Arley Garden Festival

6 comments

Yesterday mum and I went to the garden festival at Arley (our second time!). Like last year it didn’t dissappoint… lots of plant stalls, and a tour round the herbacious borders with the head gardener, who was really helpful and answered people’s gardening questions at the end (apparently what I’ve got in my greenhouse is fungus gnats! Hopefully at last I will be able to find some way of getting rid of the bleepers!)

Anyway, I am just gonna stick up some of the pictures I took… the herbacious borders at Arley are apparently the oldest surviving ones in the country, surviving I think he said from 1860ish or sometime (they’re trying to pin down the exact dates through hunting through archive material). He also said that they are designed to be walked along, and viewed that way, rather than as somewhere to sit and look at. The planting is planned so it looks good from an angle,wheras if you look at it straight on, there might not be much stuff in flower etc. The Herbacious Beds:

The Ilex(?) Avenue:

The Shrub Rose Garden (I think perhaps my favourite bit):

In the vegetable garden there were these roses which had been trained up fence posts. I thought they made a really attractive, but non-fussy feature. Something that I would like to try if I find a suitable space :):

Booty: I spent some long hoarded christmas money and added to my plant collection, problem is i of course now have no idea where to put them! My favourite is the white ragged robin… i fell in love with it! I have a couple of pink ones lurking in my border somewhere which i discovered a few weeks back in a mini module tray, that i’d sown last year. Have since sown more, because I’ve decided they’re so pretty!

I also bought Geranium ‘Mrs. Kendal Clark’, which I’m excited about (although its ‘Anne Folkard’ that i’m especially keeping my eye out for). I also a white physostegia (i’ve never even heard of them before… time for research;), and then 6 gulp plants off a stall with a 3 for £5 on 7cm pots of perennials. Unfortunately they’re all hideously rootbound and have some major straggle issues, but I’m hoping that given some space they will somehow pick up… maybe next year :P But I got an orangey-yellowy helenium, a white Achillea Ptarmica ‘the pearl’, Geum Rivale (water avens), a yellow coreopsis, a felty leaved verbascum, that should have yellow flowers next year I hope, and a weird Digitalis lanata ’ ‘café creme’. Also I got a saxifraga ‘cuscutiformis’ from another stall. It all came to £18, which wasn’t that bad, but apparently more than I should have spent..

Spikey seeing what all my fuss is about.

I hope you’re all having a good weekend gardening. Sorry if I’ve been lousy at commenting on things lately… I’ve hardly been on GoY! :( I was going to upload some photos of how my gardens doing, but these ones took an eternity so I’ll have to do it some other time (don’t want to waste the weather! Dad has gone out to weed where the front lawn needs replacing (where it all got weedkilled off last year to be leveled out… and is still waiting for a re-sowing!). I am about to go out and help him, in the hope it will get done sooner! (also he has been very lovely and just won some more edging tiles for me off ebay!).

Happy Gardening to all! xxx

P.S. Sorry if all the photos make your computer go slow! GoY is lovely, but occassionally can be frustratingly slow whilst loading!

• 26 Jun, 2011
• 6 likes

More blog posts by jennyfer