Who didnt win at Chelsea

Well, the Daily Telegraph Garden by Ulf not only won a gold but was voted best garden of the show. I think in the end it does catch the important elements of the way we are likely to be living within and without our gardens and nature in 2009 and 2010. Simple lines, deceptively simple colour palette.

It was quite interesting though how the cameras and discussions had a tendency to end up in what I think was a darling of a garden, the Foreign and Colonial Investments Garden designed by Thomas Hoblyn with its wooden wave and beautiful maiden. Guess they've got loadsamoney...Still I think in a way it was the unofficial best in show.

As predicted by the pundits the aquilegia was probably the most surprising star of the flower show. The photo left is another one of mine that has popped up in my Spanish cottage garden this summer.

There was more than an eye cocked at climate change and design. It is always hard to know if it was credit crunch or climate change that motivated some of the designs but from where I was sitting in my armchair in Spain I welcomed the use of water tolerant plants in such exciting ways.

Some big names weren't there. M and S for a very big one. But you could have knocked me down with a feather to see the Olive Tree Garden. These olive trees had been selected very carefully from the high northern areas of Spain so that they should already be hard for cold and wind. Well done that couple! They started with a big open field and look where they ended up.

On balance I just love the way that the show kept throwing up innovative ideas how to use or decorate or put together just about anything. The garden based on Robert Dudley's attempts to impress the first Queen Elizabeth, the perfumerie looked fun and was apparently interactive.

And who won a gold for their rose but I didnt get to see this on my tv? But nice write up at this RHS garden blog:

http://mygarden.rhs.org.uk/blogs/graham_rice/archive/2009/05/18/peter-beales-roses-new-at-chelsea-09.aspx

Well done Peter Beales!

I think I would have liked a bit more technology personally speaking. Selective editing is of course going to be a big issue but some hard work needs to be done to really go beyond the obvious imho..
Lights and water were in abundance - I would have liked to have known something about costs, mechanisms and so on for the real world. Its a bit like MPs in parliament - you dont really know about the hidden costs. Still the coverage had me glued to the old tv this week more than usual and the left hand side of the cortex was sparking with visual and creative ideas to keep me going for quite a while.

Agave Americana - at 24 days

- and still going.

Sweden and its gardens

It does not surprise me that I come to write of Sweden and its gardens through the cinema. Cinema has always been one of the highest art forms in Sweden and my photographic and cinematic enthusiasm is really whetted by the current Kenneth Branagh series of “Wallander” filmed around Inspektor Kurt Wallander's hometown Ystad in Sweden.

The director Philip Martin and the Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle (2009 Best Achievement “Slumdog Millionaire”) conferred to make sure they were going to be able to create a visual style that reflected Sweden – natural, simple, clean lines, an amalgum with the landscape, melancholic. This thread that permeates through all the Swedish arts can be found equally in garden design.

A recent strong example of this is the Linnaeus Garden which won a Gold Medal at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2007, designed Ulf Nordfjell with art works inspired by the work of Georg Dionysius Ehret and executed by Anna Karin Furunes. This garden is a miracle of white and silver simplicity inevitable water features. The garden is now reset out in Gothenburg Botanical Gardens. This botanical garden is considered to be the premier Swedish garden. See below

I note with interest that the Daily Telegraph contribution to the Chelsea Flower Show 2009 will be a garden designed by Ulf Nordfjell which will be a fusion of Anglo and Swedish elements. I look forward to what this will actually mean In gardening design.

Two Important Swedish Carls -

Carl Linnaeus (1707-78)

is known as the father of modern taxonomy who created the system for naming, ranking and classification of all organisms. He named about 7700 plant organisms and 4400 species of animals. Prior to his work any scientific name had no validity unless Linnaeus included it in his works. His most important work was published in 1753 and called “The Species of Plants”

Carl Larrsson (1853-1919)

Internationally beloved realist painter who shared his riotously colourful garden Lilla Hyttnas and family with the world through his art. Karin his wife was also trained artist and her bold ideas were a major plank in what we see and enjoy about the artist his home and and environment.

Other interesting Swedish garden pointers:

Swedish railway stations

Really was intrigued by the gardening around Swedish railway stations which were to actively encourage birds and bees.

Found in this reference http://www.nzetc.org/tm/scholarly/tei-Gov06_08Rail-t1-body-d5-d3.html which is dated 1932

“At every station, he reports, as well as every signalman's cottage, a garden is laid out at the expense of the State Railways, which also send out special gardening inspectors to advise. In addition, he states, the railway administration has taken wild birds under its protection by putting up no less than 12,000 feeding perches in the trees adjacent to the railway line “ British Rial take note...

Two important botanical gardens

Gothenburg Botanical Garden considered to be the premier Swedish Garden – it is also where the Linnaeus Garden was re-established having won a First at the Chelsea Flower Show in 2007.Garden. This is a link to the plants to be found in the Linnaeus Garden.

http://w3.goteborg.se/botaniska/PDF/VaxtlistaLinnetrdg.pdf

Fredriksdal Museum and Gardens themed on an 18^th century manor house thereby reflecting provincial life. Notable rose garden and kitchen gardening. (www.fredriksdal.se)

Nordic Gardens Fair at Alvsjo near Stockholm

Sweden has a number of formal gardens, as ever attached to houses and palaces of importance and more than a little influenced by the French tradition of formal gardens. A good example would be the Gronsoo Palace built 1611, west of Stockholm. Gustavian in style with a famous Lake Malaran and 720 hectares of landscape demonstrating farmlands, forestry and so forth.

Advent of RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2009

Can you believe it? We are ahead of the game on this blog. It is that major gardening event in UK right now and this is a quote from the Daily Telegraph's Bluffers Guide to CFS 2009.

"Chelsea looks backwards with quotes from Keats and Tennyson on the meaning of life, potent medicinal herbs used by beekeeping monks, an alchemist's den in the Fens and Queen Elizabeth 1's perfume, emphasising the continuing power of plants".

Other major events being pointed up are

.....the real interest in growing vegetables
.....vertical growing togive up more space and protection to the above
.....the continuing love of fine grasses and a new amour - the hornbeam espaliered and, my word, aquilegias (See left, my first one in my Spanish garden)

The rumour is that there isnt as much money around in this event this year. Well that is going to be a shock to the system as the British gardening industry is worth about $6 billion - that s a lot of cabbage....The clever blighters though will be showing the gardening public the money saving gardening tips, tools and water saving plants I am going to guess...

Reading up on 2008, I had a shock to find that Monty Don had a stroke while doing the 80 Gardens round the World programme. How had that passed me by? Well guess you wont be reading my blog Monty but sending you postive thoughts for a full recovery.

Also got a jolt as there is going to be a Swedish garden for the Daily Telegraph designed by Ulf Nordfjell. I better get my Swedish article up now!

www.rhs.org.uk/chelsea/tickets.asp

What constitutes a Garden?

Yesterday I rather foolishly took on a rather long “stroll” near Lorca to try to find the Menhir de Serrato, There is a sign post in Lorca saying it is 4.5kms away. Then I turn up a road that says 1.5kms to the Menhir. I drive over a kilometer more and find another sign. Logic would say it is about half maybe one kilometer further on up the track. Wrong. And it also turned out to be a bit of a scorcher and we left the water in the car..... and of course with creeping weakening muscles because of ms, and age. It took me ages to cover what should be I guess a 20 minute walk to the bowl edge. Yeah yeah yeah....

Well being stubborn I got there and was rewarded with a siting of a hardly known four meter high megalith sitting in a very deep bowl. An incredibly secretive place, absolutely quiet, scented with a rich variety of herbs and what came to mind was speech in Midsummer Night's Dream.” I know a place where the wild thyme blows.... “



The sense of a pagan garden or socially cohesive important place was very powerful. There were signs of small animal tracks and clearly these are what humans follow down to the stone.

Having slid most of the way down the bowl to the stone by grabbing handfuls of esparto grass we use what shade we can obtain by putting our backs to the north of the stone for some rest and contemplation before the climb out. There was a plaque that sid this stone had been found in 1975 would you believe, that the stone probably datedfrom about four or five thousand years ago. Then you start the why questions....

Inevitably the first place to start looking for answers is the computer but there is nothing in English I can find. And almost nothing in Spanish except for one good blog where people have walked in as a club at a more appropriate time of year – like February. A couple of references to the Lorca Museum of Archeology which I have already visited and seen some of the human artifacts found around the Menhir. This is when I look for definitions of the word “garden”. What happens is, the more I look the more I am pushed back in time. I come across the first references to neolithic gardens for heavens sake. I guess we have to take the beginning of horticulture as the beginning of gardens. Then I start to fall over links to all sorts of associations of myths pagan rites statuary and I mentally have to start to close down. No wonder there are now prehistorians who specialise now in gardens. Anyway I think I have made a good enough case here to put up some photos of this special place which feels like some very old socially cohesive garden with statuary.

My Garden and I - Spring 2009

Winter come to an end... out of the dormancy of the land the slow emergence of our garden becomes apparent. Our personal winter bird population had an absolute field day on the abundant crop of prickly pear fruit. Particularly noisy most mornings is the green woodpecker who sits atop the hedge of prickly pear spraying droplets of water from the fruit and leaves in the early morning sunlight. Spectacular photograph – if he would let me take it.... .Instead here is a barbed bouquet of prickly pears.

The structural work on the delapidated cottages finally has been taking place and these two old peasant homes are at least waterproof and beginning to take on a certain charm. The need to clear away from the walls in order to repair them meant cutting back through ivy and . This also changes the gardening dynamics. My gardener's brain and imagination has started taking off in unexpected areas.

The winter seems to have been long but without any real extremes at our height of 740 meters.. The almond trees' abundancy of flowers promises much and there have been no serious winds or frosts at our height to threaten the crop.

Five years ago these valleys were absolutely stricken by severe frost while the sap was rising and devastated many of the limited amount of trees in this semi arid region. It just shows that time and more fortunate weather can reap fabulous benefits on the landscape. It is our own nature for

neatness and tidiness which is really suspect. The landscape this spring is stunning and trees one thought had had it are draped with bridal veils of white, pink and a host of other variations according to almond type. At their feet there are swathes of early wild flowers – weeds to some.

I am spending money at the tree centre as this is when I have the opportunity to get a few more trees in. The ground is actually soft enough in which to dig large enough holes. Our tiny vegetable patch has a few beans planted and courgettes this year. There is this small window of opportunity to grow some things before the middle of summer fries everything in sight that is green. Last year was the learning curve on this....

We are also blessed by a wonderfully verdant supply of a wild spinach. Last year I was pulling it up as “weed” but in the last few weeks it has been our staple vegetable.

A little aside: Jason Webster the writer of Duende has a new book out on the creation of a garden up in the hills of the Castellon region on very ancient terraces. Listening as I do to "Excess Baggage" I heard him say that he has planted oaks with truffle spore. A really good money spinner except for one thing - the boars hve found them too.

Lots of discussion around as to how to stop the wild boar mashing one's garden. Pee ing , human hair hung from fences - anyone want to add to the list?

The Agave Americana April 2009 - Part Four

Ten days growth ...

Two weeks now...

Trying to measure the diameter without loss of life and limb....



...at this point diameter is 17 inches (41cms)

The strength of this part of the stem is phenomenal as well - used for structural posts by us in rebuilding the old cottage