dixter – beautiful, and verbascums

Early evening at a Great Dixter Friends’ event – cloudy skies mean little shadow.  Softness is the prevailing texture in the front meadow with quiet colour allowing for the full picture of buildings, trees and hedging to read in complete proportion. I’m always aware of the buildings here with the spaces around the buildings having a clarity as well as differing character. Good design.

In the Sunk Garden, a mass of Cenolophium, unusual placing in a confined space – but it works.

The division  – brickwork and planting – between the Sunk Garden and the Wall Garden, contains a bold combination of magenta lychnis + small dark dahlia.

Groups of cornflowers, seemingly the favoured annual this year, repeated at intervals down the Long Border. Yellow tones  read well in low light with the clearest and brightest seen on the torchlike stems of verbascum.

Quite lovely pale evening primrose in this composition . . . .

. . . and a stronger coloured form stands up well with purple tones.

Across the Cat Garden, shimmers of stipa flowers bridge the gap between the perennial layer and the yew hedging.

The growth especially of perennials in the Orchard Garden is overwhelming and luxurient. . . .

. . and right at the furthest boundary of the Vegetable Garden,sits a long thin border packed with matrix planting.  Jewel like perfection.

The use of colour here has always been bold – it takes confidence to mix these 2 tones of blue with a touch of cerise . . .

. .  but a more obvious tried and tested combination of yellow flowering ferula, purple clematis and soft pink rose.

Exuberance of planting around the Peacock Garden contrast with quieter but, as complex, combinations such as low euphorbia in the selective mix of species in the Prairie . . .

. . and teazles with onions.

There is another sky,

Ever serene and fair,

And there is another sunshine,

Though it be darkness there;

Never mind faded forests, Austin,

Never mind silent fields –

Here is a little forest,

Whose leaf is ever green;

Here is a brighter garden,

Where not a frost has been;

In its unfading flowers

I hear the bright bee hum:

Prithee, my brother,

Into my garden come!  Emily Dickinson