-Avon. The root of the word Avon is “abona” in Celtic or in Welsh, “afon”, which means “river”. So, strictly speaking there are nine “River Rivers”.

Juliette graciously invited us into the house for tea and cakes – a lovely English garden-visit custom……

….. and I can say without exaggeration that she is a talented, inventive cook with a keen eye for presentation.

Then, with a last look at the garden, I turned the corner around the unique flint & limestone wall of the house towards the bus and the journey past Stonehenge towards Bath.

*********

Want to read more blogs about my English trip in June 2023?

Sissinghurst in Vita’s Sweet June

Boldly Go: June Glory at Great Dixter

Hillside: Dean Pearson and Huw Morgan in Somerset

Malverleys: A Garden of Rooms

Yews Farm – A Brilliant Marriage…. of Boxwood and Beans

Oudolf Field at Hauser & Wirth

The Newt

Autumn at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens – Part 2

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Finally, I’m getting to finish up my visit to Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay Harbor, the continuation of Part 1 that I published in January. (Who knew winter would get so busy?) So let’s keep wandering and head for a little while down Haney Hill, below, which connects the formal parts of the garden above with the magnificent forests below.

There’s a small pond at the top with a Japanese feel……

…. enhanced by the ‘Ice Dance’ Japanese sedge (Carex morrowii). I left the sign in this photo to illustrate how careful CMBG is at providing descriptions almost everywhere, something many botanical gardens forget to do since it requires attention to detail and resources.

A lookout allows visitors to contemplate the rich, mixed forest below here.

And, unlike many public gardens, CBMG also pays attention to ecology and educating visitors.

The path is flanked with naturalistic plantings, mostly native, including many choice conifers.

Since it was October 14th the leaves of many native trees and shrubs had started to change colour, including the sourgum (Oxydendrum arboreum) below.

… and the hobblebush viburnum (V. lantanoides) was a pretty burgundy.

I am familiar with a lot of goldenrods, but hadn’t seen Short’s goldenrod before. This is Solidago shortii ‘Solar Cascade’.

I went as far down as the Henry Richard sculpture ‘Glass Orb’, but since we had a long drive ahead of us later, I retraced my steps back up.

I had left Doug in the Vayo Meditation Garden, a quietly beautiful space on the hillside.

It wasn’t until a few weeks later that I learned the name of the tall perennial with the yellow pom-pom flowers blooming so late in the season. It’s Boltonia asteroides ‘Nally’s Lime Dot”, which was named for the late John Nally, the man who designed the famous flower garden at Wave Hill in the Bronx. Here’s my 2016 blog on Wave Hill.

Then we headed back to the main garden campus above, stopping at the Rose Arbor which features a number of vines and elaborate plantings.

Though it was late in the season and the plants had declined a little, I could appreciate the various containers used liberally throughout CMBG.

I liked the way pink-flowered Asarina scandens had been used as a trailer in the pot below.

Walking through the garden, there were reminders of summer in the seedheads amidst flowering grasses.

‘Sedum ‘T-Rex’ was putting on a spectacular show!

And native little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium) had taken on its reddish autumn cast.

Possumhaw (Viburnum nudum ‘Longwood’) had also turned a deep rose-red for fall.

I thought I had photographed most of the trees with prominent exfoliating bark in my career, but no! Here is Chinese hazelnut (Corylus fargesii).

I peeked quickly into the Burpee Vegetable Garden but I really wanted to visit…..

… the spectacular Bibby & Harold Alfond Children’s Garden. The entrance, below, featured fun boulders called “Spraying Whales” by sculptor Carole Hanson shooting surprise jets of water at visitors…..

….and I thought of how much fun this would be for little kids in summer.

Opened in July 2010, the garden was made possible by a gift from the Harold Alfond Foundation. Mr. Alfond made his fortune mainly in shoes, first the Dexter brand, then brand names for other firms. I liked this speech given at the opening by the foundation chairman:

“In the summer of 2007- the last summer of his remarkable life, Harold Alfond visited the original gardens at the suggestion of his good friend Larry Pugh. Harold was 93. Together with son Ted and his wife Barbara, Harold saw the beauty of this place then and imagined what more it could be for the state he loved and its children. Harold’s life passion was athletics and children. Bibby Alfond’s passion was children and gardens. And so at the age of 93, with Bibby no longer at his side, Harold was drawn to the vision of what we see here today as he reflected on how his life had been enriched by Bibby and her gardens – gardens which had graced their summer home for decades. Moved by the memory of Bibby and her passion, and with Harold’s sentiments in our hearts, we knew the Children’s Garden was deserving of foundation support. And we felt pride and perfect balance when it was agreed the garden would be named the Bibby and Harold Alfond Children’s Garden. And not vice versa.”

The Chairman went on to quote from a famous children’s book by a Maine author illustrated on the sign: “As Miss Rumphius’ father admonished her to do, you have done ‘something to make the world more beautiful’.”

I especially loved seeing Miss Rumphius on the sign because it’s a favourite children’s book of mine, a 1982 award-winner by Maine author Barbara Cooney. Here I am reading it to my granddaughter Emma. As an aside, CMBG is careful to note that visitors should endeavor to grow Maine’s native sundial lupines (Lupinus perennis), rather than the non-native and invasive west coast lupines (L. polyphyllus) in the book.

Designed by landscape architect Herb Schaal of AECOM, Inc. who has designed over 20 unique children’s gardens in the U.S., the garden is full of surprises and abundant references to other Maine children’s books, including ‘Blueberries for Sal‘. My grandkids would adore the maze, below.

The Keeper’s Cottage features a green roof and a pretty windowbox. And it’s clearly on the radar of this little one.

I spotted the Liatris seedheads and thought how wonderful this garden would be in mid-summer, since it was still looking spectacular in October.

Who doesn’t know about Beatrix Potter’s “Mr. McGregor’s Garden” and that wascally wabbit? The greenhouse behind is actively used during the season.

Perhaps the beans and beets had already been harvested? In any case, this garden was full of colour.

Millstone seats with built-in planters! What a great idea for little kids.

There were attractive containers in the Children’s Garden too.

Colourful coleus was in flower beneath a rain-chain. The unusual silver trailing plant is Arctotis auriculata.

One container featured a dark-leaved mimosa, Albizia julibrissin ‘Summer Chocolate’.

A flower bed was full of colourful plants, including many choice succulents……

… such as Mangave ‘Lavender Lady’.

A chicken coop is part of the fun.

And the Story Barn is filled with enticing books for kids and sweet little stools for reading.

As I headed out towards the exit, a young visitor was engaged in a fun activity at the Boat Pond.

I’ve seen and photographed many children’s gardens, including New York Botanical Garden, the Huntington Garden in Pasadena and Denver Botanic Gardens (also a Herb Schaal design), among others, and this one was the best and most creative by far. It was a fitting way to end our visit to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.