I love gardens that sit well in the surrounding landscape, gardens with a strong sense of place. Christina’s garden in Italy transitions smoothly from formal planting through more informal massed perennials, grasses, shrubs and tree and on into the wild natural landscape beyond. James Golden’s ‘Federal Twist’ is full of naturalistic planting that helps settle…
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I’m not entirely sure what I expected of the show gardens at the Malvern Spring Show. Up until now my only exposure to show gardens has been via TV, and then mainly RHS Chelsea and RHS Tatton Park. One of the things that has always bugged me about these is the tendency for them to…
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I went to the Malvern Spring Show with Gardening SIL yesterday. It was wonderful, if totally exhausting. I’d been to Malvern before, for a VW festival. The setting was the same, nestling in the shadow of the beautiful Malvern Hills, but everything else was a little different… BIL dropped us off at the entrance, relieved…
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I wound’t even remotely consider myself to be an expert gardener, and when I fail with plants I tend to blame myself for not understanding their requirements and providing the correct conditions. I’ve also found it hard to get really good information about just how well a plant performs – the RHS Award of Garden…
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