RHS Tatton Park

We went to the last day of RHS Tatton Park today: our first trip to an RHS show. 'Twas marvellous. The gardens were excellent, and there were loads of really good plants on the stalls, and we came away with lots of ideas. And lots of plants. The weather was much better than it could have been: warm, sunny, dry. Bit too sunny, really, and we're a little pink and dehydrated, but I won't complain.

Photos galore:

One for the wishlist, this: we liked it as a screen to grow things up, behind a bench.

An inspiringly colourful herb garden; one of the plant stalls in the floral marquee.

'Brownfield Beauty', the winner of the Young Designer of the Year award (Tristen Knight), and source of some of our plants...

'A Taste of Ness', which gave us some ideas for planting scheme in the seating corner. It's designed around a  colour wheel: the bed runs from the front right corner (white) into yellows and oranges in the back right; reds along the back to purples in the back left; and then blues down the left and part-way along the front.

More from A Taste of Ness:

 

'Enchantment': a lovely, calm, green-and-white planting scheme.

Also from 'Enchantment', a good alternative for growing a clematis.

'The Mornflake Garden', which also provided some of our plants! It won Best in Show for the show gardens.

A box ball, within an informal bed: see, it can be done!

A nice example of the sort of stream we want ('Making a Splash').

And the sort of planting in front of a hedge that we plan for next to the pond.

All photos © Ian 2012.

We bought two clematis (C. florida 'Alba Plena') which has lovely white flowers that open to double, and then have attractive seed-heads; a hydrangea with distinctive star-shaped white flowers (H. arborescens 'Hayes' Starburst'), which really caught our eye; and, from the Hardy Plants Society, a white eryngium (E. giganteum 'Miss Wilmott's Ghost').

As it was the final day, the show gardens were dismantled at 4, when we were able to pick up two grasses from the Mornflake Garden (Deschampia cespitosa 'Bronzeschleier' and 'Goldschleier') in big pots, and eight plants from the Brownfield Beauty garden: two 'Sweet Tea' heucherellas, two Molinia caerulea grasses (ssp. arundinacea 'Skyracer'), a Panicum virgatum 'Heavy Metal' grass, one each of achillea 'Terracotta' and 'Paprika, and a Stipa arundinacea.

All in all, a fantastic day, which has given us some great ideas and some lovely plants. I expect we'll go again next year!