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Gardening | Garden visits | The Laskett Gardens by Sir Roy Strong

July 3rd, 2011 by Tim Matcham
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A group of around twenty people brought together by a love of gardens and the phenomenon known as Twitter were welcomed to The Laskett by the head gardener. The introduction was, in some respects, an apology. an apology for all the shortcomings of the gardens we were about to see: That it had been designed and built in stages on a tight budget: That there were only two gardeners working four days a week; That it was changing – implying that the owners weren’t necessarily happy with it; It was almost as if he was saying don’t expect too much of this garden – this of course after we had all paid our £10 entrance fee!

So were these fears well founded? Almost all of our group were disappointed and were vocal in their views about how crowded, unkempt and frankly messy the gardens were. The planting seemed ill considered with the strangest of planting combinations, where one type of plant would have sufficed there were five. The wide and varied use of predominantly cheap materials seemed to spoil great swathes of the garden and more statues than you might expect to find in any museum.

The lack of unity, the bringing together of ideas, forms, colours was evident in abundance. There was no coherence or glue in which to hold the assembled array of plants and materials together to provide anything substantial or memorable.

But perhaps this is to miss the point of this garden?

It strikes me that it is a very personal space. One created by a husband and wife team of Sir Roy Strong and his late wife Julia. It is a garden of experimentation, one that is evolving and changing, one that celebrates the life and achievements in a way that evokes emotion.

As a garden designer, one of the key things that I try to achieve is to bring out the clients personality in their garden. I am told that I achieve this well. To do this in my own garden however I find very much more challenging – the point that I am seeking help and guidance from John Brookes. The point I am making here is that to design your own garden is not an easy task for anyone, even if like Lady Strong you have a design background (albeit that her forte was stage set design).

Whilst the garden may leave many puzzled and disappointed the garden wasn’t created for them. I applaud the fact that they have achieved something that is so personal but from a garden design perspective most of it left me cold. There was too much incongruity and an overwhelming feeling bought about by the volume of planting and statuary. For me less would have been more. Not a garden I will rush to see again but equally I’m glad that I have seen it, as much to remind me what not to do. For some however the cost has left a bitter taste that a garden that is open to the public should be so far from excellent.

I’d love to hear your views if you have been to the gardens, feel free to leave a comment.

 

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Gardening | Garden Design | great plants – Campanula sarastro

June 8th, 2011 by Tim Matcham
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Campanula ‘Sarastro’ – one of many wonderful Campanulas but somehow this is the daddy of all the bells! Large dark purple-blue flowers with a slightly unreal waxy appearance that start to appear from May onwards.

Campanula 'Sarastro'

As the flower starts to form it has the appearance of a deflated airbag before opening out in to a wonderful shiny bell. It works well alongside ornamental grasses and alliums and others in a blue/purple planting scheme and is an asset to any cottage garden scheme. Cutting back the stems to the ground after flowering will encourage a second flush of flowers through to the autumn.

flowers heads look like deflated air bags before opening to their full bell shape

It grows to about 50cm (just over 2 feet in old money!) and will grow in most soils and conditions – fully hardy too, so expect to see it again next year!

valuable addition to any border

A real favourite perennial with minimal care requrements.

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Gardening | Garden Design | Inspirational Gardens | North Court

April 29th, 2011 by Tim Matcham
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My family are all keen gardeners which made the decision to earn a living from my gardening knowledge fairly straightforward. Setting up as a Garden Designer on the outskirts of Bath brings back memories of past generations who shared my love of the garden. Last weekend I was lucky enough to return to a garden that probably is the greatest influence on that passion.

The gardens are at North Court in Shorwell on the Isle of Wight.

My grandparents moved there when they retired in 1964, splitting the house three ways between three brothers and their families. The garden was also apportioned and being around 14 acres in total there was plenty for everyone!

After restoring the house they set about the gardens which include a wonderful acre of Victorian walled garden. My grandfather was keen on growing fruit and vegetables and my grandmother loved her roses. They won many medals at the local Brighstone Flower Show for their exhibits over the years – contesting many of the categories with a very able gardener by the name of Bob Bucket.

The house is now owned by my grandfathers nephew and he is wildly passionate about the gardens. There are some fabulous plants in the gardens – some with interesting connections.

This Paeonia mlokosewitschii - affectionately known as Molly the Witch was given as seed to my grandmother by Vita Sackville-West (Lady Nicholson) from Sissinghurst.

It now flourishes in the borders of North Court and John Harrison kindly gave me a small root cutting to propagate on. The plant is wonderful and always seems to attract masses of bees.

Here are some of the other plants that were in bloom or looking special.

The gardens are very extensive and are frequently opened as part of the NGS Scheme – there is plenty to see!

There were also some very private moments for me when I felt the very strong presence of my Grandparents – the last time I visited here was for the funeral of my Grandmother in 1996 – so it was pretty emotional!

I hope that I have captured some of the spirit of these wonderful gardens and that it helps explain my passion for gardens and gardening – I feel very lucky and am delighted that they are in such safe hands now. I am already planning a return in the Autumn!

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Garden Design | An evening with Dan Hinkley – rocking with laughter!

March 17th, 2011 by Tim Matcham
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It is perhaps appropriate that tomorrow is Red Nose Day 2011. What better way to get you in the mood than to listen to an American, with a passion for gardening and an almost British sense of humour – his dry wit had clearly missed most of his American audiences but was most definitely not lost on his very English audience tonight.

Though organised by Derry Watkins of Special Plants fame (who was keen to point out that her gardens were now open on Tuesdays) – who is of course american herself, Dan Hinkley drew a large audience to the Bath University Gardening Club to illustrate a talk on two Pacific North West gardens. The climate there seemed pretty similar to Britain with some oddities bought about by its coastal location.

Dan’s delivery style is easy going and effortless much as the gardens he has created and he had his audience well primed with open laughter. How can gardening be so amusing? To those that appreciate that gardens take time effort and patience to create – it is finding that by illustrating the errors made with good grace sits well with a knowledgeable audience.

Locating a water feature right outside a bedroom window – those of a certain age would appreciate this one…When told by a garden visitor that he was “lucky to have a south facing wall” in which to grow plants that required a sheltered, sunny aspect – his research concluded that no matter where you were in the world every house had a south facing wall (he had just made best use of his!) Planting Scleria secans (Razor grass) right next to an entrance door only to find guests losing their feet while walking past…The elegant mush left behind when Agapanthus succumbs to the winter frosts – how important is this to the winter garden??? Or bales of Phormium hacked down in dismay after 10 years thanks to three blindingly cold winters. Buying large rocks to place in the landscape, when two generations previously had spent their entire agricultural lives removing such monoliths from their land – surely he would have been disowned for paying to have them bought on? Yes we rocked with laughter!

Every gardener will have experienced some of these travesties and understand that you can only laugh and then learn from your findings – seeing others trip over the same hurdles gives us reassurance that we are not alone in our battle to create something special in our outdoor space. We know that when it does all come together it is really rewarding – when it doesn’t – laughter is surely the sweetest tonic!

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Garden Design | Working with Vectorworks CAD garden design software

March 10th, 2011 by Tim Matcham
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Vectorworks CAD software is transforming the way garden designers can work with their clients. I have recently won a job working with a local hotel to review their existing gardens and grounds – around 15 acres in total so quite a sizeable project!

Following some initial meetings the first step is to determine what planting is already in the garden and to add them to a plan, creating a report to then use to discuss with the hotel manager how we want to go forward.

Now a few years ago this would have been a daunting task involving surveying the site and then determining the plants, back to the drawing board to carefully draw in each of the plants and log them in a spreadsheet to create a report.

Using Vectorworks things have been much more straightforward. The hotel had recently had a full site survey carried out in order to obtain planning permission for a new annex to the hotel. This had included a full tree survey and full topographical information about the site. This had been created in a programme called Auto-CAD which is frequently used by Architects as their preferred software. Vectorworks is able to import these files allowing me to get to work straight away.

Printing out the sections that I required to carry out my plant survey I was able to quickly log each plant on site ready to take back and enter in to Vectorworks. Using an existing planting tool I am able to enter all the relevant data about the respective plants including any comments or actions that I want to make about the plants. I can easily define shrubs, perennial and trees – indeed any plant can be registered and logged, accurately positioning it on the plan.

This can then either be emailed to the client as a pdf or printed out together with the accompanying customised report giving everyone the information they need clearly and concisely to make a decision about future planting schemes.

The joy is of course that we can then overlay any new planting and remove plants that we don’t want from the plan without commissioning a complete re-draw – saving huge amounts of time and money.

Certainly a transformation from old working practices. I’m not sure I would have fancied the task without Vectorworks and I’m delighted that I have invested in both the software and in training.

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Gardening | Garden Design | great plants – Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’

February 28th, 2011 by Tim Matcham
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As we wait with latent expectation for those wonderful heralds of the spring garden to finally break cover and shower us with golden cheerfulness there are some plants that have been keeping a quiet watch over the winter months.

The Viburnum group is a remarkable collection of varied plants and I often wonder whether it would be possible to design a garden that only featured Viburnum in all of its assorted guises. Viburnum tinus ‘Eve Price’ is a popular choice of many schemes but is rather prone to Viburnum beetle which quickly reduce the leaves to a rather scrappy looking lace skeleton – a problem that is duplicated in others such as the V.opulus.

Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’ isn’t affected but since it flowers before the leaves are present this somehow seems less of an issue!

It flowers over the winter months on bare stems and on still days fills the air with a powerful sweet aroma that serves as a reminder that there is still active life in the garden even on the darkest days.

That said it is quite a straggly plant and doesn’t offer much after flowering has finished and although it does respond well to pruning it can also be left to it’s own devices so is ideal for the back of a border where it can be left alone and allowed to sink into obscurity in the summer months – ready to spring out and wow us again next winter.

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Gardening | Garden Design | Robin Templar Williams Design Masterclass – Difficult Sloping Gardens

February 7th, 2011 by Tim Matcham
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In any walk of life training is now an accepted part of improving yourself and making progress in your chosen field. Garden Design and indeed gardening are two areas that, frankly, I don’t think you could ever have too much knowledge or experience. Every day throws us something new which is part of why I, along with many others, love gardens and garden design.

The Garden Network has recently had a great deal of contact with BALI – a relationship which will continue to grow and strengthen in the future. We were given the opportunity for discounted tickets to attend a Robin Templar Williams Masterclass at BALI headquarters entitled ‘Difficult Sloping Gardens’. This proved very popular and rightly so!

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Robin Templar Williams in action during his masterclass

I hadn’t previously met Robin – despite the fact that he lives and works quite close to me, but was thoroughly inspired by his ‘let’s get on with it’ approach. We started with some basic design principles using positive shapes and reminded that the design principles for sloping gardens remained the same as for level gardens.

Whether it was the way it was conveyed or the detail of the topic but I felt that I learnt as much about design in one morning as I had in several years at college and since. Part of this though was the new found confidence that came from realising that what I was doing was very much on the right lines but had now been vindicated by Robin’s commanding knowledge on the subject.

As designers our job is to solve problems for clients and when the garden is sloping this becomes an even greater requirement. The key was to follow the basic principles and ensure that you start with a good quality, accurate land survey which then needs careful analysis. Using photos and video to understand the nature of the land. The starting of the design should be of a broad brush approach to check flow and balance of the proposals. By taking a cross section through one or more places you can then test levels and wall heights to ensure the project will work. Some of the best advice was to make sure that you use fellow professionals to survey and undertake any engineering work that may be required.

As with any event like this there is also the opportunity to network with fellow designers and landscapers from around the country. It is often when talking to others like this that you realise that others face very similar problems and challenges to you and that although being a garden designer can be quite a lonely existence there is always a huge amount of support available on tap for the asking.

This event has proved very popular and BALI have organised another day to re-run the training event. There are a limited number of places available so don’t waste time in booking yourself on this very worthwhile course. Link to more details here.

There is also due to be a day that just deals with design basic principles which I strongly suspect will be equally worthwhile and popular! Details here!

Robin runs the successful Garden Design School with Moira Farnham

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Gardening | Garden Design | Book review – Residential Garden Design with Vectorworks Landmark 2011

December 31st, 2010 by Tim Matcham
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I have never read Leo Tolstoy’s ‘War & Peace’. The aura that surrounds it as being a long and not all together easy read have put me off from even venturing near the tome. I have a similarly irrational fear of software manuals. They are always overly large and coolly uninviting. They cover such a huge range of mind boggling information that, for the uninitiated, they appear daunting and unwelcoming. This is true of the everyday software that we all use on our computers as well as more specialist topics such as garden design.

Luckily help is at hand for at least one of these programmes. Now in its third edition, ‘Residential Garden Design with Vectorworks Landmark’ by Tamsin Slatter, gives garden designers a clear, descriptive and illustrated guide to getting started with Vectorworks 2011.

Unlike the dreaded software manual, which covers every single aspect of Vectorworks whether you are a garden designer or landscape architect or an interior designer or architect, where some things will be relevant to you and others simply aren’t. Tamsin’s knowledge of both the market leading software and of garden design means that she is able to steer us towards the important, relevant aspects of the software and create a form of work-flow that can be referred to again and again.

The way that the book is laid out means that you can follow a series of tasks that lead you through the tools that you will need to competently execute the garden design process. The bonus with the book is that there is a CD that accompanies it with part pre-completed exercises for you to work on so if you don’t get it by reading the book you can work on actual garden designs.

These exercises that accompany each section mean that you aren’t just reading an endless and mind numbing dialogue. Each section then is bought to life with a real situation that can be explored and experimented with in a controlled manner aiding more complete understanding.

As a visual learner, I learn best through seeing and watching and in this respect training sessions provide the best solution most of the time but you can’t have and expert sitting in the room with you all the time! On hand to answer the question that you may have asked more than once already and this for me is where the book wins every time.

I suspect that most garden designers that have made the leap to Vectorworks Landmark CAD, probably don’t use it often enough to remember every detail about how to get the best out of it without consulting some sort of notes. I know I need to and this book provides an excellent platform for making the most out of your investment.

Talking to many garden designers who are apprehensive about making the leap from the drawing board to the computer and CAD design there are a number of fears – normally relating to control of images and colours. Like any new discipline these skills need to be learnt and honed through practice. It helps then, to have a clearly laid out guide which takes you through the steps that you need to know and offers pointers to the ‘Help’ sections on where to find more information on a given subject.

The advances that have been made in Vectorworks 2011 are pretty significant – particularly for me – as I have upgraded from VW 2008 so having this to hand while I am working through new designs will be indispensable and will, I think, allow me to make better use of the VSS service that is also available for 2011.

Now we don’t need to be daunted by software manuals that are reminiscent of lengthy literary works. I would love to see this book shipping with the software so that everyone can benefit and would also welcome similar style books and accompanying exercises tackling more complex aspects of the software such as 3-D terrain modelling and perhaps some of the wonderful plug-ins that are now available for Vectorworks 2011.

Residential Garden Design with Vectorworks Landmark is written by Tamsin Slatter and is available through Vectorworks Training and Computers Unlimited

Join Vectorworks CAD Group on The Garden Network

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Indoor Gardening | Brighten the winter gloom!

November 30th, 2010 by Tim Matcham
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The snow and ice have come early this year and done a good job of finishing off much of the colour outdoors – and anyway the days are so dark and gloomy that we are all much happier inside with a nice hot cuppa and a good book.

But wait! - there are plenty of house plants that can brighten the gloom!

One of my perennial favourites is the Christmas cactus which is just now starting to show its colours. For much of the year this plant stands unloved and pretty much uncared for in a quiet dark corner of a room, quietly minding its own business. Just when you have all but forgotten its existence out comes a magnificent flourish of flaming red flowers that brighten the room and lift your spirits.

First to show are the thin glossy buds against a shiny green swathe of succulent ‘leaves’ followed quickly by a very showy flower.

They really do need very little care and are so rewarding at a time when colour is most welcome.

Another plant rapidly gaining in popularity is the orchid – now there are many different types of orchid but one of the easiest to care for is the Phalaenopsis orchid. The joy of these is that with a little care they can flower for months on end – not only providing excellent value but also a bit of a challenge when trying to get them to flower again after the flowers that came when you bought the plant finally fade and wither. I don’t profess to be any sort of orchid expert but with a little experimentation an orchid that I acquired early last year now has its second flush of around 15 blooms on 3 flower spikes and more are on the way – I’m thrilled!

So just when you have given up on the garden outside why not try bringing some plants inside. There are many to try like Narcissus Paperwhite Ziva (best planted at the end of September in bowls or pots and bought in once ready to flower. Hyacinth can also be forced to flower now and can then be planted out. They add a heady fragrance to any room.  At Christmas time though I like to see red and that’s where my Christmas cactus steps in and performs without any fuss.

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Two cakes, a biscuit and a royal garden.

September 2nd, 2010 by Tim Matcham
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Twitter has a lot to answer for. How else would you get 25 people from around the country to visit a garden on a glorious sunny , early September afternoon.

Meeting before going to the garden it was clear that all was not quite as it might have been! In order that the 25 recognise each other we were invited to wear a button hole in the true spirit of a blind date. All was going swimmingly with assorted flora being sported until one of our number arrived wearing a half eaten digestive biscuit secured with a badly mis-shapen paperclip!

Perhaps I should explain that this gathering was no ordinary outing but a meeting of gardening enthusiasts of various persuasions found loitering with intent on Twitter and the garden we were to visit was Highgrove, the garden of HRH Prince Charles. The biscuit arrived courtesy of James Alexander-Sinclair which somehow saw the topic of conversation move on to cakes.

Now you would have thought that the often vociferous assembled group would be interested in the organic gardens filled with national plant collections especially as we had the pleasure of a carefully selected volunteer guide with three Chelsea Gold Medals to her name to guide us round. However it was quickly established that cakes would be available for purchase in the tea rooms at which point Barbara Taylor volunteered that she had baked cakes for everyone too! Now our interest was truly roused.

Two cakes for one garden visit!

My thanks go to Helen Johnstone for bringing this to life – it was great to see friends that in some cases have only been known online and to re-acquaint with others met at similar events previously.

It was a pleasure to meet Michelle Chapman, Roland and Jamie Paterson, Rob Stacewicz (who won the prize of some hand cream for his airplant buttonhole), Cleve West and Christine Eatwell, Anne Wareham and Charles Hawes, Zoe Lynch, Jenny Woods, Helen Reeley, Lia Leendertz, Sharon (Plantswoman), James Alexander-Sinclair, Simon and Sherrie Suter, Judith (aka Arabella Sock), Dawn Isaac, the shy and retiring Anne-Marie Powell, Kate Bradbury and her friend Abigail, Barbara Taylor and Deb Bird.

Gardens are a great way of enjoying a summer afternoon and the pleasure is multiplied when it is shared with so many with differing views but a shared passion – even if that appeared to be cake and biscuits.

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