Just a few lines on my visit to this year’s show. There were a lot of large rocks and giant size pebbles at the show this year. Another trend seems to be more colourful plantings than the rather restrained green of last year. The best in show was the Telegraph Garden designed by Ulf Nordfjell and it was really a lovely thing to behold:

This modern small garden (’Nature Ascending’) also caught my eye:

One of the Courtyard gardens ‘Pottering in North Cumbria’ was one that I’d like to take home for the great plant selection and simple but effective design.

Here is where to begin: The Whitchurch Potato Festival, in Hampshire on the 24th and 25th of January.

There will be many, many, varieties of potato to choose from (judging by past years) and even some sexy disease resistant varieties. You can also get gardening advice, buy or swap seeds and buy plants on the day. It’s usually a couple of quid to get in and make sure you get a catalogue of the varieties that will help you choose the varieties by cooking method and pest/disease resistance.

I can’t recommend these days enough. They allow you to buy small quantities of seed potatoes, in contrast to often having to buy kilos of them from the seed merchant catalogues. Tubers are priced individually at 15p each, or you can still buy them by the 2.5kg bag. This means you can buy just enough for your space and try several varieties to get crops across a longer period or to find ones you prefer the taste of.

My own favourites include:

‘Epicure’ - always reliable, good cropper and untouched (on my patch at least) by pest or disease.
‘Fleur Pecheur’ - Pink potatoes, lovely roasted, small size but lots of them.
‘Arran Victory’ - lots of fab purple potatoes.

PS. I bought a bag of shallots ‘Jermor’ at the festival last year and they were a real success. I’ll be trying a different variety this year. Simply plant into small pots and plant them out when the weather warms up a bit in early spring. They needed almost no attention apart from a bit of water for the first few weeks, I harvested simply bags of them in august.

It’s that time again, as it gets colder (and darker) outside the gardener is forced to spend more time indoors and to fight off boredom the seed catalogues are delivered so we can dream about exciting plants next year.

A few links for you to order your seeds for 2009:

Thompson and Morgan

Seeds of Italy (Franchi Seeds)

Kings Seeds (particularly known for vegetable seeds but also sell flower seed)

Chiltern Seeds

Suttons

Unwins

During January there are many Potato Days that you can buy seed potatoes from that also have seed suppliers attending or where you can join in a ’seed swap’ to exchange your excess or unwanted seeds for something else. The nearest one to me is held in Whitchurch, more details here.

This morning on the BBC news there was a piece about how councils may be considering asking people to apply for planning permission before they pave over their front gardens to use for parking.

In town the cumulative effect of paving over thousands of front gardens is that heavy rainfall can run straight off paved areas and into drains that may overfill and add to flooding.

There are ways that a new parking space can be created without adding to water run-off if the space is created using new permeable types of paving, designed with gaps that allow water to reach the soil below, or gravel. In fact there have been quite a few gardens created at the shows this year and the last that tackle the problems of combining garden and parking space.

Olive trees
There were several old olive trees in gardens at the show with a very old looking one as the centrepiece of the Combat Stress garden in a large planter. It appears that these trees are sometimes saved from development in Italy. They are very attractive and tactile with the leaves having a silvery appearance and the trunk being gnarled and rough.

Raised beds
Many of the gardens featured raised beds and vegetables seemed to feature in a lot of them, sometimes mixed in with more ornamental plants. The Homebase garden featured a series of wooden raised planters stepped up in height and filled with vegetables that looked very good and would be a useful way to grow your vegetables if you lack space.

Agapanthus
Small ones, big ones, from deep blue through to white, these were everywhere and really stood out on long stems above other plants.

White gravel
There was a lot of it around!

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I visited Chelsea for the third time this year and I’m now starting to get the hang of the show, navigating the site and fitting in seeing all those exhibits and show gardens in the space of an afternoon ticket from 3.30pm-8.00pm when the show closes.

These are some of the hilights of the show as far as I am concerned:

I really liked the planting for this entry into the Courtyard garden section called “A journey to work” (Sponsored by Simmonds and Simmonds) with the contrasting textures of foliage and the bright orange of the fritillarias it was very energising to look at. Wonderful ferns against that black timber - an idea that could be used against deckboards on a smaller scale.

The concept of a walk through the back garden on the way to your office outbuilding seems to be more relevant as more people choose to work from home and I think that the scale of this garden makes the ideas in the design very achievable in the average suburban back garden. The design is very simple with a curved path leading the visitor through those leafy plants to the bottom of the staircase. I think the impact of the garden design come from the contrast of that simple curve with the texture and interest in the bold planted area.

Although some of the plants used are regarded as tender if the design was used somewhere like London there is a possibility the “heat island” effect in the city could mean they would survive winter.

What a lovely simple idea that has so much visual impact. The nasturtium is really easy to grow from seed and the wattle fence painted black gives it real contrast. If I was going to waffle on like a designer I might even comment on the contrast between the rounded leaves and the linear aspect of the fence construction…

There has been quite a lot in the press about vertical gardening or using plants to cover walls and this was a particularly lovely, and petite, example in the garden of The Children’s Society designed by Mark Gregory. I have read that vertical planting may help to keep buildings cool in summer and insulate them through winter and help to reduce the “heat island” effect. The effect happens when concrete and brick building absorb heat from the sun during the day and release it at night, making the cities warmer than surrounding countryside. This wasn’t the only vertical planting at the show and I think it will re-appear next year too.

Today in The Times there is an interesting article on making your own garden look as good as a show garden (themed in time for Chelsea Flower Show week).

I was thinking about what tips I would add to those written by Cleve West in the article, here are my ideas.

Cleve mentions the trend for topiary that appears at this years Chelsea show and he recommends buying small plants rather than expensive fully-formed topiary plants. This is a good tip and what Cleve doesn’t mention is that smaller, younger plants will usually settle in quicker and grow better than transplanting an older established plant. So you may not have to wait too long to begin shaping the plants into their final shapes. If you already have a topiary shrub or a hedge then you can also make young plants from cuttings, real topiary on a shoestring budget.

While Cleve urges reader to “Never use more than two or three materials or it starts to get a bit fussy and can make the space feel a bit cluttered. Keep the design simple.” I would add that having a design, on paper or done on the computer on a program like Sketchup, is the first step to creating simplicity because it allows you to add and remove elements easily before you commit to buying anything or digging any holes. If you already have an established and full garden then try taking a photo of it from an upstairs window of your house to identify what parts of the garden are working and where there are gaps you could fill or areas to thin out. Work on the top of the photo using tracing paper or acetate to draw in new feature or planting ideas.

Taking regular photos of your garden throughout the year can also reveal if you have periods where there isn’t much interest in the planting. Even through winter there are plants which look good and add colour or fragrance to the garden and once you know when you have some gaps you can use a book like “What Plant When” published by the RHS for planting suggestions to fill them.

I have been perusing a copy of the June issue of Artists and Illustrators magazine and an article on garden design drawings. The article focuses on the drawings on Steve Puttnam and Andrew Stevenson for a show garden at The Chelsea Flower Show this year and how these drawings help to convey not only the details of the planned garden but also the materials used to make it and the mood the garden hopes to create for visitors.

It is interesting that Steve Putnam says he prefers to produce fully realised drawings of a garden design for his clients so that they will comprehend the whole design and how changing materials would affect the design. Keeping his clients fully aware of what the garden will look like through a drawing would appear to not only be good for business but it also means his clients have a wonderful piece of art to remind them of the whole process.