Your eyes do not deceive you, I am posting about a non
Chelsea Flower Show thing during Chelsea week! However I am very excited to be
going to Chelsea later today to help out on the NGS stand....there can be lots
of perks to being a volunteer!
What I am writing about is my trip last Sunday to Beth
Chatto’s garden and RHS Hyde Hall, somewhere I have wanted to go to forever.
Beth Chatto is quite a famous plantslady, and where I think most people know
her from is her famous dry garden, a gravel garden which she does not water. At
the time this was all quite revolutionary, a new idea of just working with
plants that are naturally suited to the type of conditions that you have
locally rather than an overly irrigated and fertilized artificial paradise of
rectangular stripped lawns and rows of red salvias and marigolds. Working with
nature rather than against her.
Since then this idea has of course blossomed and also
evolved into things such as the naturalistic planting schemes we have today,
however it was exciting to go on a big trip out of the city with Peter and Sam
to see it for ourselves.
On the way was Hyde Hall, which seemed rude to not visit, especially
as the traffic was miserable and as an RHS member I get in free. I hadn’t been
before, and left with mixed feelings. It
is a strange place, full of the RHS visitor services professionalism (huge
cafe, all very easy) but sits in the middle of fields. It still feels very
young, and not quite yet coherent as an entity. Things seemed a bit disjointed,
and patchy...however there is lots of space for expansion and I think the
garden may grow into its self.
They also had a great dry garden
Beth Chattos was completely the opposite and I *loved* it
and would thoroughly recommend a visit. Built around her modest home (no Great Dixtor
Tudor Manor houses here!) the coherent garden feels like a well loved space
which has developed over time to be a beautiful and well laid out garden which
I could happily live in.
You start with the dry garden (which you don’t need a ticket
to visit)
Then there is the cafe (mmmm, more cake vicar) and a huge
well laid out nursery full of very high quality plants.
The garden its self first leads to the ponds, jealousy
abounded for these lush waterways
It was then island beds a go go
Before the woodland garden which I think was probably the
best I have seen. Usually woodland gardens are sparcely planted, however
here the planting was relatively dense
with loads of things I hadn’t seen before.
mmm Veratrums |
There were lots of climbers up trees which made for a very exotic effect |
I needed to wander round a couple of times to take it in
properly, so left Peter to wander off to the nursery as I felt I didn’t need
any plants. How wrong was I! When I went round the nursery there were loads of
unusual things that interested me and I needed a trolly!
My haul...I ended up buying
Raoulia tenuicaulis: an amazing very flat groundcover plant
Iris sibirirca ‘blue bungee’
Ferula Communis: Giant Fennel which I have been trying unsuccessfully
to grow from seed!
Asphodeline liburnica
Euphorbia cornigena wallichii
Eryngium eburneum
Other things that caught my eye through the day
So near and yet so far, we haven't been to any of the two, we ought to really. Nice haul!
ReplyDeleteGreat photos, I (almost) feel like I was there with you. Hopefully I will get to visit someday!
ReplyDelete