A small selection of photos are now on my profile - just showing the main areas of the garden and one or too good plants.
First of all, it was great fun to meet Porridge, who is a true plantswoman and very knowledgeable [impressed] BabyPorridge is an excellent garden visitor and PorridgeBoy was charmingly keen to take his mum on his own tour of the gardens, which featured ducks much more heavily than plants, until impressively kept otherwise occupied by MrPorridge . I enjoyed meeting them all very much. No-one in the cafe seemed too taken aback to hear two grown women addressing each other as 'Porridge' and 'Grendel', and we recognised each other instantly, so no creeping round saying 'hello, are you here to meet me?' was required.
I think it was a bit early to see the gravel garden at its best, compared to the photos in The Gravel Garden book - as you might see from the photo, there were pockets of excellent individual plants, but not that many plant combinations, which I always want to see. Looking particularly striking, though, were fritillaria persica (which I must get for my garden), anemones (not sure of species), euphorbias, and bergenias. Beth Chatto uses different varieties of bergenias widely, especially at the corners of beds, and they really did look very effective. We agreed that if Pannacotta was there, she might have to change her attitude to bergenias. In fact, Porridge nearly bought Pannacotta a particularly good bergenia...
The wood garden was looking absolutely terrific, though, with wonderful trilliums and the hellebores looking stunning (see photo). I also loved erythonium 'pagoda', with its lemon-yellow bells hanging down over the elegant foliage. The shade walk was also great, and more than ever I missed having a shaded area in my new garden.
Throughout the garden, there were amelanchier lamarckii. We came to the conclusion that this is not nearly as good a plant as people say - there's something about the off-white blossom and off-brown leaves that makes it look just like a 70s curtain my parents have. As Porridge said, it's like a not very good selection of prunus. Speaking of prunus, there was a smasher overhanging one of the ponds, that caught even PorridgeBoy's attention.
The damp gardens were also looking good, but I'd say that at this point, not quite as full of sustained interest as the stream garden in the Botanic Gardens at Cambridge, which are looking particularly dramatic at the moment. However, Beth Chatto certainly won out with a dramatic massed planting of crown imperials in a huge bed on the edge of the wood, which I stupidly didn't photograph.
Egging each other on, I came away with Erysimum scoparium to replace a couple of 'Bowles Mauve' which are entirely the wrong colour for the plants they're among. Annoyingly, just having bought seeds of bronze fennel, I saw a plant labelled as an improved variety, 'Smokey'. I shall make do with the ordinary bronze fennel. I bought the biennial giant fennel, ferrula communis, which I'd read about in Beth Chatto's Gravel Garden book - it puts up blooms 3m high in its second year, so this should be pretty dramatic. Despite Porridge's promptings, I stuck to one of those! Finally, I was delighted to see stachys 'Primrose Heron', a variety of stachys with stunning primrose yellow leaves, that I've been looking out for for a while. Very much looking forward to seeing that in the garden!
Sorry this has turned into such an essay, but it's a stunning garden, and a real lesson in 'right plant, right place' - I didn't see a single thing that looked unhappy or out of place.
Roll on the next trip!