The trouble I find with spending a number of days visiting gardens is the sensory overload. So many gardens, plants, owners, ideas and experiences and when you then start to try and think about how to distil your experience into a blog post; well sometimes it seems to be a challenge too far.
I have a habit of writing blog posts almost immediately I return from a garden visit but work demands have got in the way and I find myself a week after my return skimming through my photos, only a 1000 in my case, trying to decide what to blog about. What strikes me is the direct correlation between the gardens I enjoyed and the number of photos of them. In each case these gardens are very much those of enthusiastic plants people. They are full of texture and form often more from plants than structure and they offer me inspiration on so many levels.
I think Jenny and David Stocker’s garden was the real winner for me. We visiting on a very wet day, although by the time of our visit the rain was light but poor Jenny had experienced a trying time during the gullywasher earlier in the day. However, despite the overcast skies the garden sang to me.
Initially, it was the extremely skilled placement of pots and small vignettes that intrigued me. I can learn so much from these. My pots end up scattered around the garden, randomly placed, but as you can see from the above a small collection with a mix of leaf shapes, size of pots and a couple of small accessories takes on a whole identity of its own; a small work of art.
The cacti remind us that we are indeed in Texas, and I have included it to humor those of my friends who are convinced I spent the week looking at cacti and tumble weed. However, as you can see from these photos the garden is far from a barren landscape. David and Jenny built their home on the side of a hill and enclosed the garden with a wall creating a sense of enclosure and presumably creating a microclimate. I think I am right in saying that the various spaces between the house and perimeter wall create six different garden spaces each with its own theme.
I think this is what Jenny calls the English Garden. I loved the exuberance of the flowers in this space. There is no formal rigid border, instead the plants spill out over the paving creating a very naturalistic space and a space I would love to waste a few hours in, listening to the bird and insects and watching the lizards run along the wall (which we were lucky to do a couple of evenings later).
The first and third photos are of the front planting area which as you can see is full of large succulents. I am not informed enough to attempt to name any of them but I loved the juxtaposition of the spiky succulents with the surrounding trees which I think are oaks. I developed a love of the trees in Austin which seem to have quite broad and open canopies giving much needed shade but also with their small leaves bringing a lovely diffused light to the space beneath. I have been trying to think of a tree I could use to create a similar effect in England.
I think one of the reasons I love this garden is because of the polished combination of very English plants such as the Aquilegias, Geraniums and Poppies with succulents and cacti; I think this one is a Prickly Pear. So often you see plants corralled into a restricted planting scheme – succulents, hardy exotics, herbaceous border – and never the twain shall meet. Jenny has shown that you can ignore these preconceptions and building on the plant’s cultivation needs and looking carefully at colour, form and texture you an create exciting and intriguing planting.
Although Jenny has been blogging for as long as me, if not longer, I hadn’t come across her blog until this trip but I am now following her assiduously and I feel that I have found a kindred spirit albeit on the other side of the pond.
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