I went to Hove to look at a garden – the owner and I are doing a collaborative planting. This means tempering desire with the practical. There used to be a time when I would heave heavy tomes round under my arm to show off planty pics. Hurray for the internet which lets us pull…
Category: The Best Nurseries
Plants by Post – do I rate them?
When I asked Tim Milward of Plant Me Now how many lines of seeds they had in their catalogue he looked at me politely and I realised I was a bit of an idiot. Plant me now, geddit? Plants arrive as plugs or in 7cm pots and the punter plants them and tends them. It’s…
Which Ivy? Where?
This weekend I went to Fibrex, the nursery for pelargoniums, ivies and ferns. The unlikely name comes from a long family history in nursery growing which started out as a rose business. The family bought it from a man who had a clever notion of how to pot the roses up for sale. An unfashionable…
Designing with hedges
The landscapers are planting whips like anything right now. Whips are twigs to you and me. The cheapest are 20 to 30 centimetres in height which seems like a slow start in the first days of the life of a hedge. Please do follow us!
Le Jardin Plume
Step through a hole in the hedge off a field of stubble and you’ve got the hallmark of Le Jardin Plume: simple restraint. The garden, some 20 years old, was created by the Quibels to bring attention to their nursery. It is, as you might guess, a plantsmans’ garden. Not many minutes in,…
The world’s best nurseries: series 3
Santa’s Grotto or elves? A very good way to write off a garden centre or nursery, or so I used to think. On the east coast of England the land is open and sandy and this makes for good growing ground – free draining and easy to work. Consequently there are quite a few nurseries…
Get naked at David Austin: some useful rose info
The leaves are off, or nearly, and I’m taking my mind back to David Austin and February. I went there for a day’s course on designing with roses run by the inexorable Diana Perry, fount of rose lore. Due to dog trauma (another story altogether) I did not write a blog log but now I…
The World’s Best Nurseries Series No 2.
I have never been to Avon Bulbs in person. Once a year in autumn, a parcel arrives with contents looking like an upmarket take-away. Whispery paper bags with a twist and drizzle of shredded paper. Inside, the new bulbs, salivated over previously on their stand at Chelsea. Or in the Avon Bulbs catalogue. The owner,…
The World’s Best Nurseries Series: No 1.
Whenever I go plant shopping, lingering time is built in. The notebook, pencil and camera tag along. There is nothing quite like a good nursery to give ideas for planting combinations. Or to offer up a completely new herbaceous ingredient. Experimental candidates in pots make it into the car boot to take home and…