First road trip of the year: Part 1

Having had the first shopping trip last weekend, this weekend was the first plant road trip; to visit Keith and Melissa's garden and a cactus mart. In part 1, I'll cover Keith and Mels garden. I have posted about their garden before (here) and visit at this point each year. Obviously it is totally the wrong time of year to visit an exotic garden in the UK; nothing is out or growing, and the plants are still showing their winter damage. There is always something new to see though.

It is unfair to show the jungle and pond sections (to the front and left of the house), the ferns are not out and nothing is up, so I am concentrating on the new arid bits which are down the right hand side of the garden. When you come out of the side of the house you see the current project, or one of them, the sunken garden (the house is to the right of this picture). The building in the photo is the new cactus house and will all be planted. Neither of these were built this time last year, just the end wall with the lean-to greenhouse against it. The rest of the area was a sloping lawn / storage area.

Turning slowly left you have the lean to greenhouse against the end wall of the cactus house, then the big greenhouses.

You can see the green roof in the lower left hand corner of the photo, which I'll come back to. Continuing around you can see the new planted bits. If I remember correctly these were laid out last year, but not build or planted.

Then looking at the planted bits from in front of the large greenhouse

I tend to visit this time each year and it is amazing to think that last year, the lean-to and the big greenhouse was up and the there were piles of gravel where the landscaping was roughly going to happen, but that was it. Given they do everything themselves, on top of the general garden maintenance, it is an amazing amount of work.

Looking back towards the greenhouses, you can see the different paths. You can also see the different levels and how much work there has been to create the flat and sloped sections.

and a bit further along, the bank starts to curve around in front of the house.

You can see the various covers placed over plants to keep the snow off. Most of the plants under them seemed fine and hopefully the covers can come down soon. I can't remember every seeing them up this late.
       

The green roof is a mixture of alpines, aloes, agaves and cacti. They are all looking very healthy given the time of year and the winter they had.

The alpines in the rest of the garden look good as well. I am pleased to see these mounds got through without any protection and almost 2 weeks covered in snow. 

The beds are a bit bare at the moment as everything is still in the green houses, this is the lean to

The cactus house is not planted yet, they haven't been able to move the other plants out to get into it. The view in is still pretty good

Now some of the plants. All the aeoniums where either in flower or just looking good. Her aeonium nobile has got big, just to rub in the fact I lost mine this winter.

There are so many agaves, it is hard to select just one.

This aloe saponaria variegata looks almost identical to mine, they obviously have a tendency to get more variegated as they mature.

The next one is aloe suprafoliata in its juvenile form, we both got seedlings from the same batch so there is always a little competition between us.

There seem to be a lot of gastoveria x aloes around in the UK now the next one is called 'floe'

Finally an aloe I picked up for her a few years back.  She asked for something big with offsets, this is what I found:

Every time I pop over she suggests I re-pot it.  As it was such a lovely day on Sunday, I thought it was time I did. We spent a couple of hours splitting off the pups and cleaning them up. There were 24 plants in all:

They were all packed into a crate to dry for a few days and then some will be planted out, some potted up and I imagine a few given away. One may have come home with me.

Finally one of the signs she has made for the garden, I like both the message and the way a pot has been encased and then planted up. 

Crete Lodge garden

I have been meaning to do a post on this garden for ages.  It belongs to Keith and Melissa and is a real labour of love.  I have posted about it before but not shown the main garden, so it is about time I rectified this.   I first met them in 2008 and have been lucky enough to be allowed to visit a couple of times every year since. Melissa is responsible for me going on the cactus field trips every year (here is the post on the last one) and is a very bad influence when it come to buying plants. I don't think she has worked out the difference in size of our gardens. This post is a mixture of my photos (both old and recent) and some supplied by Melissa where I do not feel mine do the garden justice.

The first obstacle to overcome are the guard dogs

If you do manage to somehow sneak past them you come out of the house onto the terrace. This photo is a bit old now and they re-modelled it last year.

The edge of the terrace looks over the top of their arid bank which is one of the main reasons for visiting.  I say "one" as the garden has so many areas that stand out, this is their little swimming pond with the lovely telegraph pole hut built by Keith. Sadly the last couple of bad winters have not been kind to the tree ferns or some of the palms around this areas, but like his this older photo.

I never stop being amazed at how much they manage to do,  it's not just things like digging the pond out, but all the beds have low walls made from bricks and objects they have been given or found.

 

So the arid bank. It forms a sweeping curve around the back of the house and is spectacular.

Photo by Melissa

The rocks are local, either from where they have excavated or from a local gravel pit.

Photo by Melissa

The bank is mainly planted with a mixture of agaves, cacti, yuccas, with other xeric planting filling in the gaps.

As if that lot wasn't enough, for the last couple of years they have been extending the bank, moving the greenhouses and adding a water storage tank. This is the size of green house I want, it looks even better now it is filled.

Photo by Melissa

Mind you their little lean-to isn't bad either.

Photo by Melissa

The other side of the end wall is going to be a cactus house with all the plants in the ground, which I can't wait to see when it is finished. This was the area between the new greenhouses and the bank at the tart of the year.

I haven't managed to get back since it has been fully planted up, but Mel has kindly let me see photos of it recently and I can not wait to see it in person:

Getting some of the plants in looked fun.

Photo by Melissa

But it was really worth it. Again it is the little details that make the garden stand out. Remember the telegaph pole hut? There were some left, so they have been used to form rasied edging to some parts of the garden.

Photo by Melissa

One section of the new bit is a massive water storage tank which is hidden by a green roof.

Photo by Melissa

At first I thought it was strange not to have added more plants, believe me Mel has no shortage,  until you see it from the terrace, or should that be don't see it for the terrace.

Photo by Melissa

The only problem I have with their garden is that I always leave feeling very inadequate in how much I manage to get done in my tiny little garden.  They do everything themselves including all the brick work. I still believe that Melissa has managed to clone Keith and has a garage full of him somewhere, can two people really manage to do this all on their own! It really is a beautiful garden, and visiting is always one of the highlight of my year.  They except visitors by appointment and if you are ever going to be near Norwich I highly recommend arranging to drop in.  (Here are links to their facebook page, and their web page).

Sadly the dogs have been trained to follow me around and bark if I go near the greenhouses unsupervised, but I always come away with at least one gift and a head full of ideas. I wonder if Melissa would hire Keith out when I come to do the hard landscaping in my garden.

Road trip: part 2

The first day of the trip was all about the large cactus nurseries. Day 2 was far more relaxed, a quick tip down to the local nursery and then time to look around my friends garden and greenhouses. The local nursery is Urban Jungle, a great little nursery with an good range of unusual plants.  I have posted a few pictures before, this is the vertical planting wall that one of the staff put together. It seems to have got through the winter without any problems.

 

The largest greenhouse has a large planted area, with a Koi pond.  There is a little coffee area to sit and take in the plants.

  

You have to feel for nursery owners, in March it was so hot and all the talk of draughts meant people were not buying plants as they wouldn't be able to water them. Then it rains all of April so gardens are the last place people want to be.  All the time they are having to juggle young plants and new deliveries.  The nursery was chock full of lovely plants with some new rarer forms all putting on growth ready for it to warm up enough to go out into the sales area.

  

 

We did our bit and bought a few little treasures and thankfully more people were turning up as we were leaving.

So shopping finished it was back to the house for the rest of the afternoon.  It was too wet to properly look around the garden, (I promise I will do a post on their garden at some point), so we stuck to the inside areas.  Mind you with a conservatory like this you almost don't need to  go outside.

One of the best plants at the moment is the flowering agave gypsophyla. I don't think it matters how often you see agave flowers, they are always a great sight.

It is a lovely plant, such a shame it will die afterwards, but fingers crossed this pup will survive to continue the line.

 

It is by no means the only agave to admire, everywhere you look there are lovely plants:

 

I took particular interest in this agave victoria reginae hybrid, it's a stunning plant, now I just need to track one down.

 
I love agave mitis albicans, it really is a much better form than the normal.  This one has a good set of pups forming, it is going to make an spectacular clump, either that or a good set of plants for swaps.

One of the things I look forward to on my visits is seeing all the succulent bowls. They always look amazing, so well designed proportioned. I can never get mine to look as good.

There is a joke that the house is turning into a succulent rescue centre.  This is one of the plants they have rescued, not bad for a freebie.

There was also the biggest echeveria I have ever seen.  It's huge and thankfully offsets freely so I was able to add one to the plants leaving with me.  You would need quite a garden to have a clump of these!

Then it was out to the greenhouses.  The smallest is a lean-to against a purpose built wall.  It is probably the emptiest, which gives you an idea of how many plants there are.You have to tread very carefully as you walk through them.

 

At this point I became far to busy admiring the plants to remember to take photos, but did manage to take one of this variegated aloe polyphyla.

As I was walking past their alpine propagation area (they are stocking up for a new area in the garden) I noticed this lovely little mound.  I don't know what it is about a simple mound of green that is so pleasing on the eye. Sadly this gypsophyla aretioides is another one to be added to the wants list, at least I know I can find this on easily when I decide to get it.

I could post so many more photos of plants in her collection that I am envious of, but she watches me closely enough as it is without drawing attention to the plants I would like to liberate!