August
4
Two go shopping
When the Director suggested that Aoife and I go plant shopping at Orchard Dene Nurseries, it was an offer I couldnt refuse. Chris and Toby Marchant, who run the nursery in Henley, are used to dealing with designers like Tom Stuart Smith and recently grew all the plants for the four acre Piet Oudolf garden at the new Hauser + Wirth gallery. (And by the by, they are lovely people, who will provide one of CWs stopover during his swim).
The news that the garden will see another Summer, with the Museum open for venue hire till August 2015, changed our initial ideas a little. We had already planted the narrow strips under the pleached roses with in period plants such as sweet rocket (hesperis), chives, sweet williams, and some dianthus (chinensis, so not in period, which Liz exclaimed are 'very pink'). And sneaked some cosmos, coreopsis and verbena into the gravel garden, all grown just across from the Museum at Roots and Shoots.
After consulting Christopher and Philip, we opted to stick with period plants for the Knot, but to use modern cultivars. (The old varieties flower once and most are over by July). We also wanted some plants for St Marys, to provide flowers for arranging in the church. Since April, we havent spent the £10 weekly flower budget, so aimed to spend some of that 'banked' money on robust things like nerines, crocosmia, phlox and asters. We also had a short shopping list for adding plants to the mead, the central band of the biodiversity garden which, like the Knot, can look scruffy post June.
Although our tiny shopping list is the opposite of what Orcgard Dene are used to, Chris immediately understood that we were looking for late flowers for this year, and a 'jewel box' approach to the equally tiny Knot. We wandered through hundreds - thousands - of plants noting her advice and tweaking our initial ideas aiming to give the best possible effect. Some plants we selected are being cut down to delay flowering till late August or later. Thats the kind of detail we like!
As we were getting ready to leave, Chris unrolled a drawing from the corner of the office - Piet Oudolfs hand drawn plan for the H + W site, a long scroll of coloured circles and dots with number of plants noted. Forty of this, thirty of that. A privilege to see something so far removed from the usual CAD plans.
After a lovely couple of hours shopping, Aoife and I caught the train back to the Museum clutching a box each of things we could get planted straightway - astrantia 'Moulin Rouge' (plum coloured, grown for Piet, as all the whites were reserved), oregano 'Herrenhausen' and some cracking crocosmia (yellow George Davidson and orange 'Babylon', with a flatter open flower). These are now planted and the rest of the plants will be collected by Liz in the next week or so.
What else did we buy? a newish golden rod, Solidago 'Fireworks'; Phlox 'Blue Paradise' which Chris 'sold' on the strength of its darker young leaves; Aster amellus 'King George'; Aster ageratum 'Starshine', subbed for 'Violetta', which, its true is a leggy giant; sedum telephium 'Matrona' for the Knot; Sedum 'Autumn fire' and thirty nerines for cutting; evergreen ferns for the back garden and the mead; white verbascum for the Knot; th elong flowering blue geranium 'Brookside' for the mead; and ruellia, a lovely plant grown for Tom SS which we spotted as we wandered off from our guide - also called Mexican Petunia, it has a lilac-blue upright flower (our one impulse buy, for the back garden and the dry garden). I reckon getting two varieties which arent generally available and some we hadnt seen before make us lucky so-and-sos. Now its up to the garden team to clear spaces, so we can get our new plants into the Knot in the sort of mirror planting which the space needs. We made a start this week by lifting and dividing (and potting - thanks Lisa and Judith) centaurea, eurybia and foxgloves which will be ready to go back into the Knot in a few weeks time. And you will be pleased to hear that - prompted by Kay - we have Annas agreement to buy labels for the new and more obscure plants in the back garden. So expect fewer questions from puzzled visitors.
Christopher Raven