Please come and talk to me about ideas for planting

[isthatporridgeinyourhair]

Inspiration needed please! I have a raised area (approx 6m x 15m) - which falls away to a meadow beyond. I have planted up the area with stipa tenuissima interplanted with allium spheracephalon, I have also planted box to provide a contrast with the stipa. I had in my head that this would reflect the meadow - but obviously be a cultivated area. Do you think that the planting will provide enough interest or do I need a third plant - perhaps a scabious?

Views welcomed!

You're right Trowel - mine were about an inch taller than the stipa and they flopped over and I didn't want to stake the whole area.

loved it Porridge it was heaven - dp laughed at me for photographing everything ...

i was wondering what the white flower was in my link - not the allium...

It is wonderful - she has the magic touch!

Trowel and her bifocals are right - it's an achillea - but have no idea what the cultivar is.

Pineberry - Are you also Catherine Earnshaw? I think the white flower in her/your link is an achillea, as I said, but it could perhaps be one of the umbellifers - although the flowers look too densely-packed for (say) sweet cecily.

yes i am sorry!!! very confusing!

oooh thanks for the help

hey ladies. lovely thread with some beautiful plant combinations and suggestions. Have loved looking at the links.

Im studying landscape design at uni but am really struggling on the plant knowledge side of things. You all seem to know a great deal about plants and I was wondering if you could suggest any ways I could improve my plant knowledge. I feel like im missing out on so much and everyone else on my course is so much more experianced than me and I feel it greatly hampers my confidence. sorry to hijack the thread. Just thought I would ask quickly as I so enjoy gardening and landscaping and just learning new things

Do you think it might be a slightly unhappy achillea, or perhaps a species plant? It doesn't seem to have a lot of flowers per head compared to the varieties I have in the garden.

Talking of achilleas, I was recommended Inca Gold above Moonshine by a nurseryman who's won Gold at Chelsea (Harvey's Garden Plants, just north of Bury St Edmunds, delicious teas and sweet hens). He says its a much better plant, alhtough not well known.

re. Plant knowledge - going round good nurseries very slowly looking at the plants and their labels, and going round good gardens very slowly, I think. I'm good on plants (it's probably actually one of my major talents), and I think it must be because when I was young, Easter bank holiday would have consisted of walking very slowly with my grandparents, aunt and uncle round a garden, with people saying 'there's a so and so'.

Now, query of the day - how would Beth Chatto (or the late great CL) plant a paeony like this one - www.dejager.co.uk/product/?pid=17308? It needs to move from the back of a border to somewhere you can see it?

If we were to go to Great Dixter, when's the best time of year to go?

Spooky, as well as lusting over gardening porn mags visit as many gardens as possible. NGS is brilliant - little local gardens as well as big ones and often the owner is available to chat AND excellent afternoon tea and cakes too.

Porridge, my last garden was a bizarre mix of sand and sticky clay in layers. The dianthus did best on a pretty middling section that had had lots of compost dug in. But i did save seed to sow it in trays.

www.vanngarden.co.uk/ this is where I am going today for example - been loads of times before as it's pretty local but I love it.

GM - Have been to Harvey's - lovely hellebores.Inca Gold is noted for future use. Thanks (smile). Dixter is good in July/August for exotics/long border but would happily go at any time. Internet playing up on paeony - will check out and come back on that.

Would second going round gardens very slowly Spooky and NGS is good (opened my last garden for them until we moved).

Trauma - think that the dianthus problem must be me then! Vann Garden looks interesting and they have plant sales too!

Thanks for the advice re getting to know plants better. I really struggle with retaining information.
Off to a garden centre today so I will try to go slow and take in as much as possible, although my teenaage sister will be in tow so im sure there will be pleanty of moaning about the pace of the walkinng.

Thanks again.

Oh, another idea. If you try to learn what the Latin plant names mean, it makes it much easier, as very often the names are a pretty literal description of the plant.

Spookycharlotte - Do you have a local horticultural society? Many have monthly talks by nurserypeople, which are a good way of absorbing information.

Spooky I have learnt lots from borrowing books from the library (as well as going to local gardens/nurseries).

I have found the Hillier paperback books very good, plus Geoff Hamilton, Christopher Lloyd, Penelope Hobhouse, Helen Dillonm, Stephen Lacey etc etc.

WHy not have a look in your local library and see what you can find.

G'sMum is Harveys worth a trip even when not Hellebore season do you think? Its on my "to visit" list and sounds lovely.

P - yes, definitely - they do lovely courses on planting for difficult conditions. I've been on a hellebore day, and I think on a 'plants for shade' or 'extending your flowering into the late autumn' or something day. The food is very good, and as I say, the chickens are fun. I think if you go on a course, you get a reduction on anything you buy on the day.

Consider Geum 'Lemon Drops' fab with the stipa,anchors the movement and tones colour wise.Won't detract from the height of the Alliums.

You could always echo the cultivated Geum with the native Geum rivale in the meadow below.