Marc's Gardens

The wonderfull Jaqueline van de Kloet - Dutch bulb master Well, you don’t get blog titles like that every day, now do you? Organs of Perennation, or put simply – bulbs! Bloomin’ magic things if you ask me. Small flowering time capsules is what they really are: a miracle, condensed and concertinaed into a container of hope and promise. How poetic! Well anyway, it’s kind of that time again when our horticultural attentions turn towards bulb planting for the spring. Nurseries, garden centres and even supermarkets are full of them at the moment. Not that I would ever endorse purchasing anything even remotely horticultural from a supermarket, but I often see some real bulb bargains to be had in supermarkets: 18 Allium ‘Purple Sensation’ bulbs for £5 (from Tesco) can’t be bad. Two hefty bags of mixed Daffs for the same price is also a good buy in my opinion. Two rows of daffs planted under a climbing hydrangea......... .... and the result a few months later....

Blimey, it has been some time since I last published a hortic post here. I’ve been very busy working, studying and writing ‘stuff’ elsewhere! Anyway, having had a nudge from a colleague recently, I managed to find a vacant and warm afternoon in which to visit the Dunnett-designed rooftop gardens at the Barbican centre in London. Having had the challenge of replacing the somewhat out-dated plantings of the 1980’s, Nigel Dunnett (Professor at Sheffield University) and his team began planting the Beech Gardens back in March 2015.   The original planting featured areas of lawn, bedding (Yikes!) and bold architectural plants such as Phormiums and Cordylines. These had rather outgrown the site, requiring heavy irrigation and brought many structural problems to the site also. Ageing design, over-mature plants and leaky irrigation prompted the City Corporation to have a radical rethink.  The Barbican ‘complex’ is a funny ol' place. I’ve visited it many times over the