rhs tatton park

An almost final, overwhelming week in teaching came to an end and thankfully, the Royal Horticultural Society flower show at Tatton Park in Cheshire proved an excellent antidote to the powerful emotions I had been feeling.

Despite having made declarations that we would not buy anything, came back with a fully loaded car!!

This lemon leucanthemum x superbum 'Broadway Lights' was one of my 'stars of the show' and two plants came home. Our beautiful native ox-eye daisies (leucanthemum vulgarae) are free flowering meadow plants that thrive locally and I hope to be able to introduce them to the meadow area as it develops. This showier cultivated cousin should flourish in the conditions that ox-eyes like. We hope to divide them and multiply their number at the allotment before finding a place in our new garden for them. In a large group (possibly planted against a contrasting, darker foliage plant) they will have a big, late summer impact. The newly opened flowers have this lovely pale citrus colour but then fade to a yellow white giving an interesting range of flower colours in one plant.


The flowering cyclamen hederofolium looked lovely in pots and we were further inspired to create our own small containers back at home. C. hederofolium was abundant in dappled shade under the crab apple tree in our old garden and looked almost as good as these seen in their pots at the show.

 Also captivating and excellent subjects for pots were the hostas: there are now so many forms of the plantain lily and it is little surprise that they have become so fashionable. Planted together, their contrasting leaf colours, sizes, shapes and habits created a memerising effect on the dedicated stands for father and daughter and meant we spent too much of our limited time admiring these and not getting around the huge show and all its other delights! Here hosta 'Hands up' shows its erect foliage.
'Green is also a colour' Gertrude Jekyll