Snapdragon's garden

Birthdays and bluebells

It is my birthday today.
Exactly five years ago Euan and I viewed a house in Balfron - it looked perfect in the schedule.
There was a lot riding on it - we had been looking for ages, a friend had thought about and then decided against selling us a barn to convert and nothing else suitable seemed to come on the market.   
This property was old (bonus), had  a big garden and an outbuilding that could be converted into a workshop/ studio/shop just off the main street.
Mum looked after the children and we made a day of it - we needn't have bothered.  The house that looked so promising in the schedule was just all wrong, irreparably and bizarrely connected into its neighbour in a way that guaranteed a complete lack of privacy.
The ensuing rather bad silent pub meal is the worst birthday meal I have ever had.

Three days later Euan phoned me to tell me to get the paper, that there was a property he thought would be ideal.  I looked it up - a squat, brown pebble dashed, aluminium windowed bungalow. Hmmm.

And then we came and viewed - we spent 10 minutes in the house - we spent a lot longer in the gardens - this bluebell wood is why we live here - it flowers every year for my birthday (and anyone who knows me knows what a big deal I make about my birthday).

The house is still pretty awful - to be honest it is in a worse state that when we bought it as we wait for a building warrant - but the wood is magnificent.

Photos all by Jane Robertson.

Taking shape

We have fantastic friends.
Yesterday evening Callum came round with his shiny new pick-up and gamely towed the airstream from our back lawn (where it looked as though an aeroplane had crashed into the greenhouse) over the flowerbeds to the top field where it is to stay, looking down through the bluebell wood along the glen.
Jane R took this photo of the airstream before it moved - you can see all the light covers that we need to replace.
Then we barbecued sausages and halloumi and raised a glass  to Callum and Jo (who had omitted to tell us that it was their wedding anniversary when we asked the favour- as I say great friends) and their new baby while relaxing in the sun.
A great evening.
Moving the airstream has made an enormous difference.
You can now begin to see what the gardens will look like - I haven't been able to plant up some of the beds this year as we knew they would be squashed by the airstream so they can now be filled which will help.  But it is more than that - now the hedges start to make sense, the paths lead somewhere.
It is all very exciting - now I just need to make the plans a reality. 
A garden photographer called this morning to see whether it would be a good time to take shots for a guidebook.  Gulp. I said to call by in August . . .so now that I have a deadline, I better do something about it.

Newsletter out

The new Snapdragon's News newsletter is out - e-mail me snapdragonjane@googlemail.com if you want a copy.
There's a special offer on my new notebooks and a recipe for nettle & mint soup.
J
x

Better wedding photos.

After a busy week, with weddings and gift orders and fairs, today is a down day.
I am sorting out my desk and doing some admin - sparked by needing to actually get my accounts in order before it all spirals out of control and leaves me sobbing over a mess of receipt filled shoe boxes in January.
Not my favourite job.  I just make piles and piles of paper and then get fed up with it all and make a cup of coffee.
On a brighter note, Jane Robertson has just popped round with a CD of photos taken of the wedding flowers on Saturday - they are just as gorgeous as I thought they would be and I thought that I would share a couple.
The church is a lovely old building with a beautiful arched front door.  This is a heart wreath of box and rosemary which I hung the front door of the church - the top is decorated with hellebores and scented narcissi.
I love heart wreaths, you think that they might turn out twee but they never seem to - I make ones with dogwood and willow in the winter with berries and paperwhites at the top and I've made up one with sweetpeas as well for a wedding in a tiny castle chapel.
And here is a much better photo of the bride's bouquet - taken by a proper photographer - not by my trying to hold it steady and press the shutter at the same time.
I find angelique -the peony tulip in the bouquet - quite difficult to grow, the blooms are a bit capricious and have a tendency to bloom small, they don't grow well in the tunnel as they are prone to rot.
But when I look at flowers like this they are obviously worth it.  Stunning.
Back to the accounts . . .but then the sun has just come out . . .another day?

Workshop in Perthshire

This afternoon I have been on the phone to Caroline from the business Twice who asked me a while ago if I would do a workshop on cutting garden flowers at her house in Perthshire.
The course has now begun filling up, so it is definitely going ahead and I am very excited about the day.  I just love meeting people and showing what can be done with the flowers growing in their gardens.
The course is one of three that are going to be held in June at Inchyra House, a beautiful Georgian house in Perthshire The other two courses are to be on foraging - led by Xa Milne and Fiona Houston who wrote a great series of articles about foraging for the Saturday telegraph which have recently been published as a book - Seaweed and eat it
- and decorating with colour - in which the colour consultant Joa Studhome will help people to devise foolproof colour schemes for their homes.
I find that many people are nervous of picking flowers from their own garden and making up bouquets, so I shall be showing them the best ways to harvest, condition and look after flowers and how to give a really professional finish to a gift bouquet.  It will be a really hands on course, limited to 10 so that I can properly show people what to do.   Everyone will leave with a booklet of tips so that they can use their new skills at home and a beautiful hand-tied bouquet they have made themselves.
The courses cost £85 including lunch, wine and coffee - further details here 

Beautiful day

Beautiful weather, beautiful venue, beautiful bride - what more can you want?
Congratulations to Mary and Jim.
Jane Robertson took some photos of the flowers in the church so I'll post them later in the week - this is a snap of the angelique tulips and meadowsweet in Mary's bouquet.
Today we are putting the cover back on the polytunnel - strapping men are girding themselves for action - better get out there . . .

Wedding tulips

Thats the thing about tulips . . .yesterday was all sultry glamour . . .today is fresh, crisp and elegant.

This is a bouquet picked up by a bride whose brief was simple, light, fresh.  She came this morning to select her flowers - went off with her girlfriends for a coffee at Tir-na-nOg and came back for the finished article.
Here are a couple of snapshots.

The tulips are spring green - ideal for a bouquet as the stems are sturdy and the flower opens out into a shallow bowlshape.  They are mixed with white honesty and solomon's seal.

Tomorrow I shall begin picking and conditioning flowers for a wedding that is very special to me - all last year the groom bought flowers for his womanfriend from my van. I was so delighted when they got engaged and I was asked to arrange the flowers for them.

Sometimes I just love my job.

parrot tulips

We seem to have moved from winter to summer without a break in between.  One minute it was horizontal rain and a northerly gale, next balmy sunshine.
I could get used to it.
This rather glamorous bouquet went out as a transport/packing trial yesterday. It is a sultry mix of tulips queen of the night, rococo and a double form of Princes Irene along with a deep red wallflower and some hornbeam.
I grew the double orange tulips as a replacement for orange favourite - a glorious orange and green parrot tulip which would be the ideal tulip (gorgeous, long blooming, scented) were it not that its stems have a habit of snapping about 2 inches down from the head. It seems to be a fault line rather than a case of the head being too heavy. Unfortunately this orange one has the same fault - both are scented of freesias, I wonder if the snapping stems are genetic too. 
I popped the three sturdiest looking stems into this bouquet, hoping that the hornbeam twigs and wallflowers will keep them safe, but they obviously can't go into a non-trial bouquet.
The search continues . . .

The Mulberry Dyer

The courses at Alt-y-bela take place in an old barn - old, uneven and dark with shuttered windows, burning candles and a wood burning stove.  With the pots of dye material bubbling away it gave the whole an alchemical atmosphere.
The dyeing course was run by Debra Bamford, aka The Mulberry Dyer, and as she specialises in historically correct dyes, working with museums and historical re-enactment societies, it was exactly the right venue.
First we talked about all the preparation work that Debs had done before the course - the mordanting of our pieces of wool and silk - scrubbing them up and treating them with alum so that they were ready to take the dyes.

Then we moved onto the fun bit - the pots of simmering plants - dyer's broom; madder; walnut leaves; safflower and alkanet - and we learned how to dye, how to modify, how to overdye and what happens if you add stale piss to the dyebath.
We also learned how everyone's temperament had as much effect on the final result as did the individual dyes - the final colours were all quite different depending on how impatient we were with the dyebaths.
The thing that amazed me was quite how vibrant the colours were - particularly fleece dyed with dyer's broom which could have been used to make one of those high visibility jackets.  Debs told us how yellow stockings were by men worn to indicate that they were young free and single - so there you go!
One of the joys of  going on courses, completely aside from the learning of a new skill, is the people you meet.  Somehow, when everyone is concentrating and sharing ideas it gels and there is no awkwardness.  I am actually quite a shy person, I don't relish introducing myself to new people, yet here, where I knew no-one prior to the day, I felt welcome and relaxed and chatty. The photo shows Arne and Chris (who has a wholesale plant nursery and a fantastic knowledge of plants) deliberating over cloth!
Here is the washing line strung up with some of the threads and fleece that we dyed (all carefully labeled).
The whole of the day was held together and made joyous by Arne's assistant, Kristy, one of the most understatedly and sunnily capable people I have ever met.
It was also made memorable by the truly delicious lunch, cakes and coffee (someone who had been on a previous course at Alt-y-bela had claimed before I went that the lunch alone was worth the fee - they may have a point)
In conclusion - it was a fantastic day - I learned loads of useful stuff, I met great people, I saw an emerging garden, I ate a delicious lunch, I drank white wine in the sunshine.  I came away feeling very privileged.
Definitely worth the 8 hour drive.
The Mulberry dyer is doing another course at Alt-y-bela just before Christmas - contact kristy@arne-maynard.com for details. 

Alt-y-bela

When you are looking forward to something as much as I was looking forward to my trip to Wales you often set yourself up for disappointment.
Not in this case - I loved my trip from start to finish, despite the ridiculous amount of driving involved. 

I loved it so much that I am going to split posting about it into 3.
One of the main motivations of going to Wales was to see the garden that Arne Maynard is creating around his renaissance house Alt-y-bela near Usk in Monmouthshire -   over the 15 years that I have been interested in gardens I have found myself consistently drawn to gardens which turn out to have been designed by him and I thought that it would be great to see this garden right at the beginning of its creation.
Alt-y-bela is at the base of a valley - somehow managing to be a sun trap, rather than gloomy as so many valley bases are.  I stayed at a B&B on the valley slopes and walked down via the old drovers road - so this is how I approached the house through a magical wood of white wood anenomes. 

The front of the house is the only part which is gardened at the moment - a curving stone wall separates a small garden area from the drive and tall airy espaliered apple trees enclose it - there is a long curving, rough hewn oak bench for basking on and a bed of thyme and old lizard tulips in a gritty bed.  Everything is pared down and beautiful.

The trees - in full blossom this week - were light and airy and I expect that they will continue to look great right the way through the year - particularly when the branches are jewelled with the small russet apples.

On the other side of the yard was an auricula theatre, full of old terracotta pots of these gorgeous flowers - each precise, doll-like, perfect.

The back garden and the drive area is all still mud.  Beautifully sculpted into curving terraces, but mud none-the-less.  Arne's vision, laid before us in sweeping gestures, is of a high octane meadow, with astrantia, dark leaved cow parsley and geranium phaem flowering amidst fine meadow grasses (the mix in the neighbouring field has been analyzed and recreated).
It was wonderful to be there at this stage, and I shall definitely return to see the vision realised.  I love people with passion.