Green Vista From Combining Plants

Georgia O’Keefee painted some brilliant portraits of red Poppies some times upto 3 feet wide and high, even bigger than the real thing in my garden.The last photo shows how Red and Green work well together on a canvas or in a garden setting. Oriental poppies are perennial and most Poppy species are easy to grow from seed of which 50 varieties are available from Thompson & Morgan

The objective of a Stumpery is to create a garden feature from ferns, logs and old tree roots. The Victorians started a trend to build Rooteries, Ferneries and Stumperies as romantic woodland places to grow exotic ferns and woodland plants. If you have a dark corner or want to collect ferns then you could start your own Stumpery quite easily and add to it as the fancy takes you.

Members of the Buttercup family are called Ranunculaceae. To grow the plants successfully beware the seeds tend to have a short period of viability and need planting straight away.

Fritillary, Buttercups, Bluebells, Tulips and Narcissus all in the same shot, what more could you ask.

Greenery is all very well but I like to see swathes of colourful flowers. I try to envisage how mixed planting will shape up in terms of colour but generally my minds eye falls short when it comes to the imagination department. The best tip is to keep it simple with only a very limited number of varieties chosen because they are due to flower around the same time.

Think before you allow poppies to proliferate. Poppies rob a lot of goodness from your soil.

It is the end of this years Hostas but I was lucky to keep most slugs off most Hostas until the autumn ravages start. It is no longer worth protecting the leaves which are due to die back into the Hostas roots to await next spring.

Art can be found in many situations and you don’t need to look too far in the alpine house.

Nemesia are good flowers for rock gardens, containers or for use as a bedding and front of border plants. Surprisingly they also make a nice and useful cut flower.

Mesclun is a name for a traditional melange of salad leaves. The name mesclun doesn’t feature in any of my gardening reference books before 1980 so old gardeners may not recognise the term.

The ancient Chinese have cultivated Tree Peonies for over 1500 years. Prized specimens are and were grown for medicinal purposes as they contain glucocides and alkolides. The  imperial palace gardens had many specimens that became quite valuable.

Tulips grow from bulbs not catalogues but I guess that is obvious. Nevertheless I think the first job is to check over any Tulip bulbs you lifted last spring to dry off. Bin any with mould or soft centers, do not add them to your compost heap.