Garden diary

20 March 2017

The first day of Spring

Spring is coming now, you can feel it in the warmth of the sun and hear it in the birdsong. I'm never really conscious as to how and when the change begins every year and yet you feel it, you sense the change.

Everywhere in the garden that change is taking place, seeming to gather pace every day, sycamore seeds are germinating in the rich fertile ground of the kitchen garden and also in the thin grass of the amphitheatre. The first leaves are beginning to break on the hazels on the drove, delicate windflower on the lane, and everywhere there are fresh green and purple shoots emerging from the earth.

It's a hopeful time of year and every warm day leaves you more convinced that winter and the cold are finally banished for a few short months at least. Yet, the weather can change very quickly, and the warmth disappears momentarily reminding you that it is still only March after all.

The garden at Allt-y-bela is cleverly designed; at first the floral focus of the garden is kept very close to the house, the bulb meadow and courtyard are the initial focus with the snowdrops on the drove and blossom acting more as an eye catcher, drawing the view out. Now however, with the narcissus blooming, the focus is drawn out further and it will stay this way until the tulips and then the cottage garden bring you back into the garden's core.

Today I went out to gather flowers for the house. The Narcissus lobularis are just reaching their peak before they inevitably begin to fall away and with the fresh green of the new hazel leaves and the acid green of the Euphorbia, I soon had a jug of flowers that felt like spring. Oxslips, a single stem of hellebore and water marigolds completed the arrangement. In a way though I felt I was missing an important part of the garden, the first few snake's head fritillaries are in flower  and whilst it felt a very hard decision to sacrifice any for a small arrangement it also felt remiss of me to not include this beautiful spring wonder of a flower. In the end it felt right to arrange it simply with some anemone and narcissus as a simple bedside jar.

I've found the practice of picking flowers really very helpful in understanding the changes which take place on an almost daily basis at Allt-y-bela. When you are looking for the best flowers to pick you notice how the quality and quantity changes over the weeks. Actively looking for flowers has connected me with the garden in a slightly different way to that which I am used to.

Words: Steve Lannin, Head Gardener at Allt-y-bela

Photographs: Britt Willoughby Dyer

© Arne Maynard Garden Design 2017 - reproduction of content and / or photographs only by request. 

15 August 2016

Arranging the borders

There are some times of year in the garden that just feel bountiful. June is one of those times, where everything feels generous and lush. There is usually a time in late September that feels similar, it's like the plants are all rushing to put on the best show possible before the cold comes and cuts them down. It was at this 'last gasp' moment in the garden that last year Arne and I spent a lovely afternoon in the cottage garden picking flowers; looking at which of the plants worked togetehr and which really didn't. It was a fun afternoon but also very useful, pulling all of those flowers together in close quarers really illustrates how the combinations are working.

I sometimes find August a little disappointing - the weather is never as good as it feels it should be and actually the garden can fall into a bit of a lull, especially if it's dry. Foliage can turn coarse and a little glaucous and flowers looked washed out and dull. Our afternoon spent picking back in the autumn does not seem to have been in vain and the colours in the cottage garden feel much more harmonious. This week, with Arne still away, I thought I might take stock of what August has to offer and do a little flower picking myself.

Initially I thought of picking just one bunch from the cottage garden but as soon as I set off, trug and snips in hand, I was arrested by a beautiful phlox in the Granary Lattice. Phlox amplifolia has modest sized purple blooms on a long strong stem and I couldn't pass by without taking a stem or two. In stopping to pick them though I similarly couldn't pass by the soapwort, Saponaria flore plena, which is flowering for the first time and looking particularly clean and bright. The new Echinacea 'Swan Wings' soon followed before I was pulled to the other side of the drive by Crocosmia 'George Davidson' - surely I must be able to find a place in an arrangement for him.

By the time I reached the cottage garden I already has a trug full of flowers. Perhaps August wasn't quite so spartan as I had thought! The cottage garden had plenty of Astrantia major 'Claret', a plant I tend to associate with the early summer. I tried to leave it behind, I really did, but in the end I couldn't. The colour looks as if it's been sprayed on, it's so intense and deep, and it makes such a good foil for other more seasonal flowers that I convinced myself it would work! Another slightly agonising decision was whether to take Clematis viticella 'Mary Rose'. It is so beautiful and so tangled together I risked destroying the display it's made rambling over the 'Queen of Denmark' rose dome. Luckily I managed to tease out a little without making too much of a mess!

My single arrangement was not looking more like three but frankly, I was having too much fun to let it worry me too much. By taking a little of each, I managed to leave very little evidence of my afternoon raid, the only exception perhaps was the Dahlia merckii. This cultivar is new to us this year and I think I must have taken most of the longer flowering sections but it was just too lovely not to have a proper showing of it. I'm generally not the biggest fan of dahlias - I find them a little coarse and ungainly - but D. merckii is definitely one for me. It's much smaller and more delicate than its bigger brasher cousins and with the light behind the flowers they look like Lalique glass.

Putting the flowers together, with more than a little help from Britt, was a joy and seeing them photographed in the house was a real treat. I hope you will agree that the results are rather beautiful. I've put together lists of the main elements for each of the arrangements below just in case you might like to grow them for cutting in your own garden. You can view the full selection of Britt's images in our gallery here.

Arrangement #1

Dahlia merckii

Clematis viticella 'Mary Rose'

Origanum laevigatum 'Rosenkuppel'

Phlox amplifolia

Lobelia 'Hadspen Purple'

Saponaria flore plena

Arrangement #2

Veronicastrum virginicum album

Foeniculum vulgare

Crocosmia 'George Davidson'

Echinacea 'White Swan'

Trapaeolum majus (common nasturtium)

Arrangement #3

Phlox carolina 'Miss Lingard'

Phlox 'Discovery'

Dahlia 'Naples'

Astrantia major 'Claret'

Cosmos 'Antiquity'

Sanguisorba tenuifolia

Words: Steve Lannin, Head Gardener at Allt-y-bela

Photographs: Britt Willoughby Dyer

Full image gallery: click here

1 September 2015

Enter: The Dahlia

One of the many wonderful things about having a garden is being able to pop outside and cut a few flowers for the house. Whether you choose to pick wild flowers and grasses, astrantia or phlox from the borders or specially grown beauties like sweet peas, there are few things that brighten up a home more than flowers.

At Allt-y-bela the picking usually starts with wild narcissi in early spring, followed by tulips and then wild flowers and stems from the herbaceous borders, before moving on to sweet peas, chosen here for their scent as well as their colour. But now it is the turn of the dahlia to take centre stage.

This year has been a great year for the dahlias at Allt-y-bela; the plants have been stronger and taller and more floriferous than last year. The flowers have also been bigger and their colours truer. Amongst the many dahlias in the garden Dahlia 'Vancouver' has become a firm favourite of mine. It has a cactus type flower with an opulent purple edge, which fades towards the centre. It really looks stunning as a single specimen in a vase. Arne has a particular weakness for Dahlia 'Naples' which is a very sophisticated flower; double but very neat and sculptural, it is a kind of antique white, rare and special, it's definitely one for the connoisseur.

In the kitchen garden are two small beds which are devoted to cutting flowers, in the spring they are packed with hundreds of tulips which go to brightening the various rooms in the house and at this time of year they are full not only of dahlias but also sweet peas, cosmos and gladioli. This year as something of a departure from the norm we have grown vegetables including sweetcorn, peppers and squash, as well as edible flowers such as calendula and nasturtiums, amongst the cutting flowers.

As ever though nothing stands still at Allt-y-bela and this year we have used one of the beds in which we grew potatoes to trial some new dahlias. We have three new varieties; D. 'Veronne's Obsidian', D. 'Glorie van Noordwijk' and D. 'Classic Swan Lake'. The latter is a dark leafed, dark stemmed variety with creamy semi double flowers while D. 'Veronne's Obsidian' has unusual, almost black, pinwheel flowers that are very unique. D. 'Glorie van Noordwijk' is perhaps a tone lighter than the colour of the house at Allt-y-bela and I can immediately see its appeal. Its flowers are cactus type, strong and bright with just a hint of translucence.

Each of these new additions has something out of the ordinary to offer. The nice thing is that none of them would have been my choice, I'm much less brave when it comes to experimenting with strong colours and unusual forms, but I certainly wouldn't rule out my writing in a year or two's time of my complete addiction to any one of them. Innovation requires risk and whilst Arne continues to innovate my horizons continue to broaden.

Words: Steve Lannin

Photographs: Britt Willoughby Dyer