Healthy plants for colour in November.

The onset of late autumn encourages us to look hard at the things in the gardens that are really earning their keep. Plants flowering or adding to the garden scene now tend to be extremely healthy and need very little care through the year. Here are some of the best plants in the gardens at Easton now.

Cotinus coggygria ‘Grace’ with Rubus thibetanus ‘Silver Fern’ in the Velvet Border. ‘Grace’ is an exceptional smokebush cultivar for autumn colour.

Colchicums in the Cedar Meadow. Although they are coming to the end of their flowering time and the slugs have had a little taste, these have been up for at least 3 weeks. This meadow is managed as a spring meadow and is mown from July onwards. When the temperature starts to drop, we stop mowing to prevent the heads of these lovely autumn bulbs from being decapitated.

Perhaps not to everyone’s taste is Prunus laurocastus ‘Marbled White’ but to my mind, beautifully marked. For us, this is the perfect shrub, being totally hardy, disease free, offering something all year round, easy to grow and not attractive to our resident rabbit population. It is growing quite densely but I am hoping to remove the lower branches as it grows. This will allow light underneath and we can plant delicate woodland plants below.

Rudbeckia triloba or Brown Eyed Susan. Technically a biennial this has flowered with us as a shortlived perennial. In flower for at least a month and totally unaffected by the frosts of the last couple of nights. This is still flowering in the long border with Aster turbellinus, see below.

The last of our Asters to flower with a wiry but graceful habit, this perennial makes about 1 metre in our beds. The tiny buds  and airy foliage have been attractive for months but it’s lovely to see the flowers now.
If you would like to see these plants and great autumn colour, the gardens are open on Sundays in November for FREE!

The Long Poppy Border in August for Wordless Wednesday

Gone August: The highs and lows of running an open garden.

Once a year I feel ashamed of the garden and it is always in August. There comes a week when nothing goes right. The garden has ‘Gone August’.  100 years ago, when the family spent a full month in the big house, no wonder the gardeners relied on bedding. The hedgerows and trees take on a tired look and the delicate blue and pink perennials and shrubs go over, sometimes not very attractively. The colours of autumn arrive – dirty pinks and strong orange and yellow. They will glow in the September light but the flat harshness of an August day does not show them at their best.

  Grubby colours in harsh light. Yeuch! Scroll down for some more uplifting images!

The weather knows all this. So, we get drought, torrential downpours and richocheting temperatures to add to our troubles. Both of our mowers, challenged by incessant mowing of wet grass early in the year are getting more and more temperamental and the continued strong growth of hedges and grasses in the meadows means the job list is stretched. On top of this, we have lots of visitors who deserve a friendly stress-free welcome and many of the team take a well-earned break this month. ‘You shouldn’t give holidays in August’ people tell me to my moaning but I think they work incredibly hard all year and many have family commitments and basically, they need the break.

This feeling used to last the month when we first started out but now we have a better structure and some student labour to help out so I have cut it down to about one week. I am very aware that, although we see the gardens all the time and carry memories in our head of spring and summer, a few of our visitors will only give us one chance to persuade them that this is a garden worth telling their friends about (and we need that, for sure.) So last week, when the feeling started to creep in that we were not on top of the extra work, I pulled in help from wherever I could get it. 

This Sunday, the Meet the Artist day as part of the textile exhibition was a great event and although I chuntered about the odd weed (cheeky ragwort in the meadows mostly) I felt we could head on into Autumn confidently. 

Next year, I hope my July diary entry will read: ‘Dont forget the gardens will ‘Go August’. GET PLANNING. No-one wants to hear you fretting, thank you!’ (Best Mary Poppins' voice)

On the upside here are some Good Things about August:


The Long Border (but see a few weeds sneaking onto the gravel)

Agapanthus flourish between the greenhouses and seed themselves here, adding to their number year on year.

The greenhouse goes bonkers with lush growth and produce.

Late Annuals in the Pickery start to take over from cornflowers and calendulas.

The beautiful wildflowers left in the meadows are swamped by insects: Scabious, Wild Marjoram and Knapweed in particular. Butterfly colonies are good. The swallows are clustering overhead ready to make the most of the insect feast as it rises from the grasses and trees.

The Beauty of Clear Pink: 5 of the best roses.

Every season seems to have its predominant colour combinations. Early summer here  means gentle blues, pinks and whites. The blue geraniums glow in the dusk and white flowers pepper the meadows and woods. The intense green brought on by the rain this year is the perfect foil for the pale pink roses.
Here are 5 beautiful roses, all photographed in the gardens this week:
Rosa ‘Constance Spry’
Introduced in 1961 this is the grand dame of David Austin’s best roses. She flowers once a year but in such profusion and vigour that it is worth the wait. The flowers have a beautiful form and scent. Can be grown as a large shrub or climber. We grow ours as short climbers on a north and south wall.

Rosa ‘The Generous Gardener’ 
Named to commemorate the work of the NGS (who we open for at Easter). I pass this rose on the way into the office everyday (you can see it next to the trellis gate by the tearoom where we grow it as a short climber ) Its great beauty is guaranteed to make me pause in admiration.
 
Rosa ‘Gentle Hermione’
A relatively recent introduction that is making a healthy show in our meadow. A tribute to its natural vigour; not all roses can cope with the cold and competition in our meadow rose displays. I am looking forward to getting to know this beautiful rose better. The picture below shows an atypical flower that is charming nevertheless.

Rosa ‘The Windflower’
I love the casual blowsiness of this rose, it is good for informal areas. The petals are loosely folded and the flowers exude the kind of charm that carefree children have.

Rosa ‘The Mayflower’
Our big hitter. We grow this as a hedge outside the tearoom. The blooms lack the form of some of the finer roses listed above but what it lacks in detail it makes up for with the big picture…It is very healthy and flowers throughout the summer. We get the most requests for its name of all the plants in the garden(despite the prominent label)


And while I am on the subject of pink. This is our dark elder. Sambucus nigra. I think it is ‘Black Lace’ but we also have ‘Black Beauty’  Shown here with the elderflower cordial that I made from its flowers. For the recipe see my blog at Fennel and Fern (due to be published June 29)

The Giraffes arrive...oh, and a couple of gratuitous zinnia pics.

In May I bumped into these two at the Chelsea flower show. For some time I had been looking for a sculpture that would fill the space at the end of the long terrace without costing a five figure sum. Being on the plebeian side of art appreciation, cones and helixes didn't speak to me but these guys did. They arrived today and look perfectly at home looking dreamily over the park. I fear that, like the teas, they may become a bigger draw to the gardens than our carefully crafted planting schemes. Since I am mad about them already that suits me fine .

At 13' tall this fellow could do with a name, any suggestions?



Zinnia prob. 'Aztec Sunset'
(it's a long time since the spring sowing)



Zinnia profusion 'Coral Pink '