‘Aster Frikartii Monch’

These healthy plants are just coming into flower. The wet summer has made the foilage lush sappy and light green but they are still robust without support.

Asters are one of my favourite top ten border plants. This lavender-blue variety Monch has a longer flowering season, beginning earlier, in mid summer, continuing into autumn and is mildew resistant. ‘Monch’ is exceptionally free-flowering with an attractive colour that is easy to place as it associates well with so many other autumn flowers such as Echinacea White Swan.

• Aster is best grown in a sunny or partially shaded position with fertile, well-drained soil.
• Propagate by division or cuttings
• Water during dry summers as it requires adequate moisture throughout summer.
• This 2-3 foot high flower attracts bees and butterflies
• The Royal Horticultural Society have given ‘Monch’ their prestigious Award of Garden Merit.

Do not feed your slugs and snails on your Clematis

Even in this wet summer there are better plants for them to snack on

Try the inverted grapefruit skin as I prefer to drink beer not drown slugs

This fleshy leaved Sedum Telephium Matrona is just colouring and clumping up in my garden. It is not as vigorous as Sedum spectabile Autumn Joy which can be come a bit of a thug if left unchecked.

• Look out for even stronger burgandy coloured foliage and flowerheads
• Try the ‘Chelsea chop’ on plants in May to encourage later growth that isn’t as prone to flop. Cut back the young growth and wait for the plant to rejuvenate
• Sometimes called Ice Plants the heads can be left on over winter and look good rimed in frost.
• Nearly as attractive to Bees and Butterflies as the Buddleia
• Easy to grow even in poor soil and work well in cottage gardens

Traditionally herbs are grouped together in a special area of the garden but you can try mixing ornamental herbs amongst perennials.

Focal Points

Angelica is happy in semi-shade and reaches over six feet tall. The green candied stems of Angelica archangelica, with huge fine cut leaves are used to decorate cakes. Alternatively try bronze coloured Angelica silvestris Vicar’s Mead.

Fennel is another tall focal point plant with green or bronze foliage. This perennial likes sun and flowers yellow with edible seeds.

A Bay tree Laurus nobilis f. augustifolia will create a more formal setting responding well to trimming, shaping and pruning

Edible Edging

Curly leaved Parsely with bright green leaves can set off the bright colours of bedding. Flat leaved parsley works less successfully.

Chives are fine leaved clumpy alliums with purple blue flowers and look very good with purple leaved plants and shrubs.

Thyme has many varieties both upright (above) and creeping, variegated or lemon scented. They are useful for hot, dry, poor soil conditions.

Marjorams or Oreganum vulgare can also fill a niche at the front of a garden

Herb Tips

• Keep picking or trimming herbs to keep tidy and encourage new growth
• Mid range border filler plants include Rosemary, Lavender, and Hyssop
• Mint likes semi-shade and a fertile soil try spearmint mentha spitica, apple suaveolens, ginger gracilis as other flavours.
• Try mint in flower arrangements.
• Caraway, Chervil, Lovage and Coriander look tatty as they begin to flower so leave them in the vegetable or herb garden

The National Botanic Garden of Wales - Middleton Carmarthen

The worlds largest single-span dome bigger than the Eden project and lots of Lottery funding investment. Well worth seeing where your investment has gone.

Doubled walled garden creating several micro climates and themed borders with a cool oasis at the centre are the key aspects of your visit. There is a strong ecological approach within the garden and several ideas for you to consider when you return to your own environment.

Other Garden Features to See

• Bog Garden & Japanese Garden,
• Bee Garden & Tropical House
• Welsh Rare Plants & Physicians of Myddfai
• Nursery Glasshouses and The Great Glasshouse
• Mediterranean Garden
• Organic Farm, bio-mass furnace & Estate Walks
• Kitchen Garden and activities for children
• Lakes and Dipping Ponds

Other gardens in Wales can be found by clicking here

I am never all that confident about mixing such strong colours in my garden. Needless to say therefore this picture was taken in a public park on the Victoria Embankment Garden. I was chased off the grass before I could get a better picture.

The tropical leaves provide green relief from the purples, reds and hot yellows. Somehow I am not convinced that this colour scheme would fit in my Northern garden.

The Rubeckia hardy perennials do grow with other members of the Compositea clan in my garden. Although many varieties like the Rudbeckia hirtas are recommended as half hardy annuals.

The AGM goes to the Rudbeckia speciosa for its large yellow flowers with a black centre and Rudbeckia triloba Brown Eyed Susan.

Father 1570-1638 and son 1608-1662 both worked as gardener to the Royal family and are buried at St Marys Church Lambeth. At the Museum of Garden History in Lambeth there is a garden laid out using plants they introduced to the UK after trips to Russia, Africa and North America in the early 17th century.

As early traveling plant collectors both John Tradescants’ were responsible for many plant introductions and curios collected on their travels. Plants include Michaelmas daisy, Cistus, Acer,  Maple and Tradescantia

‘Musaeum Tradescantianum’ was the first museum catalogue published. Tradescant willed that the collection was to go to his widow on his death, but Elias Ashmole obtained the collection by deed of gift and established the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Some of these original items can still be seen in that museum and Ashmole is also buried at the Museum of Garden History. The tomb of the Tradescants stands beside the knot garden near that of Captain Bligh of the Bounty, and is covered in carvings representing their interests in life which showed them both to be ‘curious men’.

Alliums produce some of the most interesting seedheads. Each capsule is about to burst on this Allium cristophii (AGM) sending dozens of hard black seeds to perpetuate the family.

There are over a thousand species of Allium or onion and this is one of the most eye-catching of them all both in flower and in seed. Large flowered Alliums should be planted in groups of odd numbers to enhance the effect. They like a sunny site where it will tolerate competition from other roots. Each spherical flower-head helps create a perfect ball shape. The complete stem will last for many weeks as part of a dried flower arrangement.

Other Plants to Grow for their Seed Heads

• Pampass Grass (Cortaderia selloana) for the large fluffy plumes and a whole range of other grasses
• Teasels (Dipsacus) to feed the birds and to catch the frost
• Honesty for the shimmering white seed heads
• Iris Foetidissma for the red berries bursting out of the seed pod
• Paeonia lactiflora for the red furry seed head
• Zea Mais, Mexican Corn on the cob for the multi-coloured cobs after drying
• Papaver, Phlomis fruticosa, Phlomis samia/russelliana, Phormium tenax are also recommended by the gardener

Annual begonias can make a good display in a planter. Not all planters are as tall as this.

This specimen in a public park was one of five in a row outside an orangery. The column of pots was over twelve feet tall and had a similar circumference. The plants were probably Begoinia Fuchsio that had grown over all but the top bowl of the columnar planter.

The variety most likely to be used in planters is Begonia semperflorens with its waxy bronze or green foliage. They can be grown from very fine seed to produce the fibrous roots of most plants. They are not to be confused with tuberous-rooted begonias or the angel-wing begonias with hollow stems.

Begonia sutherlandii with an AGM is suitable for hanging baskets as a foliage plant or for the clusters of small orange flowers.

At Holland Park in London this week end there was also a good show of roses even though the first flush was being pruned. Pruning seems to be one of the skills the gardeners had spent a lot of time and effort to master. Many shrubs and trees displayed the benefit of the skills. There was a area of young Acers that will develop into a colourful show over the next years. They were well protected from wind and excessive sunshine ( although the sun was the least of the problems on this wet weekend).

This is one of the many less known London Parks and it is well worth visiting

A pre war garden designer Gertrude Jekyll worked with architect Sir Edward Lutchens in the UK and North America. She wrote 12 books and many of her gardens have been preserved or re established from detailed plans that were left behind. She was interested in naturalistic planting and the Arts and crafts movement.

Her name is much associated with the development of textured borders arranged and grouped in individual colours such as white gardens or ‘gold’ borders composed entirely of material in various shades of yellow and orange.

Examples of her gardens such as Hestercombe (Somerset) and Upton Grey (Hampshire) have been restored, as have parts of her own much-loved garden at Munstead Wood in Surrey.