So, first stop, Swines Meadow Farm Nursery in Market Deeping to see my friends Colin and Karan. When I last visited there a few weeks ago I came home with a rather nice hydrangea and a rather large ginger cat called Bruce, Bruce is adorable. I was also looking for a ornamental quince and something a little different from the crimson and gold ones I already have as small, not yet perfectly formed, hedge. They did not have any at that time but Karan promised to look out for something for me.
Good as her word, this is Chaenomeles x superba 'Cameo', it has a lovely pale peach flower. The words 'lovely' and 'pale peach' do not often go together in my world, but this time they do.
I think it is rather fab.I have also been steadily buying ferns over the last year or so and they have a nice range at the nursery, so I came away with:
Osmunda regalis Purpurescans, I love its large unfurly leaves.Next to leap into my hands was Onoclea sensibilis,
which does look a very sensible fern to me, again I like its airy nature and also the wonderful red stems.
The stems are worthy of a closer look. These two ferns are now happily planted in my bog garden, which has so many ferns in it now (at least five) I think I might rename it the fernery, in that pretentious way that things get named above their station.
Finally I bought this, Peltoboykinia watanabei (what a great name), I have seen this plant before and bought one long ago in a previous garden just to see it die rather swiftly. This time I feel more hopeful as the top end of the Wild Garden is quite shady and moist and think (hope) ideal conditions. We will see.
So that was that, we chatted a while, wandered a while and ended up in another greenhouse at which point this jumped up and demanded to be bought:
Iris confusa, the bamboo iris, I chose one not yet in flower so that it would more easily get home in one piece and so that I have joys yet to come. I apparently chose one that came with a free lincolnshire snail, what a lucky buy! Its like I don't have enough snails of my own......... I'm sure it was hiding.So we began to wend our way home, when my chauffeur said 'shall we stop off at the fair at the botanic garden?', well it seemed rude not to.
This resulted in a final purchase:
Yes, this rather young and lovely trillium. A trillium you say? but did you not state quite clearly that in terms of your garden you are better off just burying the money in the ground? Yes, yes I did, and I have recently bought and sown some trillium seeds that will probably take a year to even germinate. This trillium was not costly and it was so pretty,
that I thought I would give it a go. I will let you know how it gets on.So, we got home with a bootful of booty. What I have forgotten to mention are the two trays of plants that arrived with the chauffeur:
The season of sharing spares and plant swapping has begun, I think I have rather a lot of planting to do.
