RHS Tatton Park

I've been looking forward to this for some time: this week's seen the 2013 RHS flower show at Tatton Park, and—like last year—we bought tickets for the final day.

Near our entrance, and the first thing we stopped at, was 'The Home Guard-ener', a World War II allotment garden, which uses the Ministry of Food guidelines for crops and spacings, and varieties available at the time. At the end, beyond the Anderson shelter (planted with marrows growing over it), was a really colourful flower bed, which we thought made the whole garden rather ornamental, despite 90% of it being vegetables only in different shades of green. Pleasingly, one of the potatoes was 'Home Guard', introduced in 1945.

'The Home Guard-ener' (photo © Ian 2013)

There were a number of 'Galaxy' themed gardens, which were interesting, and had some pleasing planting, but—perhaps inevitably—didn't really contain anything we'd probably replicate. However, I did rather like the chocolate-scented cosmos (C. atrosanguineus), which cropped up in several gardens.

Chocolate Cosmos in 'NSO: Watch This Space' (photo © Ian 2013)

'The Edible Medley' had a pleasing stone rill running through it, which has us wondering whether a rill draining from the colour wheel to the water garden is something we should consider.

'The Edible Medley' (photo © Ian 2013)

I had to take a photo of two woven willow cats, playing with a willow mouse.

'The Animals Went In Two By Two' (photo © Ian 2013)

'The Water Garden' (photo © Ian 2013)

Of the municipal beds, our favourite was the one from Birmingham City Council.

'The Canals of Birmingham' (photo © Ian 2013)

The grass border at the front of Echomap's garden caught our eye.

'Sound Idea' (photo © Ian 2013)

I fear Liz may now want a water wheel as a water feature.

'The Industrious Force of Nature' (photo © Ian 2013)

Whereas I'd rather like a garden observatory.

'The Star-Gazer's Retreat' (photo © Ian 2013)

For that future day when we might keep chickens, I rather like Kate Humble's Flyte So Fancy chicken coop.

Planted-up chicken coop (photo © Ian 2013)

RHS National Young Designer of the Year went to Tony Woods, who designed 'Escape to the City'. Last year's winner (Tristen Knight, with 'Brownfield Beauty') was also one we liked: we obviously share our opinions with the judges. We bought a couple of plants from this during the sell-off, including the brunnera just visible in the bottom left of this photo.

'Escape to the City' (photo © Ian 2013)

The garden leaflet for this one was the best I've seen: it had mug-shots of most (all?) of the plants, which made it really easy to identify something that caught your eye.

'Escape to the City' (photo © Ian 2013)

Cercis canadensis in 'The Bee Garden' (photo © Ian 2013) 

Predictably, we bought a load of plants, and had a struggle back to the car with half a dozen pots in each hand.

Car-load of purchases (© Ian 2013)

To enumerate them: a dark leafed ligularia; a 'Chocolate' eupatorium (E. rugosum); a variegated lysimachia (L. punctata 'Alexander', I think); Sanguisorba 'Tanna'; three 'Ravenwing' cow parsleys; a 'Queen Victoria' lobelia; a replacement 'Miss Willmott's Ghost' eryngium (and tray of seedlings!); three heucheras; a Japanese ginger; an edible tulbaghia 'Silver Lace'; a variegated agapanthus ('Tinkerbell', perhaps?); three 'Bishop of Llandaff' dahlias; a tradescantia; and the Brunnera macrophylla 'Jack Frost' mentioned above. We also bought some heritage seeds, from Pennard Plants, including cucomelon, and a purple climbing French bean, 'Blue Coco'.

I think there are two more plants, too, which I can't remember.

The purchases (© Ian 2013)

Notes for the wishlist:

• Achillea 'Apple Blossom' has an unusual (for achillea) almost purplish colour.
• Scented geranium 'Lady Plymouth' is rather attractive.
• Tomato 'Totem' is remarkably compact: from Pennard Plants, I think.
• 'Red Malabar' spinach is a pretty climbing form.
• Potentilla thurberi 'Monarch's Velvet' (a herbaceous potentilla?) has a good colour flower.
• Hordeum jubatum (foxtail barley) has attractive flowerheads.
• Coreopsis 'Jive' is nice.

Moon & Venus

The moon, Venus, and Jupiter have been in excellent alignment over the last few weeks, culminating in their closest positions on 15th March. I saw that, but only got the camera out on 26th. Really, I need a longer lens to capture the moon at a decent size (something 750mm or longer, for frame-filling splendour), and my longest lens is only 125mm (and I don't have a tele-adaptor). I hanker after Sigma's 150-500 OS lens, and occasionally borrow Philip's 100-400 Canon (which is beautiful, but shorter and more expensive than the Sigma). I'd also love a proper telescope with camera adapter, admittedly.

Never mind: cropped, a shot of Moon and Venus (Jupiter's now sunk down towards the horizon):

A Long Day Digging

Admittedly, I only spent a couple of hours digging, but it's the longest day of the year (the solstice was at about 1715). The hole for the apple tree is taking a long time to excavate, as there was—I discover—a large piece of iron sheet where I want the tree, as well as a big stone. The sheeting is out, but the big stone will have to wait. I'm worried that the same sort of problems will confront us when digging the pond, which may mean re-visiting the mini-digger idea. Which would, in principle, be fine—so long as the weather cooperated on the booked hire period!

Solstice!

It's the solstice today (at 1128 UTC): I always like noticing such astronomical events. This one's bitter-sweet for me: although it marks the formal start of 'summer' (although I think it's been summer for a couple of weeks), it's also slightly depressing to know that the days will now get shorter for six months.

On the topic, I'd really like to find a way to build an analemmatic sundial into the garden, possibly one where the observer themselves is the gnomen. Don't know where, yet!

Next stop: the cross-quarter, Lammas/Lughnasadh on 1st August.