Tough plants from Yorkshire

Plants bought this weekend: 24.  (This included a tray of 12 annuals so it's not as bad as it sounds)


This Saturday, I visited Dark Star Plants in North Yorkshire during a visit to my parents.  I was prompted to visit by an article in The English Garden Magazine (yes, still buying magazines) which described the nursery as specialising in plants in dark, dramatic colours and raised to be hardy in the cold climate of Yorkshire.

Dark Star Plants have created their nursery within the old walled garden of Rounton Grange, home of the Bell family who were wealthy 19th century industrialists.  The  Grange itself has been demolished but the extensive walls of the garden remain, replete with the 100 year old vine-eyes still in place.   Overcast weather darkened my initial impressions, however glimpses of sun reflected a glow from the red brick onto purple-black violas and the burgundy foliage of heucheras casting a spell of warmth over the place.  The plant range is extensive, laid out in neat rows: the darkest, most velvety irises, aquilegia 'Barlow Black' and astrantias in all ranges of claret.  It was a relief to browse a real nursery with plants in the state that they should be at this time of year.  Nothing had been forced into flower in a Dutch hot-house with the aim of making a quick sale.  It seems like a long time since I had visited this kind of place and I found it a haven of peace, even though I worried for the owners with the lack of crowds queuing up to buy candles and thermal socks or whatever else garden centres are flogging these days.

The walled garden.  That's my dad in the flat cap on the right.

The nurseryman was a true northerner, slow and thoughtful in his words, greying hair spilling out underneath a countryman's hat.  Once warmed up, he idled for twenty minutes telling us the history behind the garden.  The daughter of the Bell family, Gertrude (described by various sources as a traveller, politician, writer, archaeologist and spy), loved the garden and its staff, writing of the very walls in her books and sending seeds back home from where she eventually settled in Baghdad.  None of the original plants remain now but the new owners have recreated a working garden as well as a nursery, cultivating cut flowers as well as fruit and vegetables which they sell to the farm shop next door.

Typical dark and cloudy Yorkshire weather guaranteed to blow cobwebs away.

It seemed like the idyllic life to a plantaholic like me, tending the nursery within the shelter of the walls, the moors just a nod away on the horizon.  The reality is probably harder: pressure to compete against large commercial outfits and the gardener's perennial affliction of back problems.  Still, it was a treat to browse an unusual collection of plants that cannot be found elsewhere.  If you like your plants hardy and true to life and don't need photoshopped pictures or flowers forced out under UV lamps, plus a bit of history thrown in then it is well worth a visit.

PS My dad pronounced the range of plants 'impressive' - not praise that is given away in a lighthearted manner.

Hellebore orientalis 'red hybrid'

As advertised

I've been after a pink hellebore for a while. It's been a furtive kind of lust, pretending to Le Photographe that I'm not going to buy anything else until I've finished the garden design course that I'm starting this week. In the meantime, I've been loitering around garden centres, fingering hellebore leaves while no-one was looking or browsing on-line nurseries alone late at night and then deleting the browsing history to hide my plant addiction from those who care about me.

It was thus that my ongoing love-hate relationship with the 'boutique' N1 Garden Centre continued when I told Le Photographe last week that I was just popping out for some potting compost. As the helpful assistant carried my compost to the till, a couple of pink hellebores just, well, slipped into a basket I happened to have picked up on the way in.  (Why can I never do as the books tell me to do and always end up buying pairs of plants instead of three or five.)

Now the N1 Garden Centre is in quite an affluent area and most of the customers these days look like they are record producers or in PR. I didn't want to look like someone from Clapton with no cash so I said to myself, "I'd better buy them then."

Our relationship took one of its rocky turns at the till when I pointed out that the label advertised that the hellebore was pink as seen in the plant label above.

What perturbed me was this flower on one of the plants:

I questioned this to the assistant who didn't know about hellebores. Someone else was called who also didn't know. Now I do not know much about hellebores either but I mumbled something about thinking that they don't always come true or maybe can have different shades of flowers on the plant. Assistant number 2 consulted one plant encyclopedia and then another before reading out loud, "flowers darken with age."  She snapped the encyclopedia shut, knowing it was victory for them. 

Now this seemed implausible to me but I felt the pressure of both lack of knowledge and the queue of people building up behind me anxious to get back to their recording studios or wherever. My finger had already been poised over the card machine for 10 minutes by now ready to punch my number in so it was already the point of no return.  I thanked the assistants for all their help looking this up and said I felt reassured because I really wanted a pink one and so if was going to go pink, that was good.

Assistant number 1 then carried my compost to my car for me.  My car has been with me since 1998, my Toyota Starlet which has never let me down but, let's face it, has seen better days.  The assistant deposited my compost into my rust-caked boot and then he turned and looked at me very deliberately as if he wanted to make sure he could recognise me in a police line-up.  I can hardly blame him amongst all those BMWs and four by fours.

The trusty Starlet.

Over the course of the week, the single flower has blossomed and become pure white apart from a  greenish tinge.  Hackney has a drug problem and perhaps it would seem pink to anyone after some hallucinogens but it is definitely white to me.

Helleborus orientalis 'red hybrid' in white

 Hellebore experts, please advise!

RHS London Plant and Design Show

Today was the start of 'the season' - the first of the RHS shows opening with the two day Plant and Design event.  I went last year and was disappointed.  I can't say why exactly.  I don't think I was in the full throes of plant addiction then.  I was the gardening equivalent of someone that smokes only socially whereas now I am like an alcoholic who says they only drink to relax.  So it was only with half a heart that I set off, battling a tube full of children on half term.  At Westminster, the sun shone through the thin light of winter, Big Ben silhouetted against a pale sky.  As I walked into the Horticultural Halls, I was greeted by a sea of irises that bought tears to my eyes.

(Note to Helene from Graphicality - you NEED irises!)



Vast tables of spring bulbs lifted everyone's hearts out of the frosty morning. 

Orchids bloomed.

Hellebores gave off a radiant but delicate glow.

I have to explain at this point that Le Photographe refused to come to this show as he is already 'garden showed-out.'  This is worrying so early in the season.  It must be something to do with the different approach the French have to gardening.  They are all into order and topiary, chic and understated, less obsessed.  Maybe other French people might think he is a paysan if he is seen at shows.  I had to take photos with my mobile instead.


Slugs - or rather those who warrior against them were also represented.  I bought three of these anti-slug rings.

There was also a kind of anti-slug magic carpet for sale.

In an act of heroism to spare my terrace the weight of yet more overcrowding, I managed to buy only one plant.  Yes, just one.  Just an iris.  Iris reticulata 'baby blue.'

I decided today that anyone who is ill or upset should be able to have an iris prescribed for them.  You can only feel better for having one.  If you have had a bad day, I prescribe you one iris.