As most of you know by now our main hobby is exotic gardening with koi keeping secondary to that. Although both coexist in our garden, our external and social endeavours for both rarely mix together, and we pursue both disciplines on separate occasions. We are active members of Kangei Koi Club and we all meet quite regularly and have been visiting each others pond, as well as meeting up once a month. And being a koi club we talk mainly about, as the name suggests koi and rarely about plants and gardening.
But one of koi club buddies, Paul Randall to our pleasant surprise is actually into exotic gardening as well. And last Sunday he hosted a picnic and pond visit for the koi club. His pond is stunning but as a fellow exotic gardener naturally we paid as much attention to his planting as much as we did to his pond.
The clarity of his pond water is amazing, as well as the quality of his fish
Paul's garden is fabulous and his planting is definitely right up our street especially with his penchance for cacti and succulents. His collection of succulent plants are so extensive that he's also in the process of applying for a national collection for some of them. And his love of spiky plants is clearly evident in his exuberant planting scheme.Now let's take a tour of his garden:
Multi trunked Chamaerops humilis as the focal point of this bed
Agave stricta
This was fun! A nice way to make a feature out of an old tree stump
Sempervivums in production
Agave parryi
Aloe plicatilis
Before we look at more plant photos let's take a look at his koi pond again...
Unique curvy pond with amazing water clarity
Loving the stained glass and details of the adjacent filter house
Nice detail with the mosaic on both sides of the pond window
Paul has a huge garden with a well laid out hard landscaping. Like most gardens though, despite already looking good it is still evolving as Paul develops new areas and focal points.
Space for veggies, nice!
And pet tortoises, how cute!
A large duck pond
Separate growing on indoor koi pond
Now for more plant photos...
For the koi club visit he set out a plant sales area with proceeds going to charity. We were an hour late and by the time we got there many of the plants were snapped up already. We still managed to buy a couple of very nice Echeverias. And I like the idea of the raffle too, for those who bought plants from the sales and I was hoping to win the tray selection but alas I didn't!
As you can imagine we'll be visiting Paul's again. Not only to see his wonderful koi but to also see his fab garden and collection of plants. Double treat!
Mark :-)
