Posts Tagged ‘Decorative features’
Mark the date: Sussex Prairies Garden, 4 September
Posted by editor on Monday, 29 August 2011
Well worth a visit – on Sunday 4 September 2011 (from 11am until 5pm) a rare collection of exciting nurseries, artists and crafts people will be coming together at the Sussex Prairies Garden. Over 60 stalls will be displaying a great selection of unusual plants and beautiful pieces for you to buy.
The Sussex Prairies Garden also happens to be one of our favourite gardens, renowned for its dramatic drifts of late summer-flowering perennials.
The Garden House will be there – ready to discuss our forthcoming (and very exciting) Christmas and 2012 courses, workshops, garden visits and talks (evening talk with Fergus Garrett at GH on 23 March 2012!). We’ll also be selling GH-made preserves and a variety of seeds and plants.
Plant exhibitors include:
- DESIRABLE PLANTS – Specialising in herbaceous perennials, Epimedium and other woodlanders, Galanthus, Watsonia, Gladiolus, Tritonia and other South African Iridaceae, outh African Erica, Sanguisorba, Geranium, Hedychium and Roscoea. www.desirableplants.com
- SCARECROW PLANTS – Out of the ordinary plants, English Native wildflowers and plants to attract wildlife. Also hand-made local ironwork and trellis. 07939 272443
- RAPKYNS NURSERY – All grown in their traditional nursery – a unique and exciting range of quality and unusual cottage garden plants. 01825 830065
Art exhibitors include:
- ANNEMARIE O’SULLIVAN – whose passion lies in all things woven, knotted and netted, will be showing baskets and larger woven forms. www.annemarieosullivan.co.uk
- FRANCES DOHERTY – extraordinary ceramics based on the forms of fruiting bodies, flowers and particularly seedpods. Richly glazed to complement the form and often combined with metal and reclaimed sea defence timber. www.francesdoherty.co.uk
- CHRIS BURCHELL COLLINS – A Blacksmith and Green Woodworker whose work is influenced by the wonderful forms and shapes found in nature.
- JANINE CREAYE – will be bringing many new small sculptures for gardens and interiors. Stylised and patterned wood carving, stone carving and drawings of natural forms. www.sculptureform.co.uk
- HOLLY BELL – wheel-thrown functional ceramics including jugs, tea-sets and planters. www.hollybell.co.uk
And many, many more – a great chance to source some amazing plants and artifacts for you, your house and your garden! For more information visit www.sussexprairies.co.uk
Garden Gadabout: mark the dates!
Posted by editor on Wednesday, 22 June 2011
If nothing gives you more pleasure than checking out other people’s gardens, then the Garden Gadabout is for you! Two weekends – 25th/26th June, and 2nd/3rd July – over 70 local gardens around the Brighton & Hove (and many beyond!) will be opening their garden gates for charity.
The gardens are wonderfully varied, giving inspiration at every turn – from the smallest courtyard to large ‘wild’ gardens and allotments – each with its own unique mix of planting and hard landscaping ideas.
The Garden House will be open on the first weekend only, 25th/26th June. There’ll be plants and seeds for sale, fresh eggs from our hens, a tombola – and a whole lot more! Our garden is a unique and imaginatively restored old market garden, extending behind other houses to make a very large space filled with vegetables, flowers and many decorative ideas using recycled materials. We’ll also be offering lunches, wine and soft drinks – so make a date, bring some friends and come along! Find us at 5 Warleigh Road, Brighton BN1 4NT (side gate!).
For info on all the gardens and downloadable guides, go to www.gardengadabout.org.uk
Carole Klein, patron of the Garden Gadabout, says: “I’m thrilled to be patron of The Sussex Beacon’s Garden Gadabout once again. This year over 70 gorgeous gardens and community spaces will be opening across the two weekends, and there’s a wealth of wonders to discover. As well as scrumptious lunches and teas, many of the gardens this year will be offering something a little bit extra to make your visit even more special.
There’s nothing quite like being a part of making things grow, watching and waiting for the changes that unfold day to day, season to season. The Gadabout is a great opportunity to gather ideas from all sorts of spaces. From bold and stunning contemporary designs, to quiet havens of wildlife – of all shapes and sizes. I’m a passionate enthusiast of sharing our green spaces, it’s just so inspiring to discover what other people have lovingly created. So take a good browse amongst these pages and plan your visit, not forgetting of course where to stop for teas, cake and lunch.
The Garden Gadabout also fulfils an important role in raising essential funds for The Sussex Beacon, enabling them to continue their work, meeting the changing needs of men and women living with HIV. This year the funds raised by the Garden Gadabout are more important than ever, as new diagnosis of HIV continue to increase and fundraising becomes even tougher.
A big thanks goes to all the lovely gardeners who open and share their gardens, to all the volunteers who help them, and to all of you who come along and enjoy this wonderful event.
So go on….get Gadding!”
We love: Cleve West’s Best Show Garden, Chelsea Flower Show
Posted by editor on Saturday, 28 May 2011
Well, 2011′s Chelsea Flower Show extravaganza is over – the year’s inspirational kick-start for new gardening ideas, plantings and structures – we loved it!
Cleve West’s garden for The Daily Telegraph was awarded Best Show Garden – quite an accolade and well deserved, this was a beautiful garden and one of our favourites. We always expect the unexpected with Cleve’s gardens, yet they still have recognisable qualities – strong sculptural forms (last year remember those huge concrete planters? And the year before his dementia-friendly sensory garden with a giant sculptured ball at its centre?), moving water and sensitive planting.
This year his garden’s warm off-yellow plastered and dry-stone walls and flowing water framed an open space containing three 10ft high columns by French artists Serge Bottagisio and Agnès Decoux, with one lying on the ground, that appeared to be ruins but in fact mix the old and new in concrete and terracotta. 
The planting looked so unconscious, almost self-seeded in effect, and the colouring exquisite – a soft blend of yellows, silvers and soft-whites – highlighted by the occasional dark red-pink Dianthus cruentus, grasses and airy umbellifers (including parsnip flowers from his own allotment!). Specimen trees of Styphnolobium japonicum (the Japanese pagoda tree), gave scale to the planting, rising up from the sunken gravel area to soften the effect of the monolithic columns.
Artists Open Houses, May 2011
Posted by editor on Saturday, 7 May 2011
If you have the energy and time to spare, set aside the coming weekends to visit the wonderful Artists Open Houses 2011 – more than 1,000 artists are exhibiting their work at over 250 venues, spread across the city of Brighton and Hove and the surrounding area.
The event provides a great opportunity to view unique work in artists’ homes and studios and to buy directly from the artist or maker. The art and craft works are of every different type – paintings and prints, ceramics and metalwork, textiles and felt work, jewellery and silverwork – and sculpture.
Of course, our particular interest is in sculpture and art works for the garden, and there are many artists creating work for our outside spaces.
The 2011 Festival dates are May 7th and 8th, 14th and 15th, 21st and 22nd, and 28th and 29th.
The open houses are grouped into ‘trails’ – so select a trail, check the website for maps and directions – and get walking! For more info on trails and artists visit www.aoh.org.uk
Photos here show work by Jackie Jones (mosaic sundial), Terri Bell-Halliwell (stone sculpture) and Angie Evans (ceramic tile) among others.
Prop up your plants!
Posted by editor on Monday, 28 March 2011
Now is the very best time to get your plant supports into place. With growth on most perennials just starting, you can clearly see where the plants are and more easily get stakes or supports into position.
Of course, not just tall perennials – climbers, certain roses, even vegetables like broad and runner beans will need careful staking to avoid the plants collapsing as they grow in heavy rain and winds.
Some of our favorite materials and effects:
- Simple and relaxed – consider birch or hazel twiggy sticks, bendy and easy to twist around to create loose supports.
- Dramatic – tall supports like wigwams or tripods – use straight hazel sticks pushed firmly into the ground and tied at the top. Wrap wide mesh or twist soft twigs around the bottom half of the structure to give seedlings something to cling to as they grow.
- Metal structures – we prefer rusted metal, though in the right setting stainless steel can look very dramatic – metal can be formed into wonderful natural shapes mimicking seed heads or leaf structures, blending with the plant shapes themselves.
- Wooden structures - obelisks can look very good in more formal settings, often best painted in soft mid-tones.
- Arches and arbors – made from young living willow. Pushed firmly into the ground and watered in well, willow will root very easily to form a living structure. As it grows, twist and plait in the shoots to form a robust structure.
- Practical supports – simple grids made using bamboo canes are perfect for the cutting garden where practical considerations are more important than aesthetics.
We love creative and decorative supports – maybe hang small bits of mirror, glass or foil milk bottle tops from your structure to move and glitter gently with the wind. Paint bamboo canes or panels of wooden trellis in bright colours and use amongst the flowers in your cutting garden – or why not use rusted bed-springs to support your broad beans in the vegetable patch?!
The key thing is to let the support structures flow with your planting, give great thought to which material suits your planting, enjoy building your structures and be experimental.
We love decorative ironwork…
Posted by editor on Saturday, 21 August 2010
When you think about garden design don’t forget that you can add drama by using decorative ironwork. Rose arbours, obelisks and wall supports give height, and exciting supports for your herbaceous perennials can help give personality to your garden space.
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).