Features: Inspirational ideas from Tatton Park

Currant tomatoes

Everyone was stopping and staring in admiration at the Robinson’s stand in the floral marquee. The object of their delight was a 2m (6 ft) high plant of redcurrant tomatoes growing up some trellis. It was festooned with strings of tiny fruit, like shiny red pearls, from top to bottom. Apparently they taste very sweet. There is a yellow variety as well and they would look gorgeous growing up a fence or pergola. Robinsons are selling seeds for next year and they were going fast.

Living fly paper

If you have a conservatory with lots of tender plants in it you will, at some time, have had trouble with white fly. Marston Exotics in the Plant Heritage marquee were selling a useful little plant called Pinguicula ‘Tina’, commonly called butterwort. It has beautiful lime green, slightly fleshy leaves which are covered in a sticky secretion. These leaves attract whitefly and other small flies and they die a sticky death. The plants have a pretty lilac coloured flower and need to be kept, standing in half an inch of rainwater, in the conservatory.

Miniature snippers

At this time of year it’s a daily chore keeping on top of the dead-heading in the garden. If you’ve got window boxes or hanging baskets, it’s a really fiddly job snipping off small flower heads, even though it’s well worth doing to keep plants flowering for longer. The Herb Society is selling some great little snippers called Deadheads that are perfect for the job. They come in three bright colours, are sharp and easy to use and would be good for picking herbs as well.

Windowbox solution

Hanging pots and containers on the wall is always a bit of a chore. You have to drill a hole and put in plugs and screws to make sure it’s secure, then, if you want to move it or change things around it can be a problem. On the Be Fruitful, back to back garden Sharon Hockenhull, designer, has come up with a really good solution. She has fixed a rack of horizontal bars to the wall and, using large butcher’s hooks, has hung window boxes planted with strawberries onto it at varying heights. It’s a wonderfully versatile system and you could hang virtually anything on the wall very simply.

Natural art

Sculpture in the garden is a very personal thing, sometimes you just have to wait until you see a piece that speaks to you. Purple Sue is a sculptor from North Wales who works in natural materials and metals, particularly willow and copper. She is showing a range of her work that includes a beautiful willow bird – it’s about five times life size, but light and uplifting.

Not so hard landscaping

Show gardens are great sources of inspiration for your own garden and also offer the perfect opportunity to have a look at new techniques in hard landscaping. This year several designers have used resin-bound paving for their paths and patios.(e.g. Edible Trends, Lose the Shoes, Be Fruitful) This is a technique that uses natural or recycled materials coated with clear resin that binds it together. For example, you can have a path that looks like gravel but you don’t have the problem of loose stones or weeds. It is permeable, easy to lay, comes in a wide range of colours and textures and feels lovely and smooth, almost soft, underfoot. You can also use it indoors – sounds like a winner.

The perfect lily

If you love to grow flowers for cutting a new Lily ‘Miss Lucy’ from Harts Nursery is just what floral artists have been looking out for. The large double-flowered white variety has no stamens so there’s no danger of those annoying lily pollen stains, which often put people off growing these beautiful flowers. It also means there’s no danger to cats which can be harmed by lily pollen.

Warm planting for cold climates

One of the planting combinations that really caught my eye at the show was in ‘Lose the Shoes’ a back to back garden designed by Bernie Quinn. Here a wonderful warm effect has been created by teaming dramatic, topical-leaved Canna ‘Durban’ with pale orange Echinacea ‘Sundown’ and a low-growing Miscanthus ‘Nippon’. The planting stood up well to the windy wet conditions at the show and would be great for adding late season colour to any small garden.

For the plant enthusiast

It’s always interesting walking round the shows to see what’s different. There are always one or two plants that suddenly burst onto the scene, this year it was francoa, a low-growing, clump-forming plant with pink starry flowers. Several species were available around the show, but one which really stood out was a new variety from Hardy’s Cottage Garden Plants called Francoa ‘Pink Bouquet’, which has flowers that are larger than most varieties.