They were equally at home nestled in Hooksgreen Herbs’ Peter Rabbit’s veg plot
(‘Sutton’s Apricot’); reaching tall in the Renaissance Gardens (wild
digitalis); and pinpointing an unusual lime hedge (Tilia cordata from deepdale-trees.co.uk)
in the Time to Reflect Alzheimer’s Society garden.
A cube of foxgloves greeted us at the Botanic Nursery’s stand in the Marquee.
Headlined as “The Great Survivor”, it was described as one of the few native
plants to be well received in gardens, with a knack of springing up
unnoticed until its towering stems dominate the garden. From then on it will
self-seed.
Wild foxgloves are biennial, and purple forms predominate. Perennial
forms (many available from thebotanicnursery.co.uk)
should be cut down after flowering, allowed to regrow from their bases, then
divided.
In Marylyn Abbott’s tiny Topiarist’s Garden, a miniature of her courtyard at
West Green House, near Hook in Hampshire, creamy albiflora foxgloves and
camassias took a co-starring role to potted lupin ‘Noble Maiden’ that
nestled in a framework of clipped box, to be replaced with other plants in
pots, once spent. A charming spot, where the designer imagined the head
gardener indulging in his own flights of fancy, away from the demands of the
estate.
The tall yellow lupin ‘Chandelier’ took pride of place in the Best in Show
garden for Laurent Perrier, cushioned with frothy Deschampsia cespitosa and
Orlaya grandiflora, a combination inspired by Fergus Garrett at Great
Dixter. All the plants from this garden can be bought from crocus.co.uk,
which supplied the award-winning array, including the pale-yellow Digitalis
lutea.
Crocus also stocks my favourite planting of all, in the Telegraph Garden,
where the skyscraper Stipa gigantea joined shocking pink wild Gladiolus
communis subsp. byzantinus (it grows wild in my garden), with sparkles of
tiny wild pink, Dianthus carthusianorum, that designer Tommaso del Buono
told me grew wild in the countryside near his native Florence. Tall
camassias, lime-green euphorbias, fennel and a stunning royal-blue Anchusa
azurea ‘Loddon Royalist’ completed the picture.
The Telegraph Garden (HEATHCLIFF O’MALLEY)
Because of its connection in all our hearts with the centenary of the First
World War, I’d imagined the poppy, in all its forms, would reign supreme
this year. A few wild ones (Papaver rhoeas) dotted the inspirational series
of grass mounds that made up Charlotte Rowe’s No Man’s Land for the
Soldiers’ Charity (producing the most sumptuous catalogue of the show). The
Gardeners Have All Gone plot from Pennard Plants and Roots and Shoots
celebrated the black troops who fought in the First World War with black
opium poppies in their poignant gone-to-seed vegetable garden. But the most
vibrant poppy came from the Midlothian nursery Kevock Garden Plants.
Its electric-blue Meconopsis ‘Lingholm’ lit up the Marquee. It often tempts
me, but is difficult to grow down south. They need cool, wet summers and dry
winters.
In the language of flowers, rosemary, salvia, zinnia and forget-me-not all
signify remembrance. Peonies mean compassion, but they bring out the
green-eyed monster in me: covetable varieties were shown by Binny’s (binny
plants.com), and by one of the country’s oldest nurseries, Kelways, that
specialises in peonies, iris and hardy ferns, all favourites of mine. It
sells tree, herbaceous and their crosses – intersectional peonies. I loved
its ‘Claire de Lune’, ‘Krinkled White’ and ‘Late Windflower’, all delicate
with bright golden centres, from its tempting website, kelways.co.uk.
In celebration of Alan Titchmarsh’s half century in gardening, of all things
floral and the biggest community campaign, Britain in Bloom’s garden
demonstrated the wide range of flowers that can be grown in this country,
and highlighted the tallest plant skyscraper of them all, the echium. Echium
pininana (available from thompson-morgan.com)
has a stunning flower spike in bright blue, pink or white that can grow to
four metres (13ft) in sheltered spots, dying after flowering, but scattering
its seeds to bloom again.
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