Disa
Went to the Tatton Park flower show on Thursday – yes, that’s right, two whole days off from being mummy in a week! Shocking. (Repercussions in the form of slightly clingy children are sometimes a price worth paying.) Despite getting halfway up the motorway before having Sara check my bag for the tickets, which necessitated a slight unscheduled visit home again, we were there bright and early and it was neither too busy nor too hot. First off we kind of fell into conversation with a woman who was hanging about by her own back-to-back garden; she looked vaguely familiar but as we tried to figure out what red flowers Sara might have spreading in her garden and then talked about her garden, I didn’t think much of it. Then I squinted at her name badge…hmm, lodge lane nursery sounds vaguely familiar; maybe it is near here. Eventually twigged that she was the nice lady from Bluebell Cottage who had shown Maggie her cat and tadpoles in May. Oops. Her garden was one of the nicest, anyway, inspired by Great Dixter and full of plants.
Coffee and doughnuts then onto the show gardens. Quite uninspired in general this year, I thought – there are usually a couple that make you think wow. Lots of nice plants (we scribbled notes and photographed) but most of the gardens just looked like somebody’s nice back garden. We did wonder if there was a dearth of plants to choose from with the iffy weather, but I don’t know. Even Chris Beardshaw’s, which won best in show, was just a couple of (well planted) borders and a lawn. A lawn! We watched some children doing a dance in wellies (briefly).
The floral marquee was very busy but we didn’t let that stop us filling the old-lady trolley with lovely plants. Favourite this year was “Disa“; a kind of fluorescent-bright cool orchid, which were displayed on a black background and looked absolutely stunning. I have two glowing in my front room now, which is not cool but hot at the moment and has no black background (they are still pretty). We spotted Joe Swift and Gordon Burns (he reads our local news) – who looked vaguely familiar but we did have to ask a random lady in a hat. Trendy plants included achillea, agapanthus, penstemons and lavender, while prairie planting at last seems to be on the wane. I fell madly in love with a wicker ball on a metal poley thing (I am not going to explain this very well – have a look at it here); you could sit, well almost lie, in it and I have fantasies of spending entire summers in there with a book (perhaps the nanny will bring one when she comes). It would look fabulous on our back patio if I only had a spare two grand.