Landscape and garden news, tips and advice

The Westonbirt Arboretum Tree Festival

The Westonbirt arboretum changes its colours and becomes a different place through the seasons. The trees this Autumn will be a beautiful sight with over 2000 Japanese maples in bold reds.

A Garden Within Doors – last week of the exhibition at the Geffrye Museum

The Geffrye Museum — the delightful museum dedicated to the living rooms of merchants’ houses through the ages — is currently running A Garden within Doors, an exhibition looking at plants and flowers in the home, writes Helen Gazeley.

The museum, set in eighteenth-century almshouses, Shoreditch, has a run of eleven rooms furnished as they would have been at different periods from the end of the 16th to the end of the 20th centuries. Each room is currently dressed with flowers, in keeping with the period. So, a swag of greenery is slung across the Tudor mantelpiece, Delftware full of scented hyacinths adorns a 17th-century table, ferns and careful arrangements feature in the mid 19th century. In the basement, the exhibition space holds paintings, books and plant holders from the 19th and 20th centuries.

Is it worth a visit? Well, in a nutshell, we can say that people have always enjoyed bringing flowers and plants into the house and occasionally fashion changes as to how and what flowers are displayed.

I've visited Veddw House Garden and met Anne Wareham

This tale is a bit odd but it's a true account about how I came to meet garden maker, Anne Wareham, and her stunning Veddw Garden.

It wasn't a planned visit at all but I just happened to be in the area - quite strange in itself because I live permanently in south-west France - and decided to make a totally unannounced (although not entirely uninvited) visit.

The story starts at the Premier Inn in the middle of Bristol. I travelled to the United Kingdom to meet Hale Events to discuss the feasibility of a Landscape Juice, landscape and gardening trade show and exhibition for 2011.

Rendez-Vous aux Jardins

If you are a garden lover and you're coming to France next weekend (4,5&6 June) you might want to take in the Rendez-Vous aux Jardins event.

Rendez-Vous aux Jardins is and annual opening of approximately 2000 private and public gardens throughout France.

A different theme is chosen each year with this year's being The Gardener and his Tools: learn and appreciate how the ancient Egyptians or farmers from the middle ages tilled and tended their land.

For more information, visit the Rendez-Vous aux Jardins website.

p.s. I've contacted the website to ask for a list as it's apparently not there.

Open Garden Squares Weekend

London Parks & Gardens Trust is offering the opportunity to visit more than 120 private gardens & squares as part of Open Garden Squares Weekend.

For the third year, this popular event, will be sponsored by Transport for London. Visitors from all over London and far beyond will have the rare chance to enter a vast array of inspirational gardens which are not usually open to the public - ranging from the historically memorable to the small and quirky; from the contemporary and eco-friendly to renowned roof gardens, cemeteries and working allotments.

Over 200 gardens are participating in the weekend with 31 taking part for the first time. Twelve new and exciting gardens, which are not usually open to the public, will be allowing ‘exclusive access’ to visitors over the weekend.

The Great London Garden Trail 3rd May 2010

You'll probably be too excited by the impending election to want to leave your television screen but if you do, and you feel like a little cultural excursion, then why not embark on the Great London Garden Trail on Bank Holiday Monday, May 4th.

Ten Society of Garden Designers' gardens, including ones by John Brookes and Andy Sturgeon, will be open to the public 12 noon until 5pm.

For details on the gardens and their plants lists - as well as what bus and tube routes to use to get yourself about, click on this .PDF guide.

What's a garden visit worth - £50 argues Anne Wareham

The Guardian's Friday debate - Is it time for a £50 garden entrance fee? - highlights the challenges anyone who owns and runs any form of garden attraction faces.

Anne Wareham, garden writer and joint owner of Veddw in Monmouthshire, argues that the 'charity' mentality has robbed her and others of the opportunity to charge a fair price for entry to a garden attraction.

Anne says that running Veddw - see map is a costly business and she doesn't want to turn the garden into a garden centre or tea shop: she has likened her garden to being more like a concert or play or a visit to the opera.

Where is Keith and Ros Wiley's Wildside garden?

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Keith Wiley used to be the head gardener at The Garden House on the edge of Dartmoor.

Between 1978-2003 Keith created a natural garden that is held in high regard by many in in the horticulture world.

After a falling out with new management at The Garden House, Keith and his wife Ros, set up a nursery and began developing a 4 acre garden which became the first programme in a series called the Landscape Man, with Matthew Wilson.

The Wildside Nursery can be found at: Green Lane | Buckland Monachoram | Nr Yelverton | Devon | PL20 7NP

Telephone: 01822 855 755
Email: wildside.plants@virgin.net

Website: www.wileyatwildside.com

Garden and Nursery Opening Times - Thursdays and Saturdays only April to the end of July 2010. Also 2 charity open days on Sunday July 4th & July 11th. Admission £4.50

Stoke Poges Memorial Gardens get Grade I listing

English Heritage have awarded the crematorium memorial gardens at Stoke Poges Grade I listed status.

Set in parkland adjacent to Stoke Poges golf club, the landscape originally formed part of Stoke Park and was laid out by the famous landscape gardeners Lancelot "Capability" Brown and Humphrey Repton.

The characteristics of Stoke Park changed in about 1909 when the golf course was built and land sold off for building.

Last Chance to See Chesters Walled Garden

Last year brought news of the closure of one of the best loved gardens in the north of England. There’s still a chance to see it before it’s gone for good, writes Helen Gazeley.

News of the forthcoming closure of the world-renowned Chesters Walled Garden in Northumberland shocked the gardening world when it was announced last July.