The colour of this young Knapweed is dark almost purple. As it opens fully it will become blue and then fade as the flower ages. The colour helps Centaurea montana earn its nickname of Mountain Cornflower or perennial cornflower.
01.08.2023 - 14:48 / gardenerstips.co.uk / hortoris
China is one of the great destinations for visiting gardens. The influence over garden design and the vast array of plants and flowers is secondary to the investment in time and dedication demonstrated in so many great locations. This is just a selection of those you may consider visiting if you can make the journey..
The Garden of Contentment has an evocative name that for many sums up the essence of gardening. This feeling of tranquility will be found in many of the gardens we are considering visiting but this Shanghai location is an exceptional place to start our virtual garden tour.
Whilst in Shanghai it is worth a visit to the local Botanic Garden with its collection of old bonsai and many acid loving plants.
For a strange, modern, garden in Beijing the Grand View Garden was built in 1984 to represent a fictional garden replicating one described in a classic Chinese tale ‘ A Dream of Red Mansions’ available in English
For keen gardeners the best location must be the ‘Silk City’ of Suzhou where you have a choice of choice gardens to visit. The name Lingering Garden makes me want to invent a name for my own patch, perhaps that should be the patchwork garden. The image is of the Lingering garden from Wonderlust and Lipstick inspiring women travellers.
The Canglingting or Dark blue wave garden is deceptive in its use of pools and local scenery whilst the Humble Administrators Garden is anything but humble as the largest garden in the city. The Circular Grace Mountain Villa blends with the rocky out crops making traditional use of the landscape evocative of Chinese painting.
The star amongst so may great cultural heritage sites is the The Master of the Nets Garden a household garden and one of the smallest but highly
The colour of this young Knapweed is dark almost purple. As it opens fully it will become blue and then fade as the flower ages. The colour helps Centaurea montana earn its nickname of Mountain Cornflower or perennial cornflower.
In Yorkshire we are lucky to have several gardens designed using the theme of a Himalayan Garden. The Hut near Ripon at Grewlthorpe is  ‘The Himalayan Garden’ with all the plants you would expect in such a setting including
Daffodils are classified into 13 divisions and currently one of the most popular is Division 8 Tazetta Narcissi. These are a group of low growing daffodils that are at home in rockeries or containers.
Now part of this garden is down to crazy paving the Qualcast grass box is needed less and can be put to a different use. It looks like a ‘unibarrow’ has got in on the act to make a feature planter for these pansies.
Ants can be an unsightly nuisance and inspire concern. However they do not directly damage plants but are more a sign that you have another pest problem.
After salad crop failures in Spain and shortages of courgettes, broccoli and other ‘long distance’ vegetables gardeners could to worse than focus on traditional and non-traditional root crops.
White is the second most useful colour in the garden after green. I am progressively increasing the number and variety of white and grey plants that I grow.
Cornwall and the west coast of Scotland have some fine temperate gardens well worth a visit but Yorkshire has the grandeur of the stately home garden.
London Holland Park’s water feature in Kyoto Garden.
Britain has some of the best gardens in the world. The choice of which to visit is far larger than this selective list but at least it gives you somewhere to start planning this years outings.
Where would we be if there weren’t already numerous robots used in the gardening industry. Do you imagine there are thousands of Dutch gardeners pricking out the seedlings of the soon to be gaudy annuals on supermarket displays or thousands of Chinese coolies picking individual seeds for our packeted seed industry (well may be in this case).
In the cold wet winter it is a good time to plan where to visit as the year improves. The South West is the obvious place to start your visiting tour of gardens containing exotic plants.