Flowers Flowers everywhere, nature is beautiful

One thing people often struggle with is what plants to plant together to get either year round interest or a little montage at a certain time of year. Over the next few months I’m going to put together four plants I would heartily recommend for your garden that you can grow together. They will like the same conditions and act as a perfect contrast for each other and are for sale in the nursery.

Philadelphus 'Belle Etoile' – This is a shorter variety but any Philadelphus would do, as long as it has those fabulous white flowers and amazing scent. Any time I smell Philadelphus it takes me right back to 1986 and my second job in horticulture as a YTS student at Inveresk gardens. Its such an evocative smell for me, anyhoo enough of my reminiscing. A great hardy shrub with light green foliage, white flowers and a heady summer scent. Plant in sun and well drained soil, will tolerate some shade.

Narcissus 'Thalia' – my favourite daffodil, yes I know its pure white, one of the many reasons I love it, always like the different and unusual. Hardy, later flowering, multi headed, a must have for late spring early summer and bonus its scented too! Sun or shade it will bloom.

Digitalis purpurea f. Albiflora – Magestic pure white flowers on tall spires in summer which will grow in sun or shade and most soils. Plants them through a border to give height in amongst shorter plants. The bees will thank you too for providing them with flowers they love.

Clematis 'Miss Bateman' – Probably my favourite Clematis. Easy to grow on a sunny fence, pergola, arch or wall in well drained soil. It will reward you for planting it with large white flowers with green shading down the centre of the petals. Purple anthers set the whole flower off in early summer

Views from the garden at home this week, mainly the front garden. All those Aquilegia flowers are on the same plant! The alliums are early and the white azalea escaped the frost, yay!

My latest wriggly tin building painting. Based on the one we saw on our Bonchester Bridge walk a couple of weeks ago

The apple and crab apple trees in the nursery orchard are laden with blossom this year, I hope we don’t get a late frost! A bonus of cutting the grass at this time of year is I really get to enjoy the orchard as I’m walking up and down behind the mower.

You can sit on the bench under the crab apple and enjoy our silent space with views over the gardens to the Pentlands beyond. Its worth a few moments to sit and enjoy the sounds of the birds, the peaceful quiet and contemplate.

https://silentspace.org.uk/join-the-scheme/

If blossom is your thing, now is the time to choose a tree. Our ornamental cherries and fruit trees are covered in blossom. Choose from Prunus 'Snowgoose' ( single white and scented), Prunus 'Pink Perfection' (double pink and scented), Prunus 'Amanagawa' (narrow and columnar, perfect for small gardens), Prunus 'Kanzan' (double pink), Prunus serrula (single flowers and amazing shiny bark) and a range of fruiting apple varieties and 3 crab apple varieties.

Blossom water colours by Rona

David is quite adamant that he has never been and will not ever be a gardener, but over the 14 years we've been together, like it or not he has absorbed information about plants and names of plants. So it seem only fair to get him to contribute his top five favourite plants for sale in the nursery as part of the Quercus team

Matteuccia struthopteris – the Shuttlecock fern………. He loves the lime green colour when it first unfurls, its upright form and how it looks in the nursery as a swath of fronds in a shady area. Plant with bluebells and it’s a perfect combination.

Chives – they look good in the garden and taste great too. Very useful in the kitchen especially on new potatoes (don’t forget the butter) and the flowers look great, are edible, last for ages and are brilliant for bees.

Hedera ‘Buttercup’ – a well behaved ivy that doesn’t take over the world. The leaves are butter yellow with green tinges depending on how shady a place its planted. It looks amazing on the birdbath in the bat and bird border in the nursery and on our fence at home.

Corylus avelana cortorta – delightfully mad in their twisty growth, even the leaves are twisted. Grow the green variety or the purple (Red majestic) for a really interesting small tree in the garden. Even in winter when the leaves have fallen it takes on an architectural look with snow or frost highlighting the twists and turns. Bonus it has catkins in spring.

Rheum palmatum v. Tanguticum – a stand out plant for sheer size and presence in the garden. Ideal for shade and damp conditions this ornamental rhubarb shouts look at me. Then it flowers…..with stems that reach beyond six feet. Also look out for the purple undersides of the leaves, sheer extravagance on an already ott plant. We love it.

David’s bonus plant is what’s affectionately become known as the Persicaria monster! Many customers presume it’s a shrub when they see it in all its summer glory in the railway garden, covered in large plumes of white flowers on its 7 feet high and easily the same across clump in the railway garden. It really is a monster, but it got its nickname because it had rooted out the small pot it was in on the side of what is now the herb garden where it had been placed on the ground cover fabric by the previous owner and left. When we came to move it we realised it had made itself at home and was a huge plant with its 2 litre pot still entombed in its root system.

David's plant choices

I have never had a Sanseveria flower before, and I've had a few plants over the years, isnt't it amazing Isabel asked if they are scented, yes they are but not in a pleasant way!

What a great day, the sun was out, it was warm, the nursery was busy and Ben, Dan and Betty visited too and came home for tea Always great to catch up with my boys and Betty. Looking forward to seeing Jamie and Natasha tomorrow to go and choose wedding plants

This week we’ve been enjoying some warmer dry weather at last! So no excuses to crack on with the stock bed tidy up. Isabel is making great progress in the shade stock beds and is potting up and sorting out lots of great bergenias and heading into A’s in the shade beds.

Especially exciting this week was the species paeonias coming into flower in the woodland garden which I sowed from seed 7 years ago. They spent their first years in pots and when the woodland garden was planted up three years ago the got planted where you see them now. We have enjoyed Paeonia daurica and Paeonia mlokosewitschii which is yellow, but oe of the plants has produces a beautiful pale with with suffused edges to the petals, apparently this is a thing Paeonia mlokosewitschii does.

I’ve been getting through M’s and the monardas are tidied and lots of new plants potted in amongst all the other jobs needing done. I’ve nearly finished sorting through the shade plants that live in tunnel 2. This is my first job when I get into the nursery at 8am, armed with my first coffee of the day, it’s a peaceful time to work in contemplative silence or catch up with podcasts before we open. I’ve also been sorting through the surplice stock beds through the back next to the tunnels, determined to deal with the weeds before they beat me. Its also a chance to move more plants that are coming into flower out to the stock beds.

We had the Kirkurd WI visit for a garden tour on Friday, it was lovely to meet them again as I did a talk about the nursery for them back at the beginning of the year.

At the weekend I started planting all the annuals out in the gardens, These mainly go out in the herb garden and include veg like chard, kale and runner beans and flowers including borage, calendulas and corn flowers. Hopefully the hares will leave them alone!

Fiona is still working her way through last years cuttings and has nearly finished, next will be the cuttings we did a couple of months ago which are ready to pot already. Davi dhas been continuing with the paths into the tunnels, which is making a great difference to getting around.

The gardens continue to fill up with flowers and foliage and are looking great in the sunshine. The stand out plant has to be the camassia on the herb garden bank, they are such a great blue especially alongside the yellow of the cowslips.

The wildlife is enjoying the nursery too with lots of newts in the water features and the birds feeding their young. I’ve spotted a few ladybirds and a knotgrass beetle which is new to me.

Middle son Jamie and Natasha get married in a months time, our first family wedding which we are so excited for so I’ve also been planting up plants into large 10 litre pots and putting them in the tunnel to bring on. I am doing the flowers which is a huge honour and I want to make sure we have a good choice of flowers for the day. They are planning a cottage garden theme which is perfect.

In the front garden at home this week and then the back garden. The spring bulbs are over and I’ve cut them back to make room for the annuals that are ready to plant out. The big alliums in the front garden are great this year and are producing a new flower or more every year. In the back garden we’ve been enjoying dinner out in the sun, the geums and clematis coming into flower. But this week what I am most excited about is finally getting an outside tap fitted (hopefully, this is the second plumber we’ve tried to get this done). It will make watering the greenhouse and all my pots so much easier in dry weather. 

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