A change of paving

Natural Paving, who are kindly donating the paving, are now discontinuing the Oyster Travertine that we were going to use. As there is no point showcasing a paving product that no-one will be able to get hold of after the show we need to look at something else. It’s back to the drawing board. The best option is their contemporary Cornsilk sawn sandstone which has a lightly textured surface coloured with ‘beautiful hues of pale cream and milky coffee, with hints of delicate orange’, or so the brochure says! The flagstones are machine cut to give a contemporary smooth ‘squared edge’ look and as they are suitably pale, will work well as a neutral background to the exuberant planting. 

There will be no further changes - the paving is now on order!

I’ve been using my newfound skills in SketchUp, a Computer Aided Design package, to work out a paving layout. This is so the guys from Greenbelt Landscape can get straight down to laying the flagstones when they get to site. They won’t need to waste any time working out which size goes where, a great help as they only have 16 days in which to build and plant the garden. However, it’s not as easy as it sounds. When I make a simple change in one area, it messes up the pattern in another. 

I discuss it with Eliot and he takes over with simple pencil and paper. In less than half the time I took faffing about on the computer, he creates a layout that works. It just goes to show that old school can still be the best!

Perfect perennials

So the grasses are sorted, how are the perennials doing? They’ve all been marshalled together in a site on Ladybrook Nursery so that I can come down on a regular basis to tend them, deadhead, defoliate and generally get them looking their best for arrival at the Tatton show site.

The plants are under the sprinklers when I first arrive so I can’t get near them unless I want a drenching! Most are looking great. Lots of growing has been going on since I was here last. The only ones that are not performing to show garden standard would appear to be the Echinacea ‘White Swan’ so I may have to swap them. Janine, who has been helping me with my choices, is going to see if she can source some that are producing more flowers and growing more uniformly. The Leucanthemum supurbum ‘Silver Princess’ are looking very good but I’m not sure they will be high enough to peep through the grasses.

 

The Achillea are doing really, producing lots of lovely flowers but I don’t want them using up all of their energy too early. I will be snipping off the more mature flower heads that are showing too early so that they can reserve their flower power for the end of July!  The Knautia are also flowering prolifically, although I still haven’t decided whether to use these or the Cosmos atrosanguineus (Chocolate Comos). I’m after a really deep colour to contrast with the soft pastels of the other perennials and I’m now leaning towards the Cosmos as the dark brown will look gorgeous with the grasses, especially the Anemanthele  lessoniana which have a touch of orange in them. So not only does it look yummy, it sounds yummy too!

I’ll be back again next week to check on progress, leaving my plants under the watchful eye of the local Blackbird!

A sneak preview of the planting

It takes me just over two hours to get to Wildly Rural to meet up with David the owner. The weather gets better and better as I drive into the deepest corners of Cumbria to Kirksanton where they are based, and where I have planned to spend a blissful day in the warm sunshine messing about with plants, perfect!

Have you ever read those car reviews where the manufacturer disguises the outline of the car they are testing? Well, it was a bit like that with my planting. You’ll see in these pictures the overall effect that I want to create but we had to have a few ‘stand ins’ for grasses that are not quite ready yet and the perennials that are being supplied by Ladybrook Nursery. So although you think you can tell what it is, its not quite the finished article. You’ll have to come to the show to see that!

We use the grid on the textile ground cover of the nursery floor to mark out in chalk the different beds within my design to the correct dimensions. Its illuminating to see the scale of my garden like this, giving me the first indication of how it will look in reality. We place the appropriate grasses around the space to create the look that I am aiming for, and make note of which plants go with each other and how many fit in the spaces. The first bed takes us almost two hours to complete, as we make lots of tweaks to keep it looking naturalistic and random, which is much harder that it sounds. By the time we set out the last bed, we take only half an hour as we’re cooking on gas and have the plant plan formula all worked out. I add two smaller grasses to the plant plan, as I decide that these are useful fillers to hide large pots and create swathes of lower planting between taller plants.

David’s initial suggestion was for 120 plants in 7.5 litre pots but I may need to up this quantity, as I want to create a mass of texture and movement with the grasses, with only the flower heads of the perennials appearing in small bursts of colour. My next task is to make sense of the sketches and numbers I scribble down and calculate a close approximation of the number of plants that I need.

“I’m now as close as I’ll ever be to a finished planting plan but I just hope that I can replicate all of this again when the plants eventually get to site!”

A visit to Tatton Park

On a rainy day in June I met up at Tatton Park with Kris Hulewicz, the Show Manager for RHS Tatton. Matt and Eliot from Greenbelt Landscapes and Jo from Alzheimer’s Society came along too to check out the location of the show garden, mainly to see how level the prospective area would be. As we have a large pool we need as flat as an area as possible so that Matt and Eliot don’t have to dig out too much ground to make it level.  At first it would appear that you can’t see anything but on closer inspection there are vague markings on the grass where last year’s tracks were laid for the pathways around the show. Dodging the deer and sheep poo (and sheep) we use these vague markings to work out a rough estimate of where the garden will be sited, and its looking good; relatively flat which is remarkable in such a large show ground in a vast open deer park!

Whilst we have Kris in our clutches (he’s a hard man to get hold of!) we sort out a few knotty details. There are numerous forms that need to be completed over the next few weeks for things such as the ordering of electricity, water to fill the pool, do we want a skip, and emptying the pool after the show. We discover that we won’t need to complete some, which will save time and also money in some instances which all helps to reduce the pressure on our tight budget.

Kris gave me a copy of the plan for the show ground to show our location and the good news is that we are just beside the Escape Zone Champagne Bar!  So you’ll know where to find us if we go missing.

Our meeting is cut short when the heavens open and even the sheep and deer run for cover. Let’s hope it’s not like this in three weeks time when we begin the build!

Choosing the grasses

Before my next visit to Wildly Rural in a couple of weeks time, I am trying to get a better idea of how many grasses I actually need, and then decide how this quantity will be split across the different species.

I’ve marked out a few square metres in chalk on the path to the side of my house, and then filled these squares with a number of circles drawn around the correct sized plant pots (5, 10 & 20 litres). This gives me an idea of the percentage of grasses I need in relation to my perennials. Then comes the decision about which grasses to use. Not so easy! To some extent I’m limited by the quantity of each that David has at his nursery as my total number comes to just over 200 individual plants.

I decide to take all of the Pennisetum alopecuroides ‘Hameln’ (20 in total) a lovely compact grass to 60-90cm in height with fluffy inflorescences like foxtails. These will act as a contrast in texture to the other grasses.

The main body of the grasses will be created with a split between Anementhele lessoniana and Deschampsia cespitosa Bronzeschleier’, which produces a neatly rounded tuft of narrow green foliage topped by a cloudlike mass of finely branched inflorescences. The Anementhele is an exceptionally graceful grass, and the delicate stems move with the slightest breeze, which will create exactly the wonderful feeling of movement that I’m aiming for.

To add height and act as a gauzy screen in areas of the garden, I choose Molinia ‘Transparent’ for its slender inflorescences held high above the foliage to 1.8m, very light and breezy as the name suggests. I don’t want too many of these, as they may become too solid which will defeat my objective, but I’ll compliment them with the slightly smaller Molinia ‘Edith Dudszuz’, for a balance between the heights.

In a few weeks time I’m going back to Cumbria to mark out the ground at the nursery with the design of my garden and set out within the planting areas with the actual grass plants, not just pots. I can’t wait!