Garden Design Blog

Winter Style – Save Your Garden!

Kay — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 16:59:41 +0000

Tom Jones Los Angeles Garden

Kay — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 12:32:43 +0000

Growing Tree Ferns

Kay — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 11:42:56 +0000

Tree ferns, Alan Titchmarsh’s signature plant, have had a chequered history in terms of garden style in Europe. While the Victorians were head over heels in love with them, building special ferneries in which to display them, they fell out of fashion because they were considered ‘gloomy’ by subsequent generations.

However, they have returned to popularity today, as they are now their structural shape and the unique fuzzy texture that gives impact and dramatic value to modern gardens. However they shouldn’t be purchased on a whim - a mature fern can have fronds that are eight feet long! These look particularly good when set against a painted wall and lit from the front so that the shape of the fronds is dramatically shadowed on the wall at night.

What to grow

While there are around 20 species of Dicksonia tree fern, only four or five can actually be grown in the UK as they are not hardy enough to survive our winters.

Growing tips

Nearly all tree ferns like to have a slightly alkaline soil and appreciate a humus rich mulch.

You need to water the trunk and crown of tree ferns because the fibrous feeding roots actually grown along the not underground.
Humidity is key to success, and many tree ferns will enjoy regular hosing with water in the summer – and a dose of well-rotted manure around the base of the plant will also help to conserve moisture
Wrap tree ferns up with a fleece during winter.

Celebrity Garden: Alan Titchmarsh

Kay — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 11:13:57 +0000

After many years, Alan Titchmarsh’s garden no longer appears on TV. For a long time we were familiar with Barleywood, his Hampshire garden, which appeared on Gardeners World. But in the past five years, since he moved, Titchmarsh has kept the cameras away from his new garden, also in Hampshire.

It surrounds a Georgian farmhouse and is only a few miles from the famous Barleywood, but when he moved, Alan Titchmarsh started truly afresh, not transporting a single plant or cutting from his old garden to his new one. But his favourite plants and features have reappeared: the acre of land is divided into grass walks and cottage-style beds, linked with hedges of clipped box, an avenue of pear trees and interspersed with cones and balls of clipped bay and yew in large Italian pots. His signature plant is here too: there is a glade of tree ferns, a winter walk with lines of hellebores, and something completely new – a Grade II listed privy which he is converting into a shell grotto: a bit of an admixture because grottoes are a Victorian obsession, but then, what else can one do with a listed outdoor toilet?

In keeping with his declared environmental beliefs, the rear of the garden is a naturalist’s paradise, in the meadowland he has created a wildlife pond which is home to newts and natterjack toads. And he’s planted a number of semi-mature trees to create a semi-meadowed, semi-wooded landscape. And he refuses to use pesticides or fungicides on his flowers, fruit and vegetables.

Tree ferns courtesy of psd at flickr

Planning a Cutting Garden

Kay — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 21:58:12 +0000

If you go back in history, you’ll find that the family garden is a fairly recent development – peasants had ground on which they grew food and nobles had landscapes in which they demonstrated their power – and part of any noble landscape was a cutting garden. It was simply created to provide flowers to decorate the castle, villa or mansion and so it had no design features at all.

Growing flowers for cutting is a production process and most cutting gardens are hidden behind a wall or hedge because the idea is to have productivity, not style – so if the colours class or the layout is a bit untidy, it doesn’t matter. It’s also an experimental garden where you can try out new plants and colour schemes before moving them into your viewing garden.

If, like George Clooney, you want a cutting garden, or perhaps just a cutting bed tucked into an unobtrusive corner of your garden, plan it in terms of easy use. The plants should be grown in widely spaced rows to give you room to plant, thin, weed and, of course, cut. You should also put flowers with similar requirements for sun, water, and drainage together regardless of whether they look attractive in proximity or not. What to plant is an unlimited choice, but focus on both annuals and perennials, going for the longest stemmed varieties as they offer the most choice when it comes to flower arranging, and don’t forget to have some really stunning foliage plants to give texture and neutral colour to your arrangements.

floral arrangement courtesy of bernadettemacphersonmorris

Planning a Walled Garden

Kay — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 19:01:16 +0000

Celebrity Garden - George Clooney: tree thief and gardener

Kay — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 20:30:51 +0000

There seem to be two sides to George Clooney – recently he revealed that he revenged himself on a neighbour by stealing his prize tree. Apparently when Clooney was a student, his dog got into the very horticulturally-minded neighbour’s garden and, as a result, was shot in the backside with an airgun. The dog survived but Clooney was later to sneak into the garden next door to cut down his neighbours prized fir tree and set it up for Christmas in his own lodgings.

But today Clooney seems more horticulturally inclined. He is the owner of Villa Oleandra in Laglio, Northern Italy which has, amongst other things, a cutting garden purely grown to create floral displays for the house and an olive garden. The garden joins the lakeside terrace and boat dock so that the villa faces out over the water and there’s a footbridge that leads to an old factory, which is also part of the villa’s grounds.

Clooney is apparently keen to maintain the traditional ambience of the property, and while it would be unlikely to find many conifers in such a clement area with such a high water table, there are certainly lots of Cypress trees and I doubt he’ll want anybody cutting them down for him!

Villa Oleandra photograph author’s own

A kitchen garden like Jamie Oliver’s

Kay — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 17:24:57 +0000

Jamie has a habit of practising what he preaches, and his own fascination with kitchen gardens is well known – we saw him in Jamie at Home, enthusing about the freshness of produce from garden to kitchen in a couple of minutes, and also about the beauty of a vegetable garden. As the recession bites, many more people are thinking about making their gardens more productive – but that doesn’t mean you have to miss out on good looks and fun from your garden space.

Pick an area that is easy to reach and easy to water, preferably from a water butt that saves rainwater for you to use on your vegetables. You don’t want to be wandering the length of the garden to harvest a few herbs in the rain, so try and keep it relatively close to the kitchen. Good paths are a must – you can use bricks, grass paths or shingle, and if you divide your area into beds, think about how they will appear – you can make them any shape you like, there’s no need for square or rectangular beds, and so you can create shapes off a central circular bed, or single plant like a globe artichoke, or even a pillar of roses or a tower for sweet peas. Those beds could be triangular or petal shaped, think of knot gardens and let your mind run wild!

What to plant

Try to rotate crops through the four families: legumes, brassicas, roots and the onion family to reduce the risk of diseases taking hold. Most of your vegetables will be planted and harvested in a single twelve-month period but some like fruits and herbs are perennials to remember that they will stay in place for years.

Mick Jagger&amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;amp;#039;s Garden

Kay — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:51:34 +0000

Orchard garden style

Kay — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:29:01 +0000

Orchard gardening is a long term commitment with a lot of pluses for the dedicated gardener. There’s the plus of getting lots of lovely fresh fruit, the plus of helping the environment and the plus of having a relatively maintenance free garden once it’s established.

On the minus side, there’s the cost – it can be quite expensive to set up an orchard, and the fact that you can’t chop and change. Once you’ve planted your trees, it isn’t a good idea to keep moving them, so if you’re the kind of gardener who likes to do a makeover every year or two, this isn’t the style for you.

Remember that most orchards are walled, so if you don’t have a walled space, you will need to provide some kind of windbreak, and ensure you don’t plant your trees too close together or too close to your foundations!

When choosing trees for an orchard garden think about their shape, autumn colour and spring flowers as well as the fruit, this will give your garden a range of shape, colour and fragrance through the spring and summer, and can also provide excellent autumn foliage and striking winter shapes.

Plan your flower planting to complement your trees – wide beds with flowers and shrubs that complement the tree blossom look fantastic.

Orchard garden courtesy of yellow book ltd