Gravetye Manor

On Sunday I visited Gravetye Manor, the house and garden of gardener and writer William Robinson, author of The Wild Garden.  I will most likely post again about this garden, but for now I don't think these pictures need any words, the landscape truly speaks for itself.

Spring at Merriments

On Saturday it was rainy so I drove around the countryside. I stopped at Merriments, a garden and nursery close by that I visited during my October garden tour. It was nice to see the garden again, cut to the ground and showing off its new spring leaves. 

Above: Omphalodes verna 'Starry blue'

Viburnum x bodnantense 'Dawn'

I liked this in combination with Hellebore foetidus

A nice spring section

And the lovely Hepatica

Salix udensis 'Sekka'
Native willows are showing off their yellow, fuzzy blooms all along the roadsides.

I thought this was an interesting shot of the two hedge materials (yew and beech) meeting up. Seems pretty dramatic with the clean, trim trunks of birch trees.

Very vibrant yellow green of the emerging Tanacetum vulgare 'Isla Gold'

Erysimum pulchellum, a carpet of wall flowers!

Euonymous fortunei 'Silver Queen'

 This picture was taken the day I arrived and the Long Borders were still showing its winter colors. On Friday another gardener and I were charged with the daunting task of pruning this emblematic euonymous. We looked at this plant for an hour, taking tentative cuts until Fergus came along shaking his head. He made lots of quick cuts, standing back from time to time to investigate the shrub from all angles, then going back and taking more. It was an exciting thing to watch actually, and you really saw his process and his eye at work, one cut could literally change everything.

The following photos were all taken after the pruning job. It seemed like we made dramatic changes, but after looking at the before and after shots, the shape, form, and feeling of this 'emerald and gold' still remains in tact.

You really notice this shrub this time a year as the rest of the border is cut down. The euonymous anchors the Long Border and is beautifully framed by the yew hedge.

We have cleared, weeded, cleaned, cut back, and even planted out this side of the long border...

and tomorrow morning this side awaits us!

First Days at Great Dixter

Work days end at 5:00 here and in England they have not set their clocks ahead yet, which means the light is fading by the time I go out for my late afternoon garden wander. So I apologize for the low light and somewhat blurry photos. Today was a fantastic day. I spent most of the last two days planting out hundreds of Lychnis coronia. A common plant you might say, but Fergus Garrett has had a vision of a magenta cloud, a haze of those brightly lit flowers, suspended throughout the garden! This has been an amazing project to work on for a variety of reasons: 1. This plant is a self seeder and is already scattered about and coming up in many of the beds, we just added many many more. 2. The goal is to plant this plant to look like it has self-sown, which means lots of very careful looking, from all angles, to make sure it looks just random enough. I already was aware that self seeded plants scattered about were one of the many hallmarks of the Great Dixter and Chrisopher Lloyd style, but now I see what goes into achieving this effect. Many hours were put in to make the garden look as though it just planted itself! I love it! After lunch there was a seed meeting and Fergus handed out seeding projects to everyone. I have a few packets and in the next few days I will be inducted on seeding the Great Dixter way. In the late afternoon I moved over to the Long Borders and patiently bent myself around the emerging bulb foliage to carefully pick and weed out all the undesirables. The weather has been lovely, hazy sunny and warm, and it feels wonderful to be back in the dirt again. All the students, volunteers, and employees are extremely knowledgeable and generous.

Above: The legendary compost piles. They are so tall that the gardeners have to climb the ladder to dump their buckets.

View half-way up...

 View from the top looking out to the setting sun

Looking out over the fruit cages from the top of the pile. I love the grass against the yews.

View looking out over the stock beds.

Sitting on the bench at the top of the Long Borders enjoying the end of the day.

The Shapes (and Colors) of Great Dixter

Yestersay I arrived at Great Dixter in Northiam, England. I will be here for a month, living in the beautiful student accommodations and volunteering with the gardening team. I arrived early morning, rented my car, uneventfully drove myself here, and spent the afternoon settling in. There is an excitement and energy to the place, similar to Hidcote last March, as all hands are on deck, working hard to get the garden ready to open to the public in the beginning of April. I spent a few minutes in the cloudy, late afternoon taking photographs to record some first impressions of the garden. What is striking this time of year is noticing the dynamic positive and negative shapes created by the hedges and topiary!

Euphorbia characias ssp. wulfenii

The ever lovely wall of Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster'

And more incredible topiaries found in the Peacock garden

The classic Great Dixter pot display at the front door

Clematis cirrhosa var. 'Balearica'
A clematis already in bloom!

Hellabore 'Anna's Red'
This is one of the most stunning Hellebores I have ever seen.  It is named after the great garden writer Anna Pavord and was bred by Rodney Davey. This Hellebore is so unusual and so beautiful and so coveted. It hit the market in England this past year and they are currently working on breeding rights for the rest of the world. Read more here!

Ipheion uniflorum

This is the same bulb I saw blooming indoors, in pots, at Smith Botanical Garden, sporting its lovely "stripped trousers." Here it has naturalized all around the doorstep.

The Long Borders, not yet cut down and still so beautiful. I was especially struck by the gray of the santolina, the bronze of the spirea, the green-yellow of the euonymous, the brown-yellow of the grass, and the gray of the still beautiful seed heads of the cardoons. And across the way is the orchard meadow, the crocus just passing by and the daffodils just beginning.

Looking out over the Orchard meadow to the countryside

Snow on Leap Day

Inevitably, it always snows! My garden looks fresh again! The snow continues to fall this morning and the world is thick with this white stuff.

 The seed heads and sturdy stems of the native Actaea racemosa seem to hold up the best of the tall, summer blooming Actaeas/Cimicifugas.

 

The twisted tumble weed stems of Lespedeza bicolor. This plant dies to the ground in zone 5 here in Putney, but reemerges from deep in the earth, pushing up asparagus like shoots in the late spring. 

Orangery

An Orangery is a glass house or conservatory originally built to over winter tender citrus trees, a practice that became fashionable and prestigious in 17th century Europe. At Smith they have filled a glassed in hallway with many fragrant plants which were all just beginning to bloom. There is nothing like the smell of a citrus blossom- so sharp, floral, lemony, buttery, billowy... It is so distinct and so pleasing. There were numerous fragrant orchids, rhododendrons, and the fragrant-less camellias in full bloom all along the sensory promenade.

This Rhododendron cubitti was in perfect form, with its silky, large, white blossoms, emanating a sweet jasmine-like scent. This specimen is one of 300 species of the Vireya Rhododendrons originating in the cool mountains of New Guinea, Sumatra, Borneo, and the Philippines.

Coelogyne cristata 'Mt Cuba'

I know little about the vast and varied world of orchids, but I do know that this one captured my attention. It was a prolific waterfall of flowers and fragrance.