Month: May 2025

FAREWELL TO THE IRIS BORDER: A FINAL LOOK BEFORE THE TRANSFORMATION INTO THE BENTON BORDER

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The Border as It Stands

Here it is, in full—May 2025, in a blaze of purple, mauve, acid yellow, and soft steel.

View of the Iris Border in full bloom with Allium Gladiator and bearded irises in May 2025.

The back is lined with dark tulips (Queen of Night, still clinging on), and the stone wall gives it a whiff of a Roman ruin. There’s something restrained, almost architectural, about this year’s display. A final nod to its original formal intention before we let it get a little looser, a little loucher.

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DESIGNING A SHADE GARDEN BORDER: HOSTAS, FERNS & STUMPERY STRUCTURE IN A NORTH-FACING WOODLAND SPACE

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The Great North Border viewed from the lower slope, with stone walls, obelisks, and developing planting along the path.

A planting philosophy for the cloistered summit of the Great North Border: structure, shadow, and the poetry of repetition.

There is a hush at the top of the Great North Border.

Down below, roses rise and shout, clematis jostles for grandeur, and paths wind between drama and delight. But up here—up here—something older stirs. The light is green. The ground is dark. And everything is listening.

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GERTRUDE JEKYLL ROSE IN FLOWER: A SCENTED START TO THE SEASON

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Rosa ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ bloom just beginning to open, showing rich pink petals in early light.

It was only a matter of time.

Rosa ‘Gertrude Jekyll’ has opened her first blooms here in the garden, and with them, the curtain rises on what promises to be a thoroughly operatic performance.

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PLANTING ROSA ‘ROSERAIE DE L’HAŸ’: A DRAMATIC ARRIVAL FOR A RUGOSA ROSE

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Rosa ‘Roseraie de l’Haÿ’ in her pot, unwrapped with visible nursery tag

Rosa ‘Roseraie de l’Haÿ’ arrived not with grace, but with grandeur.

Unboxed beneath a rare Aberdeenshire sun, she emerged from her cardboard carriage with the slow disdain of someone well aware of her own myth. Known here simply as Elektra, one word suffices, but her full name commands respect. One bloom. One warning.

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THE PEACE LILY FROM TESCO THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING: EVELYN’S STORY

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Peace lily in a white ceramic pot, standing upright with dark green leaves and a white bloom.

She came from Tesco.

Not a garden centre.
Not an emporium of scented promises and curated moss.
Tesco—between discounted daffodils and a shelf of limp parsley.
Wrapped in silence, in cellophane, in clearance.
She sat in a white ceramic pot. Once £12, now £9.

No one looked twice.
But we did.

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FIXING A WATER BUTT HOSE: THE TALE OF BARRY, TWINE, AND TRIUMPH

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Front view of black water butt connected to a greenhouse, showing the outlet tap and full body profile.

We regret to inform readers that Barry’s initial performance was, by his own admission, a little underwhelming. The connection hose—thin, brittle, barely up to the task — was cruelly split by a jubilee clip in what can only be described as a tragic act of early optimism. Emergency measures were taken: twine was applied, muttered apologies exchanged, dignity somewhat preserved.

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SHADE GARDEN DESIGN: ACT II OF “MY NAME IS RED” WITH ROSA ROSERAIE DE L’HAŸ AND RHEUM TANGUTICUM

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A freshly mulched garden border beneath a weathered stone wall, with a young tree on the right.

If Act I of My Name is Red was the border in its prime—bold, declarative, and upright with conviction—then Act II is the hinge between certainty and doubt. This is not a collapse, but a complication. Not an ending, but a reckoning. And like any good second act, it enters not with a shout, but with a shift—music that leans, tilts, sways. The cello opens the curtain this time, not in triumph but in tension: a low thrum of Piazzolla’s ‘Libertango’, not yet reaching its climax, but already circling something unresolved.

It’s worth noting that ‘Libertango’ is more than just ambience. It is also the melodic seed of Grace Jones’s “I’ve Seen That Face Before”—a song of confrontation, disguise, and memory. Here, too, it becomes a leitmotif. A tango between Rheum and Rose. A dialogue without resolution. And like the border, it asks questions but offers no easy answers.

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MY NAME IS RED: ACTS I & III — MIRROR AND ECHO

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Close-up of pink blossoms on Malus ‘Laura’ against spring foliage.

A garden border as a stage—divided not by theme, but by tone. This post introduces Acts I and III of ‘My Name is Red,’ a narrative planting with theatrical intent and emotional depth.

This is not a linear telling. (But then again, what gardener ever planted anything in a straight line—narratively or otherwise?)

The border does not begin at one end and finish at the other—it breathes in three acts, each with its own rhythm, palette, and emotional register. This post introduces the two outer chambers of that unfolding structure: Act I, the entrance, formal and upright; and Act III, the close, shaded and solemn.

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MY NAME IS RED: DESIGNING A GARDEN BORDER AS LIVING NARRATIVE

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Prologue: The Broken Border

An overgrown compost heap and toppled archway with a weathered football nestled in weeds below a stone wall.

Every garden has its secret shame. Here, it was the back border — the stretch beneath the old stone wall that separates us from the local primary school. A wilderness, really. Brambles. A compost heap verging on sentience. Turf stacked like a geological layer. Even a football. Watching me. Always watching.

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THE BENTON IRISES TAKE THE STAGE: GROWING CEDRIC MORRIS’S HISTORIC BEARDED IRISES

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THE BENTON IRISES TAKE THE STAGE

New arrivals, familiar ghosts, and the promise of a future performance.

The new arrivals swept in like a travelling troupe — fresh from the hay-strewn hold, labels stapled to their leaves like boarding passes. A little dishevelled, a little dazed, but humming with potential.

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