a garden visit

I took my parents to the Chatto gardens this morning, by way of celebrating Mother's Day.  My first idea was to go out to tea, but the timings of coffee work better: walk round the gardens, coffee and cake in the cafe, wander round the plant sales area, parents home in time for lunch and an after-lunch nap.  There was only one row full in the car park when we arrived, and my father expressed surprise that the garden could pay for its upkeep with so few visitors, but experience working at the plant centre teaches me that Sunday mornings usually start quietly, and given the clocks changed last night, while it was technically five to eleven in human terms it was still only five to ten.  Sure enough, by the time we left the main car park was fairly full, and there were plenty more vehicles in the overflow area.

The gardens were looking very good.  There were plenty of spring flowers, and not yet too many leaves, so that the landscape had an airy, ethereal quality.  I was greatly taken by the swathes of a powder blue squill in the border along the far boundary.  They were very pretty, and appeared to be naturalising freely, despite the competition from the oaks along the edge of the garden. Unfortunately they weren't labelled, and I didn't know what they were.  I shall have to try and spot them in this year's bulb catalogues.

Equally delightful were the clumps of Fritillaria verticillata in the gravel garden.  The whole plant is a charming shade of light green, leaves, flowers and all.  I wanted to buy some last year, but neither Kevock nor Peter Nyssen were offering it.  Mind you  if they had it would probably have ended up being eaten by mice in the cold frame, with most of my other fritillaries.  Alas, the pheasants have eaten the flowers of most of our snakeshead fritillaries.  I am afraid the pheasant problem is getting worse as our cats get older, and don't go out much.  Our Ginger did appear briefly this afternoon in the back garden with a fat mouse, and Black and White Alsatian Killer Cat spent the entire afternoon asleep in the rose bed, but not much feline patrolling goes on nowadays.

My mother was rather taken with a light flowered Symphytum.  It is a pretty thing, but I had to warn her that it ran rapaciously, and was really a plant for large gardens with tracts of space to cover rather than small town gardens.  I have it in the meadow, where it has run about remarkably on horrible poor soil where almost nothing will grow.  It is an excellent bee plant, which is a bonus.

After the Chatto visit I busied myself planting out various odd things I've bought recently, or had in the greenhouse over the winter.  I must try and remember where I put them all, or at least remember to check my gardening diary for what I've planted, if we get a dry spell, so that I can water them.  I am trying my luck with Selinum wallichianum, an umbellifer I saw and greatly liked at Trentham last September.  The Chatto gardens had packets of seed for sale.  I wonder whether my lone plant will set seed, or if I should buy it a friend?