looking good: garden stars of early july

A fad in modern architecture and gardening or a necessity to bring back nature into industrialised densely built urban landscapes? Living green walls are becoming more and more popular, so we decided to explore the benefits, installation and maintenance process of these structures. Read on to find out how long they have been around, why so many buildings are having them, and how you can make one for your home.

Hedera, which we commonly refer to as English Ivy (pl. Ivies), is a family of around 20 species of evergreen perennial plants. Depending on their surroundings, these woody plants can be both ground creeping or climbing nearby trees, rocks, buildings, and pretty much anything they can lay their stems on.

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

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.

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.

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..

Peace is not just the absence of war it can be a reflection of a personal inner tranquility. To many gardeners peace may be a state of harmony with nature. It is a theme of several ‘hard landscape’ projects and sculptural works as shown by the selection of Peace gardens below.

In some years different plants do better than others. In my garden this year is the spring for primulas and today’s crop shows off some of the strong colours that I have been enjoying.

Holland Park has some Zen like features but fails my Zen test. The classic elements of a successful Zen are stone, sand or gravel, water, plants and space. Then there is a question of balance between yin and yang. Cramped or cluttered gardens inhibit the flow of spirit so space is potentially the key ingredient of a Zen garden.

Some  animals can be a real pest in the garden. Their crimes include eating the wrong thing, digging in the wrong area, turning grass brown with urine and leaving a dirty mess. Some chose your favourite plants to damage as I know from some aggressive over fed pigeons in my own garden. In my experience the worst offenders are rabbits, cats, mice, deer, pigeons and dogs including foxes. Rats cause concern but have not caused direct damage in my garden.

July is the season to look out for mature lilies in older ponds. There is nothing to beat the calming influence of a white lily on a pond of still water. Of course not all ponds are and remain tranquil. This smaller pond on Filey cliff tops acts as an advertising hoarding for ice cream. Who invented ice cream for dogs? It is already enough to encourage kids to splash in the pond never mind dogs.

I was picking the Czar plums to make more jam when a wasp was disturbed from eating it’s lunch. Wasps go for my plums just as they are at their sweetest best. My problem was I couldn’t see which plums had a wasp in the fruit if they were above head height or facing away from my hand. The resulting sting set me on the trail of other stingers in the garden.