A visit to Waterperry

Waterperry's famous Asters and Rudbeckias in bloom, later summer

A lovely if flying visit today to Waterperry Gardens on the outskirts of Oxford. 

I’ve been going to Waterperry for years and it’s one of my favourite places. A few years ago, while working at GMTV as a regular freelance overnight News Editor, I was sitting in the newsroom at 4am wondering what exactly I could do at this time of the morning - other than sleep - to make myself feel a bit less deathly. Clearly sleep was not on the agenda, as I still had several hours to go before my shift finished. 

Instead, I decided that when I got home I would apply for a job at Waterperry as a seasonal gardener - a few hours a week, to act as a welcoming counterbalance to the world of overnights, breaking news, too much coffee and carbohydrate and general exhaustion.

A couple of weeks later I started work and I will never forget Garden Manager Pat Havers’ opening gambit: ‘I want everyone working here to be happy.’  Wouldn’t life be great if all managers were like that?! 

Kitted out in my official uniform, I grabbed a hoe, a barrow, a bucket and a kneeler, and headed out from the staff shed ready to get stuck in. My first job was to tidy up and deadhead some of the bush roses in the Rose Garden.  I must have passed the test because I was there until the end of the summer, having spent four very happy months weeding, deadheading, and generally learning loads from Pat and her small and extremely dedicated team. 

Waterperry is a fabulous garden and if you haven’t visited I can’t recommend it highly enough - especially if you enjoy a good cuppa and a slice of cake! At the moment the highlights include a really fabulous display of thousands of fritillaries in the riverside meadow, and in the next few weeks the famous Herbaceous Border will start to fill out with thousands of cottage garden favourites which will bloom until end end of Autumn. 

I will post some video of today's visit in the next couple of days. In the meantime, to see some of my previous films about Waterperry you can have a look here:

https://vimeo.com/album/1886260 

Follow Waterperry’s news and tips at their blog here: 

http://www.waterperrygardensblog.co.uk/

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Operation new front garden

I have decided it’s time to start planning Operation Front Garden. We inherited the most boring front garden in the world: a square of grass, surrounded by gravel, in front of our bay window. Last year I tried ‘making a wild flower meadow’ (aka, not mowing). My husband was entirely unconvinced by this strategy, and where I saw an emerging meadow he saw a mess. In the end I agreed that perhaps it was the wrong ambition for a small patch of garden in a suburban road. The advantage of having a failed meadow in the front garden means I can come up with an new plan - exciting! 

I am an avid garden watcher and nosy neighbour and it seems like Hebes grow well round here - I like their structure and texture so perhaps I will go for a couple of different varieties, together with some kind of Daphne for autumn/winter fragrance, a Hammamelis intermedia ‘Diane’ which has amazing scalret flowers and only grows to 6 foot. I love Chaenomeles (ornamanteal quince). And Viburnum. I would also love a Tamarisk. And a Garrya Elliptica. And maybe a Ribes. And one of my neighbours has a fantastic Trachelospermum Jasminoides which, despite being a bit tender, seems to be thriving...all exhuberant scarlet autumnul loveliness. 

You get the picture. My new mantra really should be ‘less is more’. In reality, my problem, as ever, will be narrowing down the choices. 

Yesterday's welcome and unexpected soaring temperatures (21º,  no less!) finally coaxed out my Narcissi 'Pheasants Eye', which are planted around the base of one our our still teeny apple trees. 

The pear tree (now on its third home since I bought it 8 years ago) has burst into its frilly springtime display, despite the best efforts of a local crow who was enjoying flower buds for Sunday lunch.














In the glade at the end of the garden a small family of Anemone Nemorosa has appeared - I can't even remember if I planted them but they are so lovely I will add to them in the Autumn...and a few feet away a clump of Leopard's Bane (Doronicum orientale ‘Little Leo’) is providing a welcome splash of sunshine.

 

Yesterday's blog you may remember referred to the stately Tetrapanax Rex my sister has growing in her London garden. Below is a chance to compare and contrast.

Hers. Pretty impressive, huh?






                                                                                             

Mine. Ahem.

Of snowdrops, compost heaps and hard winters...

A week or two back I spent a lovely couple of hours replanting snowdrops passed to me by my great friend and former neighbour Sue, a retired occupational therapist with a small but perfectly formed and packed cottage garden, who is a never ending source of inspiration and advice. 

The snowdrops have gone into my new white border. This is still very much a work in progress having been carved out of the lawn last summer. The border is the former site of our compost heap, which, having become the home of several rats, was dispensed with after one of them actually ran over my husband’s foot - much to his chagrin and the rest of the family’s amusement. Consequently the bed has the advantage of having been dug over with two years worth of compost, but the disadvantage of being almost directly under an overgrown Leylandii in the next door garden and being in the shade for most of the day.

Last autumn it was looking pretty bare, its perennials having died down and nothing to show but a newly planted Parthenocissus Henryana and a Tetrapanax Rex (of which more later). Now, however, it’s filling up nicely: white and green tulips (I’ve lost the labels!), my new snowdrops, a profusion of anemone blanda (actually blue, not white, but hey, they can be the one exception to the colour scheme), an as-yet tiny philodelphus which I hope will eventually hide our kids’ trampoline from view, some clumps of Geranium Pratense ‘Splish Splash’, a couple of white Japanese Anemones and some white Nepeta. 

Anemone Blanda

The pride of place goes to a fabulous Tetrapanax Papyrifer ‘Rex’, which my sister grows in her garden in London.  Hers is the most magnificent specimen - enormous, deeply lobed leaves which would dwarf even the most cheffy dinner plate,  and towering stems which appear to grow several feet each year. 

And how is mine doing? Well, let's not beat around the bush. Even if I wanted to there is no bush worth beating around. My Tetrapanax is a stick. It's 6 inches long, and showing no sign of life, having been clobbered by a typically freezing Oxfordshire winter. I await with some trepidation to see what happens. Just like my still dead-looking Toona Sinensis I fear it’s a case of the wrong plant in wrong place and our frost pocket garden can’t sustain it, but I live in hope and will report back in a month or so. The Toona Sinensis, Lazarus-like, did manage to come back last year so I'm not giving up yet.

Tetrapanax Rex - this is how it should look!

This month's list of things to do includes ordering some worms for the wormery that my husband bought for my birthday present two years ago (some girls like shoes and handbags, but I guess I’m just weird like that). The first lot were victim to some persistant summer downpours and ended up drowning (still feel guilty about that) and I’ve been promising to get some more on a monthly basis ever since. Hopefully we will manage to get composting this year without a return of our furry friends. 

If you are in the area and haven't had a chance to get to Waterperry Gardens to see the annual display of fritillaries they are in full bloom right now. If you can't get there you can still enjoy them in all their glory by looking at this short film I made about them last year. Happy gardening!

Seed Planting Time!

I love seed planting time. I’m like a child in a sweet shop with too much choice and no ability to say no. I have probably spent hundreds of pounds over the years on seeds and I am ashamed to say many went unplanted and ended up in mouldering packets only to be guiltily consigned to the bin the following spring. I’m getting better though, and last year managed to not only plant the few seeds I decided to buy or collect, but some of them even flowered! I know, for seasoned gardeners among you this may seem trivial, but for me it was a big deal. 

Perhaps my favourite of last year’s home grown efforts was my Cerinthe (Honeywort). It's such an unusual plant, with grey green foliage and dark purple bunch-of-grape-like flowers which the bees adore, and which look fantastic in the front of a mixed or herbaceous border. They last for weeks too. 

Cerinthe (Honeywort)         © Clare Holt

I also managed to grow another wonderful and unsung plant which I discovered during a summer working part time at Waterperry Gardens near Thame - the Shoo-Fly plant, (Nicandra Physolades), which Waterperry had growing in their Rose Garden and never failed to prompt questions and exclamations of delight from visitors.

I think this plant has everything - great structure, graceful arching stems, with a succession of large morning-glory like flowers which emerge from dark purple green buds and go on to produce wonderful seedheads which look a bit like chinese gooseberries. 

I tried for two years in a row to get my collected Nicandra seeds to germinate, and last year they worked a treat. They can be grown as half hardy perennials or annuals and apparently self seed so I am keeping a close eye out to see if any pop up over the next few weeks.

Things have finally started to grow!

Things have finally started trying to grow!

Hacquetia

It's been such a long, cold winter - the third really cold one in a row. This year though, the temperatures have stayed low for much longer - unlike 2012, when things all started growing like mad in March and were then clobbered by the cold and lack of sunshine for the rest of the summer.

Anemone Blanda

That said, there really is no such thing as a 'normal' year, and maybe this is just more typical British weather than what we've been used to of late. Thankfully the last couple of weeks has seen temperatures rising a bit, and even the odd few hours of sunshine! 





In my garden things are finally starting to come up, thank goodness. I have a lot of herbaceous stuff which disappears underground in the summer so it's been looking, well, brown and muddy for months now! But every day I can see more tantalising glimpses of things bravely poking their heads up: species geraniums, achillea, alchemilla mollis, rudbeckia Goldsturm and lysimachia punctata, with its tiny cabbage-like shoots sprouting like a mini allotment patch.

Lysimachia punctata

A lot of these were planted as small '3 for a tenner' plants last spring so it's exciting to see how they will do in their second year. 




Perhaps my favourite is a fabulous catmint: Nepeta nervosa 'Blue Moon' - a great favourite with the bees, and the most intense deep blue flowers. Having failed several times to get lavender to thrive in my chilly garden I think I may give up and plant Blue Moon in its place this year.

Nepeta Nervosa Blue Moon, and happy bee.                                       Copyright Clare Holt

In the new white border (it's probably a bit grandiose to give it that title, but that's what it's going to be!) the tulips I planted last autumn have all come up - - the ones that I didn’t manage to get in, beaten back by the dark and cold of pre Christmas, I have put in the other side in the ‘new’ bed. As I write (mid April) the late-planted tulips are starting to venture out of the earth perhaps encouraged by the slight warming up of the last couple of weeks. I have no idea if they will flower or not - but I take the attitude, perhaps naiively, that plants want to do what they do and given half a chance they'll pretty much get on with it. 

Although the white border is still a thing that exists in my imagination as much as anything else, I have taken advantage of the kindness of my wonderful gardening friend Sue and planted some passed on snowdrops among the anemones, cyclamen and erythronium. Now it's just a case of waiting another year to see how it all looks. Patience, as ever with gardening, is not just a virtue, but a necessity!