Garden Blogs

Hello! These last two weeks before the start of our build on site at the Show on the 26th June are a critical period. Up to now I've always had options about just exactly what will be in each Garden. But now is the time to make hard and fast decisions, chose one thing in preference to another and place your orders, with delivery dates and times. With this in mind I arrived at Tendercare Ltd at Denham just off the A40 near Uxbridge on the edge of London. This is a Nursery I’ve dealt with over many years and it specializes in mature plants. For anyone building a show garden it’s important to get a feeling of established planting, you just can’t do it with ordinary Garden Centre plants. Tendercare Nursery has grown to become a cornucopia of specimen trees, shrubs and herbaceous perennials. I knew they would have the answers to my planting needs for Rachel’s Stylish by Nature Garden! Now is the time to choose plants you feel confident will look perfect in 2/3 weeks time. So I had a great time being shown around by sales manager Saija, and I selected the majority of the plants that will be used in our tricky monochromatic Garden. We need plenty of silver plants in recognition of Rachel’s 25th anniversary. Fortunately nature is very generous here with many fine plants displaying this type of foliage. In particular you get many seaside and Mediterranean plants sporting grey or silver leaves. This is mainly to do with needing to have tougher foliage to reduce water loss. I needed a 2nd tree to balance with the weeping pear I’ve already chosen (which will sit behind and frame the garden seat.) I had imagined it would be another weeping tree like a silver birch but here we go – and this is why I hate to have to confirm a planting list – I decided that that type of tree would be wrong, for 2 reasons. Firstly a weeping silver birch might sound silver but it will actually look predominantly green, with its leaves hiding its only silver feature, that being its beautiful white bark. Secondly such a tree takes up a lot of space, and this is a small garden. But I need something tall and proportionate to the Gazebo which will otherwise totally dominate the garden (sadly now you see what worries me in my sleep!) I settled on a fantastic slim and elegant Birch tree - Betula Doorenbos which makes full use of its brilliant white trunk with a light canopy of leaves which won’t distract from the overall silver/white/grey/black theme of the garden. Anyway I'm pleased to say this is now my definitive list for the Rachel’s Organic Stylish by Nature Garden – celebrating 25 years (not taking into account Beales and Mattocks White flowering Roses – more on these another day!) Silver / White / Grey: Olearia macrodonata Cotoneaster franchetti Artemisia Powis Castle Santolina chamaecyparissus Koelaria glauca Stachys Silver Castle Hosta Elegans Festuca glauca Astelia Silver Spear Euphorbia Silver Swan Cyanara cardunculus Dactylis variegata Pyrus salicifolia Betula Doorenbos Dark/Black: Sambucus Black Lace Ajuga Braunberg Pittosporum Tom Thumb Heuchera Palace Purple Weigela Follis Purpurea Ophiophogon nigrescens Prunus cerasifera Nigra Penstemon Huskers Red Lysimachia Firecracker