I met a friend for coffee today at the Beth Chatto gardens, and managed to leave without buying any plants. From our table we could see into the shade netting covered tunnel where hellebores were lined up, and various intriguing things were flowering, but I told myself that I did not need any more plants at this moment. I already have a large number of potted bulbs ready to go out, and am on a pruning and mulching mission. There is not time to be distracted into impulse purchases.
While waiting for my companion I wandered around the gravel garden, keeping half an eye on the entrance. There is always something interesting to see. After all, it is a world famous piece of planting design, and the growing conditions are so similar to our front garden that I'm on the lookout for ideas to use at home. I liked the effect of a generous scattering of pale mauve crocus, not having thought of crocus as a gravel garden plant, but they looked very pretty, and I wondered whether the bulbs would be less likely to be eaten by mice than they are nowadays in the borders. I have never noticed rodent holes in the gravel. From my experiences trying to make holes to drop bulbs in, a burrowing rodent would probably find the hole filling in again as fast as it could dig. Though it could always dig down in the middle of a patch of thrift.
The Anemone pavonina were out, and I toyed with the idea of getting some more, if they had any, since it is not the easiest plant to get hold of, and terribly pretty, like a sort of upmarket Anemone coronaria de Caen in delicious fruity shades of peach, plum, and cream. Then I was distracted by the sound of a coach, and mightily relieved to see my friend walk through the gate near the head of the coach party, so ran up the garden to catch her so that we could get into the queue for coffee ahead of the crowd, and forgot all about the anemones until I was back home.
The stems of Beth Chatto's Romneya coulteri have been cut back to about a foot, so I could do the same with mine, when I get to that part of the island bed. It is alive, I looked at it yesterday and saw tiny leaves emerging. I feel a sort of glow at finally having got that to go. It is notoriously difficult to establish, and I am on my third attempt, which I swore should be my last. Perversely, if it does once become established it can be a rampant spreader. Part of the interest of visiting gardens outside their main season of display, if you are a gardener, is to see the underpinnings, how the plants are pruned and trained and fed.
In the afternoon it was back to mulch and Strulch. I would like to think I am on the home straight in the larger rose bed, but suspect that in practice there is still quite a long way to go. I noticed that the clumps of Lamium orvala are at about the stage of development that Carol Klein's were on the TV a few years back, when she took cuttings of them, so maybe I should take a quarter of an hour off from the mulching to try some of my own. I could use some more Lamium orvala. It is a neat, fairly tall growing dead nettle which does well in dryish shade, producing large and handsome leaves and spikes of dusky pink, typical labiate flowers. Late in the season it falls apart and looks tatty, but overall its main drawback is the peculiar, musty smell of the foliage if you brush against it. Fortunately, tucked away doing ground cover work in the middle of a shrub bed you don't need to touch it very often.
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