Wednesday 25 May 2011

What I loved


The Chelsea Flower Show yesterday was so rammed with dithering garden folk that getting a picture without at least 4 cagoul clad bottoms in it, bending into the flower beds, would have been tricky. Ram-out it may have been, but I loved it.


Above: Nectaroscordum siculum (a personal fave)
Below: Iris 'Dutch Chocolate'...yum


Also very exciting to see the garden I helped to plant win Best Artisan Garden & Gold, and it really was a very peaceful space. The artist responsible for the Haewooso garden sweetly said the judges particularly liked the 2 inch strip of meadow grass I laid along the boundary, and I can't stake further claim than that, but it was a privilege to be involved even at that small level!

Monday 23 May 2011

Escapism


I showed a friend these pics of a garden I have just finished and she thought it was abroad. I think it's the colour of the fountain lining and the dusty hoggin path.... Now how about a bit more of that heatwave we were enjoying?

Thursday 19 May 2011

Chelsea - a sneak preview...


One day I will do a garden at Chelsea. Today however was about seeing what all the hype is about - it is a famously stressful rite of passage for any garden designer - and I was invited to help plant a garden. Not one of the main Avenue gardens, but - much more intriguingly - a small garden, designed around a Korean lavatory. A garden with a loo, called Haewooso. The designer, Jihae Hwang, aims to present a spiritual oasis where you can free yourself of anxious thoughts, re-attune the body and attain peace... I can hardly write that without sniggering. I think her garden will be lovely though.


Thursday 12 May 2011

The Muse


Some are of the view that any spare patch of bare earth in an urban space should be planted. If it’s there and available, it should have a tree at the very least. As a city, we have the best public parks in Europe, but out on the street, it’s not looking as green as it could. A step in this direction would be to clad more buildings in non-invasive climbers – rambling roses, for example, trained along wires; vines and climbing hydrangea.


At the extreme – it ought not to be such, and perhaps it’s early days – is The Muse, Hackney. This is an architect’s house that plays host to a rich and natural landscape…on its roof. Yes, on its roof. There is a wild meadow above the sitting room, a Hazel woodland on the roof deck, and a stand of Hawthorn on top of the bedroom. The building is on the site of an old sausage factory, surrounded by high residential blocks; yet within this urban jungle is an oasis of green - provided by plants incorporated in the roof structures. There is no doubting the positive effects on those lucky enough to look out onto them. Locals frequently stop by to thank the architect, and I can believe it. Standing on this roof terrace felt rare and special – it wasn’t your run-of-the-mill olive trees and lavenders, but native species for attracting wildlife (a blackbird was busy finding food for its babies while I was there). The really wonderful part of all this is that it has been created in the sky, where to some, roof tiles would have done.

I left the site wondering why this isn’t the norm yet. Isn’t it a no-brainer?

Wednesday 4 May 2011

Heady summer bliss!


Could this balcony be any more romantic?