Hampton Court Highlights

A week ago, I was at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show. I think it's my favourite of the two big London RHS shows, not least because there are so many sellers there - the first thing I did was make a beeline for the Nemaslug guy! Hopefully this will reduce the number of slugs eating my ferns and angiosperms, the little bastards.

Anyway, pictures. Really liked some of the ideas in the sustainable gardens, including this one, The Rain Chain, with a chain directing water off the roof. I wonder if this might be a solution to my obscenely wide downspout?


I also liked Jack Dunckley's A Desert's Delight, with two distinct exotic gardening styles, the xeriscape:


And the lush tropical:


The Thailand Garden of Serenity was gorgeous too:


And I need to add this crocodile fern to the Covet List:


Only two of the conceptual gardens were what I would call pretentious wankery, and I very much loved this one, Concreation:


And the It's Hard To See garden, which I showed you last week.

There was more shopping in the form of what is becoming an annual trip to the Mendip Bonsai stand. They sell all my favourite exotic conifers as seedlings, suitable for planting out, container growing or bonsai. Last year I got myself a Taxodium distichum, a Ginkgo biloba and a Sequioadendron giganteum - the whole lot came to about £7, and the Ginkgo and Taxodium have each grown about a foot and a half in the past year. This year I picked up a Pseudolarix amabilis and a Larix kaempferi. And I could do whole posts just on bonsai trees. Art masquerading as gardening, that is.

Hubster managed to keep himself entertained, and I think (although he'd never admit it in case I get the impression he likes looking at plants) he actually enjoyed himself. Unlike this really bored-looking dragon:

Gentle Giants

The RHS gardens at Wisley have their popular bits - the rose garden, the glasshouse, the alpine collection. And on a fine day it's difficult to get some quality quiet time in these places. But if you occasionally like a walk in the garden without shrill juvenile voices and slow-moving coach parties, turn right at the restaurant and head to the pinetum, where the only people you'll meet will be similarly looking for some quiet contemplation among the gentle giants.

I first visited back in January, and it was just as deserted in June. And this is what the Metasequoia glyptostroboides looked like in January:


This was it in June!


As well as this beautiful Metasequoia, Wisley have a Sequoiadendron giganteum and Sequoia sempervirens - all three sequoioids (isn't that a great name?). So I was able to pick some cones and photograph some leaves to help me distinguish more easily between the three (and indulge my nerdy bits). The cones look beautiful. I have them in a shot glass at the moment on the mantelpiece.

Some Way To Go

On my last trip to Wisley I got stuck behind a party of primary school children, so I decided to take a different route round, and went to the top of the conifer lawn. This is what I saw:


A Wollemia nobilis in the shadow of what looks like a massive Leyland or Lawson cypress!

Don't worry little fellow, one day you'll be as tall as your friend.

The Covet List #1

I wrote this for pre-posting before visiting the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, where I actually managed to buy one of these.

Sometimes I spot a plant that I really, really want. A few weeks ago at Wisley, I saw a plant that I've been after since Carol Klein pointed it out on a Chelsea Flower Show programme a couple of years ago.


Recognise it?

It's the teeniest tiniest cutest little Gunnera you ever did see! It's the second smallest of the genus, G. magellanicum (I have yet to see a G. albocarpa, only 1-2cm long). And the RHS have obliged by putting it right next to G. manicata for scale...


There - the entire clump of the tinies is still smaller in terms of area than one of those triffid leaves.

And now here it is!


Can't wait to get it planted out.

Friday Fern #29

This is a cute little fern I picked up last year. It was sold as "Pteris Mix" (I'm sure some of the more supermarket-y garden centres think that's an acceptable label for any fern they can't be bothered to identify). But as you can see from the photo, I think it's a form of Adiantum raddianum:


This one is coming back from the dead, as I kept it as a houseplant and sort of "forgot" to water it... I am continually amazed by the whole Adiantum genus' ability to resurrect itself.

Edit: Yeah, just had to reset the image URL as there was a lovely but irrelevant photo of the pond rather than the fern...

Back From The Palace

I've been to Hampton Court today with Hubster and one of my gardening buddies. In retrospect maybe having the whole day there but taking time to sit down an awful lot in between gardens would have been better, because we are both so sore! I don't recommend doing Hampton Court less than two months after a car prang...

We had the best day for it, according to the guy selling TubTrugs, and it was good to chat to some old friends manning their stands. I'll post some more photos over the weekend I expect, but this was one of my highlights:


This is "It's Hard To See", one of the conceptual gardens.

Wisley Gets Its Cycads Out

A pleasant surprise for me a couple of weeks ago was to round the corner of the glasshouse and see a display of some of RHS Wisley's best cycad specimens.


Macrozamia spiralis:


M. johnsonii:


Hybrid of Cycas revoluta (f) and C. taitungensis (m):


And I really was over the moon to see, pride of place right in the centre of the display, my absolute favourite Encephalartos horridus:


Compared to some of the photos I've seen of them in the wild, this is quite a small specimen, but I don't care - I was just SO happy to be able to see it (and maybe perhaps touch a frond and feel just how "horridus" it really was...).


Really, there aren't many plants that say "Back off bitches" quite so effectively as this chap.

Friday Fern #28

Last weekend I visited Crews Hill for the first time, to see all the nurseries and garden centres. I had a bargainiferous time at Crews Hill Gardening Club, where I scored a replacement Washingtonia robusta for the one that spear-pulled on all three growing points for £5.99 - and it's nearly as tall as me!

Later, after a very nice sausage butty for lunch, we carried on to Wildwoods Water Gardens, and I made a discovery:


This is Salvinia auriculata, and it's a noxious weed in the USA! And yes, it's an aquatic fern. I had never heard of it, and had to google the name on my phone before stretching to the garden centre's "5 for £5" offer.

I was going to just dunk them into the bottom of the fountain, but I think they might not have enjoyed the moving water so much. So I made a little pond. Bastard the Cycad needed repotting, so I used his old container, bunged an old cava cork in the drainage hole (I'm not posh enough for champagne) and filled it up.


With some oxygenating plants and a long-sought-after Saururus cernuus (I know they're common as muck in the USA but I've never been able to track one down until last weekend), the pond is looking really sweet.

Copyright Thief!

I'm heading up to Akamba tomorrow, and was checking the postcode and getting directions, when I saw on Google Maps a familiar photograph (scroll down to the bottom).

Yes, it's this one of José Cuervo, my variegated Agave tequilana:


Now, if I had tagged the photo "Akamba" and Google was using it while providing a link back to my Picasa album or even this website, I would not have a problem. However, this Qype user Phil Holmes has passed it off as his own photo. Not cool. Here's the page concerned:

Photo of Akamba by philholmes

Now, I want to make it clear that this is nothing to do with Akamba or the people who work for Akamba. For starters, they would have posted their own photographs if they'd wanted to write about the nursery. Would it be me if I sat here and accepted the blatant infringement of my copyright? Of course not. In case it gets pulled, here's my comment on the photo:

This is not Phil Holmes' photo. This is my photograph, of my Agave tequilana, in my garden, with my Camellia x williamsii in full flower, and the ceramic dinosaur my mother gave me behind it. Phil Holmes has stolen this photograph without asking me or indeed crediting me with the copyright. If you look at the URL for my photograph (http://picasaweb.google.com/juliaheathcote/JurassicPark#5194006282273344610) you will see that it is licensed under creative commons, which means I only authorise use if my copyright is acknowledged.

It isn’t even a plant I bought from Akamba. I bought it from Cotswold Garden Flowers, an hour's drive away. And the location for the photograph above is my own back garden in west London.

Now, my lovely readers, you all know this because the majority of you are also bloggers and understand the importance of acknowledging copyright, especially if we're not being paid for our efforts.

But in case Phil Holmes from Shirley feels the need to google his name, let me reiterate: my blog and my photographs are authorised for use under an Attribution-Noncommercial-No derivative works licence. This means you have to credit me as the owner of the material, and you can't go round passing it off as your own. Especially not if you're getting some kind of reward (whatever this points system is) for posting my photograph. This is not the first time I've had to do this - I had to complain when someone advertised their Dicksonia antarctica on eBay using my photo!

I have reported the photo to Qype, and I hope it will be removed by the time I get home from the end-of-year bash. Because you won't like my angry, tired and emotional posts...

I'm In Love...

...With my garden! On Sunday I could stand it no longer. For three years, Hubster has trudged, tripped and cursed his way around Jurassic Park hanging out the washing on a line suspended 6'6" above the plants. It was clear the washing line needed to go.


I replaced it with an extendable line, screwed in to the apple tree at one end and a miserable ash tree that not a single resident will miss if it "accidentally" falls down at the other end. This now means Jurassic Park never has to cope with having knickers unceremoniously dangling over it, and more crucially, we don't have to worry about our upstairs neighbour soaking the laundry when he waters his plants!


So I've interspersed in this post some photos of Jurassic Park, approaching its absolute peak. Enjoy. I'm going to go outside and embrace my unemployment with a margarita and a good book.