an unplanned garden visit

Calling into the Beth Chatto nursery to get a small present to take to a friend's house, I managed to drop my mobile in the car park.  Fortunately they found it and called the Home number, so I ambled round in the afternoon to collect it.  While I was there I looked round the garden, which is still free to RHS members in March.  The hellebores are looking good, and one of my favourite bits of planting at this time of year, a large Cornus mas grown as a small standard tree rather than a large shrub, next to a spotted laurel.  Cornus mas is a splendid plant, which carries small yellow flowers on bare branches.  It's a pity you don't see it trained as a tree more often.  Like most cornus the leaves grow in opposite pairs, and the leader often seems to die back, or is deliberately stopped by nursery growers trying to make it bushy.  Once this has happened training the plant up on a couple of metres of clear and reasonably straight stem becomes difficult.  The laurel, some variety of Aucuba japonica, makes a marvellous partner for the cornus because it has bright yellow dots across its dark green leaves which pick out and echo the yellow of the Cornus flowers.  The spots create an illusion of dappled sunlight even on dull days (this afternoon was actually bright and sunny), and while some of the heavily variegated aucuba can be a bit garish the spotted one is not garish at all, merely cheerful.

I was comforted to see that not all of the borders have been weeded and mulched yet.  As I look at the post-wintry mess outside my windows it's a sort of relief to know that even a world famous garden with teams of professional gardeners and keen young horticultural students to tend it, is still not totally tidy and polished for the season ahead.  Something has been digging in her garden too, leaving holes and scuff marks in the gravel garden.  Wildlife is no respecter of greatness.