A major case of plant and gaden envy

One of the main reasons for the weekend in Norwich was to visit Keith and Melissa's garden.  I have posted about it a few times before, mainly here and here. Melissa makes my obsession look like a passing interest, there are succulents EVERYWHERE. Mind you it helps when you have so much space to plant them out not to mention one or two greenhouses.

This is not exactly the best time to visit her garden, the covers have only just come off, and the jungle and fern areas have yet to fill out.  Given the mild winter and early spring it was however looking the best I have seen it on these early tips.

So starting in the cactus house. Lots of very happy plants in here.  It has filled out a bit since the last visit, but there is still space for a few more plants.

This aeonium looks really strange, it seems to be forming new heads, but the rosettes are not opening. I don't think it is a weird flower. 

I have a massive soft spot on this form of agave titonata.  It has a great colour and lots of good teeth and who wouldn't want one that size! Sadly they are not at all hardy and space limits what I can bring inside.

This variegated aloe arborescens is one of the plants that got me totally hooked.  Years ago now, she posted a picture of it and it was love at first sight.   It should have formed an amazing clump by the end of the summer. The cacti on the right  reminds me of "cousin it" from the adams family.

She has recently started planting up unusual pots to enter into her local cactus and succulent society meetings. Apparently no one else does, so she always wins.  This tea cup is one of her larger ones. Her latest was an tiny snail shell.

The cactus house is on the edge of sunken garden.  Both were finished last summer and the mild winter was a welcome break to allow the plants more chance to settle.

The dalmatian puppies are all grown up, but still have their puppy energy. Apparently they are not ones for sticking to the paths and have formed their own tracks through the undergrowth.  Thankfully the sunken garden is mainly dog proof. There are so many lovely plants there including this aloe polyphylla.  It is strange that some spiral young and others take a lot longer (mine seem to be taking their time as well).

The cycad corner still looks great. I can't wait to get my cycads in the ground like this, almost more than anything they add an exotic look.

One of her larger agave parrasana which is almost perfect. It is a good combination with the ice plant and looks really blue against the bright green.

Typically Melissa got there first on the pines, although we have spoken about them before, so maybe I can claim she stole my idea. This dwarf blue one looks great, there are a few around the garden, explaining why Urban Jungle didn't have any when I was looking for them.

The other greenhouses are still in winter mode, so it would be unfair to post any photos in there, instead moving onto the main succulent plantings. Melissa has been trying to convert me to having some cacti outside and this one shows why. It is amazing what you can grow with a simple rain cover for protection.

At this time of year there is a lot of colour, from the alpines.

I am so jealous of these mounds, there are a few scattered around which are all doing well. I keep killing mine, maybe they don't cope with my flood or drought type watering.

Onto the bank and some of the agaves are a really decent size now.  Last summer and the mild winter means there are all in good shape. I am certain it makes a massive difference to hardiness if plants have a good summer to put on some growth and then a gradual led into the cold giving them a chance to shut down.

One of her groups of agave montana, I thought mine looked good, these are even better. I am guessing they must be some of the biggest in the UK.

Back towards the sunken garden on the middle path and there are more pines.  Are you seeing how well they work yet?

If you don't like the blue creeping forms, you can go for one of the cone or bush shapes.

Finally my favourite yucca this year. It is strange I usually just walk past this one, but this year have added it to my list of plants to find.

The middle path takes you via the green roof which was already looking good.  The alpines are just getting going here.

It is always worth the drive to visit the garden and Melissa and Keith are great hosts.  My only complaint is the plant and general garden envy I always leave with.

To finish a couple more pictures of the dogs, I know there are a few dog lovers who look in.

A little retail therapy

It was time for my annual trip to Norfolk to visit Keith and Melissa and their wonderful garden and to do a bit of plant shopping.  This is always one of the highlights of the year, a lovely garden to look around and visiting a few cactus and independent nurseries. This year more than ever I needed some plant therapy to get to my mind off not being able to get in the garden.

I'll come back to Melissa's garden in another post. Over the weekend we visited the largest cactus mart of the year, Hyde Hall (one of the RHS gardens) and a couple of local nurseries. First up was the cactus mart and most people agreed that the setting was far from ideal. Everyone tends to tun up ready for opening, the hall wasn't large and so it was a bit of a scrum as everyone tried to get the choice pants.

It was much more enjoyable once the rush had died down and there was space to take you time and enjoy each stand.  Many of the sellers had brought multiples of plants, so kept re-filling the empty spaces, and it was worth returning to each stand to see what had been placed out since your last look.

I was quite restrained and didn't buy everything I liked the look of.  Most of plants were small so it was easy to transport them home. Having said "no more white echeverias", I did cave and bought two.  I can never resist when I see them, despite knowing that they are a pain to keep in top condition and need to be inside to keep their colour.

Ask if you want photos of individual plants.

Next up was a trip to Hyde Hall.  It was the wrong day to visit this garden; it is very open and on a windy day was a little blustery.  Most of the garden was not my style, there were a few areas I liked.

In one section a group of flower spikes caught my eye. On close inspection I found they were eremurus robustus, having seen the size of the leaves on mine, I had wondered if the flowers would be a dramatic. They do not disappoint.

The real area of interest was the gravel garden

I haven't visited many RHS gardens, but they seem to have good nurseries.  For some reason their alpine sections have always been well stocked with some choice plants.

It is always good to find a large number of named sempervivum varieties and added a few to my collection, so I will have to revive sempervivum sundays.

That was it for the Saturday, then on Sunday it was time for the local nurseries.  Having visited the local chain, it was off to Urban Jungle . This is one of my favourite nurseries and it gets better every year.  They started, as the name suggests, with a the majority of plants being aimed at exotic garden styles.  With the bad winters they have evolved and now the exotics are mixed in with choice plants from other styles of gardening.

One of the highlights of visiting is seeing the plants in beds, it is a great way to show how good plants are, or how they may be used in the garden, they also have two great green walls.  This is the original one and it continues to do well. The new indoor one is planted with broms

The main greenhouse is lovely to walk around,

You can stop and look at the koi

And if you want to relax you can get a drink and collapse in one of the seating areas.

Liz who runs it, seems good a picking up on trends in both plants and was of gardening. It was great to see a good selection of pines, both dwarf and larger forms.  I will never understand the resistance to these plants, I guess it's fall out from the laylandii hedges that were so popular in the UK until their true size became obvious.  I think they are perfect in gravel beds planted among succulents and the new garden gives me an ideal opportunity to include some.

Then there are the trends in planting, Kokedama seems to increasingly popular.  Liz has them scattered throughout the nursery

Anyone in the UK interested finding out more about Kokedama, UJ are are holding a demonstration on the 1st of June, details can be found here. There is also an edible jungle, but at this time of year it is just being planted and so not worth photographing.

Obviously the true test of a good nursery is if you leave with any purchases,  which I always do.  This time was slightly different as with a whole garden to fill, it was not the usual spikie plants I was after.

The cinodendron hookerianum (chinese lantern tree) was a suggestion for the shade garden.  I have been looking for plants to espalier and someone suggested it may be something different to try.  I also picked up a couple of different arisaemas, again it was great to see several varieties available.

Here is everything, sorry for the elongated line up, my neighbours little girl loves to come over and help when I am in the garden and she decided the plants had to be lined up to display them.

All said, a very successful weekend of shopping, with something for my obsession and a few things ready for when I can get planting in the garden.

Will I ever get the garden back

Yet another long bank holiday weekend wasted.  Typical isn't it, long weekends in the UK are famous for their rain, the two so far this year have both been lovely and I haven't been able to use the garden.  The last few weeks of a build are always the worst, you can see the end is in sight, and so everything seems to drag. 

There is so much that needs doing: the ground needs digging, the banks need building, the paths need laying, the indoor plants need putting out, and the outside plants need planting. With the sun the plants are looking good and really into growth early this year.

Two plants are doing their best to cheer me up.  Firstly my large agave montana.  I can't look at this plant without grinning it is everything I love in agaves

The other plant making me smile today is the eremurus stenophyllus. Looking at it this evening and noticed no one but two flowers! I love their flowers, which will develop through the summer.

Still tiny at the moment, but they remind me there is the whole summer to go, and I will get the garden back at some point.

Starting to plan

Assuming I don't jinx it, we are very close to getting the builders out of the garden. This will mean that there is the whole summer to get cracking on the design and getting the basics in.  It is scary and a bit hard to think about at the moment as the garden currently looks like this:

View current garage door (pretty much face west).

As you can see it is not just all the builders materials, but the lack of fences plus the whole area around the patio basically being concrete (the joy of builders thinking that simply burying their waste is acceptable). The front garden is not much better and has a skip and another lot of concrete and broken tiles form the roof.  The next stage (fingers and everything else crossed)  is that the builders will remove all their materials and then bring in a mini digger to remove the top layer of soil leaving me with a flat, none concrete base to start from.

View from corner of patio (pretty much due east)

The whole garden project is a two stage process, we have lost a lot of garden in the build and the garage is now taking up valuable garden area.  Not only is it 4m deep, but there is a further 4m behind it that we can not really use.  So stage two is to knock down the old garage and build a smaller wokshop / shed (with a green roof) in the bottom of the garden freeing up a further 4m of space for planting.  So any plans at this stage will have to be done with that in mind.

So in stage one of garden design, there are two main areas I am interested in.  Firstly the little section down the side, which is 3m wide and 7m deep, so big enough to use.

This part of the garden gets the morning sun and depending on the planting along the fence, it will get sun until about 1pm.  We currently have two main ideas for the area; a Mediterranean style courtyard with fruit trees trained along the walls. This would make the most of the fact that one of the walls is south facing and it really holds the heat well. The problem would be that it means we have to use low planting along the fence line, so it may feel quite exposed. The other idea is to make it a more secluded shade garden.  Planting taller screening plants along the fence and then ferns and under-planting in the rest of the area,  creating a more lush place to sit.  This will give us more privacy, but will obscure more light from the rooms.

The second area that will be worked on straight away is the succulent bank I am planning for along the front of the patio and then going down the south facing fence. To give an idea of the size, the patio is 6.5m wide (5.5m available for planting) and it is 7.5m to the garage.

My thoughts here are to build an L shape bank along the wall and fence.  This would start quite sparsely planted by the patio steps, and would end more lushly planted by the current garage door.  If I have enough material I would like to build the bank to the height of the top of the patio wall. I have no doubt that all the agaves, yuccas and cycads will be very happy there.

The next few weeks will be spent doing some sketches and surfing for inspiration.  By which time the garden should be ready for me to start work.  No doubt I'll keep you all updated as my thoughts come together. Until then, keep your fingers crossed, that the builders do actually finally move out!

Finally some time in the garden.

With building the extension our lives have been on hold since the start of the year. Everyone told us how hard it would be, but actually up until the start of April it was fine.  Then Spring started properly, the plants woke up, and all I could think about was getting outside to explore. The weather has been amazing this week, and not having a garden to potter in has been really strange.  I hadn't realised how much I use the garden to de-stress and generally mull things over.

So today with no builders around I decided it was time I took back at part of the garden.  Some plants needed to be moved out of the green house, so it seemed like an ideal excuse.  The builders are still occupying the majority of the garden, so it was just about squeezing a bit of space to store some plants.

There were a few offcuts from the patio which allowed the area in-front of the garage to be extended.  This is out of the way and wont interfere with designing and building the garden.

It is a fraction of the pots that need to be out, but is a start.  It also gave me a chance to really look at how they coped with the winter.  The main problem seems to be lack of water, with most of these being in the greenhouse, they got hot and very dried out. I am particularly pleased with how the bowl of echeveria agavoides forms is doing (right hand side of the image.) They have held their colour so well, and should really fill that bowl by the end of this summer.

The echeverias in general have enjoyed the warm start to the year.  The greenhouse is a mass of flowers.

Many of these are in the nursery section, young plants that are now established and will be planted up this year depending on if they have made it to my like list. 

Not to be out-done the cacti are getting into flower as well. This one looks good but every year I remember how disappointing the flowers are. I may need to have a think what to do with it for the future, as currently it isn't standing out in terms of earning a place in the greenhouse.

Compared to this one, which not only looks good, but has more distinctive flowers.  I think it will be planted into a nice pot when I have bit more time and space. It has formed such a lovely clump and so far has no blemishes or marks.

Both of these could learn something on flowers from the next one.  Still looking good after over a week in flower.  

Fingers crossed we have passed the worst on the build and are can not get more of the garden back with each day.  It would be amazing to have the whole thing back for in two weeks, although it would mean I then actually have to do some serious work on designing, building and planting the actual garden.

Selecting paint colours the plant lovers way

It has got to the time in our build when we have to select the colour for the outside of the house.  This is never easy and the temptation is to simply select the same colour as everyone else.  Those that do opt for something different most likely paint samples around the place to help them select.

The builder asked that we limit these to the wall to the patio, as the other render is still drying.  This wall will also not be visible once finished as I am planing to build a succulent bank up against it to make the most of the space.  Sadly he chucked away all the rubble from the build which would have been perfect to build the bank up instead of me having to buy tonnes of materials myself.

Once the paint had dried it was time to test it against the slabs to be used on the patio and paths

At this stage the succulent fan kicked in. There are obviously going to be lots of pots around and I will no doubt use the wall as a back-drop for photographing my plants so I thought it would be sensible to test that as well.

It is no surprise that the colur changes every time you place something else next to it. It is lovely in London at the moment, we are having a very early and sunny spring, so the succulents have got into early growth.  Especially given we had almost no winter at all.  The cacti are starting to flower, this is the first to put out a full flower though.

It is a much stronger colour than last year, which could be something to do with the sun and heat I believe. The echeverias are all starting as well, which is actually a bit of a shame.  Because the builders are still in the garden I couldn't take everything out of their winter storage areas, so they are scattered around under tables, benches and anywhere else I thought they would be protected from the builders.  They need to be brought out into full view so they can be enjoyed. Plus it is getting into that time I need to harden them off before the sun gets too strong. 

Hopefully only 3 weeks or so until I get the garden back.

It's been a while

With the extension work and builders blocking the green house and generally trashing the garden, there has not been much to report. Then this last week we got a big step closer as this is now the view from the kitchen / diner.

The patio doors are in and that signals we are into the final stages of the build. It mean I can start to plan for the day they remove the rest of their stuff out of the gardens and the real fun can start. There are currently on-going discussions with my OH about the area in front of the doors, I think it is a perfect plant display area for some of my pots, but she seems to think that we should use it for table and chairs. You would think she would know me better by now.

To celebrate I went on the first plant buying tip of the year, to one of the rare plant fairs they hold around the UK.  It was a spur of the moment decision, as shown by the purchases:

At first this probably looks fine (all be it not very spikie), sadly the back row of plant were bought at the same plant fair last year, the front row, this years.  It does show a certain difference in the attention I pay to the other plants, as I have never bought the same succulent twice by accident. Thankfully there is enough space in the garden for both sets and I guess there will be no waiting for them to form clumps. 

While I have yet to properly start on the design for the front and back, I know they are both going to be more varied than the last garden and while there will be a lot of succulents and gravel sections, there will also be more lush and shade areas.  I am considering using rock gardens as a theme throughout and just swapping the planting medium in the different sections. That lot should all be perfectly happy in different sections.

Another plant I picked up was eremurus 'Oase'.  This is the third variety I have, and want them scattered around the gravel beds.  I'll do another post on these later.  Two different plants that found their way into my car were creeping clematis. I saw these somewhere as different plants to have in an gravel bed.

I want to try and get some different types of plants into the planting and theses looked amazing in the pictures I saw. Time will tell if they cope with my lack of watering and care. A friend who specialises in clematis (but ironically hates these forms) says they should do well in my type of gravel bed. If I can keep them alive I may use them on the green roof and vertical planting areas as well.

Very exciting to be thinking of getting into the garden again, sadly the doors have also highlighted how much closer the garage is to the house (and how ugly it is!).

The next project is to knock it down and build a smaller one in the section that is currently hidden behind it.   Then again maybe I should wait until the current project is actually finished before starting to plan the next one.