You can grow wildflowers in a border, a pot and a window box as well as in a meadow.
10.08.2024 - 04:20 / houseandgarden.co.uk / Martha Stewart
Scented ‘Angel’s Trumpet' flowers (top) in Benedict Foley and Daniel Slowik's cottage garden are perfect for a night garden
Gardens are romantic places by definition, but there is something particularly alluring about a night garden. Sometimes known as ‘moon gardens’, as the name suggests, night gardens are gardens designed to be enjoyed once the heat of the day has passed. They conjure balmy evenings, the garden aglow with moonlight, a place for romantic lovers' walks or whispered plots and schemes. In countries where the heat of the day causes both people and plants to wilt, night gardens come into their own. As dusk falls, a new cast of plants and insects wake up to begin the business of flowering and pollinating, offering an alternative performance to their daytime counterparts. While the first moon gardens appeared in Mughal India, they have been much imitated and reinvented since. Everyone from Vita Sackville-West to Martha Stewart has fallen for the bewitching charms of a night garden, but what is it that makes them work?
The non-negotiable element for a garden that comes alive at night is a monochromatic palette. With the lights down low, plant colour becomes irrelevant as few can be read come nightfall. But white-flowering plants positively glow. In the dusky twilight a plant that feels bleached at noon, comes alive. And it’s not just the flowers — silvery foliage catches the moonlight and provides a lovely contrast to darker leaves, and pale grasses will do the same. Given that strolling around a garden at dusk is more likely a summer pastime, opt for summer-flowering plants such as white hydrangeas, roses and phlox or the silvery fronds of artemisia or the handsome spikes of a cardoon. As with other planting
You can grow wildflowers in a border, a pot and a window box as well as in a meadow.
There is no way to sugarcoat the challenges many of us in the Mid-Atlantic region have faced this summer. The inconsistency of rainfall and the extreme high temperatures have greatly impacted our efforts to garden successfully. Even with valiant efforts to apply supplemental irrigation, I have witnessed a wide range of plant material showing signs of drought stress that I have rarely witnessed in my 15-plus years of gardening in this region. To say it is cause for concern would be an understatement. As a result, in the last few months I have been repeatedly asked how we can prepare our beloved gardens to reduce heat and moisture stress for future growing seasons. One answer to this conundrum is to add organic matter to the soil in the form of compost.
I heard a rustling behind me and turned to see a huge tortoise disappearing under a shrub! That was 25 years ago in South Africa. I was thrilled to see the creature but my fellow gardeners quickly loaded it onto a wheelbarrow bound for the veld (the open grassland) beyond the garden.
Hi GPODers!
Hey GPODers!
Native plants, as the name indicates, grow naturally in an area or region. There is a growing shift among many people away from a manicured garden with non-local species in support of more natural areas, and especially, for embracing native plants.
Happy Monday GPODers!
A conversation with Sarah Price about how she designs her planting schemes is fascinating. She works in an unfettered way, with no specific planting plans but an intuitive sense of the plants that will work well together to form the nature-inspired compositions she is known for. Her gardens are like exquisite paintings, comprising layers of detail with a gentle succession of plants that provide interest for most of the year. This summer combination comes from Sarah’s own garden on the edge of Abergavenny. Here, she has created different areas and habitats, including a dry garden in the old walled kitchen garden.
Sustainability is at the forefront of most parts of our lives these days, from how to be less wasteful with our food shopping to considering the materials we use in our homes. Gardening is no different, and it's as important to think about the environment there as it is in any other aspect of our lives. In fact, you could argue it's the most important as a healthy, sustainable garden will support the ecosystem and wildlife that should be thriving there. To set you off on the right path, Clare Foster sets out the seven things to consider in order to cultivate a sustainable garden.
Flanking our waterways in great mops of silver green, the willow is the most poetic and mysterious of trees. In many cultures – including ancient Egypt and ancient Greece – it was associated with immortality, death, and the underworld; old English folklore states that if you sit beside a willow and shed tears, the tree will cry with you. In China, where the weeping willow hails from, it represents strength and resilience, reflecting the instruction in the Tao Te Ching to have a flexible attitude: 'A tree that won't bend, breaks easily in storms.' Being pliant and strong, willow is used for weaving, and its light weight and hardness make it the best wood for cricket bats.