Flori's best flowers and vegetables

It is quite tricky to keep control with the garden my best big one is the Rose, I am Flori I am 6.
I do gardening at school with mummy.my best little plant is the daisy.

Tilly's vegetables

Hello I am Tilly (8) , I am very proud of my fine mum, Lucy she has helped me whith my gardening skills and I am now making\designing my own vegtable patch. I will be growing pumpkins,sunflowers to give it a bit of colour, aubegerine, swiss chard, broccoli and potatoes. my sister, Flori is keen to have a patch too. I will start growing my delicious vegetables when the stupid weather has got better!

What makes us plantaholics so enthusiastic?

I love wallowing in plants with fellow plantsman. People with a true passion for plants are a delight to listen to and can enthuse even farmers like my husband into the garden (most farmers just want to plough the whole lot up!) The Goddess of Gardening in my opinion is the great Beth Chatto whose garden I have been visiting since I was a child, being taken by my mother (who sowed the seeds this illness!) Many years ago we went to an exibition in Hadleigh where Cedric Morris's paintings were being shown and Beth gave a wonderful talk. He managed to blend the love of gardening with a passion for painting and of course inspired people like Beth. I think of Cedric when I look at our delicate little Narcissus 'Cedric Morris' which braves the weather at this time of the year, giving us hope that spring maybe in the air soon. I think that the love of all the arts is very much linked to gardening. Indeed in our garden here at Rushbrooke we have included art in many forms. Firstly using plants to soften the base of sculptures, picking up on their colourings or contrasting the texture of a rusty metal plough breast with not only whispy grasses but also prickly Sea Holly like Eryngium Miss Willmotts Ghost. We also used the art of willow weaving to create a willow urn and tunnel which adds height and acts as a division between a more formal area and a more curvacous relaxed one! The copper verdigre of Cary Norman's 'Pod' looks fantastic as a centre piece picking up the bluey green cabbage leaves. Whether it's reclaimed galvanised watering cans or gates from the council dump or original art, I love it. We hope not to have any mass produced obects in the garden or any features that I have seen elsewhere. Your garden should be as original as you are, which in my case is pink haired with lots of rings - so colourful maximalist planting with lots of decorative objects!!

The God of Gardening is in my opinion Roy Lancaster who I have heard lecture many times. He is absolutely bubbling with his keenness for the plants he's seen on his travels around the world. I remember one memorable afternoon at Lullingstone Castle where the lovely Tom Hart-Dyke took a group of us around his fascinating World Map Garden and then Roy gave an inspirational talk afterwards. You couldn''t get two more plant mad lovely people- I was in heaven.

I have had the joy of showing dear Beth around our garden in May 2008, which has made my life. She and her head gardener spent four hours here walking around the garden discussing every plant and enjoying a lovely lunch together. It gives me great pleasure to know that I am now on 'kissing terms' with my great hero. I must say that when the Hardy Plant Society came to see the garden last year I did scan the group for that familiar shock of white hair that is Roy Lancasters, but sadly he wasn't with them.. I wanted to impress him with my Plants of Asian Origin Border which were sourced through another great plantsman Rupert Eley of the Place for Plants nursery. The plants where slected from his book Travels in China - which one day I would like to go to but Dominic asked me to marry him, then having two lovely girls has put pay to my travelling plans for a while!!

Cary Norman's Pod in Dominic's Potager

This is meant to be my first short blog - whoops! Must get out and finish trimming the stone parterre - more of this anon.

Posted on 21st February 2010