Welcome to our North Devon Garden.

 

 

 

 

  The view from the gate

We have been opening our garden for the past seven years in aid of various charities. The garden is 100ft by 50ft and the soil is heavy clay. Our part of Devon experiences some frost, but rarely below -5 degrees Celsius or lasting more than a couple of days Until 2008/9 since when we have been into minus double figures every year. During these openings we have been asked for more details about the plants and garden. Neither of us has any qualifications in horticulture so any information here is based on our own limited experience and what we have gleaned from experts. Incidentally all photos on this site were taken in our garden and greenhouses. We hope you enjoy the site and hope to see some of you at our openings. We would welcome any feedback on the plants or the garden.
Dawn and Steve

Garden Openings 2011: 

 

Sunday 28 August       Bank Holiday    26 visitors
Monday 29th August   Bank holiday     30 visitors

Sunday 4th September                         25 visitors

Sunday 11th September                       16 visitors

Sunday 18th September                       17 visitors

Thank you to everyone who came along this year. In spite of rain that fell on 4 out of the 5 days we still managed to get close to our par of 120 visitors (114), and the article by  Jan Barwick in Devon Life and the mention on radio Devon on the last day definately helped. It was great to see so many returning visitors and meet so many new ones.  Between you all, you managed to raise £392.70 for the National Garden Scheme charities and £60 for North Devon Hospice. See below for our plans for next year, but as we mentioned to a number of you we are hoping to do an informal open day for our hedychium heaven project if it all works out (see the project page for more and see here closer to the time for opening details. 

 I am just about to update the links page for those who were asking about suppliers, especially for Hedychium moorei 'Tara' which was the star of the show.

 

We are not planning to open in 2012 to give ourselves a bit of a break and try a few things out. We will be happy to open for anyone who wants to visit by appointment, we had a thoroughly entertaining evening on 8th August when Pyworthy gardening club came to visit, what a great bunch of people! We would happily do the same for any other groups next year on the understanding that the garden won't be prepared to NGS standards and that there may be some 'works in progress' under way.

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After a disappointing year with Hedychiums last year we had some hard choices to make, should we struggle on with them or should we face up to our limitations and give up and find more usual plants to grow. We reached a very 32 Allenstyle Drive solution to this and in late September went to visit Andrew Gaunt's national collection near Chichester (http://www.chichestergingers.co.uk/information.html)  and bought a further 12 hybrids and species types mostly in bare root form, which with typical (over)confidence I planted straight into the garden rather that potting overwinter into the heated greenhouse. These included such beauties as Tai Savannah, Tai Sunlight, Tai Mammoth (for lovers of the Armstrong and Miller show), Tai Pink Princess, Tai Emperor, Thai Spririt, Daniel Weeks, Maximum, White Starburst, a white form of densiflorum and densiflorum  'Kalimpong Gold'. With the cold winter I wondered if I had been wise but all have survived and surprisingly Thai Spirit, Tai Sunlight and maximum are flowering or sending up buds. So the committment to growing hedychiums out of doors and reporting here what works is greater than ever.  In the words of Bruce Springsteen 'No retreat, baby, no surrender'.

Passionflowers

They have taken a bit of a hit too but there's always an upside to losing plants. 'We picked upp some new ones which have done really well especially 'Abigail' and 'La Morelina' The most amazing survivor of the big -9 freeze in the greenhouse was passiflora racemosa 'Buzios'. Racemosa is supposed to cope with a minimum of +7 degrees. Some sad losses though, Debby, citrina, antioquiensis, tarminiana (but not my new tarminiana alba), mixta, Lady Margaret, piresiae and alata. They shall not grow old as the plants that remain grow old, but they will make damn fine compost. On the upside one of our photos has been used by New Zealand's very cooly named biosecurity department (I'd love to be able to flash a badge and say "Steve Morgan, biosecurity, don't any of you asparagus move,!" or "Hand over all the lupins you have.") See below

http://www.biosecurity.govt.nz/files/pests/sea-anemone-passion-flower-factsheet/sea-anemone-passion-flower-factsheet.pdf

 New passionflowers from Jane Lindsey and Cross Common: Abigail, La Morelina, Fata Confetto and Elizabeth - an old favourite - Welcome Back!

 

 

*A Gardeners World researcher contacted us to see if Carol Kline could come and marvel at the 'amazing display of hedychiums that this site rashly promises visitors and I had to explain that there was little to see and sent him on to talk to Andrew Gaunt of the national collection, of whom more later.

 

Here are some pictures to give you an idea of our style of gardening

We have no lawn at all. Instead we have various mulches on liner covering the improved (with mushroom compost and horse manure) soil.

We have a large range of hedychiums

 

and bananas

 

 

The garden also features cottage garden and prairie plants including a collection of rudbeckias