Marc's Gardens

I was going to visit a friend in Hemel Hempstead the other day. From Sevenoaks, this means going half way round the M25, past such notorious hold-up-hotspots as Clackets and around Jct 8 & 9. I decided to leave after 9.00am in the hope that most of the commuter traffic would be gone by then and that the M25 might be slightly quieter. Some hope! It wasn't long before I hit the first of many snarl-ups around junction 8. About an hour later, boiling hot and cursing like Gordon Ramsay in a bug-infested kitchen, I decided to give up on the idea and turn off at my next opportunity. Fortunately, the next slip road led me straight into the loving embrace of RHS Wisley. If nothing else I could at least pop in there for a caramel latte and a slice of cake.    Lots of lovely lovely Stipa gigantea As I say, it was a baking hot day, and boy! was I glad to arrive at the near-empty Wisley car park. Do you know, I have an air-condition...

Perhaps even…. The Greatest Flower? How is the humble Sunflower much like The Beatles?     Well, and bear with me on this one. Imagine you asked a hundred people in the street to   ‘name the biggest , best, most popular pop group of all time’… I reckon The Beatles would form a majority answer. Now, asking those same people to ‘name the biggest, most popular flower’ and I’m pretty sure the noble sunflower would rank highly in their responses. Therefore, and somewhat like The Beatles, the sunflower suffers from that strange and similar dynamic… You know, the one that goes something like this. Because of their brilliance and majesty, reliability and all-round loveliness, they often get a little overlooked, in favour of whatever is new and current.   George - the Dark Horse - was always my favourite!   By now, regular readers of my blog will know that I LOVE yellow daisies. Again, a rather...

The subject of horticulture as a career - or whether such a thing as a horticultural career industry even exists - has yet again been given coverage in the news and gardening media recently. The RHS has had an on-going campaign, trying to promote horticulture as a career option for the young to enter into; so too have organisations such as the National Trust and English Heritage. I don't know if it's in conjunction with the RHS but even our Alan (Titchmarsh) has been waxing-lyrical about the benefits of today's youth entering the industry: rallying, cajoling, nudging the young to consider it as a career option. I read in this month's Gardener's World magazine an interesting debate between James Alexander-Sinclair and Helem Yemm entitled " Would you want your kids to work in gardening? " On the back pages of the magazine this question is also taken up by Titchmarsh as he reflects on 50 years working within the sector. I...

Another month of musings from Le Jardinier With regards gardens, and the pallet of plants on offer at any one time, I have always favoured late summer through to late autumn far above any other time of year. Yes, I love spring for everything spring has to offer - it's a period full of promise; a time when your senses elevate into the spirit of what's just around the corner - summer! But, for some reason, in respect of plants at least, i've always been a late summer person. Well, I say 'for some reason', but actually I know precisely why this is. Basically, it's this...... I love daisies! There, I said it! In fact, this 44 year old metro-sexual male, is going to stand up, right now, and say it loud'n proud... I love daisies!   All daisies!  Everything from those 'damn yellow composite' flowers from the North American Prairies (so-called because they're often so ' damn ' hard to tell apart in the field) to the white'n robust clas...

 Just a little piece of the largest meadow planting in the U.K.... at RHS Wisley - go see!   Folks, Instead of writing about such things as French or Dutch Renaissance gardens, or the loathsome nature of carpet bedding, I’m often asked to compose a blog entry giving some horticultural advice together with some practical and seasonal tips. Why have I not done so thus far? Well, to be honest, despite being an honest, down-in-the-dirt gardener, I prefer to use my blog for something a little more creative. I mean, if you want that kind of stuff, there’s plenty of those cheap throw-away ‘ garden answer type’ magazines that’ll provide you with pages and pages of tips & tricks: everything from Chelsea Chopping to chitting potatoes.   Personally, I would rather wax lyrical about the asteraceace family, or get all fired up over a new perennial yellow daisy. How camp did that sound!?   Anyway, after much badgering from friends and colleagues, mayb...

I haven't written an entry for a little while... J'ai été très occupé! S ee, i'm still doing my evening class French! Well, hopefully I can produce something of horticultural and literary merit for you during this spare 60 minutes of mine. Here's hoping! So, seeing as this is a bit of a re-introduction, let's commence with a dainty little picture taken this past week. A week spent with high winds, dodging rain and hailstones.... and it's nearly June!  Allium fit to burst.... backed by swathes of unfocused forget-me-nots and a colour co-ordinated summer house to boot! So, what have I been up to? Well, speaking horticulturally at least, I took myself off to Wisley last Saturday to spend a day in the company of a Mr Noel Kingsbury.... not forgetting of course the plantswoman Marina Christopher, who also helped to co-create what was a splendid day. The theme of the day was 'Successional Planting' and, seeing as i'm due to attend the...

  The Not so New, ‘New’ Perennial Movement.   Piet Oudolf at the start of his fame The last ten years has seen an explosion of naturalistic plantings in our gardens. It feels like a decade of this style of gardening has gone by pretty quickly, and therefore it still seems (to some at least) quite a new and fashionable way to design gardens.   Of course, ‘there’s nothing new under an old sun’ as they say, and even though Piet Oudolf may be the person famed for much of what we see in gardens today, it’s worth remembering that even he had his influences: e,g. Karl Foerster - the German plantsman, nurseryman and writer, who (as far back as 1903) was combining a love of sturdy perennials with grasses to create a remarkably similar effect to what we see today. Piet cites Foerster as his main influence, as well as his personal idol.   Now, one could argue, that pushing aside the now somewhat-ageing perennial wave, there is in fact very little movement in mo...