Garden Blogs

Thursday, 25 June 2009

Getting Fruity

Rachel's Organic Passion for Taste Garden is all about FRUIT. People dedicate their lives to growing fruit and we’ve got a fantastic bunch of experts at Ken Muir Nurseries in Essex bringing on the specimens that bear the fruit we take for granted when we enjoy Rachel's delicious tastes. I took time out last week to check out how the plants were getting on and I wasn’t disappointed. I had planned to visit a day earlier, but got stuck in the dreaded M25 car park, gave up and decided to go the next day. That meant I missed Roger and Kevin Muir, but Sue Muir was there to show me round – this is a proper family business! Actually this was something of a trip down memory lane for me. The Muirs’ Nursery is in Weeley near Clacton. Back in the 70’s this was the site of a Woodstock size Rock Festival and friends and I camped there for the weekend. The bands that played were the pick of the Rock world at the time, including Rory Galagher, King Crimson, Lindisfarne, TRex and weirdly the Groundhogs who I saw last year at our own concert hall in Falmouth. The pick of the bunch was a young Rod Stewart and the Faces which remains one of the best sets I've ever seen. Sue told me she had camped there as well so we were able to reminisce! I'm acutely aware looking at the trees and bushes that there is really relatively little point in me deciding what individual plants should be set aside for the show. The reality is that 24 hours is a long time in the world of fruit. Blackcurrants dripping in dark bunches of fruit now will be well over by the time we need it – strawberries and raspberies that look green and uninspiring now will be laden in ripe fruit during the first week in July. So I'm told anyway! To be honest I've just got to rely on this family team that have 12 RHS Gold medals and over 40 years of growing under their belt! I've given them a list of the type of plants that go into Rachel's products and most of them will appear in our display, apart from the exotic ones like bananas - which would look a little out of place in combination with gooseberries! So, in short, we are going to have fine blackcurrants, strawberries, peaches and cherries. Will the gooseberries be over? Will the Rhubarb grow a bit more? Will the blueberries actually be blue? The Muirs are delivering the plants on Monday 29th and Ive realized I had better get a net over all those fruit bushes before they are eaten before judging! I had a classic nightmare about building the garden last night! The digger had broken down and couldn’t be repaired for 2 days, my digger driver Martin was drunk and wouldn’t listen to me and the site for the garden had been changed by the RHS to a position next to some children’s play equipment where it would be impossible to build. I was in despair and was relieved to wake up! Opposite to dreams?

Friday, 19 June 2009

Decision time!

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

Tuesday, 9 June 2009

More news from Paul at Hampton Court!

Hello again! Did you know both the Rachel's Gardens have Gazebos? These are great mini shelters for any size garden. In both show gardens they will provide a hub and focal point around which the rest of the garden works. In Rachel's Passion for Taste Garden we have a pretty thatched timber Gazebo, a brand new product from the company Breeze House Ltd from Leek in Staffordshire. Positioned in the corner of the plot it will provide a great spot to sit and watch the fruit ripening all around you! I'm going to decorate and fill it with dried flowers and produce to suggest it’s a store as well as a good place to relax in the shade. It's open sided so will catch any cool breezes - as I'm hoping for a good hot summer at Hampton Court this year! I'm also planning to get some climbers going over it – I have my eye on a good size Actinidia (Kiwi plant) which is a fine climber for a sheltered south facing position. In Rachel's Stylish by Nature Garden we have a more formal timber and Glass panel Gazebo currently being specially prepared by Scotts of Therapston, Northamptonshire. This building is a very up market and will sit in the centre of the plot. Its octagonal with 2 panels on each side as windows and a central one as plain timber. The remaining two panels are open entrances. The idea is you can walk through it from one side of the garden to the other. Scotts are painting the exterior black and the window frames and interior white, to make it especially Rachel's! They are also leaving me an opportunity to fit a daisy design onto the finial – one more thing to think about! It will have seats on 2 sides so again a nice place for the Rachel's team to rest up after a hard day manning the stand at the show! I would like to get some fragrant white flowering roses over the building, the variety is a bit in the balance. Robert Mattock of Abingdon, Berkshire produces fine large climbing and rambling specimens in containers and I would like the intoxicatingly scented and appropriately named Paul’s Himalayan Musk … but will it be in flower?! More news coming soon!

Wednesday, 3 June 2009

Rachel's Show Gardens - an update from Paul

Its always exiting yet a little frightening when June arrives and I know there is a big job to be done at Hampton Court Flower Show which opens 7th July! I have the fantastic opportunity to build 2 really special small gardens for Rachels Organic, which together with some extra touches around the sales and hospitality areas should make it a must visit venue at the Show! Back in April I met up with Rachels team on site in the Great Park at Hampton Court. We had a choice of 4 potential locations and opted for a superb position near the long water with the Palace as our backdrop. I start the build on the 26th of June and the Gardens will be judged on the 6th of July just before the Show opens. My first Garden is called “Rachels Organic Passion for Taste Garden” The idea here is to connect the Garden to the products and the organic and sustainable ways they are produced. Its good to be working with a company that has strong environmental policies. This garden will consist of only natural products – a thatched Gazebo storehouse and low sleeper wall with radiating sleeper pathway - all from sustainable timber sources and really the rest of the garden is all about plants. Im confident I will have strawberries, currants and blueberries. My fruit trees have been purchased but are already getting annoying diseases like peach leaf curl – apart from soapy water any good ideas?(ideas that are of an organic approach of course!) The second Garden is called ”Rachels Organic Stylish by Nature Garden” This will be a fragrant monochromatic garden with the emphasis on silver as it's Rachels 25th anniversary this year! I've got a lovely big weeping silver pear tree already lined up for this garden, but I've still got a lot of leg work to do with the rest of the plants. Peter Beales Roses of Norwich are going to provide me with highly scented white roses, and I've been promised some pure black Ophiophogon grasses from another supplier. Its important this garden matches its name and reflects the class of Rachels products. More updates coming soon!