It was a great opportunity to meet up with some of the workshop tutors, and find about more about them and their skills.

One of our favourite local artists, Jo Sweeting, was there.  Jo is a sculptor and stone-carver, working mainly in British limestone.  Her work is bold yet incredibly sensitive, and works so well in a garden setting.  Her bowl forms are particularly striking, and we also love her small pebbles, carved with hearts, feathers or letters.

Jo will be running stone-carving workshops at The Garden House in 2011 – however this autumn, I’m happy to report, she’ll be turning her skills to pumpkin-carving!

We haven’t yet firmed up the date, but it’ll be in October, so watch this space…

As part of the Brighton & Hove Food and Drink Festival, Deborah Kalinke and Bridgette Saunders invite you to a Taster day at The Garden House!

It’s on Saturday 4 September! Taste the food.  Taste the wine.  Taste the courses…

Celebrate your enthusiasm for horticulture. Kindle an interest in learning a new skill. Savour food from the fabulous Brighton-based vegetarian food restaurant Terre à Terre. Enjoy a glass of wine supplied by The Butlers Wine Cellar, a local wine merchant.

• Bridgette will be signing copies of her recently published book Allotment Gardening
• Terre à Terre: The Vegetarian Cookbook by Amanda Powley and Philip Taylor will also be on sale
• Buy spring-flowering bulbs from a wide selection of our favourites – seeds too!

Come inside The Garden Room and browse our resource library and its wealth of gardening books, magazines and reference material at leisure.

NOTE: The Garden Room can also be hired for both work away-days and dinner parties for special occasions, menus and prices available on request.

Our Taster Day is FREE - Saturday 4 September – we’d love you to drop in any time between at 11am and 4pm – bring a friend or two and enjoy the garden and all our fun events…we look forward to meeting you!

For further information contact: 01273 702840 | 0778 866 8595

contact@gardenhousebrighton.co.uk

www.gardenhousebrighton.co.uk

When you think about garden design don’t forget that you can add drama by using decorative ironwork.

One of our favourite garden creatives is Brighton-based Steve Betteridge.  Steve makes bespoke garden features in steel – he made our wonderful gates at The Garden House – often rusting the steel to blend beautifully with the garden’s natural palette without distracting.

Taking reference from plant structures, such as alliums, arum lilies, Japanese anemone heads or leaves – his work has an elegant flow, long and simple lines of steel reflecting the plant’s natural movement.

Steve can also offer a range of gardening services from general maintenance to soft landscaping (bed creation, planting design, lawncare).

www.digthis-gardens.co.uk

Amongst others our favourite plants for hot yellows and oranges include the lofty Inula magnifica, Crocosmia species (think Emily McKenzie), Helenium (Moerheim Beauty is a must), Hemerocallis (Corky is a favourite), Kniphofia (shown here is Tawny King) and the statuesque Eremurus (the foxtail lily).

For rusty and terracotta tones look to Achilleas; for deep mahogany tones consider Helianthus, these rich and stunning sunflowers will flower through to October. All sit well with ornamental grasses, especially as they dry and go amber and gold.

Deadhead fading flowers of herbaceous perennials regularly to stimulate new blooms and prevent plants from self-seeding. Once you know there’s no likelihood of further blooms, leave the last flower heads in place – not only can they look great, but they’ll provide perfect food for the birds in your garden as they prepare for winter.

Some weeks ago The Garden House held an open day to raise money for RISE (Refuge, Information, Support, Education), a local charity supporting women, children and young people affected by domestic abuse.

We had a brilliant afternoon, with delicious homemade cakes, chutneys and jams for sale; stalls selling garden tools, jewellery, glass-art, home made gifts; and a multitude of gardening items.

We also held an auction – with prizes including a week’s holiday in a stunning converted chapel in Suffolk, a week in a fab villa in Fuerteventura, a photo session in a local photographic studio, a customized deckchair (how very Brighton!), and so many more tempting items…

Little surprise then that everyone stayed on for the ‘auction action’ at 4pm  (Bridgette’s partner Graham has this amazing knack of prising the money from his willing victims – to everyone’s great amusement!).

In the evening we held an outdoor dinner party – delicious homemade food, wine, and live entertainment.  Again all profits going to the charity.

So, the bottom line – this year The Garden House raised £2,444.93 for RISE – a fantastic result!  Thank you again to all who took part, all who helped make it happen – and of course everyone who visited The Garden House and enjoyed the day with us…

By the way, if you fancy finding out more about upcoming courses and workshops at The Garden House come along to our FREE mini-taster day on Saturday 4 September.  We’ve asked many of the course-leaders to hold mini-taster sessions, discussing their upcoming workshops and showing examples of their work.

Plus we’ll be selling spring-flowering bulbs, and Bridgette will be signing copies of her book Allotment Gardening.  And if all that’s not enough, the fabulous Brighton-based vegetarian food specialists Terre a Terre will be providing food for the day. We will also have wine and coffee available.  Come along!  Further details in DIARY on this website.

We had the perfect day, one of those wonderful sunny summer days when you can think of nothing you’d rather be doing than sitting quietly in the garden and drawing…

Debbie took us through a range of inspirational works, from Beatrix Potter to Henry Moore, showing how different techniques suit different subjects or moods, and how different effects can be achieved by using a variety of pens.

Her patient enthusiasm had its reward – following a delicious lunch in the garden,  everyone was soon settling into the perfect spot to capture their vision…

The day reminded me just how important it is to slow down and enjoy our garden spaces.  Most activity centres around digging, weeding, pruning, watering – and so many gardeners I know say they hardly ever, or indeed never, actually relax and enjoy their garden.

But at any time of year it’s equally important to just sit and review, or capture the moment in ink, paint or on camera – so take a tip from us – summer’s here, slow down, put your feet up, and enjoy…

Alys with us shared her thoughts on how to harmoniously grow flowers and vegetables together in our own gardens and allotments – her philosophy so perfectly chimes with ours at The Garden House.

Her attitude is one of relaxed gardening, of going with the flow – as she says “Conceptually it’s a lot to get your head around, but you

don’t need to fight to make things grow.” She sees making gardening easy as the new way, especially for busy people who love their gardens but have other work/life priorities.  “I’m aiming at people who don’t want to dedicate themselves to gardening, but who just want to get some food off their plot.”

We also loved her creative ideas on vegetable containers – using anything from wire baskets to dustbins!

The Garden House is once again opening its garden gate in aid of a local charity – this year we are raising funds for RISE (Refuge, Information, Support, Education), a local charity supporting women, children and young people affected by domestic abuse.

Join us for a brilliant afternoon! There will be stalls selling all sorts – including garden tools, jewellery, home made gifts, culinary delights, and a multitude of gardening items.

Tea and cakes will be on sale too, and we have our Grand Auction at 4pm!  Auction prizes include:

• One week in a villa on Fuerteventura
• Large abstract painting by Sussex artist Bobby Boud
• Deckchair with customized patchwork seat
• Photo session in a local studio
• Patchwork quilt
• Coffee machine and coffee set
• Two complementary planted containers
• Voucher for a hair cut in a local salon
• Bridgette’s Friday gardeners – working in your garden for one day!
• And many other items, including ‘ingredients for a screaming orgasm’ (don’t ask!)…

Garden opens at 2.30pm

Entrance fee: £2 per adult

We are also holding a Garden Dinner Party, which starts at 7pm.  Why not book a table with friends?  The cost of the dinner will be £20 for a delicious three-course meal and a glass of wine (we will have wine available for donation should you need extra!) – and during dinner we’ll be serenaded by live band Vinyl Riff!

Dinner menu:

• Starters: roasted Piedmont peppers, OR mushroom, sherry and walnut pate, OR watermelon and goat’s cheese salad
• Main course: organic Cheddar, zucchini and roasted red onion quiche, OR Malaysian fish curry, OR tortilla with fried beans served with guacamole and salsa
• Dessert: free-range homemade meringue nests with summer fruits, OR chocolate brandy refrigerator cake, OR fresh fruit platter

Contact us for more info: 01273 702840 / 0778 8668595 / contact@gardenhousebrighton.co.uk

Please come and bring your friends and help us to raise some money for this hugely worthwhile cause – thank you, and hope to see you then!

Following a short career in classical music as a gifted tenor, Graham’s love of plants was re-awoken by a cathartic trip to Sissinghurst Castle in Kent where his eyes were opened to the artistic and creative process of gardening at its highest level; Lucy is a textile artist.  It is palpably apparent that creativity flows through their fingertips – everything in the garden and nursery is beautifully considered, immaculately laid out and personally attended come rain or shine.

What Graham doesn’t know and feel about plants seems hardly worth knowing.  He is one of a small group of passionate plantsmen and women, always exploring, propagating, exchanging ideas – citing amongst others the late Christopher Lloyd, plantswoman Marina Christopher, and writer Noel Kingsbury as friends.  His passion and creativity has created a unique nursery, one where you can guarantee finding that special ‘must have’ cultivar, where you know you’ll be inspired…

At the end of a long day, glass of wine in hand, he walked us around his garden highlighting key plants, indicating where planting has worked brilliantly and where it has not (rare!), infecting us with his philosophy and enthusiasm.

“At Marchants, the nursery drifts almost imperceptibly into Gough’s rich, dramatic sweeps of herbaceous planting: sanguisorbas, daylilies, masses of grasses, achilleas, dark agapanthus…” Anna Pavord, The Independent Magazine.

For Graham gardening and creating the nursery is the best therapy one can get.  He tries not to go with the trends, but takes a more subjective view, relying on intuition.  He advocates “going it alone, keep your eyes open, and make personal choices”.

Key messages from the evening:

• In a small space you have to be selective; achieve a visual calmness by narrowing the number of plant types used
• Find peace in clear spaces; a simple water feature with little around it, creates a sense of sanctuary
• For colour inspiration look to 20thC paintings
• Set aside an area of the garden where you can ‘play’, doing something different each year, trying new plants

Marchants Hardy Plants,
 Mill Lane,
 Laughton, 
East Sussex 
BN8 6AJ

Tel/fax: 01323 811737  www.marchantshardyplants.co.uk (check website for opening times)

I don’t go to therapy, instead I garden. It keeps me calm, I can work through all my issues and have imaginary arguments in the greenhouse where no one can hear me and I always win. The plants respond well to the attention and there are weeks when I spend more time nurturing my seedlings than my family.

The other advantage of gardening is meeting other gardeners, who are all too willing to share their interest in growing things and often give you stuff, in the form of cuttings and bits of leaf to identify. This weekend we went to the Garden Gadabout in a very sunny Brighton where we met some fabulous enthusiasts eager to share their green spaces.

We saw a number of interesting trends…..

• The new shed - everyone’s got a fancy room-in-the-garden shed, with sofas/internet connection/curtains
• Vegetables in raised beds – everywhere but everywhere
• Potatoes in bags/containers – apparently easy and prolific
• Beech sticks as wigwams for climbers (prettier than bamboo)
• Chickens – who have their own fancy coups if they’re lucky
• Seating areas – loads of them everywhere
• Recycled boxes/tins/sacks are the new pots
• Mosaics – from small to complex, black and white or multi coloured
• Creating your own seed packets and hand drawing the floral fronts
• Cakes – it seems all gardeners can cook cakes and make excellent lemonade

Here are some of the photos taken this weekend…

…and don’t forget the Garden Gadabout (private gardens opening in aid of the charity Susssex Beacon) is happening again weekend 3rd/4th July.

Note from GG coordinator Bridgette Saunders: “As usual The Sussex Beacon’s garden will be opening Saturday 3rd July. Come and visit us and see the changes that have taken place. You’ll receive a warm welcome and have the opportunity to visit the gardens of this unique centre. There will be stalls, a tombola and of course cream teas to buy and enjoy whilst 
relaxing in tranquil surroundings. All the funds raised from The Garden Gadabout come directly to The Sussex Beacon.”

Check their website for details www.gardengadabout.org.uk