more of my cement mix succulent displays.

Been pricking out Phormium seedlings for a hour per day we sowed around a kilo of sed so theres a lot to do

Phormium  is a genus of two plant species in the Xanthorrhoeaceae family.its best known as New Zealand flax

 One species is endemic to New Zealand and the other is native to New Zealand where they are  liable to grow big very quickly often to big but that’s not usually a problem in devon as every five years theres cold wet  weather that kills them down to the roots I am fine with that as they look there best when young .

We like to use them in tubs large pots and especially as a Architectural focal point  in beds with ornamental  grasses.

Also I have been planting up some more of my cement mix succulent displays.

you can see i have been carving out the foam through the cement mix surface. 

Here you can see the just rooted succulent cuttings.           

this is a view from the other side 

Below is one i experimented with hollowing out the centre  and joining together .

 

The cavity was filled with a mix of compost and a special mix this allows me to grow bigger root ball plants on the displays .

this one  over wintered and put up with a 5 degree  below zero without cracking although the cobweb sempervivum  died ,I am going to replace them  with a well rooted group of unusual sedums .

 

this one also over wintered and again did well, you can see just how creative you can be,  one plant failed in the centre

This

is how they start out one of the grand children did this one using a engraver to carve the florists foam later on we will make up the cement mix  and cover it.

below are a few more pictures .

 

 

 

i am halfway planting some of them.

living oil paintings

This week at the nursery

Hi  

Its so nice  to have some good weather at last and have been making the most of it by planting these little glass   terrariums  at the nursery.

If you look closely you can see the small coloured balls ,these are a water absorbent material a bit like jelly to touch, in the past we have had a problem with people either under watering or more usually over watering, these slowly release there moisture and you can tell from the size of the balls when water is needed, almost foolproof.

 

Also this week been planting up these living oil paintings .

 which we specialise in we put a plastic liner behind the canvas,fill with a special compost and make holes through the canvas and plant a range of succulents in to the compost behind ,then water through a hole in the top  as its oil it doesn’t mind getting wet so we spray the plants every so often .

what do you think ?

 

Here is another above something else we enjoy making there made from florist foam covered in a mix of compost, sand and cement.

The great thing about using this stuff is you can easily carve the foam we like to use a electric engraver to do all the fiddly bits and a knife for the rest the dust from the foam we use in the cement mix as well this helps to keep it light .

Mix the cement with the rest of the ingredients and make quite a wet mix then leave for 5 mins then just paint it on thickly ,allow to dry very slowly ,this builds up strength by curing the cement if it looks like its drying to quickly I spray it to keep it damp curing takes a good week then you can make holes through the cement covering poke a little compost in along with a succulent and water ,the florist foam absorbs water so you don’t need to water very often and occasionally add a little feed to the water and the plants will grow in to the foam a get really well established.

It is such good fun making these I don’t like when people buy them from me as you get really attached to them.

  Honestly you are only limited by your imagination as you can carve such artistic shapes etc

Have a go .

I will put a video on next time I do a batch .

cheers 

Alpines,succulents and grasses in rock gardens

Alpines and rock gardens

Alpines and rock gardens were once high fashion, there were various things every serious gardener had to have, and a rockery was definitely one of them.

When we started our landscape and design business we were building them everywhere.
I loved constructing them, all the different types of rocks that were available meant you could design them in a huge variety of ways and incorporate them with water, fish ponds, waterfalls etc.
Rockeries and alpines had come into fashion in the late 19th century. 
Grand rockeries were quite simply a status symbol for wealthy gardeners.
Expensive they may have been to build and maintain, but with the latest plants being brought back from across the world by adventurous plant hunters they were perfect for showing off wealth. 
One of the best large privately owned gardens in Poole, Dorset, England is Compton Acres, it was founded in 1920 by Thomas William Simpson, an entrepreneur who had become wealthy through the manufacture of margarine would you believe.

  The gardens are a popular tourist attraction well worth a visit

This outstanding example of the Arts and Crafts style of landscape design uses a combination of rock-work and water to create a realistic landform giving views from and under the bridges.

Many tons of red sandstone and grey limestone were used to create two contrasting areas. Mature specimens of “dwarf” conifers are interspersed with a huge variety of appropriate plants including Euphorbia myrsinites, Fascicularia bicolor, Iberis sempervirens and many spring bulbs. It is thought to be one of the largest privately owned rock garden in the country. 

Compton Acres consists of five themed sub-gardens: an Italian garden, a rock and water garden, a heather garden, a Japanese garden and a less formal garden called the "Wooded Valley".

definitely one of our favourite gardens

The ever-expanding middle classes went in for them, so the market for plants was clearly enormous. unfortunately commercial nursery's jumped on the bandwagon and sold many totally unsuitable for the smaller rockery's.
Soon  the source of the stones started to dry up and you paid a lot for a very few small boring ones many working families even made there own stones out of concrete usually with disastrous results.
The best stones were Charlton mackerel and ham   
[this is a good example of ham stone] 

We perfered to go and hand pick a load to find the best and most unusual shapes, my favourite was /still is  Charlton mackerel it  was fascinating to break apart as it was full of really interesting fossils and was just fantastic to use thinking of ways featuring the fish and ammonite fossils in walls, you can still buy small amounts direct from the quarry but its

very expensive and we use it occasionally as  fossil pictures in the sides of walls soon sadly all the good quarries closed and the stone left just wasn't suitable for the job and there were some ugly rockery's built for a while in bad areas with rubbish plants no wonder they went out of fashion.
With the demise of the rockery, there has been a massacre of plant availability, so we have been busy cultivating our own favourites at our nursery growing a mix of hardy perennials, selected grasses, succulents and alpines we still build rockeries nowadays but they have changed with the times we also have been trying to source new supplies of stone from other parts of the country some as far away as India the problem  of course is haulage costs.


This is a great example of the wonderful sculptural quality of succulents i love them, just remember perfect drainage  is  there main requirement.
l use a lot of tufa when building succulent areas  its a volcanic rock and comes from allover the world its full of bubbles and is very light compared to other rocks its passable to buy it with so many bubbles in it it will float on water I'm not kidding! You can also carve holes easily  in it easily to put succulents in to.
Succulent rockerys can be artfully arranged in a completely different way to the old-fashioned rockery.
Recently there has been a resurgence in succulents grasses and alpines especially among the young they particularly like the artistic side of the plants and that there is so many ways of displaying them ie vertical walls roofs, mini gardens, troughs, tubs, tea pots  actually the more original/wacky the container the better is the current fashion see pins at this page https://uk.pinterest.com/botanicapop/succulent-plants/ .
Time to re-think alpine, succulent and ornamental grass propagation especcialy succulents there is so many variations of them now and as they frequently produce sports [natural variations in colour shape habit etc] it's passable to have a plant no one else has, by keeping a eye on seedlins or plants that produce offsets, propergating them potting them up and see if going to produce more of the same but like all natrual mutations some are good, some bad, if its extra good you could have it named after you.
 Alpines succulents and ornamental grasses start thinking out of the box and  use them in a sculptural and design-led ways and start growing these amazing plants once again.