Thursday 21 February 2013

Winter gardens tour

Hellebores and snowdrops were looking great in all the gardens visited; a white seedling with Galanthus 'S. Arnott' at Colesbourne Park.
I got back last night after a wonderful though intensive five days of seeing friends and visiting gardens, enjoying the richness of plants that enliven late winter as well as the first decent, warmish sunny days of the year. This is a selection of images from the trip.


My 'winter bling' bed at Colesbourne Park, looking good in its second winter. Yucca 'Color Guard' is outstanding for winter colour and texture.

The foliage of emerging herbaceous plants is an overlooked component of the winter garden: Corydalis temulifolia 'Chocolate Stars', at Colesbourne.

Another example: Iris foliage in an Oxfordshire garden.

Galanthus 'Ronald Mackenzie' - a yellow form of 'Daglingworth'

Galanthus nivalis 'Witchwood'

The garden of friends in Northamptonshire - for security reasons I am being coy about locations - a tapestry of colour and interest.

Galanthus 'Walker Canada'

Not a great picture, but this is one of the most exciting new snowdrops I've seen for ages: albino with a yellow ovary. It is called 'Yellow Angel'.

An extraordinary clump of G. nivalis 'Blonde Inge'

A richly coloured Ficaria verna seedling.

Rumex sanguineus and Cyclamen hederifolium at my parents'.

Another gold medal-winning display from Avon Bulbs at the RHS show on Tuesday. The dark plant in the centre is Lunaria annua 'Chedglow' - must get some seed of that!

A display of Cymbidium by McBean's. A plant of the green one, 'Scotch Mist', accompanied me home. Very inconvenient on the tube.

An unusually coloured selection of Hepatica japonica in John Massey's collection.


John Massey's grass border, still looking good after the winter. It is augmented by Berberis and other shrubs

A double green hellebore in John's garden: more on Ashwood hellebores in another post.

7 comments:

  1. So very beautiful... makes me realize there is hope for us! We are under ten inches of snow with five foot drifts and two more blizzards coming as well... eventually Spring will come and I wouldn't want it too early as that only causes greater problems. Your photos are amazing...
    thank you!
    Larry

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oh my good! What stunning pictures! Here in Norway we have -5C today and clear blue sky, sunny and 1 1/2m snow! Not even a single hint of spring!

    ReplyDelete
  3. I saw John Massey's grass border in late January and it looked fab then, an example of how good mass plantings of grass can be.

    I like the look of that Lunaria as well as I am looking for plants with good foliage to show off spring bulbs.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm loving the winter bling bed.

    ReplyDelete
  5. How lovely, I can´t wate until the snow melts.
    What lovely pictures, Hope to see my snowdrops soon, Best wishes from Sweden / Marika

    ReplyDelete
  6. I think everyone wanted a plant of that Lunaria !

    ReplyDelete

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.