Echinacea pallida and E. paradoxa
Two reliable species conflowers to add to garden borders.
Alliums or Ornamental Onions
Use alliums to bridge the June gap between the flowers of spring and the summer flowering perennials. Even when your garden borders are bright with colour in June from Euphorbias, Geums and Iris there is still a role for alliums. Their round pompom flower heads are larger than tennis balls and contrast boldly both in …
Tulipa acuminata
The Ottoman Empire, in a similar way to Holland, had a fanatical obsession with tulips. Needle-shaped flowers were prized of which Tulipa acuminata is an example. This wild species tulip flowers later than most. Its flower petals drawn out into long fine points are yellow splashed with orange and red marks. In one way the …
Snowdrop Highlight At Winter’s End
Snowdrops highlight this small perennial meadow planting this winter’s end in my Amsterdam trial garden. Following cold wintery nights there is much still to be enjoyed in a garden dominated by perennials. Galanthophiles are gardeners obsessed with snowdrops. I adore these spritely early bulbs but the collector’s bug has never caught me. I have trialled …
Setting Out A Perennial Planting Plan – Step By Step
These are the steps to follow when setting out a perennial meadow planting plan. Strange as it might seem, the way I place the plants on the ground is almost the reverse of how I put a planting plan together in the first place. As you will know from earlier posts on this web site, …
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Example of a Perennial Planting Plan
Two prairie grasses dominate this perennial meadow planting plan. The Panicum virgatum is a large, fine leaved, upright growing grass which is used as a feature plant in this example. Feature plants rise out of perennial meadow mixtures to serve as focus points. Used singly and sometimes repeatedly, they can bring an additional layer of …
new – Perennial Planting Plans
PERENNIAL PLANTING PLANS is my new eBook about designing perennial meadows. In a new approach to presenting my ideas on the subject of naturalistic planting for the average home garden PERENNIAL PLANTING PLANS shows clearly how to go about arranging the plants on the ground to create natural looking plant communities. PRICE €9.99 The plans …
Learning With Experts – Online Training
The online training courses offered by Learning With Experts feature video lectures by some of the worlds leading experts in their fields. Originally starting in 2011 as My Garden School, they offered a range of courses covering garden design, garden maintenance, planting design, the herb garden, roses, shrubs, climbers and bulbs. Later the range expanded …
Thinking About A Design For The Winter Garden
For an article in the current winter number of Onze Eigen Tuin (Our Own Garden) I was asked to show the beauty in the transition from autumn to winter in the garden landscape. What might be seen as chaos and disorder to some can in fact be very beautiful when carefully observed. Dying and “dead”, …
A New Grass Border Design
Inspiration for any planting plan is needed and in this case it came when I “accidentally” planted a seedling of the grass Calamagrostis brachytricha next to a patch of Actea simplex (Syn. Cimicifuga simplex) in an existing grass border, their flowers complementing one another perfectly. When designing a perennial meadow I look for five appropriate …