Daphne's Restuarant, Chelsea - collaborates with EGS for an interior garden installation

  

EGS graduates at 2012 Chelsea Flower Show

Daphne’s Restaurant, Chelsea – collaborates with EGS for interior garden installation

Chelsea’s acclaimed Italian Restaurant, Daphne’s on Draycott Avenue, set up a challenging competition exclusively for EGS Garden Design graduates.    

 info@englishgardeningschool.co.uk

 

Congratulations to Amy Roberts and Manoj Malde who both graduated with distinction in 2011.

'The Hardy Plants society' Passionate about Plants' with guest speakers Andy Sturgeon, Fergus Garrett and Val Bourne.

This is going to be a long, long blog !! sorry

I have just discovered this Society,  I really wanted to find a gardening community.  Gardening and Garden Design can be a solitary business.  I went to a ' Passionate about Plants' day held by the Middlesex group.  With three amazing speakers with different takes on gardening. We started with Val Bourne who talked about gardening and her home with such humour and love,  I wanted to move into her gorgeous looking home and garden in her garden.  Val was a teacher, you can tell, she talks with passion and also didn't hesitate in telling me that the problem with many garden designer is they don't know their plants,   I quickly mentioned before studying garden design I had been gardening for nearly 10 years,  but lets be honest, after listening to her speak, I know nearly nothing. This is a gardener with it in her bones, Val started as a child.  As she said when all her friends were at the local disco she was tucked up in bed with seed catalogues. You see, I was at the Disco, that's where it all went wrong!!  

Next up we had the amazing Fergus Garrett, he is the gentle keeper of Great Dixter,  he worked with the late great Christopher Lloyd.  Fergus talked about the garden with love and affection and always bought Christopher's gardening ethos back into his talk ' Christopher always wanted the plants to look comfortable where they were planted '. He showed us photos of how he and Christopher played with colour combinations in the garden,  fabulous photos of Mr Lloyd wearing a bright coloured shirt with an equally bright coloured backdrop of the plants.

Last we had Andy Sturgeon who talked openly and honestly about the sometimes pure fluke moments of garden design where something that wasn't planned happens and falls into place in a Chelsea RHS show garden.  He had the audience laughing all the way through,  what a relief to find someone who is so successful in the fickle world of design with such a great sense of humour and there is hope for us Garden Designers who are just starting out.

The whole day was finished off with a hall next door filled with nursery owners and there plants.  The more mature audience of this day were hardcore shoppers these are gardeners not to be messed with, think first day of Harrods sale.  They REALLY know their plants.  I found myself buying Helenium 'Sahin's Early Flowerer - just because Val said she loved them and a Crambe cordifolia - just because a lady standing next to me of the amazing age of 89 said she loved them and called the Crambe ' lady of the woods with her arms outstretched and Allium scenscens Twisty, just because..... sign up .... they have a full calender and often garden visits that you might not get there on your own.  This whole day cost me the paltry sum of £20 and of course the bags of plants I bought. The society are now on facebook. A great day out.

Get the Chelsea look in your garden | Gardens Illustrated

Get the Chelsea look in your garden | Gardens Illustrated

Roses waiting for sun

Roses all lined up

Homes needed.................

PURPLE

Tulip 'Orange Emperor' - bulbs

Tulip 'Orange Emperor' - bulbs

Must remember in the Autumn I want pots of Orange Tulips.  Wish list from The Sarah Raven website.

Converting a pond, re homing the wildlife

In the process of a small project,  converting an unwanted pond as the owners have two small children.  The wildlife have been re homed and the sides of the pond have been punctured to slowly release the water.  This will hopefully leave enough water at the bottom for all the new bog planting. James my Landscape brother in law,  traveled with slopping  buckets of frogspawn to give the babies a lovely new home.

Ammi Majus (Bishop's Flower) Seeds - 500 for £1.95

Ammi Majus (Bishop's Flower) Seeds - 500 for £1.95

ordered and cant wait.............From Sarah Raven.....Buy 10 packets of a delicious concoction and get one packet free... Sarah Raven has really kick started the country into planting for Bees..

A Bees Buffet

This small area I have planted is on the way to looking full and lush.... a little more sunshine would help.  Its a Bees buffet.




The next raised bed is under construction. Ordered a gorgeous mix of seeds from ' Sarah Raven' yesterday.  Buy 10 packets and you get one free.

Off on Saturday to the 'Hardy Plants Society' a horticultural event held for gardeners and plant lovers for a 'Passionate about Plants' day,  speakers are Andy Sturgeon, Fergus Garrett and Val Bourne imparting their wisdom and humour, could be helpful with a hosepipe ban underway and still freezing cold nights. 

Sweet Peas for summer by Laetitia Maklouf

I ordered this on amazon after reading bits from the 'You magazine'  simply because the sub title 'how to create a garden in a year'.  Having sold my little house, where in the courtyard garden I had collected and been given plants , everything I could get my hands on over five years,  by the time I left it was perfect ........ just a hap hazard romp of climbers huge pots and Box balls.  I loved it,  the children of course hated it,not only did they have a small garden but pots everywhere.  Now having moved into a rented house with a big corner plot of 'Lawn'  they love it.  My first thoughts were to keep life simple, and anyway its not really mine and who knows how long I will live here, I shall have a minimalist garden and less hassle'.  Well I have now just dug and retained a flower border the pots are coming in thick and fast and the climbers are getting that lovely frothy look.... and the sweet peas and runner beans are just popping up. So much for that,  so of course this book just had to be ordered.

 Its a simple,  plant lovers story of making her garden.  Its soothing and simple and I have loved and hung on Laetitia's every word. The photography is gorgeous and the odd recipe to enjoy the things you have grown are enticing.  So for anyone who just loves the simple pleasures of gardening and growing,  its a must.  Having turned the book over I have just realised Laetitia Maklouf went to 'The English Gardening School' like myself.