Over the garden wall…..
It is always worth
a peek around you
when you are out and about.
Early last summer
Lesley and I were visiting a nursery
and a casual glance (no lets be honest a blatantly nosey, tip-toeingly precarious, neck-craning peer over a stone wall) revealed this intriguing landscape:
The pale trunks of pollarded sweet chesnuts emerge from plump pouffes of Hebe – we are guessing sub-alpina or rakaiensis.
What do we think?
Do we like this formal little arrangement?
Well, yes and no!
It actually reminded us of a previous post:
Collars, Cuffs and Bracelets
but this lacks the sharpness of say Arabella Lennox Boyd:
The fussy intrusion of clumps of Rosa rugosa spoils things.
As does, at least temporarily, the drifts of daffs dying off as daffs do do.
If you wanted an early display you could have snowdrops. their dying foliage is neater.
We also wonder whether the hebe really works vis a vis the grass.
Might we prefer shiney leaved sarcococca?
- Better in shade than the hebes.
- It would be fabulous with the pale trunks and the emerald turf
- It would flower in winter – tho the smell is not my favourite.
T’would be like an allee full of alley cats!
I also think that the training of the pollards needs to be improved:
In this kind of look, rigour is all!
R
Robert Webber
The Hegarty Webber Partnership
Category: Design Bites, Garden Planning, General Gardening Stuff, Reviews of Gardens and Shows
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I really enjoy that look, and agree that some plants need to be removed….edited from that, to make it more powerful. How about scatterings of bulbs within that lawn instead of a drift? Nice what we can see snooping / looking over a wall – that helped me learn much about plants when I moved here. (“wow, pomegranates do grow here, they become trees, and they are in so many 40′s-60′s era back gardens.”)
Hi David,
Yes I liked it too, just needs tightening a tad as you say.
Yes to scatterings of bulbs.
Looking really is the key to learning, refining your tastes etc
Thanks so much for your comment!
best
R