…Plants make it even BETTERER

This was Andy Sturgeon’s one-day pod-fantasy conceived for a project called Cityscapes.

…It is very, very very pretty, especially when the Thames is all a-glitter….

Plant list is simple:

Cydonia oblonga (definitely one for my lust list)

Cenolophium denudatum (was going to be angelica but the cold got the better of that idea)

Deschampsia caespitosa

Hesperis matronalis

 The perfect spot for a picnic…

…It takes a while….

These have been here for as long as I can remember – (the pink one was given to my mother at the birth of my older brother)….What I’m trying to say is that they’re older than ME.

I don’t remember them ever flowering so abundantly as this year.

…leaving a trail of luscious bounty….

Too many blooms to carry indoors, (like so many precious babies) and float in bowls

…So they get used to anoint topiary…’n stuff.

I’ll write a recipe for this one-pot-wonder once I’ve grilled my mother on her secrets.

a bientôt

x

All done up with honesty and erysimum…

The owners don’t go in for any fancy gardening….

They just SCATTER seeds, and do nothing else..

Very bad photos…sorry.

…re-turf my entire garden and do this:

Narcissus ‘February Gold’ ….

Tens of faaaahhhzens of ‘em

Making you feel glad to be alive.

Thanks Kew - that was spectacular.

I’ve been meaning to snap this garden for ages. Glad I waited till now though, because I think it’s at its best in October with dahlias a-go-go. It’s in an uber-posh street with big houses. I don’t know who lives there, but I love that they haven’t done the usual ‘tidy’ thing (see the next-door house, below).

I love October more and more every year. It was the first month I was ever properly aware of, being my birthday month, but it means so much more with the gardening bug in place. Hunk took me to the divine Dock Kitchen, whose menu reads like a poem about autumn. Pheasant biryani with rose petals and gold leaf… #thatisall

x

The sort of bench you need to buy another bench for, so you can sit and gaze at it.

from a friend’s garden that I love…terrible photo, but hey ho.

Have a lovely sunday x

This is the garden of some friends who had some building work done to produce a sunken seat in the space. Before the builder got there, the garden had one small patch of poppies. He turned over rather a lot of earth and it got spread about a bit….

…and this was the delicious result:

A forest of poppies.

It’s really most upsetting to have to face up to the fact that I won’t be Queen, so to make things feel a bit better (and celebrate marriage to someone far far hunkier than Prince William will ever be) we jumped in the car for a weekend away – no Babeties allowed.

I had carefully planned the whole thing so that we could drop in to Easton Walled Gardens, and then…oh joy…it SNOWED!

Okay, now you can’t do much plant-spotting when everything’s covered in snow, but you can appreciate stuff like this:

It was the kind of stinging cold that makes your nose hurt, and then feel like it’s fallen off….the kind of cold that needs hot chocolate and mince pies in the tea-room…(which, by the way, is warm and has spotty table-cloths and pretty mugs to drink from)…

There is gorgeous ironwork, old gates leading seemingly nowhere, an ancient yew tunnel and absolutely everywhere, there is stuff for children to enjoy.

There are bird-watching hides and secret dens, and there is a bridge that looks like it should have impossibly skinny Kiera Knightly sitting on it in a bathing suit – spine painfully bent….

There is a terraced lawn which needs me to toboggan down it…..

…and there are grand steps that make me want to curtsy

I shall come back and see the sweetpeas in the summer…(and so should you).

It’s worth noting, by the way, that this entire restoration project has been undertaken by the deeply charming Ursula (Queen of Easton), slowly, thoughtfully, and on a shoestring…makes me realise anything is possible.

..and talking of inspiring women, we went home via the rather pretty town of Stamford and had a cosy drink with the one and only Miss Pickering and her Hound.  I discovered Miss P through her totally beauteous blog.  She loves dogs and despises gerberas…what’s not to adore?  Her shop is a jewel-like treasure-trove and her chat is as fragrant as her flowers.  Enough said.

Here are two I’m entranced by:

(sorry the picture quality is so awful…these were taken on my telephone)

How much do I love these two entrances?

VERY much is how much!

The one on the left was taken somewhere off the M3 motorway.  The little tiny crack of a flowerbed is planted with begonias and polyanthus..leading your eye to…..

yes! – a little plastic gnome-dog.  To the right (and sadly out of the picture) was a small bed of kniphofia…adorable.

There’s a sort of careful thoughtfulness here that I find moving.

And the one on the right is a glorious orgy of Solanum (potato vine) and Trachelospermum (star jasmine), along with a little white climbing rose.  I love the abundance of it…of course x

Yesterday was a beautiful day.

Yesterday The Babety woke at 6.30am rather than 5am.

Yesterday I was not giving a ‘talk’.*

Yesterday my Rosa ’Scentimental’ came out.

Yesterday I went to this seriously yummy NGS garden opening.

I’m going to declare and interest here.  Jenny and Ricky Raworth’s garden is one of my favourite gardens in the whole wide world.  This couple are totally nuts about their beautiful garden, but not to the exclusion of everything else (there are lovely daughters and grandchildren etc to be bonkers about too)…anyway, they always give superb garden opening.  Not only is the garden always spectacular, but both are always there to answer questions and show you round, and generally be seriously charming…oh, and there’s another reason.  It begins with ‘CA’ and ends in ‘KE’.

There are so many elements to this haven – a spectacular sunken area at the front, with masses of stone troughs planted up with alpines and semps, a conservatory packed full of Pelargoniums, the most sumptuous, deep beautiful borders bursting with scented loveliness, including massed Crambe cordifolia (of which I am hideously jealous), fantastic clipped hedges and a knot parterre.  They also have the MOST perfect lawn EVER.

Jenny says she never fed her Irises (here, Iris Jane Phillips), until this year, thinking they’d hate it, coming as they do from dry rocky ‘bakey’ type places.  But they’ve tripled in volume since she did…so feed away everybody.

Don’t you just love the box cones – they look just perfect for leaning against with a morning paper.

Here (above right) is an extraordinary geranium.  It’s called G. x oxianum ‘Thurstoniuanum’ and the petals are all rolled up – a bit like Tulipa acuminata

Above left is a spectacular Datura with some of Jenny’s much loved Plectranthus and a lovely small person

Here, above is Jenny’s favourite Poppy – it’s deeper red than ‘Pattie’s Plum’ and it’s called ‘Medallion’

…Here is Jenny, with a background of gorgeous R. ‘Constance Spry’

And here is the Babety in one of my old dresses, made by my granny.

Every time I visit, it’s thrilling because there’s always something new, but more than that, there’s this lovely feeling of happiness and family which you can’t learn, or buy or fake.  Yes, I’ll take that Papaver, and the room full of pelargoniums, and that passion for plectranthus and the perfect lawn, and that extraordinary geranium, and the massive crambe but more than that, I want the feeling….  Trust me to want to copy something indescernible rather than an actual thing….typical.

Apart from urging you to visit Jenny and Ricky’s garden, which you can do in July (see here for details) here’s a plug for Jenny’s garden days which are brilliant.