With Julia Boulton, Beth Chatto’s granddaughter and chief custodian of the world famous gardens
Natural show stopping designs
TThe garden is looking glorious with colour and new growth. May is just around the corner and the buzz for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show is growing. As well as the plants we are growing for the show (we are providing nearly all of the plants for Emma O’Connell and John Warland’s Freedom from Torture Garden), Emily and Miya from our shows team will be lending a hand during the build itself.
As not everyone can get to Chelsea, we have decided to put together our own Chelsea display in our nursery area for everyone to see. We’ll be creating it from the middle of May and it will be on display for Chelsea week, which is May 21-25.
You can follow our progress on our website, or even better, come and visit us. Beth’s garden is like a 7.5 acre Chelsea show garden, showcasing thousands of different types of plants suitable for the varying conditions across the site. It is a living catalogue for the many plants propagated and nurtured by our team, which are available to buy on our nursery or on our website.
It would be great to see you.
Spring jobs in the garden
As we leave April behind and head towards May, the growing season starts to gain momentum with the garden transforming from spring to summer growth. Colour and vibrancy intensify and plants seem to grow before our eyes! Drifts of forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica) continue to knit together plants in the Water and Reservoir Gardens and are an invaluable ground cover during April and May, filling empty spaces with their distinctive pale-blue flowers.
We have continued weeding/editing the Gravel Garden, thinning out selfseeded annuals and biennials. This year we have had a massive influx of the white-flowered form of Verbascum chaixii ( note to self, must deadhead sooner this year), and we also removed a substantial amount of Pilosella aurantiaca (fox and cubs), which spreads via seeds, rhizomes or stolons.
Topping up the gravel, we use 10mm stone sourced from a local quarry, as a relatively thin (approx. 1-2cm) mulch which helps retain the moisture in the ground, while still allowing for annuals and biennials to self-seed and flourish. A thicker layer of mulch (min 10-15cm) would be advisable if the aim is to reduce the amount of seeds germinating.
Rainfall (or lack of) often dictates how hard we prune the shrubs in the Gravel Garden. With plenty of moisture in the ground, we can be certain that they’ll respond well to rejuvenation pruning.
This year a tired looking Atriplex halimus, Bupleurum fruticosum, Phlomis fruticosa and Salvia lavandulifolia were all pruned h
