Specialist Plant Nurseries
My lovely,
I only did one interesting thing this week (unless you count turning my compost heap) and that was touring as many specialist nurseries of the county and I could fit into one hot, sticky day.
Now, I am as susceptible as anyone to the impulse buy and I arrived at each new nursery ready to be seduced all over again. However, as well as directing you to these havens of wonder, I am also going to offer a few words of caution.
Firstly, June is not the time to go plant shopping. There is a reason why the horticultural cognoscenti buy their plants, bare-root and twig-like, in the depths of winter. I know you can't see what they are, but planting them in their dormant state or just as the soil warms up in spring means you get strong, happy plants. Pop into a garden centre and buy a pot in full bloom and it is likely that they have little left of their season. They peaked, not in your cutting garden or herbaceous border, but in a sales display. (A side note: the pots of most mainstream garden centre plants will be peat based. Please do ask and refuse to buy if they are.)
But garden centres are not daft; I am not immune to the sugar rush and seeing a plant in full flower makes my fingers itch to put it in my trolley. My first stop on my nursery tour had the most utterly perfect solution. Each plant on sale had one big pot in full bloom, and a row of little pots of plants ready to grow on. This incredible skilled tactic was entirely responsible for me buying an Aquilegia 'Denver Gold', a Trollius (a single, soft yellow cupped flower that exists at the perfect point where a florist's ranunculus meets a native buttercup) and my first ever Pelargonium. I avoid them like the plague usually, but this one looked so bizarre in flower, I could not resist. You see? It works.
The one plant I did buy in full flower was a Bupleurum longifolium'Bronze Beauty'. I have bought seed every year for a decade and I think I got one seedling once. Bupleurum, or Hare's ear, is notorious for disliking interference. Like Aquilegia, it self-sows like cress, but if you try and grow it yourself, it sulks. I bought a plant that was over but covered in seeds and I will shake the whole thing over some bare soil whilst looking the other way and feigning disinterest.
The genius that managed to stagger her flowerings to achieve this feat is Derry Watkins. Her nursery and her garden near Bath, Special Plants, are well worth the pilgrimage although there are plants and seeds available from her website if it is too far for you. But then you wouldn't get those impulse buys…
At this point, I will share something with you that I wrote for a blog post in Gather a few months ago about how to make the most of money in your garden.
Never ever ever impulse buy plants
I have killed a lot of plants in my time. Any trip to a garden centre starts with a beeline to the sales corner; it appeals to both the thrift and the rescuer in me. I have bought all sorts of things, simply because they were there. A Sambuca niger. Astilbes (astilbes don't grow in my sun-drenched soil). More whitecurrants than I care to share with you.
They don't die because I don't know how to care for plants; I do.
They die because I don't know where to put them. I can't commit. They don't have an obvious (or even a subtle) place and so they languish in their garden centre black plastic pot, drying out, starving, having to be urgently resuscitated by sitting in bucket of water, and then drying out again.
Do not go to a nursery or a garden centre without a plan.
Do not buy a plant that you don't know what you are going to do with.
Do as I say, not as I do.
And so with a car uncomfortably full for such an early stage of the day, I set off for the Botanical Nursery, home of the national collection of Digitalis. The good news is that they recently achieved a gold at Chelsea for their display of foxgloves. The bad news is that every stem and plant that bore any resemblance to a foxglove had been brought on for Chelsea and so were over by the time I arrived. I have absolutely adored the apricot ones I grew this year but we are making efforts to move to perennials at Malus Farm over the next few seasons, and so I steered towards the pots of Digitalis ferruginea. I have plenty of D. parviflora which is similar but smaller. Then I accidentally bought a tray of Camelot Cream plug plants. The impulse things just keeps getting me.
A note, I find it really useful to research things as I go around but there is no phone signal at the Botanical Nursery. I bought a lovely looking Eupatorium rugosum 'Chocolate' on the gamble that I could turn one very healthy looking one into a repeating feature of the shrub layer of the flower planting. Apparently not; propagation is by division in the spring.
A delightful place to visit, gorgeously lush plants, and the best glasshouse I have seen for while - just do your research in advance.
By this point I was hungry, and so the only place to go next was the Walled Garden at Mells. A magical place in a magical village. I went for the lunch and stayed for the plants. An unusual bog sage, Salvia uliginosa, that I have fancied for a while. (Unusual because tweedier is usually the only blue plant I invite in.) A Devon pink. An Achillea in a soft blush which turns out to be called 'Peggy Sue'. They look beautiful next to the Dalmation Peach foxgloves I got at the Botanical Nursery. I didn't mention those? I did buy a lot of plants… Even in the heat of the day, the garden was full of people at tables, drinking coffee and eating pizza. The planting design is wild and textured and really rather lovely. It nearly makes me understand the appeal of Persicaria but not quite. Give me Sanguisorba any day.
I had such great ambitions for The Great Nursery Tour, but the day was hot and the car was dangerously full. Parking is tricky in Mells at the best of times and parallel parking is not made easier by attempting to see through verdant fronds on the parcel shelf. So I chose one last highlight before I called it a day. Not technically a nursery, but a garden. The Piet Oudolf Garden at Hauser and Wirth.
I had low expectations given that it is June and Oudolf is renowned for making gardens look dramatic and breath-taking at all times of the year except June but I should not have been so churlish. It was, as ever, full of intrigue and detail, and yet also the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. I went round once, then went in the shop and bought a planting plan, and went round again. Circling and marking plants that I suddenly realised I could not live without. You will be relieved to hear that I went back into the shop and bought a box of seeds and resisted starting a whole new wish list of perennials. And then the sun went in behind a hazy cloud and I went round a third time, taking as many pictures as I could without the glare.
On my way out, a detour into Durslade Farm Shop for a lemon with a leaf (is there anything so beautiful as a really good lemon?), a bottle of rhubarb ketchup, and a handful of botanically illustrated cards.
If you are in the West Country, I highly recommend all of them. If you are not, and you aren't likely to be any time soon, I do suggest you research your own local experts and aficionados. National Collections are a wonderful place to start, but do ask around.