Decoration garden. Garden lights landscape

Led lighting garden

led lighting garden, garden lights landscape, decoration garden

led lighting garden, garden lights landscape, decoration garden

led lighting garden, garden lights landscape, decoration garden

Read More

The Buckingham Palace Garden, London

Famous English gardens visit

The great thing about Buckingham Palace garden, according to Garden Manager Mark Lane, is that ‘no-one knows what to expect,’ he says. It’s true. We’re all familiar with the Buckingham Palace itself, but what of this famous English garden that lies hidden behind it? Anyone lucky enough to have attended one of The Queen’s garden parties will describe it as an oasis of greenery in the centre of London. But there’s more to it than that.

Buckingham Palace Garden

Despite being largest privet garden in London, this 39-acre space is designed for the enjoyment of many. It is ‘a working garden’ as Mark calls it, welcoming 610,000 visitors last year alone. So, if you are thinking of what famous English gardens you’d like to visit, visit the Buckingham Palace garden. Get your passport to London! FREE entry to over 50 attractions – FREE public transport – The London PassLike the Royal Family, it has a duty to perform. Buckingham Palace famous English gardens manages to be at once open and secluded, functional and ornamental, floral and wooded, tidy and ‘untidy’ – a remarkable and somewhat surprising achievement for your visit of this one of the famous English gardens.

The design of the Buckingham Palace garden as we see it today dates back to the early 19^th century, when King George IV made substantial alterations to the building (then known as the Queen’s House), transforming it into Buckingham Palace under the capable hands of architect John Nash. Homepage link At the same time, George IV commissioned his gardener, William Townsend Aiton, to create a garden fit for a king. A thre-acre lake was dug out, and a mound constructed, designed to screen the Buckingham Palace from the nearby Royal Mews. This famous English gardens that we advise you to visit, style was heavy influenced by Aiton’s predecessors and key exponents of the English Landscape movement, William Kent and Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown.

The Buckingham Palace Garden

Today, the Buckingham Palace garden still feels park-like, in some places even pastoral, with its groves and avenues of trees, its Victorian shrubberies, serpentine walks, sweeping lawns and vast lake edged with marginal  planting. Theatre Breaks with Superbreak‘When you are at a Buckingham Palace garden party, you want to imagine you are in the countryside,’ says Mark. ‘The great thing is that you can get lots here and easily forget that you are in London.’ A canopy of trees surrounds the grounds, providing shelter from the noise and shielding many of the neighbouring buildings from view. The thick layer of trees in Buckingham Palace garden also adds depth and theatricality, creating an impressive backdrop.

The Buckingham Palace garden is home to almost 100 mature specimens of London plane, but is also planted with beech, polar, oak, ash, horse chestnut and Indian chestnut, conifers, and a few rarities such as the Chinese chestnut tree, Costanea millissima; the round-leaved beech, Fagus sylvatice ‘Rotundifolia’; and the Indian bean tree, Catalpa bignonioides ‘Aurea’. It is also rich in spring-flowering trees and shrubs, such as azaleas, rhododendrons and magnolias. Rhododendron ‘ London Calling’ was raised here by Palace gardeners as a 70^thbirthday present to HM The Queen. Summer-flowering Magnolia grandiflora, with its enormous flowers, is another stunner at this famous English gardens that we advise you to visit.

There is little information on what the Buckingham Palace garden looked like 100 years ago.

Across the lake is an island, which acts as a welcome refuge for wildlife, particularly during the Buckingham Palace garden party. ‘There’s lots of cover there, and we have all manner of nesting birds – coots, moorhens, shelducks, mallards and great crested grebes.’ The Buckingham Palace garden is also home to birds that you would not normally see in London, such as sandpipers and sedge warblers. ‘And our weeping willows give fish protection from predators. Along the lake, we have a kilometer of marginal planting. We cut back a quarter of it every year and leave the rest untidy, ‘ Mark explane. ‘Our wildlife survey in the 1900s showed that we were too clean, so we now have 350 types of British wildflowers. We also have in excess of 700 different moths, six of which were recorded for the rirst time this year, and more than 280 species of beetles. Bats thrive in Buckingham Palace garden too.

One of the highlights of the summer Buckingham Palace garden parties is the Long Border, also known as the Herbaceous Border. Looking at it now, one would never guess that it was once used for the cultivation of vegetables during the Second World War. ‘ There’s little duplication of plants, so Buckingham Palace garden party guests can walk up and down the border and enjoy all the wonderful variety of flowers, including phloxes, salvias, rudbeckias, lyhrums, persicarias, agapanthus, monardas, rupatoriums, achilleas, dahlias, delphiniums, helianthus, ginger, bananas, campanulas, hostas, sweet peas and the occasional rose.

We label most things, so that when you visit this famous English gardens, you can jot down names. The sweet peas are grown in the glasshouses at Windsor, and all their colour are agreed with The Queen’s florist, so they can be used in floral arrangements around the palace.

The Victorian tradition of summer bedding is kept alive on the terrace outside The Queen’s privet apartments. Here, the scheme changes twice a year, and will no doupt be dazzling for this summer’s Jubilee celebrations.

Beyond the Herbaceous Border is a more intimate area known as The Queen’s Walk, where serpentine paths lead you past shrubberies of evergreens and autumn beauties such as acers and cornus. Under the trees there are lots of lilies, daphnies, ericas ans sarcococcas, thinning them only slightly. Around one of these bends is the spectacular Rose Garden. ‘The roses in this famous English gardens are planted is straight lines, in a single colour and about  60 per bed. It’s predominantly Hybrid Teas, with a few floribundas.’ At the centre is a gleaming white William Kent summerhouse smothered in wisteria, behind which is small rose border and a catenary adorned with climbing roses. A fairly new development in the Buckingham Palace garden is the tennis court border, at the edge of the garden. ‘Over a four-year period, we planted around the tennis court. The plantings transform the area, breaking up the expanse of lawn and creating a nature corridor between the different wild areas. We have shade-loving plants on one side and sun-loving area on the other.’ Many things are doing well, including the aptly named A. ‘Buckingham Palace’.

‘We have pushed the boundaries of what we can grow in London, but at the same time we need to make sure we can look after these plants. Ultimately, nothing major is done without The Queen knowing. There are no surprises. After all, it is her garden.’

Buckingham Palace garden can be visited as part of a pre-booked tour in Aug and Spt. 

ALSO IN THE AREA…

If you are in London for the Jubilee or the Olympics, you can visit these other famous English gardens:

GARDEN CHELSEA PHYSIC GARDEN, 66 Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, London SW3 4HS. Tel: +44 (0)20 7352 5646, chelseaphysicgarden.co.uk

GARDEN Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 3AB. Tel:+44 (0)20 8332 5655, kew.org

GARDEN Chiswick House and Gardens, Burlington Lane, London W4 2RP. Tel: +44 (0)20 8995 0508. Chgt.rg.uk

Garden Centre Nearby

10.4 miles from Buckingham Palace: Syon Park Garden Centre

Brentford, Middlesex TW8 8JF. Opened in 1968 by Queen Mother. Top quality plants, furniture, giftware and a restaurant.

Read More

5 Kitchen garden designs

Vegetable garden design

FANCY GROWING YOUR OWN VEGETABLE GARDEN? Just choose a style to suit your space and get planting your kitchen garden!

Nothing beats the crunch of a freshly dug carrot or the sweetness of a strawberry plucked from the plant from your own vegetable garden, and an ever-increasing range of fruit and vegetable seeds available, growing your own kitchen garden has never been easier, even in the smallest of garden spaces. With a little know-how, anyone can have a go and taste the rewards by vegetable garden planning.

The best site for a kitchen garden is an open, sunny spot not overshadowed by trees. Don’t tuck vegetables away out by sight from the house for they are every bit as decorative as flowers.

It’s so satisfying to grow your own food, and, since many vegetables mature within weeks, you get a quick reward for your labors. It also lets you grow unusual varieties that aren’t available in the shops. But success is in the vegetable garden planning. The most productive plots are those that are carefully thought out to ensure a steady supply of produce, either through successional vegetable garden planning and plantings, or by varying times. This avoids gluts of any one veg and extends the harvesting season of  the kitchen garden.

1. FORMAL KITCHEN GARDEN

A formal kitchen garden is neatly compartmentalized to fit a variety of  vegetables alongside soft fruit and flowers for cutting. There is an art to ensuring tall plants don’t overshadow long-growing ones. Any sunny wall or fence will provide shelter for space-saving fruit espaliers. Apples, pears, cherries or peaches grow well trained against a wall, which will aid ripening.

The small option of formal kitchen garden

• Construct a series of 120cm-square raised beds edged by low walls of wood, brick or stone.
• When you are thinking of the vegetable garden design, make sure each bed can easily be reached from all four sides without treading on the soil and compacting it.
• Planning vegetable garden, separate the beds with paths topped with gravel or bark chippings laid over a weed-proof membrane.
• Always make paths wide enough for pushing through with a wheelbarrow.
• Try to ‘double harvest’ in your kitchen garden root vegetables such as turnips, beets and kohlrabi. These also produce edible leaves – pick a few at a time from each plant before harvesting the root.

The large option of formal kitchen garden

Create a focal point of the kitchen garden with a central feature in the beds such as topiary, an obelisk, ornamental or a standard plant – medlars, bay trees or roses are good examples. 

Planning vegetable garden, break up the space with terracote forcing jars for rhubarb or run of traditional glass cloches that not only keep pests at bay, but also protect tender seedlings.

Thinking of vegetable garden design, plan for create an irrigation system through the beds. The larger the kitchen garden area, the more water is needed during prolonged dry spells, so direct rainwater from adjacent roofs into water butts and connect them to leaky plastic pipes laid through the beds.

2. Vertical kitchen garden design

Filling airspace in the kitchen garden is a clever way to fit in more plants, especially in a small vegetable garden. Peas, beans, cucumbers, marrows, squashes and courgettes are all good candidates for the vertical growing in the kitchen garden. Training plants upwards makes maximum use of a limited vegetable garden ground area and is useful where space is restricted. But do remember when you are doing vegetable garden planning, all vegetables need some light.

The structures

• The key to success in this vegetable garden design lies in support. The simplest structures are three or four-cane tripods that are traditionally hazel branches coppiced in spring.
• An effective technique of vegetable garden planning for peas is to sandwich a row of young pea plants between two rows of sticks running each side at 45º angle so they meet above the vegetable garden plants. Thread garden string through to add stability.
• Bean poles (either hazel sticks or bamboo canes) provide sturdy support for runner or broad beans. Cut in straight, two-meter lengths, then push into the soil – upright or at an angle – to create wingwams, arches or even a mini-pergola. Where poles meet, firmly tie with string or twine.

• Wooden obelisks in the kitchen garden will provide attractive and strong supports for gourds. Using thicker poles will suffice for courgettes.
• Taller versions, in wood or mental, draw sweet peas upwards, making attractive centerpieces to kitchen garden beds.

The plants

• Maximise your kitchen garden space and plant a fast-growing ‘cash crop’, such lettuce, in between a slower-growing main crop, such as sweet corn or broccoli: the lettuce is ready to harvest before the main crop matures, so does not disturb it.
• Place taller plants at the back of your vegetable garden so they won’t steal all the sunshine, then you can squeeze a row of a low-growing crop such as rocket, spring onion or radish between taller crops in the kitchen garden.
• Endive, radicchio or spinach are useful additions to a kitchen garden bed as they can cope even in partial shade.
• The higher a plant climbs, the more important it is to tie in the main steams with expandable kitchen garden ties.
• If the soil of your vegetable garden is supporting lots of tall growth, it will need additional water and nutrients and should be mulched well and fed regularly.

3. Container kitchen garden design

Many delicious vegetables, fruit and herbs can be grown from seed in the kitchen garden containers. The beauty of pot-grown veg is that, as each reaches maturity, it can be moved close to the kitchen for harvesting. Planning vegetable garden go for dramatic effect for chilli peppers and aubergines. Tomatoes make attractive patio plants and varieties such as “Tumbling Tom Red” grow well in hanging baskets.

The plants

• Strawberries, with their handsome foliage, grow well in layers in special, multi-holed terracotta planters.
• Thinking of vegetable garden design, grow potatoes or sweet potatoes in large canvas bads so they can be moved around. Barrels are good choice for a static spot.
• Keep a few smaller pots in your container kitchen garden of herbs or chives to fill gaps  in ornamental vegetable kitchen garden beds during the time it takes for each row to be harvested.
• Salad leaves are especially easy to cultivate in pots for your vegetable garden and the cut-and-come-again varieties regrow after snipping with scissors. Early sowing are ready to cut after about nine weeks; mid-season sowings after only six weeks.

The pots

• Terracotta and glazed pots are the most attractive for the kitchen garden design, but they do absorb water from the compost. To avoid this, line the inside of pots with plastic, piercing the base for drainage.
• Alternatively, plastic pots for the kitchen garden are inexpensive and easily moved around.
• Choosing large containers reduces the need to water.
• Root vegetables need deep containers – old chimney pots are ideal for planting carrots, while top heavy tomatoes need a weighty pot so they don’t topple over.
• Grow in your vegetable garden plant in a quality compost that is formulated for the purpose.
• Feed veg or fruit plants of your kitchen garden with a slow-release fertilizer.
• Provide plants with a sunny spot.
• Never let them dry out.
• To deter slugs and snails, spray round the base of kitchen garden pots with lubricating oil, raise them on feet and stand over gravel or egg shells.

4. Potager Garden

Potagers originated centuries ago as an arrangement of geometrically shaped garden beds edged with box and filled with vegetables, fruit and flowers. It is a versatile, adaptable kitchen garden design. As long as the original proportions of the vegetable garden are maintained, any kitchen garden design can be shrunk or enlarged to fit different sized or shaped vegetable gardens, but garden designs can also be as simple as four rectangular kitchen garden beds grouped around a centerpiece.

The structure

• The potager vegetable garden is a framework of crisply cut, low-growing hedges that delineate the vegetable garden beds. The hedges are most often created from dwarf or common varieties of box.
• A softer look of potager kitchen garden is achieved with lavender, which forms a compact, silver hedge topped in summer with long, fragrant spikes that attract bees and other insects.
• Clip bushes of your vegetable garden into shape in autumn and early spring so they don’t get straggly and woody.

The plants

• Potagers combine fruit, vegetables, flowers and herbs, not as rows, but planted according to a garden design so the colours, forms and textures of the garden plants are balanced and beautiful.
• Decorative forms of vegetables dominate, so go for frilly, red-leaved lettuces such as ‘Lollo Rosso’ or ‘Cerize’, purple sprouting broccoli, the glistening red, orange and golden stems of Swiss chard, or firm round cabbages in rich reds or subdued steely blues.

5. Cottage kitchen garden design

Cottage gardens evolved in the country as a practical solution to growing food in limited space kitchen gardens. At first glance, cottage kitchen garden design appears wayward, but behind the apparent randomness lies care to ensure plants do not overshadow one another and that the soil is kept healthy with homemade compost. Roses, clematis and self-seeding perennials are key elements in the cottage garden, with fennel, borage, sweet rocket, feverfew, aquilegias and foxgloves self-seeding year on year. The emphasis is on easy-going plants that are edible, medicinal and ornamental.

The vegetables

• Vegetables include asparagus which, once established in the kitchen garden, looks after itself, yielding tasty spears in late spring, followed by fern-like fronds that add foliage among flowers.
• Red orach is another beautiful favourite, its young leaves delicious in salads, while the mature leaves taste like spinach when cooked.
• A cold frame is invaluable for bringing on crinkly red lettuces, leeks or sweetcorn to fill any gaps.
• Grow in your vegetable garden seedlings in ‘pots’ crafted from newspaper, filled with soil and tied with jute string. Plant into beds and the paper rots down.

Easy access is essential so lay reclaimed terracotta tiles through the beds to avoid damaging plants.

The flowers

Beautiful flowers are also essential, especially those that are edible, too. Some species of da lily taste similar to crunchy lettuce and the petals from marigolds or bergamot add tangy flavours to salads as well as colour and fine textures.
For organically minded gardeners, companion vegetable garden planning and planting helps discourage pests. For example, nasturcuims sown alongside broccoli act as a sacrificial plant by diverting hungry aphids, while French marigolds, chives or parsley are good at luring greenfly away from tomato plants. Plant rosemary, thyme and lavender around fruit trees as they will attract bees for pollination.

-->

Read More

English Garden: Great Dixter

English Garden: Great Dixter

Tucked away in the peaceful East Sussex English countryside, Great Dixter is a spectacular English home and garden created by Christopher Lloyd, one of the Britain’s greatest horticultural talents.

Famous English gardens visit

You are unlikely ever to see a more perfect and pleasing combination of English house and garden that the one at Great Dixter in East Sussex, England. Until 2006, this was the home of Christopher Lloyd, one of the 20^thcentury’s most inspired gardeners. Christopher Lloyd’s English garden, a riotous spectacle of blooms stretching from April to October, is a horticultural masterpiece, itself splendidly set off by the warm tones of a timber-and-tiled building with a more-than-surprising history.

Since Christopher Lloyd (1921-2006) – or ‘Christo’, as he was known to his friends and family – passed away at the age 84, the house, English garden and its wider estate have been run by the Great Dixter Charitable Trust. A special “Great Dixter Conservation Project’ has initiated a series of important repairs to Great Dixter house, the first of which has just been completed. Meanwhile, in the English garden, the enthusiastic and knowledgeable horticultural team is ably keeping the spirit and spectacle of the English garden alive. Despite the sad disappearance of its owner, there has, it seems, never been a better time to visit Great Dixter.

Even before Christopher Lloyd made his English garden famous for its exuberant planting, Great Dixter had already developed a reputation. In 1910 Christopher Lloyd’s father, Nathaniel Lloyd, bought this small farm estate on the edge of the English village Northiam. At its heart was a derelict 15^th-century timber-brick house with wonderful beautiful views of the mellow Sussex countryside. Nathaniel must have realized that with the help of an experienced architect, he could transform Dixter into the ideal English home and garden in which to raise a family with his young wife Daisy. He found a perfect man in Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944), now revered as one of Britain’s greatest ever architects.

Grand design

Oitside, Lutyens set to work designing the framework of the English garden in an appropriately Arts & Crafts English style. He introduced English garden compartments or ‘rooms’ surrounded by yew hedging and added elements of hard landscaping such as steps, doorways, terraces and paths, many of which remain to this day in the beautiful Great Dixter English garden. Nathaniel made his mark by planting topiary, a classic English garden feature of the Arts & Crafts gardening style, and even went on to write a topiarist’s handbook entitled Garden Craftsmanship in Yew and Box. In 1913, just three years after it was bought, Great Dixter appeared in Country Lifemagazine, illustrated by pictures taken by Nathaniel Lloyd. He was sp pleased with his snaps that he turned them into postcards.

Grand Dixter: Nature’s way

For just over 20 years, Nathaniel and Daisy lived happily together at Great Dixter, raising their six children, of whom Christo was the youngest. Then, in 1933, Nathaniel died and it fell upon Daisy to look after her family, staff and estate. She, more than any other person, was the greatest influence in Christopher Lloyd’s life. It was Daisy who sparked his interest in nature, plants and gardening at an early age. Even when he went to prep school and later university, mother and son continued to share their passion by exchanging letters on the gardening subject. When the Second World War broke out, Christo entered the army, but on his days off nothing could stop him from exploring the countryside in search of flowers.

Famous English gardens visit

Flowers became Christopher Lloyds ultimate passion and once the war ended he joined Wye College in Kent to study for a BSc in decorating horticulture. Being close to home meant that he could return at weekends, spend time with Daisy and take a more active role in the English garden. A year after graduating and aged just 30, he was offered a job as an assistant lecturer at Wye College; he used the plants grown at Great Dixter English garden as a material for his lessons. By 1954, having left teaching behind, he set up his own nursery next to his English garden. Everyone knows that English rose is one of the favorite flower in the English garden.

Great Dixter true colour

Over the course of the next half century. Christopher Lloyd transformed Great Dixter into an icon of British gardening. He fleshed out the bones left out by Lutyens and his father and created eye-popping floral displays. Among his most famous achievements is the incredibly long, and appropriately named, Long Border. Although originally laid out by Lutyens, Christopher Lloyd stretched its length by a third. Mixing shrubs, perennials, annuals and bulbs, this fabulous and ever-changing English garden creation offers a bounty of blooms from April to October. Another highlight is the Exotic Garden. Here, Christo and Fergus (his head gardener) uprooted the roses planted by Daisy and created a sensational late summer to early autumn subtropical paradise, with impressive cannas, dahlias, yuccas and bananas. “It’s just like a Rousseau painting,” explains Fergus.

Many 21^st-century gardeners and designers proudly credit Christopher Lloyd as their biggest inspiration. His approach was refreshingly unhindered by past styles and contemporary expectations. Christopher Lloyd pushed the boundaries of what could be achieved with flowers and became famous for his adventurous colour combinations and his love of experimentation. He once wrote: “I take is as a challenge to combine every sort of colour effectively.” At Great Dixter, he created an intense flower English garden with an ever-changing and astonishingly long season of interest in which no patch of ground was wasted. Even paved surfaces were filled with joyous combinations of potted plants. As much as gardening, writing was part of Christopher Lloyd’s daily routine. Christo’s famous writing style: personal, entertaining and thoroughly opinionated. As well as offering practical advice, almost like a friend he shares his joy of gardening: “Gardening is one of those creative activities that produces an enjoyable sensation of achievement…”

Loss and legacy

Christopher Lloyd’s death was a sad loss to the gardening world, but he has been masterfully succeed by Fergus Garrett. While continuing to look after the Great Dixter English garden, he is responsible for the Trust and for training horticular students on site, some of whom reside in the Lutyens wing in the house. He, like Christo, believes in an intensive approach to planting; what he describes as ‘gardening in the fast lane’.

Despite the visitors, there is s sense that this is still very much an evolving private garden with learning and experimentation at its center  rather than that which is now forever ‘set in stone’.

GETTING THERE

If you driving from London, head towards Sevenoaks and then continue down the A21 (about 1h 45 min). Trains run from St Pancras and Ashford International to Rye, which is a 30-minute bus journey to Northiam village where Great Dixter is located.

WHERE TO STAY

Budget: Boasting a lovely English garden and a quiet location just outside Northiam, South Grange Bed and Breakfast (southgrange-northiam.co.uk) has single and double rooms each priced at £27.50 per person per night. Tel: 01797 252 984.

Luxury: Recently renovated, the George in Rye (thegeorgeinrye.com) offers 4-star contemporary accommodation within a 16^th-century historic building, with rooms starting from £135 per night. Tel: 01797 222 114

MORE INFORMATION

Great Dixter, Northiam, East Sussex, House and gardens open 1April – 31 October, Tuesday and Sundays and Bank Holiday Mondays. Gardens open 11am – 5pm, house opens 2-5pm. House and gardens: Adults £9.35, child £4.40. Gardens only: Adult £7.70, child £3.85. For more details, please call 01797 252 878

-->

Read More