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RHS Chelsea Flower Show!

Though I’ll not be able to visit the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show, my thoughts always swing back to it at this time of year. This is a glimpse into one of my favourite gardens from a few years ago: The Arthritis Research UK Garden, designed by Chris Beardshaw and Keith Chapman Landscapes. I […]

via It’s Chelsea Flower Show Time Again! — Susan Rushton

Susan Rushton reminds us that the Chelsea Flower Shows begins this week! I went for the first and only (so far …) time in 2014. It was such a highlight of all my travels!  I would dearly love to go again. In the meantime, I will have to content myself with this beautiful gallery of photos from the Telegraph. Enjoy!

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Saturday Snippet: Non Morris on LILY OF THE VALLEY

Painting of Lily of the Valley, 2009, Charlotte Verity.

Garden and floral designer Non Morris wrote this lovely piece about lilies of the valley, a flower emblematic of the month of May, a couple of years ago.

 

The Dahlia Papers

GRACE KELLY, PARIS IN THE SPRING TIME AND THE “WORST OF ALL DELICIOUS” WEEDS

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Convallaria majalis var. rosea after the rain

On the wooden table outside our kitchen door I have a terracotta pot of the most elegant pink lily of the valley, Convallaria majalis var. rosea.  The pot was given to me as a precious container of newly planted bulbs by my friend the painter, Charlotte Verity .  The gift was important as it was a memento of an extraordinary year Charlotte spent as Artist in Residence at The Garden Museum in London in 2010.  Here in the shadow of the ruddy castellated walls of neighbouring Lambeth Palace, Charlotte spent a year painting in Tradescant’s Garden – the knot garden created in 1981 by the Dowager Marchioness of Salisbury around the important tomb of the Seventeenth Century plant hunters.

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Lily of the Valley 2009 – Charlotte Verity

Here…

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Saturday Snippet: The Scented Garden

If any of you also read my blog Serenity Now, you know that I enjoy fragrance and perfume, and I post about scents on most Fridays: Fragrance Fridays. Today, Saturday Snippets and Fragrance Fridays come together, with an excerpt from Rosemary Verey’s The Scented Garden.

My ideal scented garden is surrounded by a wall or hedge, for scent is never still, indeed it is best when carried on the breeze, and a wall will help to contain it. If you have no wall then put the fragrant plants close to the house, so that when you walk outside you will easily catch their scent. Plant narrow beds and make many paths, to allow you to walk close to the scented leaves and brush against and squeeze them. Make low hedges of lavender and southern-wood. Have some raised beds for flowers which are fast with their scent so they may be enjoyed without bending low. Plants that release their perfume easily should be planted so the prevailing wind will bring the scent to you.

Photo: www.shootgardening.co.uk

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Early American Women Garden Designers and Horticulturists – a brief summation

This is a wonderful overview of several early American garden designers who were women and thus somewhat overlooked these days, with the possible exception of Beatrix Farrand.

Plinth et al.

Despite scholarly work and books, the contributions of American women in garden design and landscape architecture have not received their recognition as those of their overseas contemporaries have. Perhaps due to United States’ European colonial history, Americans have looked towards Europe for inspiration and with varying degrees of success attempted to replicate the styles here. And there is no discounting the romantic appeal of the Edwardian flower borders, the Italianate waterworks, and Grecian ruins, all of which were not created in a nascent country. Well-do Americans increasingly made the trans-Atlantic journey to visit and see them, and certainly returned home, buoyant from their travels and receptive for a piece of ‘Europe’.

During my research into the ‘tropicalismo’ or ‘Victorian subtropical bedding’ in North America, I began to note the regularity with which the same female names appeared in magazines and books. These women boasted distinguished careers as strong as Gertrude…

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