Horticultural

Hot p(l)ot or not? Number 6

Ok, this one's a pot rather than a plot, but hey, I make the rules, right?

I spotted this container at Garden Organic at Ryton, near Coventry at the weekend. It's certainly got volume, but what do you make of the planting mix? I didn't manage to catch much of the pot itself, but as I recall it was a fairly plain terracotta or stone job.

Just add your thoughts below: please start with a "hot" or a "not" so I can tally the votes.

HPON? Number five, at Kingston Maurward in Dorset, was the first plot to get the thumbs up from you discerning readers, with 13 "hots" and a couple of "tepids" from those awkward beggars among you.

If you want to look back at all the previous HPONs, go here.

On a slightly different note: the apple and pumpkin day at Ryton (which I mentioned in my piece for Weekend last Saturday on gardens to visit for autumn highlights) was great fun, albeit cut short due to an increasingly poorly child (who was nonetheless mesmerised by the Coventry-based Morris group Elephant Up a Pole, who were performing that day).

Anyone aware of my previous rants about lack of refreshments in gardens will be relieved to hear that Garden Organic has a wonderful organic restaurant plus a good cafe. We didn't get much time to see the gardens, but I did ogle and consequently desire an amazing giant Chinese quince (Chaenomeles cathayensis - see below): imagine the jelly you'd get from that fella!

 

Inspired to garden: The Morville Hours and a visit to Kathy Brown's garden

I am currently reading - and adoring - The Morville Hours by Katherine Swift. It's a book about the creation of a garden in Shropshire, but so much more than that: astronomy, agriculture, history, geology and countless other areas of knowledge feed into Swift's description of turning a bare field into a series of gardens inspired by former residents of Morville. (This woman's learned, writes beautifully and created a huge, wonderful garden, Yes, I want to be her.)

This book has thrown up a hundred different trains of thought in my mind, but the current one is the different forms of inspiration for creating gardens. Swift's garden conjures up an imagined place inhabited by different characters from the past: but others seek inspiration in eveything from quantum physics to the music of Bach. Last Sunday I visited a garden inspired by art: not individual paintings, but the style of an artist.

I think my favourite part of Kathy Brown's garden in Stevington, Bedfordshire was the Barbara Hepworth garden (pictured above), which was sparkling in the September sun. I don't know much about Hepworth but this garden certainly made me want to learn more, which was perhaps part of the point. There were other gardens inspired by Kandinsky, Mondrian, Monet, Hokusai and Rothko, plus French parterres, a cottage garden and an orchard: I'll try to upload a gallery of more images later in the week: in the meantime visit Kathy's blog and site for more info.

The other wonderful thing about Kathy's garden was its playfulness - which was handy as I took my two-year-old daughter along. She adored the playhouse and the tyre swing. She insisted on stroking a huge bumblebee resting (along with dozens of honey bees) on the Sedum spectabile 'Autumn Joy' but fortunately it didn't sting her. She also loved the shells in the Hepworth garden and the Humpty Dumpty figure on top of the Mondrian-esque wall (just visible in the picture above). And the squash and chocolate sponge at the church hall afterwards went down very well, too.

Anyway, this garden, along with the Morville Hours, led me to thinking about the inspiration for my garden revamp (which I am hoping to get under way next year, building work allowing). Up until now I've been lusting over individual plants, planning shapes of borders, mulling over shades of patio stone and whether a pergola or an arch would be best. But perhaps there should be something more cerebral behind the pretty flowers? A overarching concept, a theme? Or is that a tad prententious for a 70ft garden on the back of a 30s semi? I wouldn't want anyone to think I was taking myself too seriously, after all. Advice welcome, in the usual way below.

Shear lunacy: some unusual topiary

Anyone who is dull enough to follow my Twitter feed may recall that I was awestruck by some topiary around the corner from my new gaff the other week. Well after days of frustrated searching I have located the cable for my digital camera so I can bring to you this image.

At the time I think I described the "thing" on the left as "Rupert the Bear on a unicorn". I have been casting around to try to work out what else it's meant to be but have drawn a blank. The face on the right is actually a Janus head which is moderately less crazy. I've got a fancy it looks like Abraham Lincoln, but I guess it's in the eye of the beholder.

I've never been a big fan of topiary. Most of it seems to entail a hell of a lot of work to create a whimsical effect as per above. But there's topiary and topiary, right? Only I've recently invested in a pair of small box balls for either side of the porch and I am hoping I don't suddenly get the desire to clip them into, oh, an iPhone or a possum or something.