On 2014-06-24 18:33:13 +0000, Bob Hobden said:

"sacha" wrote

Bob Hobden said:

I don't blame the gardeners but the NT seems to have a policy of
allowing a LOT of bare earth to show and that makes a garden look mean
and grudging. Frankly, all too often you can tell the number crunchers
call the shots. In the white garden, in one area, a dozen Cosmos were
trying to do the work of 3 dozen. I saw two plants I'd like to get, a
Euphorbia cornigera (sp?) and a lovely, very old climbing rose on the
wall of the library entrance. It's immediately on your left as you walk
through that arch, past the steps up to her writing 'tower'. It has no
label so I doibt they know what it is, though someone said she'd try to
find out for me.

At Great Dixter, the place just bounces with exuberance and joy. I
really have never seen a garden like it. We all know the received
wisdom of planting loads of one thing in groups or drifts but there,
nobody takes the slightest notice of such 'rules'. A solitary Verbascum
would normally look forlorn but because it's surrounded by loads of
plants and its friends pop up here and there nearby, it's never in
'sore thumb' isolation. There isn't an inch of earth to be seen where
planting is complete and where it wasn't, we encountered Fergus Garrett
and assistants planting Francoa, so he and Ray had a brief discussion
about those! The garden is managed with a light hand but never
over-managed and certainly not manicured. The quantities of meadow
garden are a wonderful counterpoint to the cultivated areas. For the
first time we saw Amicia zygomeris in a garden other than our own and
as you so rightly say, loads of things we grow at home. Tremendous!


Some people love to see earth between individual plants, I have friends
like that. My "overgrown" garden must be a constant irritation to them
but then I work in the belief that covering the ground with plants
stops weeds growing, so my plants compete for space.
At Great Dixter I got the feeling they garden such that if a nice plant
seeds itself they let it be knowing it will almost always work. So they
let the verbascums seed around and only pull them up where they really
don't want them. I bet they do the same with Opium poppies, I do.

Our ambition is to cover every square inch but we let some so-called
weeds flourish, such as Lunaria and pink campion. We also let 'coral'
grow in a few places as the blackbirds like the berries. I think its
other name is black bryony? I'm sure you're right about the
self-seeding at Gt. Dixter. It does look as if a series of happy
accidents have been allowed to flourish here and there. There were many
poppies, one of which was a wonderfully dark plummy sort of colour and
another which was a small red cup with very pronounced black spots, not
Ladybird but a smaller version of that. It really is an inspiringly
beautiful garden and Christopher Lloyd's influence is still very
present. I loved his notice about why things aren't labeled, displayed
in the plant sales shop. I took a photo of it, so I hope it's legible
and if it is, I'll post it. A friend of ours was a friend of his and
from all we heard, it is typical of his no-nonsense attitude to life
and his garden! I probably don't need to say there was a major falling
out at some point, never repaired!
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon